RICH POWELL TESTIFIES ON INNOVATIVE CLIMATE SOLUTIONS

ClearPath Executive Director Rich Powell testified at a May 15 House Ways and Means hearing about how next-generation clean energy technologies can mitigate climate change and give the U.S. a leading edge in a reliable, affordable and clean global power grid.

“Climate change is an urgent challenge that merits significant action at every level of government and the private sector,” Rich told the panel. But the committee should focus on solutions that are “ambitious, technology-inclusive, politically-realistic and substantively-pragmatic.”

“We need an aggressive innovation policy to make clean energy cheap,” Rich said. “In the near term, divisive policies to make traditional energy more expensive will only aid deployment of existing technologies, not facilitate breakthroughs relevant for the developing world.”

Ways and Means ranking member Kevin Brady (R-Texas) echoed that “changes in the Earth’s climate system are a real cause for concern and reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is a shared priority.” He added the “key to successfully tackling climate change is American innovation.”

Rich spotlighted an emerging plan from Reps. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and Darin LaHood (R-Ill.), the Energy Sector Innovation Credit (ESIC). “This technology-neutral approach would leverage market signals, help the most promising technologies and phase down as each technology proves commercial viability,” Rich said. In doing so, it would limit market distortions.

A recent report sponsored by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Coalition and co-authored by IHS Markit and former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz’s Energy Futures Initiative recognizes the ESIC concept as a federal tax policy that can be a key enabler for clean innovation.

Preliminary analysis from energy-economic modeler OnLocation projects ESIC could result in a gigaton scale CO2 emission reductions by 2040 just by contributions from cutting-edge technologies that are near to demonstration - including NuScale Power’s small modular reactors, NET Power’s zero-emission natural gas plant, floating offshore wind and energy storage.
 

Watch video highlights of Rich’s banter at the hearing with:

Ranking member Brady on how the shale gas revolution is a model for the types of federal R&D, incentives and public-private partnerships that can help further drive down carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

Rep. Reed about how existing technologies are not accelerating the transition to a global clean energy economy.

Rep. LaHood on how existing clean energy tax incentives have the unintentional consequence of distorting wholesale markets and the need to instead incentivize power when demand is actually there on the grid.

Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) about accelerating high-performing, affordable and clean energy technologies around the world, including zero-emission natural gas plants, energy storage and advanced nuclear.

Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.) on the need to make clean energy technologies cheaper to encourage developing nations to adopt on their own to reduce global carbon emissions

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) on how extensions of crucial carbon capture and advanced nuclear incentives last Congress can be a model for other clean energy tax code updates.
 

Rep. Reed opines in The Hill: “We need tax policies to accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies by incentivizing entrepreneurs and allowing the energy sector to mirror Silicon Valley’s innovation – fast, disruptive, exciting and good for consumers."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) says it is time for the U.S. to take action on climate change and is readying to introduce a bill that is part of an “innovation agenda” to expand federal funding for research into carbon capture technology.

Bill Gates writes in his latest blog that what’s needed “in the years ahead is a diverse and flexible mix of energy solutions - a Swiss army knife of energy tools,” including energy storage, hydropower, carbon capture and nuclear.  
 

SENATE ENERGY HIGHLIGHTS CARBON CAPTURE EFFORTS

A Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing highlighted a bipartisan bill to ramp up the Department of Energy’s carbon capture and storage work, as well as those projects that are leading the private sector efforts so far.

8 Rivers Capital Policy Director (and ClearPath alum) Adam Goff praised the Enhancing Fossil Fuel Energy Carbon Technology (EFFECT) Act led by Ranking Member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) as “critical to the success of the entire carbon capture industry.”

Goff was there representing the NET Power zero-emission natural gas demonstration plant near Houston and detailed the Allam Cycle carbon capture technology at its heart. “This technology is a paradigm shift,” he said. (Watch our Allam Cycle video explainer)

Occidental Petroleum senior vice president Richard Jackson echoed Goff in singling out the extension last Congress of the Section 45Q carbon capture tax incentive as a “significant step,” but stressed that more R&D was needed, including on carbon emission utilization. “For this to collectively work, more utilization opportunities should exist” outside of enhanced oil recovery, he said.

Panelists said the federal government must help expand the necessary infrastructure, including CO2 pipelines. Columbia University’s (and former principal deputy assistant secretary at DOE’s fossil fuel office) Julio Friedmann noted the bipartisan USE IT Act approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg said the current 5,000 miles of CO2 pipelines in the U.S. may need to be expanded to 10-30,000 miles “if we’re going to make sign reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil energy sources.”
 

FY20 DOE SPENDING BILL ADVANCES TO FULL COMMITTEE

The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee by voice vote forwarded to the full panel a FY20 Department of Energy spending bill that raises funds for most departmental programs, while level-funding the nuclear and fossil energy offices.

The full House appropriations committee will take up the bill Tuesday.

Crucial details - including how funding would be specifically targeted among vital R&D and other clean energy innovation efforts - haven’t yet been released.

Congress last year approved a FY19 spending bill that contained critical programmatic direction and eagle-eyed investments in advanced nuclear, carbon capture, grid-scale storage and other clean energy technologies.
 

“Great to see House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee take 1st step in FY20 process today, building on bipartisan progress made in FY18 and FY19 in funding energy innovation,” Rich Powell tweeted. “We must continue to robustly support targeted @ENERGY efforts so the U.S. leads in this area.”
 

NEWS NUGGETS

NuScale Power and Enfission (a joint venture of Lightbridge Corporation and Framatome) announced a memorandum of understanding to explore using next-generation nuclear fuel technology in NuScale’s small modular reactors.

DOE’s Undersecretary of Science Paul Dabbar, in an interview with Columbia Energy Exchange podcast host Bill Loveless, walked through the history of the national labs (starting with Albert Einstein and FDR) and highlighted perovskite solar, post-lithium ion battery systems, fusion, carbon capture for materials and other research happening today.
 

THE PATH AHEAD

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