[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                 CLEARING THE AIR: LEGISLATION TO PROMOTE
                 CARBON CAPTURE, UTILIZATION, AND STORAGE

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

             SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE

                                 OF THE

                    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________


                            FEBRUARY 6, 2020

                               __________

                           Serial No. 116-97






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      Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

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                    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

                     FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
                                 Chairman

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois              GREG WALDEN, Oregon
ANNA G. ESHOO, California              Ranking Member
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York             FRED UPTON, Michigan
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado              JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania             MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois             STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina    ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
DORIS O. MATSUI, California          CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
KATHY CASTOR, Florida                BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland           PETE OLSON, Texas
JERRY McNERNEY, California           DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
PETER WELCH, Vermont                 ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico            H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
PAUL TONKO, New York                 GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York, Vice     BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
    Chair                            BILLY LONG, Missouri
DAVID LOEBSACK, Iowa                 LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon                BILL FLORES, Texas
JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,               SUSAN W. BROOKS, Indiana
    Massachusetts                    MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
TONY CARDENAS, California            RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
RAUL RUIZ, California                TIM WALBERG, Michigan
SCOTT H. PETERS, California          EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan             JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas                GREG GIANFORTE, Montana
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
DARREN SOTO, Florida
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
                                 ------                                

                           Professional Staff

                   JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director
                TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director
                MIKE BLOOMQUIST, Minority Staff Director







             Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change

                          PAUL TONKO, New York
                               Chairman

YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York           JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois
SCOTT H. PETERS, California            Ranking Member
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California    CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia         DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware       BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
DARREN SOTO, Florida                 BILLY LONG, Missouri
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado              BILL FLORES, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois             MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
DORIS O. MATSUI, California          EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
JERRY McNERNEY, California           JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
RAUL RUIZ, California, Vice Chair    GREG WALDEN, Oregon (ex officio)
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex 
    officio)








                             C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hon. Paul Tonko, a Representative in Congress from the State of 
  New York, opening statement....................................     2
    Prepared statement...........................................     3
Hon. John Shimkus, a Representative in Congress from the State of 
  Illinois, opening statement....................................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................     6
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 
  State of New Jersey, opening statement.........................     7
    Prepared statement...........................................     9
Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of 
  Oregon, opening statement......................................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    11

                               Witnesses

Mikael Sasha Mackler, Director of the Energy Project Bipartisan 
  Policy Center..................................................    13
    Prepared statement...........................................    15
    Answers to submitted questions...............................   140
John Noel, Senior Climate Campaigner With Greenpeace USA; Jason 
  Begger, Executive Director of the Wyoming Infrastructure 
  Authority......................................................    21
    Prepared statement...........................................    23
Jason Begger, Executive Director of the Wyoming Infrastructure 
  Authority......................................................    28
    Prepared statement...........................................    30
    Answers to submitted questions...............................   142
Laurel Harmon, Ph,D., Vice President of Lanzatech, INC...........    34
    Prepared statement...........................................    36
Lee Anderson, Government Affairs Director of the Utility Workers 
  Union of America, AFL-CIO......................................    43
    Prepared statement...........................................    45

                           Submitted Material

H.R. 1166, the USE IT Act of 2019................................    76
Letter of February 5, 2019, from Andrew Grinberg National 
  Campaigns Special Projects Manager Clean Water Action to Mr. 
  Tonko, and Mr. Shimkus, submitted by Mr. Tonko.................   107
Letter of February 5, 2020, from Sean O'Neill Senior Vice-
  President, Government Affairs Portland Cement Association, to 
  Mr. Tonko and Mr. Shimkus, submitted by Mr. Tonko..............   110
Letter of February 6, 2020, from Claude Letourneau, CEO, Svante 
  to Mr. Tonko, and Mr. Shimkus, submitted by Mr. Tonko..........   112
Letter of February 4, 2020, from James D. Ogsbury, Executive 
  Director, the Western Governors Association, to Mr. Tonko and 
  Mr. Shimkus, submitted by Mr. Tonko............................   115
Letter of February 5, 2020, by Our Children's Trust, to Mr. Tonko 
  and Mr. Shimkus, submitted by Mr. Tonko \1\
Letter of August 20, 2019, from Carbon Capture Coalition,nto Mr. 
  Smith, et al., submitted by Mr. Tonko..........................   126

----------
\1\ Letter has been retained in committee files and also is 
  available at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF18/20200206/
  110482/HHRG-116-IF18-20200206-SD007.pdf.
Letter of February 27, 2019, from Jesse Walls, Senior Director of 
  Government Affairs, National Audubon Society, to Mr. Barrasso 
  and Mr. Carper, submitted by Mr. Tonko.........................   131
Letter of February 27, 2019, from Lonnie R. Stephenson, 
  President, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, to 
  Mr. Barrasso and Mr. Carper, submitted by Mr. Tonko............   132
Letter of February 26, 2019, from Jason Albritton, Director of 
  Climate and Energy Policy, the Nature Conservancy, to Mr. 
  Barrasso and Mr. Carper, submitted by Mr. Tonko................   134
Letter of April 9, 2019, from Hal Quinn, National Mining 
  Association, to Mr. Barrasso, submitted by Mr. Tonko...........   135
Letter of February 27, 2019, from Neil L. Bradley, Executive Vice 
  President and Chief Policy Officer, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 
  to the Senate members, submitted by Mr. Tonko..................   136
Report from World Resources Institute ``CarbonShot: Federal 
  Policy Options for Carbon Removal in the United States'', 
  submitted by Mr. Tonko \2\
Memo of March 20, 2018, from the Congressional Research Service 
  regarding CCUS projects and CO2 pipelines as covered 
  projects under FAST 41 guidance, to Mr. Goldner, submitted by 
  Mr. Tonko......................................................   137

----------
\2\ Report has been retained in committee files and also is 
  available at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF18/20200206/
  110482/HHRG-116-IF18-20200206-SD015.pdf.









 
                 CLEARING THE AIR: LEGISLATION TO PROMOTE
                 CARBON CAPTURE, UTILIZATION, AND STORAGE

                              ----------                              


                       THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2020

                  House of Representatives,
    Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change,
                          Committee on Energy and Commerce,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in 
the John Dingell Room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. 
Paul Tonko (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Members present: Representatives Tonko, Peters, Barragan, 
Blunt Rochester, Soto, DeGette, Schakowsky, Matsui, McNerney, 
Ruiz, Pallone (ex officio), Shimkus (subcommittee ranking 
member), Rodgers, McKinley, Johnson, Long, Mullin, Carter, 
Duncan, and Walden (ex officio).
    Staff present: Jeffrey C. Carroll, Staff Director; Adam 
Fischer, Policy Analyst; Jean Fruci, Energy and Environment 
Policy Advisor; Waverly Gordon, Deputy Chief Counsel; Caitlin 
Haberman, Professional Staff Member; Rick Kessler, Senior 
Advisor and Staff Directory, Energy and Environment; Brendan 
Larkin, Policy Coordinator; Dustin Maghamfar, Air and Climate 
Counsel; Nikki Roy, Policy Coordinator; Mike Bloomquist, 
Minority Staff Director; Peter Kielty, Minority General 
Counsel; Ryan Long, Minority Deputy Staff Director; Mary 
Martin, Minority Chief Counsel, Energy and Environment and 
Climate Change; Brannon Rains, Minority Legislative Clerk; and 
Peter Spencer, Minority Senior Professional Staff Member, 
Environment and Climate Change.
    Mr. Tonko. Good morning, everyone. The Subcommittee on 
Environment and Climate Change will now come to order.
    I recognize myself for 5 minutes for the purpose of an 
opening statement but before we get started, I want to announce 
that Jason Albritton from the Nature Conservancy, who was a 
scheduled witness, will not be able to join us for today's 
hearing. We were told that his wife went into labor this 
morning, and we are wishing them a speedy and safe delivery, 
and we will include his statement for the record.

   OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL TONKO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

    And let me please have the witnesses come to the table, 
please.
    OK, we will applaud the new delivery.
    Thank you, everyone.
    This morning, this subcommittee will examine H.R. 1166, the 
USE IT Act, which was introduced by Representatives Peters, 
McKinley, and Veasey last year.
    There is a wide range of views on carbon capture on this 
subcommittee and I ask my colleagues to set aside any feelings 
you might have about carbon capture in the power sector for the 
next few hours.
    If of you believe, as I do, that we need to achieve net 
zero emissions in the next 30 years or sooner, that means we 
need to develop solutions for difficult to decarbonize sectors 
and processes, along with deploying many more sources of 
negative emissions.
    And if you believe, as I do, that we need major 
infrastructure investments as part of our climate response, 
then we will need low emissions in cement, steel, and other 
industrial products. In some cases, carbon capture is simply 
the best and most viable option for parts of the industrial 
sector.
    The USE IT Act looks beyond traditional carbon capture. The 
bill amends the Clean Air Act to authorize a competitive prize 
for--of $35 million for direct air capture, or DAC, and $50 
million for CO2 utilization R&D.
    Title 2 clarifies CO2 pipelines as being 
eligible covered projects under the FAST Act. Estimates suggest 
that 5 and 15 gigatons of CO2 emissions will need to 
be removed globally every year by 2050 to stay below 1.5 
degrees Celsius of warming and we will need to achieve net 
negative emissions later in this century.
    To date, we have offered minimal Federal R&D funding for 
negative emissions technologies, despite recent recommendations 
from the National Academies for a large and sustained 
commitment.
    Let's be clear. Carbon removal is not a substitute for 
major and rapid emissions reductions but technological and 
natural solutions for carbon removal that stores CO2 
in plants, soils, oceans, geological formations, and products 
will be an important strategy in a comprehensive climate 
response.
    Direct air capture is among the most exciting of these 
technological solutions. DAC has flexibility in where it can be 
sited and can even co-locate with a sequestration or 
utilization site to ensure DAC capacity is available at the 
scale necessary later in this century.
    The Rhodium Group recently estimated that 9 million tons of 
removal capacity will need to be in operation in the year 2030. 
We are a long way from that target today and there are big 
hurdles to get this technology to scale. There is a need for 
low emissions, electrical and thermal energy, and viable 
storage options. And cost remains the biggest challenge, but 
the experience of the past decade with renewables, lithium-ion 
batteries, and other technology shows that R&D investments, 
coupled with smart deployment policies, can drastically reduce 
these costs. We are on the cusp of major breakthroughs but 
innovation requires a holistic approach. R&D for technology 
development is part of the equation but deployment incentives 
like the 45Q tax credit in California's Low Carbon Fuel 
Standard are important to monetize negative emissions 
practices. A Federal carbon pricing program could be structured 
with this in mind as well. Federal support can also help 
develop markets for carbon utilization, including fuels, 
chemicals, cement, and carbon fibers. This is one of the goals 
of the buy clean proposal in our clean future draft.
    While I support many of the concepts in this bill, I 
believe there are ways to improve it. Mr. Shimkus can attest 
that I am not usually one to deny new authorities to EPA but, 
in this case, I believe the Department of Energy is best suited 
to lead Federal CCUS R&D efforts. That is not to say EPA and 
other agencies will not have important roles to play, including 
monitoring and verification of storage sites to ensure carbon 
is staying permanently sequestered.
    I am also interested in how the Federal Government can help 
standardize and verify the greenhouse gas life cycle assessment 
for utilization and sequestration practices. This could help 
foster a common understanding of the net impacts of different 
technologies and methods.
    Finally, the largest current market for CO2 
utilization is enhanced oil recovery. This is concerning, as we 
need to be moving away from the use of petroleum. This makes it 
all the more important and urgent that we develop those new 
markets for alternative uses.
    I look forward to today's discussion and I hope we can 
examine some of these potential issues and work together with 
the bill's sponsors moving forward.
    With that, the Chair now recognizes Mr. Shimkus, our 
ranking member of the Subcommittee on Environment and Climate 
Change for 5 minutes, please, for his opening statement.
    Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Before I start with 
my 5 minutes, I would like to ask unanimous consent to brag for 
a minute on my son.
    Mr. Tonko. Yes.
    Mr. Shimkus. My son has just left the Peace Corps. He is 
working his way back to the United States. I had a book made 
that, when I visited him in Tanzania over Christmas, and I want 
my colleagues to see and share. I am going to take it home 
after this week. So if they are looking through a photo album, 
a real small one, no disrespect to the panel. It is just that I 
want them to see what my son did and I am very proud of him. 
So----
    Mr. Tonko. Well, proud dad, we wish your son well and a 
safe return. And thank you for sharing that. We appreciate his 
service.
    Mr. Shimkus. And my Democratic friends can see it also, if 
they would like.
    Mr. Tonko. Well, thank you for sharing that in a bipartisan 
way.
    Mr. Shimkus. In a bipartisan way.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Tonko follows:]

                 Prepared Statement of Hon. Paul Tonko

    This morning the Subcommittee will examine H.R. 1166, the 
USE IT Act, which was introduced by Representatives Peters, 
McKinley, and Veasey last year.
    There are a wide range of views on carbon capture on this 
Subcommittee. I ask my colleagues to set aside any feelings you 
might have about carbon capture in the power sector for the 
next few hours.
    Because if you believe, as I do, that we need to achieve 
net-zero emissions in the next 30 years- or sooner- that means 
we need to develop solutions for difficult to decarbonize 
sectors and processes, along with deploying many more sources 
of negative emissions.
    And if you believe, as I do, that we need major 
infrastructure investments as part of our climate response, 
then we will need low-emissions cement, steel, and other 
industrial products.
    In some cases, carbon capture is simply the best and most 
viable option for parts of the industrial sector.The USE IT Act 
looks beyond traditional carbon capture.
    The bill amends the Clean Air Act to authorize a 
competitive prize of $35 million for Direct Air Capture, or DAC 
("dack"), and $50 million for CO2 utilization R&D. 
Title II clarifies CO2 pipelines as being eligible 
covered projects under the FAST Act.
    Estimates suggest between 5 and 15 gigatons of 
CO2 emissions will need to be removed globally every 
year by 2050 to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, and 
we will need to achieve net-negative emissions later in the 
century.
    To date, we have offered minimal federal R&D funding for 
negative emissions technologies, despite recent recommendations 
from the National Academies for a large and sustained 
commitment.
    Let's be clear, carbon removal is not a substitute for 
major and rapid emissions reductions.
    But technological and natural solutions for carbon removal 
that stores CO2 in plants, soils, oceans, geological 
formations, and products will be an important strategy in a 
comprehensive climate response.
    Direct Air Capture is among the most exciting of these 
technological solutions. DAC has flexibility in where it can be 
sited and can even co-located with a sequestration or 
utilization site.
    To ensure DAC capacity is available at the scale necessary 
later in the century, the Rhodium Group recently estimated that 
9 million tons of removal capacity will need to be in operation 
in 2030.
    We are a long way from that target today, and there are big 
hurdles to get this technology to scale.
    There is a need for low-emissions electrical and thermal 
energy and viable storage options. And cost remains the biggest 
challenge.
    But the experience in the past decade with renewables, 
lithium-ion batteries, and other technologies shows that R&D 
investments, coupled with smart deployment policies, can 
drastically reduce these costs.
    We are the cusp of major breakthroughs, but innovation 
requires a holistic approach. R&D for technology development is 
part of the equation, but deployment incentives, like the 45Q 
tax credit and California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard, are 
important to monetize negative emissions practices.
    A federal carbon pricing program could be structured with 
this in mind as well.
    Federal support can also help develop markets for carbon 
utilization, including fuels, chemicals, cement, and carbon 
fibers. This is one of the goals of the Buy Clean proposal in 
the CLEAN Future draft.
    While I support many of the concepts in this bill, I 
believe there are ways to improve it.
    Mr. Shimkus can attest that I am not usually one to deny 
new authorities to EPA, but in this case, I believe the 
Department of Energy is best suited to lead federal CCUS R&D 
efforts.
    That is not to say EPA and other agencies will not have 
important roles to play, including monitoring and verification 
of storage sites to ensure carbon is staying permanently 
sequestered.
    I am also interested in how the Federal Government can help 
standardize and verify the GHG lifecycle assessment for 
utilization and sequestration practices. This could help foster 
a common understanding of the net-impacts of different 
technologies and methods.
    Finally, the largest current market for CO2 
utilization is enhanced oil recovery. This is concerning as we 
need to be moving away from the use of petroleum. This makes it 
all the more important and urgent that we develop those new 
markets for alternative uses.
    I look forward to today's discussion. I hope we can examine 
some of these potential issues and work together with the 
bill's sponsors moving forward.

    Mr. Tonko. OK, the Chair now recognizes the proud dad for 5 
minutes.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN SHIMKUS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS

    Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Carbon capture utilization and storage, or CCUS has been an 
important feature of Federal clean energy research and 
development policy for over 15 years. In fact, the DOE has been 
researching Decatur, Illinois, an ADM site. At least a decade, 
they have been doing research there.
    This support has been driven by the plain fact that fossil 
energy, coal, oil, and natural gas, are and will remain central 
to our nation's economy for decades to come. Even accounting 
for accelerating growth of renewables, fossil energies will 
continue to fuel the majority of our nation's electricity 
production, our transportation, and remain absolutely essential 
in a wide range of industrial processes well into the mid-
century and beyond, as last week's annual energy outlook shows.
    And fossil energy will remain dominant throughout the 
developing world, as those nations grow, prosper, and seek the 
tremendous benefits of affordable energy, and industrial 
materials, and mobility, as we have discussed in previous 
hearings. Given this fact, policies that seek to reduce 
greenhouse gas emissions in a way that is economically 
beneficial must build upon our existing energy supply, 
infrastructure, and industrial systems. This is where CCUS can 
serve an essential role.
    While there continue to be technical and economic 
challenges, we are fortunate that innovation and successful 
demonstrations inlarge-scale industrial capture and advances in 
the demonstration of power sector carbon capture have shown the 
viability of these technologies. In addition, given the 
economic value of carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery, 
there is growing demand for infrastructure in the energy 
sector, particularly pipeline infrastructure that can take 
CO2 that has been captured and sequester it, and put 
it to beneficial use, which brings us to the topic of today's 
hearing.
    H.R. 1166, or the USE IT Act introduced by Mr. Peters and 
Mr. McKinley, takes useful steps to accelerate the development 
and deployment of CCUS projects, including expressly direct air 
capture projects, and to help ensure more efficient timely 
permitting on CO2 pipeline infrastructure.
    The bill focuses on EPA's existing nonregulatory authority 
under the Clean Air Act to develop and support a 10-year 
program to award funds for direct air capture research and to 
develop the Federal expertise on this front with a Direct 
Capture Technology Advisory Board.
    The bill also directs EPA to provide, in what will be a 
close collaboration with the Department of Energy, technical 
and additional financial support for carbon utilization 
technologies. And consistent with the agency's existing 
authorities, it directs the agency to report on risks and 
benefits associated with carbon storage in deep saline 
formations.
    The assistance reporting and Federal collaboration that 
would grow out of this portion of the bill would help 
accelerate CCUS technologies, but it would be critical to 
enable the infrastructure for these technologies, which is why 
permitting provisions of the bill are so important. These 
provisions clarify current law by making it explicit that CCUS 
projects, including direct air capture projects, which we will 
hear about today, and carbon dioxide pipelines, can be 
considered, quote, unquote, covered projects under Title 41 of 
the FAST Act. These provisions enhance coordination of 
permitting decisions with a goal of more rapid buildout of 
infrastructure.
    Today, we will hear from several witnesses who can speak to 
climate policy, the innovation, and infrastructure benefits of 
the USE IT Act.
    I would like to welcome the two witnesses in particular. 
Jason Burger from--Begger from Wyoming Infrastructure Authority 
offers a useful perspective on the energy-rich state that is 
seeking to develop energy resources and pipeline infrastructure 
with new cleaner technologies. And that actually, would be very 
applicable to southern Illinois with our margin oil wells and 
our coal formations.
    And Lee Anderson of the Utility Workers Union of America 
can help remind us that behind our energy and electricity 
resources are American workers and their families who can be 
the first to bear the harsh economic impacts of expensive 
regulatory policies we would keep in mind, along with the 
American consumer, as we develop climate policies.
    Mr. Chairman, as you know, this is a thoughtful, widely 
supported bill. It is the kind of bipartisan legislation that 
we know we can enact in law and make meaningful changes to our 
climate policies.
     And with that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the time and 
I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Shimkus follows:]

                Prepared Statement of Hon. John Shimkus

    Carbon capture, utilization, and storage or CCUS has been 
an important feature of federal clean energy R&D and policy 
support for over 15 years.
    This support has been driven by the plain fact that fossil 
energy-coal, oil, and natural gas-is and will remain central to 
the nation's economy for decades to come.
    Even accounting for accelerating growth of renewables, 
fossil energy will continue to fuel the majority of our 
nation's electricity production, our transportation, and remain 
absolutely essential in a wide array of industrial processes 
well into the mid-century and beyond, as last week's Annual 
Energy Outlook shows.
    And fossil energy will remain dominant throughout the 
developing world as those nations grow, prosper, and seek the 
tremendous benefits of affordable energy and industrial 
materials, and mobility, as we've discussed in previous 
hearings.
    Given this fact, policies that seek to reduce greenhouse 
gas emissions in a way that is economically beneficial must 
build upon our existing energy supply, infrastructure and 
industrial systems. This is where CCUS can serve an essential 
role.
    While there continue to be technical and economic 
challenges, we are fortunate that innovations and successful 
demonstrations in large scale industrial carbon capture, and 
advances in the demonstration of power-sector carbon capture 
have shown the viability of these technologies.
    In addition, giving the economic value of carbon dioxide 
for enhanced oil recovery, there is growing demand for 
infrastructure in the energy sector-particularly pipeline 
infrastructure that can take CO2 that has been 
captured and sequester it or put it to beneficial use. Which 
brings us to the topic of today's hearing.
    HR 1166 or the USE It Act, introduced by Mr. Peters and Mr. 
McKinley, takes useful steps to (a) accelerate development and 
deployment of CCUS projects-including especially direct air 
capture projects-and (b) to help ensure more efficient, timely 
permitting on the CO2 pipeline infrastructure.
    The bill focuses on EPA's existing non-regulatory authority 
under the Clean Air Act to develop and support a ten-year 
program to award funds for direct air capture research and to 
develop the federal expertise on this front with a Direct Air 
Capture Technology Advisory Board.
    The bill also directs EPA to provide-in what will be close 
collaboration with the Department of Energy-technical and 
additional financial support for carbon utilization 
technologies. And, consistent with the agency's existing 
authorities, it directs the agency to report on risks and 
benefits associated with carbon storage in deep saline 
formations.
    The assistance, reporting, and federal collaboration that 
would grow out of this portion of the bill should help 
accelerate CCUS technologies. But it will be critical to enable 
the infrastructure for these technologies, which is why the 
permitting provisions of the bill are so important.
    These provisions clarify current law by making explicit 
that CCUS projects-including direct air capture projects, which 
we will hear about today--and carbon dioxide pipelines can be 
considered ``covered projects'' under Title 41 of the FAST Act. 
These provisions enhance coordination of permitting decisions 
with the goal of more rapid build out of infrastructure.
    Today we will hear from several witnesses who can speak to 
the climate policy, the innovation, and the infrastructure 
benefits of the USE It Act.
    I'd like to welcome two witnesses in particular: Jason 
Begger of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority offers the 
useful perspective of an energy rich state that is seeking to 
develop its energy resources and pipeline infrastructure, with 
new, cleaner technologies.And Lee Anderson, of the Utility 
Workers Union of the American, can help remind us that, behind 
our energy and electricity resources are American workers and 
their families, who can be the first to bear the harsh economic 
impacts of expensive regulatory policies. We should keep them 
in mind, along with the American consumer as we develop climate 
policies.
    Mr. Chairman, as you know, this is a thoughtful, widely 
supported bill. It is the kind of broad bi-partisan legislation 
that we know we can enact in law and make meaningful changes to 
our climate policies.
    We have already missed opportunities to enact versions of 
the legislation. I am encouraged that the Majority wants to 
move this bill and will work with you to ensure that happens 
successfully.

    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Pallone, chairman 
of the full committee, for 5 minutes for his opening statement, 
please.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE 
            IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

    TheChairman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The pictures in that book with your son are beautiful. You 
took the pictures? Wow, they are really nice.
    Mr. Shimkus. Shocking, yes?
    TheChairman. No, no, it is really--it is nice.
    I am pleased to be here this morning to discuss H.R. 1166, 
the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative 
Technologies Act. This is a bipartisan bill introduced by 
Representatives Peters, McKinley, and Veasey. It is designed to 
advance carbon capture storage and utilization, important 
components of combating the climate crisis, as this committee 
works to reach a hundred percent clean economy.
    In earlier hearings on the climate crisis, we consistently 
heard that we must develop and deploy technologies to capture 
and store carbon to prevent it from further elevating 
greenhouse gas pollution. And earlier this week, a group of 
carbon capture experts said that we may need as many as 2,000 
carbon capture facilities by 2040 to reach the mid-century 
goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.
    Clearly, we must find ways to remove carbon from waste 
streams and from the atmosphere and store it permanently and 
safely. We also need to develop new processes to convert carbon 
waste streams into durable products. Unfortunately, steel, 
cement, and other industrial manufacturing activities will 
likely continue to require fossil fuels and, therefore, for 
these industries, carbon capture and sequestration are 
essential. They are needed to achieve the deep greenhouse gas 
pollution reductions that science says are required.
    So there is a lot we must do to achieve these goals. We 
have to bring the cost of carbon capture down. We have to 
support research and development of new carbon-based products, 
and we must gain experience with carbon storage that is 
verified by monitoring and reporting programs to ensure carbon 
is being stored permanently and safely. And we also need 
policies that mandate the control of carbon pollution directly 
or indirectly.
    The bill H.R. 1166 addresses some of these important goals 
and I commend the bill's sponsors for their efforts. At the 
same time, I believe the bill could be strengthened to more 
effectively reduce emissions.
    First, I believe that the Department of Energy, which has 
pursued research, development, and demonstration of carbon 
capture and sequestration for many years, should play a larger 
role.
    Second, while enhanced oil recovery is still the most 
profitable use for captured carbon, we will not make real 
progress in reducing climate pollution unless there is 
significant net storage associated with it.
    And I am concerned, or I should say; third I am concerned 
that the bill focuses too heavily on streamlining pipeline 
construction. I would like to see it provide a lot more 
direction on medium- to long-term planning for a time when 
enhanced oil recovery will not be the dominant use of captured 
carbon.
    I also want to work with the sponsors to ensure the bill 
does more to ensure that captured carbon is safely and 
permanently sequestered. I have concerns about the EPA's track 
record of enforcing the requirements for companies claiming the 
sovereign sequestration tax credit. We must also strengthen 
EPA's underground injection control program to ensure that it 
protects underground sources of drinking water. This is 
particularly important as climate change stresses those sources 
in new ways.
    H.R. 1166 makes a significant down payment on crucial 
innovation in carbon dioxide removal and CCS technologies. And 
that is important. I also think we must do far more to 
effectively tackle the climbing prices.
    And I commend the bill's sponsors for their leadership on 
this issue. I hope we can continue to work together to 
strengthen it and gain additional support from members on both 
sides.
    We have excellent witnesses today. I am looking forward to 
their testimony but I want to yield my remaining time to 
Representative Peters, who is the sponsor of the bill.
    Mr. Peters. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased 
to be here today to talk about the USE IT Act, which we proudly 
introduced with Representatives McKinley, Veasey, Schweikert, 
and Bustos, and Senators Whitehouse and Barrasso in the Senate.
    Although the global carbon budget projected U.S. emissions 
to fall 1.7 percent in 2019, we are still running a huge 
emissions deficit by any accounting standards. And to reach net 
zero by 2050, scientists tell us that emissions must fall by 
about eight percent every year over the next decade.
    The Democrats on this committee have released draft 
legislation proposing how to close the emissions gap by 
investing in clean energy and efficiency, retrofitting 
buildings, decarbonizing cement, steel, and plastics, 
increasing public transportation, and even planning--reducing 
deforestation, even planting new trees to increase carbon 
storage.
    In the words of Chairman Tonko, our committee has, quote, 
harvested the low-hanging fruit, energy efficiency, 
conservation weatherization research, and grid modernization 
but we have to be more ambitious, as I think the chairman 
explained.
    Experts before this committee have testified that we can't 
reach net zero by 2050, unless we figure out a way to 
decarbonize cement, steel, and plastics in the industrial 
sector, and aviation, and shipping in the transportation 
sector.
    Today we are going to hear why USE IT is as important to a 
small company like LanzaTech, a bio startup--a biotech startup 
figuring out how to scale up technologies that convert 
CO2 into fuel and other valuable projects, as it is 
to the State of Wyoming's infrastructure authority, which has 
been working with DOE for years to develop large scale 
integrated CCS projects. USE IT is a standalone bill but it is 
a vital complement to this committee's climate priorities and I 
look forward to the testimony today. I thank the witnesses and 
I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr.

    I'm pleased to be here this morning to discuss H.R. 1166, 
the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative 
Technologies Act. This is a bipartisan bill introduced by 
Representatives Peters, McKinley and Veasey. It is designed to 
advance carbon capture, storage and utilization--important 
components of combatting the climate crisis as this committee 
works to reach a 100 percent clean economy.
    In our earlier hearings on the climate crisis we 
consistently heard that we must develop and deploy technologies 
to capture and store carbon to prevent it from further 
elevating greenhouse gas pollution. Earlier this week, a group 
of carbon capture experts said that we may need as many as 
2,000 carbon capture facilities by 2040 to reach the mid-
century goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.
    Clearly, we must find ways to remove carbon from waste 
streams and from the atmosphere and store it permanently and 
safely. We also need to develop new processes to convert carbon 
waste streams into durable products. Unfortunately, steel, 
cement and other industrial manufacturing activities will 
likely continue to require fossil fuels, and therefore, for 
these industries, carbon capture and sequestration are 
essential. They are needed to achieve the deep greenhouse gas 
pollution reductions that science says is required.
    There is a lot we must do to achieve these goals. We must 
bring the costs of carbon capture down. We must support 
research and development of new carbon-based products. And, we 
must gain experience with carbon storage that is verified by 
monitoring and reporting programs to ensure carbon is being 
stored permanently and safely. We also need policies that 
mandate the control of carbon pollution directly or indirectly.
    H.R. 1166 addresses some of these important goals, and I 
commend the bill's sponsors for their efforts. At the same 
time, I believe the bill could be strengthened to more 
effectively reduce emissions.
    First, I believe that the Department of Energy, which has 
pursued research, development and demonstration of carbon 
capture and sequestration (CCS) for many years, should play a 
larger role.
    Second, while enhanced oil recovery is still the most 
profitable use for captured carbon, we will not make real 
progress in reducing climate pollution unless there is 
significant net storage associated with it.
    Third, the bill also focuses heavily on streamlining 
pipeline construction. I would like to see it provide more 
direction on medium to long-term planning for a time when 
enhanced oil recovery will not be the dominant use of captured 
carbon.
    I also want to work with the sponsors to ensure the bill 
does more to ensure that captured carbon is safely and 
permanently sequestered. I have concerns about the 
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) track record of 
enforcing the requirements for companies claiming the carbon 
sequestration tax credit. We must also strengthen EPA's 
Underground Injection Control Program to ensure that it 
protects underground sources of drinking water. This is, 
particularly important as climate change stresses those sources 
in new ways.
    H.R. 1166 makes a significant down payment on crucial 
innovation in carbon dioxide removal and CCS technologies -and 
that's very important. I also think we must do far more to 
effectively tackle the climate crisis. I commend the bill 
sponsors for their leadership on this issue. I hope we can 
continue to work together to strengthen it and gain additional 
support from members on both sides of the aisle.
    We have an excellent panel of witnesses here today. I look 
forward to hearing their testimony and recommendations for 
improving this legislation.

    Thank you, I yield my remaining time to Rep. Peters, the 
sponsor of the bill.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now 
recognizes Representative Walden, ranking member of the full 
committee for 5 minutes for his opening statement.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
               CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON

    Mr. Walden. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. It is Thursday. It 
is OK.
    H.R. 1166, the USE IT Act, sponsored by Mr. Peters and Mr. 
McKinley, is a practical, it is a widely supported, and it is a 
bipartisan piece of climate legislation. Versions of this 
legislation were passed out of the Senate last year. We 
included it in the Republican 12 and 20 packages, 12 bipartisan 
bills with the USE IT Act at the top we can enact into law. It 
is a bill that we know can make a meaningful difference for our 
economy and for addressing climate risks.
    The USE IT Act provides the Environmental Protection Agency 
direction under existing authorities and in coordination with 
the Department of Energy to foster innovations in carbon 
capture technologies and improve scientific understanding of 
carbon sequestration. The bill addresses permitting delays and 
it will ensure more timely deployment of these technologies and 
pipeline infrastructure essential to these innovative 
technologies to succeed economically.
    This important bill is not complicated. It authorizes 
targeted financial support and it will generate useful 
information to assess technological deployment. Furthermore, it 
builds upon the bipartisan work of past Congresses, like 
reforms to our tax code to encourage more investment in carbon 
capture and storage.
    There will be additional practical and achievable steps the 
administration and Congress will have to take to clear paths 
for these innovative technologies to assist with cleaner energy 
systems, but this is exactly how we implement workable climate 
policies.
    And what results can we expect to see from implementing 
workable climate policies? Well, a recent report from the 
National Petroleum Council on carbon capture technologies 
points out that, over the next two decades, global GDP is 
expected to double. With this tremendous growth in prosperity, 
billions of people will be lifted out of poverty and the 
increases in prosperity will be enabled by a 25 percent, a 30 
percent increase in energy demands. So energy demand is going 
to go up 25 to 30 percent, as a result of growth in the 
worldwide economy.
    This demand, as we have examined in past hearings, will 
depend upon affordable, reliable energy and this is a growth 
that will drive the bulk of future greenhouse gas emissions in 
the world going forward. So by developing American energy 
resources, by exploring the fruits of our energy revolution, by 
developing advanced technologies like CCUS and perfecting their 
deployment, we can enjoy the economic and environmental 
benefits of exporting our innovations to these developing 
nations. Practical policies that promote competitive 
development of our own resources, not through top-down 
regulation and taxation but through American ingenuity and 
innovation is how we can best address global emissions.
    Our witnesses this morning will be able to talk about the 
importance of these bills for expanding our existing resources 
and infrastructure. It is a good start, Mr. Chairman, and I 
look forward to continuing to work with you to move this 
legislation forward.
    And let me say I agree with the majority. We need climate 
action. That is why we cannot let another opportunity slip by. 
You see we have already missed two opportunities to get the USE 
IT Act enacted.
    There was a three-corners agreement on a version of this 
legislation in the Defense Authorization Act. We were at the 
table to negotiate but, unfortunately, the majority pulled the 
plug.
    There was another opportunity in the year-end spending 
bill. Unfortunately, the majority again said no.
    So, let's not let another opportunity slip by and I hope we 
can look at other practical measures that we can enact into 
law. There are other bipartisan measures we can and should 
move.
    Just last week, we held an informative hearing on wildfires 
and I appreciate the committee doing that, the upshot of which 
was there was wide agreement that implementing active forest 
management will help reduce risks of fire and increase 
opportunities for resilient, sustainable forests. And by the 
way, healthy green forests sequester carbon. There is a bill 
for that and there is a bill to restore burned forests to plant 
trees to increase carbon sinks and provide for a healthier 
economy as well.
    So there are more bills like this to consider, Mr. 
Chairman, where I think we can find common ground. I am hopeful 
we can start working on the measures we agree upon and get them 
into law. These are the types of concrete legislative steps we 
can take right now to make progress.
    And so, I do look forward to working with you, Mr. 
Chairman, and I yield back a full minute and seven seconds.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Walden follows:]

                 Prepared Statement of Hon. Greg Walden

    H.R. 1166, the USE IT Act, sponsored by Mr. Peters and Mr. 
McKinley is a practical, widely supported, bipartisan bill. 
Versions of this legislation were passed out of the Senate last 
year and we included it in our 12 in '20 package. Twelve 
bipartisan bills--with the USE IT Act at the top--that we can 
enact into law. It is the kind of bill we know can make a 
meaningful difference for our economy and for addressing 
climate risks.
    The USE IT Act provides the Environmental Protection Agency 
direction, under existing authorities and in coordination with 
the Department of Energy, to foster innovations in carbon 
capture technologies and improve scientific understanding of 
carbon sequestration.
    The bill addresses permitting delays and it will ensure 
more timely deployment of these technologies and pipeline 
infrastructure-essential for these innovative technologies to 
succeed economically.
    This important bill is not complicated. It authorizes 
targeted financial support and it will generate useful 
information to assist technological deployment. Furthermore, it 
builds upon the bipartisan work of past Congresses, like 
reforms to our tax code to encourage more investment in carbon 
capture and storage.
    There will be additional practical and achievable steps the 
Administration and Congress will have to take to clear the path 
for these innovative technologies, to assist with cleaner 
energy systems. But this is exactly how we implement workable 
climate policies.
    And what results can we expect to see from implementing 
workable climate policies?
    A recent report from the National Petroleum Council on 
carbon capture technologies points out that, over the next two 
decades, global GDP is expected to double. With this tremendous 
growth in prosperity, billions of people will be lifted out of 
poverty. And the increase in prosperity will be enabled by a 
25% to 30% increase in energy demand.
    This demand, as we've examined in past hearings, will 
depend on affordable, reliable energy - and this is the growth 
that will drive the bulk of future greenhouse gas emissions in 
the world.
    By developing our American energy resources, by exporting 
the fruits of our energy revolution, by developing advanced 
technologies like CCUS and perfecting their deployment, we can 
enjoy the economic and environmental benefits of exporting our 
innovations to these developing nations.
    Practical policies that promote competitive development of 
our own resources, not through top-down regulation and 
taxation, but through American ingenuity and innovation is how 
we can best address global emissions.
    Our witnesses this morning will be able to talk about the 
importance of bills like this, for expanding our existing 
resources and infrastructure. This is a good start, Mr. 
Chairman. I look forward to working with you to move this 
legislation.
    And, let me say, I agree with the majority - we need 
climate action. That's why we cannot let another opportunity 
slip by. You see, we've already missed two opportunities to get 
the USE IT Act enacted; there was a three corners agreement on 
a version of this legislation in the Defense Authorization Act. 
We were at the table to negotiate, but the Majority pulled the 
plug. There was another opportunity in the year end spending 
deal, but the Majority again said no.
    We should not let more opportunities slip by.
    And I hope we can look at other practical measures that we 
can enact into law. There are other bi-partisan measures we can 
move.
    Just last week we held an informative hearing on wildfires, 
the upshot of which was that there was wide agreement that 
implementing active forest management will reduce fire risks 
and increase the opportunity for more resilient, sustainable 
forests; there's a bill for that. There's a bill to restore 
burned forests, to plant trees to increase carbon sinks and 
provide for a healthier economy.
    There are many more bills like this to consider. So, I am 
hopeful we can start working on the measures we can agree upon. 
These are the types of concrete legislative steps we can take--
right now--to make progress. I am looking forward to working 
with you.

    Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair would like to remind Members that, pursuant to 
committee rules, all Members written opening statements shall 
be made part of the record.
    We now introduce the witnesses for today's hearing. And 
again, thank you, one and all, for joining us and sharing your 
thoughts and solutions with us.
    First, we begin with Mr. Sasha Mackler, Director of the 
Energy Project Bipartisan Policy Center; next, we have Mr. John 
Noel, Senior Climate Campaigner with Greenpeace USA; then, Mr. 
Jason Begger, Executive Director of the Wyoming Infrastructure 
Authority; then, Dr. Laurel Harmon, Vice President of 
LanzaTech, Inc.; and finally, Mr. Lee Anderson, Government 
Affairs Director of the Utility Workers Union of America, AFL-
CIO.
    Before we begin, I would like to explain the lighting 
system. In front of you are a series of lights. The light will 
initially be green. The light will turn yellow when you have 1-
minute remaining. Please begin to wrap up your testimony at 
that point. The light will turn red when your time expires.
    At this time, the Chair now recognizes Mr. Mackler for 5 
minutes, please, to provide your opening statement.

  STATEMENTS OF MIKAEL SASHA MACKLER, DIRECTOR OF THE ENERGY 
  PROJECT BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER; JOHN NOEL, SENIOR CLIMATE 
    CAMPAIGNER WITH GREENPEACE USA; JASON BEGGER, EXECUTIVE 
   DIRECTOR OF THE WYOMING INFRASTRUCTURE AUTHORITY; LAUREL 
   HARMON, PhD., VICE PRESIDENT OF LANZATECH, INC.; AND LEE 
 ANDERSON, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS DIRECTOR OF THE UTILITY WORKERS 
                   UNION OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO

               STATEMENT OF MIKAEL SASHA MACKLER

    Mr. Mackler. Thanks and good morning. As you said, I am 
Sasha Mackler and I direct the Energy Project at the Bipartisan 
Policy Center.
    I am delighted to be here this morning on behalf of the BPC 
to express support for the USE IT Act. BPC believes that the 
only way to confront the climate challenge is to dramatically 
accelerate the development and deployment of carbon-free energy 
systems that are cost-competitive with traditional options and 
the USE IT Act is a critical step and a bipartisan step in this 
direction for carbon capture.
    I should also note at the outset that in addition to my 
work on Energy Policy at the BPC, I spent a number of years 
recently working in the private sector as a developer of carbon 
capture projects. Through this experience, I can offer a 
firsthand account of the challenges facing CCUS development and 
I can attest to the need for more targeted Federal support, if 
we are serious about bringing carbon capture into the 
marketplace in a meaningful timeframe.
    BPC is enthusiastic to support the USE IT Act. It focuses 
on a set of technologies that will be critical to achieving our 
twin goals of mitigating climate change and keeping America's 
economy strong for this century and beyond.
    My testimony this morning will focus on four main points: 
first, the importance of innovation; second, the critical role 
that carbon capture utilization and storage must play in 
decarbonizing our energy system; third, the unique role that 
direct air capture, or DAC, could play in managing climate 
risks; and finally, the significance of utilization in the 
trajectory of scaling carbon capture systems.
    At the outset, I think it is useful to step back and remind 
ourselves of the role of technology innovation and how it has 
always played a key role the success of our nation. The Federal 
Government's willingness to invest in key technologies at key 
junctures from the space race to the IT revolution has been 
crucial to navigating past eras of economic transformation. 
Today, we face another such transformation and it is every bit 
as challenging as the ones that defined previous eras, the 
transformation to a net zero economy by mid-century.
    And time is not on our side. We need to reduce global 
emissions to net zero by 2050. That is only three short decades 
from now. To achieve our climate goals, we need more and better 
tools than we have now and that is where carbon capture comes 
in.
    We need these technologies because we simply don't have 
non-fossil fuel alternatives for all the energy-using sectors 
of our economy, including applications such as long-haul air 
travel or some industrial processes.
    How can carbon capture help? Carbon capture from industrial 
sources offers a way to capture CO2 from smokestacks 
and prevent it from going into the atmosphere. Another class of 
carbon capture technologies, often called direct air capture or 
DAC, offers a way to remove CO2 from the ambient 
air.
    And DAC is worth focusing on for a minute because it has 
gotten less attention in the past but that is changing really 
quickly, as many are increasingly seeing the advantages of 
adding DAC to our climate toolkit. The key virtue of DAC is 
that it can be used to remove CO2 already in the 
atmosphere and if we can make work at reasonable cost, it will 
give us a tool for reversing past emissions and, in effect, 
canceling out new emissions that have no practical way to be 
avoided.
    But the only way that DAC will be ready to play a 
significant role is if the Government helps to jumpstart it. 
USE IT does this by creating incentives for technology 
development and by enabling permitting improvements for 
projects and their supporting infrastructure. So this is the 
feature of the legislation that we are particularly 
enthusiastic about.
    Another feature of the USE IT Act I want to draw attention 
to is its focus on CO2 utilization. This is critical 
because it can help make the economics of DAC or carbon capture 
work in the near-term. Potential uses for CO2 are 
actually not too hard to think up. CO2 can be used 
as a feedstock for cement or synthetic fuels but the biggest 
immediate market for large quantities of CO2 today 
is in the oil industry for enhanced oil recovery.
    On balance, we at BPC have concluded that carbon capture 
with enhanced oil recovery is worth pursuing, both because it 
offers immediate benefits in terms of reducing the net 
emissions associated with oil production and because of the 
synergies it affords in terms of engaging a major industrial 
partner, accessing potentially large sources of private capital 
for technology development and infrastructure buildout, and 
developing the needed regulatory frameworks for carbon storage. 
And we are not alone in reaching this conclusion. A number of 
prominent environmentalists also agree.
    So in closing, I want to thank the subcommittee again for 
this opportunity to testify and explain some of the reasons why 
we at the BPC support the USE IT Act. Technology innovation has 
always been America's superpower and it remains our best bet 
today.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Mackler follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much.
    Now, we recognize Mr. Noel. You are recognized for 5 
minutes, please.

                     STATEMENT OF JOHN NOEL

    Mr. Noel. Thank you. Chairman Tonko, Ranking Member 
Shimkus, members of the committee, thank you for inviting me to 
testify today. It is an honor.
    My name is John Noel and I am a senior climate campaigner 
at Greenpeace USA.
    We are not opposed to the provisions in the USE IT Act that 
support carbon utilization research. And of course, science and 
technology are going to play a major role in addressing the 
climate crisis but we do need a vision for carbon removal that 
is fully decoupled from oil production.
    The amount of carbon we have to potentially remove is 
entirely up to us and what we do right now this decade. The oil 
and gas growth paradigm makes this difficult and that is what I 
am here to add context to about today and why we are skeptical 
of any policy that would strengthen the oil industry in the 
name of climate action. We see addressing the climate crisis 
and growing the fossil fuel industry is mutually exclusive.
    We cannot escape the fact that absolute demand for and 
production of fossil fuels must decline rapidly. This necessary 
decline in oil production calls into question the wisdom of 
incentivizing enhanced oil recovery. As written, the USE IT Act 
does not provide any guardrails to ensure that it will not lead 
to decades of increased oil production. If it is, indeed, an 
onramp to a broader decarbonization agenda, where is the 
requisite off ramp for fossil fuels?
    Proponents reported that the EOR industry could triple in 
size by 2030, with 375 million barrels of additional annual 
production. This would likely only occur under scenarios where 
the U.S. production continues to expand in the coming decade, 
rather than declining at a pace consistent with the 1.5 
scenarios.
    Proponents are also clear that the long-term growth for the 
industry is constrained by a lack of access to consistent 
sources of CO2 and pipelines are needed to expand. 
Companies see the future that a subsidized EOR industry could 
unlock and the resource estimates we are talking about here are 
breathtaking in the context of an unfolding climate crisis.
    Advanced Resources International says there are 284 billion 
barrels of additional oil that are technically favorable to 
CO2 injection but the industry intends to step 
beyond just aging conventional oil fields and apply the 
technology to unconventional resources, as I talk more about in 
my written testimony. The expansion into unconventional 
resources complicates the oil industry's carbon storage 
narrative, as storage in unconventional resources is not well 
understood. We also note that CO2 EOR operations are 
in addition to the rest of the industry's growing production 
pie. Nowhere in this discussion is there commitment to a 
managed phaseout of production in line with climate science. It 
is net expansion.
    Part of the justification used for EOR and incentives 
created by the USE IT Act is that these same productive oil 
formations could someday be converted to long-term storage. A 
2010 DOE paper determined that it does not make sense as a 
mitigation tool to construct pipelines to oil fields to expand 
EOR without first establishing that suitable long-term storage 
capacity exists. This is not happening, as I talk more about in 
my written testimony.
    IEA goes further and says we need a, quote, paradigm shift 
in regulations from the way EOR is currently practiced. I do 
not see the oil industry welcoming a paradigm shift in 
regulation. At this very moment, oil interests are working to 
undermine the existing secure geologic storage regulations 
under Section 45Q. This is a tax credit as part of the system 
of incentives designed to drive new carbon capture investment.
     Senator Menendez recently sent a letter to the IRS 
Inspector General calling for an investigation into section 
45Q, quote: publicly available data suggests that the vast 
majority of 45Q tax credits claimed have come absent the 
required the monitoring, reporting, and verification systems 
that ensure the safe disposal of captured carbon, in clear 
contravention of current law and guidance. End quote.
    This is the type of the regulatory framework and associated 
tax incentives that this legislation is born into and we think 
that it ensures that the industry will pocket these subsidies, 
continue on its current course of full-throttle expansion, and 
fight any additional policies to reduce our dependence on oil. 
The industry's campaign to undermine true climate solutions in 
order to maintain demand is real and well-documented. EOR 
cannot be siloed off from the rest of a company's portfolio or 
business strategy. Climate science and carbon math are not 
complete without an honest analysis of political power.
     Thank you for your consideration of these risks.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Noel follows:]

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
    
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much, Mr. Noel.
    Mr. Begger, you are now recognized for 5 minutes, please.

                   STATEMENT OF JASON BEGGER

    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of 
the subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with 
you today.
    My name is Jason Begger, and I am the Executive Director of 
the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority. The WIA is tasked with 
promoting and assisting the development of energy 
infrastructure in deploying technology. We are focused on 
solutions.
    Our largest current project is the Wyoming Integrated Test 
Center, which is a public-private partnership between the State 
of Wyoming, Basin Electric Power Cooperative, Tri-State 
Transmission and Generation Association, and the National Rural 
Electric Cooperatives Association. The ITC is a post-combustion 
research facility located at Basin Electric's Dry Fork Power 
Station near Gillette, Wyoming. It is the largest facility of 
its kind in the U.S., providing much-needed scaleup space to 
learn--to better learn how to reduce the costs and find new 
methods of capture in managing CO2 afterwards.
    At the top of our utilization efforts is a partnership with 
the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, which will award $20 million in 
prizes to teams that are best able to convert CO2 
into other valuable products, such as carbon nanotubes, 
methanol, building materials, polymers, and plastics. Wyoming 
is also developing a project with Japan and Columbia University 
to convert CO2 into calcium carbonate.
    While developing high-tech products capture the 
imagination, the reality is we will require a wide array of 
options, including enhanced oil recovery and geologic 
sequestration. EOR is an attractive early option, due to the 
fact that it produces revenue and can help with the economics 
until capture costs are reduced in future years.
    On the utilization side, the market for carbon nanotubes is 
small, whereas, concrete is immense but a lower value product. 
Determining how to best manage carbon is a large puzzle of 
factors, including geology, markets for products, and pipeline 
infrastructure. If the U.S. is going to permanently sequester 
CO2, the country will need a massive expansion of 
pipelines to carry the carbon from places it is produced to the 
places it can be used.
    For example, there is an extraordinary amount of 
CO2 produced by Midwestern ethanol facilities. 
However, they are located hundreds of miles from places with 
the right geology for permanent storage for EOR and no pipeline 
exists in the Midwest. The current CO2 pipeline 
network is about 5,000 miles of fragmented lines, compared to 
the current natural gas pipeline network, which is 60 times 
larger, about 300,000 miles. We will need a comparable network 
of CO2 pipelines to move carbon from sources to 
sinks.
    Further complicating pipeline buildout is many of the 
places with the best geology have a Federal lands nexus, which 
triggers National Environmental Policy Act reviews. A typical 
project with mixed Federal, State, and privately-owned lands 
may require upwards of 30 reviews, permits, and approvals from 
various regulatory bodies. If it crosses multiple states, this 
number increases accordingly.
     NEPA analyses were historically completed in relatively 
short timeframes. Unfortunately, they have evolved in such a 
way that they may take upwards of a decade and tens of millions 
of dollars to complete. The NEPA analysis and permitting for a 
wind farm in Wyoming and accompanying multi-State transmission 
line has cost over $200 million and has taken ten years.
    In Wyoming, a right-of-way application for a 200-mile 
CO2 pipeline project was submitted in February 2013. 
Six years later, in February of 2019, they finally received the 
Record-of-Decision from the Bureau of Land Management. Delays 
such as these affect the economics and viability of projects, 
not to mention the lost years of carbon reductions.
    In an attempt to expedite the development of pipeline 
infrastructure, Wyoming launched the Wyoming Pipeline Corridor 
Initiative. This effort has identified the areas best suited to 
site projects, ideally near existing infrastructure and away 
from environmentally sensitive areas and critical wildlife 
habitats. In December 2019, the BLM closed a comment period on 
the proposal. We hope this initiative can shave years off the 
permitting process.
    Oftentimes, we focus on the various pieces of carbon 
management and do not consider the entire system and necessary 
links to make it a reality. H.R. 1166 is very important to that 
effort, as it provides both critical fundings for the 
utilization of technologies and a mechanism to accelerate the 
construction of the CO2 pipeline infrastructure that 
will be necessary.
    I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today and 
will gladly answer any questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Begger follows:]

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    Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Begger.
    Dr. Harmon, you are now recognized for 5 minutes, please.
    Your mike, please.

                STATEMENT OF LAUREL HARMON, PhD.

    Dr. Harmon. I just wanted to thank you, Chairman, Ranking 
Member, and members of the committee. On behalf of LanzaTech, 
for whom I am the Vice President of Government Relations, I am 
here to share our story of carbon capture and utilization to, I 
hope, explain to you that this is, in fact important, real, and 
accessible today and, at the same time, share, through our 
experience, why the research and development provisions in CCU 
that are in the USE IT Act are so important to advance the 
technology.
    Carbon capture and utilization is an approach which will 
actually take carbon, which currently looks like an 
environmental liability, and turns it into an economic 
opportunity, creating jobs and creating new sustainable 
products.
    LanzaTech was actually founded with the vision that carbon 
needs to be treated as a resource and that we need to find ways 
to reuse all carbon that has already served a function and turn 
it into products which then can supplement, replace those 
products which we currently rely on from petroleum and other 
virgin fossil sources. In particular, as we look ahead to a 
decarbonized world, we will need carbon-dense fuels for 
aviation. We will continue to need materials from--that are 
carbon-based materials.
    So we are a biotech company. We are located in Skokie, 
Illinois, where we have about 130 people in Representative 
Schakowsky's district. We certainly appreciate the support we 
have gotten over the years. We are privately held. We have 
raised over $340 million of capital from diverse global 
investors, all of whom see the value of CCU.
    And in particular, I would like to emphasize that we are a 
technology----
    Mr. Tonko. Dr. Harmon, I hate to interrupt you. Can you 
move the mike just a bit----
    Dr. Harmon. Certainly.
    Mr. Tonko [continue]. Because it is not recording on--OK. 
Thank you.
    Dr. Harmon. Is that better?
    We, as a technology-licensed----
    Mr. Shimkus. But you need to mention Schakowsky's name one 
more time so it really gets out there.
    Dr. Harmon. OK, I will say that very loudly.
    So as a technology-licensor, the capital that we have 
raised has all been for the purposes of technology development 
and the technology is now being implemented throughout the 
world.
    Our focus is on industrial carbon capture and utilization 
and our first target is in the steel sector. Our technology 
uses an ancient biological pathway in which microbes actually 
consume CO2 instead of sugars in a fermentation that 
then produces ethanol, produces other chemicals, and we have 
platforms and partnerships to take our fermentation products 
and turn them into aviation fuel, into chemicals, and into, 
ultimately, textiles and other types of durable goods.
    An important element, if we are looking at steel emissions, 
is that the steel sector produces emissions that are very 
highly concentrated in carbon monoxide. And in fact, carbon 
monoxide is the primary thing which our fermentation uses as 
its feedstock. And, therefore, it is very important, when we 
think about utilization at large and, in fact, for USE IT, that 
the utilization provisions extend not only to CO2 
but to carbon monoxide, in the form of carbon oxides, as 
expressed in 45Q.
    I would like to share that our technology is gas 
fermentation technology, which I have written about more in the 
written testimony, is, in fact operating commercially, directly 
producing ethanol from steel mill emissions. And we have taken 
the ethanol produced from steel mill emissions and produced jet 
fuel, which has been used in both a transpacific and a 
transatlantic flight.
    When we think about ethanol as a platform, it is suitable 
as a pathway to plastics, to the types of fuels that I 
mentioned but, in addition, technology such as ours can 
directly produce chemical intermediates that end up on 
coatings, in plastics, in jackets that people wear, or in yoga 
pants.
    And so in closing, I would like to emphasize that the 
journey from an idea and a new technology to a commercial plant 
operating in the real world has taken 14 years and significant 
investment. And therefore, the investment in R&D represented by 
USE IT is extremely important to advance this industry.
    So thank you, and I appreciate the opportunity, and look 
forward to any questions. [The prepared statement of Dr. Harmon 
follows:]

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    Mr. Tonko. Thank you so much, Dr. Harmon.
    And now, Mr. Anderson, you are recognized for 5 minutes, 
please.

                   STATEMENT OF LEE ANDERSON

    Mr. Anderson. Thank you, Chairman Tonko, Ranking Member 
Shimkus, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. My name 
is Lee Anderson and I am the Government Affairs Director for 
the Utility Workers Union of America.
    The Utility Workers Union represents around 50,000 workers 
in the electric, gas, nuclear, and water utility sectors. It is 
a truism, at this point, that the manner in which the world 
generates electricity is evolving rapidly. The Utility Workers 
recognize that this change is being driven by economics, by the 
recognition that global climate change is happening, and that 
it is the result of manmade carbon emissions.
    That point is clear. The need to manage carbon emissions at 
scale globally is urgent. We must decarbonize our economy; 
however, we must do so in a manner that does not crash local 
and regional economies. To date, however, change has been 
occurring randomly, even chaotically, in the absence of a 
comprehensive plan for how to curb emissions without disrupting 
our economy.
    The closure of a power plant means the loss of many 
hundreds of jobs for working people directly employed in the 
operation and maintenance of these large facilities. As these 
plants are often situated in areas that make them the best 
source of high-quality employment for many miles around, the 
challenges these workers often face in seeking new equivalent 
employment can range from difficult to nearly insurmountable. 
This is why we will continue to fight for the survival of all 
of our facilities, the employment of workers, and the stability 
of their communities wherever we see hope for the future, 
particularly through the use of science.
    Technology enabling the decarbonization of power plants 
holds the potential to change the economics of a facility, 
enabling it to compete with other generation options and the 
opportunity for these workforces to make their contribution in 
the fight against global climate change, all while preserving 
the culture and social fabric of families, communities, and way 
of life that, once lost, can never be replaced. This is the 
simple reason why we support the USE IT Act.
    Policy choices, or the lack thereof, have very real human 
consequences. Using public policy to advance research and 
development on carbon capture technology will make it easier 
and cheaper to build these systems at scale. Moving the science 
through successive generations, driving down costs, innovating 
ever-better approaches to the problem of carbon emissions, all 
this adds up to a greater ability to operate power plants as 
cleanly and efficiently as possible and retain them for what 
they are--critical infrastructure, providing an essential 
public service and anchor institutions that underpin the lives 
of workers, their families, and their communities.
    Indeed, the follow-on effects to communities, with the loss 
of many thousands of jobs indirectly supported by these plants, 
the shuttering of small businesses dependent on the middle-
class workers in the power sector as their customers, as well 
as the impact on town and county budgets after the loss of 
significant portions of their annual tax revenues due to the 
closer of these large plants, have all too often added up to a 
landscape of cultural and personal destruction.
    For our members, then, the best outcome will always be to 
keep their families and communities intact but this outcome 
requires retaining the economic anchors that make that 
possible. When facilities close, very soon families disperse, 
towns haul out, and what is left behind are empty desks in the 
schools, empty pews in the churches, and empty coffers in local 
government budgets.
    Although we also call on policy leaders to develop a system 
that addresses the needs of workers and communities in the 
aftermath of plant closures, the reality is that this remains 
almost entirely in the realm of the hypothetical, one that is 
meaningless for those who have already lost their jobs, and for 
those who will continue to do so, unless we can harness 
technology to retain the assets that make these jobs possible 
in the first place.
    Without this ability, workers with few or no easy 
alternatives will continue to be left behind. Personal 
calamity, whether due to divorce, bankruptcy, substance abuse, 
or simply the Diaspora of families and the economic, social, 
and physical collapse of communities, will continue to occur 
time and again as deindustrialization continues to play out 
across the U.S.
    In summary then, we believe the USE IT Act will promote the 
use of technology that can create a cleaner environment, create 
and retain family-supporting and community-supporting jobs, and 
preserve American communities anchored by the energy industry.
    Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of today's 
proceedings. I look forward to answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Anderson follows:]

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    Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
    We will now move to member questions.
    Before we do that, however, our technical team has asked 
that our guests move the microphones directly front and center, 
so that the recording is as crisp as it can be. So, I thank you 
for that.
    I will now start the member questions by recognizing myself 
for 5 minutes and, Mr. Mackler, let's begin with you.
    Last year the Bipartisan Policy Center worked with the 
Energy Futures Initiative looking at Federal R&D investments in 
carbon removal. Do you believe getting these innovative new 
technologies commercialized at scale requires significantly 
greater Federal support?
    Mr. Mackler. I think the short answer to that is yes. I 
think direct air capture, in terms of a Federal priority for 
research funding, is only just emerging now as a high-level 
issue. And for that reason, we actually, at the BPC, launched 
last year a Direct Air Capture Advisory Council to really help 
to make the case for a stronger, more ambitious innovation 
program focused on industrial direct air capture technologies.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. And EFI also published a report, 
Clearing the Air, that provides a potential multiagency roadmap 
for Federal spending. Are you familiar with that report?
    Mr. Mackler. I am.
    Mr. Tonko. That report makes the case that many agencies 
should have a role in carbon removal policy, which I agree 
with, but EFI has suggested that DOE could play a leading role 
in carbon removal technology R&D and suggests they should 
receive the most funding.
    Do you believe, based on its previous CCS work, DOE has the 
technical expertise to lead a negative emissions technologies 
research agenda?
    Mr. Mackler. I do agree with that.
    Mr. Tonko. And Dr. Harmon, how has LanzaTech partnered with 
DOE on R&D projects in the past and have they contributed to 
your ongoing utilization efforts?
    Dr. Harmon. Absolutely. We have worked with the Department 
of Energy on all aspects of our technology. That includes 
support from RPE as to develop the technology by which our gas 
fermentation fundamentally operates, our bioreactor technology.
    We have worked with the Department of Energy for 
development of pathways within our microbes to produce 
products. We have, through that type of support, demonstrated 
over 50 direct fermentation products, many of which are direct 
substitutes then for chemical intermediates.
    And a very major piece of work, which has extended since 
2012, is the development of the pathway from ethanol to 
aviation fuel, for which the front end is the ethanol from CCU.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much.
    And so DOE has existing relationships with many of the 
stakeholders and technical expertise on CCUS, but I don't want 
to suggest EPA shouldn't play any role.
    Mr. Mackler, I think it was clear from your testimony that 
BPC cares about achieving emissions reduction goals and that 
negative emissions be properly recognized. For the credibility 
and, potentially, compensation of these projects, whether they 
are technological or natural, how important is it to have an 
accurate and verified account of how much carbon is removed?
    Mr. Mackler. I mean this is central to the rationale for 
supporting the technologies, in particular, supporting the 
utilization of CO2 as part of a climate strategy 
that really needs to be based on sound science, on deep 
analysis, and on very strong regulatory frameworks that can 
ensure the CO2 is removed and permanently 
sequestered.
    So this is it is a critical piece of the overall rationale.
    Mr. Tonko. And I know there are a couple of different 
methods for nature-based projects, for greenhouse gas life 
cycle assessments, but should more work be done to standardize 
the accounting and verify the impacts of negative emissions 
technologies?
    Mr. Mackler. Yes, I think that is right. I mean we need to 
make a distinction between removal technologies that 
permanently take CO2 out of the carbon cycle, which 
is what direct air capture technology would do if you were to 
remove the CO2 and inject it underground, compared 
to natural solutions, which really they remove CO2 
but they are not permanently removed because they can always--
there is a flux between the biological carbon cycle and the 
full carbon cycle.
    But the short answer is more analysis is really needed to 
understand the specifics of the carbon balance of various 
approaches. But we know, from a general standpoint, that the 
benefits are there but, if we are going to quantify them, we 
should probably get a little more precise on how we measure and 
certify the storage.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
    Mr. Noel, you suggest safeguards to this bill. Could that 
include ensuring that carbon removal is validated and storage 
sites are better monitored and regulated?
    Mr. Noel. It should but that is not what is happening right 
now and there is a lot of work to do to get there.
    Mr. Tonko. What types of requirements do you envision from 
EPA regarding the monitoring of regulation of sequestration?
    Mr. Noel. I would say there needs to be an update to the 
UIC regulations that govern enhanced oil recovery. Right now, 
companies don't have to report the amount of CO2 
that is actually sequestered or come up with a monitoring plan. 
The companies just report the amount of CO2 they 
receive.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
    With that, we will now move to Mr. Shimkus, the 
subcommittee ranking member, to question for 5 minutes, please.
    Mr. Shimkus. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to change 
up my order a little bit.
    I want to start with Mr. Anderson because your people are 
my people. I really appreciate your testimony. I mention those 
concerns almost every hearing that I have. Sometimes my 
facilities are operated by the Boilermakers.
    So we just had an announced closure, fortunately, none in 
my district, but announced closures of Canton, Coffeen, Havana, 
and Hennepin. Now, those communities don't speak out as to they 
are not a Chicago. They are not a New York. They are not an L. 
A. So these are the small rural communities that you mentioned.
    Can you briefly just talk about what, in a small community, 
the loss of 50 employees in a power plant? Again, I think you 
mentioned wages. You mentioned tax base. You mentioned--just go 
over that because it does have real world impact in many of our 
congressional districts around the country.
    Mr. Anderson. Absolutely. Thank you very much for that 
question, sir.
    You really can't overstate the effects. And these are, as 
you say, the sort of places that are the definition of the kind 
of places that get overlooked and left behind.
    As it happens, our most recent example was in Ohio, two 
power plants that closed at the same time in one county right 
along the Ohio River. It is not an overstatement, it is 
literally the case that the tax revenue from those power plants 
was 75 percent of the town and county budgets and that paid for 
schools, fire stations, police. It paid for everything. And 
this was about two years ago and the immediate effect was many 
of those things started to close, or downsize, or they no 
longer do that anymore.
    The people tried to sell their houses as fast as they can 
before they lose all of their value. Trying to find other 
alternatives elsewhere in the country, sometimes they do; 
sometimes they don't.
    But even if individuals are able to sort something out for 
themselves and find a job in Dayton, or in another State, or 
whatever, what they leave behind is what I was talking about, 
an emptied out community that is no longer the same or they 
won't see their families for more than once or twice a year 
because now they live hundreds of miles apart.
    It seems like a small thing when we are talking about 
economics but, as a human thing, it is a very big deal.
    Mr. Shimkus. Yes, I appreciate that. And just following up, 
so a lot of us, when we are visited by folks and people talk 
about jobs and economic development, then there is a 
multiplication factor of three. You know for every one job here 
you are going to have the convenience mart. You are going to 
have the grocery store. You are going to have this.
    So I guess what I am hearing is that there is not a 
multiplying, it is a division aspect, where you are going to 
start losing the convenience store. You are going to start 
losing the gas station. You are going to start losing the 
grocery store, and the local theater, and the like.
    Is that what you have observed?
    Mr. Anderson. Absolutely. When that was happening and we 
were trying to find options for those power plants at the time, 
some of our strongest allies were Chamber of Commerce people, 
business leaders, and people who knew exactly what was going to 
happen to the business community in those towns because they 
were completely dependent on the people who lived there and 
worked there for business.
    So politically, our allies were up and down the spectrum 
because we all saw the same thing coming.
    Mr. Shimkus. Yes, thank you for speaking out. I do it. I am 
a politician, so I am not really trusted all the time but you 
are supporting the men and women--the working men and women, I 
do appreciate the testimony and thanks for coming here.
    Mr. Begger, you say that enhanced oil recovery, EOR, is an 
attractive early option for CCUS development. Can you elaborate 
what you mean by that?
     Mr. Begger. Mr. Chair and Mr. Shimkus, it is one of the 
few, I guess you would call, commercially-deployable revenue 
streams for carbon management right at this time. You know I 
think we all are looking for geologic storage, carbon products, 
those types of things, but technologies get cheaper over time. 
You know if you look to say, for example, the Petra Nova Plant 
in Texas, they feel like the lessons learned from just building 
that first one, they could build the second one 30 percent 
cheaper and just hope that you will see those incremental cost 
reductions with every generation and every one that is built.
    And so we feel like EOR is currently viable today. And as 
we do more and more of those things, it will bring the cost 
down to make other pathways economic.
    Mr. Shimkus. So this helps drive down the economies of 
scale for deployment----
    Mr. Begger. Yes.
    Mr. Shimkus [continue]. Because there is a revenue stream 
that helps offset, whether it is a tax credit or direct Federal 
funding for these projects.
    And Mr. Noel, I don't have time to ask a question but I 
appreciate your testimony. I appreciate it was delivered in the 
manner in which you did. Hopefully, we can find a method to get 
this forward.
    And I do appreciate the sponsors of this legislation, Mr. 
Peters and Mr. McKinley, for moving this forward.
    And with that, I yield back my time.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Peters for 5 
minutes, please.
    Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today we have the 
opportunity to discuss climate legislation with a real shot at 
becoming law. USE IT passed the Senate Committee on Environment 
and Public Works by unanimous consent last year. That includes 
Senators Barrasso, Bernie Sanders, and Ed Markey. So that is a 
pretty good breadth of support.
    And I am sorry that the Nature Conservancy representative 
couldn't be here. So that is good news/bad news because a baby 
is a nice event but, clearly, it would have been better if it 
was tomorrow but we can't plan that out. That is nature, I 
guess.
    So what the bill does is it provides Federal research 
support of a suite of CCUS technologies, including $35 million 
to provide competitive grants for technologies that can cost-
effectively remove carbon dioxide out of the air through direct 
air capture and $50 million to support research and 
technologies for commercial uses of captured carbon dioxide.
    Second, it codifies an existing interpretation that comes 
from the Obama administration that CO2 pipelines and 
CCUS infrastructure projects could be considered covered 
projects under FAST-41, if there also Federal actions under the 
jurisdiction of Federal agencies. It does not weaken NEPA.
    And I think people have discussed a lot of the need for 
developing these kinds of carbon capture facilities. There are 
only two commercial direct air capture projects now. The 
largest is a plant in Alabama that only captures 4,000 tons per 
year and one active CCUS project capturing CO2 for 
permanent storage in the saline reservoir and that plan is 
based in Illinois. We need to accelerate this and this is our 
opportunity to do that.
    I just want to address briefly the EOR issue, the enhanced 
oil recovery. No one is claiming that linking EOR to captured 
CO2 is a panacea. Clearly in the long run, we have a 
lot of techniques we would like to do to phase out the use of 
fossil fuels. Among those might be pricing carbon and providing 
incentives.
    But I would just note that we have, many of us in this 
committee have signed a letter to preserve the CAFE standards, 
which are intended to ensure that cars, as they come off the 
production line, are more efficient, they use less gas. But we 
have implicitly acknowledged by doing that that we are going to 
have gas cars for a while. Even if today we decided that every 
car would be electric, it would take about 25 years for the 
fleet to turn over.
    So, in the meantime, the capturing of CO2 for 
EOR in the near-term can reduce the carbon footprint of that 
oil and gas we will be using. So that is all to the good. It is 
not a panacea. It is not where we want to end but it is a good 
place to start.
    Now I want to begin by asking Mr. Mackler about this, the 
concern about streamlined CO2 permitting. And there 
is a concern that that would lead to an increase in oil 
production that would derail our climate goals but according to 
the Clean Air Task Force, if the U.S. EOR expanded to its 
maximum potential, this was all done with CO2 from 
direct air capture, the atmospheric benefit would be 
substantial.
    Do you agree with that?
    Mr. Mackler. Yes, I do agree that in the limit, if we are 
talking about in the limit here, if direct air capture were 
deployed to its full potential to meet demands for EOR, there 
would very likely be a substantial climate benefit because if 
direct air capture technologies were married with the best 
resources for producing oil and storing CO2, you 
could conceive of a project that was actually producing net 
carbon neutral oil. And so if that was your goal, it could be 
achieved through direct air capture.
    And it is our view at the Bipartisan Policy Center that 
when it comes to climate risks, the real problem is carbon and 
CO2, and not necessarily fossil fuels. We need to be 
looking at the carbon accounting.
    Mr. Peters. Right. And so the notion is that in the short-
term, at least while we are using fossil fuels, we would like 
the lowest carbon output as possible, correct?
    Mr. Mackler. That is right. There is a net benefit from 
using captured CO2 to produce the oil. So, we should 
be doing that as we transition to a lower carbon economy.
    Mr. Peters. And in the long run, we are not getting away, 
necessarily, from transitioning to a lower carbon economy.
    Mr. Mackler. Right.
    Mr. Peters. But we are also potentially developing 
technologies that could draw carbon out of the atmosphere and 
really do what the IPCC said we had to do, the United Nations.
    Mr. Mackler. That is exactly right. You are buying down the 
cost of developing and stealing these technologies and, at the 
same time, leveraging those economics to build out an 
infrastructure, CO2 pipelines. Most importantly, 
that can then be used later just for storage.
    Mr. Peters. OK, thank you so much.
    My time has expired. I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Walden, full 
committee ranking member, for 5 minutes, please.
    Mr. Walden. Well good morning, Mr. Chairman, again, and 
thanks to our witnesses. You have done a great job educating us 
on some of these matters.
    I wondered--I have been reading this report out of MIT 
about engineers there who have designed an ability to remove 
carbon dioxide from the air using, basically, batteries that 
attract. Are you familiar with that, Mr. Mackler?
    Mr. Mackler. Not in great technical detail but I am aware 
of the research.
    Mr. Walden. And so, as the report goes, they can get down 
to the 400 parts per million in the atmosphere, remove that 
carbon, and requires really no new fuels. It is the effect of 
the battery charging and discharging, and the air would just 
flow through, and they can capture the carbon and release it.
    And Dr. Harmon, I am curious. Is that the kind of work you 
are engaged in in your company to remove carbon?
    Dr. Harmon. So we are removing carbon directly from 
industrial emissions. These are emissions that contain a lot of 
CO, which is toxic and must be combusted. And so, in a sense, 
you can think of it as a pre-combustion approach.
    And our particular technology is biological. So we are 
using a biological process----
    Mr. Walden. Got it.
    Dr. Harmon [continue]. To capture that carbon and transform 
it into another output.
    Mr. Walden. All right. I----
    Dr. Harmon. I would say--I just was going to say that the 
products of direct air capture, in whatever technology is 
representative, also can become feed for our fermentation and 
we work with partners and other methods to do that.
    Mr. Walden. OK.
    Mr. Walden. So I mean my approach to this is innovation is 
going to be the way out of this. We have to set the right sort 
of incentive system, and we will have debates about what that 
is, but our great innovators at MIT and elsewhere are really on 
the forefront of this. And the consumer can win, the American 
consumer can win because we can develop this technology here 
and actually achieve the goals that the IPCC and others say we 
have to achieve going forward.
    A lot of us believe this USE IT legislation, coupled with 
the 45Q tax credit, provides a nice companionship going 
forward.
    And Mr. Begger, I wanted to ask you about the Department of 
Treasury. They still have to issue the guidelines, as I 
understand it, for those applicable applications for the 
credits but, in the meantime, they are offering a potentially 
good incentive for private sector investment. Is that right?
    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Walden, that is correct. We 
are still waiting on the IRS to issue that guidance.
    Mr. Walden. Yes, we have been pushing them, too.
    So 45Q is an important reform for the development of the 
industry. Can you explain how the USE IT Act fits in here, 
because we think there is a marriage to be had, and what 
benefits would it supply to the development of CCUS and the 
related infrastructure?
    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Walden, you know these first 
few projects are going to be, I guess the pathway to making 
them economically viable is going to require sort of layering a 
number of different benefits, you know whether it is the tax 
credit, a DOE grant, a State grant, private investment. You 
know when you look at early technologies, you do need that sort 
of layering to get the first ones built, to bring those costs 
down. And then, hopefully at some point, they are just able to 
stand on their own two feet.
    Mr. Walden. I want to make a comment about your comments 
about NEPA because I'm, too, actually, from a western State. I 
kid my friend from Ohio or Wyoming that she is from one of 
those big rectangular eastern States because Oregon is actually 
out west. But we face the same sort of issues with public 
lands. Trying to get anything done there can take a decade and 
then you litigate. And we know if we are going to actually deal 
with this crisis at hand, we have got to move faster than a 
decade or more to be able to build the facilities, build the 
pipelines, build the power lines to get a grid that works to 
factor in the renewables and everything else.
    And so I am intrigued by that and I am pleased by the 
administration's movement forward on NEPA reform, the first 
major reform since 1978 when the rules were first adopted. To 
try and just streamline the process, go back to the original 
intent.
    I want to also recognize that the study released by the 
Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in 
September, which found that Russian natural gas exported to 
Europe has a lifecycle greenhouse gas emission profile that is 
41 percent--41 percent higher than U.S. gas exported to Europe. 
And for natural gas sent to China, the Russian gas is 47 
percent higher in total life cycle.
    So do you think it makes sense for the U.S. to send cleaner 
gas to those areas?
    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Walden, you are absolutely 
correct. My organization, we conducted a study about five years 
ago about coal exports to Asia.
    Mr. Walden. Cleaner coal?
    Mr. Begger. When you look at the tier 2 engines that we use 
in our mining equipment, the just the cleaner, safer, more 
productive operations that we have across the fossil energy 
industry in the United States, there is a lower carbon 
footprint to export U.S. commodities around the world.
    Mr. Walden. All right, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thanks 
again to our witnesses. I look forward to continuing to work 
with all of you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Soto for 5 minutes, 
please.
    Mr. Soto. Thank you so much.
    First of all, I wanted to ask both Mr. Mackler and Mr. Noel 
about sort of the net reduction that could potentially happen 
or not happen when we are talking about using direct air 
capture for advanced oil recovery. Could it lead to a reduction 
either now or in the near future?
    It would be great to hear from both of you.
    Mr. Mackler. Sure, I would be happy to respond to that.
    The short answer is yes. There will be a climate benefit 
from using captured CO2, particularly atmospheric 
CO2 for the production of oil. The precise carbon 
benefit depends on several factors--what the oil field looks 
like, for example, how much CO2 is needed to be 
injected per barrel of oil that is produced. What is the 
particular direct air capture technology? What kind of energy 
source does that system use and where is that energy sourced 
from?
    So there is a range of expected benefits, which is why that 
we are sort of talking in generalities here. So more work needs 
to be done on how we calculate those life cycle benefits.
    But the ability to store that CO2 permanently 
underground as part of this EOR process is very well-understood 
and the regulatory frameworks are in place.
    Mr. Soto. OK, Mr. Noel.
    Mr. Noel. Yes, I mean it all depends on the assumptions 
embedded in those analyses and different players are going to 
have different motivations to come up with those assumptions.
    We do think there is a better way to tackle climate change, 
rather than sucking carbon pollution out of the ambient 
atmosphere. The original carbon sequestration is to leave it in 
the ground.
    Mr. Soto. Thanks for that.
    And I was intrigued about using the CO2 to 
develop construction materials, cement, concrete, and other 
construction materials, where we advanced the Moving Forward 
Infrastructure package just last week, a $319 billion highway 
investment that would expand research and innovation. Part of 
that is innovative materials that last longer and that reduce 
carbon pollution.
    So it would be great to hear from Mr. Anderson and Dr. 
Harmon on the--would it be helpful for jobs, Mr. Anderson?
    And Dr. Harmon, would it be something feasible to be able 
to really utilize cement from carbon capture to do a major 
infrastructure rebuild of America?
    We will start with you, Mr. Anderson.
    Mr. Anderson. The short answer is yes, absolutely, it would 
be good for jobs.
    I mean in the first place, all of these systems have to be 
built and my brothers and sisters in the building trades unions 
love to build things. That is an enormous amount of work that 
would have to be done.
    In the second place, once it is up and running, then there 
are other people, like the folks in my union, who will operate 
and maintain those systems and who will operate and maintain 
the things on either end of the pipeline, things that are 
making the CO2 in the places where the sinks are. 
Those are jobs that we get to keep.
    Yes, that will create and retain jobs is literally true.
    Mr. Soto. And Dr. Harmon, based upon your manufacturing 
experience, do you think we could get there, sooner rather than 
later, to help create cement, concrete, and other construction 
materials from condensed CO2?
    Dr. Harmon. Absolutely. I will say that that is not a part 
of our particular business.
    Mr. Soto. I understand.
    Dr. Harmon. But we work with other companies that are very 
far along in that that are producing materials today. It is an 
extremely viable and high-volume, high-opportunity pathway and 
one which, in each instance, will create those manufacturing 
jobs and in sectors, not just the utilization sector but in 
manufacturing areas that badly need them.
    Mr. Soto. Thank you.
    And Mr. Beggar, are you seeing that among Wyoming's 
infrastructure utilizing CO2 to create building 
materials just yet; if not, will we see it on the horizon?
    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, Wyoming right now 
our focus has really just been on providing the platform to 
develop these technologies, recognizing that where particular 
things are deployed is really dependent on a lot of different 
factors.
    You know, for example, we have great rock quarries out 
west. So a synthetic material is not going to be probably as 
economic as the natural one. But for example, our relationship 
with Japan, that after Fukushima they are doing away with their 
nuclear, they don't have great land mass and things for 
renewables, they are doubling down on coal but their western 
society, their modern society wants low carbon technologies. 
And so we are working with them on a utilization technology 
that would use concrete because they have a huge market for 
that.
    Mr. Soto. Thank you and I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative McKinley for 5 
minutes, please.
    Mr. McKinley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 
holding this hearing on our bill.
    American innovation in carbon capture technology and 
utilization will--the premise I am working under, will lead to 
reduced carbon emissions, not only in America but, more 
importantly, around the globe, especially in China and India. 
Because if you go back to the MIT report, where they say unless 
growing emissions from the rest of the world are addressed, 
there still will be global catastrophe. That is why the global 
carbon capture program is so vital.
    For years, our office has led the efforts to advance 
innovation, increasing fossil fuel research funding, and 
implementing 45Q. As the lead co-sponsor of the USE IT Act, I 
am proud to work for the past three years with Scott Peters on 
this effort.
    The USE IT Act had broad support from bipartisan members of 
the Congress, as well as a host of industry, labor, and 
environmental stakeholders and the Senate has already advanced 
it twice in '18 and '19. Consequently, I was disappointed that 
last year we missed the opportunity to sign this bill into law 
when it was a part of the defense bill. So I am hoping, rather 
than throw up roadblocks, the majority will continue working 
with us and pass this bill as a standalone legislation.
    Look, let's be honest here with all of this. If America 
doesn't lead the way on carbon capture technology, who will? Do 
we really think China, and India, and the rest of the world are 
going to do that? They have shown no commitment to be able to 
do that. So for us to maintain our mantle of leadership on 
energy, this bill will help.
    Please direct my question to Mr. Anderson, if I could, 
please. The primary objective of the USE IT Act is to use R&D 
funding to spur development and deployment of carbon capture 
utilization and storage projects. Let's go back over it. I want 
to make sure that people really hear what will be the impact of 
that on the jobs and various utility workers.
    Mr. Anderson. Well, I can use an example right there in 
your district, Congressman. We have two coal-fired power plants 
in your district. The Harrison plant is one example. I am sure 
you are very familiar with that facility, and the number of 
people who work there, and what else is around there, which is 
not a lot. If a plant like that goes down, the alternative is 
basically to leave. And good luck finding another opportunity 
somewhere else, especially if you are a 50-something boiler 
mechanic.
    Mr. McKinley. I know in Pleasants County, it was over 30 
percent of the budget for that county, the tax revenue. That is 
going to affect schools, fire departments, first responders, 
all of that is going to be. So it is important for us to 
continue this, continue this effort to try to reduce the 
emissions and I think we can do this with innovation.
    Dr. Harmon, if I could to you, just how big a barrier is 
the lack of infrastructure in developing carbon capture and 
storage projects?
    Dr. Harmon. So I would say it depends upon the application. 
As utilization technologies scale, infrastructure will be 
extremely important to collect large volumes of feedstock and 
enable large-scale utilization applications, which then drive 
down costs. Luckily today, we can at least get started with co-
located facilities but being able to bring large volumes to 
sites where either the chemical facilities are available, where 
hydrogen is available, where renewable power is available, all 
of that will be extremely valuable in scaling up and promoting 
utilization.
    Mr. McKinley. Let me stay with you on a little bit and try 
to paint a picture here.
    If we do this retrofitting of our power plants, and maybe 
Mr. Anderson this goes to you as well, if we retrofit our power 
plants to remove, if we implement a carbon capture program, we 
are already capturing and storing the fly ash, the coal ash, 
residual, we are taking care of that. What is the motivation, 
then? Why are we so--if we are on that cusp of being able to 
accomplish this, what is the cusp then to continue closing down 
our coal- and gas-fired power plants across America if we are 
capturing all the emissions and especially given the impact it 
has on our communities, for our schools, our first responders, 
and the like? If we do this, wouldn't that address this problem 
we are trying to focus?
    Dr. Harmon. So I am not an expert in capture from power 
facilities because we specialize in industrial facilities.
    What I can say is that, to the extent that we can create 
value from emissions, such as from the power sector and from 
the industrial sector, we are not only keeping plants open but 
we are adding those jobs that are associated with utilization 
and with infrastructure development and, therefore, there is a 
multiplicative effect when we look at opportunities to use 
carbon that is otherwise going to waste.
    Mr. McKinley. Thank you.
    My time has expired. I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Schakowsky for 5 
minutes, please.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you so much.
    You know we absolutely all have to have a sense of urgency. 
The science is so clear that the climate crisis is an 
existential one for us. And if we are to save our planet for 
our children and grandchildren, we have to accept that 
challenge right now.
    So to ensure temperatures don't rise above two degrees 
Celsius and to avoid climate change's worst consequences, I 
think we do need to go beyond reducing emissions. Rapidly 
transitioning from fossil fuels, building nature-based 
infrastructures, and I think carbon capture are all necessary. 
We simply can't afford to pursue one solution at a time. We 
also can't afford to focus too much on mitigation, while 
ignoring the real problem of being the world's largest emitters 
of greenhouse gases, historically.
    Still, carbon capture can be part of the solution, I think.
    So Mr. Mackler, in your opinion, would the USE IT Act 
detract from or discourage the use of other strategies like 
nature-based solutions?
    Mr. Mackler. Thanks for that question. I don't think it 
would detract from nature-based solutions because I think that 
that is a completely different area when it comes to policy, 
and when it comes to policy needs, and funding needs.
    When we are talking about industrial direct air capture, 
this is a technological approach that really needs an injection 
of capital to foster technological innovations in the chemical 
processes, in the industrial processes needed to capture the 
CO2.
    The nature-based solutions are very important but it is 
sort of a different arena, I think, from this.
    And so both are needed and they are complementary, not 
competing.
    Ms. Schakowsky. So you think it is important to pursue 
multiple climate solutions alongside carbon capture technology?
    Mr. Mackler. Definitely. We are in all of the above, you 
know low-carbon energy--we taken all of the above low-carbon 
energy perspective.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thanks.
    And I am glad that companies like LanzaTech, which, as Dr. 
Harmon said, is in my district. I am very proud of that. And I 
appreciate your finding innovative solutions to address the 
climate crisis.
    So, Dr. Harmon, how can creative approaches to utilization 
reduce emissions and repurposing CO2 benefit the 
ways in which--in your opinion, how does utilization need to 
be--to be limited regarding enhanced oil--no--is that right? Do 
I want those? Yes, OK.
    Talk to me about Lanza.
    Dr. Harmon. Well, to your first question: How can 
utilization contribute to our climate objectives at large? As I 
said earlier, we all understand implicitly that we need carbon 
in our future. We will need aviation fuel. We will need 
plastics. And yet, the carbon that is being emitted today that 
we see as a liability from a climate perspective is actually 
the building block that we need.
    So utilization in the form of products that substitute for 
those that we would get from petroleum or from natural gas in 
fact do a dual value. On the one hand, they are producing new 
low-carbon alternatives and they are reducing the emissions, 
the atmospheric emissions. And this is all done in the context 
of actually creating value and creating money. None of our 
partners are doing it for charity or to meet regulatory 
demands. They are doing it because they can make money from 
emissions.
    Ms. Schakowsky. And I appreciate the list of different 
kinds of products that can be produced that you included.
    I wanted to also ask Mr. Noel: Do you think that we can 
have some guardrails? Do you think we need to limit the use of 
capturing carbon for enhanced oil recovery?
    Mr. Noel. Absolutely. EOR operations, as I said in my 
testimony, are part of an expansion strategy. It can't be 
siloed off from the rest of a company's portfolio.
    Ms. Schakowsky. So it is not an all or nothing thing. We 
can put some guardrails, some limitations on the kind of work 
that we do.
    Mr. Noel. The way that carbon capture is currently 
practiced is all the carbon capture in this country is sold 
back to the oil companies should not inspire public confidence.
    Ms. Schakowsky. I appreciate that.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentlewoman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Long for 5 minutes, 
please.
    Mr. Long. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for 
being here today.
    Mr. Begger, do you live in Casper or where do you live?
    Mr. Begger. I live in Cheyenne.
    Mr. Long. Oh, you do? Good. Good.
    Mr. Begger. But I have lived in Casper and I spend a lot of 
time in Gillette.
    Mr. Long. Yes, my wife is from Cheyenne. So that is why I 
was asking. She grew up there. So, yes.
    We have been talking about carbon capture for before there 
was any functioning facilities. So for years, we have been 
talking about carbon capture on this committee. And we have 
people come in all the time from our district and we will have 
meetings in our office. And when we are in a committee hearing 
like this, sometimes I will come down here, which just happened 
to me a few minutes ago. I went out and had a meeting in the 
side office over here with some folks from our district and 
they are working on a project trying to get it out of the EPA. 
And it has been ready to go for 8 or 9 years now, trying to get 
it out of--so with that in mind, I have a question about 
bureaucratic red tape.
    Does that stand in the way of innovating new technologies 
that can expand American energy and manufacturing jobs, while 
we do see harmful emissions?
    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, I think where this program would 
best be fitted, you know it is a policy decision for Congress. 
I do think that the regulators and the EPA have a role to play 
in making sure that the policies set forth align with the 
technological reality. And so you know I have great confidence 
in EPA--or excuse me--in Department of Energy, and their team, 
and what they are able to do but you know I think there is a 
role for EPA to play as well.
    Mr. Long. You think what?
    Mr. Begger. There is a role for EPA to play as well in 
understanding things. But you are right, one of the biggest 
challenges that we have is bureaucracy and red tape. I mean I 
spoke about NEPA and some of those processes. And the last 
thing that we need to do is head down a pathway where we are 
not able to actually get things built and get things done 
because of bureaucracy.
    Mr. Long. OK, thank you. Like I said, I just walked out of 
a meeting behind the TV monitor right there in the next room, 
where they have been waiting for an answer from EPA. As I say, 
they have had it ready for 8 or 9 years now.
    Mr. Mackler, I am going to go to you next. How important is 
deploying carbon capture technologies to help promote 
affordable and reliable energy production, while putting the 
U.S. on a path towards meeting domestic climate objectives?
    Mr. Mackler. Well, we think carbon capture is essential to 
decarbonization of the energy system at least cost. And there 
has been an analysis conducted that suggests if carbon capture 
is not part of the toolkit going forward, the cost of hitting 
or achieving our climate goals could double.
    So it is really important for a variety of reasons. Because 
we need a big toolkit, we need as many solutions on the table 
as possible. And frankly, there are not alternatives to some of 
the energy consuming parts of our economy today, so carbon 
capture. There are not alternatives to fossil combustion in 
some of these parts of our economy and carbon capture is really 
the only pathway forward for some of these places.
    Mr. Long. OK, I am going to stick with you, Mr. Mackler.
    Even as coal production in the United States declines, we 
know that fossil fuel, as being a cheap and reliable source of 
energy, will continue to be used in the U.S. power sector. Even 
more developing countries, like China and India, will continue 
to rely heavily on fossil fuels as they look to grow their 
economies.
    How does the U.S. stand to benefit from being at the 
forefront of the carbon capture implementation, particularly as 
it relates to global climate policies?
    Mr. Mackler. That is a great question and I think it is 
important to note that we have seen enormous advances in 
renewable energy over the last 15 to 20 years. The prices of 
solar and wind have decreased dramatically and they have 
deployed very successfully in the U.S. and around the world. It 
is a great success story.
    But if you look at how that is fitting into the global 
energy picture, it is mostly a case of those technologies 
meeting new demand. And so the use of fossil fuels continues to 
increase, even as we are deploying these other technologies.
    So we are going to need carbon capture to start to get at 
the existing infrastructure and energy chains that we use 
today. And if the U.S., with all of its innovative commercial 
expertise, and its innovation systems, and all the companies 
working on these technologies gets out in front in developing 
these next generation carbon capture technologies, it is an 
enormous market for our U.S. companies to export to globally.
    Mr. Long. OK, thank you.
    And Mr. Anderson, how would the increased use of carbon 
capture technology, both here and around the world, impact jobs 
here in America?
    Mr. Anderson. Well I think there is really three pieces to 
it. One, to start with, is the manufacturing. It all has to be 
made. It would be wonderful to make all of that equipment here 
in America. The second thing is that it all has to be built. It 
all has to be constructed by somebody. And the third thing is 
that then it has to be operated and maintained.
    That whole chain is thousands upon thousands of jobs that 
we could have all over the country.
    Mr. Long. OK, thank you.
    And Mr. Begger, just to wrap up my earlier comment--I don't 
know how long you have lived in Cheyenne, but my wife and I--
everybody want to know how I met someone from Cheyenne. But we 
met at the Tollerton School of Ballet in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. Well, we thank you for that information.
    The gentleman yields back.
    And now the Chair recognizes Representative Matsui for 5 
minutes, please.
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I thank 
the witnesses for being here today.
    As we look at the technologies and the solutions currently 
available to us, it has become quite clear that carbon 
reduction strategies are not enough. It is critical that we 
begin laying the groundwork for robust deployment negative 
emission technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air and 
sequester it. This is likely the only way we can possibly hope 
to achieve the emissions reductions needed to prevent 
catastrophic climate change.
    We know there are natural sequestration efforts like 
afforestation and reforestation uptake, and storage by 
agricultural soils, and biomass energy with carbon capture and 
storage.
    Mr. Mackler, are these natural sequestration efforts 
sufficient to keep limit warming of our planet at 1.5 degrees 
Celsius? And a yes or no is all I need here.
    Mr. Mackler. They are not sufficient. They are important 
but not sufficient.
    Ms. Matsui. All right. Do you think that there is currently 
an adequate investment at the Federal level for carbon capture 
research and development? Yes or no?
    Mr. Mackler. No.
    Ms. Matsui. What kinds of improvements in CCUS technology 
can we expect from the improvements--from investments made 
under H.R. 1166?
    Mr. Mackler. I think we can expect to see improvements in 
the technologies around direct air capture. That would probably 
be the primary benefit.
    Ms. Matsui. OK, thank you.
    Some of my colleagues and one of the witnesses on the panel 
had raised concerns about the potential support that this bill 
provides for increased investments in oil development. At a 
time when we are doing everything we can to ramp up investments 
in renewable and clean energy technologies and transition away 
from fossil energy, we should not be subsidizing or supporting 
new investments in construction of fossil fuel development.
    I would like to ask each of the witnesses: Do you believe 
that, in its current form, H.R. 1166 could lead to increased 
investments in oil development? Just a yes or no, starting with 
Mr. Mackler.
    Mr. Mackler. I do believe it could lead to increased 
investments in oil and gas development, yes.
    Ms. Matsui. Mr. Noel?
    Mr. Noel. Yes.
    Ms. Matsui. Mr. Begger?
    Mr. Begger. Yes.
    Ms. Matsui. Dr. Harmon?
    Dr. Harmon. Yes.
    Ms. Matsui. Mr. Anderson?
    Mr. Anderson. Yes.
    Ms. Matsui. Mr. Noel, you referenced a 2010 DOE study that 
states that CO2 pipeline to oil fields looking to 
expand EOR operations should not be constructed without 
establishing that large, additional, suitable storage capacity 
exists in the area that can handle storage over the long-term.
    Does H.R. 1166 contain any provisions that would ensure 
this? Yes or no?
    Mr. Noel. No.
    Ms. Matsui. Are there ways this bill can be improved and 
strengthened to ensure that sequestration is done safely and at 
significant scale, while minimizing other environmental risk?
    Mr. Noel. There are ways on multiple fronts to strengthen 
this bill.
    Ms. Matsui. Can you please provide an example of potential 
improvements?
    Mr. Noel. Sure. Explicitly exclude enhanced oil recovery 
from the research provisions. Also, explicitly state that the 
pipelines should not be sent to EOR regions to produce oil----
    Ms. Matsui. OK.
    Mr. Noel [continue]. Among other things, which I can submit 
for the record.
    Ms. Matsui. OK, thank you.
    As you probably are aware, in 2018, the State of California 
amended its Low Carbon Fuel Standard to enable CCS projects 
that reduce emissions associated with a production of transport 
fuels sold in California and projects that directly capture 
carbon dioxide to generate LCFS credits. This qualification for 
credits came with a few stipulations, including a requirement 
that operators of CCS projects monitor the site for at least 
100 years post-injection.
    Mr. Mackler or Mr. Noel, do you think a monitoring 
requirement like this would strengthen the integrity of carbon 
capture projects?
    Mr. Mackler. Yes, I do.
    Ms. Matsui. Mr. Noel?
    Mr. Noel. Sure.
    Ms. Matsui. So do you think the 100-year timeline is 
appropriate? Either--Mr. Mackler.
    Mr. Mackler. Well, I think it is very rigorous. You know 
whether or not it is the right number I think is an open 
question but it is certainly a very rigorous approach.
    Ms. Matsui. OK. Mr. Noel?
    Mr. Noel. Agreed. And what happens on the 101st year?
    Ms. Matsui. OK. I don't have much time but there seems to 
be a broad agreement in this room that CCUS has an important 
part to play in achieving our carbon reduction goals but some 
here are more supportive of EOR than others. I believe we 
should be focused on other means of sequestration, such as 
long-term geologic storage.
    Mr. Mackler, in what ways has the U.S. demonstrated or 
deployed carbon dioxide sequestration and utilization, other 
than EOR? And I realize I am going over time but quickly, can 
you?
    Mr. Mackler. Well, we share your view that, in the long-
term, geologic saline storage should be the priority for most 
of the CO2 that we capture. The U.S. Department of 
Energy has had a very sweeping research program on saline for 
many years now and so we have demonstrated global leadership 
there.
    Ms. Matsui. Thank you very much. I am signaled that I have 
run out of time.
    I yield back. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Carter for 5 
minutes, please.
    Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank all of you 
for being here. Obviously, it is extremely important.
    I continue to say that innovation is going to be the key 
for us. And when you say innovation, a lot of people think, 
when you are talking about the climate, that we are talking 
about renewable fuels, and we are, but this is also innovation. 
This is extremely, extremely important.
    I want to start with you, Dr. Harmon. LanzaTech has a plant 
near my district in Soperton, Georgia, right outside my 
district. And whereas I have not had the opportunity to visit 
it yet, I do plan on doing that and want to go by and see 
exactly what you are doing. And from what I understand, it is a 
very large operation and we appreciate your investment in our 
area.
    Tell me, obviously, it looks like you see a viable 
opportunity here to create these products from waste gases. 
What kinds of industrial gases and waste submissions are you 
utilizing here?
    Dr. Harmon. So our first commercial plant is directly 
converting steel mill emissions into ethanol. We have projects 
in development around the world, actually, which use refinery 
gasses, ferroalloy gases, which are similar to steel-making 
gases. These are gasses that are rich in carbon monoxide, 
carbon dioxide, and hydrogen, depending upon the source.
    Mr. Carter. Do you know, do you see other kinds of gasses 
like this being able to be utilized?
    Dr. Harmon. There are other industrial sectors for which 
the technology is also applicable. Calcium carbide would be 
one. There are emissions in the chemical sector as well. It is 
quite a very broad opportunity.
    Mr. Carter. You mention in your testimony about gas 
fermentation and the use of carbon dioxide to develop 
beneficial products such as this. What do you see as the future 
of that?
    Dr. Harmon. So just to be clear, the gas fermentation 
relies not just on carbon dioxide but on carbon monoxide. We 
see this as very broadly deployable, even in the U.S. Taking 
strictly the gases from industry that area accessible to us 
today, we could build 33 plants, based just on 60 percent of 
that gas.
    Mr. Carter. Wow.
    Dr. Harmon. And each of those plants would create probably 
a thousand jobs during construction, maybe 240 during 
operation, and that takes into account the multipliers that 
were referenced earlier.
    But these are substantial operations in areas that need 
that kind of----
    Mr. Carter. And see, this is the point I try to make. I 
look at this as being a tremendous opportunity for us. You are 
talking about creating jobs right here. A tremendous 
opportunity.
    One last thing, Dr. Harmon. You mentioned how Federal 
research had actually assisted and help kickstart this type of 
technology. Could you just expound upon that for just a second?
    Dr. Harmon. Certainly. If we talk about our site in 
Georgia, for example, there we have, in fact, a pilot operation 
that is demonstrating our next generation bioreactor technology 
and that technology originated at small scale, with support 
from RPE. And with support from RPE, we were then able to scale 
that up to a larger what we call a field pilot.
    At the very moment, sticking with Georgia, we are in fact 
designing a 10 million gallon per year facility to produce jet 
and diesel fuel from ethanol that is brought from all parts of 
the U.S. And that is, it is a pre-commercial demonstration but, 
in fact, it will be commercially viable.
    And if you are aware of the scale of some of the renewable 
fuel and sustainable aviation fuel initiatives, this is a 
substantial opportunity that can be replicated everywhere, and 
that technology was developed and scaled up with support from 
the Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office.
    Mr. Carter. So Government created the environment for you 
to succeed in. That is the point we have been trying to make. 
Thank you for verifying that.
    Very quickly, Mr. Begger, I wanted to ask you. You 
mentioned the XPRIZE Foundation. Can you just tell me about 
that, explain that to me?
    Mr. Begger. Sure. Mr. Chairman, Representative, XPRIZE 
Foundation is sort of a philanthropical foundation that has 
offered a lot of engineering competition prizes over about the 
last 20 years. Probably the one that they are most well-known 
for is SpaceX; that started out of an XPRIZE competition.
    And so they have done a lot around public health, and 
water, these sorts of things, but they have one now that is 
really focused on carbon utilization. So three or four years 
ago, I think there was 47 teams from seven or eight different 
countries that put forth proposals to best pull CO2 
out of a power plant stream and convert it into some other 
marketable product.
    Mr. Carter. Right. Right. Just another example of how the 
private sector is helping us in this goal that we all share in.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative McNerney for 5 
minutes, please.
    Mr. McNerney. I thank the chairman. I thank the witnesses 
for your testimony; it was informative and useful. I appreciate 
it.
    Especially, Mr. Anderson, I agree with your testimony and I 
wholeheartedly agree that we need to find a way to positively 
utilize the human resources and capital currently employed in 
the fossil fuel industry. Hopefully, Federal regulation will 
help in that regard, including the USE IT Act.
    Mr. Mackler, is there an accurate cost model for direct air 
capture, say in dollars per ton, or something like that?
    Mr. Mackler. Well because this is such a nascent field, 
with many different technology strands and sort of pathways 
being developed in real time, some of them privately developed 
so it is hard to look under the hood and see what they cost, we 
don't have great insight into what the costs are.
    There have been some studies that have been put out that 
suggest costs could be as high as $600 per ton, but that is 
really seen as very much on the high end, and as low as 
potentially $100 to $200 per ton within sight, and potentially 
less than that at some point in the future.
    Mr. McNerney. Where do we need to be, dollars per ton?
    Mr. Mackler. Well, it depends on the business model, and it 
depends on you know what the climate goals are, but I think if 
we are in the range of $100 per ton, we are going to see 
significant deployment of direct air capture.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
    Dr. Harmon, a similar question in terms of carbon usage: 
How far are we from competitive uses of carbon usage and what 
are the biggest cost production obstacles?
    Dr. Harmon. So the distinction in this case is that we are, 
in fact, producing a product that goes into the market. So the 
ethanol that is being produced from steel mill emissions is 
being sold as a gasoline blending component and that is a 
profitable operation.
    There are high-value products in the chemical sector that 
create really significant value but in any and every instance, 
those partners, industrial partners that we work with, are 
motivated by actually a positive economic return. They evaluate 
these investments in the same way that they would evaluate any 
other.
    Mr. McNerney. We need large-scale commercial applications.
    Dr. Harmon. We need to move to large-scale. As I mentioned, 
it took us 14 years to get to this point. Any of the new 
technologies, and there is a whole portfolio that is emerging 
across the innovation world, they will all need to move to 
scale. They need that type of support.
    Mr. McNerney. Right.
    Well, Mr. Mackler, what additional forms of policy do you 
see--this was already asked of Mr. Noel--do you see needed in 
addition to the USE IT Act?
    Mr. Noel. For carbon capture in particular?
    Mr. McNerney. Carbon capture.
    Mr. Noel. Well I think the USE IT Act does some very 
important things in terms of investing in direct air capture 
and in helping to facilitate the construction of 
infrastructure.
    The most important policy for driving large-scale carbon 
capture and direct air capture into the marketplace would be a 
market for low-carbon energy, whether that takes the form of a 
clean energy standard, of a carbon price, or procurement 
policies that could actually provide the developers of the 
technologies and the projects a means to recoup their 
investment, that is the most important policy.
    Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
    Mr. Begger, while enhanced oil recovery is currently one of 
the primary applications for utilizing captured carbon dioxide, 
its usefulness is expected to diminish as we transition away 
from reliance on fossil fuels.
    In your testimony, you noted the role of carbon control 
technologies beyond EOR. Please describe some of the more 
interesting projects that your State is funding for utilizing 
captured carbon beyond EOR.
    Mr. Begger. Mr. Chairman, Congressman, there really is a 
suite of different technologies. Sometimes I think we tend to 
gravitate towards the carbon fibers and these high-tech sort of 
things and there certainly are opportunities there because, at 
the end of the day, this is just chemistry. We are taking 
CO2, you know one atom of carbon, two atoms of 
oxygen, and converting it into something else.
    Mr. McNerney. We have to do it economically, right? I 
mean----
    Mr. Begger. We have to do it economically and so you know 
it is a very strong chemical bond that needs to be broken. And 
so what are the economics to take that energy and put--and 
convert it into something else?
    I think sometimes, too, we try to demonize the particular 
carbon source when, in reality, we need to be focused on carbon 
itself. It shouldn't matter if it comes from EOR, or coal, or 
natural gas, or ethanol. It is what are doing? Are we capturing 
the carbon and utilizing it or permanently sequestering it in a 
place where we can't use it?
    So you know there are things like cryogenic carbon capture 
that could be used. There are things--membrane, solvents, 
absorbents. You know while we can't forget about the carbon 
capture piece--you have to capture it first--and then you know 
what you do with it. There is far more carbon out there than 
just EOR can support, or products, or geologic sequestration. 
So it is going to have--it is fitting those puzzle pieces 
together.
    Mr. McNerney. Thanks.
    Mr. Chairman, thanks for your indulgence. I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. You are welcome. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Johnson for 5 
minutes, please.
    Mr. Johnson. Well thank you, Chairman Tonko, and Ranking 
Member Shimkus for this hearing today because I think it is an 
important one. I want to thank our witnesses for being with us 
talk about a path forward on carbon capture technology.
    You know whatever your opinion is on carbon emissions, it 
is good to see a number of us on both sides of the aisle taking 
a look at this thing and saying hey, how do we get some use out 
of it you know. We don't all have the same scientific 
background but we have been working on it now for a number of 
years and I am looking forward to seeing, through this 
legislation that we are looking at, how we can make this work.
    I want to start out by mentioning and springing off of 
something my colleague, Mr. Carter from Georgia, said. You know 
what is going to really address the climate concerns across the 
globe is innovation. That is what is going to solve the 
problem--market-driven solutions and discoveries like carbon 
capture and others. Yes, there is a place for alternative 
fuels, and biofuels, and wind, and solar, and absolutely we 
should let the market drive innovation on those and use them as 
they fit into our energy profile but we are not going to solve 
the climate concerns with government mandates. We are just not 
going to do that. It is going to be smart folks like you guys 
and others that come up with solutions that solve the problem.
    So let me start with Mr. Mackler, if I could, and Mr. 
Begger, you can chime in here, too. Last Congress, I co-
sponsored, along with several of my colleagues, the legislation 
to reform the 45Q tax credit enacted as a part of the 2018 
Omnibus, which was intended to incentivize the acceleration of 
new technologies to capture and store carbon for practical use.
    While I understand that a number of carbon capture projects 
have been announced since those changes, I am told the IRS is 
sort of slow-walking, taking their time on making a number of 
clarifications for credits or for companies wishing to claim 
this tax credit.
    So first, I would like to ask: How important has the 
Section 45Q tax credit been in some of the recent project 
announcements across the country, Mr. Mackler and Mr. Begger, 
if you would?
    Mr. Mackler. It has been central. It is the most important 
policy we have in place today for carbon capture.
    Mr. Johnson. OK. Mr. Beggar.
    Mr. Begger. I agree. You know there have been a lot of 
people who are using I guess those dollar figures for that tax 
credit to at least do some early back-of-the-envelope 
calculations on what projects would look but, ultimately, until 
they receive final guidance, you won't be able to pull together 
a project.
    Mr. Johnson. Right. OK. So here is a case where Government 
policy of incentivizing innovation is producing results, rather 
than mandating a solution, giving the innovators an opportunity 
to work the problem.
    And so if we can get some certainty with the IRS and 
guidance, which we know would minimize some ambiguity for 
businesses looking to invest in carbon capture technology, what 
effect would that have going forward, Mr. Mackler and Mr. 
Begger, again?
    Mr. Mackler. I think it would kickstart the commercial 
industry in a way we haven't seen yet. So it would be very 
catalytic. Of course, you know some of it depends on the 
details around what the IRS specifies in terms of how to 
implement the tax credit. So, that needs to come out quickly so 
we can take advantage of the credit because the window of 
opportunity is closing because there is a sunset on the tax 
credit and so we are losing time. But if enough time remains or 
if the credit is extended, it could be very catalytic.
    Mr. Johnson. OK. Mr. Begger, do you agree?
    Mr. Begger. I agree. I think the carrot of a tax credit has 
done far more to advance commercialization than any regulation, 
or threat of a carbon tax, or anything has ever done.
    Mr. Johnson. I like your term, Mr. Mackler, it would 
kickstart it. You know it wasn't until the Wright brothers 
solved the problem with powered flight that it kicked into high 
gear the aviation industry. You know I mean we have got many, 
many examples like that and this is just another one.
    We need to give the innovators an opportunity to innovate. 
That is what we need to be doing.
     Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Blunt Rochester for 
5 minutes, please.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking 
Member Shimkus. Thank you also the panelists.
    We are in a climate emergency. We are seeing the impacts 
from climate change in our communities every day. We are 
getting grave warnings from scientists and economists about our 
future, if we fail to address climate change. So, we must act.
    Not only do our children and grandchildren depend on it for 
their futures, we all depend on it right now. That means that 
we must use every tool available to us to try to avoid the 
worst impacts from climate change. Numerous witnesses have 
testified that carbon capture and sequestration will be an 
important and even required tool, as we work to drastically 
reduce emissions.
    I agree that carbon capture has a critical role to play in 
developing climate solutions, which is why I look forward to 
working with my colleagues on this legislation, but we must 
ensure that we get this policy right so that we can deploy this 
technology while also protecting our communities and our 
health.
    Mr. Noel, in your testimony, you mentioned that, following 
enhanced oil recovery, carbon dioxide is stored underground. 
Are there environmental impacts to injecting carbon dioxide 
into the ground and, specifically, does it pose risks to 
drinking water sources?
     Mr. Noel. Sure, there are a whole unique set of risks that 
injecting continuous CO2 under the ground at high 
pressures present to underground sources of drinking water. And 
we do not think the regulations on EOR, as currently practiced, 
are anywhere near where they need to be.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you.
    And Mr. Mackler, as you know, throughout this Congress, 
this subcommittee has held a series of hearings on the 
challenges stemming from the climate crisis, as well as the 
solutions needed to address it. In your testimony, you 
discussed the need to bring a diverse set of solutions that 
will work comprehensively across economic sectors.
    Can you elaborate on this and how this legislation will add 
to the suite of policy options to tackle the climate crisis?
    Mr. Mackler. Sure, I would be happy to.
    Yes, so we have reviewed the analysis that has been done on 
how we can most cost-effectively decarbonize the U.S. and the 
global energy system. And it is very clear that the broader the 
toolkit of solutions, the more likelihood that we are going to 
actually achieve our climate goals, and especially achieve them 
at the lowest cost.
    And so historically here in the United States, we have 
invested an enormous amount of resources quite successfully in 
bringing down the cost of wind and solar. And that is a major 
success story. We need to now do the similar thing for other 
energy technologies to ensure we are positioning ourselves for 
success. And the USE IT Act can be a part of a strategy for 
bringing forward carbon capture.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. Mr. Mackler, do you believe that this 
bill can be improved in ways that bolster public health 
protections, while maintaining its fundamental purpose to 
support CCUS deployment?
    Mr. Mackler. Yes, it could probably be improved in some 
ways.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. Do you have any suggestions?
    Mr. Mackler. Well, I haven't given a lot of thought to that 
part of this bill but I am sure there are ways that this could 
be done. I would be happy to submit that for the record later.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. That would be awesome.
    Do you believe that these priorities--those priorities are 
compatible or are they mutually exclusive?
    Mr. Mackler. They are very compatible. I mean we have been 
injecting CO2 into the subsurface through the 
enhanced oil recovery industry for more than 50 years. And so 
we can go and look, and see what impact that has had on the 
local environment, and I think we can demonstrate very clearly 
it has been minimal.
    And so those parts of the challenges, to the extent that 
they remain, can be managed.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. And Mr. Anderson, in your testimony, 
you discussed how deploying carbon capture technology can 
impact your workers and communities.
    Can you elaborate on how this legislation would create 
jobs?
    Mr. Anderson. Well, as I mentioned earlier, there are three 
main components to it. All of the technology has to be made 
somewhere. It has to be manufactured. I think, personally, that 
we should make that domestically in America and export it 
abroad, as well as here.
    Second of all, it all has to be constructed. Whatever the 
CO2 source, there is no need to, as my colleague 
said, demonize any particular CO2 source. They all 
need it and all of these systems would to be built for that. 
That is thousands of jobs.
    And then once they are in place, they have to be 
maintained, repaired, operated. That never ends. That is an 
unending source of jobs, literally.
    Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you. I want to just close out by 
saying I believe it is not an all or nothing, and that we can't 
just do something today and not do something for tomorrow, or 
not do something for tomorrow and not do something right now, 
and that is why this legislation is important. But we also have 
to take into account the health outcomes as well. And so we 
look forward to working with you, Mr. Peters and Mr. McKinley, 
thank you, on this legislation.
    Thank you so much and I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentlewoman yields back.
    The Chair now recognizes Representative Barragan for 5 
minutes, please.
    Ms. Barragan. Thank you. Thank you for having this 
conversation. The climate crisis does require urgent action and 
we need to consider all options.
    I think that there are merits to carbon capture technology 
for preventing greenhouse gas emissions. I am a little 
concerned about some of the unintended consequences that can 
arise from it.
    Mr. Noel, one of the most significant reasons for 
environmental injustice in low-income communities and 
communities of color is their close proximity to fossil-fueled 
power plants and industrial facilities, such as coal.
    In a carbon-constrained future, could carbon capture and 
storage keep a facility open longer in a disadvantaged 
community and would there still be the emission of pollutants, 
such as sulfur dioxide particulate matter and mercury, into the 
community?
    Mr. Noel. Yes, and it is one of the reasons Greenpeace does 
not support carbon capture in fossil fuel plants. Existing 
fossil fuel plants should be phased out.
    And I also say that there is no consensus, in our view, on 
these technologies without representation of communities who 
live on the front line, who have to live next to extraction 
projects that would be prolonged as a result of deploying these 
technologies.
    Ms. Barragan. So it would take us longer to get away from 
the reliance on fossil fuels. Would that be accurate in what 
you are saying?
    Mr. Noel. Yes.
    Ms. Barragan. Mr. Mackler, one of the main uses for 
captured CO2 is enhanced oil recovery, which makes 
it easier to extract oil from oil wells. My district has a lot 
of urban oil drilling. You can drive around my district and you 
can actually see it right in people's backyards, right next to 
where kids play on soccer fields, and you can also see our kids 
walk around with inhalers around their necks.
    So I have been fighting for closure of some urban oil 
wells, not understanding why we need them in people's backyards 
and next to parks where our kids play.
    Could the oil industry use this enhanced oil recovery to 
extend the life of these wells?
    Mr. Mackler. Well that is a very good question. And the one 
thing to keep in mind when it comes to CO2 injection 
for enhanced oil recovery is it can't be used in every 
reservoir. There are only certain reservoirs that are amenable 
to CO2 injection for enhanced oil recovery. So I 
can't speak specifically, for example, around the production 
that is happening in your district and to whether or not they 
would be extended in their life by the injection of 
CO2.
    Ms. Barragan. What about urban drilling, in general?
    Mr. Mackler. I don't think that carbon capture or EOR would 
have any special impact on urban drilling, in general.
    Ms. Barragan. And so following up on that question, does 
the streamlined permitting in the bill reduce the level of 
public input and environmental protections for establishing 
carbon capture in enhanced oil recovery?
    Mr. Mackler. Well it is really, you know those provisions 
that help to streamline the permitting of infrastructure do 
not--are not designed to circumvent the environmental review 
process. They are really designed to help accelerate and better 
coordinate environmental review and permitting of certain 
projects.
    So I think that, in general, you know one should not look 
at that provision as sort of a workaround of environmental 
permitting.
    Ms. Barragan. Mr. Noel, do you have anything you want to 
add?
    Mr. Noel. Yes, I would say the whole point of EOR is to 
extend the life of oil fields. It is right on DOE's website. It 
is in all the oil industry's literature.
    I was at a briefing yesterday with an oil company who said 
you could almost apply EOR to every oil reservoir in the world, 
if they perfect this technology.
    So if they get--continue to get Federal, State support and 
incentives, we are talking an insane amount of oil on deck.
    Ms. Barragan. Thank you.
    Mr. Noel, how does the current cost of carbon capture and 
storage, as a climate solution, compare to the cost to reduce 
emissions through other means, like solar, wind, geothermal, 
and energy efficiency investments?
    Mr. Noel. It is probably the most expensive way to do it 
right now in the near-term. Energy efficiency seems to be the 
cheapest.
    Ms. Barragan. Right. Thank you to our panelists.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Tonko. The gentlewoman yields back.
    I believe that completes the list of members choosing to 
ask questions of our panelists, and we thank you all for 
appearing here today and for your help, too, in bringing us 
together.
    So I do have a request for unanimous consent to enter the 
following into the record: a letter from Clean Water Action; a 
letter from the Portland Cement Association; a letter from 
Sfonte (phonetic); a letter from the Western Governors 
Association; a letter from Our Children's Trust; a report from 
World Resources Institute entitled CarbonShot: Federal Policy 
Options for Carbon Removal in the United States; a memo from 
the Congressional Research Service regarding CCUS projects and 
CO2 pipelines as covered projects under FAST 41 
guidance; and then finally six letters of support from various 
groups that were sent to the Senate in 2019.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
    Mr. Tonko. And I again thank all of our witnesses for 
joining us for today's hearing.
    Mr. Anderson, thank you. I know you did some reach out with 
the subcommittee and thank you for that.
    Mr. Anderson. Thank you.
    Mr. Tonko. And I remind Members that, pursuant to committee 
rules, they have ten business days by which to submit 
additional questions for the record to be answered by our 
witnesses. I would only ask that each witness respond promptly 
to any such questions that you may receive.
    And at this time, this subcommittee is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:09 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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