Welcome to your Friday Rundown for the week ending March 23. Rundown will take a break next week and be back April 6. Feedback is still always welcome at info@clearpathaction.org.
OMNIBUS SPENDING DEAL BOOSTS CLEAN, RELIABLE ENERGY
Congress approved an FY18 omnibus spending bill that boosts clean and reliable energy funding across the board.
Among the highlights:
ADVANCED NUCLEAR
Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy gets a 19 percent boost, to roughly $1.2 billion, including more money for research and development.
Funding to begin design of a Versatile Fast Test Reactor – critical to advanced reactor development.
Removal of a prohibition on directed funding for small modular reactor efforts and support for SMR R&D.
$10million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help license advanced reactors
Large increase in Nuclear Energy Enabling Technologies, including advanced modeling and simulation and crosscutting technologies.
DOE is instructed to provide Congress with recommendations to set “aggressive, but achievable goals to demonstrate a variety of private-sector advanced reactor designs and fuel types by the late 2020s.” This partially addresses bipartisan efforts from Sens. Jeff Flake and Martin Heinrich and Rep. Clay Higgins.
INNOVATION
ARPA-E gets a big bump to $353 million
DOE’s energy innovation loan program office preserved and directed to process incoming applications
$41 million ($10 million increase) for energy storage efforts at DOE’s Office of Electricity
DOE energy innovation hubs fully funded
32% increase in funding (from $53 million to $70 million) for the R&D account that could lead to breakthroughs in perovskite solar, a new material that could make printable or paintable solar that is potentially thinner and more efficient than today’s panels
CARBON CAPTURE, STORAGE, UTILIZATION
Directs support for DOE’s National Carbon Capture Center, which helps bridge the gap between laboratory research and large-scale demonstrations
Funds research to improve production from enhanced oil recovery and unconventional reservoirs
Authorizes $2 billion in loan guarantees for electric cooperatives to build carbon sequestration at power plants
HYDROPOWER
$35 million for conventional hydropower and pumped storage and $10 milion in competitive funding opportunity “to test the commercial viability of new use cases for pumped storage hydropower at locations to enhance grid reliability and manage variability.”
WHAT’S STILL MISSING?
A more fuel-neutral approach to carbon capture, storage and utilization research and funding to incentivize pre-commercial projects
Lack of goals at DOE for energy storage, similar to those being drafted for advanced nuclear and also called for in bipartisan legislation led by Sens. Jeff Flake and Cory Booker
BARRASSO, WHITEHOUSE INTRO CO2 CAPTURE, PIPELINE BILL
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse Thursday introduced the bipartisan Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies (USE IT) Act, which directs EPA to support efforts that reduce and utilize carbon emissions and direct air capture research. It also aims to improve permitting and deployment of carbon capture, utilization and sequestration facilities and the pipelines that would carry the CO2 to be used for enhanced oil recovery, storage, to be developed into products and for other purposes.
The bill is also cosponsored by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito and Heidi Heitkamp as a follow-up to the FUTURE Act which extended and expanded the Section 45Q tax credit. (more on that below!)
The USE IT Act narrowly amends the Clean Air Act to direct EPA to use existing authority to support carbon utilization and direct air capture research, clarifies that carbon capture projects and CO2 pipelines are eligible for expedited permitting reviews, directs the White House Council on Environmental Quality to establish guidance to help project developers and operators, and sets up task forces to hear from those affected in order to update this guidance when necessary.
WHY 45Q MATTERS – AND WHY IT’S NOT ENOUGH
The four USE IT Act sponsors were among those also leading the way when Congress fixed the Section 45Q carbon capture tax credit as part of a broader budget deal signed into law in February. It was a big, big deal. This incentive would accelerate technologies that capture, store and utilize carbon emissions from existing and new coal and natural gas plants, as well as industrial facilities that produce a range of U.S. products.
But the new Barrasso-Whitehouse bill also illustrates how the promise of carbon capture technology can’t rest on the 45Q fix alone. ClearPath Executive Director Rich Powell and our in-house clean fossil fuel expert Justin Ong explain in a new blog that an ambitious package of steady DOE dollars, private activity bonds, streamlined permitting and other regulatory fixes are still needed.
Don’t miss Sen. John Hoeven’s new op-ed in Roll Call, explaining how the U.S. can lead on carbon capture and more broadly on global fossil energy innovation. “You can’t find a better example of how public-private partnerships can spur innovation than Project Tundra,” a joint effort to retrofit a North Dakota lignite coal power plant with carbon capture technology that DOE recently awarded $6 million.
Ahead of the omnibus rollout, Energy Secretary Rick Perry this week offered support for ARPA-E before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I have found some very, very positive things that have come out of it,” he said. If Congress funds it, “it will be operated in a way that you will be most pleased with,” he added.
NRC Chairwoman Kristine Svinicki told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that pre-licensing conversations with NuScale and Oklo on their advanced nuclear designs “continues to be very active.” While NuScale has submitted their small modular reactor design, Oklo appears “to be moving out of the pack with some serious intent there to submit a design in the coming years” that will be even more advanced, Svinicki said.
Congress should ease restrictions on purchase power agreements between federal agencies and electric utilities, instruct DOE to relax certain export control regulations that have become unnecessarily cumbersome and order NRC to create a new regulatory regime for future nuclear reactors that is better able to assess risks, according to a set of recommendations by R Street Institute.
FERC has granted an additional 30 days, until May 9, for public comments regarding an analysis by regional grid operators about the resilience of the nation’s power grid. FERC has directed regional transmission operators to report on grid resilience.
BP American President John Minge will leave that job at the end of April to chair a National Petroleum Council study on carbon capture and storage technology.
