U.S. Congressman Dan Crenshaw Proudly Serving Texas’s 2nd Congressional District
Press Releases
Washington, July 18, 2019
Tags: Energy
WASHINGTON, DC – Representative Dan Crenshaw, joined by Representatives Cuellar (TX-28), Flores (TX-17), Gonzalez (TX-15), Lamb (PA-17), Lucas (OK-3) and Walberg (MI-7), introduced the Launching Energy Advancement and Development through Innovations for Natural Gas (LEADING) Act of 2019. The legislation prioritizes research and development funding for technology that captures carbon emissions by instructing the Department of Energy to utilize up to $50 million each year of existing funds. Ultimately, the bill seeks to develop more carbon capture technology to make it more accessible, resulting in widespread use and lower carbon emissions from power plants across the country. Yesterday, the Senate companion bill advanced out the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources with unanimous support.
“Carbon capture technology has huge potential to dramatically reduce our emissions,” said Crenshaw. “Our very own Net Power Plant, in La Porte, Texas employs this technology and has achieved zero emissions while burning enough natural gas to power 5,000 homes in the Houston area. This is an important step forward for green energy solutions that work towards our goal of lowering global emissions through clean, cheap, and exportable energy.”
“Clean, efficient, and affordable natural gas is a critical component of America’s energy portfolio,” said Science, Space and Technology Committee Ranking Member Lucas. “Modernizing energy production and reducing greenhouse gas emissions requires realistic solutions that don’t prohibit effective fuel sources and inhibit economic growth. This bill will expand early-stage research and development of carbon capture technologies to make natural gas an even cleaner energy source. I’m proud to cosponsor this bipartisan legislation that will help make carbon capture commercially viable and help strengthen and modernize America’s natural gas production.”
“We need an economically sensible solution to reducing greenhouse emissions and fighting climate change in the United States,” said Cuellar. “Carbon capture has been shown to be the best way to properly mitigate the effects of climate change, create more reliable, affordable energy, and increase economic growth. To obtain the full benefits of carbon capture, this legislation will encourage more investment and research so we can accelerate the development and commercialization of the cost-effective carbon capture technologies. I want to thank Representatives Crenshaw, Lucas, Flores, Lamb, Gonzalez and Walberg for working to tackle climate change in the United States.”
“Thanks to the dramatic increase in the use of cleaner burning natural gas and new innovations, the U.S. has the lowest emissions of any industrialized country while remaining the world’s largest economy and significant creator of jobs and economic opportunities,” said Flores. “The LEADING Act incentivizes research and development of carbon capture technologies, which will allow us to fully harness the environmental benefits of America’s vast natural gas resources and keep energy costs low for hardworking families.”
“Here in Michigan, we are leading the way on making a responsible transition to clean natural gas. This bipartisan bill would help get new innovative technologies out of the lab and into the market, providing more affordable energy options for consumers,” said Walberg.
The full text of the bill can be found here.
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Carbon capture IMO is one of the most terrifyingly dangerous green technologies.
In 1986 Lake Nyos belched somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 tons of CO2, killing people up to 15 miles from the site of the belch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster
100,000 tons is a few weeks output from a large power plant.
Thankfully Lake Nyos was and is sparsely inhabited, probably because ever few centuries everyone near the lake dies.
If a similar disaster happened near a major city the casualties could be comparable to the death toll from the detonation of an atomic bomb.
Let the CO2 fly free, so it can do its job of being plant food, instead of creating hideously dangerous concentrations.
AMEN!
There is no need for this.
The impression given is that the “fossil fuel industry” is willing to sacrifice our future for a few bucks.
That is false.
This is sacrificing our present for a few bucks and votes to boot.
“$50 million each year of existing funds. ”
A stupid waste of $50 million of existing funds. What else that should be done is going to get cut for this stupid, pointless political jesturing.
Who knew that he had fallen for the climate BS? This will do nothing to reduce global emissions, and it will do nothing to stop climate change or lower the “global temperature” (if such a thing existed) Absolutely a waste of time and resources. I agree, sequestered CO2 is very dangerous .I have pointed out the Lake Nyos problem before. Atmospheric CO2 on the other hand, is harmless. $50,000,000 *SMH*
It was in a valley so in effect they, all oxygen breathing animals, were suffocated as the heavier CO2 displaced all other gases. Estimates were in the order of 17% CO2. And there are people who think we can bury CO2 “safely”? There was a report or link I read recently that there are considerations about storing CO2 in mand-made salt caverns at 200 atmospheres. Truly scary stuff! Has any these advocates opened a bottle of liquid filled with CO2, under pressure? Gasses under pressure are scary when there is a breach. It’s why pressure vessels are pressure tested in water/liquid.
Eric Worrall – July 19, 2019 at 2:11 pm
The “good news” is, …. those CO2 polluting power plants can now be easily spotted by NASA and legal action can be taken against them, ………………. read on:
Excerpted from above article:
YUP, and now NASA has proof positive scientific “evidence” of said CO2 reduction, to wit:
Excerpted from: First Data from NASA’s OCO-3 Mission
Life is good.
Well said Eric. Thank you.
Re: CRENSHAW INTRODUCES BIPARTISAN CARBON CAPTURE LEGISLATION
For the record Representative Crenshaw and co-sponsors of this CO2 capture legislation, you are full of Schmidt. CO2 in the atmosphere is good , and more CO2 is better.
Excerpt from my recent paper:
15. Atmospheric CO2 is not alarmingly high, it is too low for optimal plant growth and alarmingly low for the survival of carbon-based terrestrial life. The real danger is not too much CO2 – it is CO2 starvation. Over geologic time, CO2 is ~permanently sequestered in carbonate rocks.
Plants evolved at atmospheric CO2 concentrations of 2000 ppm and greater, and many grow best at about 1200 ppm CO2 – about 3 times current levels. That is why greenhouse operators pump 1000-1200 ppm CO2 into their greenhouses.
Major food crops (except corn) use the C3 photosynthetic pathway, and die at about 150 ppm from CO2 starvation – that is just 30 ppm below the minimum levels during the last Ice Age, which ended just 10,000 years ago – “the blink of an eye” in geologic time. Earth came that close to a major extinction event.
During one of the next Ice Ages, unless there is massive human intervention, atmospheric CO2 will decline to below 150 ppm and that will be the next major extinction event – not just for a few species but for ~all complex terrestrial carbon-based life forms.
Reference: “(Plant) Food for Thought”
(first posted in January 2009 on wattsupwiththat.com, published on icecap.us in December 2014)
by Allan MacRae, Dec 18, 2014
http://icecap.us/index.php/go/new-and-cool/plant_food_for_thought2/
Reference: “Should We Celebrate Carbon Dioxide?”
by Patrick Moore, October 15, 2015
https://www.thegwpf.org/patrick-moore-should-we-celebrate-carbon-dioxide/
Excerpts from
“CO2, Global Warming, Climate and Energy”
by Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/06/15/co2-global-warming-climate-and-energy-2/
Or even exceed a nuclear blast death toll depending on topology. Now if they could pipe directly to the nearest greenhouse farm…
I don’t think he understands the issues. Undoing the Carter era rules on nuclear would have a much more positive effect, even if one is ignorant enough to buy into the “CO2 is the temperature knob” theme.
50 million a year for a research to repeal the Second Law of Thermodynamics? As the Congress is a legislative body, why don’t they repeal that law directly?
Net Power Plant, in La Porte, Texas…
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Experimental-Texas-power-plant-aims-to-make-13654087.php#photo-17003111
The phrase is “win-win”.
It doesn’t public funds those to “research” it. The benefits of CCS for reuse in EOR are known. But the places it can be used in this manner are limited in the big picture. And CCS for EOR is just atiny drop in the bucket of the FF energy the US consumes domestically every day.
Further, the technology is mature, and any research to continue to improve it for more CO2 for EOR can come from private investment. This is not something to stick the tax payer with.
Interesting article about the Net Power Plant, in La Porte, Texas. It says that it uses the Allam power cycle which, if I understand correctly, uses pure oxygen instead of atmospheric air and the article doesn’t really say how much oxygen will be needed to be supplied to a commercially viable power plant, how the oxygen will be produced, where the energy will come from to produce the oxygen or how much it will cost. The article does mention that the plant could produce power for $20 per megawatt hour, assuming the federal tax credits that provide incentives for storing carbon dioxide stay in place but it doesn’t say how much it would cost without the federal tax credit. Using the CO2 produced for injection into oil and gas reservoirs to boost production makes sense but otherwise CO2 sequestration seems like a dubious proposition.
That makes no sense. Superheating CO2 to drive turbines does not create energy from nor consume the CO2. You cannot “consume” CO2 to make energy, it is already in a fully oxidized state. After the turbine cools it you are left with some hot CO2 and if you push 3% of that thru pipelines where is the other 97% going? Vented to the air, blessed as carbon neutral because it was used in the process to make some electricity? What about the energy it took to heat it to supercritical? Where did that come from? Smoke and mirrors.
“where is the other 97% going”
If I understand the process correctly, the “97%” of the CO2 is the working fluid for the turbine which is reheated to its suprtcritical state by burning more Natural gas and sent back through the turbine. Only the CO2 generated from reheating the working fluid CO2 is extracted to be used for some other purpose such as oil well injection or CO2 sequestration.
The link from David Middleton above made no sense at all to me . Supercritical CO2 is a low temp (300-400K) but high pressure form of CO2 used , eg in decaffeinating coffee without using toxic solvents .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_carbon_dioxide#/media/File:Carbon_dioxide_pressure-temperature_phase_diagram.svg
How is this consumed in a power plant to produce energy when , as others have pointed out , it is already fully oxidised? Any further chemical reaction would be endothermic , consuming energy , unless you reacted with a more electronegative element than oxygen , eg e fluorine- which God forbid .
I wonder if the journalist misread 400K (Kelvin) as 400C (Celsius) – not a very high temperature , but if you do not know the difference between celsius and kelvin scales then 400 might seem very high.
(BTW – side comment to Mods . Can’t seem to get any AOL.com email anymore so have changed email address , in case you are wondering)
Is that 97% of CO2 that is recycled , ………. recycled to what?
And how much does the “CO2 recycling” cost?
Undoubtedly written by a journalist and completely cobbed-up, this explanation makes no sense whatsoever. It sounds as though reheating CO2 is providing energy, which cannot be, and it sounds as though only 3% of the total emissions are stored. At any rate the Houston Chronicle needed someone capable of editing this. As it stands it implies an ever growing supply of CO2 running around some piping, awaiting a customer.
The money would be far better spent in support of Modular Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor technology. Zero emissions, intrinsically safe, economic, reliable and, I believe, potentially capable of being partially fuelled by existing nuclear waste.
Meanwhile carbon capture and storage is technically a bit of a dead duck.
Can we send Crenshaw a couple of books to read? Do Congressmen or their staff read books sent to their offices?
“Here in Michigan, we are leading the way on making a responsible transition to clean natural gas. This bipartisan bill would help get new innovative technologies out of the lab and into the market, providing more affordable energy options for consumers,” said Walberg.
LOL
Um – CCS will cost. So they will be providing more expensive energy, not more affordable energy.
Got a better idea, just vent the CO2 to the atmosphere and let the plants do the work that they have been doing for millions of years; they love the stuff and it wont cost anyone a plugged nickel.
OB
Yeah…right…
The spoon and fork made me fat.
Taking guns away from legal owners will reduce crime.
The dog ate my homework.
The government does things more efficiently and economically that the private sector.
Humans 1% contributions of Carbon Dioxide increases temperature where 99% of natural contributions don’t.
CCS is a colossal waste of energy and money.
There is no other way to put it.
But when you’re a Congressperson, spending OPM is what you do to get re-elected.
Sad.
“The legislation prioritizes research and development funding for technology that captures carbon emissions by instructing the Department of Energy to utilize up to $50 million each year of existing funds.
If DoE has $50 million to waste on CCS, then that’s $50 million too much in its budget.
He couldn’t get Al Green to co-sponser ?
😉
I have lived a long time and at one point in my life would have been outraged by such stupidity but thanks to wisdom that comes with age I just shake my head and say what a pile of excrement. I thought we were the intelligent species.
If it’s “bi-partisan” anything, run away.
Rather than on carbon capture, the time, effort, and money would be better spent on holding one’s breath.
The main, probably only, value of carbon-capture technology is that it can be used to make the green idiots think we are successfully addressing their concerns.
Yes, it’s a non-viable solution for a problem that doesn’t exist, but these people clearly enjoy being lied to and sometimes I feel like obliging them.
Another politician drinks the Kool-Aid.
OK as long as nothing in the bill is ‘cast in concrete’. I don’t believe anything along this line can be made to pencil out. The energy to put the carbon into storage will always exceed the energy obtained to release it. If a very cheap source of energy is found to do this it is better used to defer further ‘release’ of ‘new’ carbon.
No benefit to warming has yet been shown. In other words, if “X” megtons of carbon are ‘sequestered’ the temperatore will be ‘not increased’ by “Y” degrees to a reasonable certainty – ie it is not yet proven.
Why capture it? Let it free. I eagerly anticipate the day when our atmospheric concentration reaches 800 ppm and heralds a new dawn of agricultural and forest product abundance.
But, but, but, the BIG political donors can’t make any profit iffen they have to wait for forests to grow.
The EIA came out with a report a short while ago in their Frequently Asked Questions, “How much natural gas does the USA have and how long will it last. Check it out.
America needs a lot of energy produced if we are going to continue to live the lifestyles we are accustomed to. We believe America has to start looking at the future and what we have for energy and how we can best utilize that energy, and it will be good for all.
We have over 600 years of coal in the ground. Coal can be combusted clean. https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo
Natural gas should be used for building space heating and by industry to produce all those things we need every day. Coal should be used to produce our electricity. President Trump has the right idea of putting up a bunch of smaller capacity high efficiency low emission coal power plants. That will work much better for ramping to fill the gaps in solar and wind. Oil is for transportation.
It still requires that someone with deep pockets, any sceptical very rich men/women , or the Federal government, to prove that CO2
is a good and essential gas, with continues publication every week of that fact.
Remember Dr. Gobbles, “”Tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”.
Well the Greens do that all the time, so let us do it too.
MJE VK5ELL
Natural gas should be used to heat your house, not power electrical turbines. Some one stand to make a ton of dough off this farce, and it won’t the consumer. The consumer will pay through the nose, either in outrages power bills, or hidden in big tax increases to subsidize the whole scam.
Consumers will pay because competing with power plants for natural gas drives the price up. They can burn coal instead. I can’t.
No reason we should not do both. The US is blessed with enormous reserves of natural gas. It is cheap, clean and abundant. I live in Corpus Christi Texas and the drive to San Antonio puts one through the heart of the Eagle-Ford oil play where hydraulic fracturing was pioneered to prove to the world the best place to find new oil is where you found it before. Oil fields once thought to be financially exhausted fracking showed we left 80 % in the ground. The future of electrical energy generation will be nuclear and super efficient gas turbines minus the nonsense of CCS. The green dullards who squeal and squirm and wring their climate catastrophe hands will eventually be but a mere speed bump in the unfolding story how we brought affordable electricity to mind kind everywhere.
This is very disappointing from a Republican congressman.
“Bipartisan” support for the carbon capture fraud? So republicans are coming out of the globalist closet? When will this madness end?
When we look at the big picture, it is very clear that the Earth is in a CO2 drought. This drought has the potential to bring about the next mass extinction. Fortunately, humans came along just in time to liberate the sequestered C and save the planet. But some humans want to thwart that!
I thought the cheapest and most efficient way to capture carbon is to replace old growth forest with new trees.
All of the old growth forests have already been replaced, some with new trees.
Planting trees really is the best way if this is what you’re into. I like planting fruit trees, especially considering the price of fruit these days.
The tree farms some greens despise do more to carbon capture than most people realize.
The reality is that there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the idea that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So capturing CO2 will have no effect on climate. This effort also ignore’s another more potent greenhouse gas that the burning of fossil fuels creates, H2O. For those that believe in the radiant greenhouse effect, artificially sequestering CO2 will have no real effect on the total amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere which is dominated by H2O and the subsequent overall radiant greenhouse effect. The best way to sequester CO2 is to provide more plants that will turn it into hydro-carbon organic matter and O2. Currently adding more CO2 to the Earth’s atmosphere is better for life in general. A sudden release of sequestered CO2 could be very dangerous and lethal. If one is really serous about reducing the burning of fossil fuels one would be spending money on replacing old fossil fuel power plants with nuclear power plants.
CCS – An absurd, expensive, “solution” to a non-problem. “Carbon” isn’t the problem; carbonophobes is the problem.
Okay so what’s the correct amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and why?
And is this lower than the average for the last 600 million years and, if so, why?
As others have frequently pointed out, trying to build systems to reduce this seems to have rather more downsides than the alternative. I don’t know exactly why it’s so hard to comprehend a post-greenhouse world… apart from some people’s careers, avocations, and worldview being dependent on not comprehending it.
Luckily, even if we build some monstrous sequestration machine, we have considerable time to deal with the problem – likely millions of years. Hopefully future generations will be better at math.
Up to $50M in handouts each year to their “constituent” carbon-capture businesses.
Comment stuck in moderation somewhere. Not sure why. Didn’t use any banned words AFAIK.
Subsidies are great for enriching the subsidized.
If all the subsidies for solar panels, windmills and their associated price supports were instead spent on geothermal heat pump systems in the US, our CO2 output would be FAR lower. And the installed infrastructure would continue to reap the benefits of lower energy consumption for the approx. 40 year lifespan of the systems.
The subsidizers chose…poorly…
And that’s the problem.
My opinion of Crenshaw just tanked. I thought he had enough common sense to know that CO2 was not a pollutant. Somebody talk to him – please. Alarmists would suck all the CO2 out of the atmosphere if they could.
Clever political move. Forget New Green Deal. forget carbon tax, wind and solar subsidies, world government. It is now Clean Carbon Economy.
In politics perception is everything. Science, technology, not even economics is not so important.
So, we have renewable, natural carbon which the foundation of life on earth We use condensed coal source such power plants and direct their CO2 greenhouses where we grow tomatoes in Alaska. Then we eat the tomatoes. We can also produce diesel fuel from plastics or CO2.
Extreme left will hate this.
I really don’t believe there is any stupidity involved here. This is politics. Crenshaw has finally got his fingers in the pie and his feet on the gravy train and he really wants to climb the financial ladder through millionairdom to mega rich like all politicians. He needs two things. Money and votes.
Step 1. Throw your priniples and beliefs out of the window. Get on the latest bandwagon.
Step 2. Throw some Government money in the direction of the mega donors and the parasitic businesses. Expect in return to get donations for your next campaign to get a message out, any message you think will win more votes.
Step 3. Don’t do anything too outrageous to lose your partisan voter base. Equally true whether you are Republican or Dimwit, Conservative or Labour .
Step 4. Go to the other side just far enough to get enough floating voters to keep your edge over your political opponents.
Crenshaw is spot on. He does not give a toss about climate change any more than any other politician does. Means to an end. Get rich. Get Power.
The problem Trump has is that he was already rich and already had power so he missed step 1 .
If you want genuine stupidity look no further than the current UK Government.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble,
finding it weather it exists or not.
Misdiagnosing the problem, and
applying the wrong remedy!
Actually this is better!
“No mans life,liberty or property
are safe while the legislature is in
session”
probably this bill will never become law
if it does it will likely be amended to ‘up to $50M’ for CCS and will ultimately provide a minuscule subsidy to the natural gas industry which has employers in the districts of the sponsors
annoying but not a big deal
CO2 makes up 0.04 % of the atmosphere. Only 3% of all of the CO2 that enters the atmosphere every year is due to mankind. Even if the IPCC’s wild guess at sensitivity was correct, total elimination of the mankind portion would be lost in the round off of the temperature calculations.