The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to a
briefing to examine the potential effects of pending energy and climate
legislation on the transportation sector and U.S. dependence on oil.
Policies that create a sustained, stable, and predictable price on
carbon for transportation fuels have the potential to promote
fuel-efficient vehicles, low-carbon fuels, and more energy-efficient
transportation decisions by businesses and consumers. However, how such
a price is determined, how it is applied, and how generated revenues are
used can greatly influence the benefits and costs of such a policy. This
briefing will focus on the economic and environmental implications of
alternative ways to reduce oil use and greenhouse gas emissions in the
transportation sector and how key stakeholders are likely to respond.
Speakers for this event include:
Dr. David Montgomery, Vice-President, Charles River Associates
Dr. Chad Stone, Chief Economist, Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities
Dr. Adele Morris, Policy Director for Energy and Climate Economics,
Brookings Institution
Dr. David Austin, Senior Economist, Congressional Budget Office
Jack Basso, Director of Program Finance and Management, American
Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)
James Corless, Director, Transportation for America
Patrick O’Connor, Legislative Counsel, NAFA
Fleet Management Association
Fuel use in the transportation sector is widely regarded to be less
sensitive to changes in price, relative to electricity and other sectors
of the economy, due in part to limited availability of transportation
options and substitutes for petroleum fuels. Recent swings in fuel
prices, corresponding demand responses, and other research suggest,
however, that modest price signals - especially sustained price
signals - can spur investments in clean transportation and create
significant benefits for the transportation sector. Options to create a
carbon price through a fee on transportation fuels can be designed to be
as effective and predictable as other policy options based on tradable
allowances. Any revenues generated through such policies can be returned
to consumers and businesses, reinvested in transportation infrastructure
and advanced vehicle and fuel technology, or directed to a combination
of public uses.
This briefing is free and open to the public. No
RSVP required. For more information, please
contact Jan Mueller at [email protected] or (202) 662-1883.
American Energy Alliance staffers Kevin Kennedy, Patrick Creighton, and
Laura Henderson on tour in Pennsylvania. All are former House
GOP staff.
The American Energy Alliance (AEA), a new polluter front group, is
touring the nation to smear President Barack Obama’s clean energy reform
agenda. Employees riding the “American Energy Express” bus are spreading
the conservative claim that the American Clean Energy and Security Act
will “cripple our sluggish
economy.”
AEA is the 501 c(4) offshoot of the Institute
for Energy Research, a right-wing oil-industry think tank run by Robert
Bradley, a former speechwriter for Kenneth Lay. E&E News reports that
AEA’s “Energy Town Hall” bus
tour pictures
workers in hard hats:
The American Energy Alliance, which is affiliated with the
conservative Institute for Energy Research, has begun a four-week bus
tour to county fairs, sporting events and public meetings in several
coal-reliant states. Representatives of the group will travel in a
large blue bus carrying the slogan “Stop the National Energy Tax, Save
American Jobs” and a picture of workers in hard hats. They will cross
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia and Virginia. Yesterday,
AEA officials participated in a rally with
another group, Americans for Prosperity, in Zanesville, Ohio; a day
earlier, they visited a county fair in western Pennsylvania.
AEA has no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in
supporting the agenda of any particular political party.
However, AEA is tightly connected to the
Republican Party and right-wing oil interests. In fact, all of its
employees
are former House Republican staffers:
Speakers:
P. Kumar Agarwal (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)
Timothy J. Brennan (University of Maryland)
Mark G. Lauby (North American Electric Reliability Corporation)
3:15 PM
Break
3:30 PM
(5) Renewable Energy in the Transportation and Power
Sectors
(6) Financial Markets and Short-Term Energy
Prices
Moderator: Michael Schaal (EIA)
Moderator: Tancred Lidderdale (EIA)
Speakers:
Denise Bode (American Wind Energy Association)
Bob Dinneen (Renewable Fuels Association)
Bryan Hannegan (Electric Power Research Institute)
David Humbird (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
Speakers:
Jeffrey Harris (Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
Robert McCullough (McCullough Research)
Adam E. Sieminski (Deutsche Bank)
Robert Weiner (George Washington University)
Restoration of Superfund.
In 2002, Bush crippled
Superfund,
the federal program for cleaning up the most toxic sites in America, by
eliminating the tax on industrial polluters “that once generated about
$1 billion a year.” President Obama’s budget reinstates Superfund
taxes
in 2011, restoring $17 billion over ten years to the depleted
program.
Polluters Pay To Fight Climate Change And Make Work Pay.
The Bush administration rejected the Kyoto
Protocol
in 2001, and instituted a voluntary
program
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in 2002, which instead rose.
President Obama calls for a mandatory cap on carbon
emissions
starting in 2012, expected to raise $645.7 billion over ten years.
Instead of sending those revenues back to the polluters, $15 billion a
year will go to clean energy technologies, with the rest funding the
Making Work Pay tax credit to reduce payroll
taxes for
every working American.
Ending Tax Breaks For Fossil Fuel Industry.
Oil, natural gas, and coal companies enjoyed record
profits in recent years, even as
numerous incentives and tax breaks for companies that drill and mine our
shared resources were protected. President Obama’s budget eliminates
$31.75 billion in oil and gas company giveaways and increases the
return from natural resources on federal lands by $2.9 billion over
ten years.
In a column at the Center for American Progress, director of climate
strategy Dan Weiss analyzes the budget and finds: “President Obama’s
proposed energy budget is a ray of sunshine after an eight-year
blackout.
Congress must now make this clean energy future a reality.”
According to E&E
News, Democratic
leadership plans to unveil an “all of the above” energy package today or
tomorrow which likely has the following components:
Expansion of OCS leasing to include areas off the coasts of the
Carolinas, Virginia and Georgia, and possibly the eastern Gulf of
Mexico as well. A bipartisan Senate plan known informally as the “Gang
of 10” proposal would allow drilling in these regions no closer than
50 miles from shore. But House lawmakers and aides did not say how
close to shore their plan would allow drilling.
New revenues from oil companies. A Democratic leadership aide said
the bill may include provisions to ensure payment of royalties from
late-1990s deepwater Gulf of Mexico leases that currently allow
royalty waivers regardless of energy prices. The absence of
price-based limits on these royalty waivers could cost the Treasury as
much as $14.7 billion over 25 years, according to the Government
Accountability Office. The bill may also include the repeal of the
Section 199 tax deduction for major oil companies. This plan, past
versions of which have also frozen the deduction at 6 percent for
non-majors, raises roughly $13.6 billion over a decade, the Joint
Committee on Taxation estimated in June.
A so-called renewable electricity standard that requires utilities
to supply escalating amounts of power from sources like wind and
geothermal power. The House Democrats plan to include a standard of 15
percent by 2020, an aide said, akin to a measure the House approved
last year that did not survive negotiations with the Senate. The plan
allows roughly a fourth of the standard to be met with efficiency
measures.
Extension of renewable energy and energy efficiency tax credits.
E&E also reports that Pelosi indicated “the energy bill might include
support for automakers’ retooling to make more efficient vehicles.”
This could also be part of an economic stimulus package being prepared
or the continuing resolution to extend government spending beyond the
Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year, she said.
Top House Democrats say that shortly after Congress reconvenes, they
will put on the floor a piece of legislation that will include an
expansion of offshore drilling but also a renewable electricity
mandate, energy-efficiency standards for buildings and oil industry
tax provisions.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) described the plan as “a political reverse
takedown on the Republicans,” by calling the
GOP bluff on their calls for an “All of the
Above” energy agenda. David Sandalow, an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama
(D-Ill.), told E&E News: “We’ll see whether the proponents of all of the
above can take yes for an answer.”
Renewable electricity standards, building efficiency standards, and oil
tax provisions have repeatedly passed the House over Republican
opposition, but have died in Republican filibusters in the Senate.
The legislative plan will represent a compromise from the agendas of the
various national lobbying campaigns by outside organizations:
Al Gore’s We Campaign’s call for a 100% renewable electricity standard
by 2018;
Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions For Winning the Future’s call for
expanded drilling;
T. Boone Pickens’ call for new grid development, tax incentives for
wind and solar, and subsidies for natural gas;
The coal industry’s American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s
call for increased advanced coal technology subsidies.
ACCCE
and
Pickens
each have had a significant presence at the national conventions.
On a lighter note, as Open Left’s Matt Stoller found, the people
employed by ACCCE to spread the “clean
coal” message in Denver
weren’t necessarily all up to speed.
President Bush exploited this morning’s press briefing on the “follow-up
efforts” to Hurricane Gustav to attack Congress about lifting the
offshore drilling moratorium. Stating that “what happens after the storm
passes is as important as what happens prior to the storm arriving,” he
made the declaration that “our discussion here today is about
energy.”
Bush wasn’t referring to the 1.4 million
Louisianans
who have lost power due to the storm’s destructive force, and chose not
to mention the 102 deaths caused by
Gustav.
Instead, he went on the attack:
I know that Congress has been on recess for a while, but this issue
hasn’t gone away. And, uh, this storm should not cause members of
Congress say well, we don’t need to address our energy independence.
It ought to cause the Congress to step up their need to address our
dependence on foreign oil. And one place to do so is to give us a
chance to explore in environmentally friendly ways on the Outer
Continental Shelf.
Watch it:
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough
were both floored by Bush’s decision “to use another hurricane in
Louisiana to promote offshore drilling at this point,” after he
“performed so poorly during Hurricane Katrina.”
Let’s be very clear. Number one: There’s no such thing as American
oil any more. These are multinational corporations. If you let
multinational corporations drill all this oil, they’re going to sell
it to the highest bidder, whether it’s China, or India, it doesn’t
matter. Why would we throw away America’s beauty chasing the lost
drops of oil, so multinational corporations can sell it to India and
China?
And people also got to remember, we didn’t stop this as an
environmental issue. We didn’t stop offshore drilling for the
duckies and the fishies. We stopped it because coastline communities
were suffering. Because the property owners, the children who live
in those coastline communities – not when there were oil spills – but
every day, when your child goes out to swim, he comes back covered in
oil, you have to use gasoline to get the oil off your child. That was
happening coast to coast
A report from the Public Campaign Action Fund on 2008 spending by oil
and coal industries
finds that they are on track to spend about one billion dollars this
year on lobbying, political contributions, and advertising. The full
report
amasses the following expenditures:
2008 SPENDING BY OIL AND COAL
INTERESTS, BY CATEGORY
Amounts in millions
Coal/Electric Utilities
Oil/Gas
Total
Political Contributions
$16.5
$20.9
$37.4
Lobbying Expenditures
73.7
55.3
129.0
Paid Media
7.4
201.2
208.6
Other Political Spending
40.0
12.2
52.2
Total
$137.6
$289.6
$427.2
Lobbying expenditures and political contributions come from Center for
Responsive Politics data compiled from
public disclosures. Paid media figures are from
TNS Media Intelligence, the industry standard
for tracking media spending.
The “other political spending” comes from the coal industry group
Americans for Balanced Energy
Choices
/ American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ABEC/ACCCE) and from
Newt Gingrich’s 527 corporation, American Solutions for Winning the
Future (ASWF).
Today at 2 PM, the entire House GOP caucus is
holding a Capitol rally to support their drill-drill-drill bill, dubbed
the “American Energy Act” (H.R.
6566) and
being promoted as an “all of the above” approach to energy policy. Their
memo, acquired by the Wonk Room, reveals their
plans
to promote the bill as a panacea for high gas prices.
As Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Daniel Weiss points
out,
however, the House GOP is pushing a number of
misleading or false talking points. In particular, they grossly
overestimate the expected returns on drilling offshore, opening the
Arctic Refuge, or mining oil shale—and fail to mention that any such
returns would only be noticeable in decades.
Speaking before a joint session
of Congress on Tuesday, President Barack Obama declared that his plan to
restore America’s economic prosperity “