Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
2/27/2015
In a set of Congressional hearings this week, lawmakers pressed senior Obama Administration officials on the implications of the Department of Energy’s decision to suspend funding for the FutureGen 2.0 carbon capture and storage project on the Environmental Protection Agency’s justification for qualifying CCS as a best system of emissions reduction within the agency’s proposed new source performance standards (NSPS) for coal-fired power plants. The proposed rule would largely mandate the use of the technology on all new-build coal fired power plants, but some critics of the EPA’s proposal have charged the technology is unproven and increased research and development is needed to commercialize it. “The Administration’s taken a position that no new coal plants should be built in the United States unless they’re equipped with CCS technologies, which … right now there’s nothing that’s been demonstrable to be successful to accomplish that,” Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) said to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
The EPA had referenced the FutureGen project, which plans to retrofit a decades-old 200 MW oil-fired unit at a mothballed power plant in western Illinois with carbon capture technology for geologic sequestration nearby, in its justification for qualifying CCS as the BSER within the agency’s NSPS. Beyond FutureGen, Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Penn.) noted at the House Energy hearing several projects within the EPA’s justification are experiencing problems. “Are you aware that the partially funded Kemper project is $3 billion over budget,” Murphy asked McCarthy, going on to note issues at more projects in a rapid fire manner. “Are you aware that the FutureGen project in Illinois was discontinued? … You’re aware that the Texas Clean Energy Project hasn’t broken ground yet? … You’re aware that the Hydrogen Energy California project doesn’t use coal, but actually uses petroleum coke? … Are you aware that the final project the EPA cited providing technical feasibility for new coal fired power plants was the 110 megawatt Boundary Dam facility in Saskatchewan, Canada? It’s not actually a new plant at all but in fact a retrofit, are you aware of that?” Murphy said.
Murphy went on to tell McCarthy, “It appears that all the projects that I just went over that are cited by the EPA, they haven’t been completed, some haven’t been started, one’s been discontinued, one isn’t even in this country and none of them are large-scale … I’m not sure that EPA is actually following the law on this.”
McCarthy replied that she was aware of most of the issues noted, but also stated that the EPA’s decision to use CCS as the BSER in the NSPS was not made only on the basis of demonstration projects. “The record that EPA produced in our proposed rule went well beyond data from those facilities. We feel very confident that this technology is available. We feel very confident that the use of CCS technology at the levels that we’re proposing it will be a viable option for coal to continue to be part of the future of this and other countries,” McCarthy said.
DOE Pressed on Viability of Tech.
In addition, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz faced questions during a House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee hearing this week on DOE’s actions to commercialize CCS technology in light of the proposed EPA regulations. “These are onerous rules. They’re unrealistic rules, but they will require coal-fired plants to capture and store underground about 40 percent of the carbon dioxide that they produce. In order to comply with these extremely costly and, I think, impossible regulations, companies are going to have to utilize carbon capture and sequestration technology, CCS,” said Rep. Hal Rodgers (R-Ky.), chairman of the full Appropriations Committee. “The elephant in the room … is that technology is not available commercially. You can’t get it so companies are going to be required to do something that’s impossible or shut down. I think I know what the strategy is. It’s to shut them down,” Rogers (R-Ky.) said. In response to Roger’s comment Moniz stated that CCS techology is commercially available and DOE has requested an increase in funding for CCS research and development in its FY16 budget request.
Lawmakers Ask How DOE, EPA Have Worked Together on New Rule
During a House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing, Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) asked Moniz if and how DOE and EPA have worked together on the proposed regulations to ensure their feasibility “I am from Virginia so, you know, certainly our state’s very involved with coal and very concerned, often, about the EPA regulations and how they are impacting us and universally hear concerns about that. So in light of some of the proposals there and the cutback in clean coal technology, I was wondering are you working with EPA so that they aren’t putting onerous burdens on, you know, coal companies depending on things that may or may not go forward and be invested in and happening and how can we coordinate this better so more science is being used from the energy department before the EPA is making their decisions,” she said.
Moniz said the link between the research at DOE and the EPA regulations was not exact. “We do, do technical consultation with the EPA, but I think there’s sometimes a little apples and oranges. The projects that we advance from the Department of Energy, not surprisingly are pushing the edge. So when we do a carbon capture utilization sequestration project, we are pushing, you know, 90 plus percent capture. If you look at the proposed EPA 111(b) rule for new coal plants, if you build a ultra-supercritical plant, a very high efficiency plant, which exists, the EPA proposed rule requires only 30 percent capture. That is a much lower impact. In fact, the impact is significantly lower than the numbers that are often talked about because it’s literally a much smaller partial capture requirement,” Moniz said.
