GOVERNMENT & POLICY CONCENTRATES
NEW CO2 CAPTURE TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES
NIH GRANT PROGRAM TARGETS HIGH-RISK RESEARCH NIH is now accepting applications for a new grant program designed to fund innovative, original, or unconventional research. The transformative research project grant program (T-R01) will fund risky, investigator-initiated research for a five-year period and will use new evaluation procedures different from those used in traditional peer review. “The T-R01 Program will pilot novel approaches to peer review to facilitate identification and support of the most ground-breaking, high-impact research,” NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni said in announcing the program. NIH will invest more than $250 million over the next five years in this cross-NIH program.
“Oxy-combustion,” a carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, was used for the first time last week at an operating electric utility demonstration project in Germany. The pilot plant was launched by Alstom, a French construction and engineering firm. Oxy-combustion is one of a handful of technologies being explored to determine if they can efficiently and economically capture CO2 emissions from coal-fired electric power plants. Oxy-combustion burns coal in a pure oxygen environment, creating an exhaust stream of relatively pure CO2, which Alstom says can enhance the gas’s capture, pressurization, and injection underground. The German pilot plant is a 30-MW demonstration facility built next to the existing 1,600-MW Schwarze Pumpe plant, operated by Vattenfall, a Swedish power company. Alstom is involved in several other CCS demonstrations, including one in Wisconsin at WE Energies, which uses chilled ammonia to capture CO2 after coal is burned (C&EN, March 3, page 7). Because coal generates half of the U.S.’s electricity and more than one-third of CO2 emissions, power plant owners and technology developers have much at stake in trials of such technologies.
GREAT LAKES REPORTS FLAWED, INSTITUTE SAYS Two drafts of a federal report examining health and pollution data from around the Great Lakes have serious shortcomings, according to an Institute of Medicine (IOM) review released in early September. “We found problems in how each draft was developed, which data were used, and what conclusions the authors drew,” said Robert B. Wallace, the University of Iowa professor of internal medicine and epidemiology who chaired the IOM committee that reviewed the two drafts. “The problems we found in the drafts would limit the ability of officials and others to draw conclusions
concerns raised by CDC managers about the 2007 draft, saying it “could lead readers to assume links between contamination and health problems regardless of whether they actually exist.” Meanwhile, the 2008 version provides only a summary of information about releases of contaminants “and does not add substantially to the understanding of pollution around the Great Lakes,” the IOM review said.
SHUTTERSTOCK
EFFORTS ON TERRORISM PREVENTION GRADED
from them about whether any health risks are associated with living in or near certain places around the Great Lakes.” One version of the draft report by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention was leaked in 2007 and posted on the Web by an investigative journalism group. CDC issued a revised draft earlier this year. IOM agreed with many of the Aerial view of part of Lake Ontario.
The U.S. government gets a “C” for efforts to prevent biological, chemical, and nuclear weapon terrorist attacks, according to a report card published by the bipartisan organization Partnership for a Secure America. Former congressmen and members of the 9/11 Commission Lee H. Hamilton and Slade Gorton unveiled the report card at a press conference on Sept. 10. The U.S. received a “D” in 2005, when a similar report card was released. “Moving from a ‘D’ to a ‘C’ in three years is progress but not really acceptable progress,” Hamilton said. The report card also provided three key recommendations: giving a single top-level government official authority to make government-wide counterterrorism decisions, implementing a strategic plan, and strengthening international cooperation. The partner-
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ship also released three supporting papers evaluating U.S. policies on biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction. According to Margaret E. Kosal, author of the paper on chemical weapons, chemical terrorism is the most probable terrorist threat, and “the biggest risk is dismissing the chemical terrorist threat as a relic of history.”
INDUSTRY URGES ACTION ON TAX, TRADE BILLS As Congress returns from its August recess, the chemical industry is urging lawmakers to pass several pending free-trade agreements and to retroactively renew and extend the federal R&D tax credit, which expired at the end of last year. “In an uncertain economy it is irresponsible for Congress to put politics ahead of offering incentives to one of the largest contributors to America’s economic engine, which is manufacturer exports,” says Joseph G. Acker, president of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association. Tax credits for R&D are “invaluable” to chemical manufacturers, he says, especially for small and mid-sized firms. Chemical manufacturers are calling on Congress to make the tax credit permanent, and they want the House to approve free-trade pacts that the Bush Administration has negotiated with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea.
