The West Virginia House of Delegates has overwhelmingly approved two bills the Senate passed without revealing the text of the legislation, signing off on measures that would expand the Division of Natural Resources’ powers.
The House on Thursday passed bills that would authorize the DNR to lease state-owned pore spaces in certain areas for carbon sequestration, and allow the division to sell, lease or dispose of property under division control when it’s deemed obsolete or no longer needed.
Both bills underwent minor changes in the House that will require final approval in the Senate, which unanimously passed them Jan. 12 hours before their text was made available on the Legislature’s website.
The Senate suspended state constitutional rules last week requiring that bills be read on three separate days before passage for 25 bills in the first two days of the legislative session, including the two DNR-focused bills the House approved Thursday. Those two bills, Senate bills 161 and 162, were introduced without committee consideration on the Senate floor and passed hours before they were publicly posted, precluding any opportunity for public review.
The House Judiciary Committee advanced the bills to the full House Monday after James Bailey, secretary of the Department of Commerce under which the DNR is housed, endorsed them.
During Thursday’s House floor session, Delegate Todd Longanacre, R-Greenbrier, indicated he was disappointed that SB 162 didn’t pass through the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee.
House Judiciary Chair Moore Capito, R-Kanawha, who presented the bill, noted that Bailey and DNR director Brett McMillion were present at his committee’s meeting at which the bill was approved Monday.
“The purpose of the legislation is to untie the hands of the state, to be able to utilize its land for people of the state of West Virginia,” said Capito, who announced a 2024 run for governor in November.
SB 162 drew more House floor discussion than SB 161, with members of both parties viewing it as an economic development tool.
SB 162 would allow the DNR’s director, with Department of Commerce approval, to lease state-owned pore spaces underlying state forests, natural and scenic areas, and wildlife management areas under division control for carbon sequestration. The director would be prohibited from leasing state-owned pore spaces underlying land that is designated as state parks.
The House passed SB 162 in an 87-12 vote.
Proponents of SB 162 have sided with Bailey in saying the measure could support the state’s momentum in a hydrogen energy and economic development hub competition the state and partners are in.
The West Virginia-led Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub, which calls itself ARCH2, is pursuing support for hydrogen hubs provided by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021. The Department of Energy opened a $7 billion funding opportunity in September to create hydrogen hubs nationwide.
The coalition of dozens of entities across Appalachia said earlier this month that the U.S. Department of Energy has encouraged it to submit a full application — a blessing it bestowed to fewer than half of the 79 entities that submitted concept papers.
West Virginia officials partnered with the nation’s largest natural gas producer, an Ohio science and technology development nonprofit, an Illinois energy research firm, and a Bridgeport energy technology consulting firm to create the regional hydrogen hub last year. The project has since gained support from the governors of Kentucky, Ohio and Maryland.
Hydrogen, which is light and has the highest energy per mass of any fuel, is viewed as key in the energy transition away from fossil fuels that drive climate change.
Members of the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub have touted “blue hydrogen” as a reliable energy solution. Blue hydrogen is derived mainly from breaking methane into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
Environmentalists have said blue hydrogen isn’t actually clean hydrogen.
Blue hydrogen is supported by carbon capture and storage technology that is, as yet, unproven at commercial scale.
In a report published in 2021, researchers from Cornell and Stanford universities found that greenhouse gas emissions from the production of blue hydrogen are “quite high,” especially because of leaked methane.
Methane has a 100-year global warming potential of 28 to 36 times that of carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Carbon capture, use and sequestration is an umbrella term for technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and uses it to create products or store it permanently underground. Such technology retrofits commercial power plants to mitigate coal and gas asset emissions.
Bailey said he couldn’t say whether pipelines would be required or how much money the state could make from leasing pore space.
“The market is still developing,” Bailey said.
Under SB 162, the DNR director also may directly award a pore space lease when secretaries of the Department of Commerce and the Department of Economic Development certify that the lease is a required component of an economic development project.
SB 162 follows last year’s House Bill 4491, a law that set up a state regulatory program for underground carbon dioxide storage, and established permit guidelines for drilling injection wells and sequestering the carbon. HB 4491 clarified that pore space rights belong to the surface owner.
Asked for comment on SB 162 Monday, Gas and Oil Association of West Virginia executive director Charlie Burd said the industry group supports the Legislature moving policies forward that help West Virginia attract investments in carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
But Republican opponents of SB 162 voiced distrust of the Biden administration’s focus on decarbonization Thursday.
“This is taking us down that green new energy trail,” Delegate Henry Dillon, R-Wayne, said. “We have to decide as a House whether we’re going to go down that trail all the way. I urge that we don’t do that.”
SB 161 was amended on the House floor to limit the DNR-controlled property that the division can sell, lease or dispose of to property that is deemed obsolete or no longer needed.
Bailey told the House Judiciary Committee Monday SB 161 would remedy a DNR inability to grant right-of-way access to adjoining property owners, convey property to a public service district to facilitate a project, and pursue economic development projects with potential partners interested in unused property that isn’t a state park or state forest.
The House passed SB 161 in a 94-5 vote.
Other bills passed by the Senate in the first two days of the session were approved on the Senate floor moments after they were introduced without committee consideration. Bills weren’t put into the Legislature’s bills system until after they were introduced on the floor, giving the public only seconds to review a wide range of legislation before the Senate approved it.
Senate communications director Jacque Bland said a technical issue prevented the text of SBs 161 and 162 from transferring over to the Legislature’s website when they were introduced on the floor.
Blair defended suspending constitutional rules to fast-track the bills, noting most of them passed the Senate by wide margins in 2021 or 2022.
“I don’t think that matters a whit, what the origins of the bills were,” West Virginia University law professor Bob Bastress said in a phone interview last week. “I still think it’s clearly contemplated by Article VI [of the state constitution] that the public should be fully informed about what’s being voted on.”
