Budget & Policy

A headline in the Oct. 25 edition of GHG Reduction Technologies Monitor (“Alstom’s U.S. Head Calls for Carbon Price”) did not accurately reflect the comments made by Alstom’s U.S. President Amy Ericson in the story. In a speech last week, Ericson did not directly push for a carbon price, but instead more generally called for […]

IN DOE The Obama Administration this week nominated two individuals to fill senior-level management positions at the Department of Energy. Joseph Hezir has been tapped to serve as DOE’s Chief Financial Officer. He currently serves as a Research Engineer and the Executive Director of The Future of Solar Energy Study at the Massachusetts Institute of […]

The Department of Energy has released its final environmental impact statement for the FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage project, clearing the project to move ahead to the next stage.

The United States will largely no longer provide aid through international development banks for new oversees coal-fire projects unless those projects deploy carbon capture and storage technologies, the U.S. Treasury Department announced this week.

Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) unveiled a draft bill this week that would render the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules setting CO2 emissions standards for new power plants of no effect.

Mississippi Power’s flagship carbon capture and storage facility at Kemper County is now expected to come online in the fourth quarter of 2014, the utility’s parent company, Southern Company, told investors this week.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) called on his colleagues to increase funding for research into clean coal technology at an Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing this week, arguing that the future of coal depends on such advancements.

Carbon capture and storage was called into question as the best system of emission reduction for coal-fired power plants this week at a House Science subcommittee hearing exploring new U.S. Environmental Protection rules that would set emissions limits for new-build plants, with several witnesses rejecting EPA’s determination that CCS has been adequately demonstrated.

IN DOE The Obama Administration nominated Ellen Williams this week to serve as director of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Williams currently serves as chief scientist for BP, and is on a leave of absence from the University of Maryland where she has served as a distinguished university professor in the Department […]

The Obama Administration has decided to seek public comment on its Social Cost of Carbon values—used to estimate the societal value of reducing carbon emissions—reversing course after months of outcry from Republicans and industry groups over the revised estimates released in May.

A new study published in an online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week suggests that injections of supercritical CO2 and other gasses for enhanced recovery into the Cogdell oil field near Snyder, Texas, may have triggered earthquakes nearby.

Proponents of carbon capture and storage need to restructure the societal case for advancing the technology in terms of job preservation in a future carbon-constrained world, Graeme Sweeney, chairman of Zero Emissions Platform, said at a stakeholders meeting that took place at the Fifth Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum Ministerial, held in Washington this week.

The Department of Energy said it is investing nearly $84 million in carbon capture and storage projects across the U.S. this week. The agency said it is making the new project investments as part of efforts to drive down the costs of CCS for new and existing coal-fired plants.

Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz strongly backed the readiness of carbon capture and storage to be deployed in new coal-fired power plants this week.

Remediation efforts at Delhi Field—an enhanced oil recovery project in northern Louisiana that was discovered to be releasing a mix of CO2, saltwater and other well fluids in June—is nearing completion, Phil Rykhoek, president and chief executive officer of Denbury said this week.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) demanded more information about how and why the Obama Administration updated its Social Costs of Carbon estimates—used to estimate the societal value of reducing carbon emissions—in a letter sent to Sarah Dunham, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Atmospheric Programs, this week.

In order to drive advancements in carbon capture and storage technology, there needs to be better knowledge sharing among companies that are undertaking first-of-a-kind CCS projects, according to several industry leaders who spoke on a panel at the Fifth Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum ministerial meeting in Washington, D.C. last week.

President Barack Obama appointed Dan Utech to take the reins as his top energy and climate change advisor this week, replacing Heather Zichal, who left the administration to pursue opportunities in the private sector.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a carbon tax of $25-per-ton that would rise 2 percent each year could help cut the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade, outlining the idea along with its pros and cons among approximately 100 other options for trimming the deficit in a paper released this week.

Representatives from the coal industry, environmental groups and other interests offered at times starkly different opinions on how the Environmental Protection Agency should develop its greenhouse gas limits for existing power plants at a listening session in Washington last week—one of the last such sessions to be held amid an 11-stop tour.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s subcommittee on Oversight explored in a hearing last week whether the natural gas industry will voluntarily employ existing and effective technology to keep methane—a potent greenhouse gas—from leaking into the atmosphere during the hydraulic fracturing process, or whether regulation is needed to keep emissions in check.

Chris Smith, the Obama Administration’s nominee to serve as assistant secretary of energy for Fossil Energy, pledged this week to provide “full transparency” on the Department of Energy’s carbon capture and sequestration programs if confirmed.

Republican lawmakers took the Environmental Protection Agency to task this week for holding up the Kemper County Energy Facility and other large-scale demonstration projects using carbon capture and storage technology as national models for deploying CCS as it attempts to set CO2 emission limits for power plants and essentially mandate that new coal-fired plants be built using CCS technology in proposed new source performance standards.

The White House this week nominated two to serve in the Department of Energy’s top science positions. Franklin Orr has been nominated to serve as under secretary for Science and Energy. He is currently the director of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University, and has been an associate professor and professor in the […]

IN THE NATION Colorado proposed new rules this week that aim to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas operations, making it the first state to require “leak detection from tanks, pipelines and other drilling and production processes,” according to Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s office. The proposed rules would require monthly inspections of large emissions […]

A federal grand jury in Pittsburgh, Pa., indicted the former head of the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Lab on a charge that he obstructed justice this week.

The announcement last week that the Tennessee Valley Authority is planning on closing eight coal-fired units follows a national trend of shuttering coal plants and may be indicative of what is to come in the future, according to some industry experts.

Concerns over a provision in the Environmental Protection Agency’s new proposed rule that essentially mandates the use of partial carbon capture and storage technology for new coal-fired power plants is mounting, with a former assistant secretary of energy and some Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee repeating the charge that CCS is not ready yet and a working group of the EPA finding that the peer review of some scientific studies used to justify the mandate appears to be “inadequate.”

As is our annual practice, GHG Monitor will not publish next week in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. The next regular issue will be in your inbox Dec. 6., and we will issue bulletins should any major news break in the interim.

SCS Energy’s Hydrogen Energy California project and the California Energy Commission are still facing disagreements over air quality calculations and other issues as the CEC is gathering information in preparation for its final staff assessment and environmental impact statement, it was revealed at a new round of public workshops and a committee conference held by the CEC this week and last.