Top Senate Democrats are investigating the Department of Energy’s plan to prop up aging coal plants with millions of dollars Congress originally set aside to advance carbon capture technologies and improve energy resiliency and environmental protection in rural areas.
Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) told Energy Secretary Chris Wright in a letter shared with POLITICO’s E&E News that the agency’s move to repurpose the funding “flies in the face of the law.”
The Wednesday letter refers to DOE’s use of more than half-a-billion dollars from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law to support coal projects. Former and current agency officials, legal experts, and some lawmakers have argued that repurposing the funds undermines the law.
The statute authorized and appropriated almost $3 billion to capture heat-trapping gases from big emitters through demonstration and pilot programs.
