FRANKFORT — Kentucky industries including distilleries are looking at capturing their carbon dioxide emissions. One way to store the emissions is by injecting them into underground wells. A legislative committee on Thursday approved creating what would be the state’s first regulatory framework for those wells, a form of carbon capture and storage and a method of mitigating climate change. House Bill 677, sponsored by Rep. Jim Gooch, R-Providence, came from more than a year of collaboration among environmental advocates and fossil fuel industry representatives on an oil and gas working group connected to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet.  HB 677 would require permits from the cabinet before constructing or operating carbon sequestration injection wells, also known as Class VI wells, with the goal of having the state government receiving permission from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be the primary regulator of wells for carbon capture.  Other states have been granted permission to be the primary regulator of such wells. According to the think tank Great Plains Institute, state legislatures across the country have considered over 60 bills related to carbon management this year.  Curbing the release of heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the goal of capturing and storing CO2 in deep underground reservoirs. It’s also seen as an emerging “economic development opportunity,” said Tom FitzGerald, a longtime environmental advocate who worked on HB 677. “It is an economic opportunity that will occur. The question is: Is it going to occur in Kentucky under a comprehensive set of rules that protect everybody’s rights and make sure that it’s done properly?” said FitzGerald, a former director of the environmental legal group Kentucky Resources Council.  FitzGerald told lawmakers on the Kentucky House Natural Resources and Energy Committee that HB 677 creates economic opportunity while protecting nearby landowners and mineral rights. Among the provisions in the bill, the injection well operator would need at least the consent of 75% of owners of the acreage where an underground reservoir is located.  Bill Barr, a managing partner with oil and gas company BlackRidge Resource Partners, told the Lantern after the meeting that a number of potential injection well sites are being tested, including one at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Paradise Power Plant in Muhlenberg County. He said large industries in the state including distilleries are looking at voluntarily capturing their carbon dioxide emissions, and injection wells allow for a more cost-effective way to store the gas.  “There’s a large-scale ethanol plant in Western Kentucky that’s capturing CO2 from their operation that is being trucked. … That’s not an economic way to handle it,” Barr said. “The cost of transporting a captured molecule of carbon some place else to dispose of it, to sequester, is very expensive.” The bill unanimously passed the House committee, advancing to the full House for consideration. Gooch, the bill sponsor who sat next to Barr and FitzGerald while he presented the legislation, said the  parties working together have “come up with some really good legislation.”  The post Kentucky would regulate carbon-storage wells under plan developed through collaboration appeared first on The Lexington Times. ...read more read less