WASHINGTON, DC - The House Energy and Commerce Committee is continuing its investigation into whether certain federal agency decisions concerning clean coal technology have complied with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct05). The committee has been particularly interested in whether or not EPA adhered to this statute when the agency was developing its proposed greenhouse gas standards for new power plants. Energy and Commerce Committee leaders today wrote to Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz seeking to examine DOE’s implementation of EPAct05 and the information DOE developed and provided to other agencies.
In the letter to Moniz, committee leaders wrote, “Information developed in our investigation has raised questions about EPA’s compliance with EPAct05, which strictly prohibits consideration of carbon capture technologies at facilities that have received federal funding to be ‘adequately demonstrated’ under section 111 of the CAA. In particular, both documents reviewed by Committee staff and briefings with agency officials indicate EPA was not aware of these statutory limitations when it was developing the proposed standards. EPA’s failure to identify and faithfully apply EPAct05 statutory limitations when it decided to propose standards for new power plants in September 2013 raises questions about the underlying quality and integrity of its analyses."
The leaders continued, “The Secretary of Energy is responsible for establishing and carrying out EPAct05’s Clean Coal Power Initiative and for helping to implement certain EPAct05 authorized clean coal tax provisions. In light of this, we seek to examine the Department of Energy’s implementation of EPAct05 provisions relating to clean coal technologies and the information it developed for or shared with other federal entities relating to these provisions, particularly sections 402 and 1307 of EPAct05."
“Our investigation to date suggests EPA completely overlooked the legal limits put in place by EPAct05 and the agency was caught flat-footed when the committee first raised these legal concerns," said Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-PA). “Following the laws Congress sets is not optional, and our investigation seeks to fully understand the reasons for this apparent failure to faithfully apply important statutory provisions."
The committee is asking DOE to provide the requested documents by October 7, 2014.
In addition to Murphy, the letter was signed by full committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-KY), Vice Chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Michael C. Burgess, M.D. (R-TX), Chairman Emeritus Joe Barton (R-TX), and full committee Vice Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
