• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

After Five Years, Congress, Bush Agree to National Energy Policy

Posted on: Friday, 30 September 2005, 06:01 CDT

By Anonymous

At least 70 percent of the $1.8 billion Clean Coal Power Initiative funding must be spent on coal gasification demonstration technologies.

It took five years, but Congress finally passed a comprehensive national energy bill that President Bush signed into law in August. The $12.3-billion measure contains about $6.17 billion in authorizations for coal and mining-related items. And tax packages for coal-related programs total $2.8 billion. The bill authorizes $1.8 billion over nine years for the Clean Coal Power Initiative. At least 70 percent of the those funds must be used for coal gasification demonstration technologies. The remaining 30 percent would be used for advanced coal pulverizing technologies. The bill also authorizes $1.137 billion for basic coal research and development. The measure also establishes a 10-year, $90-million research and development program to develop carbon-capture technologies for new and existing coal-fired power plants. And $75 million would be spent over three years for coal mining research programs.

The energy bill also authorizes $3 billion for a new Clean Air Coal Program. The first part of the program is a five-year, $500- million program to help existing coal-fired power plants to install advanced pollution-control technologies. They would be aimed at reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions. Part two of the Clean-Coal Program is a seven-year, $2.5-billion program to help electricity generating plants install advanced clean coal technologies to replace existing generation capacity or for new capacity. Other provisions in the energy bill include a climate change program that is voluntary and technology based, a $75- million program to investigate the use of precious metals for catalysis and studies to address labor shortages that are facing the energy industry.

In addition, the new energy program makes changes to the Mineral Leasing Act. The changes increase the amount of coal acreage a company can lease from the federal government. Also, the bill provides $1.5 billion in subsidies to promote the building of more nuclear power plants. And there is the potential for billions of dollars in government commitments to ensure the plants receive financial backing from Wall Street. The energy bill also addresses oil shale, even though the Bush admininstration admits that commercial oil production from this resource is more than a decade off. It directs the U.S. Department of the Interior to speed up the process for leasing the oil shale land it controls, mostly in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The amount of land a company could lease would also be increased to 207 km^sup 2^ (80 sq miles) from 21 km^sup 2^ (8 sq miles). The new leasing program is to be ready in two-and-a-half years.

Copyright Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, Inc. Sep 2005

Source: Mining Engineering

More News in this Category