Budget & Policy

Tamar Hallerman GHG Monitor 4/5/13 IN CONGRESS The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is scheduled to hold a confirmation hearing for the Obama Administration’s pick for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Gina McCarthy, next week. The hearing is set to be held on April 11 beginning at 10:30 a.m. McCarthy currently serves as EPA Assistant […]

The Obama Administration slashed the Department of Energy’s coal research budget in its Fiscal Year 2014 request to Congress today, proposing $276.63 million for the program, a 25 percent decrease from currently enacted levels. 

The Obama Administration said today that it is looking to refocus program budgets within the Environmental Protection Agency in order to create a leaner organization during a time of deficit reduction.

Lindsay Kalter and Tamar Hallerman GHG Monitor 4/12/13 AT DOE Acting Under Secretary of Energy David Sandalow announced this week that he is leaving the Department of Energy to take a fellowship at the new Center on Global Energy Policy at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Sandalow, who has also spent […]

Republicans on a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee circulated draft legislation late last week that would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from finalizing any major energy-related regulations if the Secretary of Energy deems they could have “significant adverse effects” on the economy.

Skyonic, the developer of a carbon utilization demonstration project in Texas, has confirmed that it is in talks with several international groups to set up partnerships linked to its mineralization technology. 

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking to begin work in Fiscal Year 2014 on promulgating greenhouse gas emissions performance standards for existing power plants, acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe said this week. 

A recently released Congressional Research Service report questions the planned schedule for the $1.65 billion FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage project. 

Senate Republicans pressed Gina McCarthy, the Obama Administration’s pick for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, with a steady stream of questions about the agency’s transparency policies during her April 11 confirmation hearing. 

Ernest Moniz, the Obama Administration’s pick to lead the Department of Energy, repeatedly emphasized his support of carbon capture and storage technology during his confirmation hearing this week in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. 

The new chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee vowed late this week to make carbon capture and storage a priority in the current Congress, bringing new emphasis to an issue that has not seen much attention from the panel in recent years. 

The Department of Energy’s organizational structure for applied energy research is hamstringing technology development and must be reorganized if the Department wants to truly innovate, according to a new report from a pair of energy nonprofits.

Members of the Indiana House advanced legislation this week that could save a proposed $2.8 billion gasification plant slated for construction just outside Rockport, Ind., which so far has been fraught with legal and legislative roadblocks. 

Tamar Hallerman GHG Monitor 4/19/13 IN CONGRESS Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) introduced a bill late last week that would bar the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Secretary of the Treasury from “devising or implementing” a carbon tax. The legislation prohibits either figure from promulgating any sort of price on carbon emissions generated […]

European lawmakers this week narrowly rejected a plan that would have propped up the European Union’s rapidly nose-diving Emissions Trading System. 

The proposed $2.8 billion Indiana Gasification plant slated for construction just outside Rockport, Ind., experienced yet another setback this week when language that could potentially save the highly contested project died in the Indiana House.

Despite seeing an increase in global investment over the last year, carbon capture and storage technology development is “not on track,” the International Energy Agency warned this week.

After the Environmental Protection Agency missed its April 13 deadline to finalize greenhouse gas emission performance standards for new fossil plants, a trio of environmental groups announced their intent to sue the agency for failing to do so. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has pushed back finalization of a rulemaking that would conditionally exclude geologically sequestered CO2 from its definition of hazardous waste.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee easily approved Ernest Moniz’s nomination for Secretary of Energy April 18, nine days after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor’s confirmation hearing. 

Program-level budget justifications unveiled by the Department of Energy late this week provide a closer look at the Obama Administration’s carbon capture and storage-related priorities, highlighting a greater focus on post-combustion and natural gas capture technologies and less of an emphasis on carbon storage-related research for Fiscal Year 2014. 

Tamar Hallerman GHG Monitor 4/26/13 IN CONGRESS Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee criticized Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) this week for announcing what they said is a premature vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy to serve as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator. In a letter dated April 25, the Committee’s eight Republican […]

A group of Senate Republicans called on the Obama Administration this week to drop draft guidance requiring federal agencies to consider the impact of major energy projects on climate change during the National Environmental Policy Act permitting process. 

The Department of Energy’s first large-scale, integrated carbon capture and storage demonstration project to come online reached full capacity earlier this month. 

A bipartisan group of lawmakers reintroduced legislation this week that would provide carbon capture and storage and other clean energy projects with access to a corporate tax structure traditionally reserved for fossil fuel projects.

Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman is leading the Department of Energy for the time being as acting Secretary after former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu left the Department early this week and a hold was placed on the confirmation of new Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz. 

A coalition of trade associations petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court late last week to review and overturn a federal appeals court decision that upheld the Environmental Protection Agency’s blueprint for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources. 

Carbon capture and storage legislation advanced in the California Senate this week as supporters continued to argue that the bill would fill gaps in the state’s regulatory regime.

Lawmakers debated whether investing solely in energy research and development is enough to fight climate change this week after a high-profile witness at a House Science subcommittee hearing suggested that regulating carbon emissions is inefficient in the long term. 

Mississippi Power said this week that it plans on absorbing more than half a billion dollars of cost increases stemming from its Kemper County coal gasification facility.