COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Hearing on The Road from Kyoto-Part 2: Kyoto and the Administration's Fiscal Year 1999 Budget Request Thursday, February 12, 1998 Post-Hearing Questions The Honorable John H. Gibbons Assistant to the President for Science and Technology and Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy Post-Hearing Questions Submitted by the Honorable Mike Doyle (PA-18) Carbon Sequestration Q1. Al. Please provide a list of all agencies that are pursuing carbon sequestration activities and indicate for each agency: Q1.1. A brief description of the carbon sequestration activities being pursued. Q1.2. The total budget — and the funding breakdown by project · for carbon sequestration activities in FY 1998 and proposed for FY 1999. Q1.3. The projects that are new initiatives and those that are continuations of previous years' projects. Carbon sequestration is the process of capturing carbon dioxide and keeping it out of the atmosphere where it would trap heat and contribute to global warming. Carbon sequestration can be accomplished by biological, geological, or oceanic processes. In each case, the carbon sequestration activities may provide a variety of benefits in addition to sequestration; and similarly, activities may have carbon sequestration benefits in addition to their primary benefits. In biological carbon sequestration processes, the amount of carbon taken up by and held in biological systems-i.e. by forests, grasslands, and other vegetation—is increased over that which occurs naturally. This could take the form of reforestation or afforestation, from forestry activities might include both increasing the amount of carbon sequestered in standing biomass and simultaneously providing habitat for a variety of wildlife and recreation for people. Benefits from agricultural activities might include both increasing the amount of carbon held in soils while potentially boosting agricultural productivity. Some aspects of biological sequestration are understood reasonably well, such as growing trees on deforested lands; further research can improve these efforts and significantly refine quantitative estimates of the sequestration potential. Other aspects, such as increasing forest or agricultural soil carbon levels, also need further research. Typical estimates of the amount of carbon sequestered in standing biomass and forest soils in the United States are in the range of 80 to 120 tons of carbon per acre. However, forest within the U.S. can vary widely depending on region and species composition (i.e., from less than 40 tons of carbon per acre in pinyon-juniper forests to over 240 tons per acre in the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest). Of the total carbon, about 30% is in the trees, 60% is in the soil, and 10% is on the forest floor and in understory vegetation, however, this is difficult to quantify precisely. The carbon in standing biomass, as well as much of the soil carbon, is sequestered over 40-70 years of growth for such species as loblolly pine and spruce, and considerably longer for undisturbed stands of old-growth species such as douglas fir. As a forest matures, the net carbon sequestration rate slows, even though the total amount of carbon stored in the forest may be quite great. The forest wood can be harvested and used to produce fuels such as ethanol, methanol, or FischerTropsch liquids (a synthetic diesel substitute) for transport together with electricity, offsetting the use of fossil fuels and thus reducing total carbon emissions. If the area is then successfully reforested, the cycle can continue. In geological processes, carbon dioxide is stored in deep underground geological formations. This approach requires developing technologies to capture and dispose of (or reuse) carbon dioxide from power plants or other central sources, coupled with developing technologies for sequestering the carbon dioxide in geological formations and analyzing the effects of high pressure carbon dioxide injection on the long term geomechanical and geochemical sequestration integrity of the formation. For example, much more research is needed to determine and minimize the costs of capturing and injecting carbon dioxide into deep geological structures. Even more important is understanding the impact this has on the geological formation itself. For example, extracting oil and/or gas from a geological formation may damage it, allowing the subsequent escape of carbon dioxide if it were stored there. Injecting carbon dioxide into a geological formation may lead to the formation of an acidic solution that would dissolve certain rocks or minerals allowing the escape of the carbon dioxide out of the formation and ultimately to the atmosphere. Estimates of the total potential carbon storage in depleted oil and gas wells range as high as 100 to 500 billion tons worldwide, although the fraction of this total in formations that would be stable with carbon dioxide injection or that could be cost-effectively tapped is not understood. Enhanced oil recovery using reservoir pressurization with carbon dioxide is currently being done at a number of sites and can result in the sequestration of carbon in the depleted oil reservoir. These activities may be undertaken for their own specific benefits independent of their potential carbon Carbon sequestration in underground saline aquifers has the potential to sequester, by some estimates, as much as 100 to 1000 billion tons of carbon. However, for long-term carbon storage (millennia), it may be necessary to use only those deep saline aquifers which have structural traps that can ensure the carbon will not escape to the atmosphere; this might limit the sequestration capacity to a few billion tons. In conclusion, the potential of geological sequestration is not well understood at this time, neither in terms of overall capacity or location of potentially usable geological structures, nor the requirements on those structures to ensure long-term isolation of the carbon dioxide. In oceanic processes, carbon dioxide would be pumped into the ocean depths. Since atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have risen substantially from human activity in the past 100 years, ocean carbon dioxide levels are no longer in equilibrium with atmospheric levels and consequently the oceans are gradually absorbing some of this excess carbon in the atmosphere. Directly injecting carbon into the ocean would speed up this process of reaching a new equilibrium. Although the potential carbon capacity of the ocean is as high as 1000-10,000 billion of tons, the length of time this carbon would remain in the deep ocean is not well understood, nor how disposing of large quantities of carbon in the deep ocean would impact local ocean circulation patterns and ocean ecology. For these reasons, this potential remain highly uncertain. Agencies that have active programs specifically focused on carbon sequestration activities include the Department of Energy and the Department of Agriculture. The Environmental Protection Agency has some related programs but no specific line-item funding for carbon sequestration. The Department of Energy currently has a limited program within the Office of Fossil Energy, with funding of about $1.6 million in FY 1998 to develop and demonstrate technically, economically, and ecologically sound methods to capture, reuse and dispose of carbon dioxide through sequestration technologies. This program involves collaboration with 17 countries through the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Program. In FY 1999, the Administration is proposing to expand the Fossil Energy program to about $12 million, with collaborative R&D on advanced technology for greenhouse gas separation, capture, storage (primarily geological) and reuse ($1.89 M); integration of fossil fuel production and use with natural sinks (e.g., biological) enhancement (this includes activities with the International Energy Agency Greenhouse Gas Program, Electric Power Research Institute, and others) ($2.5M); and on novel "path breaking" concepts for reducing greenhouse gas emissions ($7.5M). The Department of Energy is also requesting $9 million in FY 1999 for the Energy Research budget to better understand the fundamental scientific aspects of carbon sequestration, including $4 million for fundamental research on biological capture, $2 million for research on ocean sequestration, and $3 million for geological sequestration research. These programs comprise the sequestration components of the Administration's $39 million request for carbon sequestration and crosscutting research within the Q2. A2. fundamental science of efficient and of low-no carbon technologies. These programs will be coordinated closely with each other and with those of other agencies. The Department of Agriculture has carbon offset and carbon sequestration related programs under the Agricultural Research Service, including the Biomass for Energy and Agricultural Industry Practices programs, and under the Forest Service, including biomass for energy and carbon sequestration. The FY1999 Budget Request for these and other activities is $7.5 million under the ongoing Climate Change Action Plan, with no change from FY 1998, and $10 million for the FY 1999 Climate Change Technology Initiative Activities. Specific to carbon sequestration are portions of: (1) Agricultural Industry Practices program which, among other activities, will examine practices to increase rates of sequestration of carbon in agricultural and forest soils; (2) Recycling Research, which will, among others, examine the potential for greater carbon sequestration through use of wood and fiber in structures; and (3) Forest Stewardship Incentive Program which provides for accelerated tree planting on non-industrial private forest lands, with carbon sequestration benefits, as well as protecting soils and providing numerous other benefits. The Environmental Protection Agency has no line item funding for carbon sequestration work, but does have related programs to determine baseline emissions levels, identify mitigation opportunities, and estimate carbon coefficients for some land use systems. These activities are small portions of other ongoing activities not specific to carbon sequestration. Additional information about these programs and their budgets is available from the Which agency is considered to be the lead agency on carbon sequestration research and development? Who is responsible for coordinating the different agencies' efforts on carbon sequestration? The different agencies have largely complementary activities, with, for example, DOE leading efforts on controlling emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels and conducting fundamental research in biological and geological processes for carbon sequestration, and the USDA and Forest Service leading efforts on agriculture, forest management, and soils. In addition, the EPA is estimating emissions coefficients for certain land-use changes. The agencies have coordinated their existing level of work on carbon sequestration through interagency teams as well as direct consultation. Activities to date have been so limited in scope that there has been little need for a detailed formal system of coordination and control. If the requested funding for further carbon sequestration work is approved, then Q3. A3. Q4. A4. Describe the procedures used to evaluate individual agency programs and projects to ensure that the government-wide carbon sequestration research and development effort is comprehensive and not duplicative? To date, the Federal program has not been comprehensive and has been operating at a very low level of funding; that is why the FY 1999 Budget Request proposes enhancing these efforts. The President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Energy R&D Panel recently stated “The current annual funding level (for carbon sequestration) in FE (Fossil Energy Program) is insufficient. It should be increased to a level in the range of several tens of millions..." PCAST did not review the DOE Basic Energy Sciences Program to make recommendations on the fundamental science of carbon sequestration, nor did it review programs at USDA or EPA. As for other Federal programs, intra- and inter-agency coordination and review mechanisms are employed to ensure effective use of funds. The DOE programs are coordinated within and between the Fossil Energy Program and the Energy Research program, each focusing on complementary activities. The USDA has recently established a Global Change Program Office to: provide leadership in planning, coordinating, analyzing, and reviewing various USDA climate change programs; identify new research initiatives; provide liaison with and support to executive branch, members of Congress, and the customers of the USDA affected by global change and related activities. The EPA's activities are coordinated with USDA and DOE efforts. Carbon sequestration was an activity being pursued under the old Climate Change Action Plan as one of the voluntary measures that would limit growth in net carbon emissions. What percent reduction of our current annual net carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion might we expect to achieve through carbon sequestration measures? There appears to be a potentially significant opportunity to reduce or offset net carbon emissions through both biologically and geologically based carbon sequestration efforts. However, much more research is needed to determine the magnitude of the opportunity and the potential costs. If successful, such approaches may assist the continued use of fossil fuels even in a greenhouse gas constrained world. On the biological side, the U.S. Climate Change Action Plan (CCAP) identifies tree planting as the main opportunity to sequester carbon. CCAP was designed to sequester 10 million metric tonnes of carbon through enhanced forest growth and related measures. Due to funding cuts, the primary sequestration will be through Action 44 to Accelerate Tree Planting in Nonindustrial Private Forests; this action is expected to sequester 2.2 million metric tons of carbon by 2010. Further details can be found in the 1997 Climate Action Report, Department of State publication #10496. Opportunities for further sequestering carbon in agriculture could include the conversion of |