Washington (Platts)--25May2007

US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer
and Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, the senior Republican on a global
warming subcommittee, are pursuing legislation to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from the Capitol Power Plant. 

     The Boxer-Alexander bill would create a $3-million grant program to
demonstrate existing technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions from the
nearly 100 year-old coal-burning plant that sits about four blocks from the US
Capitol.

     "This bill will make the Capitol Power Plant the place to see today's
state-of-the-art technology at work," said Boxer, a California Democrat. "The
project authorized by our bill will show that the technology exists right now
to start capturing global warming pollution."

     Under the bill (S. 1523), the US Environmental Protection Agency would be
authorized to award $3 million on a competitive basis to a two-year project
that captures and stores CO2 emissions from the plant. The grants also could
be used for technology demonstrations that convert the emitted CO2 to
a "useful product, such as transportation fuel," improve the plant's
efficiency or reduce multiple air pollutants emitted from the plant. 

     The plant provides steam to heat and cool the US Capitol complex, which
includes the House and Senate office buildings.

     Alexander earlier this spring introduced legislation to cap CO2 from the
electric utility sector at 2006 levels or 2.3 billion metric tons in 2011 and
2.1 billion metric tons -- about 2000 levels -- in 2015.        

     The bill sets further CO2 caps for utilities at 1.8 billion metric tons
in 2020 and then down to 1.5 billion tons in 2025. Alexander's Clean
Air/Climate Change Act of 2007 would use an emissions trading program to
achieve these CO2 reductions.

		--Cathy Cash, cathy_cash@platts.com