CREST Act of 2023

Thanks @Julie Nowak!

Here's the feedback from our Gov. Affairs Team similar to this bill.

1) CCL has been supportive of carbon capture and sequestration. Given the policy itself and the bipartisan support, you should feel comfortable giving an enthusiastic thank you if your member is a part of it.

2) The gov affairs team reviews potential supporting asks before each lobby day and while we have our asks planned for November, we will add this legislation to our list to consider before our June lobby day next year.
 

@Julie Nowak
CCL is always alert to climate bills that show potential for bipartisan support. There are already signs that removal of legacy Carbon Dioxide and other greenhouse gases is of interest to members of both major parties, and independents too. First up is the CREST Act - S. 1576, co-authored by Republican Senator Susan Collins of ME, and Democratic Senator Marie Cantwell of WA, and already co-sponsored by Senators Bill Cassidy - Rep of LA and Chris Coons - Dem of DE, plus Angus King - Ind of ME. This Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Technologies Act of 2023 has already been referred to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Congress.gov summarizes it: "This bill expands the current research and development programs of the Department of Energy (DOE) for capturing and storing carbon dioxide to include methods that harness natural processes, such as the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and its storage in geological, biobased, or ocean reservoirs. In addition, the bill establishes a five-year pilot program under which DOE must purchase from certain facilities carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere or upper hydrosphere."
There is not yet a companion CREST Act in the House, but because one of the functions of the Conservative Climate Caucus there is: "...to better understand technologies and issues related to climate" it would seem there are no natural opponents to support for better research and understanding. 

Two similar bills supporting Carbon Dioxide Removal Research & Development have been introduced in both House and Senate. S. 2813, authored by Sen. Brian Schatz of HI has 8 co-sponsors, and H.R. 5457 by the same name was co-authored by Rep. Paul Tonko of NY and Rep. Scott Peters of CA. Both of these bills would engage the U.S. Departments of Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, and Transportation, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, and the National Science Foundation to undertake research and development projects in their respective areas of expertise to advance the understanding and effectiveness of greenhouse gas removal strategies. This whole-of-government approach will be needed to reach the scale of action required, and potentially to uncover lesser known but highly effective methods of reducing legacy pollution that is causing climate change. Because CO2 has a bad habit of remaining in the atmosphere for dozens if not hundreds of years, the IPCC has agreed that we need now to step up the scale of removing it, even as we all continue to develop ways to reduce emissions, and to live without fossil fuels. 

If all are agreed that we must eventually remove greenhouse gases (CO2, Methane, NOX, and more) at a tremendous scale, the time to invest in methods that could scale up is now. Think of us being in the Bell Labs in the early 1950s, when experiments were undertaken to generate electricity from solar cells for the first time. It took 50 years before those first experiments began to be commercially applied at scale. Arguably, we don't have 50 years for GGR to reach the scale that will be needed. CCL is in an excellent position to advance these bipartisan, bicameral, and bicoastal efforts that have begun to blossom in Congress, at the same time that we are advancing the most effective tools of emissions reduction.

@Julie Nowak
You may also wish to join our new Greenhouse Gas Removal Action Team, which has that bill and others, as potential targets of support. See: