The nation’s current energy policy does not support carbon capture and storage technology, according to lawmakers presenting Thursday at a Washington, D.C., technology showcase hosted by the Coal Utilization Research Council. “The president has been obsessed with using less coal and discouraging the whole research into carbon capture. It’s not a good thing. Fortunately, there are members of Congress who have your back,” said Rep. David McKinley (R-W.Va.).
Sen Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said the current U.S. energy policy is less coal-friendly than he had hoped from President Barack Obama, a former senator from coal-heavy Illinois. “I thought surely as a president he would understand … energy policy, and that proved to be false. He’s gone a different direction,” Manchin said.
Several of the lawmakers speaking Thursday noted the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, as an attack on the coal industry. Under the rule, states are required to develop action plans to meet federally set emissions reduction goals. Opponents of the rule say it will make coal uncompetitive with other forms of energy.
Both Manchin and McKinley have co-sponsored bills in their respective chambers of Congress to extend the 45Q carbon sequestration tax credit.
The 45Q tax credit is currently worth $20 per ton of CO2 captured for geologic storage and $10 per ton for CO2 captured and used in enhanced oil recovery. The program is due to expire once 75 million tons of credits have been used. Both bills would eliminate the 75-million-ton cap and increase the credit to as much as $35 per ton of carbon captured for utilization and $50 per ton captured using permanent geologic carbon storage.
Both bills have bipartisan support. “If you had told me when I first got here that we would have a coal bill that had both [Sen.] Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as sponsors, I would have told you that’s not possible,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), who introduced the bill in the Senate, said Thursday.
Heitkamp said she is convinced the Senate can pass the bill by the end of the year, even in a lame-duck session, but she admitted that it does not go far enough to incentivize CCS commercialization. “I was hesitant at least initially to just go with the 45Q as a strategy to kind of open the door because I know that that is not enough … to think that this one public policy change in the tax code will solve the problem and commercialize all this great work that you’re doing,” she said.
