Senate Dems probe DOE using carbon capture funds to prop up coal

Top Senate Democrats are investigating the Department of Energy's plan to prop up aging coal plants with millions of dollars Congress originally set aside to advance carbon capture technologies and improve energy resiliency and environmental protection in rural areas.

Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a letter shared with POLITICO's E&E News that the agency's move to repurpose the funding "flies in the face of the law."

The Wednesday letter refers to DOE's use of more than half-a-billion dollars from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law to support coal projects. Former and current agency officials, legal experts, and some lawmakers have argued that repurposing the funds undermines the law.

The statute authorized and appropriated almost $3 billion to capture heat-trapping gases from big emitters through demonstration and pilot programs.

A department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

DOE in a notice of funding said it was providing $525 million to build, restart, overhaul or retrofit coal-fired plants that are shuttered or scheduled to retire before 2032.

In the notice, the agency states that the funding being offered up is unobligated money that lawmakers originally set aside under the bipartisan infrastructure law for the now-defunct Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, or OCED.

Congress directed the office, which was dissolved by the Trump administration in a recent reorganization, to use the money for carbon capture demonstration and large-scale pilot projects, and energy improvements and environmental protection in rural or remote areas.

While DOE instructed applicants to "integrate carbon capture demonstration phases," current and former department staffers say the notice is vague; doesn't describe in detail when to incorporate carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS); and allows applicants to move ahead with near-term "reliability upgrades" without requiring carbon capture at the outset.

The department on Wednesday announced recipients of that funding, including coal plant operators in Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina. The agency's announcement did not mention carbon capture technology.

When asked about the funding, DOE last month said the language of the notice of funding was meant to provide flexibility with respect to project phasing, and all projects "must complete applicable coal fired power plant construction, modernization or upgrades as well as a CCUS pilot or demonstration" within the "proposed project period of performance," which is six years.

But Heinrich and Murray said the funding opportunity draws $350 million from "unobligated balances provided explicitly to commercialize carbon capture" and that those funds could now be diverted to recommission coal plants, which is "in clear defiance of congressional intent." DOE, they said, is also "inappropriately using $175 million originally provided for energy improvements in rural and remote areas."

"The president cannot substitute his policy preferences for requirements in law, and that includes refusing to spend funds Congress requires the president to spend and steering those investments to unfunded priorities," the senators wrote. DOE, they said, "must faithfully execute the law and expend the funds for the purposes provided."

They senators also said that if the Government Accountability Office determines that the DOE awards violate the Antideficiency Act, awardees must return all funding in the future.

"The Department is knowingly and intentionally redirecting funds intended to reduce pollution to instead further the Trump administration's policy of propping up coal-fired power plants," they wrote.

"This policy will not only cause more pollution in communities nationwide while harming public health and the environment, it will also raise energy costs at a time when the American people are already feeling the pinch with record high energy bills."

The senators are calling on DOE to explain by Feb. 25 what authorities the agency relied on to repurpose the money, how the agency will ensure recipients install CCUS and how the funding announcements complies with federal law.

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Tweet