MORGANTOWN – With Congress in recess, Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va., visited Morgantown Thursday and took time to talk to The Dominion Post. He shared his thoughts on fossil fuels and clean energy, infrastructure and a few bills he’s backing.
On clean energy, McKinley said he supports a transition to wind, solar and hydro – but not a precipitous change that outpaces current technology and could do more harm than good.
He cited discussions the Energy and Commerce Committee has had about the CLEAN Future Act, introduced in March.
The act aims to achieve net zero greenhouse gas pollution no later than 2050, with an interim target of reducing pollution by 50% from 2005 levels no later than 2030. It would require all retail electricity suppliers to obtain 100% percent clean electricity by 2035.
McKinley has argued that the goal is hasty. He cites the example of a the John E. Amos power plant in Putnam County, one of eight coal-fired plants in the state.
Working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, he determined that it would take about 4,250 windmills to replace that single plant; and the spacing requirements for windmills mean that single wind farm would take up 850 square miles. For comparison, Monongalia County covers 360 square miles; Preston covers 649.
All that land would have to be acquired – probably by eminent domain – and all those windmills and all the new transmission lines and all the permitting would have to be complete by 2035.
“When you put an artificial, politically driven date of 2035 – do you understand the consequences of that?” he asks.
He has an alternate idea. Continue using fossil fuels, and continue the research to enable existing plants to be retrofitted for net-zero emissions. Shoot to be 100% clean energy by 2050, he thinks a more realistic goal given today’s technology.
Section 902 of the act calls for a three-year moratorium on building plastics plants or expanding existing plants. McKinley believes that section may be stricken, as he sees it as self-defeating. We are just passing through a pandemic that saw us dependent on other countries for PPE.
McKinley is also concerned about an interim final recommendations report issued in May by the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council in response to an executive order by President Biden.
Page 59 of the recommendations lists examples of projects that would not benefit a community and should not receive federal investment.
Among them:
- Fossil fuel procurement, development, infrastructure repair that would in any way extend lifespan or production capacity, transmission system investments to facilitate fossil-fired generation or any related subsidy;
- Carbon capture and storage or carbon capture, utilization and storage;
- The procurement of nuclear power;
- Research and development;
- Highway expansion;
- Road improvements or automobile infrastructure, other than electric vehicle charging stations;
- Pipeline creation, expansion, or maintenance.
McKinley said the United States has already achieved Paris Accord goals without signing it; the country has reduced greenhouse gas emissions more than the next 12 countries combined.
And, he said, the U.S. is not at the technology level for 100% EV transportation. He estimates the country needs to allow 15-20 years to develop a battery that doesn’t require lithium, cobalt, cadmium, rare earth elements. Extracting 1 ton of lithium requires excavation of 250 tons of dirt; and 1 ton of lithium supplies only 20 car batteries.
And cobalt extraction is socially problematic, he said. He showed a picture of children in Africa digging through dirt to find cobalt. There are 40,000 African children 14 and younger mining cobalt.
“If people have a problem with mountaintop mining, this is on steroids,” he said. “I’m with you, but just do it in the right time frame. Don’t put an artificial deadline up, because it’s just going to cause chaos for us.”
If we end carbon capture research, he said – echoing frequent statements by his Democratic colleague Sen. Joe Manchin – no one else will do it, and the glaciers will keep melting and the seas will keep rising. If we perfect it, we can share it and mutually benefit.
“We have this opportunity to become the leader in the globe on this and market it and use it as a diplomatic tool. But if we walk away from it, no one’s going to do it.”
He often cites his four pillars of the costs of going 100% green before we’re technologically ready: utility bills will rise; thousands of people will lose jobs, which will hollow out communities; air quality won’t get any better because China, India and other countries will still be building plants and fouling the air; and extreme weather events won’t go away.
Infrastructure legislation
Asked about the current debate over infrastructure legislation, McKinley said, “We’re still wrestling with what to do with it.”
Like Manchin and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., he favors passing a bill focused on traditional infrastructure – roads, bridges, water, sewer, broadband, ports and airports – and handling social infra-structure separately. A targeted infrastructure bill would pass overwhelmingly and needs the most immediate attention.
Other legislation
At the end of June, McKinley announced he was selected to serve as a member on the Republican Task Force on Energy, Climate, and Conservation. The task force “will focus on developing a policy agenda that promotes innovation, expands and modernizes energy infrastructure, and promotes natural solutions and conservation.”
Along those lines, McKinley said his current top priority is a bill he introduced with Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., called the Clean Energy Future through Innovation Act. It would fund a decade’s worth of clean energy research, development and commercialization – across all sectors – to be followed by establishing a technology-neutral clean energy standard that would reduce CO2 emissions 80% by 2050.
That decade, he said, allows time to get the country ready for a net zero energy world.
On the health care front, McKinley and Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., announced Friday they’ve introduced the PROTECT 340B Act, which would prohibit pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers from hurting hospitals and other providers that participate in the 340B drug pricing program.
The federal 340B Drug Pricing program requires pharmaceutical companies to provide drugs at discounted prices to specified clinics and hospitals – Federally Qualified Health Centers, Ryan White HIV/AIDS clinics, Medicare Disproportionate Share hospitals, rural hospitals, children’s hospitals and others.
McKinley said that pharmacy benefit managers and insurers reimburse safety net providers for drugs that pharmacies dispense to patients. But through their contract terms, “PBMs and insurers have found creative ways to take the 340B benefit away from safety net providers. As a result, the savings accrue to these for-profit, third-party middlemen at the expense of vulnerable patients for whom they were intended.”
And McKinley has teamed with Rep. David Trone, D-Md., to introduce the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act 3.0 Act. CARA 3.0 is aimed at mitigating the effects of COVID-19 on the addiction epidemic and will build on the original CARA of 2016 and opioid bill of 2108 by increasing funding for prevention, education, research, treatment and recovery.
TWEET David Beard @dbeardtdp EMAIL dbeard@dominionpost.com
