WRAP UP

Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
3/8/13

IN CONGRESS

The House passed a stop-gap spending measure March 6 that would extend funding for government agencies through the end of the fiscal year largely at current levels. The lower chamber voted 267-151 in favor of the measure, which would keep government programs running beyond the expiration of the current Continuing Resolution at end of the month through Sept. 30. Under the legislation—which received the support of 53 Democrats, with 14 Republicans crossing the aisle to vote no—most government programs would be funded at current levels, with the sequester cuts built in and some military and national defense programs seeing small increases. In a statement of administration policy ahead of the vote this week, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” about the impact of the CR and the lack of flexibility in the bill but stopped short of issuing a veto threat. Instead, it said it was “committed to working with the Congress” to address its concerns. The Senate is expected to take up the measure next week.

IN THE ADMINISTRATION

President Obama tapped Clinton Administration veteran Sylvia Mathews Burwell to head the White House Office of Management and Budget this week. In an announcement at the White House March 4, Obama said Burwell, who currently leads the Walmart Foundation, “knows her way around a budget.” Burwell previously ran the global development portion of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She also has deep roots in the Clinton Administration, where she worked as an OMB deputy director and the White House deputy chief of staff. She also worked at the Department of Treasury and National Economic Council. If confirmed by the Senate, Burwell will replace acting OMB Director Jeffrey Zients.

IN THE INDUSTRY

The Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign announced that it is halfway to achieving its goal of retiring one-third of the country’s coal fleet—about 105,000 MW of capacity—by 2015. The Sierra Club said that since the campaign started in mid-2011, it has helped secure the retirement of 142 coal-burning plants equaling almost 54,000 MW in capacity, slightly more than 15 percent of the existing coal fleet. Most recently, the heavily coal-reliant American Electric Power said it would retire three coal plants in Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky, totaling more than 2,000 MW of capacity. “With each coal plant that we retire, we are clearing the path for clean, renewable energy that doesn’t make our children sick or wreak havoc on our climate, while also working hard to ensure job training and assistance programs for workers on the ground, that will help them transition their skills to good, green jobs,” Executive Director of the Sierra Club Michael Brune said in a statement.

The Babcock & Wilcox Company said this week that its subsidiary has reached an agreement with the FutureGen Alliance to begin initial work on Phase II front-end engineering and design (FEED) work for the $1.65 billion FutureGen 2.0 project. The company said that the Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group, Inc. signed a contract with the Alliance to begin initial engineering and preparation work on the 166 MW carbon capture and storage project planned for western Illinois. “Our contract with the FutureGen Industrial Alliance is a major milestone in the FutureGen project and we’re excited to begin work on this new stage,” Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group President J. Randall Data said in a statement. The two entities will continue to negotiate additional contracts to move forward with full FEED work, B&W said. The technology provider is designing the project’s oxy-fuel combustion system, air quality control systems, boiler, steel and other control systems. The Department of Energy approved the project’s phase II contract last month.

ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT

China will postpone the implementation of a carbon tax for the rest of the year, Bloomberg reported this week. Quoting a Ministry of Finance official, the news organization said there are still some internal discussions within the Chinese government regarding the tax’s economic impacts. State media reported last month that the government would introduce a carbon fee as part of a suite of new environmental tax policies. Bloomberg said China will eventually introduce a carbon tax of 5 yuan to 10 yuan (80 cents to $1.61) per tonne. The government initially announced that it would levy a carbon tax in 2011 during the release of its 12th Five Year Plan, which outlines policies that must be carried out by 2015. That blueprint also set a larger goal of reducing carbon intensity 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. The government began gradually rolling out several cap-and-trade pilot programs in seven major cities and provinces at the beginning of the year.

Malcolm Wilson spoke out for the first time last week since local reports accused him of being in a conflict of interest while heading up the International Performance Assessment Centre for the Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide (IPAC-CO2). Media reports in recent weeks have alleged that Wilson, while interim head of IPAC, awarded a $2.9 million IT contract to the group Climate Ventures Inc., a company he helped create and was on the board of at the time. But in an interview published in the Regina Leader-Post last week, Wilson said his times at CVI and IPAC did not overlap. Wilson said he asked to be removed from CVI’s board two days after it was incorporated in Aug. 2009, but it took seven months for the paperwork to be filed. “I’m definitely at fault for not pursuing people to make sure (the paperwork was filed immediately),” Wilson was quoted as saying. “I didn’t do the follow up I should have done.” Wilson said he was never in a conflict of interest and that he did not personally benefit from the contract. He declined an interview request from GHG Monitor.