SCIENCE ADVISERS PUSH OBAMA TO CONTINUE CCS POLICY SUPPORT

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
3/29/13

The President’s team of science advisers underscored the need for the Obama Administration to continue its work to reduce the regulatory obstacles associated with the deployment of carbon capture and storage technology if it wants to move forward with addressing climate change in its second term. In a March 22 letter outlining its recommendations for mitigating and adapting to the effects of climate change, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) said the Administration should continue its support for major CCS demonstration projects currently underway. The “continued support for projects is important not only for the purpose of establishing the technical and regulatory basis for CCS in the United States, but also because U.S. support for and success with this technology will likely be influential in moving other countries such as China and India toward CCS use,” the letter states. PCAST also advised the Administration to use the federal Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage’s August 2010 recommendations as a blueprint for action on CCS moving forward.

The letter lists the ongoing federal support of CCS as one of several actions the Administration should take to decarbonize the electricity sector as part of the path forward on mitigating climate change. PCAST recommended that the Obama Administration move forward on implementing Clean Air Act requirements on criteria pollutants emitted from coal plants like SO2 and NOx, as well as hazardous air pollutants like mercury and greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants. The advisers acknowledge the political resistance to what they say is the most desirable approach to limiting climate change—an economy-wide, market-based carbon policy like a cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax. In the meantime, the group suggested that the Administration reduce emissions by continuing to support the expansion of shale-gas production and the ongoing coal-to-gas shift in the electricity sector.

International Cooperation

PCAST also identified CCS as a potential area of international collaboration between U.S. and China on climate issues. “If China and the United States, as the two largest CO2 emitters, can find more ways to agree on paths forward, much of the world will follow, whether by formal agreement or otherwise. CCS is particularly ripe for increased collaboration,” the letter states. It pitches scientific exchanges, bilateral workshops on adaptation and bilateral meetings of policy leaders as ways the U.S. and China can work together to jointly lead the world on mitigation and adaptation measures.

Other Clean Energy Recommendations

The advisers also recommend that the Administration continue research into next-generation advanced energy technologies through programs like the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) and other applied research programs. PCAST also called on the White House to remove “regulatory obstacles, addressing market failures, adjusting tax policies and providing time-limited subsidies for clean energy when appropriate,” for renewables. According to the advisers, the White House can do this by boosting tax benefits for renewables and broadening the existing production tax credit for wind to include all other forms of renewable energy. 

PCAST said the President should also become more active on adaptation measures, creating a National Commission on Climate Preparedness to help spearhead federal preparedness efforts. They said such an organization could provide blueprints for ongoing data collection, planning and action on climate adaptation. “An ongoing focus on preparedness will help Americans understand that climate change is a clear and present threat, whose effects are already visible, expensive and worsening (rather than a distant issue with impacts many decades hence),” PCAST says in the letter. The group also recommended that the Administration create a quadrennial energy review to examine, across all federal agencies, which approaches can be taken to clamp down on climate change.

Obama met with his science and technology advisers shortly after the November election to discuss what the Administration could do in its second term to address climate change. Since then, the President has featured the issue prominently in his inaugural and State of the Union addresses, but has failed to offer many specifics on how exactly he plans to move forward. Observers, though, widely agree that the Administration will likely rely on existing executive authorities under statutes like the Clean Air Act to spearhead action given the lack of consensus on the issue on Capitol Hill.