Erich Pica, Friends of the Earth:
The Lieberman-Warner bill will reward corporate polluters by handing them pollution permits worth almost half a trillion dollars. And that’s just one part of this bill. The bill also includes hundreds of billions of dollars of other mind-boggling giveaways. The levels of pollution-rewarding giveaways in this bill are truly obscene.
In calculating the value of emissions allowances, FoE follows the estimates of EPA’s analysis of McCain-Lieberman (Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007, S. 280) which estimated that between 2015 and 2050, the price of emissions permits would increase from an average of $14 to $78 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas emissions.
Friends of the Earth’s analysis found that the bill:
- Provides the coal industry and other fossil fuel industries pollution permits worth $436 billion over the life of the legislation; 58 percent of this amount goes to coal (sec. 3901)
- Returns revenue raised through auctions directly to polluters—for example, an additional $324 billion would subsidize the coal industry’s efforts to develop carbon capture and storage mechanisms (sec. 3601)
- Directs another $522 billion of auction revenue to low or zero-emissions technologies, which could result in handouts to the nuclear power, big hydro and coal industries, which are not clean (these funds could also be directed toward important clean technologies, such as wind and solar—the legislation is not specific) (sec. 4401)