Erin Burns of Carbon180 discusses the USE IT Act which has been introduced in both houses of Congress with bipartisan sponsorship. The bill would provide resources for growing carbon removal now, and pave the way for future infrastructure that captures and uses carbon dioxide.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I am Ross Kenyon, lead strategist at the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Aaron Burns, the Associate Director of Policy at Carbon 180. We want to talk about the Use It Act, which we haven’t spoken about previously in our other podcast, Reversing Climate Change, or here on Carbon Removal Newsroom. So Aaron, you’ve been tracking this quite closely. What is the Use It Act and what’s been happening?
Erin Burns: Sure. So the Use It Act is a bill. It’s been introduced in both the House and the Senate this year, but it was actually introduced first in the Senate almost about a year ago, and it passed out of committee by voice vote, which means that nobody really strongly objected. I think that’s a big deal because it doesn’t happen that often. Then it was introduced very quietly at the end of last year in the House, but this year we had a really big bicameral, very bipartisan introduction, and it’s already started to move.
Yesterday morning there was the first hearing. It was in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee where it passed last year. And the Use It Act has two big titles. The first title is all about research and development. So it has $50 million in R&D for carbon use and then $35 million direct air capture competitive prize. And then the second title is more of an infrastructure title. It starts to look at what are the kinds of questions and challenges and opportunities that are going to come up around deploying a kind of large scale deployment of carbon capture and removal that’s going to require serious infrastructure and opportunities.
Pipelines, but other types of things. And when you get into issues like that, you have to think about state and federal jurisdiction and which agencies are in charge. And so I think we’re, first of all, very supportive of this bill and all of it. But I think one of the things that’s exciting about the second title is that Congress is starting to look at what does it need to do to prepare for really broad deployment of these technologies, which is what we’re aiming for, because that’s what you see is necessary in many climate models.
Ross Kenyon: You mean carbon removal just generally needs to happen?
Erin Burns: Yes. Well, carbon capture and carbon removal, and that you need it at a big scale. I think historically, sometimes we’ve thought of the technological carbon removal and carbon capture approaches as Kind of a project by project thing. You know, it’s been on the R&D side, but, you know, how might the federal government provide some funding for a single project? And that can be really important. But I think when we look at climate models, we see really big deployment of carbon capture and carbon removal. And so it’s good to see Congress starting to think about that at that scale.
Ross Kenyon: Definitely. And I followed your tweet storm, which, by the way, if people want to follow you and look at this tweet storm, what is your handle? Great. Yeah. Great tweet storm about the hearing that happened yesterday. And I thought one thing in there that was really interesting was that there is concern because the Use It Act amends parts of the Clean Air Act. So there is some concern whether or not this could change parts of the Clean Air Act that it was not intended to, or there’s some interaction there. How exactly does that work?
Erin Burns: Yeah, so it’s a little unusual because most of the time when we think about federal research and development work, we think of it through the Department of Energy. But what this bill does is actually place that first title, the research and development, is under the EPA. And to get it there, what they did is amend the Clean Air Act, which has kind of existing R&D authority. You know, it was already written in there. But there were some concerns that I think, especially from Democrats, that while they didn’t have a problem with those R&D provisions being under the Clean Air Act, that opening it up at all would allow for future changes that might impact it.
So for example, this bill, the typical process that we’ll see for this bill might be that There’s a hearing on it, which is what we saw yesterday in the Senate, and there’ll be a hearing in the House hopefully soon. And then the committee will vote on it. And during that process, there’s something called markup where people can submit amendments and changes can be made to the bill. And a lot of times those are pretty minor changes, you know. These bills go through an iterative process. They might have learned some new information and maybe some negotiations.
But what they don’t want to see is during that process or later in the bill’s life before it’s enacted, they don’t want to see changes that would decrease the effectiveness or, you know, the strength, reduce the strength of the Clean Air Act. And again, the USED Act doesn’t do that at all. It’s just... This is such an important issue, and it’s one that’s been so politically fried. And by this, I mean, you know, the Clean Air Act and protecting it, that I think they just wanted to be extra cautious. So one thing that you heard yesterday at the hearing was, I believe it was Senator Carper, the ranking Democrat on the committee, thanked Senator Barrasso for his continued commitment to not letting this bill become a place for writers that would weaken the Clean Air Act, which is something they negotiated last year as well.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, I see. Very interesting there. What is the trade-off or tension between policies like this being used for something like enhanced oil recovery and fracking versus carbon removal? Is there a tension between them? Do you see this as sort of helping each other develop this technology?
Erin Burns: Sure. So I think with the USED Act, there’s less of that tension because it’s an R&D. You know, the pieces about carbon use are really focused on R&D. And I think there’s a lot of very broad bipartisan support for carbon use or, you We all know that most of the CO2 that’s used today is used for enhanced oil recovery, and I think that was something that we saw come up around the 45Q legislation, which was updating existing products. I think there’s a question both on the front of, you know, from the climate perspective I think there’s been a lot of thought put into that, but those were definitely some questions raised.
And I think on the climate front, Clean Air Task Force who testified, Kurt Walter testified yesterday in front of the committee during the hearing, they’ve done some really great work looking at life cycle analyses for enhanced oil recovery as far as what their kind of carbon life cycle looks like. A barrel of oil produced through enhanced oil recovery actually has a significantly lower life cycle emissions footprint than a traditionally produced barrel of oil. There are all of these things where they get really into the weeds and really into the details.
But I think there are a lot of reasons that organizations who prioritize climate are also comfortable with 45Q, where some of that funding might go to enhanced oil recovery, but that’s kind of a bridge to getting past oil. And overall, the benefits to deployment of carbon capture, to deployment of direct air capture, to supporting the kind of broader carbon use and carbon tech sector is really so significant that the overall climate benefits, it’s kind of a net positive.
Ross Kenyon: That’s broadly how I see it as well. I am excited for carbon capture and use technology, even if those behaviors are not ultimately carbon negative, just because the faster that they can use this technology, deploy it, and through competition drive this price down so that the cost per ton of carbon captured becomes lower and lower, we’ll find more uses for it. And hopefully that’s just a feedback loop that keeps accelerating. So I tend to think at worst, it’s a necessary evil. Go ahead, though. Were you going to react there?
Erin Burns: Yeah, I was just going to say, I think you have to always be really vigilant about these things and making sure that there is a net climate positive and you consider all of the both climate and environmental justice questions around it while also understanding that we live in a really complex world and the energy Systems that we have set up in the U. S. are so complex and you need to be comfortable with trying to navigate that complexity and not letting perfect be the enemy of the good when we’re talking about something as important and challenging and time restricted as climate action.
Ross Kenyon: Seems very sensible and balanced. What might we look forward to for the future of legislative acts such as the Use It Act? Or should we expect more of this to come as direct air capture and carbon capture and use going to be getting more attention moving forward?
Erin Burns: Yeah, I think so. So I’m really optimistic that the Use It Act might get enacted this year. And for folks who don’t spend their time kind of up in Congress, that’s a big deal. Bills take a long time to pass typically. And so the fact that this bill has already gained so much support and is moving so quickly is, I think, really indicative of the broad support that this has. And if you look at something like the Environment Public Works Committee, you heard from members on the far right and the far left as far as Congress goes saying, They had some questions about it, but voicing a lot of support for looking at technologies like this, and I think you’ve seen that reflected where members supporting and leading the charge on the Green New Deal have been clear that carbon capture and carbon removal can play a role in this.
Carbon 180 has been around for a few years, but we just opened up our DC office back in November and we are happily inundated with requests from folks on the Hill to learn more about carbon removal and not just to educate themselves properly. And that’s again true on the technology side but also on the There are a few other bills out there that touch on this, but I think this is something we’re going to continue to see a huge amount of action on from Congress in the next several years.
Ross Kenyon: Well, you heard it here first, and we will keep our eyes peeled for that. Erin, thank you so much for being with us. If you want to follow Erin’s work, Erin M. Burns, at Erin M. Burns on Twitter, and carbon180.org. Nori loves their newsletter. We read it every week when it comes out. If you want the latest on carbon removal, it’s a very good resource. Thank you so much for being with us, Erin.
Erin Burns: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Russ.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, and if you like the show, please subscribe, tell your friends, give us a great rating and review in iTunes. That would be much appreciated. Helps the show. Help us get the word out about carbon removal, which is what we are trying to do here. So thank you very much for listening.
