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Witnesses
As oil and gas hit new records above $128 a barrel and $3.78 this week, many analysts are predicting even further increases in the price of gasoline as we edge towards the travel months of summer. To explore the Bush administration’s contributions to this energy crisis and the administration’s refusal to respond, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming announced today that Secretary of Energy Stephen Bodman will testify before the Committee on Thursday, May 22, as Americans prepare for the Memorial Day weekend, the beginning of the summer driving season.
Chairman Markey will also seek answers from Secretary Bodman on why the Bush administration continues to defend $18 billion in tax breaks to the top five most profitable oil companies that House Democrats want to redirect to fund renewable energy that could help consumers.
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E&E News:
A Senate Agriculture subcommittee enters the brewing debate over allowing industry to use offsets as a low-cost compliance option for new U.S. greenhouse gas regulations with a hearing Wednesday.
With offsets, companies could meet their environmental requirements by funding activities that don’t reduce emissions at their smokestack or tailpipe. Instead, they could rely on soil sequestration, methane capture at a farm or forestry projects.
Senate Forestry and Conservation Subcommittee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) supports the widespread use of offsets as Congress develops cap-and-trade legislation that would put a first-ever limit on U.S. heat-trapping emissions.
In an interview last week, Stabenow called on the sponsors of a pending cap-and-trade bill due on the Senate floor early next month to expand a provision that currently limits use of offsets from both domestic and international projects at 15 percent.
“This whole area of offsets is one they’re moving on,” Stabenow predicted. “I don’t think we should cap it.”
A new version of the bill from Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), John Warner (R-Va.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is expected to be public early this week. But it is unclear whether they will change the offset provisions.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona sees offsets playing a big role in his global warming platform. Last week, McCain said he would let companies meet their initial compliance requirements with an unlimited amount of offsets.
McCain’s campaign cited U.S. EPA and Energy Information Administration studies that show unlimited offsets could lower the climate program’s costs by as much as 71 percent. “Offsets are a very important bridge, especially in the early years, to the time when we have low-carbon technologies available on a commercial wide-scale,” the campaign said.
Addressing a common concern about offsets, the McCain campaign also insisted, “The offset credits will indeed be real, measurable and verifiable – or they won’t be certified and allowed into the market.”
But not everyone sees unlimited offsets in the same light.
“Don’t design a system, a boat, that’s going to leak,” said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “If you have 100 percent offsets, as Senator McCain is suggesting, all you have is sending all your money around the world and no investment in the United States. That’s a nonstarter.”
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From E&E News:
The success of legislation aimed at cleaning up contaminated sediment in the Great Lakes Basin will receive close scrutiny at a House Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee hearing Wednesday as lawmakers consider its reauthorization.
The Great Lakes Legacy Act of 2002 was designed to eliminate contaminant hot spots where PCBs, heavy metals and other pollutants poured from industrial sources into the Great Lakes and surrounding rivers and tributaries. Thus far, it has contributed to the removal of nearly 800,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment and has received high praise from U.S. EPA officials and lawmakers.
“In Michigan, it has been phenomenally successful,” Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.), who authored the legislation, told E&E Daily. “We’ve cleaned up a number of spots.”
Ehlers said he has heard the program was effective in other areas of the Great Lakes as well.
“One person who works in the whole field, including Superfund, said this is the best, most workable pollution cleanup he’s ever worked with,” Ehlers said. “That’s what we want to find out in the hearing. Is that the opinion of one person or is everyone finding it to be a very workable program?”
Ehlers said after the hearing he would work with Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) to put a reauthorization bill together.
“We’ll do whatever we can do to improve the program, and we’ll certainly try to get more funding for it because it’s clear it’s working very well and people like it,” he said. “It does what it’s intended to do. If we had more funding we could do a lot more and do it a lot faster.”
Many lawmakers are critical of the Bush administration’s failure to fully fund the legislation. Although the program would receive a $55,000 boost in the administration’s fiscal 2009 budget, the funding still falls $15 million short of the $50 million authorized by Congress.
However, presidential hopefuls Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) all have signed a pledge to fund and support the restoration of the Great Lakes. The price tag for the entire project is expected to exceed $20 billion.
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The Committee on Environment and Public Works will hold a Business Meeting to consider the following items:
David R. Hill, of Virginia, to be Assistant Administrator and General Counsel of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
The hearing, originally scheduled for May 8, will examine the new ozone national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and the process the Environmental Protection Agency used in setting them.
On March 12, 2008, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson finalized updated NAAQS for ozone, a primary component of smog. The new ozone NAAQS are comprised of a revised primary standard to protect health and a revised secondary standard to protect the environment. In setting both standards, EPA Administrator Johnson did not accept the recommendations provided to him by EPA’s independent scientific review committee, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC). With regard to the secondary standard, Administrator Johnson’s efforts to set a new standard were overruled by the White House.
In light of new information obtained by the Committee, questions are also expected regarding the White House’s role in EPA’s action to block California’s program to regulate greenhouse gases from automobiles.
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