Reposted from Bloomberg BNA Daily Environment Report
By Ari Natter
The Obama administration is on track to meet a goal to have as many as six large-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration projects in operation by 2016, a Department of Energy official said in written testimony March 27.
Those projects include the FutureGen 2.0 project planned in Morgan County, Ill., as well as large-scale projects planned through the Clean Coal Power Initiative and industrial carbon capture and storage programs, said Charles McConnell, DOE acting assistant secretary for fossil energy.
While only “a small portion” of the $3.4 billion appropriated to the department for carbon capture and storage projects in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent, the use of that funding is expected to ramp up significantly over the next two to three years, McConnell testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies.
“Over the next several years, we are in the process of developing and actually constructing several of the large-scale, commercial-scale facilities,” McConnell told the subcommittee, adding that some of those projects could be in operation by 2014 or 2015.
Focus on Oil Recovery
Technologies on which the DOE Office of Fossil Energy is focusing include enhanced oil recovery, in which the carbon captured from power plants and other industrial facilities is injected into older oil wells to draw more oil to the surface.
McConnell gave his testimony during a hearing on the Obama administration's fiscal year 2013 budget request of $27.2 billion for the Energy Department. Some Republicans have criticized the budget request for its increases in clean energy funding that they say would come at the expense of more traditional sources of energy.
Specifically, the budget proposal would increase funding for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs 29 percent in fiscal 2013, up $527 million from the prior year, to $2.3 billion, while cutting the department's nuclear energy programs by 10.3 percent to $770 million. Funding for fossil energy research and development would be cut by 19.7 percent to $429 million under the budget proposal.
“The president's budget request would accept higher prices for gasoline and electricity today in order to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into energy sources that will only provide a marginal amount of power for years to come,” Subcommittee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) said during the hearing.
Henry Kelly, acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, told the panel the president's budget request is a “key part” of achieving Obama's call for an “all-of-the-above energy” strategy.
In its proposed rule on new source performance standards for power plants issued March 27, the Environmental Protection Agency said it envisions that carbon capture and storage technology will become a commercially viable option for coal-fired power plants to comply with greenhouse gas emissions standards.