REP. DOYLE: ‘MISSION TO THE MOON’ PROJECT NEEDED FOR CLEAN COAL

Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
11/01/2013

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. “For coal to have a future, we need to invest in the technologies that allow us to burn that coal cleaner,” Doyle said at the hearing, held by the subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. “What this congress should be doing is a mission to the moon project on research on how to deal with this issue … We’ve not made this important enough, put our best and brightest people on it.” In his remarks, he also lamented the failure of the cap and trade bill, which would have allocated $10 billion for clean coal demonstration projects, and the curtailing of discretionary funds for research in the sequester.

The hearing, which explored the impact of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations on the coal industry community, was largely focused on the negative effects EPA rules have had on coal jobs and only occasionally addressed efforts to advance carbon capture and storage technology. But Doyle argued that CCS would support the coal industry and called out his Republican colleagues for failing to vote for the stimulus package and a comprehensive energy strategy, which both contained funding for CCS technology development.

‘Impossible CO2 Limits’

One of the witnesses testifying at the hearing, Raymond Ventrone, business manager of the Boilermakers Local 154 in Pittsburgh, Pa., contended that recent EPA draft rules that would limit carbon emissions from new coal-fired plants, essentially requiring than any new plant have CCS technology, would hurt the coal community. “Effectively, the EPA’s new source regulations will end future coal-fired power plant construction, despite enormous progress that has been made in recent years with advanced emissions-limiting technology,” he said, saying the EPA set “impossible CO2 limits for fossil fuel plants.”

Daniel Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said, however, that emission limits are needed in order to advance CCS. “For those who are developing carbon capture and storage technology—burn coal without carbon—the government accounting office says the number one way to make that technology a reality is to have a limit on carbon pollution,” he said. He called on Congress to allow the EPA to move forward with “commonsense rules” to protect the environment, which he said would “reduce investment uncertainty created by regulatory confusion” and would allow companies to “strategically plan for new business opportunities and cleaner energy technologies, and develop new employment opportunities.”