WonkLine: April 28, 2009
From the Wonk Room.
Although Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made it clear he “likes coal,” the Interior Department “said on Monday it will try to overturn a Bush administration rule that made it easier for coal mining companies to dump mountaintop debris into valley streams.”
As Arctic carbon dioxide levels are growing at an “unprecedented rate,” an “area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month.”
Speaking about the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill, Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) called for free pollution permits to petroleum refiners and Rep. G. K. Butterfield called for free pollution permits to electric distribution companies. These companies have given more than $375,000 to energy committee members in the first three months of 2009.
WonkLine: April 24, 2009
From the Wonk Room.
As a wildfire in Myrtle Beach on the South Carolina coast “spread over thousands of acres by early Friday” and a “7,500-acre-plus blaze” raged in South Florida, scientists reported that “wildfires spur climate change, which in turn makes blazes bigger, more frequent and more damaging to the environment.”
Rep. Gene Green (D-TX), who “represents a district with several oil refineries, a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, said about the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill, “they have to get our votes, and I’m not going to vote for a bill without refinery allowances.”
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), a prominent coal industry advocate, asked administration nominees whether they agreed with comments this week by Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, that no new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States.
Democrats on the Waxman-Markey Fence Worried about RES, Allocations
By SolveClimate’s Stacy Morford.
The usual court jesters shot off verbal fireworks as a week of hearings got underway on the Waxman-Markey climate bill, but the real attention on Capitol Hill was tuned to a few moderate Democrats who have the power to make or break the bill.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman acknowledged their concerns this morning as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood were being questioned by the committee.
Praising one of those moderates, former committee chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), Waxman said he had hoped to see his legislation pass with something like the committee’s 42-1 vote that had secured amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990. But he added,
“I have my suspicions after listening to the opening statements here that we may not be able to succeed in the same way.”
The statements and questions so far from the committee’s moderate Democrats suggest that winning enough votes will likely mean rewriting the bill’s proposed renewable energy standard to account for regional differences. It may also require free emissions permits and other aid for industries – particularly automotive and energy – that will need to evolve to survive in a carbon-constrained world.
The RES currently proposed in the draft legislation would require utilities to derive 25 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2025.
Mike Ross (D-Ark.) and Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) both expressed concerns that that level would penalize states like theirs that lack the wind power of Texas and the sunshine and geothermal reserves of California. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said his state could probably reach its current target of 15 percent by 2025, and possibly do better if nuclear and biomass could count, but 25 percent was out of the question.
Jim Matheson (D-Utah) asked Chu if he thought Congress would be overprescribing if it required both an emissions cap and a national renewable energy standard.
Chu has been outspoken in his desire to restore the United States’ place as the world’s leader in energy technology. The RES, he said, is a necessary interim driver of innovation and renewable energy use. The cap won’t start until 2012, and industry will need time to adjust. The RES, meanwhile, will drive renewable energy development by guaranteeing a marketplace. Energy executives who testified later in the day echoed that argument, saying federal rules would create stability and expectations that businesses could bank on.
That doesn’t mean that that the RES has to be uniform nationwide, though. A few committee members questioned whether Congress could instead require each state to set a minimum standard, which could then be met in ways tailored to that state’s own resource mix. Twenty-eight states already have renewable energy standards.
Dingell also questioned the “aggressive nature of the renewable electrical standard,” but he and Gene Green (D-Texas) were more focused on aid for industries, particularly the U.S. automakers and refiners.
Green, worried about job losses in the Houston ship channel area that he represents, urged the committee to provide ample free emissions allowances from the trading program for energy-intensive industries, as well as financial support for consumers facing higher electricity prices.
“We must protect our energy–intensive industries, including refineries, so we do not simply export those jobs abroad to nation without carbon controls and lax environmental regulations,” Green told the committee.
Dingell called for doubling the incentives for the Department of Energy’s advanced technology vehicle incentives programs to help the auto industry in his home state. He added:
“Of course, the question of auction versus allocation still lies before us, and that is a very serious question. Some might say ‘deal breaker’ for many members.”
The auction details from the cap-and-trade portion of the bill have yet to hammered out, which has created an easy target for fiscal fear mongering among opponents. Without knowing how the money from cap-and-trade auctions would be distributed, the Congressional Budget Office can’t accurately gauge the bill’s financial impact.
Jackson offered the committee the EPA’s newly released cost assessment: The energy bill for an average family would rise between $98 and $140 per year.
However, the EPA’s analysis looked only at the cap-and-trade portion of the bill, and with so many details yet to be determined by the committee, the EPA had to make assumptions about the price of carbon ($13-17 per ton in 2015) and the percentage of revenue that would be returned to consumers (40 percent).
The 40 percent rebate for consumers, a number recommended by the bill’s authors, did offer more insight into how Waxman and Markey might propose divvying up the revenues, but it was still only an estimate.
The committee’s 23 Republican members asked Waxman in a letter this week for more hearings to flesh out the details before the committee begins marking up the legislation for a vote.
“Your discussion draft lacks any decision on permit allocations versus auctions,” they wrote. “The manner in which you will address this issue is the cornerstone of the legislation; without it the bill is simply not finished and not ripe to be marked up or accurately discussed in the context of a hearing.”
In the absence of stronger data, some opponents have resorted to inventing their own numbers.
Two of the most outspoken opponents of the bill – Reps. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) – suggested that the lack of details was a conspiracy to prevent the committee from knowing the true cost. They repeated the GOP’s manipulation of a recent MIT study, saying the increase would be $3,100, a number the study’s own author says is 10 times too high.
It was a fellow Republican, LaHood, who spoke up today about the continued abuse of the MIT study.
LaHood held up a letter from the study’s author correcting the GOP’s use of his numbers. But when he asked to enter the letter into the committee record, Shimkus objected. If the MIT letter was submitted, then Shimkus wanted to submit a story written by the Weekly Standard, too. Waxman agreed to both.
Shimkus was clearly playing to the cameras this morning. He vowed that “those of us who want jobs are going to try to defeat this bill” and went on to declare cap-and-trade a greater danger than terrorism:
“I see this as the largest assault on democracy and freedom in this country as I’ve ever experienced. I’ve lived through some tough times in Congress. I’ve seen two wars, terrorist attacks. I fear this more than all of the above.”
Like it or not, economics will be the issue for members of Congress. Their re-election campaigns are built on numbers – how many jobs they created, how much federal bacon they brought home – and their campaigns are always on.
WonkLine: April 22, 2009
From the Wonk Room.
On Earth Day, President Obama is visiting a “wind turbine manufacturer in Iowa” to “champion his push to cap greenhouse gas emissions and boost renewable alternatives to fossil fuels,” as top officials testify before Congress on behalf of action on green jobs for a green future.
Oil-patch and Blue Dog Democrats like Gene Green (D-TX) and Jim Matheson (D-UT) yesterday called for subsidies for the oil and nuclear industries to be added to the Waxman-Markey clean energy bill, while criticizing federal renewable energy and energy efficiency standards.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) criticized the Environmental Protection Agency for taking initial steps to obey a Supreme Court mandate to regulate global warming pollution, saying, “if alphabet agencies can do what they want without regard to what Congress believes, there’s something wrong with the system.”
EPA Analysis: Waxman-Markey Could 'Play a Critical Role in the American Economic Recovery and Job Growth'
From the Wonk Room.
As Congressional hearings on draft green economy legislation begin, the Environmental Protection Agency has found that the bill will “play a critical role in the American economic recovery and job growth.” The initial EPA analysis, based on the draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) released by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), looks only at the effects of the cap-and-trade “market-based emissions program,” without modeling the effects of the complementary renewable energy and energy efficiency standards in this comprehensive legislation. Despite the limited review, the EPA has found that Waxman-Markey would “enable American workers to serve in a central role in our clean energy transformation”:
The draft bill would establish a wide range of policies to promote the development and deployment of new clean energy technologies that would fundamentally change the way we produce, deliver, and use energy. The bill would: (1) advance energy efficiency and reduce reliance on oil; (2) stimulate innovation in clean coal technology to ensure that coal remains an important part of the U.S. energy portfolio by capturing harmful greenhouse gas emissions before they enter the atmosphere; (3) accelerate the use of renewable sources of energy, including biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal; (4) create strong demand for a domestic manufacturing market for these next generation technologies that will enable American workers to serve in a central role in our clean energy transformation; and (5) play a critical role in the American economic recovery and job growth – from retooling shuttered manufacturing plants to make wind turbines, to using equipment and expertise in drilling for oil to develop clean energy from underground geothermal sources, to tapping into American ingenuity to engineer coal-fired power plants that do not contribute to climate change.The ACES Act does not address the question of how allocate the revenues of a carbon market auction. Industry executives and conservative allies like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) are calling for free giveaways to polluters. However, the EPA analysis finds that polluter giveaways are “highly regressive.” A full auction of permits and equitable returns, however, allows for working families to come out ahead:
Assuming that the bulk of the revenues from the program are returned to households, the cap-and-trade policy has a relatively modest impact on U.S. consumers. . . . Returning the revenues in this fashion could make the median household, and those living at lower ends of the income distribution, better off than they would be without the program.
The EPA modeling finds that a significant proportion of the required emissions reductions in Waxman-Markey are achieved through the use of one billion tons of international offsets a year. Because of the use of offsets, the U.S. electricity sector is expected to produce 10% fewer greenhouse gas emissions from 2010 to 2025, although the overall cap declines by over 25 percent.
The EPA analysis confirms that the American Clean Energy and Security Act will create jobs in the clean energy industry, benefit consumers, slash oil use, and cut pollution. This analysis disproves the false claims made by those who want to continue our existing energy policies.The Environmental Defense Fund:
EPA’s new analysis shows that the market-based cap on carbon contained in the American Clean Energy and Security Act can be met for $98 to $140 per year for the average American household. Those estimates only consider the costs of reducing global warming pollution, and do not take into account the benefits of action.
WonkLine: April 21, 2009
From the Wonk Room.
“Several hundred people marched on Duke Energy headquarters this morning” – and forty-four were arrested – “to decry the expansion of Duke’s Cliffside coal-fired power plant in Rutherford County.”
Oxfam report: “Emergency organizations could be overwhelmed within seven years” as the “victims of climate change-related disasters” “increase by “54% to more than 375 million people a year on average by 2015.”
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH): ” What many people” – see Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Rep. Fred Upton (R-OH) – “don’t understand is that climate change legislation can make our region and our country stronger.”
WonkLine: April 13, 2009
From the Wonk Room.
“Wind turbines accounted for 42 percent of all new generating capacity in the U.S.,” growing into “a key part of the energy infrastructure in Minnesota and Iowa,” which can now generate more wind power than California.
On Tuesday, Maine lawmakers “will take up one of the most far-reaching anti-global-warming bills to go before any state Legislature in the country” “to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and cut carbon dioxide emissions” but “Maine’s business community wants the Legislature to kill the proposal.”
U.S. Department of Energy officials and top commercial real estate executives kicked off the Commercial Real Estate Energy Alliance, a public-private partnership aiming to produce widespread net-zero-energy commercial buildings by the year 2025.
Cap and Dividend Conference Call
Please join us Friday, April 10th at noon (eastern time) for a national conference call to learn about one of most exciting climate bills ever introduced in the U.S. Congress. Do you want a STRONG carbon cap? Do you want 100% auction of carbon permits? Do you oppose carbon offsets and the complications they can cause? Do you also want to help protect Americans, especially low-income families, from rising energy prices?
Then you owe it to yourself to join this national conference call on Friday. Learn more about how a “cap and dividend” process will work. Learn why, to be effective, a national carbon cap must be simple, fair, and built to last. Learn about the legislation just introduced by Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), a powerful leader in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Featured speakers on the call will include- Michael Noble, executive director of Fresh Energy in Minnesota
- Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network in Maryland/Virginia
The call-in number is: 877-363-2003, code 1051052115
The call is sponsored by:- Montana Environmental Information Center (MT)
- Fresh Energy (MN)
- Penn Future (PA)
- New Energy Economy (NM)
- Center for Civic Policy (NM)
- Climate Protection Campaign (CA)
- Chesapeake Climate Action Network (MD/VA/DC)
- Plains Justice (IA)
- New York Public Interest Research Group (NY)
- South Carolina Coastal Conservation League (SC)
- Ohio Citizen Action (OH)
Learn more about the cap and dividend concept at www.capanddividend.org. For further information, email George Abar at [email protected] or Ted Glick at [email protected]
Pending legislation to strengthen American manufacturing through improved industrial energy efficiency (S. 661)
Restoring America’s Manufacturing Leadership through Energy Efficiency Act of 2009
The United States faces long-term energy, climate, and competitiveness challenges that go far beyond the economic hurdles that we are facing today. Our global competitors are gaining in productivity and capturing high-value manufacturing capabilities and products that were invented in the U.S. With the convergence of these challenges, we have reached a turning point in our industrial history – to use these challenges as an opportunity for the renewal and transformation of U.S. industry and manufacturing to compete globally through sheer technical prowess and product value superiority, reducing our dependence on carbon-based fuels, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and increasing productivity. This legislation takes the first steps in achieving this transformation by focusing on providing financing mechanisms for manufacturers to implement cost-competitive, energy efficient equipment and processes, as well as by establishing public/private partnerships with industry to map out where advanced American manufacturing is headed and to develop and deploy the breakthrough processes and technologies that will take us there.
1. Provides financing mechanisms for industry to retool and implement advanced technology, reducing energy intensity and emissions, while increasing competitiveness.- Establishes DOE grants to community lender/state partnerships to establish regional revolving loan programs for manufacturers.
- Links DOE’s energy assessments to SBA Loans
- Establishes partnerships between the Industrial Technologies Program (ITP) and other Federal applied technology programs to engage in early stage manufacturing technology development.
- Directs DOE to benchmark our domestic industry by assessing the cost, energy and ghg emissions savings potential of commercially available, but not widely implemented industrial technologies.
- Develops with industry, technology roadmaps to map out how to achieve decreased energy intensity and emissions, while increasing competitiveness.
- Expands the regionally based Industrial Assessment Centers to reach more small and medium-sized manufacturers and train the industrial engineers of tomorrow.
- Establishes Industrial Innovation Grants to encourage and reward innovation in industrial processes and technologies.
- Establishes a joint industry-government manufacturing partnerships to shift our industry towards utilizing advanced, sustainable manufacturing technologies and processes to compete in a low-carbon global economy.
- Directs the National Academies of Science to evaluate the critical manufacturing capabilities and supply chain components needed to capture the development and production of advanced energy technologies in the U.S.
Path Ahead for Global Warming Action
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, will deliver remarks on the path forward for addressing global warming, including legislation and other actions.