Last Gasp for Climate Bill?
Comprehensive energy and climate legislation may yet be alive in the United States Senate, but just barely. And from what has been publicly disclosed this week, they seem to beg the question with which the clean energy and environmental communities will have to grapple.
To wit: is any modest climate bill worth the political cost, knowing they might not get any other bill passed this year or next?
Then, there's the question the utilities and green jobs advocates will have to answer: is this the market certainty they have been clamoring for that will settle investment questions they've been wondering about for the past few years?
According to various press reports, the week of July 26 would be when the Senate would consider an energy and climate change bill.
In a proposal that may be offered by Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), carbon caps would be placed at 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 42 percent by 2030. A proposal by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) also has a utility-only cap. Utilities emit about one-third of the carbon dioxide produced economy-wide.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also said he had a "rough draft" of an energy bill. That bill would address cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico and offshore drilling issues, along with alternative energy and conservation incentives.
Bingaman's draft also prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating certain industries under the Clean Air Act until 2018. It also includes a price collar for emission allowances that will be distributed to utilities. The collar would have a price floor of $10 per ton for 2012, with an annual increase of 3 percent in 2012 dollars. It would have a ceiling of $25 per ton, increasing at 5 percent annually in 2012 dollars.
We may know in two weeks if the renewable energy industry is any closer answering the questions posed above.
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