Martin Schneider
GHG Monitor
4/4/2014
Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz faced questions about cuts to the Department of Energy’s fossil energy R&D budget request for FY 2015 and the commercial viability of carbon capture and sequestration technology at a hearing before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee April 3. “At NETL, fossil energy research is being cut by over 15 percent and carbon capture, one of the keys to the future of using fossil fuels and under some of the regulations being issued by the EPA, they’ve cut by 16 percent. They’ve cut carbon storage by 26 percent,” Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.) told Moniz. “If we’re serious about including fossil fuels in our energy matrix, I think someone is being disingenuous about their interest in ‘all of the above’ and rather there truly is a war on coal.”
The Obama Administration slashed funding for the Department of Energy’s coal research budget in its Fiscal Year 2015 request, proposing $302.4 million for the program, a 23 percent decrease from 2014 enacted levels. Despite the proposal of a new program for natural gas carbon capture and storage demonstration projects, which was listed in the budget along with clean coal programs, every other coal program received cuts—with the budget for Carbon Capture trimmed 16 percent to $77 million and the budget for Carbon Storage cut 26 percent to $80 million. Funding for the Advanced Energy Systems program took the largest hit, with the request proposing a 49 percent decrease in funding to $51 million, followed by the NETL Coal Research and Development program, which was slashed 32 percent to $34 million. Funding for Cross Cutting Research was trimmed 16 percent to $35.3 million. Overall, the DOE’s budget for Fossil Energy Research and Development was cut 15 percent to $475.5 million, when accounting for use of prior year balances, down $86.4 million from the FY 2014 enacted level. The only programs that received funding boosts were Natural Gas Technologies, at 70 percent, and Fossil Energy Environmental Restoration, at 34 percent.
For his part, Moniz emphasized the “big picture” of the Obama Administration’s funding for carbon capture and sequestration over the last several years. “In terms of the R&D … this administration is unprecedented in its investments in coal and CCUS—$6 billion in CCUS and right now an active loan solicitation of $8 billion for fossil fuel generally,” Moniz said.
An Emphasis on Utililization
Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.), whose western Pennsylvania district includes a National Energy Technology Laboratory site, pressed Moniz on the commercial viability of CCS. “Certainly the technologies are available today,” Moniz said. “They’ve all been used in a number a venues. As I said earlier, as with all our new technologies we remain focused on technology development and further cost reductions. In terms of our program, we have eight major projects and I would note that most of them are actually CCUS where the ‘U’ is for utilization of the carbon dioxide.”
Doyle, though, questioned the emphasis on utilization of CO2 for things like enhanced oil recovery in places like Pennsylvania. “Do you think, though, that CCS technology in areas like western Pennyslvania where there isn’t an oil recovery part to help pay for the costs, that CCS is still economically and commercially viable in those areas?” he asked. Moniz noted that “There have been many interesting discussions about if and when one goes to a system with lots of capture plants around the country including the Midwest and western Pennsylvania, there’s a lot of interest in building an infrastructure of CO2 … that’s the future.” He also emphasized that “we’re going to have to keep working to drive costs down and besides demonstration projects today … we also have programs to look at new technologies that can have substantially lower costs. The research program for these new technologies, these novel technologies is at a very early stage.
