To watch a video of Senator Manchin’s opening remarks, please click here. 

To watch a video of Senator Manchin’s questioning, please click here.

Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Ranking Member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, welcomed Dr. Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, to testify before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Senator Manchin questioned Dr. Birol about pollution controls on Chinese coal plants, the role carbon capture utilization and sequestration (CCUS) will play in the coming decades and barriers to its continued development, and the importance of the U.S. maintaining a leadership role in the development of nuclear technology.

“We have a global climate concern. We should have an alarming concern. But unless we get the rest of the globe to participate… How do we incentivize them? How is the IEA able to raise the flag that all these coal-fired plants should be using the latest technology? For us to find carbon capture and sequestration we’ve got to do something because the cost is prohibitive right now,” Senator Manchin said. 

“We are talking with governments from India and China. For them the first thing is the cost of electricity and they may have a point because they are developing nations. But on the obligations of our planet they are ready to compromise. So the scrubbers are very important for the air pollution in those cities and many of the major problems in those countries,” Dr. Birol said.

To watch the hearing in full, please click here.

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