Will The Biden Climate Plan Revive NJ’s Failed “PurGen” $5 Billion Coal Project?

Carbon Capture Is A Sham

Biden’s “All Of The Above” Climate Policy Is Obama 2.0

[Update: in addition to the billion dollar subsidies, Biden just installed a carbon capture scientist in the White House as head of climate policy, Sally benson from Standford, friend of Obama’s John Holdren, see:

• White House creates new energy division to help craft climate change policies

Update 10/22/21 – this important report documents the “exemptions and loopholes for logging” I flagged below:

• LOGGING PROVISIONS IN INFRASTRUCTURE & BUDGET RECONCILIATION PACKAGES WOULD WORSEN THE CLIMATE CRISIS AND THREATEN PUBLIC HEALTH ~~~ end update]

When it was released a few weeks ago, I actually read a couple of hundred pages of the 2,702 page Senate “bi-partisan” infrastructure bill, including all the provisions on and billions of dollars in subsidies to the so called “carbon capture” technology.

That is one piece of the Biden infrastructure and climate plans, the other being the much larger Senate budget reconciliation framework Resolution, which isn’t even a bill yet, never mind proceeding on a parallel track with the infrastructure bill, as promised by the Democrats.

But just reading the table of contents of the bi-partisan infrastructure bill reveals lots of bad stuff. There are NEPA categorical exclusions to “streamline” regulatory review (and something called “one federal approval”), several exemptions & loopholes for logging, and privatization and deregulation.

The tradition highway construction funding will result in huge new greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps the Congressional Budget Office might produce a “score” on this bill, not in terms of spending and effects on the deficit, but on quantifying the new carbon emissions the bill would create.

The Biden Neoliberal approach amounts to all carrots and no sticks (the bill has been dubbed “false solutions” – and “apocalypse soon”)

I immediately recalled NJ’s failed “carbon capture” coal plant with the Orwellian name “PurGen”, defeated by activists in Linden, NJ. For links to media reports on that project, see:

• A Green New Deal for the People of Linden

I was planning to write something about the carbon capture provisions in the Senate bill at the time, focused on how the Biden infrastructure and climate plans could revive that NJ “PurGen” project, but got derailed by disappointment in learning that the climate movement was split on this issue.

Virtually no major national “green” groups signed on to a powerful letter to the Biden Administration, strongly opposing inclusion of “carbon capture” in the administration’s infrastructure and climate plans. I looked for NJ groups. Amazingly, the NJ Industrial Union Council signed on to that letter, but not NJ’s largest environmental and climate groups. WTF?

I read that the Biden White House is openly touting a “all of the above” approach (no kidding, that’s the language they are using), and hiding regulatory rollbacks behind the slogan of “flexibility”:  (from Inside Climate News)

“The President is interested in all-of-the-above-strategy,” said White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy earlier this month, at a summit hosted by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. “We’re going to do a lot of things, and invest in a clean energy future, and make sure we have the flexibility to use the technologies that are going to get there.”

Biden is Obama “All of the Above” 2.0

On top of all this, the huge subsidies to the CCS projects are linked to Biden’s “Buy American” policy (which Biden will use for cover), but that’s a joke because there is a standardless and broad waiver from those “Buy American” requirements!

And, of course there is a long forebearance loan repayment program that is effectively loan forgiveness (but college kids can’t get debt relief).

This is so insane I really find it hard to believe that the climate groups are not in the street (or maybe they are planning direct actions and I’m just out of the lop on all this).

So, instead of writing something myself, I’ll be lazy and just except this piece today by Wenonah Hauter of Food And Water Watch, one of the few groups that focuses on corporate accountability and does not pull punches for Democrats:

the climate movement is grappling with both a sense of urgency and profound disappointment with the Biden administration. It was bad enough that the administration backed a bipartisan infrastructure proposal that jettisoned many key clean energy provisions, but it’s even worse that the infrastructure plan includes billions of dollars in new fossil fuel subsidies.

That spending would support “carbon capture,” a category of technologies that are misleadingly categorized as climate-friendly.

So, with all these new subsidies and regulatory relief for carbon capture, will the Zombie “PurGen” coal plant be revived?

Will anyone in NJ media or activist circles inquire about that possibility and use it to criticize the Biden carbon capture and billions of other fossil and nuke subsidies?

I won’t hold my breath.