Biden seeks more mine cleanup, carbon capture spending

The administration of President Joe Biden has proposed expanding spending on abandoned coal mine reclamation and advanced energy technology as part of the US government's fiscal 2022 budget.

The administration's $6 trillion budget request, released on 28 May, includes $165mn for the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement's Abandoned Mine Land and Economic Revitalization program, which provides grants to six Appalachian states to support projects aimed at cleaning abandoned mine sites. That would be $50mn more than what was allocated for fiscal year 2021, which ends on 30 September.

The increase in funding "is part of the administration's overall goal to create 250,000 good-paying union jobs for cleaning up abandoned and often hazardous mining sites," Interior said in its budget proposal.

The overall discretionary budget for the Abandoned Mine Land Program would be $192.8mn, a nearly $63mn increase from what was enacted last year.

The Biden administration also proposed increasing funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Research and Development to $890mn from $750mn, and shifts focus on the program to "climate-centric activities" such as carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) projects. That would include increasing spending on carbon capture utilization and storage programs to $305mn from the $188mn enacted for fiscal 2021, and cutting spending on transformational coal pilot projects to zero from $10mn.

"The goal is to enable the commercialization of climate change and clean energy innovations that will activate job creation, expand other public impact outcomes, and yield a more geographically diverse and impactful research portfolio," the Department of Energy said. In addition to carbon capture, research and development priorities include cutting methane emissions and "investing in thoughtful transition strategies, demonstrating, and deploying point source carbon capture and storage, advancing critical minerals, and increasing efficient use of big data and artificial intelligence."

The Energy Department also proposed spending $63mn on CO2 removal, up from $40mn in the current budget.

The proposed spending increases are in line with Biden's focus on environmental issues, including targeting net-zero emissions by 2050. The administration last week proposed allocating hundreds of billions of dollars for electric vehicles, renewable energy and manufacturing. It also reiterated its request to Congress to eliminate tax benefits given to oil and gas companies, and proposed doubling its allocation to a program within the Commerce Department that is supposed to help communities affected by the downturn in the coal industry.

But little of Biden's budget proposal is likely to be enacted. Annual budgets routinely end up being a compromise between Republicans and Democrats in Congress and the president.

By Courtney Schlisserman