Wyoming DOE Lab Day

Thank you for that introduction and thank you everyone for attending this great Lab Day event.

 

• I am almost a year into the Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management job – and what a year it’s been.

 

• Listening to the panel just ended, I’m reminded that the transformative science and technology solutions being discovered across the National Laboratories have changed – and will change – the economic and social direction of this country in great ways.

 

• So, thank you to all the Lab Directors on the previous panel for the great work they are doing wrangling all those great minds who are discovering and inventing solutions to solve our great challenges with energy security and climate.

 

• And, of course, thank you to my direct boss, Dr. Richmond, who has been leading the charge to expand the pipeline of innovations between the national labs and industries, universities, manufacturers, end-users and underserved communities, and connecting these innovations to advances in energy justice.

 

• Earlier this morning, I was at the state capital in some meetings with the governor’s senior energy and environmental officials, and there was a lot of attention to the many opportunities for DOE funding in Wyoming as well as opportunities to leverage funding from other agencies working through the Interagency Working Group for Coal and Power Plant Communities.

 

• There is broad agreement that carbon management is an excellent bridge – if not the best bridge -- to a net-zero future. I’ve been arguing this point for years because we all understand that fossil energy will remain part of our energy mix for the foreseeable future.

 

• Governor Gordon and his team have a low-carbon strategy to make the state carbon-negative by supporting bioenergy and capturing and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere even as Wyoming remains a major energy exporting state in the next several decades.

 

• Because in the coming years, the world will still be utilizing fossil energy.

 

• Wyoming is a leader in developing technologies like carbon capture and storage so that both domestic and international customers can responsibly use Wyoming’s resources to make products like as low-carbon electricity, hydrogen and ammonia.

 

• And we have seen how valuable technological solutions can be. America’s alliances have been supported and strengthened by the export of U.S. natural gas to our allies in Europe and Asia. This is not something everyone expected when Russia used its energy as an economic weapon during the invasion of Ukraine last year.

 

• Less than two decades ago, it was believed that by the 2020s, the U.S. would be the world’s largest importer of LNG, but instead, it’s the world’s largest exporter.

 

• This dramatic change in the energy security of this country is a lesson that in geopolitics, as in science, you never know what solution will be developed – or become available – to solve what would otherwise seem to be an intractable, unsolvable conundrum.

 

• What was necessary in LNG’s case was our country’s ability to build up its scientific and infrastructure capacity so it could solve major political and energy problems – unforeseen at the time – through long-term investment and scientific innovation.

 

• The national labs have done their part in this regard with energy technology. Back in 2014, Argonne Labs patented an advanced cathode technology that improved electric vehicle battery range and reliability in a way that sparked a revival in America’s battery manufacturing industry.
  Argonne battery technology confirmed by U.S. Patent Office | Argonne National Laboratory (anl.gov)

 

• And many of us know well the story of how National Lab research jump-started the shale gas revolution. Roughly $200 million in research and development spending on unconventional gas between 1976 and 1992, later resulted in an estimated $100 billion a year in economic activity from shale gas production alone, along with the creation of tens of thousands of good-paying domestic jobs.
  75 Breakthroughs by America's National Laboratories | Department of Energy

 

• Today, Wyoming continues to be a supplier of coal from the Powder River Basin because of its low-cost, low-sulfur content, and having the lowest greenhouse gas emissions footprint of any coal resource used for power generation. With a little more work to deploy CCS and biomass co-firing, it could be the first carbon neutral or even carbon negative opportunity with coal to generate clean reliable power.

 

• The same geology that holds an abundance of fossil energy resources also offers the potential storage of hundreds of billions of tons of carbon captured from industrial and biomass facilities, and carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere via direct air capture. 

 

• The national labs have been solving the country’s most challenging problems for decades, turning science into concrete solutions for policymakers, and the Labs are now the foundation of our country’s effort to transform our potential for climate action, to support domestic energy, and allow industry and manufacturing to retain and create high wage jobs.

 

• It was this great promise of what the national lab system could do that motivated Congress to pass language in 2020 allowing DOE to expand its focus not just on traditional R&D spending, but also on commercial-scale demonstration projects and deployment of climate-essential technologies and infrastructure.

 

• In the past two years, Congress delivered on this promise by passing two massive pieces of legislation – the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act – which has made the U.S. one of the best places in the world to develop industrial carbon capture projects.

 

• For FECM’s part, the infrastructure law allocates $12 billion to demonstrate carbon management technologies and CO2 transport and storage, and another $8 billion to put toward developing hydrogen hubs.

 

• This funding supports the deployment of at least six commercially scaled carbon management facilities, two of which be on coal-fired power plants; four regional clean hydrogen hubs, and the development of 20 to 40 regional geologic storage hubs over the next decade – each of which must store at least 50 million metric tonnes of carbon over the next 30 years.

 

• In parallel with these projects, we are establishing a financial authority to provide billions of dollars in low-interest loans and grants to build regional carbon dioxide transportation systems that move captured carbon from industrial facilities and power plants to geologic storage sites.

 

• And complimenting this infrastructure legislation is the Inflation Reduction Act, which increases the value of the 45Q tax credit to $85 per ton of CO2 captured.

 

• This tax credit – which received strong bipartisan support -- has dramatically increased the commercial viability of carbon capture for natural gas processing, liquefaction, hydrogen, and ammonia production from natural gas, and will enable tens of billions of dollars of private investment to flow to hundreds of additional projects in the commercial marketplace.

 

• Taken together, the BIL and the IRA represent the most significant U.S. commitment to carbon management to date. Some have compared it to the level of federal support given to earlier infrastructure projects like NASA’s Apollo program or the Interstate Highway System.

 

• We expect this legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2030. And for carbon management specifically, the combination of federal funding and 45Q enhancements could lead to the deployment of between 210 and 250 million metric tons of CCS technology annually by 2035.

 

• So, needless to say, a lot has been done in the past several years on carbon management, and DOE has been working night and day to make it happen.

 

• This level of deployment requires broad community involvement and project development that demonstrates economic, environmental, and social benefits to citizens at the local level.

 

• And for FECM specifically, our job of delivering awards to recipients and overseeing projects will become even more challenging.

 

• We have awarded $191 million so far this year, and our goal is to award $976 million from BIL appropriations and another $373 million from base appropriations by the end of 2023.

 

• And we are growing our headcount to match our new responsibilities.

 

• We aim to grow our headcount within the office by more than 10 percent this year, adding more than 100 employees, including 30 specifically for positions created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.

 

• If we are to meet our carbon management goals, we must deploy technologies and infrastructure on an unprecedented scale. This must include hundreds of carbon capture and storage projects, as well as solar projects, wind farms, electric transmission lines and thousands of miles of CO2 pipelines.

 

• But as we do all this, we recognize that American industry must build out its carbon management infrastructure to improve the quality of life for communities that have been a part of the carbon economy for decades if not more than a century. And this includes many communities here in Wyoming.

 

• Because the reality is, Wyoming has made huge contributions to our nation’s economy and energy security for many decades.

 

• And as has been mentioned earlier – Wyoming itself has the potential to store tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide as it starts to fully utilize its storage capacity.

 

• This is an enormous amount of potential storage. It will demand a lot of new pipeline and processing capacity, which is why leveraging the investment available from the BIL and IRA is so important, and why we’re so pleased the rapid response team for Coal and Power Plant Communities is making progress.

 

• This build-out will be a significant change for many communities, and to that end, our office has launched a domestic engagement framework to outline our vision for successful engagement that ensures that tangible environmental, economic, and social benefits can flow to communities.

 

• We have prepared comprehensive societal considerations and impacts guidance to address how to incorporate community engagement.

 

• And we have partnered with DOE’s Offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations and Economic Impact and Diversity to launch a pilot series of interactive workshops in communities where carbon management projects may be sited.

 

• Ultimately, these on-the-ground engagements are helping us learn community priorities and concerns about projects, including how communities can be more involved in their development.

 

• Because if we don’t get the balance between infrastructure and communities right, we risk losing what is the opportunity of a lifetime to build-out a post-carbon infrastructure for this country.

 

• All of these moving parts must fit together as part of a system, and for our part, FECM is pleased to work with states like Wyoming that understand both the complexities and opportunities of the coming era.

 

• And we particularly look forward to continuing our work with the University of Wyoming on the critical research and development that will be a benefit the future of this country and for nations around the world.

 

• So, with that, there are many important topics to discuss this afternoon, and I look forward to the discussions.

 

• Thank you very much.