Oxidential Petroleum plans to build the world’s largest “direct air carbon” removal facility

From the Article by Ari Phillips, Oil and Gas Watch, January 24, 2023

A subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum is planning to build the world’s largest plant designed to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air in the oil and gas fields of West Texas, with a start-update sometime in 2024.

Once fully operational, the plant will capture up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the capability to scaleup to 1 million metric tons per year. Direct air capture is a nascent technology that extracts CO2 directly from the atmosphere and stores it underground (or uses it to make fizzy drinks or other products).

While many carbon sequestration experts see the technology as a promising, if expensive, process to remove climate-warming greenhouse gases from the air, major concerns remain about how much of the captured carbon will be pumped back down into the Permian Basin to help Occidental to extract more oil or gas from difficult-to-reach reserves. Critics also wonder how trustworthy the monitoring will be, and how communities and the environment might be impacted by its large-scale application.

For now, Occidental – one of the largest petroleum producers in the country – has a subsidiary, called 1PointFive, that is taking advantage of billions of federal decarbonization dollars up for grabs under new government subsidies to invest in climate tech solutions to global warming. Meanwhile, Occidental will still be pumping out oil and gas responsible for heating the atmosphere. It will be simultaneously profiting from fossil fuel extraction and carbon capture.

The oil and gas company is also attracting revenue from corporate partners. These partners claim that it is good for the climate that they will be paying Occidental to “offset”– or make up for – their greenhouse gas emissions through direct capture while the partners continue to pollute.

For example, the National Football League’s Houston Texans recently announced that they have selected Occidental’s subsidiary as a “preferred carbon removal partner” to offset their flight emissions. Occidental is marketing not only carbon credits but also what they call “net-zero oil” to NFL teams and airlines. According to Occidental, net-zero oil will be attained by removing, via direct air capture, enough emissions to offset all the emissions associated with the oil’s lifecycle from extraction to consumption.

In November, Occidental announced plans for an even bigger direct air capture site in Texas. Occidental has leased 106,000 acres of the 825,000-acre King Ranch, located in South Texas near the Eagle Ford Shale oil and gas field. The company says the land can support up to 30 direct air capture projects that could potentially remove up to 30 million metric tons of CO2 per year, storing up to up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 in the geologic reservoirs below the ranch.

This storage capacity would be orders of magnitude larger than that provided by the 18 existing direct air capture plants around the world, which capture just 0.01 million metric tons of CO2 each year.

While the latest United National Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate report calls carbon removal essential to meeting climate targets, it also warns of over-relying on notions like direct air capture, which may lull policymakers and perhaps the general public into a false sense of security as to the necessity of deep cuts to emissions now.

Anthony R. Kovscek, a professor of petroleum engineering at Stanford University who studies carbon sequestration, worries that the public might reach a different misunderstanding relating to direct air capture.

“My most substantial concern about direct air capture is that lack of public understanding of the capture process will lead to negative opinions and the withdrawal of government support before the technology is fully developed and evaluated,” said Kovscek.

Currently, initiatives taken through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions are providing the incentive to advance carbon sequestration projects and for businesses to seek out credits. Federal tax credits within the Inflation Reduction Act designate direct air capture projects a $180-per-metric-ton credit, far above the previous $50 allotment.

Kovcek believes Occidental’s efforts to be aimed at developing a technology that allows them to use their existing engineering and geosciences expertise as well as sequestration storage space that the company already has rights to use.

“If it’s successful, they will have a new business that potentially outlasts hydrocarbon production and performs a necessary service,” said Kovcek. “Because they are trying to develop a new business, I don’t think that what they are doing is greenwashing.”

Greenwashing or not, for the time being direct air capture and carbon sequestration overall face no shortage of obstacles on the road to contributing significantly to decarbonization. The process remains very expensive and energy intensive and could divert resources and attention from renewable energy projects with more clear-cut benefits. Furthermore, the geologic reserves capable of sequestration are often located far away from carbon emitters such as steel plants and might require substantial investment in new pipelines.

Kenneth B. Medlock III, Senior Director of the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, said he believes even if Occidental is not generating truly “net-zero” oil, it is still resulting in a net CO2 reduction, which can buy time for other technologies.

“It is an intriguing step in the multitude of options being presented for reducing the net carbon footprint of energy,” Medlock said. “It also can leverage existing infrastructures and business models, which can bode well for its future as the technology develops.”

The Infrastructure Bill designated $3.5 billion towards the establishment of large-scale, regional direct air capture hubs across the U.S. In response to the announcement, the Climate Justice Alliance released a letter calling direct air capture, “an unproven technology that allows fossil fuel extraction and use to continue, resulting in ongoing harm to frontline communities.”

“To have any significant effect on global CO2 concentrations, DAC would have to be rolled out on a vast scale, demanding very large amounts of water and energy, and raising environmental justice concerns about the toxic impacts of the chemical absorbents used in the process,” the letter states.

Medlock believes that environmental justice (EJ) concerns about Occidental’s direct air capture are minimal, since the projects are set in remote locations, but that going forward they must be kept front-and-center in the discussion.

“As with all new energy infrastructure, EJ assessments are critical to siting and operation,” he said regarding Occidental’s plans. “So, it is incumbent on the industry to internalize EJ asit moves forward, which requires direct engagement with communities and a conscious effort to avoid injustices.”
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Erin Burns, Executive Director of Carbon180, a climate nonprofit organization focused on carbon removal solutions, said that direct air capture is “an effective means of removing emissions that drive climate impacts and injustice.” But she added that, more broadly: “carbon removal can’t slow efforts to rapidly decarbonize and can’t be an excuse to keep using fossil fuels in the US.”

Because of this, Burns believes that federal government should not fund enhanced oil recovery projects in which the sequestered CO2 is used to extract more fossil fuels , such as the Occidental Permian Basin project, and Carbon180 has advocated for its specific exclusion from key federal direct air capture projects.

Burns said trust underpins the success of this field and the ability to achieve gigaton scale carbon removal by 2050.

“But before we can build trust in direct air capture, robust monitoring, reporting, and verification – MRV – is a fundamental prerequisite,” Burns said. “MRV is the process of accounting for all the emissions, energy use, environmental and public health impacts associated with a carbon removal project to determine its net climate impact. It tells us if the work was done safely and effectively and provides receipts.”

According to Occidental’s agreement with the Houston Texans, the carbon credits purchased will not be linked to any new oil and gas extraction. Instead, the CO2 will be sequestered in reserves not associated with fossil fuel production. However, this agreement is specific to a carbon offset agreement with one NFL team. And it is not clear how much independent verification there will be, or if – in other business agreements or contexts — Occidental will use captured carbon to inject into shale formations to help extract oil and gas.

Aside from the two Texas direct air capture projects, Oil & Gas Watch is also tracking the Sweetwater Carbon Storage Hub, a proposed direct air capture project in Wyoming that would consist of modular carbon capture units capable of removing 12,000 tons of CO2 per year from the air.

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See Also: Direct Air Capture: 5 Things You Need to Know About This Climate Scam ~ Oakley Shelton-Thomas & Mia DiFelice, Food & Water Watch, January 25, 2023

Sabine presents a comprehensive introduction

From the Video Presentation by Sabine Hossenfelder, BackReAction Blog, April 21, 2021

Elon Musk has announced he is sponsoring a competition for the best carbon removal ideas with a fifty million dollar prize for the winner. The competition will open on April twenty-second, twenty-twenty-one. In this video, I will tell you all you need to know about carbon capture to get your brain going, and put you on the way for the fifty million dollar prize.

During the formation of our planet, large amounts of carbon dioxide were stored in the ground, and ended up in coal and oil. By burning these fossil fuels, we have released a lot of that old carbon dioxide really suddenly. It accumulates in the atmosphere and prevents our planet from giving off heat the way it used to. As a consequence, the climate changes, and it changes rapidly.

The best course of action would have been to not pump that much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to begin with, but at this point reducing future emissions alone might no longer be the best way to proceed. We might have to find ways to actually get carbon dioxide back out of the air. Getting this done is what Elon Musk’s competition is all about.

The problem is, once carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere it stays there for a long time. By natural processes alone, it would take several thousand years for atmospheric carbon dioxide levels to return to pre-industrial. And the climate reacts slowly to the sudden increase in carbon dioxide, so we haven’t yet seen the full impact of what we have done already. So, even if we were to entirely stop carbon dioxide emissions today, the climate would continue to change for at least several more decades, if not centuries.

Globally, we are presently emitting about forty billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we’d have to get down to twenty billion tons per year to limit warming to one point five degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial levels. These one point five degrees are what’s called the “Paris target.” This means, if we continue emitting at the same level as today, we’ll have to remove twenty billion tons carbon dioxide per year.

But to score in Musk’s competition, you don’t need a plan to remove the full twenty billion tons per year. You merely need “A working carbon removal prototype that can be rigorously validated” that is “capable of removing at least 1 ton per day” and the carbon “should stay locked up for at least one hundred years.” But other than that, pretty much everything goes. According to the website, the “main metric for the competition is cost per ton”.

So, which options do we have to remove carbon dioxide and how much do they cost?

The obvious thing to try is enhancing natural processes which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You can do that for example by planting trees because trees take up carbon dioxide as they grow. They are what’s called a natural “carbon sink”. This carbon is released again if the trees die and rot, or are burned, so planting trees alone isn’t enough, we’d have to permanently increase their numbers.

By how much? Depends somewhat on the type of forest, but to get rid of the twenty billion tons per year, we’d have to plant about ten million square kilometers of new forests. That’s about the area of the United States and more than the entire remaining Amazon rainforest.

Planting so many trees seems a bit impractical. And it isn’t cheap either. The cost is about 100 US dollars per ton of carbon dioxide. So, to get rid of the 20 billion tons excess carbon dioxide, that would be a few trillion dollars per year. Trees are clearly part of the solution, but we need to do more than that. And stop burning the rain forest wouldn’t hurt either.

But there’s a more efficient way that oceans could help removing carbon. If one stimulates the growth of algae, these will take up carbon. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, where the carbon could remain, in principle, for millions of years. This is called “ocean fertilization”.

It’s a good idea in theory, but in practice it’s presently unclear how efficient it is. There’s no good data for how many of the algae sink and how many of them get eaten, in which case the carbon might be released, and no one knows what else such fertilization might do to the oceans. So, a lot of research remains to be done here. It’s also unclear how much it would cost. Estimates range from two to four hundred fifty US dollars per ton of carbon dioxide.

Besides enhancing natural carbon sinks, there are a variety of technologies for removing carbon permanently. For example, if one burns agricultural waste or wood in the absence of oxygen, this will not release all the carbon dioxide but produce a substance called biochar. The biochar keeps about half of the carbon, and not only is it stable for thousands of years, it can also improve the quality of soil.

The major problem with this idea is that there’s only so much agricultural waste to burn. Still, by some optimistic estimates one could remove up to one point eight billion tons carbon dioxide per year this way. Cost estimates are between thirty and one hundred twenty US dollars per ton of carbon dioxide.

A more popular idea is enhanced weathering. For this, one artificially creates certain minerals that, when they come in contact with water, can bind carbon dioxide to them, thereby removing it from the air. The idea is to produce large amounts of these minerals, crush them, and distribute them over large areas of land.

The challenges for this method are: how do you produce large amounts of these minerals, and where do you find enough land to put it on. The supporters of the American weathering project Vesta claim that the cost would be about ten US dollars per ton of carbon dioxide. So that’s a factor ten less than planting trees.

Then there is direct air capture. The most common method for this is pushing air through absorbing filters. Several petrol companies like Chevron, BHP, and Occidental currently explore this technology. The company Carbon Engineering, which is backed by Bill Gates, has a pilot plant in British Columbia that they want to scale up to commercial plants. They claim every such plant will be equivalent in carbon removal to 40 million trees, removing 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year.

They estimate the cost between ninety-four and 232 US dollar per ton. That would mean between two to four trillion US dollars per year to eliminate the entire twenty billion tons carbon dioxide which we need to get rid of. That’s between two point five and five percent of the world’s GDP.

But, since carbon dioxide is taken up by the oceans, one can also try to get rid of it by extracting it from seawater. And once you’ve removed it, the water will take up new carbon dioxide from the air, so you can basically use the oceans to suck the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. That sounds really neat.

The current cost estimate for carbon extraction from seawater is about 50 dollars per ton, so that’s about half as much as carbon extraction from air. The major challenge for this idea is that the currently known methods for extracting carbon dioxide from water require heating the water to about seventy degrees Celsius which takes up a lot of energy. But maybe there are other, more energy efficient ways, to get carbon dioxide out of water? You might be the person to solve this problem.

Finally, there is carbon capture and storage, which means capturing carbon dioxide right where it’s produced and store it away before it’s released into the atmosphere.

About twenty-six commercial facilities already use this method, and a few dozen more are planned. In twenty-twenty, about forty million tons of carbon dioxide were captured by this method. The typical cost is between 50 and 100 US$ per ton of carbon dioxide, though in particularly lucky cases the cost may go down to about 15 dollars per ton. The major challenge here is that present technologies for carbon capture and storage require huge amounts of water.

As you can see an overall problem for these ideas is that they’re expensive. You can therefore score on Musk’s competition by making one of the existing technologies cheaper, or more efficient, or both, or maybe you have an entirely new idea to put forward. I wish you good luck.

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See also: Elon Musk, X Prize launch $100 million carbon-removal competition | Mike Wall, Space, April 22, 2021

“It should be clear to everyone in 2021 that climate change poses an existential threat, and that our CO2 emissions are a leading cause,” Marcius Extavour, X Prize vice president of climate and environment, said in a statement.

One year into the competition, judges will award up to 15 “milestone prizes” worth $1 million apiece. Student teams will also be awarded up to $5 million this fall to aid their efforts, said officials at X Prize, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping solve big problems via contests with big purses.

The really serious money will be doled out in 2025, provided at least one team has developed a workable, scaleable carbon-removal solution by then. The grand-prize winner will get $50 million, and $30 million will be divided among up to three runner-up teams, bringing the total potential purse to $100 million.

Trees communicate with other trees through their “mycorrhizal network,” like the Birch (left) and Fir (right), that send nutrients or signals to each other in times of stress

From an Article by Valentina Lagomarsino, Harvard University Graduate School, May 6, 2019

When scientists first studied the structure of nerve cells that comprise the human brain, they noted their strong resemblance to trees. In fact, dendrites, the term to describe projections from a nerve cell, comes from the Greek word Dendron, for “tree.” While the connection in the appearance of nerve cells was made to trees, the comparison may have been more apt than originally realized: scientists are starting to uncover that trees have their own sort of nervous system that is capable of facilitating tree communication, memory and learning.

Forests are complex systems

Forests cover 30% of Earth’s land surface and hold over a billion trees. Forests are known as “carbon sinks” because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air, store the carbon in their trunks, and exhale oxygen. Scientist have leveraged this property to measure the ratio between two naturally occurring forms of carbon (12carbon and 14carbon) to assign an age to trees, a technique termed carbon dating. Using this technique, scientists found that trees living in forests, like the tree colony called Pando, tend to live longer than trees living in urban environments, often in isolation. Dendrologists, scientists who study wooded plants, thought that perhaps trees that lived together were helping each other by sending resources through their roots. To test this out in North American forests, dendrologists utilized a technique called isotope tracing. In this experiment, scientists injected carbon dioxide gas replaced with radiolabeled 14carbon into the trunk of Birch trees. When nearby Fir trees were covered by shaded cloth, to block their ability to acquire nutrients through photosynthesis, scientists found a higher level of radiolabeled 14carbon in their trunk, meaning they must have received sugars from the Birch. These experiments confirmed that trees are indeed communicating with each other and sharing nutrients through their roots, forming a complex system sometimes referred to as the “wood wide web.”

This complex network connecting trees is dependent on a symbiotic relationship with microbes in the soil like fungi and bacteria. Symbiosis is when two separate organisms form a mutually advantageous relationship with each other. Fungi can cover a large surface area by developing white fungal threads known as mycelium. Mycelium spreads out on top of tree roots by up-taking sugars from the tree and by providing vital minerals back to the tree, such as nitrogen and phosphorus. This symbiotic relationship between tree roots and fungi is known as the mycorrhizal network (from Greek, Myco, “fungi” and Rhiza, “root”).

To identify the species that constitute the mycorrhizal network, scientists have utilized recent technological advances in DNA sequencing and big-data analysis. Microbiologists have identified different species of fungi and bacteria that form symbiotic relationships with different species of trees. Scientists believe all trees have a mycorrhizal network, but trees only communicate with each other if the fungal and bacterial species that constitute their mycorrhizal networks are the same. The most common combination of fungi constitute the arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) network, which has been found to be important for nutrient uptake in 65% of all trees and plant species. The remaining 35% of tree and plant species may have combinations of other fungi varieties that comprise their networks.

By investigating the different interactions between species of trees, scientists found that trees leverage similarities and differences in their microbial “makeup” to recognize other trees of their own species, and they preferentially share nutrients with them through their mycorrhizal network. This behavior, known as “kin recognition,” was recently explored when multiple families of Douglas Fir trees were planted in a plot and carbon tracing experiments indicated that trees of the same family shared more carbon than between trees of different families. Scientists are still investigating why this is happening, but it is hypothesized that all plants evolved to have kin recognition for reproductive purposes. Similarly, there is cross-talk between different species of trees that share the same mycorrhizal network, such as between Birch and Fir trees. Interspecies tree communication has been shown to increase the fitness and resiliency of trees.

Mycorrhizal networks are extremely important for tree health during times of danger. Certain species of fungi can facilitate tree resilience to certain environmental stressors such as predators, toxins, and pathogenic microbes that invade an ecosystem. By using a technique called allelopathy, in which a chemical signal is sent through the mycorrhizal network, trees can warn their neighbors about an invasive predator or to inhibit growth of invasive plant species. Surrounding trees can then defend themselves by releasing volatile hormones or chemicals to deter predators or pathogenic bugs. It was even found that trees can send a stress signal to nearby trees after a major forest disturbance, such as deforestation.

Climate change affects the microbiome of the forest

Trees rely on a healthy forest ecosystem to thrive and protect themselves from danger. Humans rely on a healthy forest ecosystem to be able to inhale clean oxygen. Last year, millions of people around the world experienced the devastating effects of climate change. Not only is climate change impacting human health and wellbeing, but it is also affecting the ecosystem of our oceans and forests. Human-initiated deforestation contributes to climate change by reducing the number of trees that are available to soak up carbon dioxide. Deforestation not only removes the trees that are being cut down, but also impacts trees that are still alive by disrupting the mycorrhizal network that is important for intra-tree communication.

Changes in climate, as seen through increased droughts and extreme temperatures, may further disrupt the biodiversity of the microbes in the forest. This decline in biodiversity is known as human assisted evolution, or “unnatural selection”. The altered microbiota of the forest may then change the nutrients that trees are able to receive and we may start seeing changes in tree morphology, particularly in the shape of leaves. This would change the photosynthetic capacity of the tree; for example, smaller leaves have less surface area for light absorption, which will negatively impact their ability to absorb the sun’s rays and produce sugars through photosynthesis. This could potentially inhibit tree growth and the amount of carbon that trees can share with fungi.

Furthermore, without a biodiverse mycorrhizal network, trees are becoming more susceptible to destruction from invasive, harmful insect species. It is clear that the impact we are making on the environment is self-perpetuating and heading in a dire direction for the health of our forests, but there is still hope. Some scientists are trying to combat climate change by using gene-editing techniques to restore ecosystems that have become extinct and by engineering synthetic microbes that are important for a thriving ecosystem.

Trees are considered to be the oldest living organisms on the planet. Over centuries, they have been resilient to changes in their environment due to their symbiotic relationship to fungi and other microbes. There are so many more discoveries to be made to understand the ancient wisdom of our forests and the invisible microbes that keep our ecosystems in harmony.

>>> Valentina Lagomarsino is a first-year PhD student in the Biological Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard University.

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See also: Discover How Trees Secretly Talk to Each Other, Fino Menezes, Bright Vibes, June 19, 2020

Imagine an information superhighway that speeds up interactions between a large, diverse population of individuals, allowing individuals who may be widely separated to communicate and help each other out. When you walk in the woods, this is all happening beneath your feet. No, we’re not talking about the internet, we’re talking about fungi. As a result of a growing body of evidence, many biologists have started using the term “wood wide web” to describe the communications services that fungi provide to plants and other organisms.

Should the resident citizens have input to a PILOT agreement?

By Jim Kotcon, Opinion—Editorial (Letter to Editor), Submitted to Morgantown Dominion Post, November 3, 2019

The Mon County Commission (MCC) is considering a gigantic tax break to attract yet another fossil fuel power plant to the area. The proposed Longview II would be a 1200-MW gas-fired facility located next to the existing coal-fired plant, and just a short distance from Fort Martin.

Longview claims that the new facility will be “environmentally friendly”, as do many of our political leaders, but everyone ignores the elephant in the room. The greenhouse gas emissions would exceed three million tons per year. And before proponents try to claim that natural gas produces fewer greenhouse gases than coal, the very fact that some make this claim is an acknowledgement that the issue is real, and an honest look at the math says that such a small incremental reduction is not enough.

America needs to reduce greenhouse gas emission by half within 10 years, and be entirely off fossil fuels within 30. Any investment in new fossil fuel facilities is unlikely to remain in operation long enough to pay off its cost, and those funds need to be invested in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources.

We cannot stop a private company from wasting money on bad investments, but the MCC should not give tax breaks to encourage them.

MCC should insist on carbon dioxide capture and sequestration for the proposed Longview II gas-fired power plant.

In the absence of carbon capture, the MCC should insist on separate PILOT Agreements for the Longview II gas plant and the proposed Longview solar facilities. The economic outlook for a solar farm is much more favorable over the long term than for fossil fuel facilities.

The MCC should also consider the potential for the Longview II facility to adversely affect competitiveness of the Fort Martin power plant, which does pay its fair share of property taxes. Competition from Longview will almost certainly constrain the ability of Fort Martin to compete. Even if Fort Martin does not close immediately, captive ratepayers for Mon Power may see increased electric rates to cover the increased costs of operating Fort Martin, and mine workers may see reduced hours of operation. While these changes are inevitable in a carbon-constrained economy, offering tax breaks that exacerbate these economic strains in order to provide incentives to another fossil fuel plant is short-sighted.

The MCC should require economic analyses of the proposed Longview II plant that consider the long-term costs of greenhouse gas emissions. Realistic estimates of the economic impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are in the range of $50-75 per ton. Analyses that do not consider this cost of carbon implicitly assume the cost is zero, a number everyone knows is wrong.

The MCC should consider the potential for methane from biofuels to be used at the proposed Longview II facility. If coupled with carbon capture and sequestration, this could result in net negative greenhouse gas emissions. Such technologies will be essential to keep global temperature increases below 2 C, and would assure a lifetime of operation for the Longview II facility.

Finally, the MCC should pro-rate any PILOT Agreement to the actual construction cost of the facility. When the MCC negotiated the last PILOT with Longview, Longview low-balled their cost estimates. In 2004, they claimed that plant would cost around $940 million, and the first PILOT was based on that estimate. The actual cost was over $2.2 billion, more than double the value used to negotiate the first PILOT.

The County Commission needs to be very skeptical of any cost estimates proposed by Longview, make sure that payments are proportional to the actual cost of the facility, and be fair to every other taxpayer in Mon County.

To learn more about these issues, and discuss fair solutions for all, please attend a public meeting on Thursday, November 7th at 6 PM in the MAC building, 107 High Street, Morgantown.

Jim Kotcon, WV Sierra Club, Morgantown, WV

US Senators generally support corporate interests rather than environmental quality

From an Article by Mark K. Mathews, E&E News, March 6, 2019

Senators Lisa Murkowski (R–AK, right) and Joe Manchin (D–WV, left), the senior members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, confer during a hearing yesterday on climate change.

It’s been some time since the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has held a hearing on climate change, so naturally its top two lawmakers felt compelled to get a couple of things out of the way during yesterday’s roughly two-hour meeting.

Global warming is “directly impacting our way of life,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who leads the panel.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the top-ranking Democrat, added, “There’s no doubt that humans have made a tremendous impact on what we’re dealing with.” It’s a baseline of understanding that, by now, seems obvious to most climate scientists. But it was a milestone moment for the Senate panel.

Manchin said yesterday was the first time since 2012 the committee had held a hearing on climate change. (In response, a Republican aide pushed back with the argument that climate change is a frequent topic of discussion on the panel.)

Irrespective of the timeline, Manchin and Murkowski both represent states that lean heavily on the energy industry, and their simple acknowledgement of the climate crisis yesterday was enough to draw small applause from some corners.

“It is significant that we even had the hearing—particularly when you have two leaders on the committee, both of whom come from fossil fuel states,” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said in an interview afterward. “There were some differences on the level of urgency, but I think the underlying premise is that this is something we have to deal with.”

Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club in Washington, D.C., had a similar takeaway. The “hearing was notable because it actually occurred,” she said. “It is a good day when a Republican-led committee actually listens to experts about real climate impacts, clean energy and innovation.”

But Pierce added this caveat: “This wasn’t revolutionary in terms of setting an agenda for bold action, but it was a start.”

Indeed, the committee mostly skimmed over potential solutions—touching on ideas such as microgrids, carbon capture technology and better energy efficiency for buildings. As the main thrust of the hearing was about climate change and the electricity sector, Murkowski made sure to note also that a reduction in carbon emissions is only part of her committee’s responsibility.

“As more renewables come online … our committee will focus on maintaining grid reliability and resiliency,” she said. “We’ll prioritize keeping energy affordable, [and] we’ll be working to advance cleaner energy technologies that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Manchin wanted to make clear, too, that he was skeptical of efforts to dramatically shrink the United States’ carbon footprint in the near future. “Solutions must be grounded in reality, which requires the recognition that fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere anytime soon,” he said.

At another point in the hearing, he noted the vast reserves of natural gas beneath his home state. “We have an ocean of gas under us in West Virginia—an ocean of gas,” he said.

Neither of these comments is likely to assuage the concerns of climate hawks, but they do suggest there could be a window for Congress to make small changes to energy policy in the short term.

“Responsible Republicans and Democrats are considering realistic, durable solutions to the issue,” said Alex Flint, executive director of the conservative Alliance for Market Solutions in Washington, D.C., which backs the idea of using a carbon tax to fight global warming. “They represent the evolving state of climate change politics.”

It’s unlikely, however, that any recommendation from the Senate committee will approach the scale of something like the Green New Deal, which supporters argue is the only way to head off the worst effects of climate change.

Murkowski said, “We do have a considerable role to play in developing reasonable policies that can draw bipartisan support that I think will be a pragmatic contribution to the overall discussion.”

She specifically cited topics such as new research and energy efficiency. “I think you’ll likely see these as subjects of further discussion,” she added.

Senators Whitehouse & Manchin at National Energy Technology Laboratory, Morgantown, WV

Sen. Whitehouse Proposes Carbon Tax to Repay Citizens for Pollution Costs

From an Article by Anstasia Pantsios, EcoWatch.com, October 29, 2014

Delivering a keynote address at the New York University Institute for Policy Integrity’s fall conference, in which he noted “The world has just set some dubious records. 2014 is on pace to tie or become the hottest year on record,” U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse announced that he plans to introduce legislation creating a carbon pollution fee next month. He said he will reveal details in the next few weeks.

It was an appropriate announcement to make at the conference whose theme this year was “The Future of U.S. Climate Policy: Coal, Carbon Markets and the Clean Air Act.”

“Pollution-driven climate change hurts our economy, damages our infrastructure and harms public health,” he told his audience. “However, none of these costs are factored into the price of the coal or oil that’s burned to release this carbon. The big oil and coal companies have offloaded those costs onto society.

Economics 101 tells us that’s a market failure; in the jargon, that negative externalities are inefficient. If a company participates in an activity that causes harm, it should have to compensate those harmed.”

“By making carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually,” he continued. “By making carbon pollution free, we fix the game, favoring polluters over newer and cleaner technologies that harvest the wind, sun and waves. Corporate polluters, not bearing the costs of their products, are in effect cheating their competitors.”

The Rhode Island Democrat, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety, has long been an advocate for climate change action. His official website features a page called “Climate Change: Time to Wake Up” and he has made more than 85 speeches in the Senate on the topic, giving one per week.

Whitehouse praised the Obama administration’s limit on carbon emissions from power plants, announced in June, saying “It will change the way polluters think.” But he’d like to take the next step of making polluters pay for their cost to society. He said that not only would it reduce carbon emissions and improve air quality, it would generate significant new revenue for the federal government, perhaps as much as two trillion dollars in the first decade.

He pointed to some of the positive uses that money could be applied to, including cutting taxes, relieving student debt, increasing Social Security benefits and providing transition assistance to workers in fossil fuel industries.

“It’s win-win-win,” he said. “We can use this revenue to do big things; repair a marketplace failure; and guide the economy toward lower emissions, enhanced productivity and a sustainable future.”

Whitehouse also drew a direct line between the Republican party’s increasingly stubborn climate denier stance and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed a gusher of corporate money into campaigns.

“Not long ago, Republicans joined Democrats in pushing for action on climate,” Whitehouse said. “Leading Republican voices agreed that the dangers of climate change were real. Leading Republican voices agreed that carbon emissions were the culprit. And leading Republican voices agreed that Congress had the responsibility to act. Then the heartbeat flatlined. Republican calls for climate action fell silent.

Something happened, right around 2010. It was the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—one of the court’s most disgraceful decisions. Improper fact-finding by the five conservative activists on the Supreme Court concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections—just couldn’t do it. By some magic, it’s pure.”

He says that although his Republican colleagues represent many states ravaged by its effects, “Most won’t even utter the words ‘climate change’ on the floor of the Senate at all. It’s not safe to, ever since Citizens United allowed the bullying, polluting special interests to bombard our elections with their attack ads and their threats.”

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Senator Manchin Hosts Tour of WV Energy Facilities for Senator Whitehouse

From a Press Release, U. S. Senate, Washington, DC, October 22, 2014

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) hosted Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in West Virginia to continue their ongoing discussions about finding meaningful solutions to balancing our nation’s energy needs with our environmental concerns. Senator Manchin emphasized the importance of developing new fossil fuel technology to continue producing affordable and reliable electricity, while steadily reducing carbon emissions and addressing the adverse effects of climate change. Senator Manchin toured several coastal areas of Rhode Island on October 10.

Due to inclement weather, travel restraints required the day’s agenda to be slightly readjusted. Senator Manchin and Senator Whitehouse toured the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to gather information about the facility’s development of groundbreaking energy projects, including details on how to operationalize carbon capture and storage.

Then, they traveled to Longview Power to learn about the advanced technologies at their coal-fired power plant. They also attended a briefing led by officials from Dominion Energy, American Electric Power and FirstEnergy to discuss the utility companies’ actions to produce cleaner power from their coal facilities and the impact stricter environmental regulations have on their ability to ensure reliable and affordable electricity throughout the region and this country. Finally, they met with officials from PJM Interconnection to hear about the importance of reliability to our nation’s electrical grid.

“It has been a pleasure showing Senator Whitehouse a few of our innovative energy facilities in West Virginia and continuing our discussions about the importance of investing in innovative technologies that can produce clean power while also making sure Americans are guaranteed affordable, reliable electricity,” Senator Manchin said. “We agree that we must face the reality of climate change without delay, but we also agree that fossil fuels will be a vital part of our energy portfolio for decades to come. Working together, I hope that we can find that balance and show not only America, but the world, that we can look past our differences to better this planet now and for our future.”

“I thank Senator Manchin for hosting me in the Mountain State today and for showing me the innovative work being done here to minimize carbon pollution from fossil fuels,” said Senator Whitehouse. “From improving energy efficiency and increasing renewable energy use to investing in technologies to capture and recycle carbon pollution, there is much we can do that will benefit both coastal states like Rhode Island and fossil-fuel-producing states like West Virginia. I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Manchin on these issues.”

Once Congress returns from its recess after the election season, Senators Manchin and Whitehouse will continue to work with the Department of Energy (DOE) to ensure its available $8 billion in loan guarantees and $1.7 billion in available advanced fossil grants are used to invest in innovative technologies, including those that capture, utilize, and sequester carbon dioxide.