U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in Washington on Thursday, and renewed his offer to create a national program to reduce methane emissions, which he hopes to spend up to $1 billion on.
“The methane-reduction program would be the largest, most ambitious energy-efficiency and carbon-reduction program in the history of the Department of Energy,” he said.
The appropriations bill passed in March barred the Department of Energy from spending any funds to enact a national methane-reduction program — which could potentially result in state-level programs being cut off.
Perry said that he expected a new spending bill would revive the program, so as to fund the state-based programs. But on Thursday, Representative Mike Quigley, a Democrat from Illinois, wondered whether Congress would allow it to continue without additional funds. “Some will have to go,” Perry responded.
#EnergySec Rick Perry is prepared to spend $1B on a national #MethaneReductionProgram @NRDC thanks, for lack of a better word, but @Pelosi & @SpeakerPelosi seem to be cagey & unconcerned for such a winnable war on carbon. — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) May 16, 2019