WRAP UP

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
3/1/13

IN CONGRESS

The co-chairs of the recently-created Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change sent a letter to dozens of inspectors general this week requesting information about what each government agency can do to act on climate change. Co-chairs Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said they asked the internal watchdogs about how each federal entity is currently responding to climate change and additional steps each could take to further act on the issue. The President’s mention of executive actions to help reduce carbon pollution in his State of the Union Address “presents an opportunity and obligation for agencies to develop strategies to meet the challenge of preventing and responding to climate change,” the letter states. The letter comes less than two weeks after the Government Accountability Office added climate change to its high risk list for government fiscal exposure for the first time. The group sent a letter to stakeholder businesses and other organizations last month asking for input on what government could do to strengthen the nation’s resiliency to climate change.

Two top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter to the panel’s Republican leadership this week calling for a hearing on the Government Accountability Office’s recent addition of climate change to its high risk list. Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Energy and Power Subcommittee Ranking Member Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) called on their Committee counterparts Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) Feb. 26 to hold an informational hearing on the issue. “As GAO has found, the impacts of climate change on federal taxpayers are potentially enormous,” Waxman and Rush said in the letter. “We need to understand what these impacts are and how they can be addressed.” 

AT DOE

Outgoing Secretary of Energy Steven Chu plans to return to Stanford University after he leaves the Department, the Stanford Daily reported Feb. 22. The school announced that Chu will be the William R. Kennan Jr. Professor of Humanities and Sciences, holding a joint appointment within the university’s physics and molecular and cellular physiology departments. It said Chu will focus on energy efficiency policy issues and will launch an initiative in advanced bio-imaging. “I want to return to… the marriage of physics, biology and biomedicine,” Chu was quoted as saying in the article. “That is a very exciting frontier.” Chu taught physics at Stanford from 1987 until his federal appointment in 2008. In Chu’s retirement announcement last month, he said he would stay on at DOE through this week’s ARPA-E Summit, but it was reported that he will likely stay on until a successor is confirmed by the Senate. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Ernest Moniz is widely expected to soon be named his replacement.

The National Energy Technology Laboratory issued a funding opportunity announcement this week soliciting applications for technologies that could enhance CO2 monitoring, verification and accounting efforts. The DOE lab said it is specifically looking for tools that could accurately measure CO2 saturations at multiple subsurface locations or precisely detect potential and actual CO2 leakage pathways. NETL said it will likely fund four to eight projects and will make available $3.2 million for new awards for the rest of FY2013 and will dole out an additional $6.4 million through FY2015. Applications are due April 17.

IN THE STATES

California’s second quarterly auction of greenhouse gas allowances under its cap-and-trade scheme netted nearly $84 million last week, Reuters reported. The California Air Resources Board said Feb. 22 that the second auction sold nearly 13 million credits for 2013 for the state’s 350 largest polluters—all that were offered—at a price of $13.62. The Board said it sold less than half of the credits offered through 2016 at a price of $10.71 each. The first quarterly auction, held Nov. 14, garnered a price that was slightly higher than the ETS’ $10 price floor, although that was buoyed slightly by the fact that the utility Southern California Edison accidentally bid for 21 times more allowances than it needed due to a formatting issue. The earnings now go to a greenhouse gas reduction account run by the state. Regulators have yet to determine how that money will be spent. The state Chamber of Commerce sued the ARB late last year, arguing that the body does not have the legal right to raise revenue from the scheme. That case is scheduled to be heard in Sacramento County Superior Court later this spring.

A bill that would allow the Indiana State Supreme Court to determine the fate of a proposed and highly-contended coal gasification plant passed the state Senate this week on a 47-3 vote. The $2.8 billion Rockford project, under development by Indiana Gasification, a subsidiary of Leucadia National Corp., plans to gasify 3.5 million tons of Illinois Basin coal annually, converting the feedstock into substitute natural gas that would be sold to the state. Senate Bill 510, which initially would have forced the developer to reimburse every three years any losses the state might incur as a result its 30-year purchasing agreement, was heavily diluted by the Indiana Senate’s Utility Committee last week. The modified legislation would no longer mandate such reimbursement. The bill now states that if the Supreme Court deems Indiana Gasification and the Indiana Finance Authority’s 30-year purchasing agreement unconstitutional, the issue will be sent back to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission for further consideration. The amendment also orders the state utility regulators to conduct a study on the projected volatility of Indiana’s natural gas market by the end of the year. The bill will now head to the Indiana House Utility Committee.