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62–450 2010

NEW TECHNOLOGIES: WHAT’S AROUND THE 

CORNER? 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SELECT COMMITTEE ON 

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

AND GLOBAL WARMING 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

JULY 28, 2009 

Serial No. 111–7 

( 

Printed for the use of the Select Committee on 

Energy Independence and Global Warming 

globalwarming.house.gov 


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SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE 

AND GLOBAL WARMING 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, 

South Dakota 

EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri 

JOHN J. HALL, New York 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin, Ranking Member 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

GERARD J. WALDRON, Staff Director 

ALIYA BRODSKY, Chief Clerk 

BART FORSYTH, Minority Staff Director 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 1 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 3 

Hon. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Wisconsin, opening statement .............................................................. 5 

Hon. Earl Blumenauer, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon, opening statement ...................................................................................... 6 

Hon. Shelley Capito, a Representative in Congress from the State of West 

Virginia, opening statement ................................................................................ 6 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 8 

Hon. Emanuel Cleaver II, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Missouri, opening statement ............................................................................... 11 

Hon. John Hall, a Representative in Congress from the State of New York, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 11 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 12 

Hon. John T. Salazar, a Representative in Congress from the State of Colorado, opening statement ...................................................................................... 12 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 14 

WITNESSES

Dr. Gregory P. Kunkel, Ph.D., Vice President for Environmental Affairs, 

Tenaska Inc. ......................................................................................................... 18 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 20 

Dr. Brent Constantz, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Calera Corporation ......... 32 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 34 

Mr. Frank Smith, Chief Executive Officer, PURGeN One LLC .......................... 52 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 54 

Mr. Gary O. Spitznogle, Manager, IGCC and Gas Plant Engineering, American Electric Power .............................................................................................. 70 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 72 

Mr. Sean Gallagher, Vice President, Market Strategy and Regulatory Affairs, 

Tessera Solar ........................................................................................................ 83 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 85 

Answers to submitted questions ...................................................................... 115 

Dr. Emanuel Sachs, Chief Technical Officer, 1366 Technologies Inc. ................. 95 

Prepared Statement ......................................................................................... 97 


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NEW ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES: WHAT’S 

AROUND THE CORNER? 

TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

AND GLOBAL WARMING, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 9:37 a.m. in room 2172, 

Rayburn, Hon. Edward J. Markey (chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Markey, Blumenauer, Cleaver, Hall, 

Salazar, Speier, Sensenbrenner, Blackburn and Capito. 

Staff present: Jonathan Phillips. 

The CHAIRMAN. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Select 

Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Today’s 

hearing is entitled, ‘‘New Energy Technologies: What’s Around the 

Corner?’’ 

Today we look to the future. We look to the future of how our 

country and our world will be powered. We do so by examining new 

ways to run our homes, vehicles, and businesses. We need to 

change because the status quo, sending billions of dollars to countries that don’t like us much, and sending billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, is not sustainable. We need to develop technologies that will lead us to even greater prosperity and 

a cleaner and more secure world. 

We are at a watershed moment in the history of energy production, and the choices we make at this juncture will shape our national and economic security in the next several decades and determine the fate of our planet. Between now and 2030, over $20 trillion will be invested in new energy infrastructure worldwide, and 

an estimated $1.5 trillion will be invested in the U.S. power sector 

alone. This new infrastructure is long-lived and costly, so we need 

to get it right. 

The decisions made in the next decade will set the course of the 

global and U.S. energy system, and of the global climate for the 

next century and beyond. This transition also presents an unprecedented opportunity for economic development and job creation in 

the clean energy technology sector. But the United States must act 

now if it is to be a leader in the rapidly developing global market. 

A few weeks ago, the House of Representatives took a giant legislative leap in America’s historic effort to win the next great technological revolution, the clean energy race of the 21st century. On 

June 26th, the House passed the first comprehensive clean energy 


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and climate bill in our Nation’s history, the Waxman-Markey 

American Clean Energy Security Act. 

The bill would, for the first time, put a cap on carbon pollution 

that causes global warming; and establish ambitious policies for 

the development and deployment of clean energy and efficiency; invest nearly $200 billion in the next 15 years to make America once 

again the leader in energy technology. We need to pass this bill because, for the past decade, we have fallen badly behind in the clean 

energy race. 

Of the top 30 clean energy companies in the world, only six are 

American. Portugal, Spain, and Denmark produce 9 percent, 12 

percent, and 21 percent of their electricity from wind respectively. 

America produces about 1 percent of its power from wind. 

But I am an optimist. I am a technological optimist, and I am 

an optimist about America’s ingenuity and the American entrepreneurial spirit. I know that we can and that we will win this race. 

We have witnesses here before us that are engaged in developing 

the technologies that we need. We could have invited other technology companies, but today I wanted to focus on businesses that 

are forward-leaning on solar technologies and on ways to find a 

path forward on coal. Their solutions range from developing higher 

solar efficiency to manufacturing innovations that would reduce the 

cost of solar cell production, to capturing the CO2 from power 

plants and putting it under the sea bed or combining CO2 with sea 

water to make cement. 

I have no idea whether these companies will succeed or fail, or 

whether other companies with better ideas or more inspired execution will win. That is not our job, to pick the winners and the losers, to know which technology will capture the day and which will 

fall by the wayside. 

But I do know if we put the right policies in place, we will unleash the greatest force for change on the planet: American 

entrepreneurialism and ingenuity. This was the lesson from the 

1990s in the communications and information-technology revolution. I believe that the situation is no different with clean energy. 

I look forward to hearing from today’s witnesses. We now turn 

and recognize the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from the State of Wisconsin, Mr. Sensenbrenner. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Markey follows:] 


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Mr. SENSENBRENNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Today’s hearing on clean energy asks, what is around the corner, 

and focuses on two types of energy production, clean coal technology and solar power. These power sources should compete with 

each other in an open market with other sources, like nuclear 

power, wind energy, hydro power, and other advanced technologies. 

Competition will drive technological advancement, and technology will improve our energy security and reduce our CO2 emissions. Congress cannot choose winners and losers in the competition. Experience in the market must dictate which of these technologies are viable and what mix of them can best power our economy. 

What is best for D.C. may not be what is best for my district in 

Wisconsin, which is why Republicans called their energy policy ‘‘all 

of the above.’’ ‘‘All of the above’’ means allowing all technologies a 

fair opportunity to compete. Competition between businesses drives 

economic growth. 

But if bureaucratic carbon emission schemes, like the cap and 

tax, become law, new technology will compete for government subsidies and emissions credits, and not for new consumers. GM and 

Chrysler are examples of what is to come. These companies accepted government bailout funds to stay in business and then invested 

it in lobbying the Federal Government on climate change legislation, not an example of what the people want their tax dollars to 

be working for. 

While perhaps lucrative in the short term, government subsidies 

cannot sustain our economy. 

Coal accounts for half of all electricity generated in the United 

States. We cannot keep the lights on throughout our lifetime without it. Finding a way to use it cleanly is therefore critical. Clean 

coal technology has some promising developments recently. 

In June, researchers in my State announced the successful carbon capture test at the We Energies’ Pleasant Prairie facility. Their 

researchers were able to use chilled ammonia technology to capture 

nearly 90 percent of the target carbon dioxide emissions. 

I recognize Gary Spitznogle of American Electric Power, who is 

here to tell the Select Committee about his company’s 20-megawatt 

test project at the Mountaineer power plant in New Haven, West 

Virginia. This project is larger than the Pleasant Prairie test 

project and utilizes the same chilled ammonia technology. Hopefully, this is the next step forward in the development of carbon 

capture and storage technology. 

While this process could be the next step in development of this 

technology, it is not the final step. The Mountaineer power plant 

is a 1,300-megawatt plant. The 20-megawatt test project is capturing just a small fraction of the carbon emissions that could be 

stored. With its aggressive cap on carbon, policies like cap and tax 

could lead utilities and researchers to abandon carbon capture and 

storage technology before it advances. Many utilities will be tempted to move onto natural gas or other technologies that will help 

meet their carbon cap. This could end development of clean-coal 

technology and potentially leave America’s most affordable and 

abundant source of energy out of the mix. Let us hope that that 

is not what lies around the corner. 


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Clean coal is showing promising technological developments. 

Coal can and must remain a central part of a diverse energy portfolio that includes renewable technologies, like wind and solar, and 

other carbon-neutral technologies, like nuclear and hydro power. I 

look forward to learning more about these technologies and how 

government policy can encourage the development of a diverse 

portfolio of energy production that strengthens both U.S. security 

and the environment. 

I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Oregon, Mr. 

Blumenauer. 

Mr. BLUMENAUER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Most assuredly, Congress doesn’t have to pick winners and losers, but it is important to provide a framework. That is what we 

have done historically with the development of energy resources. 

We have had government policies that have dealt with coal, oil, 

timber. Nuclear energy has received the most lavish of subsidy and 

has been part of a rather intense comprehensive government 

framework. 

What has happened with the enactment, at least in the House, 

of the landmark energy legislation is providing a framework for the 

future. I look forward to having the record develop here today 

about what the possibility is for innovation in our country moving 

forward. The innovation is going to be much accelerated if in fact 

we do have a framework that deals with carbon emissions, that 

deals with providing subsidies for energy supplies for the future 

rather than focusing on those in the past. Most important, this is 

where the world is going. And we have seen example after example. And you mentioned some of those, Mr. Chairman, in your 

opening statement. This is the economy of the future. Hopefully, we 

are able to get our priorities straight, our signals aligned so that 

we can tap the potential that is being described here by the witnesses today, and that we will be positioned to take advantage of 

it. 

Last but not least, this is what is going to drive down the prices 

in the future. The evidence suggests that there is actually minimal 

costs associated with the legislation that we just enacted. But more 

important, it didn’t take into account the potential for innovation, 

which we will hear about today. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chair 

recognizes the gentlelady from West Virginia, Ms. Capito. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for 

hosting today’s very important hearing. 

Last month, the House passed the American Clean Energy and 

Security Act. While I did not support that legislation because I believe that it stood to push energy prices upward and threatened an 

economy that is already in trouble; I believe that instead of taxing 

West Virginia families and companies and picking winners and losers, which I believe the bill does, we need to do more to maintain 

global competitiveness of our U.S. industries and support and accelerate the development of advanced clean-coal technologies, including carbon capture and storage technologies. 


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Here in the United States, we know coal is the our Nation’s most 

abundant domestic resource, with recoverable resources sufficient 

to last approximately 250 years. Coal currently fuels more than 50 

percent of all electric generation. In my home State of West Virginia, 98 percent of our electricity comes from coal. It supports 

hundreds of thousands of additional jobs throughout the supply 

chain. 

Additionally, West Virginia is the second largest coal-producing 

State, so the economic implications of our energy policy to my State 

cannot be overstated. Carbon capture is important to West Virginians in ensuring our national energy independence. Without it, 

we deprive ourselves of the most effective tool for addressing CO2

emissions from coal. We need to continue to press CCS and other 

clean-coal technologies. We need to provide sufficient funding and 

incentives, which are included in the bill, to accelerate the development, demonstration, and broad commercial deployment of CCS. 

I am very happy to today to have Gary Spitznogle here from the 

AEP Mountaineer plant, which is engaged now in a CCS project. 

That plant is in my district. I know many of the fine folks who 

work at the Mountaineer plant. I have visited the facility, and also 

seen where the demonstration will take place. I look forward to 

hearing from him and the other witnesses on this important blueprint for commercial-scale facilities. I welcome him as well as a 

representative of AEP, constituents in my district. 

The implementation will not only benefit a State like mine with 

jobs and revenue, but it will also benefit our Nation by making 

clean coal a reality. 

I look forward to the testimony from the panel. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mrs. Capito follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Serving on the Financial Services Committee and listening each week multiple times to 

economists, along with the Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and a 

host of other experts, it does not take much to convince me that 

we are in the most difficult economic time in half a century. Not 

since the Great Depression has the United States been in such an 

economic condition. 

But I am also excited about the fact that during tough times, it 

appears as if the U.S. does its best work. Microsoft was developed 

during a recession. FedEx was developed during a recession. And 

I am absolutely convinced that we will be able to depend on the 

scientific ingenuity of Americans to come up with new technologies 

that will not only help rebuild the economy but will help save the 

planet. 

One of the greatest tragedies of our little moment on this ball 

that revolves around the sun is if the United States does not provide the leadership in developing the new technologies that will in 

fact help save this planet. In Kansas City, we have created what 

we call a green impact zone. And we will be announcing on the 1st 

a smart grid for a 150-block area in the urban core. We are going 

to try to develop a whole new neighborhood using the very latest 

technologies. 

Tom Carnahan, the brother of Russ Carnahan, one of our colleagues, has a wind farm not far from Kansas City, where I live. 

That is also proving to be one of the great moves economically in 

our community. So I am excited about the possibility of coming up 

with new technologies that will allow us to do things we have only 

thought about and looked at in science fiction movies. That day is 

rapidly upon us, and I look forward to interacting with our panel 

to find out their view of what we can do and what we must do. I 

yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. The Chair 

recognizes the gentleman from New York State, Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important 

hearing. And just regarding picking winners and losers, I would assume that my colleague, the gentlelady on the other side of the 

dais, is in favor of the billion dollars plus a year for research into 

carbon capture and sequestration that is in the bill that we passed; 

that is in fact trying to pick coal as a winner. And this country, 

as Mr. Blumenauer referred to, has been subsidizing nuclear power 

for 50-years through the insurance, making the taxpayer of this 

country the insurer, in fact the only industry I am aware of that 

has been wholly backed against catastrophic accident by public insurance. 

Nonetheless, I am particularly interested in hearing about the 

potential for large scale solar power development. I have long been 

a supporter of solar power in the Hudson Valley and the entire 

country. Most recently, we have been creating a market for solar 

and wind technology in my district. Companies like SpectraWatt 

and BQ Energy have been creating new production lines, hiring 

more workers, creating jobs, taking advantage of R&D money that 

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search. Mercury Solar in my district started 3 years ago with 5 employees; now employs 60 people, and hopes to be at 80 people by 

year’s end. 

SpectraWatt is starting with 150, hiring back IBM workers and 

NXP workers who were just laid off, and using 70,000 square feet 

of empty IBM facilities, which are a really good match for producing these kind of products, clean room, positive air pressure to 

keep dust out, used to handling thin wafers of fragile materials and 

putting micro circuits on them. It is the kind of thing that matches 

up the skill set of the workforce with the work space. And I think 

I have reason to be optimistic that my district and the Hudson Valley will join the rest of the country in leading in this direction as 

we go forward into the new energy economy of the 21st century, 

and I yield back the balance of my time. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Tennessee, Mrs. 

Blackburn. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank you for 

that and want to welcome our witnesses. We are glad that you all 

are here. I think it is important that we look at new technologies. 

I think it is important that we hear from you. Of course where I 

come from in Tennessee, coal is going to play an important part in 

our look forward, as is nuclear and hydroelectric power, and making certain that the innovation and the usage is there. Knowing 

what is going to be coming at us is an important component of 

what we deal with. 

We do have a great new company in Clarksville, Tennessee, that 

is working on some new technologies and—Hemlock, which is a 

part of Dow Corning. We are grateful that they are being an innovator in this, looking at how we move forward with carbon sequestration, and continue to build our energy infrastructure. And so I 

look forward to the questions, and appreciate your time being here 

today. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Salazar. 

Mr. SALAZAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good morning. I am 

a strong supporter of the renewable energy technologies, and I am 

looking forward to hearing the testimony today. We have many 

challenges before us and a wealth of technologies to explore. 

Colorado and the Third Congressional District has great potential for solar. The Bureau of Land Management has identified 

southern Colorado as one of its solar energy study areas for the 

concentrated solar energy production. We currently have an 8.2- 

megawatt photovoltaic plant in the San Luis Valley, with another 

17-megawatt plant planned and an additional 6,400-acre, 10 square 

miles of solar panels to be installed later in a few years. 

The potential for solar power across the West is great. There are 

also many challenges associated with solar. As you know, water is 

a scarce resource in many western States, so we must be thoughtful of how we address the water needs for solar power. Clean coal 

and carbon sequestration is another technology that I am looking 

forward to hearing about today. Coal-burning power plants provide 


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half of the electricity generated in the United States. Colorado depends upon coal for the majority of its electricity. 

The current plan for cap-and-trade in my opinion places an 

undue economic burden upon Colorado energy users due to the 

amount of coal that we currently use in Colorado. If we could develop clean-coal burning technology as a viable and economic alternative, this will help Coloradans and the rest of the country become energy independent, while addressing climate challenges. 

I am glad to see that two witnesses today are testifying about 

coal capture technology and discussing economically feasible ways 

to capture CO2, as well as utilizing byproducts. I am also intrigued 

by the other uses that we can develop for CO2 that put it in use 

rather than store it away in geological formations. 

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to hearing the testimony today. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Salazar follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Great. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Washington State, Mr. 

Inslee. 

Mr. INSLEE. I will reserve, Mr. Chair. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Great. Then we will turn to our panel, our very 

distinguished panel of innovators. 

STATEMENTS OF GREGORY P. KUNKEL, PH.D., VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, TENASKA INC., 

OMAHA, NEBRASKA; BRENT CONSTANTZ, PH.D., CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CALERA CORPORATION, LOS GATOS, CALIFORNIA; FRANK SMITH, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 

PURGeN One LLC, CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS; GARY O. 

SPITZNOGLE, MANAGER OF IGCC AND GAS PLANT ENGINEERING, AMERICAN ELECTRIC POWER, COLUMBUS, OHIO; 

SEAN GALLAGHER, VICE PRESIDENT, MARKET STRATEGY 

AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, TESSERA SOLAR, BERKELEY, 

CALIFORNIA; AND EMANUEL SACHS, CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER, 1366 TECHNOLOGIES INC, NORTH LEXINGTON, MASSACHUSETTS 

The CHAIRMAN. And we will begin with Dr. Gregory Kunkel, who 

is vice president for environmental affairs at Tenaska, Incorporated. He helps to develop Tenaska’s strategic responses to climate change, and is in charge of development and environmental 

permitting for clean energy projects. 

Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Kunkel. Whenever you are 

ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF GREGORY P. KUNKEL, PH.D. 

Mr. KUNKEL. Thank you, Chairman Markey, Ranking Member 

Sensenbrenner, members of the Select Committee, for inviting me 

to speak to you about Tenaska’s two pioneering carbon capture and 

storage projects: Trailblazer in Texas, and Taylorville Energy Center in Illinois. 

These projects represent a new paradigm in the energy industry 

in a carbon-constrained world, linking electricity, carbon capture, 

and oil and gas production. Using distinct technologies, each 

project will demonstrate carbon capture at commercial scale, provide clean energy 24 hours a day, and promote rapid expansion of 

known domestic petroleum reserves through carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery. 

My name is Greg Kunkel. I am vice president of environmental 

affairs for Tenaska, an energy company based in Omaha. Trailblazer in Texas is a 600-megawatt coal-fired boiler with scrubbers 

to capture 85 to 90 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions. Recent 

developments in the Trailblazer project are that Tenaska has selected Fluor Corporation as the EPC contractor. And the Texas legislature has enacted helpful tax incentives and their framework for 

regulating permanent geologic storage of carbon dioxide. 

The great promise of post-combustion capture technologies like 

Trailblazer is that it can be applied to retrofit existing coal-fired 

power plants. In the United States, we have the additional opportunity to use the carbon-capture enhanced oil recovery paradigm to 


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significantly expand our recoverable domestic oil reserves and production capacity, while eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide. 

There is growing interest in this idea worldwide. Trailblazer and 

other post-combustion capture pioneers in Asia, North America, 

and Europe will open the door to retrofit some of the 5,000 power 

plants worldwide, and begin to eliminate the 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emitted from such facilities each year. The remaining 

key to advancement of Trailblazer and its great promise is Federal 

emission reduction incentives. When such legislation is passed, our 

aim as the Trailblazer will be ready. 

The Taylorville Energy Center in Illinois is a 500-megawatt coal 

gasification facility that converts coal to methane and then electricity. In the process, the project will capture about 60 percent of 

the carbon dioxide for use in oil production. Taylorville is the initial 

clean-coal facility under the Illinois Clean Coal Portfolio Standard. 

The Illinois law sets standards we must meet, including carbon 

capture; provides a mechanism for sale of electricity; and limits allowable rate impact. Construction will begin in 2011, after completion of current design work, final legislative review, and close of financing. 

I am pleased to report that the Department of Energy has selected Taylorville for the negotiation phase of its loan guarantee 

program. Loan guarantees are now critical to capital-intensive energy projects, and will significantly reduce financing costs. Those 

reduced costs, as well as carbon dioxide sales revenues, will accrue 

to the benefit of ratepayers under the Illinois law. 

What additional government policies are needed? Perhaps the 

most important thing Congress could do is to provide regulatory 

certainty within a climate policy framework that promotes energy 

independence and emissions reductions. The emergence of the carbon-capture enhanced oil recovery paradigm, among other ideas 

such as efficiency, renewable energy and electrification of transportation, suggests that energy independence and emission reductions 

can be achieved simultaneously and economically. 

To put the American energy industry to work on these goals, we 

need a financial incentive for emission reductions that enables the 

carbon-capture EOR paradigm and other good ideas. The WaxmanMarkey bill does much to advance the necessary policy and regulatory framework and supports the carbon-capture EOR paradigm 

specifically. 

The written testimony I provide to you includes our suggestions 

on the bill, including optimization of the bonus allowance program 

to leverage private capital. 

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide this overview of 

Trailblazer and Taylorville. I would be pleased to respond to any 

questions you have at the earliest opportunity. 

[The statement of Mr. Kunkel follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Kunkel, very much. 

Our next witness is Dr. Brent Constantz, who is the chief executive officer of Calera Corporation. He is a consulting professor at 

Stanford University, researching and teaching carbon and mineral 

formation and global carbon balance. 

We welcome you, Doctor. Whenever you are ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF BRENT CONSTANTZ, PH.D. 

Mr. CONSTANTZ. Thank you, Chairman Markey. 

I would like to say how much we admire the committee for their 

foresight in looking at these future technologies for carbon management. I am going to tell you this morning about a technology which 

takes CO2 and transforms it into saleable building materials, including concrete in aggregate, and is currently in practice on Monterey Bay in California. 

We have funded and are building, scaling up to a 10-megawatt 

equivalent plant next to the largest power plant on the West Coast 

right now. Just to frame things, fundamentally there are two approaches to removing carbon from raw flue gas as opposed to just 

taking carbon out of the air. 

One is separation, and the other is conversion of CO2. So, in separation and purification of CO2, it is a chemical process which involves a high amount of energy, and typically takes about 30 to 40 

percent of the power generated at say a coal-fired power plant just 

to do that separation step. And despite any amount of development, 

the theoretical maximum from the Harvard study shows that the 

best it could ever do is to take 25 percent of the power from the 

plant just to separate it. And when you are done, you are just left 

with liquid CO2, which then has to be transported, compressed, and 

injected. 

The other approach is to simply convert it to carbonate. This has 

been done for over a century to produce calcium carbonate, which 

is in the paper here. It is in the paint. It is in our morning calcium 

supplement. It is in your milk shake. Millions and millions, trillions of tons of calcium carbonate are produced every day. And it 

is a very well known, proven technology. 

What Calera Corporation has done is develop a way to formulate 

the polymorphs of the calcium carbonate into useful cementitious 

materials. To understand the magnitude of the problem, the Kyoto 

Protocol is calling for 5 billion tons of CO2 to be mitigated. Every 

year, there are 30 billion tons of aggregate sold worldwide. And 

here in the United States there are 3 billion tons of aggregate sold 

worldwide. Calera has the ability to sequester over 15 billion tons 

of CO2 on an annual ongoing basis in aggregate, which can be sold 

into the concrete and the aggregate markets as well as Portland 

Cement Substitutes; 99 percent of all the carbon on the planet is 

in the form of limestone today. In fact, there are 70 million to 100 

million billion tons of CO2 in the form of limestone today. That is 

where most of the carbon in the planet; the hydrosphere the biosphere and the atmosphere have just a few hundred billion tons, 

a very small amount. 

Calera’s process involves driving raw flue gas through sea water 

in the case of Monterey Bay. In most cases, we are working inland, 


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though, with the same geologic brines from saline reservoirs which 

are pumped up. 

That forms a carbonate by adding base. Then we have a revolutionary low-energy base manufacturing process. We turn it to carbonate and calcium carbonates and magnesium carbonates. The 

products are what are called supplementary cementitious materials 

that are substituted for Portland Cement. And Portland Cement 

itself has a large carbon footprint in its production. So we are both 

trapping the CO2 and avoiding the CO2 from the Portland Cement. 

We also make aggregate, as I mentioned, which is used in concrete and asphalt. And we are doing this every day. We are producing up to 5 tons a day in Monterey today. It is tested against 

ASTM standards and ACI standards. So this is a proven technology 

that is in practice today. 

I guess the important thing to realize, though, is we are talking 

about the largest material mass movement in the history of the 

planet. Humans are producing 20 to 30 billion tons of CO2 a year. 

And you need a reservoir that can take that sustainably. And the 

built environment is the ideal reservoir for the CO2. Concrete is the 

most transferred material, other than water, in the whole world. 

The infrastructure is already in place. Redi-Mix plants are pulling up to coal-fired power plants every day and picking up their fly 

ash and taking it to their Redi-Mix plants for mixing in concrete. 

There is no new infrastructure to develop here. We are doing it 

today. It is ready to move forward. 

But going from our 10-megawatt plant, which we have funded in 

Silicon Valley and are building today, to the 1,000- and 1,500- 

megawatt plants that are necessary, it is going to take hundreds 

of millions of dollars of government funding to cross that chasm. 

Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Constantz follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Doctor, very much. 

Our next witness is Mr. Frank Smith. He is a founder and principal of SCS Energy and PURGeN One. There he oversees the development of energy facilities that, according to their company, 

lead the industry in environmental stewardship and climate 

change mitigation. 

We welcome you, sir. Whenever you are ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF FRANK SMITH 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you. Mr. Chairman and—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Could you move it over just a little bit closer? 

Mr. SMITH. All right. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is my pleasure to testify this morning about new technologies and business initiatives that address our Nation’s energy 

and climate challenges. 

At the outset, Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you and your colleagues for your leadership in this area. By using a market mechanism to put a value on CO2, your bill and supporting energy policies will transform energy production in the same way that the 

Telecommunications Act of 1996 spurred a revolution in information technology. 

SCS develops electric-generating plants. We do complicated, 

large capital projects, and we have been very successful. The 

PURGeN One project, located in Linden, New Jersey, promises to 

be even more so. 

I want to make sure that the committee hears three core messages about carbon constraints and the state of technology. Using 

proven technologies available today, we can produce electricity, 

along with other basic commodities, at market prices while sequestering 90 percent of our CO2. We can accomplish that with profitable commercial ventures that meet real market needs. And we can 

do all of that using domestic resources, resources that include not 

only coal and rail and capital, but the uniqueness of our offshore 

geology and the resourcefulness that 1,500 skilled union craftsmen 

will bring to building our plant. 

The PURGeN One facility, which we are developing right now, 

is one example. The facility operates a hydrogen plant. That plant 

produces hydrogen gas from coal. Hydrogen is then used to make 

electricity and urea. In the process, the plant will capture 90 percent of the CO2 it produces, over 4 and a half million tons per year. 

That CO2 will be transported and permanently stored in sandstone 

formations deep under the ocean floor. PURGeN One does all of 

this in a dense urban setting, where it meets a real and growing 

market need for generating capacity. 

This project is a price taker in both the electricity market and 

the urea market. The consumer will pay nothing extra for the commodities produced from this facility. You see, traditional single-purpose power plants operate for large periods of time and break even 

or worse. PURGeN is a manufacturing platform that shifts easily 

from producing electricity to producing urea. This both optimizes 

the revenues, and it uses the plant’s capital stock more effectively. 

With the hydrogen plant as its base, this is relatively easy to do. 

So we set out to solve sequestration, and along the way, we 

solved the fundamental problem in electricity generation. The new 


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technology here is in the business model. Everything else is off-theshelf, proven technology. Even the sub-seabed sequestration of CO2

has been proven safe and effective. The oldest and largest ongoing 

sequestration project in the world is the Sleipner field in the North 

Sea. We will sequester in formations, well explored formations that 

are approximately twice as deep and under a much thicker cap 

rock than those at Sleipner. So PURGeN will be more reliable than 

the most proven large-scale sequestration field in the world. 

One last point. We do not look at CO2 sequestration as a cost; we look at it as a business. With the $20 per ton tax credit in the 

TARP bill and some cross-subsidization from the hydrogen plant, 

the bill operates at about break even. But the pipe has capacity 

for—what is this? Have I run out of time, sir? 

The CHAIRMAN. No, you have not run out of time. It is just notifying us that the Members are being notified that the House is now 

in session. So it will not come off your time. So you have an additional minute to go. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Thank you. One last point. We don’t look at 

carbon dioxide sequestration as a cost. We look at it as a business. 

With the $20 per ton tax credit in the TARP bill and some crosssubsidization from the hydrogen plant, the business operates at 

about break even. But the pipe has capacity for an additional 5 

million tons per year from other facilities. Operating at full capacity, we have a very successful business with a $20 tax credit and 

$5 to $10 per ton value to the CO2. PURGeN One has started the permitting process for an early 

2011 construction start, but there are some challenges. First, big 

power plants are hard to finance in the best of times, but in the 

current financial crisis, Congress will need to expand DOE loan 

guarantee authority for first movers. The $20 tax credit provided 

by the TARP legislation is capped at 75 million tons. PURGeN 

could sequester upwards of 200 million tons in its first 20 years. 

Congress will need to raise this cap and provide assurance to investors that the credit will be there for the life of the financing. 

Finally, Congress needs to make clear that offshore leasing of 

lands for sub-seabed carbon storage is not merely permissible but 

a national priority. We look forward to working with the Select 

Committee to address these issues and for final passage of H.R. 

2454. Thank you, sir. 

[The statement of Mr. Smith follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Smith, very much. 

Our next witness is Mr. Gary Spitznogle, who is manager of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle and carbon capture and storage engineering at American Electric Power. He represents AEP in 

the Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership, a regional partnership of research and industry entities arranged by 

the United States Department of Energy to study carbon sequestration. 

We welcome you, sir. Whenever you are ready, please begin. 

STATEMENT OF GARY O. SPITZNOGLE 

Mr. SPITZNOGLE. Mr. Chairman and distinguished members of 

the Select Committee, thank you for having me here, and I appreciate you offering me this opportunity to share the views of AEP 

on power generation and technologies for the reduction of CO2

emissions. We applaud your efforts to explore new technologies 

that can help achieve energy independence while reducing or eliminating emissions of greenhouse gases. 

In my testimony, I have described AEP’s leadership on technology development over the past 100 years, including new generation. Arguably even more urgent than new generation technologies, 

substantial effort must be placed on retrofit technologies for the reduction of CO2 from existing power plants. The U.S. currently obtains about half of its electricity from a large fleet of baseload coal 

generation plants. And most of these will be in operation for decades to come. In recognition of this fact, the Secretary of Energy, 

Dr. Steven Chu, has recently directed the DOE to invest significantly in the area of post-combustion CO2 capture. 

The recent changes made to the Clean Coal Power Initiative Program and the DOE-funded National Carbon Capture Center reflect 

the support needed to commercialize CCS technologies. AEP has 

teamed up with Alstom to demonstrate its chilled ammonia CO2

capture technology at the 20-megawatt scale at our Mountaineer 

power plant in West Virginia. With start-up planned for just a few 

weeks away in early September, we will begin to inject 100,000 

tons per year of captured CO2 into deep saline reservoirs approximately 8,000 feet below the surface. This project represents the Nation’s first integrated CO2 capture and storage project at a coalfired power plant. After successful validation, our plan is to move 

the technology to commercial scale, demonstrating the entire process at a rate of 1.5-million tons of CO2 per year. 

Now, if currently available CO2 capture technologies were to be 

deployed, the resulting energy consumption of these systems would 

lead to the loss of one-third of the power plant’s output. That 

means a typical 600-megawatt power plant would be reduced to 

400-megawatts, and the cost of electricity would be increased by 

roughly 60 to 70-percent. 

New technologies, such as the chilled ammonia process, offer the 

promise of reducing this parasitic power loss. However, these technologies are not yet ready for commercial deployment. They must 

be advanced in a systematic and step-wise manner. AEP’s current 

CCS project represents this next step in the evolutionary progress 

of technology development. Commercial scale demonstrations of 

technologies like chilled ammonia will not be in service before 


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2015. And even when it is, it must be understood that these first 

projects will not be installed with commercial guarantees from vendors, and they run the risk of not continuously meeting high CO2

capture levels. This is why we believe that 2020 is approximately 

the earliest date when commercially reliable carbon-capture systems will be deployable across the industry. 

A few other technical hurdles must be also be considered. At CO2

capture levels exceeding 50 percent, the steam consumption required by conventional capture technologies may jeopardize the 

unit’s ability to continue to produce electricity. In addition to energy demand, CO2 systems require vast amounts of land. And as 

a rule of thumb, a full-scale system would double the footprint of 

a typical power plant. Some plants can accommodate this requirement, but many cannot. Consequently, companies may be forced to 

deploy CO2 capture systems on only a portion of the plant’s output. 

One more significant challenge is the permanent storage of CO2

after it is captured. The extent of available saline reservoirs, injection pressure limitations, and ultimate capacity are all factors that 

currently are the subject of intense study. AEP’s CCS program 

demonstrates the prudence of taking technology in a safe and stepwise fashion to commercialization. The timeline for this work again 

points towards 2020 as a reasonable date for wide-scale availability 

of the technology. 

In summary, continued research, development, and demonstration must be supported, and is essential to make CCS technologies 

a reality. We must do more than just simply call for it. Our Nation 

must prepare, inspire, guide, and support our citizens and the very 

best and brightest of our engineers and scientists. Private industry 

must step up and start to construct the first commercial plants, 

and our country must devote adequate financial and technological 

resources to this enormous challenge. 

AEP is committed to being part of this important process and to 

help achieve the best outcome at the most reasonable cost and 

timelines possible. Thank you again for this opportunity to share 

our views. I will be happy to answer questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Spitznogle follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. All right. Thank you very much. 

And our next witness is Mr. Sean Gallagher. He is the vice president of marketing and regulatory affairs for Tessera Solar, the 

solar development company of Stirling Energy Systems. 

We welcome you, sir. 

STATEMENT OF SEAN GALLAGHER 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Well, thank you very much, Chairman Markey, 

Ranking Member Sensenbrenner, and members of the committee. 

I am Sean Gallagher, vice president of market strategy and regulatory affairs for both Tessera Solar and Stirling Energy Systems. 

Tessera Solar is based in Houston, Texas, and Stirling based in 

Scottsdale, Arizona. We very much appreciate the leadership that 

you and your colleagues have shone on renewable energy this year. 

And we will work with you to see that that continues. 

It is a great pleasure to have an opportunity to address you 

today about solar power and our concentrating solar power technology in particular. 

My companies, Tessera Solar and Stirling Energy Systems, are 

within the NTR family of companies. NTR is an Irish renewable 

energy development company which owns a portfolio of primarily 

U.S.-based businesses, including an ethanol company based in 

Omaha, Nebraska, called Great Plains Renewable Energy; the 

wind energy company mentioned earlier, called Wind Capital 

Group, that is based in St. Louis, Missouri; and a recycling business with operations in Ireland, the U.K., and the U.S. In May 2008, NTR invested $100 million in solar power manufacturer Stirling Energies Systems and created Tessera Solar as the 

project development arm of the business. So the two companies 

that I represent, Tessera Solar and Stirling Energy, are sister companies. Stirling Energy manufactures the sun-power solar-powered 

generated—SunCatcher solar power generating system that I will 

describe in a moment, and Tessera Solar will build, own, and operate the solar farms that are powered by the SunCatcher. 

Solar power comes in two basic flavors. Many people are familiar 

with photovoltaic panels, which use an electrochemical process to 

convert sunlight into electricity. And that is not what we do. 

Concentrating solar power, which is sometimes called solar thermal electric, uses the heat from the sun to create mechanical energy that is then converted into electrical energy or electricity. And 

there are a number of CSP technologies which are coming onto the 

U.S. market now. The SunCatcher, which is our product, is one of 

those, and it is a form of concentrating solar power. 

The system, which you can see both on the screens on the sides 

of the room and on the board over here is essentially a large 

parabolic mirrored dish. It is about 38 feet across. The sun’s rays 

are reflected off the dish and focused onto the heat engine that sits 

out at the end of the boom that you see there. That collected heat 

from the sun gets up to about 1,300 degrees when it the enters the 

front of that heat engine. And that is called a Stirling engine. 

A Stirling engine is essentially an external heat engine. Any 

form of external heat can be used to operate the engine. In this 

case, it is the heat from the sun that is collected by the parabolic 

mirror dish that heats a hydrogen gas and pushes a four cylinder 


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engine about the size of a motorcycle engine that is housed on the 

top of that boom. That four cylinder engine turns a crank shaft 

which turns a generator which generates 25 kilowatts of electricity 

right on top of each dish. So, in California, that is about 15 to 20 

average homes on a peak summer afternoon that can be run from 

the power that is generated by each of these dishes. 

There are a number of advantages to this technology. It has the 

highest solar-to-grid electric efficiency, which means that fewer raw 

materials are used. Its modular design allows greater flexibility in 

project size, less land disturbance, and higher on-sun availability 

because there is no single point of failure. Third, this technology 

uses far less water than any other concentrating solar power system. Up to a thousand times less than some comparable systems. 

And of course, it does not emit any greenhouse gas emissions or 

other hazardous byproducts. And because we are building at utility 

scales of hundreds of thousands of megawatts, many tons of greenhouse gases are avoided. 

The supply chain for this technology is automotive. Our supply 

chain partners are primarily based in the upper Midwest. And they 

will be converting existing automotive capacity to produce solar 

power components at a commercial scale, putting auto workers 

back to work. When we get into commercial volume production, we 

will be creating up to 4,000 jobs across the supply chain. 

Beginning next year, in 2010, Tessera Solar plans to break 

ground on two of the world’s largest solar farms in southern California. These projects will produce up to 1,750 megawatts of clean 

power. They will create 300 to 700 construction jobs as they are 

being built, and on the order of a hundred permanent jobs, operations and maintenance jobs. We will also be building the first concentrating solar power plant in Texas. And we are developing a 

supply chain—I am sorry, a project pipeline both domestically and 

internationally. So we will be creating jobs in the U.S. for export. 

There are a few things that the Congress can do to help bring 

this technology to fruition. First of all, the Department of Energy 

has got to get the loan guarantee rules out. It has been 6 months 

already since the stimulus package was passed, and we still don’t 

have the loan guarantee materials. Congress should consider extending the commenced construction deadline for receiving the 

grant in lieu of ITC by a year in recognition of the fact that the 

loan guarantee has been delayed thus far. The two programs really 

work together. If you can’t get the loan guarantee, you can’t get 

into construction to get the grant. 

We will also need transmission to bring this power that is produced primarily in the U.S. Southwest to the rest of the western 

United States and across the country. 

It is a great pleasure to have an opportunity to address you here 

today, and I will be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Gallagher follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher, very much. 

And our final witness is Dr. Emanuel Sachs. He is the chief technical officer and co-founder of 1366 Technologies. Dr. Sachs is a 

professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute 

of Technology and holds over 40 patents as inventor or co-inventor 

of technologies for manufacturing processes and solar cells. 

We welcome you, Dr. Sachs. 

STATEMENT OF EMANUEL SACHS 

Mr. SACHS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The challenges of global warming and energy security present extraordinary opportunities to grow new industries and to remake 

our industrial society in a sustainable form. Not since JFK marshaled us to go to the moon have we had such a clarion call to our 

young people to do well while doing good. And they have heard this 

call on their own. 

The opportunity to energize generations of engineers, scientists, 

business leaders, builders, and policymakers is precious. As an engineering graduate in 1976, I was motivated to work in solar energy by the oil embargoes of the early 1970s. Fortunately, the opportunity was there. I was hired onto a DOE-funded program at a 

photovoltaics company, and within 2 years, I knew what I wanted 

to do with my career. 

The term photovoltaics refers to the direct conversion of sunlight 

to electricity using semiconductor devices. That is with no moving 

parts. I will use the acronym PV for short. I returned to MIT for 

a Ph.D. in engineering and invented a new technology for making 

PV wafers called String Ribbon. String Ribbon is now the core technology of two companies. Evergreen Solar, a Nasdaq-listed U.S. 

company that employs approximately 1,000 people at its R&D facilities and manufacturing plant in Massachusetts, is one of them. 

But along the way, from lab to public company, much time was lost 

due to a lack of resources. In fact, String Ribbon lay fallow for 8 

years, beginning in 1986, when oil prices dropped precipitously and 

PV funding essentially dried up. 

On September 12th, 2001, I turned my MIT research program 

fully to renewable energy. This was my personal response to the 

events of 9/11. My students, staff, and I created three new technologies in PV. In 2007, I co-founded 1366 Technologies to take 

these inventions from the lab at MIT into industry. We are now 25 

people working to change the energy landscape, and we are one of 

150 solar startups in the U.S. 

This chart captures some of the history of PV and the rationale 

behind our company. It is centered on wafer-based silicon PV, 

which accounts for approximately 90 percent of products sold. The 

chart shows the cost of electricity from PV graphed against the cumulative production of PV modules. It covers the period from 1978, 

when solar cells were used in space, through today, and then 

projects forward to 2020. What we see is a steady decline in manufacturing costs with production. This is a classic learning curve of 

the type that characterizes most manufacturing enterprises. The 

cost reductions are achieved in part by economy of scale. But in 

PV, the major contribution is a succession of technological advances 

which act cumulatively to reduce costs dramatically. This situation 


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is similar to the sequence of developments that has kept silicon the 

dominant material in microelectronics for over 30 years. 

While PV is already economical in some markets without subsidy, in a few years unsubsidized costs will drop sufficiently below 

the price of electricity from natural gas so that we will enter the 

region of grid parity, while still allowing for sufficient profit to sustain growth. Continuation of the current 35 percent annual growth 

rate through 2020 will get us to parity with coal. At that time, PV 

will satisfy 7 percent of the global demand for electricity. Storage 

technology to compensate for intermittency will become necessary 

by 2025. Once this storage problem is solved, PV will become the 

largest manufacturing industry in history. 

PV modules are simple, attractive products with proven field reliability, and they are made mostly from sand. The challenge is to 

bring the costs down. Our aim at 1366 is to contribute key innovations in the march of PV to grid parity. For example, today the 

highest cost step is manufacturing the silicon wafers that solar 

cells are built on. Cast blocks of silicon 6 inches wide and 12 inches 

long are sawn into the wafers that cells are made of. The sawing 

is a slow and expensive process. The worst part is that only half 

the brick ends up as usable wafers, and the other half of the brick 

is turned into dust by the sawing process. And it is unreclaimable 

dust because it is thoroughly contaminated. 

At 1366, we have a new process for directly producing high-quality silicon wafers with no sawing and no surface treatment required. This single step can save 30 percent of making the costs of 

a PV module. 

From my experience, the biggest issue facing the rise of PV as 

a global energy source is consistency in funding and in the economic landscape. For example, after a few strong years, the venture capital community has drastically cut back on funding for PV. 

The current credit crunch makes it difficult to finance the multimegawatt installations that are central to the future of PV. Federal 

funding for R&D has been up one decade, down for two, and is now 

beginning to recover. If you will pardon me, what I can say is that 

the up-and-down Federal funding cycle has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. 

Finally, Mr. Chairman, you asked for thoughts on policy. I am 

not a policy expert or even amateur, but I note that changes in energy infrastructure take decades, and I can suppose that a primary 

goal of effective policy should be to smooth out the wild fluctuations 

which have plagued the development of PV. It would be helpful to 

provide more support when fossil fuel prices are relatively low and 

allow the private sector to carry more of the weight when they are 

high. This proposal is the exact opposite of the natural tendency. 

Thank you for your attention. 

[The statement of Mr. Sachs follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Dr. Sachs, very much. 

Now we will turn to our questions from the Select Committee 

members. 

And the Chair will recognize himself. 

Mr. Spitznogle, you said I think that you did not believe that 

there would be a commercially viable carbon capture and sequestration technology until at least 2020. Is that correct? 

Mr. SPITZNOGLE. Mr. Chairman, I believe that is the case when 

we will be able to have wide deployment of these technologies with 

commercial guarantees. In my opening statement, I mentioned that 

2015 would be the first time we start to see deployment at commercial scale with technologies that do not necessarily come with guarantees. So from that time period to 2020 is the time we see that 

those first installations are proven and process changes are made 

to make them reliable and they can be deployed widely. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

Mr. Smith, do you agree with that, that we will have to wait 

until 2020 to have a truly commercially viable technology? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, our plant is scheduled to go into production in 

2014, 2015. The technologies are known and proven. They are 

not—it is not a retrofit. And perhaps my colleague to the right is 

talking about retrofit technologies. So maybe those have some different problems. But our plant is scheduled to go into production 

in 2014, 2015. It is commercially viable. It is ready to go. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you agree with that, Dr. Kunkel? Where are 

you in the Spitznogle-Smith spectrum? 

Mr. KUNKEL. Well, I think there is—we, obviously, have a couple 

of projects that are commercial scale that we are advancing. And 

those are among, you know, a small group of pioneering projects. 

And those projects, we will learn a lot from those. I think that is 

the first step, is to get that group of projects on the ground. And 

then there will be significant improvements. 

So, after 2015, there will be significant improvements all the way 

down the value chain, from engineering to the equipment manufacturers and so on. So we do need—I think that the pioneering 

plants, the pioneering efforts are the object in front of us now. But 

we can build commercial-scale facilities now, both gasification and 

post-combustion. 

The CHAIRMAN. Now, let me come back to you, Dr. Sachs. You 

I think said that the manufacture of solar technologies will become 

the largest single manufacturing sector, I think you said, in the 

history of the world. 

Mr. SACHS. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. Can you expand upon that? 

Mr. SACHS. Sure. 

So what the production level that we will reach in 2020 is roughly a terawatt a year. And we will have to get to quite a larger production level of several terawatts a year in order to satisfy global 

demand. The price of photovoltaics at that point fully installed will 

be on the order roughly of $1.50 a watt. So we are talking about 

trillions of dollars in total revenue. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the year that you picked for the point at 

which solar reaches equivalency with coal in the cost to generate 

electricity is 2020 on your chart? 


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Mr. SACHS. Yes, and that is a continuation of the 18 percent 

learning curve that photovoltaics has been on since the mid-1970s. 

So the part of the curve that you saw from 1978 to today is real 

data. And then the dotted line is a projection with the same slope, 

the same learning curve. 

The CHAIRMAN. So you are saying that the same rule that exists, 

Moore’s law that exists in terms of the power of computer processing, exists over here as well? 

Mr. SACHS. It is not exactly Moore’s law, but it is somewhat, 

somewhat analogous. So technologically that powers Moore’s law is 

the accumulation of innovations in a processing of microelectronics. 

So no one company has to invent the entire processing sequence, 

but rather they build on the shoulders of people who came before 

them. And that is exactly what is happening in photovoltaics. 

The CHAIRMAN. Do you agree with that, Mr. Gallagher? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. Markey, in principle, I do. In the concentrating solar power industry, we think we have a similar cost-down 

curve that will enable us—actually, for the concentrating solar 

power technologies, the efficiency of solar radiation to good quality 

electricity is quite a bit higher than PV. And so we think that we 

are pretty close to the point where we are competitive with, for example, retail power prices in California already; and we think that 

as we get into volume production, we will see costs continue to 

come down through economies of scale, through exercising the supply chain to find the right supply chain partners, and through improvements in the technology as we go forward. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gallagher. 

The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from West Virginia, Mrs. 

Capito. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. I thank the witnesses as well. 

Let me just make sure. I am little—not confused; I am looking 

for clarity here. Because I see some of the stumbling blocks to CCS 

cost, but some witnesses have testified, I think that—well, somebody said we need to have the loan guarantees, that is absolutely 

critical. We need to have the DOE come in with specialized project 

money. I am assuming that all the technologies still need this kind 

of financial impetus to get us to the—let’s say, 2020 or 2015 where 

it will be commercially viable. 

Across the witnesses who talked about the coal, would that be 

pretty accurate in your—is there going to be a point where you 

don’t need loan guarantees and other financial impetus to move 

this technology and make it, I don’t know, revenue neutral to the 

government? 

Mr. SMITH. From my point of view, if it weren’t for the financial 

crisis, I think that would get less emphasis. Essentially, when you 

do a large power plant, you know, you are talking about billions 

of dollars. And the problem is that you are going to—when you talk 

about a first mover, you run into the problem of bankers and their 

sense of risk and things like that. 

If—in a more robust economy, prior to the problems we had last 

fall, their fear of loss is compensated by their greed, and you can 

get these things done. But fear is more a dominant emotionality in 

the financial communities, and so it becomes more difficult. It is 

particularly true with first movers. Even if all the technologies are 


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proven and you are bolting pieces together, if they haven’t seen it 

before, there is a concern. 

So in terms of funding this long term, absolutely. The U.S. economy will fund this. We are talking about how-to-get-started problems from my point of view. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Anybody else? 

Mr. KUNKEL. I would just say that removing carbon dioxide from 

power plants costs money, and we know that. You know, using the 

oil industry, we can get paid for the carbon dioxide so that helps, 

obviously, and that is pretty much undeniable. 

The initial projects are probably going to be more expensive than 

later projects because we will learn a lot. And so we hope to bring 

down the costs. But, still, if society doesn’t value emissions reductions, then this probably doesn’t make sense. 

If society does value remission reductions, then it does make 

sense. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. 

Mr. SPITZNOGLE. I guess what I can add to the comments on the 

concern about risk is, put in perspective the fact that AEP has obligations to its rate payers and its shareholders to make good decisions and mitigate that risk as much as possible. 

So when you look at these technologies, the first movers are truly 

the ones stepping forward and taking that initial risk. That is the 

case even with what we are doing down at our Mountaineer plant 

at 20 megawatts. We have asked the rate payers and shareholders 

to understand the need to do this, and they do. But there, again, 

it is a fairly small-scale step-out. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Well, understanding that a lot of times the rate 

changes go through the State, in our case, public service commission, those are tough things to get through. I know you have been 

through a couple here most recently. 

Let me ask—another question that is kind of a thread I heard 

through the CCS is the amount of energy it costs to reduce the carbon emission, like, I think one of them was 25 percent of the power 

used in the separation from—I guess separating the carbon. I 

guess, as we are looking at we are going to have more energy appetite as we move towards this—I mean, I am thinking to myself, 

how are we going to do this? We are going to increase our solar, 

which is going to help fill in some of the gaps because we are going 

to lose energy as we try to cut down our emissions from the coal 

power plant. 

Do you think this is something that is scientifically or technologically that we can keep squeezing down how much energy it 

takes to capture and sequester the carbon? 

Mr. SPITZNOGLE. That would be AEP’s engineering judgment, 

that we are starting at fairly high levels, like you said, 25, 30 percent at the parasitic—25, 30 percent of the output of the plant to 

run these technologies. And we believe, just like the evolution of 

what FGDs, through the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and SGRs 

maybe a little bit more compressed, but there is going to be a little 

bit of a growth period there where we will be under tight constraints for energy, and that developers with these types incentives 

will come up with technologies that are more efficient. 


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So we are optimistic that that can happen, and that chilled ammonia is one of those examples that we see a step-wise improvement. 

Mrs. CAPITO. Thank you. My time is up. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 

York, Mr. Hall. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to our witnesses. 

Mr. Gallagher, I was struck by your testimony about your supply 

chain specifically, and I would quote, ‘‘Because this technology uses 

steel, glass, and engines, the supply chain is automotive. We are 

partnering with Tier 1 automotive suppliers to manufacture 

SunCatcher components, the company that will make the engine 

manufacturers engines for the U.S. car makers. The company that 

will make the mirror facets makes windshields, doors, and car 

hoods. The American automobile industry has the skills and expertise to build this. The industry has existing manufacturing capacity 

that will be converted for manufacturing of solar power components. ‘‘Deploying this technology on a commercial scale in the 

United States and across the world will create jobs in precisely 

those sectors and regions of the country in which America has been 

falling behind. As we get into volume production in 2010, we will 

be putting auto workers back to work, eventually creating up to 

4,000 jobs across the supply chain.’’ 

Very exciting news, particularly given the current state of the 

auto industry. Can you elaborate on this, more details about it? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Certainly. Thank you, Mr. Hall. 

This technology—this technology essentially is—it is engines, 

and the U.S. automotive industry certainly knows how to make engines. 

In fact, in 2007, the U.S. auto industry manufactured about 17 

million cars; this year, it is going to manufacture about 9 million 

cars. There is a lot of slack capacity in the U.S. auto industry at 

this time, and so it is a good time for a company like ours to be 

going to the auto industry and bringing them new business. 

Our supply chain partners are very excited to diversify their 

businesses away from auto parts and into energy. The auto industry knows how to make products at high volumes with high reliability, and to drive down costs with continuous improvements in 

the manufacturing process. So we are excited about using that industry and that supply chain to produce solar power at a continuously decreasing cost. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 

You also noticed that your technology was developed in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories. Some critics of Federal policy have said that investments in R&D do not create jobs. I assume 

you would disagree with that? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. We think we are a pretty good model of the 

public-private partnership. We have had a long relationship with 

Sandia. We have received some funding from the Department of 

Energy to commercialize this technology. In fact, the pictures that 

you saw earlier of new SunCatcher systems are at Sandia National 

Labs. That is where the technology has been refined and much of 

the commercialization process has taken place. 


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So we are very appreciative of the support we have gotten from 

the government, and will be bringing that into commercial production next year. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. And I assume that we are talking about 

CCS, for instance, we are talking about pilot projects on various 

scales in various locations with your different companies. 

But all of you on this panel have stressed the need for loan guarantees for stable requirements for carbon emissions levels, and for 

Federal investment to continue. 

I would assume that none disagree that there are jobs created by 

those investments? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. We certainly think so. 

Mr. HALL. If there is somebody that disagrees, please raise your 

hand or speak up. It may not be on the scale that you will be at 

once you get into pilot stage and into building a full-scale sequestration project that can match a 1,000 megawatt or greater power 

plant. I am sure that is obvious; but nonetheless, there are jobs 

created. 

Mr. Smith, I am curious, if you are generating hydrogen, why not 

burn it and spin the turbine and put power back into the grid and 

have water be the effluent? 

Mr. SMITH. We do, actually. The trick is—the question is this; 

and it goes to this earlier question of what is the cost of carbon 

capture: 

When you make hydrogen, there are some costs of making it. You 

have to use electricity to create in the chemical process. And that 

is sometimes referred to as the parasitic. 

Mr. HALL. Unless the energy comes from a removal that is free. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, yes. But from someplace it comes, wherever it 

is. 

The issue is this: If you try to assign all of those costs of making 

this hydrogen to the electricity generation, you end up with 

parasitics that look like 25 or 30 percent. If you say, no, no, I have 

to spend some of that energy to make hydrogen, then what you can 

do is say, oh, I can do these other things with hydrogen. 

What our plant does is make electricity when electricity demand 

is high, and it makes—and prices are good. And it makes urea 

when prices are low. As it turns out, that is a good thing from a 

carbon footprint point of view and from a national policy point of 

view. The urea comes from—presently is largely manufactured 

from natural gas. In this case, it will be manufactured from coal. 

Mr. HALL. And you get paid for it? 

Mr. SMITH. And we get paid—I get paid for it, yes. And you are 

talking prices which are better than the prices for electricity at 2 

in the morning. We have more capacity for generating electricity at 

2 in the morning than we need, so you turn my plant to making 

urea. And in that case, if you looked at the parasitic, we think that 

the amount of energy required to capture and compress the CO2 is 

10 percent, not 30. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentlelady from Tennessee, Mrs. 

Blackburn. 


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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And, again, thank 

you to our witnesses. 

Mr. Smith, I appreciated your statement in your testimony where 

you said the new technology was the business model and the way 

you all approached your situation, and that that is why we 

shouldn’t choose winners and losers. And I agree. I think that that 

is something that is important for us, to allow you all to be 

innovators, and for us not to sit here and try to choose winners and 

losers and decide what is and is not going to—to have the opportunity to see if something actually works. 

Dr. Sachs’ chart about how long he has worked on the cell is a 

great example of this. I guess what we have to do is figure out 

what we are going to do with all that dust that you have left over 

in those bottles. 

Mr. Smith, a couple of questions for you about PurGen and your 

technology. 

Do you have any long-term liability concerns about sequestering 

the CO2 under water? And the reason I ask this is because, part 

of my district is Memphis, and we have the New Madrid Falls in 

the Mississippi River. And we have read some studies that sequestering the CO2 underground may lead to some tremors. And that 

is something we are very sensitive to in our region of the country, 

so I would just like to know if you had any long-term liability concerns on sequestration. 

Mr. SMITH. Well, as it turns out, if you tried to describe a perfect 

geology for storing carbon dioxide, you would describe the site that 

we are proposing. It is—and I have to be a little careful because 

I am on the edge of starting to speak geological speak, and I am 

not that good on it. 

But it is on a passive margin. It is tectonically inactive. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So you feel that is something manageable? 

Mr. SMITH. I think it is something that has proven to be manageable. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. All right. I appreciate that. Let me move on 

with a reminder of the time that I have. 

Dr. Kunkel, who owns the patents for the CCS technology that 

you are currently using? Do you all own them? Or individuals? 

Mr. KUNKEL. No. Actually—well, there is a whole variety of companies involved in this space. As the developer of projects, we are 

really open to a whole variety of technologies, and in fact, we have 

looked at most of the technologies being discussed here today for 

different projects. 

And we have solar going in on rooftops in development. So we 

are developers. We will use any technology that is out there. We 

do have a small investment in a company called Powerspan that 

has new technology for carbon capture that we think is very favorable in terms of reducing the energy requirement, but generally we 

look at a wide variety. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you for that. 

And I have got a couple of questions on rate payer bills, but I 

am so close on time, I will probably submit those to you. Because, 

as Mrs. Capito said, I think we are all sensitive to what would happen with the rates and how this would affect the rate payer. So I 

will submit those to you. 


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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Gallagher, I do have a question for you. 

Your SunCatcher project you said is in California and Texas, and 

I wanted to know if you had any plans for solar plants in the 

Southeast, and if you see this as a technology that would be viable 

for our area of the country. 

It sounds like you work off of heat units, not off of rays. And of 

course, this year, I was reading an article when you were talking 

about that, and it looks like our west Tennessee cotton, it needs 28 

heat units a day to germinate properly, but it only got 16 to 17 

units per day this month. 

So is SunCatcher looking at anything in the Southeast? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Well, the form of solar energy that concentrating solar power uses is called direct normal insulation, and that 

form of insulation is the best in the U.S. Southwest. So I think in 

the next several years what you will see are projects built by our 

company, and others like ours, in the U.S. Southwest. 

The sun, or the insulation, in the Southeast is significantly less 

than in the Southwest, or the form of radiation that this technology 

needs. I think there is some potential if we move down the cost 

curve the way we think that we can to think about doing projects 

in the Southeast. 

But I think the other way to bring solar power to the Southeast 

is to expand our transmission system, our national transmission 

system. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So, basically what you have works for one region of the country, but not the whole country? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. At this time, that is accurate. 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. That is a fair statement. Thank you, sir. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady’s time has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr. Cleaver. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The algae-based biofuels are getting a lot of attention from some 

of the major companies like Exxon. And in Kansas City, Missouri, 

in the district that I serve, Midwest Research Institute has a pilot 

scale algae production facility. 

And I am just wondering whether or not any of you see a commercial potential for algae biofuels. And, if so, what are the obstacles that are in the way? What can we do to make it more possible? 

Anyone? 

Mr. SACHS. I am not an expert on algae biofuels, but I will observe that that is another way to collect solar energy. So that is 

essentially what that is doing. Algae is attracted because it is 3 to 

5 percent efficient in photosynthesis versus a 0.5 percent efficient 

for green plants. 

And the point I want to make is that there are a number of ways 

of collecting solar energy that are under investigation, that are at 

different points in their development. You have heard about two: 

concentrating solar power and flat panels, flat-panel photovoltaics. 

There is also solar thermal electric, where solar energy is turned 

into heat, which is then turned into electricity, or the heat is stored 

to turn into electricity a few hours later. And algae is in that class. 

So as someone who works in renewable energy, I foresee a portfolio of solutions, even though I am here to represent photovoltaics. 


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Mr. CLEAVER. Mr. Gallagher. 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Well, I would say only that my company, as I 

mentioned, is owned by the Irish infrastructure company, NTR. 

They also own an ethanol company in Omaha called Great Plains 

Renewable Energy. 

Great Plains has recently made an investment in algae. So there 

is a lot of interest in algae as a form of renewable energy production; most of it is in the R&D stage at this point. And, frankly, I 

can’t speak intelligently as to the time frame for bringing it into 

commercial production. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Anyone. 

Dr. Kunkel. 

Mr. KUNKEL. It is not something we are invested in, although we 

have been approached from CO2. We are going to be a carbon dioxide producer and capture that for people, and the algae people are 

interested in that. So there could be an interesting synergy between these capture technologies and the algae industry. 

Of course, the brilliant thing that algae do is, they make a liquid 

that could be used as a liquid fuel, which is what we are short on. 

Mr. CLEAVER. So it is too new to even have a good picture of 

what it might become. Is that kind of where everybody’s coming 

from? 

Mr. SACHS. Well, just to make the comparison between capturing 

solar energy through algae and photovoltaics; photovoltaics has a 

long history of deployment in the field and algae does not. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Well, since you are at the microphone, Professor, 

you mentioned in your testimony that some of the hurdles to largescale use of solar technology are storage and transmission lines to 

get the newly generated power to the grid. 

What are the possibilities that are currently being explored to do 

this? 

Mr. SACHS. Well, first of all, I think the most important thing is 

to point out that those issues don’t come into play for almost two 

decades, because what happens now is, for example, 

photovoltaics—the power from photovoltaics overlaps very well 

with air conditioning loads, and so it displaces the natural gas 

peakers, the plants that are fired up to deal with that peak; and 

those are very high-cost plants. And so that is one of the reasons 

that photovoltaics is so close to entering that zone of grid parity. 

So that can accommodate up to about 15 percent, by most estimates, of electricity demand in the U.S. without storing. And 

that—we are nowhere near that. So there is a lot of growth potential, but we need to start work on storage technologies because it 

is a difficult proposition. 

One of the attractive ones solves a few problems at the same 

time, and that is plug-in hybrid vehicles which are charged during 

the day when photovoltaics are working. And so it is a kind of distributed storage, and it also obviously displaces some part of our 

consumption of oil. 

The other point is that photovoltaics has the merit of being very 

well distributed. So it can be done in large power plants, but it can 

also be done in amounts as small as home rooftops. And it can be 

deployed anywhere in the country. Of course, the yield will be less 

in the Northeast than in the Southwest, but you don’t need the colVerDate Mar 15 2010 21:27 Dec 13, 2010 Jkt 062450 PO 00000 Frm 00111 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A450.XXX A450

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limated light. You can have cloud scatter and still get response 

from flat panels. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. 

My time has concluded. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. First I thank you for being here; you are 

the angels descended from heaven just at the right moment. So 

thanks for you and your whole team’s work on this. 

Dr. Sachs, I missed something you said about the relative efficiency of photovoltaics or concentrated solar and photosynthetic 

processes. And I think there is an interesting competition between 

in our transportation policy having electricity run our cars or a 

photosynthetic process through biofuels. 

Is there any sort of master way to look at these two approaches? 

Does one have any intrinsic ultimate greater efficiency? 

Mr. SACHS. Well, the thermodynamic limit of efficiency for 

photovoltaics is actually over 80 percent; that is, conversion of sunlight to electricity. The type of multijunction cells that are used 

on—up to now up, to recently, primarily on satellites but also now 

on concentrated ground-based applications have demonstrated 40 

percent efficiencies. Those are quite expensive, and the majority of 

product is in the 15 to 20 percent range. 

So whether there is a thermodynamic limit to the efficiency of a 

biological process, I am sure there is, but I don’t know what it is. 

I know that the most efficient green plants are about a half percent 

efficient. And, as I mentioned, algae is three to five. So 

photovoltaics is, even at 15 percent, very considerably ahead. 

And the other aspect is that photovoltaics actually works as well 

or better in the winter. So cold weather, the efficiency of the cells 

actually goes up slightly. Of course, you have less sunlight. But it 

would be hard to grow green plants during that same season. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. One of you made reference to the need 

to extend the construction deadline, and I missed what that reference was to. Was that Mr. Gallagher? Can you tell me what you 

were referring to? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Certainly. In the Recovery Act that was passed 

this year, in order to obtain the grant in lieu of the investment tax 

credit for renewable energy, the project must get into construction 

by the end of 2010. Right now, as some of the witnesses have mentioned, the financing environment is quite challenging for projects, 

generally for renewable projects in particular, and for technologies 

that are first being commercialized even more so. 

So when our finance guys are talking to the banks right now, 

they are finding that the banks are not prepared to loan us money 

for the period of time that we need or at the interest rates that we 

need. 

So I think you will see over the next year or two the renewable 

energy in general and the solar industry in particular placing quite 

a lot of reliance on the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee program. But that loan guarantee program takes some time to work 

through, and we are now almost six months into the Recovery Act 

period and the Department of Energy hasn’t managed to get out 

the solicitations for the next round of loan guarantees. 


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So we can’t get into construction by the end of next year and, 

thus, be eligible for the grant unless we can get through the Department of Energy’s loan guarantee process, which we haven’t 

been able to start yet. So that was my point. 

Mr. INSLEE. By the way, is your technology different? Or how is 

it different from the Infinia approach using sterling engines? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. It is very similar to Infinia’s, uses a somewhat 

different sterling engine. They use what is called a free piston engine; we use what is called a reciprocating sterling engine. But the 

principles are quite similar. Our dish is larger; it is a 25 kilowatt 

dish versus a 3 kilowatt dish. But it is, in principle, a very similar 

system. 

Mr. INSLEE. Do any of you have any suggestions about how to accelerate our loan guarantee program? We will be talking to DOE. 

We do that. And I think they are making strides and I know they 

are focused, but do you have any suggestions on how any of us can 

help, how you would suggest the Department should go about this? 

I am looking for free input here. 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Well, I can say that—we think we have been 

hearing all the right things from the Department of Energy, also. 

What we haven’t seen is the regulations being issued. They have 

to come out with the rules that are consistent with commercial 

banking practices so that we can use them. 

There were some problems with the 1703 program passed in the 

2005 Energy Policy Act that has hard conditions that have made 

it hard for companies to use. We think that DOE is going in the 

right direction, and probably it would be useful without a conversation with OMB, which we understand has to approve the DOE’s 

rules before they can be issued. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. 

Dr. Constantz, could you tell us about what you consider your 

major challenges? This is an amazingly exciting field to those of us 

on the outside of it. What do you consider your biggest challenges? 

Are they technological or are they financial? 

Mr. CONSTANTZ. At this point, they are mainly just financial. You 

know, as I said, we have already financed our demonstration plant 

at Moss Landing where we have had a pilot plant operating for 

about 8 months now. But there we will be capturing, I believe, 

about 100,000 tons of CO2 a year. That makes about 200,000 tons 

of building material. So you can almost get profitable, you know, 

the SCM sells for $100 a ton. We are finding a lot of venues. 

You know, we really need to build, say, a 50-megawatt dem- onstration plant, is about $120 million. And to go from—we are a 

venture capital-backed startup, and there is just no way we can 

sell equity to raise that kind of money. So we really need a significant amount. Following the first larger-scale plant, though, it has 

become apparent that we will be able to receive financing fairly 

readily. 

The problem in this chasm now is, venues not only in the United 

States but around the world are looking back to the last 8 years 

and the concept—are very fixated on geologic sequestration, rather 

than a profitable use for the CO2. Mr. INSLEE. A quick question: I know the building industry can 

be conservative about adopting new technologies. They want to 


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make sure things last 100 years. What are the best things you can 

do to achieve that confidence? 

Mr. CONSTANTZ. We are in pretty good shape. We gave an AEAaccredited course at the World of Concrete, which is the largest— 

you know, 80,000-person meeting. My Vice President of Materials 

Development is the Past President of the American Concrete Institute. We have a 40,000-square-foot lab in Los Gatos doing all the 

tests. We are in discussions with all the major cement companies. 

We are doing very well on that front. 

I personally hold over 70 issued patents on cement, and we are 

very confident about the technology. We are very confident about 

the carbon capture. We are achieving over 90-percent carbon capture in Moss Landing. 

Mr. INSLEE. It is very exciting. I think I am the only former cement truck driver on this panel, so I really appreciate your expertise on this. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 

York. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had a couple of quick 

questions. One to—— 

The CHAIRMAN. I haven’t recognized the gentlelady from California yet. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the 

learned witnesses that we have before us today. 

A couple of questions to Mr. Gallagher and Dr. Sachs. You mentioned the difficult policy framework solar energy has had to contend with over the years and the fluctuating support for funding. 

What, in your mind, would represent a more permanent and 

longer lasting solution to these fluctuations that Congress has not 

yet seen fit to provide? 

Mr. SACHS. If you look, I think there should be two components 

to the guidance for such policy. One is the one that I mentioned 

in my testimony. That is, to take into account what the 

externalities are—externalities to, say, photovoltaic development. 

And that is principally the price of fossil fuels. 

As I mentioned, in my own experience I have seen it go from a 

hot field to cold field to a hot field to cold field, and these changes 

can take place over as little as a 1-month period of time, depending 

on the price of oil. So somehow policy has to compensate for that. 

The other element is already in place, in policy, in some countries. For example, Germany has a feed-in tariff which has helped 

renewable energy greatly, not just photovoltaics but wind as well. 

And that feed-in tariff—that is, you get paid for every kilowatt 

hour of electricity fed into that grid. That feed-in tariff declines in 

a programmed way over time; and that lets people know—gives 

some stability for what is likely to happen—of course, it may be 

subject to change, but is likely to happen; and people can make 

plans accordingly. 

And I think it is important for that rate of decline to take its cue 

from the learning curve for that industry, not to be motivated by 

other factors, but to recognize that industries have their own rate 

of decline of cost, and that learning curve has a different slope for 

different industries, and the preprogrammed rate of decline should 

be keyed to that learning curve. 


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Mr. GALLAGHER. I would say three quick things: 

One, Congress took one terrific step last fall with the extension 

of the investment tax credit for 8 years, which provides some durability; 

Second, Congress could enact a meaningful renewable energy 

standard this year as part of the bill that the House has already 

passed; and 

Third, Congress could create a permanent clean energy bank to 

provide source of funding going forward. 

Ms. SPEIER. Thank you. 

Dr. Constantz, I was struck by your statement in which you 

chastised us, and probably rightfully so, for kind of picking winners 

and losers, which is a bugaboo of mine, where there have been tax 

incentives legislated exclusively for geologic sequestration, but not 

for alternative forms of capture and conversion. 

Could you expand upon that for us? 

Mr. CONSTANTZ. Yes. Actually, if you read the legislation, it is 

written prescriptively for a specific method of geologic sequestration. And also, you know, in discussions with DOE and the bodies, 

it is made very clear that the funds are already directed for geologic projects and geologic sequestration projects which, of course, 

are going to benefit people that build separation equipment and 

people that build pipelines and people that drill wells. You know, 

it has been very crafted, specifically. I have an analyst report that 

shows a $1 trillion market opportunity for the builders of carbon 

separation equipment, and the people that, you know, own rights 

to the reservoirs and are going to be pumping. 

The legislation is very, very prescriptive. I can’t say it more 

strongly. 

Ms. SPEIER. So it is almost rigged, is what you are saying. 

Mr. CONSTANTZ. It absolutely is. You can talk to anybody at 

DOE. In fact, even in the industrial use program which was recently brought out, after a lot of talking to people on Capitol Hill, 

they took a $1.4 billion program and said, okay, we will just take 

$1.3 billion and target it specifically for geologic sequestration; and 

then we will have this other $100 million that we will put for every 

other project out there, and we will call that useful. 

And part of the inaccuracy is that—for example, my technology, 

we are making product every day, tons and tons of product. You 

know, as the gentleman from AEP said, they are going to be the 

very first people to take a single molecule from CO2, take it 

through the whole process and get it into the ground. They are the 

leaders in that. So they are 5 years behind us, but from DOE’s 

point of view, that is a proven technology. And we are still in the 

R&D stage, even though we are making product that can be used 

every day. 

It is like the world’s gone mad. 

Ms. SPEIER. Dr. Constantz, could you provide me with a document that would spell that out specifically? And I would like to 

share it with the chairman of the committee. 

Mr. CONSTANTZ. Absolutely. 

Ms. SPEIER. The bill, as you know, is still working its way 

through the Senate; and we can fix mistakes if, in fact, this would 

be classified as one. But certainly having the opportunity for more 


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institutions and companies to participate is to all of our interests. 

And I don’t like the idea that this has been so constrained. 

So I would appreciate that. Thank you. 

I yield back. 

Mr. CLEAVER [presiding]. Thank you. The mistake we made is— 

the Founders did, in creating the Senate. 

I recognize the gentleman from New York. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And quickly, Dr. Sachs and Mr. Gallagher, you both talked about 

storage issues having to do with renewables that are not around 

the clock or weather reliable. 

And so what do you see as the leading three or what is your favorite horse in the race in terms of storing electricity from solar, 

wind? 

Mr. GALLAGHER. Well, of course, the best storage technology that 

is in operation today is pumped hydro, where you have a two-pond 

system and you store water in the lake below and you pump it uphill at night when there is a lower power demand, and you run it 

downhill to create energy during the day when you need the power. 

A couple of other promising technologies. A number of the concentrating solar power technologies are using molten salt for storage to store heat and generate power later in the day. 

There is also a lot of interest in compressed air energy storage. 

Our parent company is taking a small interest in an R&D company 

that is working on compressed air energy storage as well. 

I think storage is a very promising area. One thing that I would 

encourage you to think about is that storage can do basically two 

things for a renewable energy system or for a grid operator. It can 

either help reduce the costs of producing energy for the developer 

by allowing it to produce more energy over more hours, or it can 

essentially help the grid operator by providing some grid integration services, grid stability kinds of services. 

Today, storage is too expensive to make it worthwhile for the developer to do it, from an economic perspective. So we should really 

think about the grid stability and grid integration value of storage, 

and think about where the storage obligation, if it is to be placed, 

should be placed. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 

Dr. Sachs. 

Mr. SACHS. I think Dr. Gallagher had a very good list of technologies. I would add the very attractive proposition of—as I mentioned earlier, of coupling storage to a reduction in need for oil for 

transportation that could be by plug-in hybrids run on batteries. 

There are also efforts at taking the electricity from renewables 

and turning them into other forms of chemical storage—batteries 

being electrochemical, these would be chemical forms—and then 

running transportation vehicles on that form. 

I will also point out that a portfolio of renewables helps greatly 

to mitigate the swings in the availability. For example, on a seasonal basis, wind complements solar being more available in the 

winter, solar more available in the summer. Geothermal is particularly interesting because it has the possibility of providing some of 

the base load and being dispatchable power. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 


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I just want to get my second question for the CCS folks on the 

panel, which is, are any of you now or do you know of anybody who 

is working on carbon capture and sequestration from gas-fired 

power plants? 

They, too, emit carbon dioxide. They don’t have anywhere near 

the particulate emissions of coal, and I understand that is where 

most of our work is going right now, because of the need to bring 

coal from the more polluting source of power into a cleaner realm. 

But right down the road from my street is a 1,000-megawatt gasfired power plant that sits on the Iroquois pipeline in Dover Plains, 

New York, that is most likely going to be built. 

And I am curious, what is available? And is there a discussion 

going on about capturing carbon from gas-fired plants as well? 

Mr. KUNKEL. There is an interesting project in Mitsubishi, in 

Vietnam of all places, where they are looking at a 1,200-megawatt 

natural-gas-fired power plant and capturing the CO2 from it and 

using that CO2 in enhanced oil recovery offshore, which kind of 

combines a whole bunch of ideas we are talking about here. 

But don’t underestimate things going on in Asia. 

But people are looking at that. And I think there are various 

issues. The biggest one, in my mind, is that the capacity factors of 

gas-fired plants tend to be lower than coal units; and so they are 

not operating all the time and so your investment is sitting idle. 

But as we move to a carbon-constrained world, those gas units will 

run more and those economics will begin to favor capture from gas 

units. 

Mr. SMITH. I would say that the first problem in capture from 

gas plants is, having captured it, what do you do with it? And in 

your district, which—one of our plants, we built in Astoria, somewhat close to Westchester. The problem is, having captured it— 

there aren’t any oil wells in Westchester that I know of—what do 

you do with carbon dioxide? 

And that is a significant element in the costs. 

Mr. HALL. We are building a lot of roads, though. 

Mr. SMITH. That is true. 

But the answer, I think, is that as you develop sequestration 

sites, you can then think about, oh, I have a place to put the carbon dioxide. Our plant will be next to a natural gas plant, Linden. 

It is Linden Station, and it sends power to Staten Island. 

And that is a perfectly reasonable place to employ the same technologies that Gary was talking about in chilled ammonia capture. 

You capture the CO2, and now that plant will have a way to get 

rid of it. Having captured it, you can do something with it. If the 

value of the carbon emissions is sufficiently high, it will find an 

economic incentive to do that. And that is the point of a cap-andtrade bill. 

Mr. SPITZNOGLE. It is an interesting question you ask. I don’t 

hear it asked very often, and I think it needs to be looked at more 

closely. 

If you look at requiring a 90 percent capture, say, on a coal unit, 

that translates to about 80 percent capture needed on a combined 

cycle gas plant. So, yes, if you are going to require at those levels, 

you need significant controls on gas as well. 


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One of the technical challenges with capturing CO2 from gas turbines is the amount of oxygen that flows through the system is 

much higher in the combustion gas from a gas-fired plant. And oxygen is an enemy of some of the capture technologies for a post-combustion. So I think there are some problems, some challenges, to 

be overcome in implementing capture technologies with gas. But at 

deep levels of required reduction on coal, you have to start looking 

at gas as well. 

Mr. HALL. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CLEAVER. Thank you. 

As we end this hearing, let me just say—make sure that you all 

understand that the members leaving and coming in had absolutely 

nothing with your testimony. The way this place operates is, there 

are multiple committees going on, and some are doing markups, 

which means voting to get something out of committee. So people 

are running between committees. 

We appreciate your testimony. And as we consider new technologies and the role that Congress will play, I think you will find 

that your testimony will be quoted—sometimes out of context, but 

it will be quoted. 

And so we appreciate very much the time that you have taken 

to provide us with the benefit of your august thinking. 

Thank you very much. This hearing has adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 11:28 a.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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