Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
5/22/2015
Supporting clean coal technologies, such as carbon capture and storage, will allow the United States to address the threat of climate change without sacrificing the nation’s economy, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) said this week at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to consider a set of pending energy supply legislation. Among the bills considered were three put forth by Manchin and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) that would focus on advancing clean coal technologies. “We have a responsibility as humans for the climate and basically we’ve got to find a balance between the economy and the environment and we’re trying to do that with legislation,” Manchin said.
One of Manchin and Heitkamp’s bills would establish a new program within the Department of Energy that would be aimed at “ensure[ing] the continued use of the abundant, domestic coal resources of the United States through the development of technologies that will significantly improve the efficiency, effectiveness, costs, and environmental performance of coal use,” the text of the bill says. This would be accomplished include research and development, large-scale pilot projects and demonstration projects.
Another measure would allow the Secretary of Energy to enter into contracts to provide certain price stabilization support relating to electric generation units that use coal-based generation technology. “This simple fix would create more incentives for public-private investment in carbon reducing clean-coal projects and help remove barriers of uncertainty surrounding the development of these critical technologies,” Manchin said. The bill would work to counteract the uncertainty caused by the volatility of oil prices that determine the price paid for captured carbon in an enhanced oil recovery type project. “Creating added certainty that captured carbon dioxide would receive a certain, agreed upon price for a limited period of time would help to ensure that carbon capture and storage technology would be developed and used,” according to the bill.
The third would make CCS and CCUS a priority across the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy. “CCUS is not just a coal technology but one that will be used across the fossil energy sector,” Manchin said. The bill would amend the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to require the Secretary of Energy to “consider the objective of improving the conversion, use, and storage of carbon dioxide produced from fossil fuels in carrying out research and development programs under that Act,” according to the text of the bill.
Industry Voices Support
At the hearing, Susan Kelly, president and CEO of the American Public Power Association, voiced her support for the three coal bills, explaining that the use of coal for several decades into the future cannot be avoided. “We do believe that with new research and development we can find better ways to use [coal],” Kelly said, later noting that “our job as utilities is to provide reliable, affordable and environmentally responsible power supply and we have to balance those three factors every day as we move forward.”