CCS

Not surprisingly, Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is interested in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and its application to coal-fueled electricity generation. North Dakota gets almost 90 percent of its electricity from coal, and the state is the 10th largest producer of coal in the United States.

In mid-2008, Senator Dorgan convened a group of stakeholders with interest in CCS under the banner of a “Clean Coal and Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technology Development Pathways Initiative” (CCS Initiative) and asked them to provide input related to a number of key questions regarding CCS. Participants included representatives from the electric power industry, coal industry, manufacturing, labor, academics, and NGOs. The questions posed by the Senator focused on such issues as how much funding for CCS is required to ensure the technology is ready for broad deployment and how the United States can expand its cooperation with other key coal-producing and coal-consuming nations to accelerate international deployment of CCS.

On December 1, Senator Dorgan released a report prepared by the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) that summarized input provided by the CCS Initiative participants.