[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 118 (Thursday, July 13, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3978-S3981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               FUTURE Act

  Mr. President, today I am joined by my colleagues from West Virginia 
and Rhode Island. We are kind of a motley group. We are talking about 
something that has brought us together with a level of excitement and 
bipartisanship. I would like to say that it is not just bipartisanship 
but really coming across the ideological barriers we frequently 
experience here to try and talk about an issue that is near and dear to 
our hearts, which is maintaining an opportunity for our coal miners and 
our coal industry to continue to do what they have done for 
generations--and that is to produce electricity that fuels this economy 
in the United States of America--but also recognizing that regulatory 
certainty is one of the key values we need to establish. In order to 
provide that certainty, we need to address concerns of other Members of 
our caucus who have in no small measure a lot of concern about what is 
happening with CO2 emissions and what those emissions are 
doing environmentally.
  I want to just kind of introduce this concept. Back in 2008, we 
passed something called 45Q, which was a provision that would allow for 
tax credits similar to what we have for wind and solar. Wind credits 
are production tax credits, and solar credits are investment tax 
credits. To provide for tax credits, $10 and $20--$10 if you are 
injecting into a formation or you are enhancing oil recovery, $20 if 
you are injecting into a geographic formation to store the carbons as 
CO2--those credits have proved to be, albeit used, but 
somewhat anemic to jump-start the technology, to jump-start the 
opportunity to see wholesale carbon sequestration.
  We also know that since 2008, we have seen new technologies coming. I 
know my colleague from Rhode Island will talk about carbon utilization. 
We are expanding beyond just carbon sequestration--carbon capture and 
sequestration--to carbon utilization. It is a hugely important part of 
this puzzle. We believe that if we provide these tax incentives to our 
industries, if we provide these tax incentives to our innovators, it 
will drive technology that will have the benefit of guaranteeing that 
we will see a diverse fuel source in America that includes coal and 
includes natural gas. We always want to point that out, wherever we 
represent coal States. I know West Virginia is in proximity to huge 
natural gas fields. We know that we may be faced with a carbon 
challenge in natural gas, and the ability to capture CO2 
behind natural gas-fired power may be an essential ingredient for 
regulatory certainty into the future.
  We are excited about this bill. We have 25 cosponsors who will 
advance and continue to talk about it and continue to grow colleague 
support. We hope this show of bipartisanship, this ability to work 
across the aisle, this

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ability to come together--maybe not with the same motivations but 
certainly with the same goal--will prove that on one of the most 
contentious issues here, which is climate and coal, we can come 
together and actually get something done that we can all agree on.
  With that, I yield the floor, and I defer to my colleague from West 
Virginia.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from North Dakota. 
She has been a champion of building this bipartisan coalition. When we 
announced this yesterday, we had a very large board that showed quite a 
broad array of groups from around the country that are very much in 
support of this concept. So, I thank Senator Heitkamp for her great 
leadership.
  It is terrific to be on the floor with Senator Whitehouse. We both 
serve on the EPW Committee together, and many times we are totally 
opposite. Sometimes we feel as if we are on opposite planets, I think, 
but definitely on different sides of this issue. It is great to be on 
the same side of an issue such as this, which really helps fortify not 
just our country but our regions and our beliefs as well.
  As Senator Heitkamp said, we have 25 cosponsors. Some of them are 
utilities, environmental groups, oil and gas companies, Governors, 
labor unions, so it is a great array of the country interested in 
carbon capture utilization and storage. We have done a lot of research 
in this area, but we haven't been able to scale it up to a point where 
it is economically viable, and that is where I think the tax credits 
will be not just welcomed and used, but it will be very important to 
see that scalability--which we have seen coming in small bits and 
pieces--maybe come in much greater amounts.
  We obviously have a very robust coal industry in the State of West 
Virginia. We have lost thousands of jobs. Senator Whitehouse and I have 
talked about his stay in West Virginia. He has great empathy for the 
coal miner and for those families that have lost jobs, but he is very 
concerned, as I think we all are, about what it is doing to our 
environment and how can we improve this.
  That is what this legislation, I think, will help do. It will spur 
domestic investment in the technologies. It will also help us, I think, 
bring energy security because it goes to the baseload fuels, whether it 
is coal or natural gas, that we have to have.
  I mean, in Washington, DC, today, it is hot out there, and I can 
guarantee you there are a lot of air-conditioners that are running at 
maximum speed. If we do not have this baseload power, which is coal and 
natural gas in areas--and I see my fellow Senator from West Virginia. 
We know, in coal country, how important that is and also what smiles on 
people's faces these air-conditioners can bring, as these hot days go, 
because we are running at full capacity.
  We want to make sure that by capturing the carbon stream, we prevent 
any waste emissions and we provide a possible valuable resource for 
industry. I remarked yesterday for industry to extract oil, which is 
very important, obviously, to the Senator from North Dakota and also in 
our Marcellus shale region.
  I believe that with this research and with the spurring of this 
technology, CO2 is going to have another use out there. 
There are all kinds of utilization possibilities, but if we just turn 
our backs on it or try to shut it down and make it unviable financially 
to invest in these technologies, we are never going to find that next 
best use of CO2.
  So we tweaked the bill a little bit. The Senators have had this bill 
out for at least a couple of years. There is a companion bill in the 
House with a lot of cosponsors as well. I think it has, with 25 
cosponsors on the Senate floor, bipartisan but very different 
philosophical beliefs, maybe. Maybe that is not the best way to put it. 
There are very different regional approaches to this, I guess would be 
a better way to state that.
  We have our universities, such as West Virginia University and 
Marshall University, that are working on this. We have the National 
Energy Technology Lab in Morgantown, where Secretary Perry joined both 
Senator Manchin and me to talk about the technologies that are in front 
of us and the challenge for researchers.
  I feel like financing and the economic model is where we are trying 
to go, in order to spur investment, to provide the regulatory certainty 
but also the investment certainty in that this is a keeper; that this 
is something that is here to stay, that it is doable, that it is 
economically feasible, that it is scalable, and it provides us with a 
lot of energy security at the same time. I think its greatest benefit 
of all is to keep our air clean and get it cleaner and meet the 
challenges of the next several decades.
  With that, I turn it over to the Senator from Rhode Island.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is a great pleasure for me to be 
here with Senator Heitkamp. We knew each other as attorneys general so 
I have admired the Senator from North Dakota for a long time. From my 
time in West Virginia, I remember Senator Capito's father who is a very 
formidable and renowned political personality in West Virginia. To be 
here with the two of them is a personal pleasure. Senator Manchin is 
also joining us, so I am very happy to be here.
  I thank Senator Heitkamp, Senator Capito, Chairman Barrasso, and my 
friend Senator Graham for leading this bipartisan effort, and I thank 
Senator Manchin for joining us on the floor.
  We have more than 20 other cosponsors so this is a bill that has 
broad bipartisan support and has a great coalition behind it. It has 
everything from my great friends at the Natural Resources Defense 
Council, many of our friends in the AFL-CIO, to nonprofits like the 
Clean Air Task Force, to moderating groups like Third Way and the 
Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, which are trying to pick their 
way through the divide, industry groups like Wyoming's Cloud Peak 
Energy coal company and West Virginia's Peabody, a coal company, and 
the ethanol industry. So we have really good, broad support. It is an 
unusual coalition, and I am excited by it.
  There are ways to remove carbon dioxide from the air and from 
emissions, and we are seeing a lot of it. I went with Lindsey Graham up 
to Saskatchewan to see the Boundary Dam facility, where they basically 
put the output of the coal-burning powerplant through a cloud of amino 
droplets that strip out the carbon dioxide and pump it to a nearby 
oilfield where they can use the carbon dioxide to pressurize the 
oilfield and facilitate the extraction of oil. That is made possible 
because they have an oilfield nearby that will pay for that carbon 
dioxide to use in order to extract the oil. If I remember correctly, 
they were getting close to $30 per ton. That is a pretty real revenue 
stream, but a lot of our American coal facilities do not have the 
luxury of being next to an oilfield that will pay for the carbon so you 
have to look elsewhere for revenues to make it worth your while. What 
we have in America is a market failure in which there is nobody who 
will pay you for removing carbon pollution. The way our market is 
structured it just does not work.
  The simplest approach, of course, would be to put a proper price on 
carbon and let the whole economy go to work in solving the problem of 
carbon pollution. Short of that, this bill takes an important step by 
putting a value on reducing carbon emissions by paying facilities with 
a tax credit for every ton of carbon emissions they can keep out of the 
atmosphere. If we can get this passed and if we can get this into the 
Tax Code so it is lasting, then investors can look at it and say: Hey, 
we can finally put some money behind these technologies, and we can get 
them going, not just in the power sector.
  This reaches into industrial carbon capture, into technologies like 
carbon utilization, and into really exciting new technologies like 
direct air capture. Now, most of these are happening elsewhere. To look 
for the models, you have to go to Saskatchewan, like I did and like 
Senator Heitkamp has done, or you have to go to Iceland, where they are 
pumping carbon dioxide down into geological structures where it reacts 
and becomes stone, or you have to go to Switzerland, where they are 
taking direct air carbon capture technologies, because, there, their 
market

[[Page S3980]]

is not broken so there actually is a return on this.
  We are seeing good work at our National Labs, I will say, which is 
funded by Congress and people like Dr. Julio Friedmann, whom Senator 
Heitkamp and I know and work with. We are doing exciting stuff. Yet to 
take it to a marketable level, there has to be a business strategy. You 
have to be able to make a business case to investors if you are going 
to put money behind building what could be a multi-hundred-million-
dollar carbon capture plant. This will begin to do that, and it makes 
me very excited.
  In particular, I thank my cosponsors for making sure we are not 
talking about CCS any longer and that we are talking about CCUS. It is 
not carbon capture and storage. It is carbon capture, utilization, and 
sequestration.
  I have also been to Shenandoah, IA. Shenandoah, IA, has a big ethanol 
plant, and there is a company, called bioprocessH2O, that is in the 
exhaust stream of that ethanol plant. They pipe out their waste heat, 
their waste energy, their waste CO2, their wastewater all 
into a plant that grows algae, and the algae eats up the 
CO2. They take about 15 percent of it out of the stream, and 
it turns it into a product. They use it for feed, for cattle, for fish. 
They use it for makeup and other products. They use it for a whole 
variety of purposes. It is a new form of agriculture that is going to 
be very valuable, and the fact that you can make it efficient to strip 
carbon dioxide out of a plant's exhaust is a great thing.
  This is a good way we can work together. It may be the first time I 
can think of that Senator McConnell and I have ever been on a bill 
together. He is not on it now in this particular iteration because 
neither he nor the Speaker want to get onto a bill that is a tax bill 
while they are looking at tax reform. Yet, clearly, we know where their 
hearts are from the fact that they were on it the last time. So there 
is a lot of welcomed political news around this, and I think it has the 
chance of really revving up American industry so it is not the 
Canadians and the Icelanders and the Swiss who are cleaning our clocks 
because we have not bothered to get our economic structure in order to 
make this a profitable undertaking. It is a great first step, and I am 
proud to be a part of it.
  I yield to my friend, the Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, I thank my good friend from Rhode Island. 
I have been to his State, and we have gone to the algae farms. It has a 
lot of potential. I agree with the Senator 100 percent.
  I applaud Senator Heitkamp and Senator Capito for leading the effort 
to update and improve this tax credit for carbon capture, utilization, 
and sequestration. We have the support of 25 Democrats and 
Republicans--totally bipartisan--and when you have Senator Whitehouse 
and Senator Barrasso on a bill, you know you have a real bill. It can 
happen. So that is very encouraging.
  Senator Capito and I come from West Virginia, and Senator Heitkamp 
comes from the energy-producing State of North Dakota. Coal was one of 
the most abundant energy sources in the world. It is lying on most 
continents, and most countries have it, and they are going to use it. 
It is a very efficient way of producing energy because it is plentiful.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MANCHIN. Yes, sir.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Does the Senator know that, in Cumberland, RI, there 
used to be coal mining? In fact, there are still coal mines underground 
in New Cumberland, WV. Every once in a while, one collapses, so we have 
been there.
  Mr. MANCHIN. I am so encouraged that you remember the history of your 
great State in not forgetting those coal mines.
  We have to face the facts and the realization that there are 8 
billion tons of coal being burned in the world on an annual basis. We 
burn less than 1 billion in the United States of America, and we are 
the country that has done more to clean up the environment than any 
other country. They all talk about doing different things, but we have 
taken the SOx and the NOX and the mercury out and the 
particulates. We have done more in the last two decades than has ever 
been done, and there is more that can be done.
  I have to be very honest with you. The last 8 years was very 
challenging and difficult for us. No one wanted to make the effort. 
They talked a good game, but no one would put the investment into the 
technology that was needed. Now we have this bill--it is bipartisan 
that everybody is working hard on--that has a chance to really put us 
in the forefront of how we utilize this carbon capture and 
sequestration.
  West Virginia has one of the first powerplants, the Mountaineer Power 
Plant, that shows it can be done commercially. We did a commercial test 
there. We know it can be done. We know it is expensive. At the time, 
President Obama said to go ahead and build a coal plant, and we will 
break you. He knew it was not financially feasible, and that is where 
that statement came from.
  First of all, coal was a baseload fuel. There are only two baseload 
fuels in the world today. Baseload is 24/7 uninterrupted power. That is 
coal and nuclear. Gas has now replaced coal in the United States of 
America in its being more plentiful for the production of energy, which 
we depend on, but it still can be interruptible because the gas 
pipelines could be sabotaged. They could break, and weather conditions 
could change that.
  So you have to make sure everything is working for the people of the 
United States of America who have always been used to and been 
dependent upon turning the switch on or their heat and their power or 
opening their fridge, and everything is working. It comes because you 
have baseload that is dependable, reliable, and affordable. You are 
going to have that.
  I think, maybe in my grandchildren's lifetimes, they are going to 
see, maybe, commercial hydrogen, which will be water vapor. I think 
that is coming. It is just not here yet. So we are going to use what we 
have and what we need and make sure we do it in the cleanest fashion. 
The United States should be and will be the leader of this. This is 
what helps us do it, and it gives us incentive to move forward on it.
  When we were doing scrubbers back in the eighties, the Clean Air Act, 
I will never forget, at the time, to do scrubbers that take sulfur out, 
you have to inject, basically, limestone. This crushed limestone, 
basically, clings to the sulfur, and the sulfur drops out in the form 
of the ash. What are you going to do with all of this byproduct of this 
ash? Can it be detrimental? Is it hazardous? Guess what. A lot of the 
drywall you are using today is made out of the ash that came out of the 
new scrubbers from which we did not know we were going to have a 
byproduct.
  So there is value. I still believe in my heart, with this piece of 
legislation, that we are going to find a valuable use of this waste. 
Can it be solidified? We know we can take clear stream CO2 
off. Can we solidify this CO2? It would not just be 
sequestering it. We are doing it in liquid form now and pressuring it 
into the ground. If you have oil or some other energy that is valuable 
to return back, then you can offset the cost, but in a lot of parts of 
the country, we do not have that oil so we are not able to have a value 
returned. It is pure cost, and the cost is about one-third of the 
production. A perfect example: If you have a 900-megawatt powerplant 
and you have carbon capture sequestration, but you have no value in 
return, you lose 300 megawatts by pushing it into the ground. It makes 
it nonfeasible financially, and that is when the statement came, ``You 
build it, and we will break it.'' That is how they break it. You cannot 
do it. So if we don't have to sequester it and pressure it in the 
ground when we solidify this clear stream carbon from liquids to 
solids, can we use the spent fuel of a solid carbon, CO2?

  This is what we should be working on. These are the things we should 
be doing. We missed 8 years. We had a hiatus for 8 years. Let's catch 
up. This piece of legislation puts us on the path to make something 
happen, to truly make us unique in the world of what we do and how we 
do it. The rest of the world counts on us. All the other countries are 
talking about all the things they are doing in climate; trust me,

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they are not. They are talking about it; they are not doing it. Even 
our NATO allies aren't using what we have already developed and 
perfected. They are not using scrubbers, and they are not using 
baghouses for mercury.
  It is not CO2 killing people in Beijing; it is basically 
particulates. It is particulates that we have taken out of the air. We 
can do this, but we need to work together. We can't be fighting each 
other. There is not a West Virginian I know who wants to breathe dirty 
air or drink dirty water--or an American--and they are not going to. We 
have improved and will continue to improve. But we can't be pitting one 
environmental group against another manufacturing or production group, 
and that is what we have done. We are just tearing each other apart 
because we are picking sides: Are you for the environment or are you 
for the economy? I am for both. I am for the environment, and I am for 
the economy, and I think there is a balance between the two.
  If we do the technology and the manufacturers or the producers of 
electricity refuse to use the technology that is proven, then they 
should be shut down. They get a certain period of time to retrofit. If 
they will not do it, then shut them down.
  We haven't gotten there yet on this, and that is why this piece of 
legislation is so important. All of the working groups and 
environmental groups--everybody should be behind this. We have an array 
of Senators who have come together, unlike most bills. We don't often 
have this happen. I am proud of what the Presiding Officer has done. I 
am proud of my good friend from North Dakota. I am proud of my friend 
from Rhode Island. I am proud of my friend from Wyoming. I am proud of 
everyone coming together and saying: If we are going to use it, let's 
do it better.
  With that I say thank you--thank you to all of us for working 
together on this and for continuing to move the United States of 
America forward. West Virginia will do its part, I can assure my 
colleagues of that.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Capito). The Senator from North Dakota.
  Ms. HEITKAMP. Madam President, one thing I want to talk about, as we 
are talking about carbon utilization--and Joe did a great job of 
talking about new technologies. Frequently when I talk about this topic 
people say: There is no such thing as clean coal. Coal cannot be a 
clean energy source. And I say: That is not true. I tell them about my 
personal experience with the largest carbon sequestration storage 
program in the country, up until some of the new developments, and that 
was Dakota Gas. I served on the board of directors of Dakota Gas, and, 
ironically, the carbon capture and transmission into an oil field was 
not done to respond to concerns globally about carbon; it was done to 
produce a salable and lucrative byproduct--CO2--which can be 
used in the oil fields.
  The one point I want to make is that a lot of the new development in 
exploration and in production of oil is done in tight formations, shale 
formations. This is not a technology, CO2 flooding isn't a 
technology that has been widely used in tight formations because we 
haven't figured out how to do it.
  I want to acknowledge one of those great American corporations, 
Occidental Petroleum, for doing something they call huff and puff, 
where they inject the CO2. They basically let that sit in 
the well and then eventually recharge the well. They are seeing 
excellent results in using this as an enhanced oil recovery method.
  We are very excited about the bipartisan group. We are very excited 
that we can take one of the most contentious issues--one of the most 
contentious issues here on the floor--an issue for which, time after 
time, no one could find a path forward, and we have met with great 
success in getting good people to come together.
  Finally, I want to say that it has been a joy to work with the junior 
Senator from West Virginia. I spend a lot of time with the senior 
Senator from West Virginia. The junior Senator from West Virginia, from 
my experience, is always looking for solutions to problems--not adding 
to the rancor, but looking for solutions to real problems. We have had 
a great partnership, and I look forward to our continued partnership in 
promoting and moving this issue forward.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.