FutureGen and the Department of Energy's Advanced Coal Programs
- Victor K. Der, Acting Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy
- Mark Gaffigan, director of the natural resources and environment team, Government Accountability Office
- Sarah Forbes, senior associate, climate and energy program, World Resources Institute
- Robert Finley, director, Energy and Earth Resources Center, Illinois State Geological Survey
- Larry Monroe, senior research consultant, Southern Co.
A House Science and Technology subcommittee will explore the troubled FutureGen advanced coal project Wednesday, days after Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he hoped to proceed in a “modified” way with the project that his predecessor abandoned.The review of FutureGen, a prototype that would capture and sequester carbon dioxide emissions among other goals, is part of a broader Energy & Environment Subcommittee probe of DOE programs to curb emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning coal, which currently provides half the nation’s electric power.
The hearing will “inform members about near-term and long-term strategies to accelerate research, development and demonstration of advanced technologies to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing coal-fired power plants,” according to the committee.
But questions about FutureGen – a joint federal-industry project that was slated for construction in Mattoon, Ill. – specifically will probably take center stage.
Forest Service Oversight
- Robin Nazzaro, director for natural resources and the environment, GAO
- Phyllis Fong, inspector general,Agriculture Department
House appropriators will delve into the state of the Forest Service on Wednesday, likely focusing on the escalating cost of wildfires and the agency’s fire management plans.The session is one in a series of pre-budget hearings designed to get assessments and input from federal watchdogs on the operation of agencies overseen by the Interior Appropriations Subcommittee.
One inescapable topic is how to fix the Forest Service’s budget problems due to wildfire costs. In recent years, the agency has run out of firefighting money and had to transfer hundreds of millions from its other programs to cover the wildfire costs, causing major disruptions to its other priorities.
The Obama administration wants to create a new contingent reserve fund for catastrophic wildfires. The fund would be tapped only if federal agencies exhaust regularly budgeted money for wildfires, which would continue to be fully funded based on the 10-year average cost of fire suppression.
The discretionary reserve fund would include $75 million for Interior agencies and $282 million for the Forest Service for firefighting. The fund would be tapped into after the $1.1 billion appropriated 10-year average runs out.
The Future of Coal Under Climate Legislation
The hearing addresses the future of coal under an economy-wide cap on greenhouse gas emissions, including the technologies and policies that may help reduce coal’s carbon footprint.
Witnesses- David Hawkins, Director, Climate Center, Natural Resources Defense Council
- David Crane, President and CEO, NRG Energy Inc.
- Ian Duncan, Ph.D., Associate Director for Earth and Environmental Systems, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin
- Frank Alix, CEO, Powerspan Corp.
- Harold P. Quinn, Jr., President and CEO, National Mining Association
- Lindene Patton, Climate Product Officer, Zurich Financial Services Group
Inhofe Environmental Communications Director Marc Morano to Leave Senate Post
From the Wonk Room.
Marc Morano
Marc Morano, the spokesman for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will leave the committee later this month to become executive director and chief correspondent for a fledgling Web site that will serve as a “clearinghouse and one-stop shopping” for climate and environmental news.
Morano joined the Senate, with a $134,000 a year salary, from the rightwing website Cybercast News Service (CNS), where he launched the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) in 2004 and attacked the war record of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) in 2006. Morano was Rush Limbaugh’s “Man in Washington” in the 1990s.
Both CNS – a subsidiary of Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center – and CFACT are part of the Scaife network of conservative front groups, supported by the Richard Mellon Scaife family fortune and corporations like Exxon Mobil. CFACT and the Media Research Center are co-sponsors of the Heartland Institute’s International Conference on Climate Change, a global warming denier conference that begins Sunday, March 8.
Obama's New Energy Budget Priorities
From the Wonk Room.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, President Barack Obama declared that his plan to restore America’s economic prosperity “begins with energy.” The details of his proposed budgetary outline reveal what Obama meant:
- Restoration of Superfund.
- In 2002, Bush crippled Superfund, the federal program for cleaning up the most toxic sites in America, by eliminating the tax on industrial polluters “that once generated about $1 billion a year.” President Obama’s budget reinstates Superfund taxes in 2011, restoring $17 billion over ten years to the depleted program.
- Polluters Pay To Fight Climate Change And Make Work Pay.
- The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, and instituted a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2002, which instead rose. President Obama calls for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions starting in 2012, expected to raise $645.7 billion over ten years. Instead of sending those revenues back to the polluters, $15 billion a year will go to clean energy technologies, with the rest funding the Making Work Pay tax credit to reduce payroll taxes for every working American.
- Ending Tax Breaks For Fossil Fuel Industry.
- Oil, natural gas, and coal companies enjoyed record profits in recent years, even as numerous incentives and tax breaks for companies that drill and mine our shared resources were protected. President Obama’s budget eliminates $31.75 billion in oil and gas company giveaways and increases the return from natural resources on federal lands by $2.9 billion over ten years.
In a column at the Center for American Progress, director of climate strategy Dan Weiss analyzes the budget and finds: “President Obama’s proposed energy budget is a ray of sunshine after an eight-year blackout. Congress must now make this clean energy future a reality.”
Center for Public Integrity: Corporate Interests Dominate Climate Change Lobbying 1
From the Wonk Room.
The Center for Public Integrity has found that “more than 770 companies and interest groups hired an estimated 2,340 lobbyists to influence federal policy on climate change in the past year,” estimating total expenditures of $90 million. Their comprehensive investigation of climate lobbying discovered that nearly 2,000 of the lobbyists represent corporate interests.
No group exemplifies the sophistication of the current debate more than the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — a new lobbying organization unveiled just weeks before the vote last June on the Warner-Lieberman bill. Representing 48 mining firms, coal-hauling railroads and coal-burning power companies, ACCCE spent $10.5 million lobbying Capitol Hill on climate in 2008 — more than any other organization solely dedicated to the issue. In addition to the group’s president, Steven Miller, a one-time aide to former Democratic Kentucky Gov. Brereton Jones, and vice president Joe Lucas, who was an aide to former Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary, ACCCE has at least 15 outside lobbyists, including former White House Counsel Quinn. The big effort is not surprising, since electricity is the largest single source of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the most carbon-intensive fuel, coal, provides half the nation’s power. But ACCCE’s position is that it supports a mandatory federal program to curb the emissions its own members produce—as long as the policy meets ACCCE’s set of principles for keeping electricity affordable, domestically produced, and reliable. And that means encouraging, in ACCCE’s words, “robust utilization of coal.”
Check out the “The Climate Change Lobby” site, including a searchable database of lobbyists and a sampling of top players.
Obama Emphasizes Energy Policy In Budget Address
From the Wonk Room.
In a sweeping address to both houses of Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Cabinet, President Barack Obama introduced his budgetary plan for the United States government, explaining it will “invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education” :
It begins with energy.Obama described how countries like China, Germany, Japan, and South Korea have leapfrogged our nation, becoming the leaders in energy efficiency and renewable energy – using technology invented in the United States. “It is time for America to lead again,” Obama declared to sustained applause. He noted the recovery plan’s investments in renewable energy, efficiency, and a new clean electrical grid. However, he challenged the Congress to deliver legislation to limit global warming emissions “to truly transform our economy” and “save our planet”:
But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.
While Congress has been willing to support new incentives and tax breaks for energy development (including “clean coal”), both Democrats and Republicans have balked at putting a price on global warming pollution.
President Barack Obama’s excerpted remarks on energy:
We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before.. . .
The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren’t preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit. That is our responsibility.
. . .
We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril, and claimed opportunity from ordeal. Now we must be that nation again. That is why, even as it cuts back on the programs we don’t need, the budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.
It begins with energy.
We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.
Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders – and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.
Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history – an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.
We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.
But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.
As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.
. . .
I think about Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how clean energy can power an entire community – how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay. “The tragedy was terrible,” said one of the men who helped them rebuild. “But the folks here know that it also provided an incredible opportunity.”
The National Clean Energy Project
From the Wonk Room.
An all-star cast of the leading voices in the new Obama era is convening at the Newseum in Washington DC to discuss the future of U.S. energy policy. The National Clean Energy Project follows a similar meeting convened by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) last summer in Nevada. But much has changed in the past few months. The new administration – including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and White House energy adviser Carol Browner – have committed to a multibillion investment in a new clean energy grid with the economic recovery act signed into law last week by President Obama.
The webcast of the event can be seen at NationalCleanEnergyProject.org.
Former senator Tim Wirth of Colorado introduces the meeting.
10:30 PRESIDENT BILL CLINTONEvery time before in the last thirty years when I started this … every time oil dropped people said give my Hummer back. They’re not saying that any more. I want to thank everybody this economic recovery bill has good things in it and I’m grateful as a citizen. We have to maximize the value of this economic recovery. The big short-term gains in jobs and greenhouse gas reductions are in energy efficiency advances.10:35 VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE
We really do have a planetary emergency. This sounds shrill to many ears. We’re still not used to thinking in those terms. We’ve seen the oil price roller coaster. This roller coaster’s headed for a crash and we’re in the front car.10:45 HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI
We have to hold together or we will all regret the missed opportunity.10:55 T. BOONE PICKENS
Geothermal does not operate an eighteen-wheeler. Get realistic… I’m running out of time. But we are going to have an energy policy in America.11:00 JOHN PODESTA, CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND
We have to recognize we’re living through a terrible recession, a dependence on fossil fuels, and the almost existential threat of global warming.will come out of the Energy Committee.
The challenge of clean energy and global warming provide a unique opportunity to achieve two things at once. A new U.S. energy strategy can be the foundation of rebuilding the middle class.11:10 HARRY REID
People are afraid the government is going to be involved. If we’re going to succeed, we’re going to have to accept that. Everyone should get off the kick that this won’t work unless the government is involved in it.11:10 VAN JONES, GREEN FOR ALL
Let’s get our young people to put down hand guns and pick up caulking guns. Let’s make sure all young people can be on a pathway not just to a green job but a green career.
11:15 GLENN ENGLISH, NATIONAL RURAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATION
Transmission is the key problem. Speed is of the essence. We’ve got to move very, very rapidly.11:20 INTERIOR SECRETARY KEN SALAZAR
We didn’t get electricity out to our place in rural Colorado until 1981. I think, based on my work with Sen. Bingaman, Sen. Dorgan, we can do a lot more than what we’re doing with renewable energy. Unless we are able to solve the juggernaut of transmission we are going to be standing in place five to ten years from now.11:25 SEN. BYRON DORGAN (D-ND), ENERGY & WATER APPROPRIATIONS SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
We’re the Saudi Arabia of wind, but we also have stranded capability. There is an absolute requirement that we connect America. The keys are planning, siting, and pricing.11:30 ENERGY SECRETARY STEVEN CHU
Siting problems are not technology problem, though it’s the biggest bottleneck. There is the technology of high-voltage DC transmission that the US is just starting to use, that can be much more efficient. We need to develop better mechanisms for stepping up the voltage and stepping down the voltage. We talk about the great wind resources and solar resources of the United States. But we have to recognize they are transient. Imagine a world of 35% renewable, going up and down. That’s a bigger problem. Somewhere in the United States, the wind will be blowing. We don’t have large-scale energy storage yet. We should look at hydro, compressed air storage.11:35 GOVERNOR GEORGE PATAKIThe distribution system: We have photovoltaics on rooftops on buildings, warehouses, homes. We’re going to need a two-way distribution system. Our system today is roughly analogous to the water system. We now have the technology than can switch the electricity. The biggest bottleneck is that the industry has not developed a standard. It’s been stalled. I’ve begun to look into this. What we really need to do is lock these people in a room until they come out with a standard.
The Department of Energy has been entrusted with a lot of loan authority, and I’ve been looking very hard how to accelerate this loan authority, to reduce years down to months. I’m beginning to look at the details.
We need to move with a sense of urgency. All the news on climate in the past few years has been bad news. If we don’t act now our children and grandchildren will ask, what were these people thinking?
Transmission siting is a major problem. I think the federal government has to get involved. We need a federal permitting process. If it’s left to a state-by-state process, it’s going to come to nothing. This worked with natural gas pipelines.11:40 ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR.
As an environmental advocate, this is the most heartening morning I’ve ever seen.11:45 REP. ED MARKEY (D-MA), GLOBAL WARMING COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
We jumpstarted the broadband revolution. I think this year will be seen as when we started the smart grid revolution. We have to make sure we’re not building the bridges out to coal country. With the REA, we took electricity out to rural America. Now we have to figure out how to take energy from the prairies, the deserts, and the rooftops back to the grid. I agree with everything Boone Pickens said, and I never thought I’d say that.11:50 LEE SCOTT, WAL-MART
Just remember that there are people for whom $5 more a week means they might not purchase some medicine, some food, something else.11:55 ANDY STERN, SEIU
We need to make sure we’re creating American jobs. Eighty percent of the jobs provided by the federal government are low-wage jobs. Twenty percent are powerty-wage jobs. We need to build on the Green Jobs Act. We need to not go for one-off solutions. We need a system. We need meaningful job standards. If we are not purposeful and intentional, we’re not going to necessarily be creating good jobs.12:00 CARL POPE
Prior to 2006, those of us who talked about this issue were relegated to the free speech zone of the national conventions. This fall, I went to northeastern Ohio in an area where steel jobs had gone away twenty years earlier. They thought something finally was going to happen. We can either build this interconnected green world, or we can build it the way we built the railroads. We got a big system, but it took a very long time and wasted a lot of effort.12:05 SEN. JEFF BINGAMAN (D-NM), ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
The greatest near-term opportunity is in energy efficiency.12:30 CLINTON
Most of us don’t get to make decisions for China. The rest of us should focus on what we can do right here right now. I don’t see how we get what we want without decoupling.12:40 REID
We are not a secure nation when we import 70 percent of our oil.12:45 PODESTA
This has been a really optimistic session about what we can do if we empower consumers and train workers. Thanks to all for coming here.
Press conference.
1:10 REIDI want to express my appreciation to John Podesta for this event. The glue that’s been holding this together for several months is T. Boone Pickens. I can now say that Pickens and myself are friends. I’m introducing bipartisan legislation this week to implement a clean smart grid, a highway to move electricity. We’re going to do it with natural gas. We just need to give incentives for these companies to move to natural gas. We’re going to move forward and do some great things for the American people.
WIRTH
The coalition being built was accomplishment number one. The second is bringing the attention this issue needs. Boone Pickens has given this an edge. Now it’s our job to support Sen. Reid and to get that legislation passed.
PICKENS
When I started the Pickens Plan I didn’t know where it was going. We’re going to have an energy plan for America. It’s been a great honor to be associated with Sen. Wirth, Sen. Reid, and John Podesta.
PODESTA
We’ve moved from whether we’re going to create a clean economy with green jobs to the hard work of how it’s going to get done. This is a moment where we can move forward and pass energy legislation and pass it expeditiously. We’re at the cusp on unleashing through more efficiency and more transmission to move clean renewable power. Today’s session gave us hope that there’s going to be good news.
Q: Jeff Young, Living on Earth: Legislation?
Reid: We’re going to make a full announcement later this week.
Q: Margaret Ryan, CleanSkies.TV: Governors?
Reid: The governors have been a little busy, but of course. That’s why we had the spokesman for the state regulators.
Q: Ian Talley, Dow Jones Newswire: State v. federal?
Reid: Whatever we do at the federal level trumps all that.
Q: Burris?
Reid: Sen. Burris is a United States Senator. The Senate Ethics Committee is looking at this.
Q: Darren Samuelsohn. What’s changed since Lieberman-Warner?
Reid: We’re going to have 59 senators. We want to have it be a bipartisan bill. We’re going to work very hard that legislation that we work on will be one that will have bipartisan support.
Q: Greenwire: Who’s going to be the Republican?
Reid: Wait and see.
Q: A. Siegel: Oil dependency was discussed. Why not electricification of rail?
Reid: We’re going to work on high-speed rail.
Q: Megan Macnamara: Coupling RES and climate legislation?
Reid: I’ve made the decision for them to be separate. Efficiency, renewable portfolio standard, some smart grid
Platts Energy Podium: Secretary of Energy Steven Chu
Speaker: Steven Chu, US Energy Secretary
Please join Platts reporters and other credentialed journalists as Energy Secretary Steven Chu remarks on the President’s American Recovery and Reinvestment plan. Chu was confirmed by the US Senate in January as the 12th energy secretary, after having been the director of DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. A scientist and co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997, Chu has devoted his recent career to the search for new solutions to energy challenges and stopping global climate change.
Please contact Nancy Covey at Platts at [email protected].
Location: McGraw-Hill/Platts, Washington Office, 1200 G St., NW, Ste. 1000