House Releases Additional Details of Its Version of Energy Spending Bill
Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
6/20/2014
Senate Democrats this week dropped plans to consider the Fiscal Year 2015 Energy and Water Appropriations bill in response to an attempt by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to add language to the measure that would block the Environmental Protection Agency’s new proposed regulations on carbon emissions for existing power plants. The EPA’s proposal, which McConnell has strongly criticized, would set emission reduction targets for each state and require them to develop plans to meet the targets by 2030. Had McConnell’s amendment been offered during a scheduled Appropriations Committee markup hearing this week, it may have had a fair chance at being adopted due to the support of some Democratic members of the committee—several coal state Democrats have expressed opposition to the rules since they were announced. Congressional staff confirmed this week that McConnell’s plans to attempt to amend the energy spending bill resulted in it being pulled from the Appropriations Committee markup hearing this week, leaving its fate uncertain.
In response to the agenda change McConnell challenged Senate Democrats, saying they were afraid to defy the Obama Administration. “So once again, Senate Democrats are preventing my commonsense, pro-coal measure from moving forward. They’re doing the bidding of the Administration, instead of listening to constituents back home,” McConnell said on the Senate Floor. “Kentucky families, especially our coal families, continue to struggle under the Obama Economy. And the Senate Democrat leadership’s latest action is yet another example of the lengths they’ll go to defend Obama Administration’s regulatory agenda – an agenda Washington Democrats seem willing to protect at all costs, even when supposedly pro-energy Senate Democrats try to make us think otherwise.”
This is not McConnell’s first attempt to block the regulations. Immediately following the announcement of the regulations, McConnell introduced the “Coal Country Protection Act.” That bill would have required “that simple but important benchmarks be met before [the] rules could take effect: The Secretary of Labor would have to certify that it would not generate loss of employment. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office would have to certify that it would not result in any loss in American gross domestic product. The Administrator of the Energy Information Administration would have to certify that it would not increase electricity rates. And the Chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the President of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation would have to certify that electricity delivery would remain reliable,” McConnell said on the floor June 3.
House Spending Bill Moves Forward with No Fossil Energy Amendments
Earlier this week, the House version of the Energy and Water Appropriations bill cleared the full Appropriations Committee after a markup hearing that saw no amendments to block the EPA’s proposal being offered. The House bill would provide significant funding boosts above the Department of Energy’s FY 2015 budget request for fossil energy programs, citing in part the proposed EPA regulations. In the committee report accompanying the House bill, lawmakers accused DOE of failing to reflect a coherent energy policy or plan in suggesting in its budget request deep cuts to fossil fuel research and development. “At the same time, the Administration is moving forward with several regulations that will have a significant impact on energy use in the coming years and that reveal the inconsistencies of the Administration’s purported ‘all of the above’ energy policy. The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rules to regulate carbon pollution from new fossil-fueled electric power plants, first proposed in September 2013, and from existing fossil-fueled electric power plants, first proposed in June 2014, will have a significant impact on energy production, consumption, and reliability,” the report says.
The House report adds, “Fossil fuels currently provide 82 percent of the energy used by the nation’s homes and businesses and will continue to provide for a majority of our energy needs in the coming years, yet the Administration has proposed to reduce the fossil energy research and development program to its lowest programmatic level since fiscal year 2000. This program conducts the very research into carbon capture and storage technologies that will now be required for certain new fossil-fuel electric power plants given the EPA’s proposed rules on carbon pollution.”
The House bill would provide a total of $593 million for DOE’s fossil energy R&D programs, a 25 percent increase from the Department’s request and a 4 percent increase from current funding levels. Coal research would receive $397 million, 31 percent above the request, and slightly higher than 2014 enacted levels. Carbon capture would be funded at $90 million, a 17 percent increase from the request, but a 2 percent decrease from 2014 enacted levels. Carbon storage also took a hit from 2014 levels decreasing 9 percent at a funding level of $100 million, 25 percent above the request.
Funding for the National Energy Technology Laboratory in the House bill stayed even with 2014 levels at $50 million, a 47 percent increase from the request. For advanced energy systems, the House bill would provide $107 million, more than double the requested $51 million and an 8 percent hike from the 2014 level. The House bill also includes no funding for a DOE-proposed natural gas CCS project.
