House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and ranking minority member Fred Upton (R-Mich.) introduced industry-backed legislation on Wednesday to invest billions of dollars in carbon capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology.
The bill [PDF] is intended to "accelerate the development and early deployment of systems for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel electric generation facilities." It would create a $1 billion annual fund, paid into by utilities that use coal, natural gas, and oil. The utilities recover the money by passing on the cost to consumers -- the bill's sponsors estimate that cost at around $10-12 per consumer per year.
The bill would create an industry-managed "Carbon Storage Research Corporation," which would administer the fund through the nonpartisan Electric Power Research Institute. The CSRC would distribute the money through grants and contracts to governmental, academic, and private entities to help research, develop, and commercialize CCS technologies.
In his floor statement, Boucher called the legislation a "necessary first step toward the implementation of ... a cap and trade system," since it would help ease the transition for fossil fuel utilities.
"If severe emissions reduction requirements in a cap and trade system take effect before the carbon capture and storage technologies are available, the effect on coal fired utilities win particular would be severe," said Boucher.
The National Mining Association and the United Mine Workers of America have voiced support for the legislation, as have Duke Energy, Progress Energy, American Electric Power, and Dominion and Southern Co., some of the largest utilities in the country.
Boucher's summary of the bill is here, and the full text is here (PDF).
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Comments
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Sean Casten Posted 5:18 am
13 Jun 2008
In todays (lightly) deregulated era, their revenue sources are not quite so direct, but they are still very much an arm of the regulated utility sector. As such, they have never met a problem they didn't think could be solved with more R&D - but nor have they ever met a problem in our electric sector that was anything but technological. This has a certain value to the electric industry, as it provides them with an implicit, theoretically non-partisan voice saying "Electric utilities are perfect stewards of the public interest. The only way they could be better would be if someone were to invent a new whiz-bang technology. If you give us money, maybe we can invent one!"
This is not to say that they have not funded some good research through the years (including paying some of my salary back in my consulting days, when they were a regular client). But they are anything but non-partisan, and setting them up as a recipient of government funding smells awfully porky.
You may also recall that EPRI has concluded that in a carbon constrained economy, we would burn more coal. Rigorous, they ain't.
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hapa Posted 1:50 pm
13 Jun 2008
"If severe emissions reduction requirements in a cap and trade system take effect before the carbon capture and storage technologies are available, the effect on coal fired utilities [in] particular would be severe,"
GROUCHO: well that can't stand. take a note: the next person i catch acting severely will get their arms cut off!
ZEPPO: their arms! isn't that a little severe?
GROUCHO: no, i said the next person.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 2:30 pm
13 Jun 2008
Yet when it comes to coal, these particular congressmen seem to have no qualms 'bout havin' consumers pay their companies for research money.
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hapa Posted 3:08 pm
13 Jun 2008
a "tax" -- as you call it -- is any money gathered for any purpose other than making the already rich, richer. this is because the point of democratic government, in the enlightened view, is to ensure that only people who have money, get money, and the reason this is democratic is that in a market economy, spending money is like voting, and the more you vote, the better it is for democracy; so the people who don't have much money to spend, who don't vote very often, are making democracy weaker, and don't deserve any money at all.
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Russ Posted 5:33 pm
13 Jun 2008
We need a term and "framing" for those who accept the severity of the aggressor as just the way things are, yet castigate the "severity" of any victim who dares fight back. (You see that everywhere in America today, this despicable moral false equivalence.)
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crotchety1 Posted 2:35 am
14 Jun 2008
However the dirty little secret, never to be revealed, is that the right wing adores taxes.
Where, after all, do corporate subsidies come from?
Where does military spending come from?
[Non sequitur follows] Just don't get me going on the "peace dividend".
- Crotchety1
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amazingdrx Posted 3:40 am
14 Jun 2008
Turn it around. They are backing the mega expensive technologies that just will never work right.
Kind of ironic. Now that renewables and conservation are proving their leadrship on cost and GHG freeing efficacey.
Why not? Because we don't need propaganda, we have facts.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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joebhed Posted 3:21 am
16 Jun 2008
Head in the sand is the way I see it.
VERY important to get started right away on solving carbon sequestration if we want to do anything about carbon.
For those who think we can stop the use of coal by slowing down the development of technological solutions on carbon, well, I have a bridge to sell you.
That is not our coal.
Just like it is not our oil.
You can keep it in the ground by nationalizing it, which i think we should do either way.
Absent that, it will be mined, shipped and burned somewhere.
If not the US, then in some other country with or without CCS.
You can't stop mountaintop mining or killing valleys and streams and coal miners by having your head in the sand.
Either we nationalize coal, or we better be damned sure that we develop carbon sequestration technology ASAP.
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joebhed Posted 3:29 am
16 Jun 2008
Either in rates or in taxes.
This is undeniable.
Where else does the money come from?
Increasing business expenses, like through taxes and fees, just get passed on to the consumers of those businesses.
The right approach is to "embrace" the fact that we all must pay the cost of solving public policy dilemmas like the environment, health and education, and what we need is a proper 'accounting", if you will, of the pass-through of the funds.
Gonna cost Trillions to solve Carbon, let's get a budget and a plan together and get at it.
The benefits of the policies will endure to the consumers and taxpayers.
How could we not expect the consumers and taxpayers to pay for it?
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