Global Climate Change: Research and Development Provisions in the President's Climate Change Technology Initiative

Michael M. Simpson
Specialist in Life Sciences
Science, Technology, and Medicine Division

April 27, 1998

98-408 STM

Summary

Following the international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions reached in Kyoto in December 1997, the Clinton Administration in January 1998 proposed a Climate Change Technology Initiative (CCTI). Through the CCTI, the Administration is seeking congressional authorization for $3.6 billion in tax credits as incentives, and $2.7 billion in R & D to be invested over 5 years in partnership with industry as a means of curbing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. (Further details about the tax credits can be found in CRS Report 98-193E "Global Climate Change: The Energy Tax Incentives in the President's FY1999 Budget" by Salvatore Lazzari.) Given that the Kyoto Protocol likely will not be submitted this year to the Senate for its advice and consent to ratification and given that it has not yet entered into force world wide, the view has been expressed among those critical of the Protocol in its present form that the CCTI is a "backdoor" through which the Administration can begin to take action anyway to implement the protocol. Further, how effective investing approximately $540 million a year in R & D in a mix of new and redirected funds and activities will be in reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains to be seen. This report will be updated as needed.

Introduction

On October22, 1997, in a speech at the National Geographic Society in Washington, DC, the President announced a nine-point plan designed to reduce the nation's carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions. Included in the plan was a 5-year package with $5 billion of tax incentives and R&D investments to encourage energy efficiency and to help develop low-carbon energy sources. To make good on that commitment, the Administration, in January 1998, proposed the Climate Change Technology Initiative (CCTI), following the international agreement reached in Kyoto in December 1997, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ¹. The CCTI, a mix of new and redirected funds and activities, again spans five years but calls for a total of $6.3 billion, with a $2.7 billion increase in R&D investments. The following tables summarize the R&D portion of the CCTI. Further details may be found in a package of FYl999 budget briefing materials on the CCTI, dated February 2, 1998. That package and other related information also are available on-line at
http://www.whitehouse.gov/Initiatives/Climate/indexp.html

CCTI $ millions (for R&D and in total)

DOE=Department of Energy; EPA=Environmental Protection Agency;
HUD=Housing and Urban Development Department; USDA=Department of Agriculture.

The main foci of the R&D efforts contained in the CCTI are the four major carbon-emitting sectors of the economy (buildings, industry, transportation, and electricity), efforts and technologies for removing and sequestering carbon, federal facilities, and cross-cutting analyses and research. They are summarized in the following table and text.

¹ For additional information see CRS Issue Brief 89005, Global Climate Change; and CRS Report 98-2, Global Climate Change Treaty: Summary of the Kyoto Protocol

CCTI $ millions (by area of focus)

Carbon Emitting Sectors of the Economy

Buildings. The Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be led by the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUE)) on a team to work with the housing industry to research, develop, demonstrate, and deploy housing technologies and practices that are highly efficient, inexpensive, and attractive to consumers. This joint effort is called the Partnership for Advanced Technologies in Housing (PATH).

The DOE will fund R&D into ways to reduce the costs of solar thermal and rooftop photovoltaic Systems. The DOE also is increasing R&D on buildings, systems modeling, and on major components including next-generation heat-pumps, cooling systems, furnaces, and lighting.

Industry. Efforts to research and develop fuel cells, advanced turbines, other technologies, and new approaches to capture useful work or heat in factories or commercial settings will be accelerated, especially in cost-shared arrangements involving DOE, EPA, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), U.S. Department of Commerce, industry teams, and consortia.

Transportation. The Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV) involves industry and the DOE, EPA, Commerce, National Science Foundation, and Department of Transportation (DOT) working together to develop cars that consumers can afford and will want to buy, that will meet all safety and environmental standards and get up to 80 miles per gallon of gasoline. The combined request for PNGV-related activities for FY1999 is $277 million. The FY1998 amount is $227 million.

The Partnership for Light and Heavy Trucks is similar to the PNGV, but focuses on cleaner, more efficient diesel engines for light and heavy trucks, and involves the DOE, EPA, and Department of Defense.

Sustainable transportation programs will promote alternatives to single-occupancy vehicles. Such programs in the EPA and DOE will be coordinated with extant and planned DOT activities (DOT work in this area is not funded within the CCTI).

Electricity. Research partnerships in renewable energy and related technologies, including wind, photovoltaics, geothermal, biomass, hydropower, hydrogen production and storage, and superconductivity, will be expanded by $100 million, which is 37 percent over FYl998.

Current Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses call for the retirement of 60 gigawatts of nuclear electric generating capacity by 2015 (current total electricity generating capacity is about 710 gigawatts). The DOE will begin R&D efforts into technologies that will allow the safe operation of extant nuclear power plants by 10 to 20 years, helping ease the transition to other low- and no-carbon energy sources.

The DOE also will begin in FY1999 an R&D program into new ways to combust coal with far fewer carbon emissions.

Carbon Removal and Sequestration

The DOE will fluid R&D to find ways (including physical, biochemical, and microbial) to remove carbon dioxide from combustion gases and sequester it, i.e., store it so that it does not enter the atmosphere.

The USDA will begin research into ways to enhance the carbon-sequestering capabilities of agricultural species.

Within Commerce, the National Institute for Standards and Technology will fund complementary biotechnology research on plant metabolism and carbon use.

Cross-Cutting Analysis and Research

Whether and how to implement an industrial carbon emission reduction program and a domestic trading system will be researched by the federal government, including the DOE, with input by stakeholders.

New research findings from the Global Change Research Program will be studied by the DOE and other federal entities to try to determine optimal geographic and technological responses.

Issues for Congress

Several committees of relevant jurisdiction in the House and the Senate have held hearings in the current session, reviewing the details of the Kyoto Protocol and related issues. Of particular interest is whether enacting measures that would focus on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas reductions to meet the terms of the protocol could be achieved at little or no net cost to the national economy, as some have suggested, or whether the protocol might result in increased taxes, loss of jobs, or a dramatic jump in energy costs for Americans, as others have suggested. Other questions have arisen as to whether any environmental benefits would, indeed, be achieved at all under the levels of reduction mandated by the protocol.

With the submission of the CCTI as part of the President's FY1999 budget, those committees have also commenced looking at details of the CCTI with an eye toward determining what portion of the request might constitute sound contingency actions versus what portion might prematurely commit the United States to the Kyoto Protocol, to which the Senate has not yet given its advice and consent to ratification and which has not yet entered into force internationally. Concerns have been voiced among those critical of the protocol in its present form that the CCTI might be a "backdoor" through which the Administration could begin to take action anyway to implement the terms of the protocol.