BILL: Power plant to be demonstration site

Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduced legislation last week that would allow the Capitol Power Plant to be a demonstration site for carbon-capture technologies.

The legislation would authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to award $3 million on a competitive basis for a two-year project that captures, stores or uses carbon dioxide emitted from the plant when coal is burned. The bill was referred to the Environment and Public Works Committee, which Boxer heads.

{mosads}The project must use technology that has been used in at least three other facilities, which in turn are at least five times the size of the power plant.

“This bill will make the Capitol Power Plant the place to see today’s state-of-the-art technology at work,” Boxer said last week in a statement. “The project authorized by our bill will show that the technology exists right now to start capturing global warming pollution.”

Said Alexander: “This bill provides an opportunity for Congress to lead by example. Using the Capitol Power Plant to demonstrate ways to reduce CO2 emissions is a good way to illustrate that we can and should act now to reduce these emissions.”

Legislative-branch operations generated 316,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in fiscal 2006, according to a recently released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Thirty-two percent of emissions came from the Capitol Power Plant, which uses fossil fuels in the production of steam to heat and cool most buildings on Capitol Hill.