Representatives of the coal, oil, and gas lobby met yesterday at the
United States Energy Association’s “State of the Energy Industry”
conference at the National Press Club in Washington. They agreed that
Lieberman-Warner may be the best legislation they can hope for,
especially if issues like polar bear
habitat
set the standard for legislation.
Katherine Ling reports for E&E
Daily that David
Parker, president and CEO of the American Gas
Association, said “Who would you rather have writing a bill in the
Senate? I might guess it may set a tone for business to fully work with
the Senate this year.” He continued that “the polar bear habitat is
going to really drive this [climate change] debate. We all have a big
education job to do and I think we need to do it collectively.”
Dingell, D-Dearborn, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee, said if California got the waiver it could impose
conflicting federal and state standards. The California standards
could be make automobile production “so expensive that people won’t be
able to buy and second of all get so difficult that the companies
won’t be able to produce anyhow.”
Dingell said the California system could lead to 50 different
standards. He said the EPA decision “makes
good sense.”
As has been previously
discussed
on Hill Heat, the specter of 50 different standards is simply false.
Under the Clean Air Act only California has the authority to get waivers
from national standards. Other states can then follow California or the
federal standards. At most there can be two different standards.
Dingell plans to introduce a climate change bill in his committee “as
fast as we can” but wants to exclude the auto industry, arguing that the
CAFE standards in the 2007 energy
bill
are sufficient regulation: “We’ve had everybody else get practically a
free ride and auto industry has to come up with a 40 percent increase in
fuel efficiency,” Dingell said. “We’re going to try to see that the pain
is shared equally all around.”
Update: Dingell has issued a clarification of his remarks, stating that
he considers CAFE standards to be a “carbon constraint” and that the
CAFE standard increase “tightens the cap on automobiles by 40 percent by
2020.” Any carbon cap would entail “further reductions” that would be
have to matched by “comparable contributions” by other industries.
Shepardson also reports on an interview with Margo Oge, director of the
EPA’s office of transportation and air
quality. She didn’t expect the agency to issue a formal written denial
“until next month at the earliest.” The EPA
may be trying to argue that its the EPA press
release
announcing the denial isn’t actually grounds for a suit to overturn the
decision.
She also said that the EPA “completed its
draft of its own new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” but
didn’t provide details.
Last week McKinsey & Company released a report, Reducing U.S.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What
Cost?,
that found that the goals of current greenhouse gas emissions reduction
legislation for 2030 are achievable with current technology and at
manageable cost, although it warned:
Achieving these reductions at the lowest cost to the economy, however,
will require strong, coordinated, economy-wide action that begins in
the near future.
The report was commissioned by the environmental organizations
Environmental Defense and National Resources Defense Council and the
energy technology companies Honeywell, National Grid, PG&E Corporation,
Shell, and DTE Energy. The Conference
Board, the leading U.S. corporate
think tank, endorsed the paper.
McKinsey found that a broad mix of abatement options need to be
followed; no one strategy accounted for more than 11% of the total
abatement, noting:
In regions with high-carbon grids, energy efficiency improvements,
typically through upgrades to building standards,
HVAC equipment, and appliances, are likely
to be the most effective and lowest-cost strategies. Conversely,
sectors and regions with access to low-carbon grid infrastructure
offer more compelling applications of such emerging technologies as
PHEVs (plug-in hybrid vehicles).
In its conclusion the report reiterated the importance of immediately
implementing energy efficiency strategies, many of which end up saving
more money than they cost, to “buy time” for emerging technologies to
develop commercially.
An aide to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), a lead co-author of the bill,
said one of the biggest changes involves an “upstream” cap placed on
the heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions that come from natural gas
processors. With the new bill’s natural gas section, more than 80
percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from the U.S.
economy will be covered under the legislation.
Previously, the bill dealt with about 75 percent of the U.S. economy.
Another change in the legislation speeds up by five years the end date
for the free emission credits given out to power plants, manufacturers
and other industrial sources. Free credits will now be phased out at
the start of 2031, rather than the start of 2036.
Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are separately capped (all allowances freely
distributed), to “remove the financial incentive for companies to shut
down their plants that use HFCs and move them to countries that don’t
have similar limits” (s. 1202, 3901, 3906, 10001-11002)
0.5% of annual emissions allowances to go to a “program for achieving”
methane emissions reductions from landfills and coal mines (s. 3907)
1% of annual emissions allowances to go to states for mass transit
funding, distributed following federal highway aid apportionment rules
(s. 3304)
Per the request of international aid
groups,
the national-security requirement for the Climate Change and National
Security Fund has been dropped (s. 4801-4804)
Interagency Climate Task Force headed by EPA
Administrator to submit a report “make public and submit to the
President a consensus report making recommendations, including
specific legislation for the President to recommend to Congress” in
2019 based on the triennial National Academy of Sciences reports
Details added to Climate Change Worker Training Program (s. 4602-4606)
Details added to Adaptation Fund (including combatting ocean
acidification) (s. 4702)
Details added to eligibility for carbon sequestration bonus allowances
(s. 3602)
CBO will hold the 2007 Director’s Conference
on Climate Change on Friday, November 16, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
CBO Director Peter Orszag will host the
conference, which will feature leading researchers addressing key
questions in the debate on climate change.
Allocating Allowances: Efficiency and Distributional Effects
Lawrence Goulder, Stanford University
Richard Goettle, Northeastern University
Dallas Burtraw, Resources for the Future
Gilbert Metcalf, Tufts University
Near-Term and Long-Term Emissions Reductions: Technology, Coverage, and
Costs
Howard K. Gruenspecht, Energy Information Administration
Francisco De La Chesnaye, Environmental Protection Agency
Henry D. Jacoby, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
John P. Weyant, Stanford University
Space is limited so please register in advance by emailing the
CBO Office of Communications contact below.
The Director’s Conference is held each year to bring outside experts
together with CBO analysts in a collaborative
effort that helps further the agency’s research agenda.
Press Contact: Melissa Merson Director of Communications (202) 226-2602
[email protected]
The National Wildlife Federation has launched a
campaign
to get a total of 218 sponsors for the Waxman (HR 1590, equivalent to
Boxer-Sanders) or the Olver-Gilchrest (HR 620, equivalent to
McCain-Lieberman) cap-and-trade climate bills. The two bills combined
have 170 co-sponsors. NWF is targeting what
they call The Final Fifty, fifty legislators who
have not co-sponsored either bill.
From E&E News (subs.
req.): Boucher
told a business forum that he has been in talks with the Bush’s
environmental advisors, including Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White
House Council on Environmental Quality, about crafting cap-and-trade
legislation Bush would sign.
According to the E&E report, Boucher did not think that having a bill
that largely preempted state efforts would be problematic. He went on to
say that there need to be more protections for the coal industry, and a
minimal cap on emissions for the next twenty years.
Boucher said any measure that forces coal-fired power plants to curb
emissions too fast – before carbon capture and sequestration can be
widely deployed – would cause major shifts to natural gas and drive up
prices.
Boucher said the upcoming climate bill will provide a “somewhat
forgiving, a gentle introduction to controls” until carbon capture and
storage is ready, which he said would be around 2025. Before that, he
said, coal-fired utilities will need other options available to meet
obligations, such as purchase of offsets.
“The schedule prior to 2025 has got to be more forgiving,” he told
reporters. “The schedule after 2025 can be very rigorous.”
Boucher said Senate proposals would impose major limits too fast. “I
don’t think the Senate bills adequately address that need because the
control schedule is quite severe in the early years, before we have
carbon capture and storage available,” he said. “If they default to
natural gas, real harm to the economy occurs.”
PG&E and WRI are members of
US-CAP. The Environmental Resources Trust is
connected to Environmental Defense, another US-CAP member.
Thorning has
appearedregularly
as a minority witness challenging cap-and-trade in previous hearings.
Anne Smith also has appeared as a minority witness challenging
cap-and-trade in a recent House
hearing.
Q: Does the National Wildlife Federation support the idea of a cap and
auction system?
A: Yeah, we’ve been working for a number of years on supporting the
best cap-and-trade system possible. We support 100% auction of
credits, or if there is distribution, there should only be
distribution for public benefit, and want to see good legislation come
out of Congress. Our time for strong action is rapidly dwindling and
want to see the best legislation we can possibly pass as soon as we
can possibly pass it.