“Looks to me like PROVE IT is sort of the low hanging fruit in this group.”
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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), during a Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee hearing, questioned Dr. Abigail Regitsky, Senior Manager of U.S. Policy and Advocacy at Breakthrough Energy, Dr. Leah Ellis, CEO and Co-founder of Sublime Systems, Inc., and Shannon Angielski, President of the Clean Hydrogen Future Coalition, on his bipartisan Providing Reliable, Objective, Verifiable Emissions Intensity and Transparency (PROVE IT) Act. The PROVE IT Act will protect and reward American workers for their contributions to our economic, environmental, and national security strengths by providing the data to show the United States’ carbon advantage.
From 2000 to 2016, the U.S. reduced emissions more than the next eight emissions-reducing countries combined. According to data compiled by CLC, goods manufactured in the U.S. are 40% more carbon-efficient than the world average, but the U.S. imports 75% of its goods from less carbon-efficient countries. Senator Cramer reiterated our domestic energy policy is often punitive towards the U.S. and turns a blind eye to the worst global polluters.
Senator Cramer began his questioning by asking all three witnesses to share their thoughts on the value of the PROVE IT Act and its impact on domestic production.
“I don't know that we can move forward as easily until we start proving that we are more carbon efficient than the rest of the world,” said Senator Cramer. “We've actually done a lot to bring down CO2 emissions in the United States, we really have been innovative. Rather than buying more steel from China, how about more steel from West Virginia or Indiana? Or how about proving that a Bakken barrel of oil is cleaner than a Venezuelan barrel of oil… I think we beat ourselves up too much.”
“Data is really the kind of first piece of the puzzle to start proving that indeed much of U.S. production is already more emissions efficient than other countries, especially countries that we are importing our goods from. So, what the data allows us to do is really have this transparent reporting of this emissions intensity and the competitive advantage, the carbon advantage of U.S. production. The other thing it enables us to do is respond to when other countries are starting to think about their own policies,” responded Dr. Regitsky.
“The Europe Carbon Border Adjustment rule is very important for protecting against dirty imports. I’d also say that in the E.U. and in America, there's proliferation of EPDs, environmental product declarations, that's a nutritional label for cement materials that list not only the embodied carbon of that material, but also the embodied energy and many of the other pollutants that Senator Markey mentioned, affect the local communities in which these materials are made,” responded Dr. Ellis.
“I can speak to respect to clean hydrogen. Right now, the lifecycle analysis and accounting methodology is already built into federal policy to qualify for clean hydrogen, whether it's tax credits or [Department of Energy] grant funding, so that accounting system for tracking the emissions associated with production and use is already built into federal policy that will catalyze this industry. It’s really important to recognize that if there are industries that want to use clean hydrogen and that will purchase it at a you know, at a premium price, for example, the carbon intensity value of that hydrogen is going to be the critical aspect of that because there are industries that are going to want to be able to say look, I'm using decarbonize hydrogen and it's reducing my product emissions by X amount, right? That's the selling point and the value-add I'll just say for clean hydrogen,” responded Dr. Angielski.
“Looks to me like PROVE IT is sort of the low hanging fruit in this group,” said Senator Cramer.