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.