Barrasso introduces GHG removal bill

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

By Ben Cannon

Wyoming U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, partly building on the legacy of the late Sen. Craig Thomas and partly defining his own path, has spent much of his first seven months in office working to reconcile Wyoming’s vast mineral fuel reserves with the growing trend toward cleaner energy technologies.

Wyoming produces a third of the nation’s coal, with the U.S. depending on coal for about half of its electricity supply. Last week Sen. Barrasso introduced the “Greenhouse Gas Emission Atmospheric Removal,” or GEAR Act, a proposal aimed at developing technologies to remove excess green house gases (GHG) from the atmosphere.
“Wherever you find yourself on the issue of climate change,” the senator said in a press release, “we can agree on one important dynamic – change awaits us.”
The bill would not aim to fund development of removing GHG emissions – the byproduct of hydrocarbon, or fossil fuel – but would incentivize gains made in the field with money rewards.

Awards would go to both public and private entities that have success in designing new technologies to remove and sequester GHG gases from the atmosphere.
Mark Northam, director of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Wyoming reviewed the proposal at the request of Sen. Barrasso’s office.

“It’s the ultimate goal in being able to deal with greenhouse gases,” Northam said.
Strange bedfellows advocate the technology with the Republican senator - former Vice President Al Gore and British billionaire Richard Branson have also called for more aggressive measures to develop GHG removal technologies.

“From where we stand today, it’s like trying to land a man on the moon in the 1960s,” Northam explained. He called the quest to develop removal technologies “the Holy Grail of greenhouse gas mitigation.”
Northam said he expected significant gains in the next decade, though a clear, feasible solution may not lie at the end.
“I’m not sure if it’s something we can accomplish but embarking on the mission is what’s important,” he said. “But the offshoots of the technology will certainly be of great value.”

Currently, GHG mitigation devices remove or reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the source – the power plant or automobile – but the costs of that technology is often shouldered by one or a small handful of users. That means billions of for energy suppliers and higher electricity bills for consumers.
Carbon dioxide removal technologies, which might take the form of billboard-like filtering devices along major roadways, would complement, not supplant existing technologies.

Measures such as the Gear Act would “spread the [costs] equally so that no one is unfairly penalized,” Northam said.
There have been some gains in GHG removal: a team at Arizona State University claims to have a small-scale working prototype.
Asked if the move to promote technologies that would allow fossil fuels to burn as usual – decoupling the problem from the source – is a surprising one for an elective from a state with not only tremendous coal reserves, but also deep natural gas wells, Northam said no.

“You also expect to see this kind of move Saudi Arabia, where they have no gas but vast amounts of oil,” he said. “You would expect to see this with a senator from any state with hydrocarbon reserves.”

There is a history of prize incentives at the cornerstone of some of the great feats of the modern era, especially in aviation. Charles Lindbergh, who flew the Spirit of St. Louis non-stop from New York to Paris in 1927, was competing for a prize offered by wealthy hotelier Raymond Orteig.

The first flight across the English Channel, in 1909, was spurred and rewarded by a newspaper.

Courtesy photo
Senator Barrasso smiles upon Wyoming.

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Barrasso introduces GHG removal bill | Planet JH News Article: General News

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