CARBON CAPTURE
Bill would authorize DOE fossil office
Christa Marshall, E&E News reporter
Published: Friday, May 11, 2018
House lawmakers introduced legislation yesterday to boost carbon capture technologies and reauthorize the Department of Energy's fossil office for the first time in more than a decade.
The "Fossil Energy Research and Development Act," H.R. 5745, from Reps. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) and David McKinley (R-W.Va.) and House Science, Space and Technology ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), would focus the office's work on utilizing, sequestering and capturing carbon dioxide from emitters and the air.
DOE's fossil office oversees research on oil, gas and coal initiatives, but current authorizing text doesn't fully reflect new carbon-reduction technologies that have been developed in the past 10 years, according to bill supporters.
The legislation would also authorize higher funding for the office, call for new programs on methane leak detection and establish an interagency task force assessing carbon dioxide pipelines. It would encourage DOE to back large-scale pilot projects.
"With research into these technologies, we will reduce uncertainty so business can continue to invest and create jobs in the energy industry," Veasey said in a statement.
The bill would repeal the Clean Coal Power Initiative, a DOE program that expired four years ago after supporting several big carbon capture projects, including NRG Energy Inc.'s Petra Nova venture in Texas. It is the world's largest retrofit of a coal plant with carbon capture.
"While the original CPPI would be repealed, there are numerous provisions in the bill that would cover and might be beneficial to coal, effectively meeting the same policy goals as the CPPI," said Jeff Bobeck, co-director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, which is supporting the measure.
Other supporters include the American Council for Capital Formation, the American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, the Bipartisan Policy Center Action and Third Way.
