[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 44 (Wednesday, March 14, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3120-S3121]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    TESTIMONY OF DR. ROBERT SOCOLOW

  Mr. BAUCUS. Mr. President, on Tuesday, February 27, 2007, the Finance 
Committee held a hearing on energy-tax issues titled: America's Energy 
Future: Bold Ideas, Practical Solutions. I ask unanimous consent that 
the following testimony from that hearing be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   The Challenge of Managing U.S. Coal in a Climate-Constrained World


             Testimony before the Senate Finance Committee

    (Professor Robert Socolow, Princeton University, Feb. 27, 2007)

       Mr. Chairman, Senator Grassley, and members of the 
     Committee: Thank you for inviting me to testify today. I am 
     pleased to be here in my capacity as co-director of Princeton 
     University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative; as a Professor of 
     Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton; and as an 
     individual concerned about the future of U.S. and global 
     energy policy. I commend you for these hearings.
       In 2004 Stephen Pacala and I published a paper in Science 
     magazine called ``Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate 
     Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies.'' We 
     argued for a portfolio of climate-change mitigation 
     strategies. Among these strategies are the deepening of 
     energy efficiency in buildings, transport, and industry; the 
     deployment of renewable energy, nuclear power and biofuels; 
     and the capture and sequestration of carbon dioxide produced 
     at coal power plants and coal-to-liquids plants.
       Today, I will focus my testimony on the strategy that has 
     moved to near the top of the list from the perspective of 
     urgency: carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS for short.


                          Collision avoidance

       Mr. Chairman, this really is a time of Bad News and Good 
     News. The Bad News is that two trains are on a collision 
     course. The Good News is that there is still time to switch 
     one of the trains onto a different track.
       Train Number One is the rush to coal power in the U.S., a 
     consequence of changed expectations about the future natural 
     gas price. Train Number Two is the urgency of dealing with 
     climate change. In my view, none too soon, climate change is 
     high on the agenda for U.S. policy.
       A collision is imminent because burning coal as we have 
     burned it in the past sends more carbon dioxide into the 
     atmosphere for each unit of useful energy produced than any 
     other energy source. So, the rush to coal makes the already 
     difficult challenge of climate change even more challenging.
       The switch is carbon dioxide capture and sequestration, or 
     CCS. Using CCS, when coal is burned its carbon does not end 
     up in the atmosphere.


                               Readiness

       CCS is commercially mature; it uses proven technologies in 
     new combinations. Carbon dioxide has long been captured at 
     natural gas power plants and coal power plants for use by the 
     food industry. A 500-mile carbon dioxide pipeline built 20 
     years ago has brought carbon dioxide from across New Mexico 
     from southwest Colorado to oil fields in west Texas. There 
     are no technological reasons to delay full-scale deployment 
     of CCS.
       The best evidence I know for the readiness of CCS for full-
     scale deployment is the 500-megawatt CCS project at BP's 
     Carson refinery, near Long Beach, California. This project of 
     BP and Edison Mission Group received investment tax credits 
     under Section 48B of the tax code, per the 2005 Energy Policy 
     Act. The project will gasify 4500 tons per day of petcoke, 
     the bottom of the barrel at a refinery, a negative-cost fuel. 
     Four million tons of carbon dioxide will be sent off-site 
     each year for enhanced oil recovery (EOR).
       Carbon dioxide capture and sequestration is likely to 
     become a favorable economic strategy for a coal utility at a 
     price of about $30 per U.S. ton of carbon dioxide. Prices on 
     emissions in the same range should also enable other 
     ``upstream'' carbon-saving strategies, ending flaring at the 
     oil field and bringing new investments at oil refineries. 
     Carbon dioxide policy should reach far upstream, because the 
     low-hanging fruit is upstream.
       Efficiency in energy use is where the other low-hanging 
     fruit are to be found. A low-tech air-conditioner cooling a 
     poorly designed and poorly instrumented office building is as 
     out of place in a climate-constrained world as a coal 
     plant without carbon dioxide capture and sequestration.


                    EOR and national energy security

       Carbon dioxide is the mischief molecule in the atmosphere, 
     but the miracle molecule below ground. Used for enhanced oil 
     recovery (EOR), carbon dioxide injects new life into old oil 
     fields. Quantitatively, a new one-thousand-megawatt coal 
     plant will produce about six million tons per year of carbon 
     dioxide. If captured and used for enhanced oil recovery, this 
     carbon dioxide should increase oil production at mature 
     fields by between 30,000 and 80,000 barrels a day. Any carbon 
     dioxide heading for the sky is domestic oil not produced--and 
     more imported oil.


                           No CTL without CCS

       Your committee is considering subsidizing synthetic fuel 
     from domestic coal. From a climate change perspective, unless 
     synfuels production is accompanied by carbon dioxide capture 
     and sequestration, this is a big step backward. Burning coal-
     based synthetic fuel in a car engine, instead of burning 
     gasoline made from crude oil, sends approximately twice as 
     much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when driving the same 
     distance--unless CCS is incorporated into the synfuels 
     production process, in which case CTL fuel is no worse for 
     climate than petroleum fuel.
       ``No CTL without CCS'' isn't the world's most exciting 
     bumper sticker, but it carries a vitally important message.


                           Carbon Price, Plus

       Mr. Chairman, The sulfur trading you helped launch in the 
     early 1990s has been a spectacular success and the template 
     for every cap-and-trade proposal since then. But the 
     launching of CCS will require ``a carbon dioxide trading 
     system, plus.'' I strongly recommend that your committee 
     restrict the next investment tax credits only to coal power 
     plants and coal synfuels plants that capture and sequester 
     carbon dioxide.
       Moreover, I recommend that policies specify only that 
     carbon dioxide must be sequestered, with penalties for 
     failure, but then leave it to the market to choose the 
     specific capture and sequestration strategy for each 
     circumstance.


     Policy must distinguish industrial from natural carbon dioxide

       Several federal and state energy policies in the 1980s that 
     subsidized enhanced oil recovery resulted in the extraction 
     of carbon dioxide from large geological formations--carbon 
     dioxide that otherwise would have stayed below ground for 
     millions of years. This adverse impact on climate was 
     inadvertent; but now we know better. All legislation 
     henceforth must distinguish industrial carbon dioxide from 
     natural carbon dioxide.


                Policies that penalize early bad action

       Urgently needed for the current period are policies that 
     give clear and persuasive signals that any new coal plants 
     without CCS

[[Page S3121]]

     will be penalized, not rewarded, in whatever U.S. climate-
     change mitigation policy emerges after the current planning 
     period. No one should expect the grandfathering of the 
     newborn.
       I was one of many who were delighted by the news this past 
     weekend that eight new coal plants with conventional 
     technology proposed for rapid construction in Texas will not 
     be built. I can't prove it, of course, but it seems likely to 
     me that the op ed in the Dallas News last month from Senators 
     Bingaman and Boxer, warning investors and the TXU leadership 
     that, in effect, there would be no grandfathering of the 
     newborn, was instrumental in derailing the construction of 
     these eight backward-looking plants.
       Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, thank you for 
     your attention.

                          ____________________