Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
2/27/2015
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) reintroduced legislation this week aimed at accelerating the commercial deployment of carbon capture and sequestration through a combination of loan guarantees, tax credits, multi-year R&D funding and government-industry cost-share projects. The bill, the Advanced Clean Coal Technology for Our Nation (ACCTION) Act, was introduced last year before a Democratic Senate and died in the Finance Committee. It is unclear if the bill will fare better in the current Republican Senate. “Last time we were able to secure some interesting co-sponsors and hopefully we’ll be building out this Congress to continue to promote this idea, continue to educate about what clean coal technologies look like and how viable they are and how they can be commercialized with the right amout of incentive and the right amount of investment,” Heitkamp said in a video posted to her website announcing the bill.
The recent announcement of the suspension of $1 billion in federal funds for the FutureGen 2.0 oxycombustion CCS retrofit project in Meredosia, Ill. further illustrates the need for such a legislative measure, according to a release from Heitkamp’s office. “As the suspended federal funding for the long-stalled, and potentially billion-dollar plus clean coal energy plant, FutureGen, earlier this month demonstrates, no realistic funding system currently exists to move carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects forward. Heitkamp’s bill works to change that by providing a path forward for practical and viable clean coal energy production, so coal-fired power remains within our national energy mix well into the future, helping to keep energy costs low and using a reliable and redundant energy source the U.S. depends on,” the release says.
Bill Calls for Up to 10 Storage or EOR Projects
The bill would direct the Secretary of Energy to carry out a program to demonstrate the integration of systems for the capture, transportation, and injection of carbon dioxide from industrial sources, either for the purpose of long term geological storage or enhanced oil recovery at a commercial scale. In carrying out the program, the Secretary may enter into cooperative agreements to provide financial and technical assistance to up to 10 large-scale geological storage or enhanced oil recovery projects. At least three of the projects selected shall be large-scale projects that undertake site characterization and permitting to qualify the projects as ready for long-term saline storage sites. Notably, the bill would authorize the Secretary to indemnify projects that sign cooperative agreements with the Department under this program for up to $10 billion “in excess of the amount of liability covered by financial protection maintained by the recipient in accordance with the requirements of the UIC program.”
The bill would authorize billions of dollars in appropriations through 2036 for research, development and demonstration of technologies including: chemical looping, supercritical carbon dioxide power generation cycles, pressurized oxycombustion, carbon utilization beyond enhanced oil recovery and other technologies. “In carrying out the program, the Secretary may enter into partnerships with private entities to share the costs of carrying out the program,” the bill states, authorizing $1.654 billion for FY 2016 through 2019, $5.283 billion for FY 2020 through 2026 and $3.3 billion for FY 2027 through 2036. In addition, the bill would set $2 billion of DOE’s loan guarantee authority for carbon capture and sequestration projects.
In addition the bill would:
- Increase the current tax credit for carbon sequestration from coal facilities to 30 percent and includes polygeneration facilities among the possible eligible projects.
- Create variable price support for companies that capture CO2 to provide long-term certainty to the utilities that sell CO2 for enhanced oil and gas recovery, regardless of the price of oil.
- Create clean energy coal bonds to provide tax credits for coal-powered facilities that sequester CO2 or meet efficiency targets relative to the current coal fleet; and
- Require reports to Congress from the DOE on the economic and technical status of CCS research and projects, including an evaluation of CCS projects online in Canada and a recommendation of how the U.S. could undertake similar projects with public-private collaboration.
