[Senate Hearing 117-122]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




                                                        S. Hrg. 117-122
 
  OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES THAT EXIST FOR ADVANCING AND DEPLOYING 
CARBON AND CARBON-DIOXIDE (CO2) UTILIZATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE UNITED 
                                 STATES

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 22, 2021

                               __________
                               
                               
                               
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                       Printed for the use of the
               Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
        
        
                          ______

             U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
44-470               WASHINGTON : 2022 
        
        
        
        
        
               COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

                JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia, Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington           JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont             MIKE LEE, Utah
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          STEVE DAINES, Montana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine            JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
MARK KELLY, Arizona                  BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado       CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
                                     ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas

                      Renae Black, Staff Director
                      Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
            Armando Avila, Senior Professional Staff Member
             Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
              Matthew H. Leggett, Republican Chief Counsel
                     Kate Farr, Republican Counsel
                     Darla Ripchensky, Chief Clerk
                     
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from West 
  Virginia.......................................................     1
Barrasso, Hon. John, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from 
  Wyoming........................................................     3

                               WITNESSES

Anderson, Dr. Brian, Director, National Energy Technology 
  Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy..........................     6
Begger, Jason, Managing Director, Wyoming Integrated Test Center.    16
Sant, Dr. Gaurav N., Professor and Henry Samueli Fellow, 
  Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Materials 
  Science and Engineering, and the California Nanosystems 
  Institute; and Faculty Director, Institute for Carbon 
  Management, UCLA; and Founder and CTO, CarbonBuilt, Inc........    23
Atkins, Randall W., Chairman and Chief Executive, Ramaco Coal....    33

          ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

Anderson, Dr. Brian:
    Opening Statement............................................     6
    Written Testimony............................................     9
    Questions for the Record.....................................   118
Atkins, Randall W.:
    Opening Statement............................................    33
    Written Testimony............................................    35
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   124
Barrasso, Hon. John:
    Opening Statement............................................     3
    Article from the Gillette News Record entitled ``Case study: 
      ITC has potential to be prominent in CO2 research, 
      breakthroughs'' by Greg Johnson, dated 4/10/2021...........     5
Begger, Jason:
    Opening Statement............................................    16
    Written Testimony............................................    18
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   119
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
    Opening Statement............................................     1
Resources for the Future:
    Issue Brief (21-03) for the Record...........................   126
Sant, Dr. Gaurav N.:
    Opening Statement............................................    23
    Written Testimony............................................    26
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   122


  OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES THAT EXIST FOR ADVANCING AND DEPLOYING 
CARBON AND CARBON-DIOXIDE (CO2) UTILIZATION TECHNOLOGIES IN THE UNITED 
                                 STATES

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2021

                                       U.S. Senate,
                 Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in 
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joe Manchin 
III, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

           OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III,
                U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA

    The Chairman. We are here today to discuss carbon 
utilization, the innovative process of taking carbon and clear 
stream CO2 from industrial and power plants and out 
of the air and around us and turning it into valuable products. 
This is innovation at work, and it is shifting our perspective 
on how harmful emissions can instead be harnessed and put to 
good use. And what a timely discussion, given that today is 
Earth Day, to talk about this intersection of climate solutions 
and economic potential. I look forward to hearing from our 
panel of witnesses about barriers to scaling up these 
opportunities and the ways that we can support the advancement 
and deployment of carbon utilization.
    Congress has made significant efforts in recent years to 
support carbon utilization technologies and projects. In order 
to get CCUS deployed at the scale we need, it is critical that 
we invest in research, development, demonstration, and 
deployment of the entire CCUS value chain from capturing 
CO2 from coal and natural gas power plants and 
industrial facilities, to utilizing or sequestering that 
CO2. That is why the Energy Act contained over $6 
billion in authorization for CCUS, including over $280 million 
specifically for carbon utilization, including coal-to-products 
demonstration projects and a new carbon utilization research 
center. As Chairman, I am committed to ensuring the 
implementation of those provisions. We need to couple these 
efforts with necessary modifications to the 45Q tax credit to 
really incentivize the deployment of these projects and 
advancing legislation like the SCALE Act, a comprehensive 
CO2 infrastructure package that I was pleased to co-
sponsor and happy to see included in President Biden's 
Infrastructure Plan.
    Nearly all studies have examined the potential pathways to 
net-zero carbon by 2050 have found a need for significant 
amount of carbon capture and carbon removal. Dr. Birol of the 
non-partisan, International Energy Agency (IEA), has 
consistently said, CCUS could be the most critical technology 
for us to invest in to meet our climate goals. I am proud of 
the work that National Energy Technology Lab, NETL, based in 
Morgantown, West Virginia, is doing under the leadership of Dr. 
Brian Anderson, one of our presenters today, to lead the way in 
CCUS efforts in the development of technologies to use coal in 
new ways. So I want to welcome Dr. Anderson. I look forward to 
hearing more about the innovative work being done at NETL.
    Carbon utilization has substantial economic and 
environmental potential and should be a key part of 
conversations around economic revitalization. By 2030, the 
CO2 utilization market, sized for products like 
concrete, fuels and chemicals, has potential to reach over $800 
billion. This would represent about seven gigatons of 
CO2, equivalent to 15 percent of global emissions. 
In addition, the use of coal as feedstock to produce high value 
products is a promising field. These new uses for coal can 
produce products superior in quality and durability to 
conventional ones, including certain lightweight, high-strength 
building products and materials like carbon fiber. The demand 
for carbon fiber, graphite and graphene will experience double 
digit annual growth in the years ahead. These new uses for coal 
also have potential to provide new economic opportunities and 
revitalize traditional energy producing communities, who have 
been hit the hardest by the energy transition.
    Ramaco Coal is leading the way in the development of coal-
to-products. I look forward to hearing from Mr. Randy Atkins 
about the work that they are doing.
    I am heartened by the commitment to carbon utilization 
shown by industry and research partners. I am pleased to 
welcome two of our witnesses who were involved in the Carbon 
XPRIZE, a five-year, global competition that challenged 
innovators to develop breakthrough technologies to convert 
CO2 into high net value products. Teams across the 
globe participated and demonstrated the value of CO2 
in a wide range of products, including alcohol used in vodka 
and sanitizers, plastics and batteries and even toothpaste. Mr. 
Jason Begger is the Managing Director of the Wyoming Integrated 
Test Center which provided the U.S. site for this competition 
and Dr. Gaurav Sant is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer 
of CarbonBuilt, who just this week was announced as one of the 
two winners of the XPRIZE for their work to embed industrial 
CO2 emissions into concrete, helping reduce the 
carbon footprint of concrete by more than 50 percent. So 
congratulations to Dr. Sant. I look forward to hearing more 
about your technology experience and the future opportunities 
for this breakthrough technology.
    In closing, let me reiterate the tremendous potential of 
carbon utilization to support our environmental and economic 
objectives. We have an incredible panel of experts with us 
today who are directly engaged in developing these 
technologies, and I look forward to this conversation.
    With that, I am going to turn to Ranking Member, Senator 
Barrasso, for his opening remarks.

               STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM WYOMING

    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so very much, Mr. Chairman. 
I am delighted to be here with these wonderful people who are 
going to be testifying and sharing their thoughts and ideas 
with us.
    You know, the International Energy Agency has repeatedly 
stated that if the world is going to meet its goal in 
addressing climate change, we will need carbon capture, 
utilization and storage, period. Earlier this year the 
Executive Director of the International Energy Agency testified 
before this very Committee in this room that carbon capture is 
an extremely important technology for reducing carbon 
emissions. That is why I have been a long champion of carbon 
capture technologies. In 2008, I introduced a bill called the 
Greenhouse Gas Emission Atmospheric Removal Act. I did this 
along with former Chairman of this Committee, Senator Jeff 
Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico, who was Senator 
Heinrich's predecessor on this Committee. More recently, I have 
worked successfully with a bipartisan group of Senators, 
including Senator Manchin, our Chairman, to expand the 45Q tax 
credit for carbon capture, utilization and sequestration. Last 
year, along with a bipartisan group of Senators, we 
successfully worked to enact the USE IT Act. The USE IT Act 
supports carbon capture, utilization and sequestration 
technology. It expedites the permitting of important 
infrastructure like carbon dioxide pipelines. It helps 
researchers find commercial uses for captured carbon dioxide 
emissions.
    Carbon dioxide emissions can be transformed to create 
numerous products, including clothing from carbon foams, carbon 
fiber, building materials like cement and concrete and even, as 
the Chairman mentioned, hand sanitizer. And of course, Wyoming 
is on the cutting edge of carbon capture research and 
innovation. In 2018, the State of Wyoming joined with several 
rural electric cooperatives to open the Integrated Test Center 
in Gillette, Wyoming. The Integrated Test Center provides space 
for research teams to test carbon capture, utilization and 
sequestration technologies. The Center gives these teams the 
opportunity to use carbon dioxide emissions directly from Basin 
Electric's coal-fired power plant in Gillette. I have toured 
the Center several times, always impressed by the projects 
underway at the facility.
    Last summer we actually had a Senate Environment and Public 
Works Committee Field Hearing at the Center. After the hearing, 
research teams provided hands-on demonstrations of their 
groundbreaking work and one of those teams was CarbonBuilt, who 
is being represented here today and recently won the prize, as 
you just mentioned, Mr. Chairman, the XPRIZE. CarbonBuilt used 
captured emissions in its concrete manufacturing technology. It 
was a finalist for the Carbon XPRIZE, a research competition to 
drive innovation in carbon capture, utilization and 
sequestration technologies. And on Monday, the Carbon XPRIZE 
announced its winners and CarbonBuilt was among them.
    Mr. Chairman, I will point out I got an email last night 
from Senator Whitehouse. He joined you and me and Senator 
Cantwell when we visited one of the teams that was working as 
well on doing exactly that form of research. They competed, and 
the team that is here today was the victor. So we have been 
following this closely, you and I have, along with Senator 
Cantwell, Senator Murkowski and Senator Whitehouse. We are 
delighted to have the founder of CarbonBuilt, Dr. Sant, who has 
joined us here today and congratulations, again, to you and 
your entire team.
    You know, earlier this month a newspaper in Gillette, 
Wyoming, Gillette News Record, did a story called ``Case study: 
Integrated Test Center has potential to be prominent in 
CO2 research, breakthroughs.'' The picture as you 
will see, Dr. Sant, is of--you may not be able to see it, but I 
know you have seen it before--of Iman Mehdipour of CarbonBuilt 
walking into where the work has been done in Gillette at the 
coal-fired power plant and the carbon capture facility. The end 
of the article, the author, the newsman reports, ``The world 
needs an important and often overlooked Wyoming natural 
resource--innovation.'' And that is what you and I have talked 
about, Mr. Chairman, the need for innovation in the work as 
opposed to regulation and taxation.
    [The article referred to follows:]
    
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    Senator Barrasso. So these are great opportunities for 
coal-to-product technologies as well and we have someone to 
testify to that today. Raw coal can be mined, treated and 
refined to separate the carbon content and then used in high-
tech, high-value products. These products include carbon fiber, 
activated carbon and graphene. Last year, Mr. Chairman, you and 
Senator Capito and I introduced the COAL TeCC Act, which stands 
for ``Creating Opportunities and Leveraging Technologies for 
Coal Carbon.'' Our legislation directs the Department of Energy 
to initiate pilot programs to help bring coal-to-product 
technologies to market. So I am very pleased to see that key 
sections of our bill were enacted as part of the 2020 Energy 
Act.
    Today, Mr. Chairman, we are going to discuss the 
opportunities and the challenges facing both carbon capture and 
coal-to-products technologies. So before we begin, I want to 
thank you for putting this Committee meeting together and I 
want to welcome Jason Begger, who is the Managing Director of 
Wyoming's Integrated Test Center. Jason has testified before 
the Senate several times, including at a Field Hearing at our 
Integrated Test Center last summer in Gillette. I would also 
like to welcome Randy Atkins, who is the CEO of Ramaco Coal. 
Randy is establishing a coal-to-products research facility in 
Sheridan, Wyoming. Finally, I want to thank all the witnesses 
for testifying and participating today and look forward to the 
conversation.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    With that, I will finish the introductions here. We want to 
thank all of our witnesses for participating today, and I think 
it is going to be a very, very interesting and very informative 
hearing. It will be quite hectic today. We have some votes 
coming up, and we are going to be going in and out, but we are 
going to keep this alive and we will have people by WebEx and 
we will have Senators coming in too.
    I want to introduce Dr. Brian Anderson. Brian is the 
Director of the National Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown, 
West Virginia.
    We also have Mr. Jason Begger, the Managing Director of the 
Wyoming Integrated Test Center.
    We also have Dr. Gaurav Sant, Professor of UCLA's Institute 
for Carbon Management, and Founder and Chief Technology Officer 
of CarbonBuilt, Inc.
    And then we have also, Mr. Randall Atkins, the Chief 
Executive Officer of Ramaco Coal.
    We will start today with Dr. Brian Anderson for his opening 
remarks.

  STATEMENT OF DR. BRIAN ANDERSON, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ENERGY 
        TECHNOLOGY LABORATORY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

    Dr. Anderson. Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso and 
honored Committee members, thank you for this opportunity to 
discuss advanced carbon and carbon dioxide----
    The Chairman. Can you turn it up a little bit?
    Dr. Anderson. ----utilization technologies today.
    My name is Dr. Brian Anderson. I'm the Director of the U.S. 
Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory, 
or NETL. Our research and development campuses are located in 
Morgantown, West Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania----
    The Chairman. Brian, excuse me, on your mic, you are going 
up and down. If you get closer to your mic. Let's try it again.
    We've got so far, but just start talking again. We'll see 
if we can control it on this end. We're trying to get your 
volume up a little more.
    Dr. Anderson. Sure.
    The Chairman. There we go. Now it is perfect. Perfect.
    Dr. Anderson. Okay, perfect.
    So our mission at NETL is to drive innovation and deliver 
solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous 
energy future. We develop technologies to manage carbon across 
the full life cycle--and have for many, many decades--that 
enables environmental sustainability for all Americans. So 
today, I want to discuss our decarbonization technologies and 
the opportunities that exist for advancing and deploying carbon 
and CO2 utilization technologies in the U.S.
    First, I'll speak to our, NETL's, advanced carbon products 
research which serve to develop high-value products from coal, 
aims to support communities that are impacted by the energy 
transition, both in past and in the future and to help 
translate those skills that they have for advanced 
manufacturing jobs. We are converting coal into high-value 
carbon nanomaterials with the potential to reduce manufacturing 
costs and energy consumption while simultaneously improving 
performance. Coal is an ideal product, ideal for producing 
graphene type nanomaterials that can be used in electronics, 
composite plastics, batteries, water filtration systems and 3D 
printing materials. We have also used coal-based additives to 
improve the strength of cement and concrete materials by 15 or 
30, 35 percent which can be used to reduce building cost and 
the volume of construction materials. Our R&D on emerging 
carbon-based building materials is necessary to renovate these 
materials as suitable for construction purposes, including 
ensuring compliance with the strictest health and environmental 
requirements for building materials for metals.
    So a few of our partnerships. We're partnered with the 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Ramaco Carbon, 
to use domestic coal to manufacture energy-efficient computer 
memory chips. This technology can be used to enable the next 
generation of artificial intelligence and machine learning and 
I'm sure you'll hear more from Mr. Atkins on Ramaco's work. 
We're collaborating with X-MAT in West Virginia to establish 
the utility of Coal-Derived Building Materials licensed from 
their partner, Semplastics, out of Florida. The University of 
Wyoming researchers are collaborating with NETL to develop 
coal-derived carbon building materials from Powder River Basin 
coal pyrolysis products. Two of the building components can 
contain more than 70 percent carbon have been proposed, their 
char-based concrete brick and another carbon-based structural 
unit. By the way, NETL has partnered with CFOAM in West 
Virginia to develop carbon foam panels and lightweight 
aggregates from coal at atmospheric pressure. There are coal-
derived carbon foams that are being produced commercially via 
big batch processes at elevated pressure, primarily for the use 
in composite tooling applications for the aerospace industry.
    And now I'd like to speak briefly about NETL's 
CO2 conversion and CO2 utilization 
research. Our carbon utilization research aims to develop 
technologies to transform CO2 into valuable products 
in an efficient, economical and environmentally friendly 
manner. The emerging field of CO2 utilization 
encompasses many possible products and applications: fuels, 
chemicals, food and feeds, construction materials, enhanced 
resource recovery, energy storage, wastewater treatment and 
many others. We have developed new catalysts that can use 
electricity to convert CO2 and methane into chemical 
building blocks and energy carriers. These inventions can allow 
the development of modular reactors that can use intermittent 
renewable energy, renewable electricity, to produce carbon 
negative commodity chemicals. We are partnered with the West 
Virginia University, the University of Pittsburgh and Longview 
Power to develop and test at the laboratory scale an innovative 
technology to produce commercial quality sodium bicarbonate 
directly from CO2 from coal-fired power plant flue 
gas. In Dr. Sant's testimony you'll hear about CarbonBuilt's 
process to develop concrete blocks using CO2 from 
power plant flue gas without the need for the carbon capture 
step. It's been demonstrated by more than 1,200 hours of field 
testing at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, represented this 
morning by Mr. Begger. We're also working with Acadian Research 
& Development in Wyoming to synthesize a catalyst for the 
process to reduce CO2 to synthetic graphite.
    As discussed in the intros by the Chairman and Ranking 
Member, full decarbonization of the electricity sector by 2035 
will require a combination of renewable resources, energy 
storage and reliable no- and low-carbon generation to assure 
reliability and affordability in our electric sector. 
Dispatchable fossil energy with CCUS can play an important role 
in conjunction with grid-scale energy storage for grid 
reliability during the energy transition. Our carbon reducing 
technologies are critical to managing carbon emissions in 
industries beyond electricity such as oil refineries and 
facilities that produce hydrogen, ethanol, cement or steel. In 
addition to carbon reducing technologies, negative emission 
technologies such as direct air capture and storage or 
bioenergy with CCUS and mineralization will play a pivotal role 
in managing carbon in long-term. We've been developing plans 
for a Direct Air Capture Center for evaluating emerging 
technologies in direct air capture.
    So in conclusion, science, technology and research are 
powerful drivers of innovation and sustainable economic growth. 
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss some of these cutting-
edge innovations which have application within and well beyond 
the energy sector.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Anderson follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
    Next, we are going to hear from Mr. Jason Begger.

     STATEMENT OF JASON BEGGER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, WYOMING 
                     INTEGRATED TEST CENTER

    Mr. Begger. All right.
    Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, members of the 
Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today. 
My name is Jason Begger and I'm the Managing Director of the 
Wyoming Integrated Test Center (ITC) which is a private-public 
partnership between the State of Wyoming, Basin Electric Power 
Cooperative, Tri-State Transmission and Generation Association 
and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The 
ITC is the largest post-combustion research facility in the 
U.S. and is located at Basin Electric's Dry Fork Power Station. 
It is important to remember that post-combustion technologies 
are not just for coal plants. They can be utilized at other 
industrial facilities such as cement plants and steel smelters. 
There's a significant need for these processes in non-energy 
applications. All ITC funding has come from the State of 
Wyoming and our utility partners. While we believe there's an 
important role for the Federal Government to play in advancing 
technology and we would welcome such a partnership, no federal 
funding has been utilized, although some of our research 
tenants have received DOE grants to conduct their projects.
    CCUS requires both the capture of CO2 and then 
permanently doing something with it to ensure it is not 
released into the atmosphere. The ITC is unique in that it can 
host both types of technologies. Two important considerations 
for CCUS technologies are the amount of CO2 utilized 
and the cost of the process. For things such as EOR [enhanced 
oil recovery], geological sequestration and mineralization, the 
CO2 rich flue gas generally only needs to be 
captured and compressed. Plus, they can utilize vast 
quantities. Other technologies can be much more expensive. 
CO2 is a very stable molecule with a double covalent 
bond so for technologies needing to break apart the atom, this 
requires a lot of energy leading to higher costs. Nonetheless, 
all are important and we need many options to successfully 
utilize large volumes of CO2.
    As was previously mentioned, the ITC hosted the Energy 
COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, but we are also working on a joint project 
with the government of Japan and Columbia University taking 
CO2 and fly ash to produce carbonates which have a 
variety of industrial uses. One application is silica which is 
used to create polysilicate, a critical component of solar 
panels. Currently, 80 percent of the global supply originates 
in a region in China with serious human rights concerns. It is 
possible we could use CO2 from a coal plant to 
produce components for the renewable industry. While 
programmatic funding is extremely important, Congress also 
needs to provide the means to carry out these projects by 
supporting the places where research can occur. NETL and the 
National Carbon Capture Center are great research facilities 
but limited in size and DOE has been sending American 
developers with U.S. taxpayer funded grants to test in Norway 
because there is not a facility large enough to test in this 
country. The ITC can host larger projects at better value to 
taxpayers with some additional infrastructure. We have the 
perfect blank canvas. Now we need to fill it. There is no 
better place than Wyoming to conduct this type of research. We 
have the facilities, suitable geology, regulatory agencies with 
expertise in regulating CO2 and a ``get to yes'' 
mentality toward permitting and supportive legislature and 
governor and last, public support for these types of projects.
    Fourteen years ago, Apple released the first iPhone which 
came with four gigs of memory, a two-megapixel camera, no 
flash, no zoom, no video camera. Today's iPhone 12 has 512 gigs 
of storage, facial recognition, four cameras and HD video 
recording capabilities. Yes, today's CCUS technology is still 
evolving, but as we know technology gets better and less 
expensive over time. We need to think about energy technology 
as we do with the things we utilize every day and appreciate 
how early government support made them possible. Touch screen 
glass, a staple of today's smart phone was developed in the 
U.K. in the 1960s for air traffic control applications. GPS, 
canned food, microwave ovens, the Internet, microchips, 
vaccines and nylon are all items developed by federal research. 
Technology is apolitical and the U.S. can make its greatest 
impact by investing in the knowledge that can be utilized 
around the world. Technology is the best way to ensure these 
countries have access to power while meeting environmental 
goals.
    I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today, and 
I'll gladly answer your questions. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Begger follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Begger.
    Next, we are going to have Dr. Gaurav Sant. I hope I 
pronounced that right, sir. I am sorry if I didn't.

 STATEMENT OF DR. GAURAV N. SANT, PROFESSOR AND HENRY SAMUELI 
  FELLOW, DEPARTMENTS OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING, 
     MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, AND THE CALIFORNIA 
  NANOSYSTEMS INSTITUTE; AND FACULTY DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR 
CARBON MANAGEMENT, UCLA; AND FOUNDER AND CTO, CARBONBUILT, INC.

    Dr. Sant. Close enough, Gaurav.
    The Chairman. Am I close?
    Dr. Sant. Very close.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Dr. Sant. Of course. Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member 
Barrasso and members of the Committee, thank you for having me 
here today. There are five things that I want to really try and 
highlight.
    Number one, of course, carbon dioxide utilization is really 
a key part of achieving our carbon reduction goals. This is 
foremost for its ability, not simply to provide a revenue 
queuing and a cost-
effective pathway, but it's potentially one of the soonest 
pathways that we can really catalyze for carbon management. 
Second, when we think about really expanded investments, we 
have to think about expanded investment in carbon capture, 
utilization and storage across the entire life cycle, 
particularly I think what is important to highlight is to 
really place a special focus on grant-making mechanisms that 
support full-scale, commercial demonstration plants. These 
demonstration plants are needed, particularly not only to deal 
us technologies and retrain our workforce, but particularly to 
gain operational maintenance and production management 
experience with new processes and relevant skills. This is 
something that we've done on an extremely limited manner so far 
and this is something that needs to be greatly expanded. 
Importantly, this kind of experiential familiarity is extremely 
important to diffuse U.S. technologies across the world to 
enhance the competitiveness.
    We've looked at the idea of transforming carbon dioxide out 
of concrete and this is really, in our opinion, an extremely 
effective approach for carbon utilization for a couple of 
reasons. Number one, the enormous scale of the construction 
industry, the relatively simple chemistry that's offered with 
this conversion and the permanence of immobilization. And I 
think this is something that we really want to highlight that 
when we think about carbon dioxide utilization, we want to 
think about permanence and the durability of immobilization as 
important aspects of carbon management. CarbonBuilt, a spinout 
company from UCLA's Samueli School of Engineering, is 
commercializing a technology of the sort that converts carbon 
dioxide into concrete and importantly, like Dr. Anderson just 
pointed out, it does it without a need for a carbon capture 
step. This work, you know, which has been funded by the Office 
of Fossil Energy's Carbon Utilization and Carbon Capture 
programs, is invaluable when we think about infrastructure 
renewal and infrastructure construction in the United States. 
And the reason is really simple because if we can enable 
construction at a really large scale with low carbon concrete, 
this is a significant and a catalytic means to create carbon 
dioxide utilization as a mainstream market opportunity.
    Fourth, we want to think about strategic government actions 
and strategic government actions are really required when we 
think about how we would catalyze some of these markets. By 
strategic government actions, I'm particularly alluding to the 
need to ensure low carbon procurement and purchasing in the 
form of ``Buy Clean'' type of ideas, ``Buy Clean'' type of 
concepts, which look both at the cost and the carbon intensity 
of products and materials when we think about not simply 
construction, but the broad economy around us. In this regard, 
it's important to create incentives both for early-stage 
innovative companies and established corporations. 
Historically, we've looked at ideas like a tax credit and while 
a tax credit is a great way to offset a tax liability, for 
early-stage companies we need to look at concepts like a direct 
payment that's based on production capacity and production 
levels, really as a means to catalyze the sector.
    Furthermore, when we think about carbon dioxide 
utilization, we need to really think about 45Q. And when we 
think about 45Q in the context of utilization we need to look 
at really reducing the cap on a qualifying project. The cap on 
a qualifying project, I think, on the order of law 25,000 
tonnes, is simply too large and it needs to be reduced to a 
number on the area of about 2,000 tonnes to really make a 
difference for a utilization project. The reasons for this are 
really simple. We'll likely not achieve utilization in a small, 
delocalized manner across many different sites, close to 
consumption centers, aka, close to markets. It makes a lot more 
sense to have modular, smaller-scale plants which really are 
producing products and materials close to where they're going 
to be sold because this is what minimizes transport cost, 
particularly important when we think about commodity materials, 
you know, things like concrete.
    The last thing I want to touch on is really a need for 
national databases. We lack national databases which have the 
tabulated data regarding the carbon intensity of materials and 
products and which follow, essentially, a rigorous review and 
standardized procedures for assessment of carbon intensity. 
This is important, not only for materials like concrete and 
steel and insulation materials, but it's important in general 
for products and services. These databases are important 
because they offer credible, technology neutral in an unbiased 
way to compare carbon efficiency intensity and improvements 
thereof which released, starts to give us an unbiased basis to 
rank and order materials and think about how incentives and 
credits could accrue as a function of the technology that's 
being deployed. Importantly, national databases of the sort are 
also important because they provide public transparency and an 
important part of what we're really thinking about is really 
allowing consumers and purchasers to make decisions about the 
products and the services that they would buy where if they 
wanted to buy low carbon products and low carbon services, they 
have the ability to consult a national database before making a 
purchasing decision.
    With that said, I'd like to conclude, and I'm happy to take 
questions as we go further.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Sant follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Doctor.
    Next and finally, we have Mr. Randall Atkins.
    Randall?

         STATEMENT OF RANDALL W. ATKINS, CHAIRMAN AND 
                  CHIEF EXECUTIVE, RAMACO COAL

    Mr. Atkins. Senators of the Committee, it is an honor to 
appear before you today and I would especially like to thank 
Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member Barrasso, who are both from 
two states that I proudly call home, as well as where our 
companies have their operations.
    Coal today is basically thought of as a cheap, 
controversial, environmentally challenged fuel combusted in 
power plants. We look at the commodity, however, through an 
entirely different lens in which it has a higher value purpose 
beyond energy; one, frankly, where coal becomes too valuable to 
burn. In our concept, coal simply stops being an emitter of 
greenhouse gas. Instead, it becomes an engine of economic 
progress and job growth for communities that are too often left 
behind. Today, I would like to discuss briefly, a fundamentally 
new, environmentally positive use for coal in which carbon 
derived from this commodity serves as a low-cost, carbon 
feedstock for high-value advanced carbon products and 
materials. It replaces a role currently mostly served by 
petroleum. This field we call coal-to-products, and we have 
coined the phrase ``carbon ore'' to describe coal used in this 
manner.
    As an overview, I would refer the Committee to the white 
paper that I'd shared in 2019 to then Secretary of Energy Perry 
from the National Coal Council entitled, ``Coal in the New 
Carbon Age.'' Our advances for higher value uses for coal, 
borrow from developments in the United States from the earliest 
20th century when coal was the basic chemical feedstock. Today, 
however, most carbon products are made from petroleum 
feedstocks. These are almost 40 times more expensive than the 
same carbon equivalent contained in coal. We are also now 
substantially behind China in pursuing this path. The IEA 
estimates that China annually now uses almost 400 million tons 
of coal a year to produce chemicals, fuels and fertilizers. 
Their new five-year plan calls for the construction of 370 new 
plants which will consume roughly a billion tons of coal by 
2024. This is roughly twice the total amount of coal produced 
in the United States.
    We embarked on our effort roughly eight years ago 
encouraged by new technological developments in advanced 
materials and manufacturing. We have worked on grants for 
innovative carbon research with the Department of Energy. We 
have had an unparalleled partnership with the national labs, 
especially the National Energy Technology Lab in both 
Pittsburgh and Albany, Oregon, as well as the Oak Ridge 
National Lab in Tennessee.
    Today, carbon is becoming the dominant advanced material of 
the 21st century. Both Senators Manchin and Barrasso mentioned 
a number of the products involved. If we could take these new 
carbon products and make them for less money using coal, it 
could have a dramatic, positive disruption on the cost 
structure of many products and industries, including 
infrastructure. It would also dramatically improve the 
environmental and qualitative aspects of many products and 
create lots of jobs. So what carbon products and materials are 
we currently pursuing? As I mentioned they've been discussed 
but they include graphene, graphite, porous carbon, carbon 
fiber, building products in a variety of forms, synthetic 
graphites and, of course, rare earth elements.
    Our recommendations are that we would ask for vastly more 
funding for both carbon research as well as for the national 
labs working with us. We would like equality under the 45Q tax 
credit provisions. And to implement these new technologies, we 
encourage ample funding and implementation of new carbon pilot 
plant facilities provided for in the COAL TeCC Act. Indeed, 
this summer we will open in Wyoming the first research pilot 
prototype which is pictured in my materials. As a main 
recommendation, however, I would encourage the development of 
what I call ``Carbon Camps.'' A hundred years ago, my 
grandfather worked in a company store in southern West Virginia 
at what used to be called ``Coal Camps.'' I know both Senators 
Manchin and Barrasso are very familiar with their history. The 
21st century version of CAMP stands for ``Carbon Advanced 
Materials and Product'' centers. These CAMPS can repurpose 
older and existing mining areas across the country into new 
mine-mouth, higher tech, net-zero emission manufacturing hubs 
which NETL has estimated might create as many as 500,000 new 
jobs.
    In conclusion, the United States possesses the world's 
largest and cheapest carbon reserves. It needs to capitalize on 
that advantage and develop its own form of a carbon valley to 
unlock that potential.
    I thank you deeply for your time.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Atkins follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you, Randy.
    Now we are going to begin our questions, and I will begin.
    This is going to be for all of you, and we will go down the 
line. We will start with Dr. Anderson and just go down the same 
as we did in speaking order.
    The President, this morning, set an ambitious goal of 50 
percent emissions reduction by 2030 which is extremely, 
extremely aggressive from where we had been before. I was glad 
to see specific inclusions of CCUS in the nationally-determined 
contribution, or NDC. As I said before, in order for carbon 
capture to thrive, we need to be thinking about the whole CCUS 
value chain, including how to use the captured CO2 
which is what you all have given your brief statements about. 
We really need to advance all the many technologies that put 
captured CO2 to good use, whether that be in 
concrete, building materials, toothpaste or more.
    The question would be, what do we need to do to get carbon 
utilization to the scale we need to be able to support and 
widely deploy the CCUS to help meet this ambitious, very 
ambitious, climate goal?
    Dr. Anderson.
    Dr. Anderson. Well, Senator Manchin, thank you for that 
question. I think that a lot of the direction or pathway toward 
meeting that goal comes to the reduction in the cost of carbon 
capture itself. So creating the low-cost feedstock of 
CO2 through driving down the carbon capture cost. We 
have some aggressive targets. We're sitting at around $40, 
between $42 and $48 per metric ton of CO2 captured. 
We want to get to $30 per metric ton of CO2 captured 
to then provide that low-cost feedstock for the CO2 
utilization that provides another mechanism for providing 
market value.
    Certainly, then continuing the efforts that we're working 
on and discussing today to provide options to create other 
vehicles for funding the carbon capture effort, I think, is 
also critical----
    The Chairman. I just want to----
    Dr. Anderson. ----cost of carbon capture and conversion.
    The Chairman. Thank you. I want to make sure I clarify. 
There are people that will be saying that this is not feasible. 
We cannot get that type of reduction in that short period of 
time. That would mean you would have to eliminate using all 
fossil. I don't believe that. I believe that we do have the 
ability and we do have technology, if we are committed to 
investing in that technology rapidly and rapidly ramping up to 
meet this ambitious goal.
    I think, Mr. Begger, if you could start now with your 
response. I just want to know if it is feasible.
    Mr. Begger. Absolutely, we just need to be able to show at 
larger scales and I think that's where facilities like the ITC 
come in. I think another area that we need to consider when 
we're thinking about this is federal lands and permitting. If 
we're going to be doing geologic sequestration, a lot of that's 
going to happen on federal land.
    The Chairman. And we have to accelerate our permitting 
process and not put all the roadblocks and go through the court 
process because it takes 10, 20, 30 years.
    Mr. Begger. Absolutely, we need to be able to----
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Begger. ----move these things and permit them quickly. 
And right now, I don't see how you could go through an entire 
NEPA process to build a pipeline to seek out your 
CO2.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Go ahead.
    Mr. Begger. I think that we need to think about the whole, 
the whole chain, you know, capturing, moving it, utilizing it 
in a place like Wyoming where we have such an extraordinary 
volume or amount of federal lands. The federal NEPA process 
certainly creates barriers when we'd look at things like where 
we've got the Dry Fork Power Station, to move that 
CO2 to places where it can be used and utilized. So 
I think that's really important as well as the scale-up to 
demonstrate----
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Begger. ----that these things can work at a larger 
scale.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Doctor.
    Dr. Sant. There are three things I would touch on. Number 
one, I think we need to do large-scale commercial projects. We 
just cannot get away from this.
    The Chairman. Can we scale up quick enough in order to meet 
these----
    Dr. Sant. We can. What it would require is funding and, 
sort of, willingness to go there.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Dr. Sant. The next thing that we'd really need is we need 
the creation of markets, and I think this is where the 
government can play a really significant role.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Dr. Sant. We need ``Buy Clean'' purchasing mandates to 
really come about.
    The third thing that we need is we need permitting, and we 
need permitting not simply for sequestration but also for 
utilization. And if we can couple this with the right kinds of 
incentives, particularly tax credits and direct payments where 
we couple, as an example, carbon reduction goals with energy 
efficiency improvements or production efficiency improvements, 
there's much higher incentive to actually make a difference.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Doctor. Mr. Atkins.
    Mr. Atkins. Sure, Senator. I think if you're going to 
approach this problem with that kind of a timeframe, you almost 
have to look at this like a Manhattan Project.
    The Chairman. Correct.
    Mr. Atkins. Where you're going to devote a lot of resources 
from the federal and state level to try to accomplish something 
to really change both the market dynamics and the way a lot of 
things that we now take for granted are done differently, one 
of which, of course, that I focus on, of course, is coal. So if 
we could have a dramatically larger shift away from necessarily 
using coal for power production and use it for a non-
greenhouse-producing function such as products, that would have 
a dramatically positive effect. And I think a number of the 
items talked about from both tax policy as well as funding for 
research are important components.
    The Chairman. But I like that challenge. With that being 
announced today, we want to make sure that we are part of the 
solution, not an obstacle. And those of us who come from fossil 
states know, if the Federal Government is serious about this, 
they have to put their money where their mouth is.
    I would like for all of you all to be thinking about this 
as quickly as possible and get a report back to this Committee 
on what it would take and the sort of investments that will be 
needed and the practicality of this being done by 2030. That 
would be very helpful to us. Okay?
    With that, I am going to turn it over to Senator Barrasso.
    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman, and 
thank you for your ongoing leadership and interest in all of 
this.
    Mr. Begger, one of the hallmarks of American ingenuity is 
our freedom to innovate. Do you agree that innovation is a much 
better way to address climate change than regulation and 
taxation, in effect, that the United States is only, at this 
point, producing about 15 percent of the global emissions and 
India and China are producing--their numbers continue to go up 
even though our emissions have been, over the last decade, 
decidedly down?
    Mr. Begger. Ranking Member Barrasso, I think you're 
absolutely right. I think if you can innovate and find market 
solutions that people rapidly adopt and take, you're going to 
find the process moves a lot faster than the stick of 
regulation where you have to try to fit that round peg into 
that square hole.
    Senator Barrasso. Mr. Atkins, you know, your National Coal 
Council report discusses the cost advantage of coal-derived 
carbon over existing petrochemical feedstocks. With supply 
chains for petrochemical feedstocks pretty well established in 
the United States and around the world, how can we develop 
robust supply chains for coal-derived carbon here at home?
    Mr. Atkins. Thank you, Senator.
    Well, as I pointed out, there is really a dramatic cost 
advantage to coal. So there's the same amount of carbon 
basically in a ton of coal as there is in a ton of petroleum, 
except a ton of coal in Wyoming goes for $12 and a ton of 
petroleum goes for about $400. So you start right there with a 
distinct advantage.
    For the United States, we basically have the entire value 
chain and supply chain within our grasp. We have the resources. 
We have the talent. We have the mining talent. We have the 
technology talent. We have transportation and logistical 
advantages in coal-producing areas. If we can take advantage of 
those, that gives us a great deal of a head start toward trying 
to get those goals.
    Senator Barrasso. And then for all of you, and might be 
able to start with you, Jason, and then work our way all the 
way through.
    In recent years, financial institutions have considered 
something called non-financial factors, including 
environmental, social and governance, when making investment 
decisions. Do each of you believe that financial institutions 
should consider carbon utilization technologies to be 
specifically compliant with these environmental, social and 
governance considerations?
    Mr. Begger. Ranking Member Barrasso, absolutely. You know, 
if the goal is carbon reduction it shouldn't matter the flavor 
of carbon reduction and should be applicable.
    Senator Barrasso. Dr. Sant.
    Dr. Sant. I agree. I think it's extremely important that we 
factor financial considerations into carbon reduction because 
if we think about the fact that, you know, we want to be able 
to decarbonize, we need technological pathways. And if those 
imply a cost, they also imply a cost not only to companies, but 
also the financiers that finance companies.
    Senator Barrasso. Mr. Atkins.
    Mr. Atkins. Yes, Senator.
    Well, I spent a lot of time working with the financial 
community and I would agree with you. They should follow those 
and if they follow the science and the facts, they both would 
say that every molecule of carbon that is put into carbon 
product, is one that is not put in the air. So I would totally 
agree with that.
    Senator Barrasso. And Dr. Anderson.
    Dr. Anderson. I would concur. I certainly agree that what 
we're trying to tackle is the emission challenge and we need to 
have all the levers at our disposal.
    Senator Barrasso. Mr. Atkins, using carbon and carbon 
dioxide as a feedstock in products, I think it is going to draw 
a lot of interest from consumers for environmental reasons. Yet 
these products really need to perform in a way that they could 
be priced competitively with existing products in the market. 
It is something that Senators Murkowski, Manchin, Cantwell, 
Whitehouse and I saw when we discussed these earlier research 
projects being done. How do products made from coal-derived 
carbon compare with existing products in the market?
    Mr. Atkins. Well, first of all, they are both cheaper. They 
are qualitatively better and, in many cases, they're stronger. 
As I mentioned, you know, coal enjoys a dramatic cost benefit 
over petroleum. So that starts the ball rolling, if you will. 
But when you get into some of the specific product lines, 
there's dramatic qualitative differences that improve the use 
of coal over petroleum in a number of these products.
    Senator Barrasso. And then, finally, for Mr. Begger. Coal 
communities in Wyoming, West Virginia, and other states have 
powered this nation for decades. The demand for thermal coal in 
the United States has been in decline, maybe for the 
foreseeable future. To what extent can coal-to-products 
manufacturing offset the economic and job losses in coal 
communities?
    Mr. Begger. Senator Barrasso, I think for a lot of those 
communities it's about keeping up volume, you know, a community 
that's built on a 300 million ton per year sort of economy or a 
community that has a million ton per year mine, what can you do 
to do things at volume? And so, these products and projects and 
things that we do, I think we need to think about that to 
ensure that you saw the number of jobs and service 
organizations or companies and everything supporting that 
industry. So there are applications and opportunities, but we 
also need to think about what the number of people that it 
would take to carry out those new industries.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we will go to Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    I want to talk a little bit about the declining cost curves 
and one of the things I have learned--having grown up in a 
utility family, my dad was a IBEW lineman at a time when all of 
our generation was coming from coal and hydro--is that not all 
technologies decline in cost over time. And if you look at a 
coal-fired power plant, a thermal plant, or if you look at a 
nuclear reactor, because they have high labor costs, they have 
high permitting costs, they have a lot of uncertainty in their 
construction, oftentimes, but they tend not to decline over 
time. That is one of the reasons why we have struggled keeping 
our nuclear fleet going even though it is firm, carbon-free 
power.
    So what I want to get at is like how do we, how do we, why 
should we believe that we can push the cost of carbon capture 
and sequestration down when many of these projects have more in 
common with a thermal plant or a nuclear reactor than they do 
with an iPhone or solar panel where you have clear 
manufacturing-based cost declines?
    Mr. Begger, you look like you want to jump on that.
    Mr. Begger. Senator, I think that's why we need to have a 
suite of technology options available. I think when we think 
post-combustion carbon capture, the ones that come to mind are, 
you know, Petra Nova, Boundary Dam, which actually employ 
solvent-based liquid. And there's actually a pretty 
significant, almost chemical plant that you build alongside 
that to, you know, to conduct the heat reaction and capture and 
do all those things, but there are other types of carbon 
capture technologies out there. For example, we have a membrane 
technology, just think reverse osmosis water. I mean, we, it 
can capture about 75 to 80 percent of the CO2 by 
utilizing a membrane.
    Senator Heinrich. And would you describe that as more of a 
distributed technology than a big centralized piece of 
technology like, say, you know, the Kemper County facility that 
failed after so many years of cost overruns and construction 
delays?
    Mr. Begger. The promise of something like a membrane 
technology is it can be modular.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes.
    Mr. Begger. So, you know, you just add on more modules as 
you need.
    Senator Heinrich. That is actually one of the reasons why I 
am optimistic about direct air capture is because it is also a 
modular technology. It does not have to be centralized.
    And so, Dr. Anderson, I wanted to ask you if you could 
speak a little bit about the role that NETL's planned Direct 
Air Capture Center can play in pushing this forward as well.
    Dr. Anderson. Well, thank you, Senator Heinrich and if I 
might take the real quick time. We have also shown some 
considerable cost decreases over the last few years in carbon 
capture from point sources so moving to second generation 
technologies beyond the aqueous and mean solutions that Mr. 
Begger was speaking to. We've driven that cost down into the 
40s when it started in the 70s. And so, we, we're seeing those 
cost declines and seeing some serious promise.
    With regard to direct air capture, there are segments of 
the economy that are extremely hard to decarbonize. And so, 
when we get to those segments of the economy in the industry 
and furnaces in folks' homes and we need negative emissions 
technologies like that----
    Senator Heinrich. I am going to stop--I would agree with 
you when it comes to decarbonizing industrial processes. In 
most cases, furnaces in people's homes can be replaced with 
electric heat pumps and that is the most efficient way to get 
to zero carbon is to power those electric heat pumps with clean 
electricity.
    But Dr. Sant, before I run out of time here, I wanted to 
give you a chance to talk a little bit about how you would 
structure a ``Buy Clean'' incentive for the U.S. Government to 
procure, for example, low-carbon concrete.
    Dr. Sant. Senator Heinrich, really the important thing I 
think we want to fully focus on when we think about ``Buy 
Clean'' is we want to think about cost and we want to think 
about carbon intensity. Historically, with construction 
projects we've thought about everything based on the lowest bid 
and the lowest bid is an insufficient basis of procurement. We 
need to think about both cost and carbon intensity on an equal 
basis and potentially even on somewhat of a favored basis 
toward carbon intensity to create the market for low-carbon 
products.
    I think, you know, of course, all of this imagines that 
you've got exactly the same engineering requirements that all 
products fulfill, but you use cost and carbon intensity as two 
levers that you can essentially adjust in making purchasing 
decisions. I think states like California are already moving 
forward with ideas of this sort, and you're starting to see 
that there's a response. Markets are starting to be thoughtful 
and most importantly, consumers, even at an individual level 
are starting to be thoughtful and I think that that's really 
how you capitalize change.
    Senator Heinrich. I'd be very interested in working with 
you on something of that sort. I do believe that, you know, the 
power of the Federal Government through procurement to really 
be a huge entry into transitioning these technologies to a much 
lower cost, to a much wider application, is part of how we 
solve some of these challenging problems.
    Dr. Sant. So I agree 100 percent and this is important not 
simply to think about how we think about a bid process, but 
it's important for how we catalyze production capacity and 
market demand. And you know, both of these, all of these things 
have to work hand in hand because you need policy and 
manufacturing capacity and really consumer response to all sync 
together. And so, thinking about really good policy around it 
is important and we're happy to help.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Lankford.
    Senator Lankford. Well, thank you very much for your 
engagement in your research on all these issues. I do want to 
be able to dig a little bit deeper on how far we are on some of 
this research. This really is a question for Mr. Atkins and Mr. 
Anderson.
    Tell me how close are we to being economical on trying to 
get rare earth minerals out of coal? Where are we? I know we 
are working on it a lot. We have talked about it a lot. Tell 
me, how close are we to making it economical?
    Dr. Anderson. So, Randy, would you want to start or me?
    Mr. Atkins. Sure. We are now working with NETL's offices in 
Albany, Oregon, on assessment of rare earths and trying to 
essentially map out in the United States where rare earth 
deposits might be found. And the second part of the question, 
of course, is once we find them, how do we economically process 
them? I would say that in terms of finding them, we're much 
further advanced than we are, necessarily, in how we process 
them. And I think that's where, probably, a lot of research 
needs to be devoted.
    And Brian, probably, since NETL is at the forefront at a 
lot of rare earth research efforts, I'll let you speak to the 
processing side.
    Dr. Anderson. Sure. Well, Senator Lankford, I can get you 
the exact numbers and where our projections are today. We have 
a number of projects from different types of feedstocks, 
including raw coal, but also from some environmental 
remediation projects like acid mine drainage sludge which 
present a little barrier to the concentration of rare earths. 
We are not to the point of economical competitiveness with the 
international rare earth markets, particularly dominated by the 
rare earth deposits in China, but we are driving the cost down 
as we scale up the processes from a number of different 
feedstocks. I can get you the exact numbers.
    Senator Lankford. That would be great.
    Senator Lankford. I am not going to try to hold you to an 
exact number because no one knows the future but God, but give 
me a good guess on are we talking five decades, three decades, 
one decade, five years before we start getting to that point 
based on current trends?
    Dr. Anderson. Based on the current trends, I think we're 
pointing toward a decade, but there's also some national 
security and implications of supply chain, supply chain 
variety. So, they'll have some domestic supply chains that it 
might be worth paying a slight premium to have domestic sources 
of rare earths and critical minerals.
    Senator Lankford. Well, it is exceptionally beneficial to 
us to not be dependent on a communist nation like China for our 
rare earths, all of our development. Our rare earths and 
critical minerals are used in a lot of places and we are 
exceptionally vulnerable at this point and dependent on a 
communist nation for our basic supply chain, I think, is a 
terrible idea. And so, developing domestic sources, I think, is 
exceptionally important and this is an area that we need to 
continue to be able to engage in.
    I do want to ask Mr. Anderson the next follow-up question 
on commercialization. There has been a lot of conversation 
about continuing to be able to use carbon in road building and 
a lot of other projects, building materials. Some of those are 
in current use and they are common. Some of those are 
exploratory and we may have a while on. So give me something 
that is aspirational at this point that is being discussed, but 
is not ready for prime time yet and give me something that is 
currently being used and is economical.
    Dr. Anderson. So one that's extremely promising is our 
coal-to-graphene materials for additives in cement. We've been 
able to drive down the cost of producing graphene by over 
10,000 compared to the current value which would enable high 
volumes of graphene to be produced and put into cements that 
strengthen cement for transportation applications. That's one 
that's aspirational but we see a real pathway into the future. 
Some of the other areas that are being at the edge of being put 
in the market that are some of our work in building materials, 
as represented by some of the folks here today, as well as 
Semplastics. I mentioned the Semplastics and X-MAT project that 
has built a facility in southern West Virginia to make roofing 
tiles that are a replacement for existing ceramic roofing tiles 
that is on the verge of commercialization and scale-up at the 
commercial scale with some tremendous success.
    Senator Lankford. Great----
    Mr. Atkins. I might add on top of Brian's comment is that 
carbon fiber is another area that, I think, is going to be very 
critical which is close to something that we might be able to 
have into the market within the next two to five years.
    Senator Lankford. Great.
    Mr. Atkins. And it has a dramatic impact on infrastructure. 
It has a dramatic impact on lightweighting of vehicles, on 
planes, on military and other strategic interests and that is 
an area that we've been working on with Oak Ridge National Labs 
which is something that we feel should be promoted by the 
government.
    Senator Lankford. That's helpful.
    Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the time.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    And now we have Senator Cortez Masto by WebEx.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the 
Ranking Member.
    Dr. Anderson, let me start with you. In your written 
testimony you stated that the emergent field of CO2 
utilization encompasses many possible products and applications 
and then you went on to list geothermal energy as a 
complementary technology, cutting-edge research in carbon 
utilization. As you may be aware, Nevada is one of the largest 
geothermal energy producers in the country and I believe we 
have significant untapped potential. Can you please expand on 
this and talk more about the ways in which both DOE and NETL 
are pairing carbon utilization and geothermal technologies?
    Dr. Anderson. So our early research in the national labs 
back in the 1980s were identifying CO2 as a 
potential geothermal fluid for use in engineered geothermal 
systems in the subsurface. It has some advantages over water 
because of its ability to carry energy and have lower viscosity 
and see it in geothermal applications. It is one that is still 
an active research area. There has been limited, limited field 
testing of using CO2 as a geothermal fluid but the 
Geothermal Technologies Office and Energy Efficiency and 
Renewable Energy has continued to do some work on this. And in 
fact, in my own history as a researcher, I personally have done 
research in CO2 as a geothermal fluid and it does 
have a tremendous potential to be coupled with regenerated, the 
mean regeneration facilities and the need for heat, to use 
CO2 in the subsurface, produce geothermal energy and 
subsequently decarbonized through utilization.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Dr. Anderson.
    Let me ask Dr. Sant, in your written testimony you called 
for the need to stage support and incentivize deployment 
CO2 utilization technologies in order to help 
industry transition and reduce CO2 emissions. So as 
the U.S. invests in carbon dioxide technology, how should we be 
looking ahead to ensure that domestic manufacturing and 
workforce training is keeping pace with the innovation?
    Dr. Sant. Thank you, Senator, for the question.
    So, really, I think there's two or three things that we 
need to think about. You know, historically we've had a big 
focus on funding research and technology development to what, 
I'd say, is lower TRL [technology readiness level], so to 
speak, and we need to really look at pushing up the TRL levels 
that we offer support to. So I think, you know, when we think 
about manufacturing, we need to think about really the funding 
of full-scale commercial plants which allow us to do two 
things. Number one, they allow corporations to gain experience 
with operating and managing these new facilities and new 
processes which are different from what they've historically 
done. I think what goes hand in hand with that is really the 
retraining of a workforce because, you know, you need a 
workforce that's going to do things differently that have been 
done so far.
    All of this can really only come about if we really funding 
the construction of these facilities and really putting them in 
place fast enough because without having the early-stage 
support that's needed to really have full commercial 
deployments, we're not going to scale up fast enough. And I 
think this kind of, sort of, operational familiarity, 
experiential familiarity, really comes from the government 
stepping in to offer early-stage support because as it builds 
experience, or builds experience not only in the production but 
also in the products and these things will go hand in hand with 
worker retraining and, sort of, broader technology diffusion 
into the market.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Then when you talk about, because I 
do believe there is an importance here with the public-private 
partnership that is essential in helping deploy these 
technologies and ensuring that the industry is trained and 
prepared. So that is a key component of design. I am assuming, 
as you are thinking about this, when you talked about 
government, kind of, stepping in, in the initial stages and 
incentivizing, but there is also this reliance on that public-
private partnership. Is that correct?
    Dr. Sant. Absolutely. All of these things have to follow a 
public-private partnership and it has to go up and down the 
value chain, right? So we have to think about manufacturing, 
but we also have to think about the creation of these products 
because having facilities that produce products that don't get 
used is not useful. And this is really where, you know, being 
able to stage, sort of, a ``Buy Clean'' type of idea where you 
really have these facilities that are producing products that 
go fulfill a ``Buy Clean'' agenda, sort of, gives you complete 
coverage of the supply chain and the value chain. I think being 
able to sync these things together, obviously, requires 
government support which is the public part and bringing 
private corporations to a point that they're able to, sort of, 
really leverage that support in the best way to really create a 
market for products and services which are of a low carbon 
nature.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    And next, we have Senator Cassidy by WebEx.
    Is Senator Cassidy on?
    If not, we will have Senator Murkowski.
    Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    You know I love these hearings.
    The Chairman. I knew you were ready.
    Senator Murkowski. But to be able to talk about the 
technologies and how we can utilize carbon. You know, for so 
long, we talked about carbon sequestration. Okay, that's good. 
We can put it back in the ground, but to be able to utilize it, 
to manage it, and to make good stuff out of it, is exciting. We 
had that great trip when we did our Arctic CODEL and had an 
opportunity to go to the University of Aberdeen and to see 
there what they were doing with the various products, but just 
again, better understanding what we can do with utilization.
    I am going to start my questions off with you, Dr. 
Anderson, because I want to talk about something that I don't 
think has been discussed here yet this morning and that is the 
potential that we have for utilizing, whether it is algae or 
kelp or seaweed, but the focus on what the oceans can provide. 
I have legislation that I have introduced with Senator 
Whitehouse, the Blue Carbon for Our Planet Act, which kind of 
focuses on what is naturally captured and stored in the oceans 
or what could potentially be utilized on our deep seabed 
floors. But more interesting to me is to be able to look at 
something like kelp, be able to use that as that carbon sink, 
if you will, and still have a market for a pretty extraordinary 
product.
    So I am interested in this kind of innovation in seaweed 
aquaculture. We are certainly seeing it in Alaska. The Center 
for Climate and Energy Solutions estimates that by 2030 algae-
based products will be a $320 billion industry. And one of the 
advantages that I understand is that it does not require high-
purity carbon dioxide feedback. It can be processed, converted 
to different products, everything from food for livestock and 
aquaculture feed to food products, chemicals, et cetera. So the 
question to you this morning, Dr. Anderson, and with all that 
you have been doing at NETL, do you think that, I mean, am I 
just dreaming on this, that this is a great opportunity for us 
but that, with the potential for algae and other seaweed-type 
matter, that we can economically cultivate and commercially 
scale to, whether it is fuel different alternatives, but create 
other valuable products? So your comments on what we might be 
able to do with these materials that are part of our ocean 
systems.
    Dr. Anderson. Senator, over the past few years or even, 
really, the past decade, we have had a number of projects 
specifically along using algae and using aquaculture for the 
capture of CO2. It's showing some promise, but also 
some challenges, as you were alluding to in terms of economics, 
the economics of capture and pushing the CO2 through 
the aqueous system and the growth, the growth profiles of the 
algae. However, a project at the University of Kentucky is 
showing some significant progress on making higher value and 
it's not vitamins, but higher value additives for animal feeds 
out of the algae process as opposed to moving it into the fuel 
sector. So there's still a considerable amount of work, and the 
work we're doing at NETL as well as NREL on the using algae for 
CO2 capture.
    In addition, we have with NREL and ExxonMobil a three-prong 
collaboration where the attempt is to use the algae and bio-, 
aquaculture-based processes with both Exxon's expertise and 
scale-up. And so, it's in the early stages, but again, showing 
some promise, but no major economic drivers that I see at the 
moment.
    Senator Murkowski. Okay, well, keep working on it. We are 
working on our end as well.
    You know, it is interesting because this morning I am 
joining a large group of members--I think, Senator Manchin, you 
are part of this--but the growing climate solutions legislation 
that is being introduced today. So there is a lot going on, I 
think, where we are looking at these new and innovative ways, 
whether it is producing building materials or whether it is 
food for livestock, but it is a good point for us to be at. So 
how we take that next step, lots of good work going on.
    Dr. Sant, I want to congratulate you and your team for 
winning the Carbon XPRIZE, pretty cool. I guess the question 
that I would have of you, and I will direct this to you, Dr. 
Sant, is should the Department of Energy's Building 
Technologies Office be doing more to help, whether it is 
develop, test or certify the carbonate material? Should other 
organizations, like ASTM International, be part of this? You 
know, as we try to figure out how we go from getting the great 
ideas to real commercialization here, should our agencies be 
doing more in that regard, other organizations as well?
    Dr. Sant. So, Senator Murkowski, thanks very much for the 
question.
    There's really maybe a couple of different comments to 
make. Number one, I think it's important involving the 
Department of Transportation because they are over, above and 
beyond largest consumers of concrete in the United States. 
Being able to couple this with the Department of Defense for, 
again, obvious reasons makes sense because, again, the biggest 
users. I think if we can tie this in with an agency like NIST, 
as an example, you know, National Institute of Standards and 
Technology, I think it gives us a unified way to get, sort of, 
the biggest buyers and, obviously, the Standards agency and get 
them to all work together. And eventually, flow all of that 
down into ASTM. The Building Technologies Office has 
historically not looked at primary construction materials, at 
least as I'm aware. They've looked to things like building 
envelopes and energy efficiency, but not really of primary 
construction materials. I think really starting out with the 
transportation agencies is a good place to start because 
anything that's accepted by a transportation agency is 
typically accepted downstream into the construction sector.
    That said, however, I think it's important to really think 
about setting unified standards. And you know, I think creating 
databases is really something which I'll keep going back to 
because there are two parts to this. One part is really the 
engineering performance. The second part is really the life 
cycle or environmental intensity of production and use. And we 
need to really harmonize both of these things together which is 
something that we've not done.
    Maybe just as an aside, you know, going back to your 
earlier question as we know the oceans are the biggest sink of 
CO2 in the world and beyond simply thinking about 
kelp, as an example, you know, there might be some interesting 
opportunities based on work that we've been doing over the last 
several years where there are interesting adjacencies where you 
can achieve carbon dioxide removal but also produce things like 
hydrogen in the process. And hydrogen, as you know, is a clean 
fuel, so there might be opportunities to really couple this 
even beyond just what I'd said is biological farms to maybe 
even energy sources.
    Senator Murkowski. Very encouraging.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it and I appreciate 
not only the witnesses being here today but what you are doing 
to contribute and push out in these great areas of innovation. 
So thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    And now we have Senator King by WebEx.
    Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Sorry to have been late to this hearing. I was at an Armed 
Services hearing talking about entirely different, but 
nonetheless very serious, issues. What I am most interested in 
is timing. We are in a race and we are in a race that we are 
losing right now. Let's put aside utilization of the carbon 
that we remove and I want to focus on carbon capture in the 
burning of fossil fuels and carbon removal from the atmosphere 
which is ultimately going to be necessary if we are going to 
win this race because of the persistence of carbon in the 
atmosphere.
    Dr. Anderson, give me some hard numbers. What are we 
talking about for when we have a carbon capture technology 
that, for example, would be cost-effective on any fossil fuel 
plant? And the second question is, how far away are we from 
being able to actually remove carbon from the atmosphere, not 
capture it in the process of burning fossil fuels?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, Senator King, thank you so much for 
that question.
    Right now, given 45Q and a real concrete price point and 
price incentive which is a bit analogous to the ITC or PTC tax 
credits on solar and wind, there's tremendous commercial 
interest today given the technologies where we are today. The 
driving down the price curve which I mentioned earlier, I do 
believe there is a potential for continued decreases in the 
cost curve requires getting it out into the commercial scale 
and the commercial sector needs those concrete financeable 
incentives to capture carbon. And so, 45Q is a step. The 
follow-on steps would be the price of carbon and those price 
signals that folks can go to the bank.
    And so, in short, I'd say it's as fast as we can construct 
those projects that are applying to 45Q today and then as they 
are deployed into the market within the next ten years, we will 
be driving the cost of capture down and I think we will achieve 
a $30 price.
    As far as direct air capture, it's much higher up on the 
price curve. And so, when it comes to the incent--the price 
paid for carbon whether it's a 45Q tax credit, we have a longer 
way to go to drive down the cost of direct air capture.
    Senator King. Do you think that, when we are talking about 
capture, that by the time that capture technology is cost-
effective, we will be out of the fossil fuel, at least in the 
electric generating business? The President today is announcing 
a goal of 50 percent reduction in nine years. So it may be that 
the technology becomes available at a time when there are no 
more fossil fuel plants. Is that a possibility or will there 
always be fossil fuel plants?
    Dr. Anderson. I believe because of resiliency and 
reliability issues and also considering the deployment curves 
of the non-fossil emitting electricity generation resources, as 
we move to higher and higher levels of deployment, we need on 
demand, firm power generating assets. And so, those assets will 
likely be fossil energy with carbon capture moving into the 
future. And we are in the midst of a lot of natural gas plants 
being built today and natural gas with carbon capture has a 
great potential of providing that firm power in a carbon-free 
basis with carbon capture.
    Senator King. I fully understand the importance of backup 
power and to solve the intermittency problem, but again, we are 
talking about a five- to ten-year timeframe we may see dramatic 
developments in storage or in a new generation of nuclear power 
which could provide that backup, but it is certainly a dynamic 
market. I am encouraged about the timeline on carbon capture. I 
am discouraged about the timeline on carbon removal because in 
the long run, that is going to be necessary. We could stop all 
carbon in the atmosphere tomorrow, and we would still have a 
problem. As you know, we are pretty much beyond the tipping 
point.
    Dr. Anderson. Yes, and so that will, you know, perhaps we 
need different levels of the carbon incentive to make it 
economical for direct air capture or other carbon removal 
technologies.
    Senator King. Do you believe that a price on carbon in some 
way has--some kind of good carbon price and dividend would be 
an important policy initiative?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, if we are to decarbonize our economy, 
we do need price signals that the private sector can run to the 
bank and are bankable in order to decarbonize. In terms of the 
policy mechanisms, there are a number of ways to get to the end 
goal, but some signal on carbon, itself, is necessary.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now, Senator Daines.
    Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Last Congress, we passed our bipartisan EFFECT Act. It 
increases investment and, importantly, commercialization of 
carbon capture technology. And while the U.S. continues to lead 
in carbon capture research, as well as development, we have not 
yet brought the technology to scale in the cost necessary for 
wide adoption. In the EFFECT Act, we set up a program for 
large-scale pilot projects at an existing coal or natural gas 
power plant. In fact, I believe that Montana is a great fit for 
one of these pilot projects. I have five letters of support 
from the community and businesses around the Colstrip Power 
Plant asking for a project to be located there to help keep and 
to grow the jobs in that area.
    Dr. Anderson, as DOE prepares to implement the authorities 
in the EFFECT Act, what will DOE be looking for in a pilot 
project and how can we ensure that the voice of Montanans are 
heard in that process?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, Senator Daines, thank you for that 
question.
    As we move forward, the deployment of carbon capture and 
sequestration technologies under our carbon capture program, we 
have a number of projects under CarbonSAFE which has been 
identifying the subsurface resources available for 
sequestration. We're moving into a FEED stage, Front-End 
Engineering Design, which would do the full-scale design of the 
integrated carbon capture and sequestration process for a 
number of our CarbonSAFE FEED study projects and what we're 
looking for is that fully encompassed design and the 
implementation plan. Then when it comes to deployment in large-
scale and being able to scale up to the commercial scale, 
again, I do believe that a lot rides on the signals like 45Q 
that would provide financing for the private sector to pursue 
carbon capture projects.
    Senator Daines. Thank you, and I appreciate your thoughts 
on that. I think that would be helpful. We have, we think, a 
wonderful place for it, of course. It is a large operation, 
transmission lines that take care of moving energy across the 
Northwest, so we would like to be considered for sure.
    While it is important to promote federal investment in 
research and development, we also need to ensure companies have 
the tools in place to create and build those jobs. That is 
where Chairman Manchin's and my bipartisan American Jobs in 
Energy Manufacturing Act comes in. Our bill incentivizes 
companies to build the next generation of energy manufacturing 
in the U.S. and specifically in rural areas like Montana, and 
updating, of course, the tax credits. This includes clean 
technologies like carbon capture and utilization, renewable 
fuels and coal-to-products.
    Mr. Atkins, how can companies like yours leverage tax 
credits like the one in our bill to create jobs in rural 
communities? I know they are very important to Senator Manchin 
and myself.
    Mr. Atkins. So I think tax credits are an integral part of 
any private financing. We look at trying to basically look at 
creating an equality with the 45Q credit so that perhaps there 
might be credits for not only just not using carbon emissions, 
but also capturing it. We've been working with NETL on some 
rather innovative technologies where we can take forest 
carbons, taking basically a gram of coal and we can create 
3,000 square meters worth of porous surface. That can be used 
to capture carbon and that's the type of thing that we want to 
get private incentives from the government to be able to put 
into manufacturing in the private areas.
    Senator Daines. Yes, I think that is what sometimes is 
forgotten. It is a very capital-intensive process----
    Mr. Atkins. Indeed.
    Senator Daines. ----with long-term payouts. It is something 
that----
    Mr. Atkins. And in many of these technologies there's 
what's called the manufacturing valley of death where you 
essentially, you need, you know, vast sums of private capital 
to create manufacturing facilities to meet product ends which, 
in many cases, are incented by the government.
    Senator Daines. Yes, and I think then also it is the 
certainty that is needed for these long-term capital 
investments----
    Mr. Atkins. Indeed.
    Senator Daines. ----that would be most helpful. Thank you, 
Mr. Chairman. I yield back my time.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    And now we have Senator Cantwell.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank 
you to you and the Ranking Member Barrasso for holding this 
hearing. Happy Earth Day to both of you.
    The Chairman. Happy Earth Day.
    Senator Cantwell. I certainly appreciate that there are 
many hearings across the spectrum today talking about R&D 
investments. Many of you know we are working on the Endless 
Frontier Act in the Commerce Committee, and we certainly want 
to get technology innovation and commercialization right. I 
think this particular area we are discussing today about clean 
energy markets and more R&D into carbon sequestration and 
utilization is certainly worth more investment. So I certainly 
appreciate that and certainly appreciate the role of DOE in 
making sure that it is recognized in the future and making sure 
that we continue to empower it on these areas.
    I wanted to ask two questions. Mr. Begger, what do you 
think that we have learned from what you have been able to do 
in Wyoming as it relates to the ITC, Integrated Test Center, 
and activities like the XPRIZE--what do you think we should 
apply from that to the future public-private partnerships? I am 
also curious, to any of the witnesses, I think of our public 
lands, obviously, as a way to sequester some amount of domestic 
carbon emissions and what else should we be doing in that 
particular area? The National Academy of Sciences estimated the 
U.S. can store an additional 500 million metric tons of 
CO2 per year through a mix of carbon-enhancing 
practices on crop land, grasslands and forest lands. And so, I 
think this is something that we also should be considering.
    Mr. Begger, if you want to start and then anybody who wants 
to answer the second part?
    Mr. Begger. Senator, I think we've learned a lot of really 
important lessons at the ITC, and we feel like we bridge that 
valley of death role that was just mentioned. And NETL and 
Department of Energy has a great graphic that, sort of, shows 
this timeline of technology development and there was this 
valley of death between the small-scale things coming out of 
laboratories and universities versus things at a 10- to 20-
megawatt scale which is 200 to 400 ton per day of capture--
facilities that industry needs to see in order to feel 
comfortable that it's scaling up. And I think that's the 
biggest thing with the success of the Integrated Test Centers, 
our utilities, and the National Rural Electric Cooperatives 
Association, is they're able to give us nudges, indications, as 
to hey, as ultimate consumers of this technology, these are 
things that make sense to us and fit in the economics of how we 
run our business. So I think that's important.
    I think in other areas looking at environmental permitting, 
everything that goes along with it, as a research facility, 
each and every one of our tenants still need to comply with the 
Clean Air Act and receive permits and do things. So looking at 
things like a blanket permit waiver from the EPA for test 
facilities would be really helpful for teams like CarbonBuilt 
that came in that are academics that really have never dealt 
with permitting and things at that level of sophistication 
before that we had to help them with. And last, when you think 
about public lands, you're going to trigger NEPA, every step of 
the way, and I look at, we have a----
    Senator Cantwell. I don't know, why would you trigger NEPA? 
What I am saying, let's make sure we preserve big forests like 
the Tongass or other areas that don't de-carbon and don't take 
away from that, so----
    Mr. Begger. Senator, I'm speaking a little bit more broadly 
with industrial uses, like you're moving CO2 from, 
say, places that are sources in the Midwest to the West where 
you have really good geology for geologic sequestration, so----
    Senator Cantwell. I am talking about just understanding our 
current natural benefits. Anybody else on that point?
    Dr. Anderson. So Senator, if I could----
    Mr. Atkins. One way to also look at this might be to 
consider, not just the public side, but the private side 
because if we can incent private industry to use other means 
of, sort of, separating the C and the O2, we've 
proven that there are uses for the carbon. So I think there's 
more than one way to skin a cat and I think to the extent that 
Congress can help incent research and development from the 
private side toward this, I think, that might be very useful.
    Senator Cantwell. We heard another voice somewhere.
    Dr. Sant. Senator Cantwell, I'm happy to say something 
about the XPRIZE. I think, you know, one of the things that we 
really liked about the competition and sort of just thinking 
about the general idea of innovation, being able to work toward 
a defined goal is always really good, but I think what's really 
required as we think about innovation is an acceptance for 
failure, right? I think we've gotten overly focused on, sort 
of, just, being, desiring success, but in innovation, success 
is never assured. And I think being able to accept failure and 
being able to build programs that, sort of, reward failure as a 
step in the learning process is, I think, something that we 
fundamentally need to think of as we approach large-scale R&D, 
especially the kinds of crash R&D programs that are likely to 
be needed to make a difference in a decade.
    Senator Cantwell. Mr. Chairman, if I could, on that point 
because this is so important to this broad debate that we are 
having today. I think there is a really big philosophical 
question that we have to address here. To me, if you are 
talking about the private sector having its experiments and 
having failures, I am all good with it, okay? If you are 
talking about us doing basic research and having failures, I am 
all good with that too. But if you are talking about taxpayer 
money and you are picking certain technologies as winners and 
losers and then finding out, or maybe even building actual test 
bed manufacturing facilities and you basically lose--I'm not 
sure taxpayers are good with that.
    So I think that we want to proceed on some of these 
questions because as Mr. Begger said, the test bed in Wyoming 
did give us some answers and we are at that stage where we want 
to take tech transfer and make it more robust, but I guarantee, 
the minute we have a Solyndra or something like that, the 
public, the taxpayer dollar isn't going to be down with, you 
know, we failed. So I think we just have to get some context 
here. I am just trying to understand. What context are we going 
to have to the government funding actual, what I would call, 
translational science and having failures? I just do not know 
how to categorize that because now we are dealing with taxpayer 
money, not investor money. And I do think my constituents who 
are a very, very big innovation economy, I would say there are 
hundreds of thousands of people who invest in these companies 
in my state. They are very sophisticated, you know, they 
definitely understand risk. But I don't know that they 
understand that that risk could be taken with taxpayer dollars.
    So if anybody can help me out on that, I would love to hear 
an answer because we are in the midst of trying to do this 
right now with this big EFA bill.
    Dr. Sant. You know, I don't have all the answers. This is 
definitely an important point that we raise and, of course, we 
want to be good stewards of taxpayer money, for sure. But I 
think the reality is that, you know, not all questions can be 
answered until we get to full commercial scale. And I think 
that's just, sort of, the nature of the beast. I think between 
a combination of being able to deal with those technologies 
sequentially as we come up with TRL is something that we need 
to do, being able to develop really robust vetting processes 
that'll give us a line of sight, understanding if something 
might fail is an important thing to do.
    But I think there's also a market aspect to it because, you 
know, if you create a market demand on the other side, it's 
highly unlikely that you would end up with failure because of 
this demand that assured and the supply that's coming online, 
that generally leads to a favorable outcome. And so, you know, 
I think, I think, I don't disagree that this is, sort of, a 
bigger and a broader issue, but we maybe need to think about it 
a bit more expansively, as simply just, sort of, a single case 
at a time.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you. I know I am way over my time, 
Mr. Chairman, but this is such an important timely question and 
I do think it is important, particularly in this particular 
area too.
    Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Well, thank you so much, 
Senator Cantwell, for your continued interest in what we had 
talked earlier while you were here, you know, the traveling 
that we have done to look at some of these research projects 
that were done. And as Dr. Sant, who has actually won the 
award, the XPRIZE, where we had looked at the research done 
overseas. So thank you.
    Senator Cassidy.
    Senator Cassidy. Thank you, thank you, all. Just putting 
time between hearings so if I ask something that is redundant, 
I apologize.
    Dr. Anderson or Mr. Begger, my briefing materials spoke 
about carbon dioxide from a fluent, for example, or whatever, 
being used to create methanol. Another example was being used 
to make ethylene. What is the cost basis, do you know, of 
making methanol from CO2 as opposed to that which is 
made from natural gas? I just say that because that relates to 
commercial viability. We want to have a wonderful--we want to 
have someplace to make, you know, to do with all this 
CO2, some way to use all this CO2 and I 
am just curious about that, nothing else but curiosity right 
now.
    Dr. Anderson. Senator Cassidy, if I might jump in. You 
know, certainly because CO2 is thermodynamically 
more stable, it is moving back up, back up the oxidation chain. 
So it is not more economical to go CO2 to methanol 
than it is methane. However, under certain context because of--
if, as we move down the deployment curve of intermittent 
renewables, there are times in which we may end up with 
curtailment situations under renewables with excess electricity 
and in terms of the storage options, there's battery storage 
for grid-scale, but there are also thermochemical storage 
opportunities. And so, if you couple an intermittent renewable 
generation facility with direct air capture, you might have a 
source of CO2 that's effectively free and electrons 
that are, would otherwise be curtailed that would allow for the 
chemical storage.
    And so, it's part of the integrated energy systems work 
that we have going on at Idaho National Lab and NREL to 
understand the full dynamics of those economics which are 
simply more complicated than just starting with methane or 
starting with CO2.
    Senator Cassidy. Now does that suggest that you need 
proximity of the generation to the plant which is converting to 
direct air capture, for example, or can it just be excess 
electrons on the grid? And, just curious, can you have a start 
and stop, you know, kind of a rapid gear up? We are going to 
start taking your CO2 and turn it to methanol, 
knowing that this may be TBD, but what you are saying is very 
intriguing to me.
    Dr. Anderson. Senator, some is TBD and it certainly doesn't 
have to be proximal, but at least with direct air capture you 
can move it almost anywhere and you can eliminate line losses 
if you do put it proximal to the intermittent resource.
    Senator Cassidy. My understanding was that direct air 
capture works best in warm, humid environments. Coming from 
Louisiana, of course, that perked my ears. But are you 
suggesting that we could do just as well in some frigid, 
northern place beset by snow and ice?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, it might not be as efficient, but there 
is certainly a demonstration facility in Iceland in one of the 
direct air capture demonstration facilities that's doing pretty 
well in Iceland, as well.
    Senator Cassidy. The ethylene--I see that there is a 
demonstration project with Occidental using CO2 to 
make ethylene. Again, is that the same principle that you have 
been discussing?
    Dr. Anderson. It is effectively the same principle. 
CO2 to a syngas with water and then from syngas you 
can make almost any of the hydrocarbons.
    Senator Cassidy. Just a question of whether or not you have 
adequate energy input, whether or not your net carbon profile 
is better off with or without it. Fair summary?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, absolutely, because you are climbing up 
the energy chain going from CO2 to a hydrocarbon. 
And so, it requires some excess energy.
    Senator Cassidy. Dr. Sant, again, I apologize if someone 
has already asked you about this, but I think it is really 
interesting, your technology. If you use CO2 to cure 
your concrete, how much does that save on your CO2 
profile relative to traditional Portland concrete--cement?
    Dr. Sant. Senator, we've spent a lot of time looking at 
this and, you know, if I give you an example around something 
like a typical concrete block, which is one of the products 
that we're in the midst of producing, we can reduce the carbon 
intensity by between 50 and 70 percent compared to a 
traditional concrete. So it's a really, a pretty significant 
reduction.
    Senator Cassidy. I have been, you know, there are a lot of 
advocates for carbon taxes which it seems like if you are going 
to have a border adjustment tax or a carbon tax, you would have 
to take into account not only the energy inputs but also the 
concrete that would be required to build a particular facility, 
if you are really going to--as well as the vehicles going back 
and forth, all that sort of a thing. So if somebody was going 
to build a facility in the U.S. or overseas using your 
technology, the logical extension is if you have a border 
adjustment tax or a border adjustment credit, is that somehow 
this would be amortized over a certain period of time, the 
amount of carbon that they, that the constructors saved from 
using your technology. Again, I am thinking out loud, but I 
suspect you would agree with that?
    Dr. Sant. So generally speaking, you know, so, of course, a 
border type of adjustment may or may not make sense depending 
on whether you're dealing with an import question or not, but I 
think the short answer really turns out to be, it really 
depends on the price signal on CO2 and whether that 
price signal is best valued over an amortized basis or whether 
it can be recovered at the front end. If you can recover it at 
the front end, I think you want to do it all up front. On the 
other hand, you know, if there's a reason to sort of make a bet 
on the forward price curve, well then you might choose to 
amortize it so you can essentially value it into the future.
    Senator Cassidy. All, I appreciate your testimony. I yield 
back, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we will have, Senator Marshall.
    Senator Marshall. Well, thank you, Chairman.
    My first question is going to be for Mr. Atkins and it has 
to do with the tax benefit that, I believe, both the oil and 
gas industry and the coal industry benefit from called the 
percentage depletion allowance. One of the prerequisites here 
is that coal is a very cheap product and there are so many 
opportunities for it, and it is my understanding in the 
infrastructure bill that is coming before us that we are 
considering, that we would lose this percentage depletion 
allowance. When I think about tax benefits that the different 
energies receive, I think about the oil and gas industry, coal 
industry--if it was 1 time, probably the wind energy receives 7 
times that, and solar maybe 70 times that, from a benefit from 
the Federal Government. And I always preface this by saying, 
look, I want to leave this environment cleaner, healthier and 
safer than I found it, as do all of us in the room, but I 
cannot drive the cost of energy up so much that a working 
family can no longer put gas in their car or pay their 
electricity bill.
    Is that, am I making some reasonable assumptions here when 
you think about tax benefits to the different industries that 
really coal, this may be the last thing standing that coal 
gets?
    Mr. Atkins. Yeah. I think, you know, all industries like to 
play on an even playing field and I'm afraid, you know, as 
we've gone on over time, that playing field keeps changing. 
Obviously today, the thumb on the scale is obviously weighted 
toward renewables. It's been taken off of any of the fossil 
fuels. And I think the way we've tried to approach it, 
obviously, we are in favor of all incentives that can be given 
for any form of production in this country. I don't care 
whether it's wind, solar, coal, fossil fuel. They all create 
jobs. They're all critical to our national strategic interests 
and they should all be fostered.
    What we've tried to do is to, sort of, take away from the 
equation, you know, the notion that somehow carbon is bad. 
Carbon is not bad. There are issues, obviously, when you 
combine a carbon with an oxygen molecule and you have 
CO2. And we understand that. So we're trying to 
basically move beyond that thesis and really step outside into 
something modestly transformational where we say, all right, 
let's look at the carbon inside of something that is, today, in 
disfavor, frankly, and see if we can turn--I hate to use this 
phrase--sort of, a diamond in the rough.
    [Laughter.]
    So, you know, coal is a--a diamond is basically coal that's 
done well under pressure. So essentially, that's what we're 
trying to do.
    Senator Marshall. Yes, coal gives us a pretty big bang for 
the buck when it comes to energy. There is no doubt about that 
as well.
    I think my next question is for Dr. Anderson. Dr. Anderson, 
we are hearing about more technologies here today and taking 
carbon and just turning it into some incredible things from a 
manufacturing process. And I had the opportunity recently to 
sit down with a company, Carbon Solutions-Materia USA out of 
Pennsylvania, and they gave me a piece of carbon and then gave 
me the fiber that they are able to turn it into and the 
graphite as well. I mean, I think it could be transformative. 
When we think about the opportunities for high-speed fiber, 
making carbon into high-speed fiber, making semi-conductors, my 
goodness. Other countries are dominating all these areas and we 
have to bring these back to the United States.
    So, Dr. Anderson, I guess my question, you know, are you 
committed to helping the Department of Energy bring these 
technologies to fruition and help Americans out here, bringing 
these supply chains back into the United States?
    Dr. Anderson. Yes, we are. And in fact, I think that there 
is one, one opportunity here that we may not have stated. There 
are many communities across the country, coal and power plant 
communities that are, have been impacted and will become even 
more impacted as we move forward in the energy transition. And 
as we create opportunities for adding value from the coal 
resource that are in these coal communities, it turns out that 
many of the supply chains are much more efficient if the 
processing facilities are moved closer to the mine mouth.
    And so, in fact, when we look at the replacement of jobs 
that Mr. Begger was alluding to earlier, there is an 
opportunity to add value, like you were mentioning these high-
value products, by bringing the supply chain back closer to the 
mine mouth and creating additional jobs in addition to 
replacement of tonnage, as was spoken of earlier.
    Senator Marshall. Is there anything more specific that you 
can describe what you see the role the Department of Energy is 
in bringing this to the real world?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, and so, it is as one, an applied 
laboratory and the government-owned, government-operated 
laboratory within the DOE that manages the program across 
fossil energy, energy efficiency and renewable energy and CESER 
and OE. It is our job to make sure that these technologies find 
their way into market and reduce risk and have the appropriate 
technology transfer pathways for all the technologies we work 
on, including coal-to-products and the other carbon products 
and CO2 utilization. So it is firmly within our 
mission to try to get these technologies into the hands of the 
folks who will put it into a commercial practice.
    Senator Marshall. Thank you and I yield back.
    Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Marshall.
    Senator Hoeven.
    Senator Hoeven. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Dr. Anderson, how important is collaboration between NETL 
and its partners like the Energy and Environmental Research 
Center, EERC, at the University of North Dakota in terms of 
developing the technologies that are going to help us crack the 
code on carbon capture and sequestration? Could you talk a 
little bit about the importance of those partnerships and your 
commitment to them?
    Dr. Anderson. Yeah, so importance, in general, is where we 
live. We have over 600 partners across the country, but there 
are some that are committed and share a mission with us, 
including EERC. And so, the EERC in North Dakota is really 
critical to a number of our technology developments across rare 
earth elements, gasification, coal-to-products, unconventional 
oil and gas as well, and certainly, last but not least, in 
CO2 sequestration. And so, there are, you know--
partnerships is really the name of the game for us because it 
takes the entire value chain and skill set of folks across the 
country to work and tackle these challenges.
    Senator Hoeven. And, are you confident that we can crack 
the code on carbon capture and storage from our coal-fired 
electric plants and that it is an important part of our energy 
mix?
    Dr. Anderson. I am confident. The EIA, well, EIA and the 
United States, and the IEA internationally, time and time again 
have shown that if we're going to decarbonize our first 
electricity sector and the economies, we need the technology of 
carbon capture and utilization and storage. And so, it will be 
a critical component to our pathway to decarbonizing the 
economy.
    Senator Hoeven. And not only, if we, I mean--and make it 
happen in this country, then the rest of the world will be 
adopters too and there is a lot of coal-fired electric in other 
countries. So that is a huge factor of it.
    Dr. Anderson. Yes, absolutely agree.
    Senator Hoeven. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Begger, in terms of trying to help make this happen in 
terms of cracking the code on carbon capture, we have worked on 
help through 45Q, the tax credit for geological storage. We 
have worked on the loan guarantees through DOE and RUS (Rural 
Utilities Service) and we have worked on funding help from DOE 
for the equipment that needs to be put in place to make it 
happen. Those are the kind of incentives and programs we are 
trying to bring to work with our industry and the states to 
make this happen. Tell me your view on how we continue to 
enhance those tools to make CCUS happen.
    Mr. Begger. Senator, I believe we need to make sure that we 
have the infrastructure in place within the U.S. to actually 
support these technologies. You know, I mentioned earlier that 
for large-scale technologies above, you know, really a 
megawatt, a megawatt and a half, to scale up to that 10 to 20 
that people see, we send technologies and U.S. taxpayer dollars 
to Mongstad facility in Norway. We have that ability in the 
U.S. We should be building up facilities--two, three of those 
that can do that here. It's all about scalability and access. 
For a lot of smaller technology developers, they may not have 
access to, you know, the National Carbon Capture Center or 
EERC, so what are we doing to put the tools, or sort of grease 
those skids, grease that glide path to technology development? 
And I think a critical part of that is not just the 
programmatic funding to do the things that we need to do, but 
the bits and pieces on the back end to provide that platform 
for these technologies to scale.
    Senator Hoeven. How important is it that we get, that we 
enhance 45Q with the direct pay option?
    Mr. Begger. Senator, I think it's going to help really be a 
game changer. Right now, you know, for 45Q if you're going the 
tax equity financing route, you're only going to see a fraction 
of that. So $35 for EOR, you know, I don't know what the exact 
market is, but it might only be $17 or $18.
    Senator Hoeven. Right.
    Mr. Begger. So making sure that that money actually ends up 
in the hands of the developers and the people moving the 
project and not the financiers, I think, would be really 
important.
    Senator Hoeven. Yes, for that direct pay option 45Q the CBO 
score is less than, the ten-year score is less than a billion 
dollars. And that, as you said, would be a game changer, right?
    Mr. Begger. That's correct. Just a week ago I was speaking 
with a large EOR development company and just looking, they 
were kind of walking through their thought process and how they 
value and look at projects and they go, you know, a $5 to $10 
differential is more than make or break, it's really are these 
things profitable or not? And they said the direct pay option 
would be something that could make up that gap.
    Senator Hoeven. Yes, absolutely.
    Thank you so much, I appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. 
Chairman.
    The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you, Senator.
    I think we have Senator Hickenlooper.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Hey, how are you doing?
    The Chairman. Good.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Sorry I am a little bit late.
    The Chairman. No problem. Wrap it up.
    Senator Hickenlooper. I think this is a great panel. I have 
been dodging in and out so if I am asking a question that is 
redundant, I apologize. I think having so much thought about 
carbon utilization which, obviously, has the potential to be a 
giant market opportunity, but at the same time we are working 
to build our capacity to permanently store CO2 
underground.
    Dr. Anderson, the National Energy Technology Laboratory, if 
we are awarded funding in Colorado to capture emissions from a 
cement facility which could then store that CO2 
permanently underground, how should we be thinking about the 
relative value of permanent sequestration versus the 
CO2 utilization we have been hearing about today?
    Dr. Anderson. Senator Hickenlooper, thank you for that 
question.
    I think that, you know, the value of decarbonizing the 
economy seems like, you know, one carbon avoided into the 
atmosphere has its own inherent value, but as we drive down the 
cost of the carbon removal and create the markets because of 
the availability of low-cost CO2. CO2 is 
not free today. And there are opportunities then to utilize it 
into other products that are also permanently sequestered. And 
so, one of our, you know, from our standpoint, one of the big 
areas for us in our research program in subsurface 
sequestration and permanence is to drive down the risk of 
permanence as well and we have a multi-laboratory consortium 
called the National Risk Assessment Partnership to help drive 
down that risk for the surety of the permanance of 
CO2 sequestered in the subsurface.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Yes, and I love that collaborative 
effort that you have on so many of these.
    You have talked a little bit about the 45Q tax credit to 
provide a revenue stream for capturing carbon so as to 
incentivize the development of this, of these technologies and 
to move us closer to getting to carbon free--or achieve 
negative emissions, I guess you would call it. What effect 
would it have--and a lot of people are talking about some sort 
of a price on carbon, let's call it a fee and dividend but it 
could be any of a variety of proposals--how would this help 
accelerate that emerging field of carbon utilization?
    Dr. Anderson. Well, I think that with the 45Q, and I made 
an analogy earlier that it is a bit more similar to the 
investment tax credits and the production tax credits that we 
see on renewable deployment. And so, I think that as part of a 
whole portfolio of incentivizing the movement and deployment of 
the new technologies on the market, like 45Q does, like the 
ITCs and PTCs do, it is really important to help incentivize 
that movement into the market. And then, if there is long-term 
certainty that can create the financial incentives, and we did 
have a discussion with Mr. Begger just recently regarding how 
some of those payments will go straight to the developer, but 
at least some certainty around the future of carbon that will 
provide the long-term incentives of large-scale investment for 
CCUS is really important.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Yes, yes, exactly.
    Mr. Begger, you talked earlier about some of the issues 
around capturing CO2 and I am, you know, this notion 
of carbon sequestration which seemed, you know, a long shot not 
so many years ago, clearly can be done and the cost continues 
to come down. There are also infrastructure needs associated 
with capturing CO2 and transporting it to permanent 
sites or locations for reuse. Can you speak to the job growth 
and economic opportunities associated with the buildout of this 
kind of infrastructure?
    Mr. Begger. Certainly, Senator.
    You know, you just look at what it would all entail. I 
mean, really the management of carbon is taking it from sources 
and putting it toward sinks, you know, and the sinks can be a 
lot of different things, whether it's, you know, geologic 
sequestration, enhanced oil recovery, to products. But that's, 
the process is we need to be able to capture it and move it, 
you know, and capture could be on a power plant, it could be 
direct air capture. I guess I'd look at it in terms of, you 
know, in any other sort of industrial project. Certainly, a 
buildup of an industrial facility could be many thousands of 
jobs. Then you look at pipelines. I think it's pretty well 
documented the number of jobs that are associated with 
pipelines to move it from point A to point B. So, really, you 
know, particular projects is going to be thousands of people, 
so I think there's tremendous value in the buildout.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Yes, well, I love the work that you 
guys are doing. Actually, all of you, I think it is a broad 
cross section. It takes me back to my--you know, I did do a 
research project, I guess 40 years ago, on using salt as a 
storage vehicle, salt formations as a storage vehicle for 
radioactive materials for carbon, for CO2, things 
like that. Anyway, it is good to see that these things go in 
full circles.
    Anyway, I yield back my time. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Barrasso.
    Senator Barrasso. Terrific hearing, Mr. Chairman. Let me 
thank you for bringing in these wonderful guests to talk about 
some of the most exciting research that I think is happening 
anywhere.
    The Chairman. Well, thank you for bringing all the talent 
you brought from Wyoming too.
    Let me just say to all of you, it really has been a great, 
great hearing. I want to thank you. But I am also challenging 
you all to tell us how quickly we can get to 2030s target date 
and what it takes if we start today to ramp up.
    I am also very encouraged about those of us who have coal, 
areas where coal plants have closed or coal power plants have 
closed. This could give us a whole new manufacturing 
renaissance there. It really fits better rather than trying to 
go into a coal area and bringing some type of manufacturing 
that does not fit with the culture. So that is so exciting 
right now, but I really look forward to hearing from you all.
    Members will have until the close of business tomorrow to 
submit additional questions for the record.
    Again, thank you, each and every one of you.
    [Whereupon, at 11:57 a.m. the committee adjourned.]

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