GHG Monitor
9/4/2015
IN CONGRESS
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), along with Rep. Tom Price (R-S.C.), traveled to Saskatchewan, Canada, last week to tour SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture utilization and storage project. The Boundary Dam plant, which came online in October 2014, is the world’s first commercial-scale post-combustion coal-fired carbon capture and storage project in operation. The project, a partnership between SaskPower, the Canadian government, and the provincial government of Saskatchewan, experienced few delays or cost overruns, regardless of its first-of-a-kind status. Touring the plant, Graham praised the project, The Canadian Press reported, quoting the senator as saying "You have not only done it right, you are having everybody in the world to come look at it."
ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT
The International Energy Agency this week announced the appointment of Fatih Birol as executive director. Birol has worked with the IEA for 20 years, most recently in the positions of chief economist and director of global energy economics, with responsibilities that included directing the World Energy Outlook publication. Birol succeeds former executive director Maria van der Hoeven. “It is the privilege of a lifetime to be chosen to run the IEA, and I am deeply honoured by the trust that each one of our 29 member countries has placed in me,” Birol said in an IEA release.