[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 117 (Wednesday, July 12, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3951-S3952]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, there was an interesting press 
conference earlier today in which I joined with Senator Heitkamp, 
Senator Capito, and Senator Barrasso on a common piece of legislation 
that will help address climate change. That does not happen often, so 
it was a good sign.
  This is not a comprehensive solution. It may not even make much of a 
measurable difference, but it will make some difference. It will help 
drive America's technological edge, and it will help, as it gets 
implemented, reduce our carbon emissions. It was very good to be 
working with those Senators.
  The fundamental problem we face with carbon capture and utilization 
and the reason so little of it now happens is economics. There is a 
flaw in the market economics related to carbon capture utilization and 
sequestration. Here is the flaw: There is no business proposition for 
stripping out the carbon dioxide, and in a market economy, if no one 
will pay for something, you don't get very much of it.
  Lindsey Graham and I flew up to Saskatchewan to see Boundary Dam, a 
carbon capture plant at a coal-powered electric generating facility 
where they are removing the carbon dioxide by running the exhaust from 
the plant through, essentially, a cloud of aminos. They are able to 
sequester closing on 80 percent of the carbon, and they use it to pump 
out and into nearby oil fields to pressurize the oil to facilitate 
extraction. Up in Saskatchewan at Boundary Dam, they have proved that 
the technology works, and where they are, with a little financing help 
from the Province, the economics work also.
  Unfortunately, not every coal-burning plant is on an oil field where 
the carbon dioxide can be used for extraction. Other than the facility 
in Saskatchewan, there is not a lot going on, on this continent. The 
Illinois facility collapsed, the facility in the South just collapsed, 
and there is one in Texas that is going on. But the bill the four of us 
got together on--which would be to create a tax credit paid for each 
ton of carbon that is captured and utilized or sequestered--could 
really make a difference. Knowing those credits are out there is the 
kind of reliance industry needs in order to invest in the technologies 
to make this happen.
  Of course, a real market for carbon reduction technologies ultimately 
requires putting a price on carbon emissions. We can fiddle around with 
payments for reduced carbon, but ultimately a price on carbon is the 
sensible economic solution. I think that is pretty much universally 
agreed by economists. Everyone agrees that carbon dioxide emissions are 
not a good thing. Everyone also agrees that carbon dioxide emissions 
are free to emitters now, so we get a lot of them.
  A harmful thing that is free to the emitter is called, in economic 
terms, an externality. It is an externality because the cost of the 
harm is external to the price of the product. A basic tenet of market 
economics is that the cost of a harm should be built into the price of 
the product that causes the harm.
  It is basically an economic version of being polite. If you throw 
your trash over into your neighbor's yard instead of paying for your 
trash collection, well, your neighbor has to clean up

[[Page S3952]]

your mess and you are being really rude--a bad neighbor.
  In essence, that is what the fossil fuel industry has been doing with 
their carbon dioxide emissions for years--not paying to clean them up, 
dumping them all into our common atmosphere and our common oceans, 
making their neighbors pay because they don't want to pay for their own 
waste.
  Like that bad neighbor, they have come up with various excuses: Oh, 
it would be too expensive for us to pay for our trash collection. Or, 
our trash is actually good for your yard; it kind of composts it a bit. 
You will love it. It is better for you to clean it up.
  Then there is my personal favorite: If you make us take care of our 
own waste, we will beat you up--politically, at least, which is why the 
fossil fuel industry spends so much money on politics, just to be able 
to make that threat credible. And around here, boy, is it credible. It 
explains virtually fully our failure as an institution to address this 
patently obvious problem that our own home State universities are 
telling us is real. From Utah to Rhode Island, the universities we 
support and root for know and teach climate science.
  Anyway, I have a carbon price bill that would cause a technological 
boom in carbon capture and carbon utilization because, at last, there 
would be a reason to pay for it, and the free market could get to work. 
American ingenuity could get to work. With that market signal and with 
funding from revenues that the fee would generate, we could actually 
extend the life of existing coal plants being shuttered by competition 
from natural gas, by stripping their carbon dioxide emissions so that 
they actually didn't do the damage that they are doing now, they 
stopped throwing their trash into their neighbors' yard, and they paid 
for trash collection. The technology needs to be there and the 
economics need to be there, and then it can be done.

  We really ought to pass the carbon fee bill. I would add that the 
carbon fee bill also creates a lot of revenue. We, I think, have agreed 
that revenue ought not go to fund the government--not to make Big 
Government--but there are other things we can do with it that would be 
very helpful. One would be to make coal country whole for the economic 
losses coal country has sustained.
  Remember Huey Long's old slogan: ``Every man a king.'' We could make 
every miner a king--with a solid pension, retirement at any time, full 
health benefits for life for the family, a cash account based on years 
worked, a voucher for a new vehicle, a college plan for their kids. It 
all becomes doable if we pass a carbon fee and use the revenues to help 
coal country. Otherwise, nothing will change.
  Coal country will just keep suffering as natural gas keeps driving 
coal out of the energy market. There is no mechanism now to remedy that 
inevitability. People will suffer. There is a remedy right there--a 
carbon fee--that can help fund and encourage the development of the 
technologies so that we can strip the carbon dioxide out of the 
emitting powerplants and so that we can go into these coal countries 
where pensions and benefits have been stripped by bankruptcy, by the 
collapse of this industry, and make those folks whole again.
  Give them their dignity. Let them retire now. It is not their fault 
that the coal industry has collapsed. They worked hard. They did 
dangerous work. They went down in the mines. They worked big equipment. 
It is a dangerous occupation to be a coal miner, and it is entitled to 
respect. Retire any time, full health benefits for you and the family, 
a cash account to help, a new vehicle voucher, a college plan for the 
kids, to make sure they are well-educated--you could do a lot of those 
things. You could help those people pass a carbon fee and make every 
coal miner a king.
  In the meantime, I am willing to find funding to flip the social cost 
of carbon--the way we did in our bill, announced today--and create a 
positive fee, a tax credit for carbon capture and carbon utilization. I 
am willing to work with Republican colleagues to find a way to pay our 
nuclear fleet for the carbon-free nature of its nuclear power.
  It is crazy to be closing safely operating nuclear power facilities 
just because they get zero economic value for the carbon-free nature of 
their power. The carbon-free nature of their power has value. The 
carbon-free nature of power has significant value. That is why we are 
offering in our legislation a tax credit of $30 to $50 per avoided ton 
of carbon dioxide emissions. That implies that an avoided ton of carbon 
dioxide emissions is worth $30 to $50.
  If nuclear power avoids that, I am willing to work with my Republican 
colleagues to figure out a way so that our nuclear fleet can enjoy the 
actual economic advantage of the carbon-free power they produce.
  We close a nuclear plant so we can open a natural gas plant which 
pollutes more than the nuclear plant because the economics are so 
fouled up that the nuclear plant gets no value for carbon-free power 
and the natural gas plant pays no costs for the harm of its carbon 
emissions. It is economic madness.
  We know that carbon-free nature has value. We know that the carbon-
free nature of nuclear power has value. We just will not pay for it, 
and plants close due to that market failure, and jobs are lost, and 
power is lost, and new investments have to be stood up in polluting 
plants to make the difference. It is crazy.
  In closing, the Heitkamp-Whitehouse-Capito-Barrasso bill, the FUTURE 
bill, to provide a tax credit for carbon capture utilization and 
sequestration in powerplants, in factories, and in a variety of 
applications, is small. It is in some respects a gesture, but 
everything begins with small steps and small gestures. I am proud to be 
a part of it, but I want to remind my colleagues that there are also 
big win-win ways that we can solve the larger problem. I look forward 
to working together to accomplish just that.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CRUZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.