Bipartisan Senate coal-state duo offers plan to clean up industry

A bipartisan pair of coal-state senators are offering a plan to speed up technology to make coal cleaner, but they say they won’t agree to any sweeping measure to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio) are pushing a plan to quicken the commercial availability of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology — vital if the coal industry is to survive under a carbon-restricted economy.

It includes $20 billion over 10 years to support large-scale demonstration projects, new efforts to determine the long-term storage of carbon dioxide and an expansion of federal loan guarantees and tax credits to encourage early adoption of CCS technologies.

While some estimates indicate it will be another 10 years before this technology is commercially available, Voinovich told reporters Wednesday that “we need to jump-start that.”

Rockefeller said the plan creates jobs, reduces emissions and “takes head-on” the fact that alternative energy sources do not match the use of coal needed for electricity.

“And I think it’s going to change the face of this debate,” he said.

But both senators said their plan works best as either stand-alone legislation or as part of broader Senate energy legislation that does not put a carbon price on electric utilities.

“It is common knowledge around here … that cap-and-trade cannot get 60 votes,” Rockefeller said. “Cap-and-trade has become a dirty word,” Voinovich added.

The two senators said the only viable plan their CCS strategy could be attached to is one combining an energy bill passed with bipartisan support last year by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and parts of a bill offered by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.). Lugar’s
legislation ramps up federal fuel efficiency and renewable fuel standards.

“I don’t think this will be included in a Kerry-type bill,” Rockefeller said, referring to efforts by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to set firm caps on industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

Voinovich said Kerry and Lieberman are still negotiating with the Edison Electric Institute, the main trade association for investor-owned electric utilities, which previously agreed to be part
of a broader carbon-pricing plan for the electric utility, manufacturing and transportation sectors Kerry and Lieberman initially floated.

But EEI is “now having second thoughts,” Voinovich said, about whether it would be willing to do a scaled-back carbon-pricing plan focused on the electric utility sector.

Kerry and Lieberman have floated a 667-page utility-focused climate bill. Bingaman too has a utility-only carbon pricing draft but has been reluctant to commit to actually introducing a plan; he has cast doubt over its ability to get enough support.

Voinovich said he has pressed Kerry on how revenue from charging utilities the right to emit greenhouse gases would be used.

“How much money do you want to raise, who’s going to pay it and who’s going to get it?” Voinovich asked. “And I still haven’t gotten an answer.”