Charleston Leader

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, held a hearing in Washington, D.C., to discuss the advancement of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies. The hearing also examined the implementation of the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies Act (USE IT Act).

Chairman Capito questioned several key figures in the field: Kevin Connors from the Energy and Environmental Research Center, Dan Yates of the Ground Water Protection Council, and Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh from Breakthrough Energy. Her inquiries focused on the progress of implementing the USE IT Act, ways to streamline CCUS project permitting processes, and the necessity of bipartisan cooperation.

Capito highlighted several critical points during her questioning. Regarding task forces under the USE IT Act, she stated: “The USE IT Act was signed in 2020. I also alluded to the two CCUS Permitting Task Forces that have been established... I'm interested to know…now that these Task Forces have been chartered and are operating, do you believe that will make an impact on identifying opportunities to improve the permitting?”

She emphasized energy reliability concerns: “We have a repeating theme here...of reliabilities...the process we see on AI and other things are putting great pressures on our potential for providing electricity.”

On permitting's role in project success, Capito remarked: “The key to all of this...is a permitting process that you can move along...any help that you can give us with permitting...will cross benefit all projects.”

Stressing bipartisan efforts' importance for effective legislation on permitting and CCUS, she said: “As Senator Whitehouse said, this is going to be a bipartisan push...because we see what happens with the regulatory environment.”