“The mothballing of Petra Nova highlights the deep financial risks facing other proposed U.S. coal-fired carbon capture projects,” analysts at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said in a report last week. Those projects include the San Juan Generating Station in New Mexico and the Tundra Project in North Dakota, both exploring carbon capture retrofits to keep their coal plants running.

Carbon capture critics are also pointing to a technical report that Petra Nova’s operators, NRG Energy, submitted to the Energy Department back in March. That report, made public last week, shows that Petra Nova experienced 367 days of outages over the three-year period analyzed (2017-2019). The report also shows the carbon capture unit captured less than 10% of the coal plant’s total emissions in 2017 and 2018, the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group, noted in a blog post Thursday.

Backers accuse critics of cherry-picking data: “An objective and detailed look at this report would have also noted the overall success of the project which recently idled due to the pandemic and the low price of oil, not failed technology,” Energy Department spokesperson Shaylyn Hynes said in a statement on Twitter Friday, in response to a Reuters report on Petra Nova’s technical report. “DOE remains committed to CCUS technology as it is critical to meeting our nation’s emissions reduction goals.”

John Thompson, technology and markets director at the Clean Air Task Force, said the technical report submitted to the Energy Department actually shows Petra Nova’s carbon capture unit has been quite successful as a first-of-its-kind project.

The capture unit captured 92% of the CO2 it saw, better than the 90% target it had set out to achieve, Thompson told Abby. And the unit’s performance improved each year, he added. The carbon capture unit itself caused 41 full or partial outages in 2017, a number cut down to 29 in 2019, according to the technical report.

Thompson also notes that air pollution emissions from the addition of the carbon capture unit were far less than expected and that more than 99% of the carbon captured was ultimately sequestered underground.

The economics are difficult, but policy can improve them: Thompson and other carbon capture supporters point out that the Petra Nova project doesn’t appear to be taking advantage of federal tax incentives for the technology, an element that could improve the project’s economics and make it less singularly dependent on oil prices.

Other types of policies, too, would help, including increased research spending, investments in carbon dioxide pipeline infrastructure and saline storage sites, and different incentives (like a production tax credit) to drive deployment, Thompson said.

“The technical side of CCS based on this report is really strong and promising. The economics are complicated, because of the pandemic and because, even in good times, you have to worry about overseas competition,” he added.

As Congress looks to a stimulus, Thompson said, they should work to craft policies that allow industrial facilities and power plants to “not just break even” if they install carbon capture, but be “slightly profitable.”

Welcome to Daily on Energy, written by Washington Examiner Energy and Environment Writers Josh Siegel (@SiegelScribe) and Abby Smith (@AbbySmithDC). Email jsiegel@washingtonexaminer.com or asmith@washingtonexaminer.com for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email, and we’ll add you to our list.

ROADBLOCK TO BIDEN CLIMATE PLANS…CENTRIST DEMOCRATS: Joe Biden must overcome a major significant roadblock to fulfill his pledge of passing aggressive climate change legislation: winning over centrists from fossil-fuel states in his own party.

“If the Democrats gain control of the Senate, it’s going to be because a lot of purple states turned from red to blue, which suggests there will be less of a mandate to pass something wildly outside a moderate climate objective,” said Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Centrist Democrats, including former lawmakers involved in the 2009 cap-and-trade fight, told Josh for a story posted this weekend that Biden, assuming Democrats win the Senate, can’t afford to lose many votes within his party.

They say Biden’s preference for using mandates, regulations, and federal spending to reduce fossil fuel use will be a tough sell for members such as Joe Manchin, the coal-state senator from West Virginia who is poised to lead the Senate Energy Committee.

“There is a difference between aspirations and platforms and actual making of laws,” said former Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who opposed cap-and-trade. “When you are making laws, you have to consider different views between the parties and different regional views that have nothing to do with party.”

Biden has pledged to pass a clean electricity standard requiring utilities eliminate carbon emissions from power plants by 2035.

“We are not going to be off fossil fuels in 15 or 20 years,” said former Democratic Sen. John Breaux of Louisiana, who rose to chief deputy whip and was a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee before retiring in 2005. “We’ve tried regulations. The better approach would be to use the marketplace to achieve better results.”

Other centrist Democrats from fossil-fuel states see Biden’s 2035 target for entirely zero-carbon electricity as unachievable and expensive. Previous clean electricity standard legislation introduced in Congress have slower timelines or weaker targets.

Read more, including why some centrist Democrats favor a carbon tax.

SPEAKING OF DEMOCRATS AND CARBON PRICING BILLS: Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin unveiled Friday legislation that would impose a carbon fee, starting at $25 per ton of carbon dioxide, once the U.S. economy recovers from the pandemic, no later than 2023.

The carbon fee would increase by $10 each year, with much of the revenue going to low- and middle-income people in the form of rebates. Revenue from the carbon fee would also go to facilities that capture, store, and utilize carbon and farmers who sequester carbon in their soils, according to a release from Durbin’s office. In addition, the legislation would offer grants to states and local governments for worker transition and to people who bear the brunt of pollution, and it would create a federal agency to fund clean energy projects.

Why the bill is notable: It’s a major climate bill from one of the Senate’s top Democrats, in the middle of a pandemic no less. As Noah Kaufman, a research scholar with Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, points out, the bill would likely be integral to climate policy discussions if Democrats take the Senate in November.

“It’s rare to see a piece of climate legislation that checks as many boxes as this one does,” Kaufman said in a tweet. He added the bill is likely what serious climate legislation looks like given the state of the U.S. economy, “lots of spending up front, with the necessary sticks coming later.” (Kaufman also has a handy comparison of Durbin’s bill versus other carbon pricing bills introduced in the House and Senate.)

One other interesting element: Durbin’s bill includes a tax adjustment mechanism to automatically bump up the carbon price if the U.S. isn’t meeting emissions targets baked into the bill (45% below 2018 levels by 2030 and net-zero by 2050). Resources for the Future and Environmental Defense Fund, in a new issue brief Friday, say such mechanisms can be critical because a carbon tax alone “cannot guarantee a particular emissions outcome because it is impossible to predict exactly how actors in the economy will respond to a given carbon price.”

BIDEN JOINS THE PEBBLE MINE FRAY: Biden would block the gold and copper mine proposed for construction in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, his campaign said in a statement Sunday.

“It is no place for a mine,” Biden said. “The Obama-Biden Administration reached that conclusion when we ran a rigorous, science-based process in 2014, and it is still true today.” Biden also slammed the Trump administration, saying former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed the Obama EPA’s veto on the project after meeting with a mining executive “behind closed doors.”

Making this a campaign issue: Biden’s team appears to be ramping up the pressure on President Trump, who could soon weigh in on the project directly.

Trump has been put in a tough spot after his son, Donald Trump Jr., came out last week against the project, which he suggested could threaten Bristol Bay’s “unique and fragile” waters. The Army Corps of Engineers last month completed an environmental analysis of the project finding it poses no serious harms, clearing the way for the mine to be approved by the end of this year.

FERC PROVIDES COURSE TO CONGRESS ON BUILDING TRANSMISSION: Staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission delivered a report to Congress Friday outlining the opportunities and challenges of building large-scale transmission lines.

The report, required as part of an appropriations law enacted in December, reiterated the importance of transmission in helping meet clean energy goals by delivering wind and solar from oftentimes rural areas where the power is generated to population centers. Transmission is also poised to play a more important role as policymakers look to electrify other parts of the economy, such as transportation and buildings.

The report highlights how transmission can improve the reliability and resilience of the grid by enabling a region to access additional generation in the event that local generation is unavailable, and can aid with restoration after an outage.

It recommends that federal and state policymakers promote transmission development by encouraging better collaboration and planning between regions.

Barriers are plenty: But FERC staffers note the federal government, unlike with natural gas pipelines, has little power to approve transmission, with the authorities mostly delegated to states.

The complex siting process, oftentimes plagued by not-in-my-backyard-ism, or NIMBYism, can take more than a decade, the report notes, as states where power lines would need to be built but don’t necessarily benefit from using or generating the power have little incentive to approve them.

Another problem the report cites is loopholes in the implementation of FERC “Order 1000,” the commission’s transmission incentives policy. That FERC order, issued in July 2011, tried to encourage competitive bidding among developers, but the report notes there is an increase in projects receiving exceptions to competitive processes. Additionally, since the order started, developers have tended to focus on reliability and local needs for building transmission without thinking about the larger regional and public policy interests, like its potential to help curb emissions.

The report also flags barriers to developing transmission as part of existing rights-of-way granted to highways and rail projects, which proponents say could save costs and be more efficient by limiting siting needs.

Some states, the report notes, prohibit building transmission in highway rights-of-way.

COMING SOON…FIRST STATE PLAN FOR EPA POWER RULE: A state will soon release the first implementation plan for the EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, its replacement of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, in what could serve as a model to other states, Anne Idsal Austin, the EPA’s air chief, said Friday during a Texas environmental law conference.

Austin didn’t name which state was putting forth the plan, but she added the plan shows the Trump EPA is “very serious about working with the states on an individual basis” and demonstrates the “more tailored approach” the agency is taking on power plants’ carbon emissions.

EPA hasn’t hit the brakes on truck rule: Austin also pushed back on reports that the EPA has paused work on new air emissions limits for heavy-duty trucks. EPA’s vehicles lab in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been shut down during the pandemic, delaying some of the technical modeling needed to craft the standards, but the agency is still “working diligently” on the rule, she said.

“We want to be sure it’s done correctly, recognizing that [the California Air Resources Board] lept ahead and is trying to push for things that in our mind are not attainable,” Austin added.

RESHUFFLING ATOP NATIONAL PARK SERVICE: Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced Friday he is designating Margaret Everson as acting director of the National Park Service. Everson replaces David Vela, who announced his retirement Friday after working 30 years at the Park Service but only 10 months in his acting director role.

Everson has been a counselor to Bernhardt and was also the principal deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service under him. She will become the forth acting head of the Park Service in the Trump administration. The president nominated Vela to be the agency’s director, but the Senate never acted on his confirmation and he wasn’t renominated.

Everson has previously worked in the Interior Department in the George W. Bush administration.

The Rundown

New York Times This is inequality at the boiling point

Washington Post This giant climate hot spot is robbing the West of its water

Associated Press Mauritius races to contain oil spill, protect coastline

Quartz Oil companies are backing Trump’s re-election after giving heavily to Clinton in 2016

CNBC Amid power outages, CEO of generator maker anticipates ‘massive change’ coming to the grid

Calendar

MONDAY | AUG 10

The House and Senate are out.