EPA, DOE HEADS DEFEND CCS’ COMMERCIAL FEASIBILITY

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
9/20/13

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy told lawmakers this week that carbon capture and storage is feasible and sufficiently demonstrated enough to be listed as a compliance technology under carbon emissions standards for power plants. The two officials told members of the House Energy and Power Subcommittee during a Sept. 18 hearing on the Obama Administration’s climate plan that the technology is currently available and argued that greenhouse gas emissions performance standards for new power plants released Sept. 20 could help drive developments and lower the cost of CCS. “Frankly, the challenge is that we need to provide certainty for how you construct a coal facility in the future. That will allow investment in technology and allow the technologies that you’re investing in to grow and become more competitive,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy and Moniz defended the standards amid Republican criticism that they would harm the economy. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) argued that CCS is not currently available commercially and that there is no legal precedent for EPA to mandate such a technology. “That’s the whole difference between the clean air debate and the greenhouse gas debate,” Shimkus said, referring to when EPA mandated that power plant operators install scrubbers as part of the Clean Air Act amendments. “In the clean air debate, technology was available, but in the greenhouse gas debate, it’s not,” Shimkus said. Moniz countered that “carbon capture, whether it be for combustion plants or for gasification plants, is demonstrated technology.” “We continue to invest in new technologies that will further reduce costs,” he said, touting Mississippi Power’s Kemper County gasification facility and previous CO2 injection and monitoring work at Weyburn-Midale in Saskatchewan, Canada. “The components are all there,” Moniz said about CCS.

Authority to Regulate?

President Obama announced his intention to issue the rulemakings for new and existing power plants as part of his climate action plan in June. But Subcommittee Republicans argued throughout the duration of the hearing that the executive branch does not have the authority to issue such limits on carbon dioxide emissions given that Congress has already spoken on the issue of climate change. “Rather than inaction on the part of Congress, Congress made a decision, and that was that it did not want to adopt that legislation,” said Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), referring to the so-called Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in 2009. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Fred Upton (R-Mich.) agreed. “Unfortunately, the Administration is now working to circumvent Congress through the back door, seeking to regulate what it was unable to legislate, no matter perhaps what the cost to jobs or the economy really is,” he said.

But Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who shepherded the cap-and-trade legislation through the House in 2009, said the executive branch has the discretion to issue the emission standards given that Congress has failed to effectively act on climate change. “House Republicans have voted against climate change legislation, they voted against climate regulation, they have voted against climate research and development and they have voted against international climate efforts. It’s an appalling record. And it’s why my question to them is, what’s your plan?” Waxman said. “It’s easy to criticize other people’s solutions.”