This just in from Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s office:
Washington, DC – As the debate on new energy and climate change legislation begins in the U.S. Senate, Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., is advocating for massive investments in clean coal technologies.
He today joined several of his Senate colleagues in sending letters to the Chairs of the Senate Environment and Public Works and Finance Committees suggesting the need for stronger carbon capture and storage language that would help to ensure that coal is burned in a cleaner and more efficient manner. Signing the letters to the two Chairs in addition to Byrd were Senators Tom Carper (D-DE), Max Baucus (D-MT), Arlen Specter (D-PA), Bob Casey (D-PA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), and Mark Warner (D-VA).
Byrd said, “If our nation is to benefit from the next generation of clean coal technology, the private sector needs greater certainty and robust financial support in order to make the necessary investments.”
Byrd has already indicated his opposition to the House-passed climate bill. He is continuing his longstanding efforts to ensure that the Senate focuses more on technologies like carbon capture and storage, which will be critical to securing the future of coal as an affordable and reliable source of electricity in America.
Byrd also continues to work with the relevant Committee members to ensure that West Virginia jobs are protected and West Virginians continue to have access to affordable energy. He also expressed his concerns earlier this year on climate change legislation with both Secretary of Energy Chu and EPA Administrator Jackson. And on August 6, he joined 9 of his Senate colleagues in sending a letter to President Obama stressing the importance of maintaining a level playing field for American manufacturing in any climate change policy crafted by the Congress, specifically noting that “any climate change legislation must prevent the export of jobs and related greenhouse gas emissions to countries that fail to take actions to combat the threat of global warming comparable to those taken by the United States.”
Byrd stated, “I will continue to engage the Administration and the Senate to make sure that West Virginians have a seat at the table during this climate debate.”
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(sigh) This bill is screwed anyway, even before the Senate makes it worse/weaker. Since we have EPA regulation of GHGs as a backup, I say let it die and start over.
I see this statement by Senator Byrd as good news. Folks can certainly differ as to the feasibility and cost and utility of carbon capture and sequestration — especially because we really have no data against which to test our hypotheses. But no one can differ as to the kind of political majority it will take to pass ANY climate change legislation that will create an architecture to move us forward over the coming decades. It will, absolutely, take a majority that includes these Senators, who are looking out for what they see, with good reasons, as their constituents’ interests. These Senators are showing their willingness to be part of that majority, and laying down the broad conditions that it will take to get them into that majority. Thanks, Senator Byrd, for speaking out for a path that you and we know is necessary.
Here is an example of how that majority is being built: in an op-ed in Sunday’s Charleston Gazette, the head of the major coal user and electricity producer American Electric Power is supporting a cap-and-trade architecture:
http://www.wvgazette.com/Opinion/OpEdCommentaries/200909120309.
The decisions mankind will make over the five and ten and twenty years from now about how much we have to reduce carbon emissions and by when and how are impossible to foresee in detail. Our absolutely critical task now is to enact and agree globally to a workable financial architecture in which those decisions can be made. That financial architecture is, most experts agree, cap-and-trade with a price collar to prevent wild energy price fluctuations that would plunge the global economy into catastrophe.
thomas rodd,you forget that ken ward and others have ruled this out as a way to reduce emissions from coal fired plants,it’s just a way to make this industry look better.go back on some of his blogs and you will see.
rwc: Here’s what the Brookings Institution has said about ca-and-trade with a price collar:
“As proposed, the House cap-and-trade system would set a quantity target on emissions and allow the market to determine the price of carbon — but with a price floor. Given that a key political vulnerability of the program is its economic effect on American households, sponsors of a Senate cap-and-trade bill could strengthen its prospects by imposing a price ceiling, in effect establishing a price collar.
“By preventing the policy from being either unexpectedly lax or unexpectedly stringent, a price collar protects both investors in green technologies and households and preserves strong incentives to abate. The price floor proposed in the House bill would start in 2012 at $10 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rise by 5 percent annually. Our research suggests that adding a ceiling starting at $35 per ton and increasing both the floor and the ceiling by 4 percent per year would increase cumulative emissions over the period from 2010 to 2050 by about 6 billion metric tons, or about 4 percent relative to a policy without a price ceiling. In exchange, adding the ceiling would allow the Senate to jettison the reserve auction, rein in offsets and possibly raise more federal revenue, both by selling allowances if the ceiling is triggered and by setting a higher reserve price for auctioned allowances if the floor price is triggered.
“With these changes, the resulting bill would be simpler and more transparent and would provide clear evidence that worst-case economic costs would be limited. The price ceiling could work like the “safety valve” included in a 2007 bill introduced by Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Arlen Specter (D-PA), which would have allowed the government to sell additional emissions allowances if permit prices rose above a preset ceiling. A safety valve limits the worst-case costs of a cap-and-trade policy, so it would improve the bill’s prospects with moderate senators by guaranteeing that compliance costs would not be excessive. Environmental groups may be reluctant to support a price collar, but they should remember that the stakes are very high: A bill that fails in the Senate or promptly collapses after enactment will do nothing at all to control emissions. If a price collar helps build a 60-vote majority in the Senate, the expected effect on emissions is well worthwhile. ”
Change is a-coming!
rwc,
I don’t believe that I have, in anything I’ve written, “ruled out” CCS.
I do believe that I have accurately and fairly explained in my reporting that many smart people have raised lots of very important questions about this technology’s feasibility and cost. My blog posts and stories on this issue are based not on my opinion or something I’ve made up, but on lots of research by scientists.
You can read all of my CCS posts here:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/category/ccs/
I think that even Tom — who advocates more research and deployment of this technology, and who understands that lots of smart people think it’s the only way out in dealing with climate change — would acknowledge that there are many reasonable questions that need answered.
That’s all I’ve said.
Ken.
Shouldn’t we be more concerned about plunging the ecology into catastrophe? Economies can recover over time, but the damage we are doing to our life support system will remain for many centuries. The best way to capture carbon is to capture and store it in a healthy living forest. Strip mining has destroyed almost a half a million acres of rich productive forest in WV and now instead of storing carbon these areas are leaching toxins into the water. There is no way to mine, transport and burn coal cleanly. Trying to capture the carbon will simply be a waste of the tax payer’s money, which could be better invested in cleaner technologies like wind and solar.
[...] of working with other Democratic senators to push carbon capture and storage technology. His office press release quotes him saying: “If our nation is to benefit from the next generation of clean coal [...]
How can we know that carbon storage will work over the long haul? They can do studies at nauseum now, but what about a couple of centuries down the road? If that carbon starts seeping out of the ground we are talking about catastrophic outcomes. That is just something I don’t want future generations to have to deal with.
Pouring such huge amounts of money into something like this is ridiculous when that money could be used to fund viable renewable energy sources.
I feel like my tax dollars are being dumped down a rat hole with this even more so than I did with the bank bailouts. Where will our golden parachutes be if this turns out to be a big pig in a poke? I don’t want my tax dollars funding coal in any way shape or form. They get way too much from us already.
re-read your comments in your article “coal can’t have it both ways”.did i read into your comments or have you already shot this method down,ken ward?
rwc,
I don’t see anything in that post that completely writes off CCS. That post simply recounts — as has my other reporting — the state of the science, which is no one really knows when or if CCS is going to be able to be widely deployed.
See that post here, folks:
http://blogs.wvgazette.com/coaltattoo/2009/07/22/climate-and-ccs-debate-coal-cant-have-it-both-ways/
In addition, the post rwc refers to was simply suggesting that the coal industry is engaging in a dishonest debate by arguing on the one hand that “clean coal” is here and arguing on the other that they need more time to clean up their greenhouse emissions.
I stand by that post, and I think you’re misreading it rwc. I’d welcome you to cite specific language that backs up your claims.
Ken.
[...] Coal Tattoo wrote last week about Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s efforts to get more funding for coal and carbon control into the Senate version of the climate change bill. That prompted this post by Joseph Romm at Climate Progress, noting Byrd getting involved in crafting the bill, rather than just opposing it. Like many experts, Romm is skeptical about Carbon Capture and Sequestration technology’s chances for being much help to the planet, but he says: I could be wrong, and it’s early well worth finding out if CCS works. That’s especially true since if it does, the future is cofiring coal and biomass with CCS and producing negative-carbon electricity. If more money for CCS gets Byrd’s vote — at least to block a filibuster — and the votes of people like Baucus, it’s well worth it. True, he might well bail on the final bill, but engaging him in the process seems like a positive step. [...]