This Wednesday, President Barack Obama will speak to CEOs at a Business Roundtable meeting on energy and climate, where he's expected to discuss his energy plans and roll out what he wants in a climate bill. Greenwire, via the New York Times, calls this a "last ditch effort" to pass an energy-and-climate bill, and has dropped the pretense of calling it a "climate bill." The Administration is debating four separate plans, ranging from mediocre to bad to worse to just-give-up-and-kiss-the-planet-goodbye.
Meanwhile, today the EPA caved to coal state Democrats to put off regulation a minimum of one year.
Details below the fold -- parental discretion advised.
- Obama's Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse Plans
The mediocre plan gives up on an economy-wide cap and trade plan in favor of a cap on electric utility emissions and a strong clean energy bill. This is described by Energy & Environment as "the most aggressive" approach, a sad commentary on the other three options. Electric utilities are lining up to oppose it.
The bad plan abandons a carbon cap and is described as an "aggressive clean energy bill that jettisons an emissions cap but includes clean energy standards. It would also lean heavily on energy efficiency measures." In this scenario, a cap on carbon would likely never occur in the United States. Capping carbon is politically unpopular, but clean energy is very popular. Although Obama would attempt to convince other countries that a growing reliance on clean energy alone is a de facto carbon cap, other countries will not consider this credible, and thus the world would never cap carbon.
The even worse approach is to give up on capping carbon, and instead pass the American Clean Energy Leadership Act, S. 1462, which passed the Energy & Natural Resources committee last summer. That bill mandates that power companies generate 15% of their power from renewable resources, known as a renewable energy standard . However, S. 1462 is generally seen as weak and may even increase carbon emissions.
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) seem to be actively negotiating a variation of this plan. Today, The Hill reported that Bingaman opposed Graham's plan to include nuclear power and the chimera of clean coal in a broader clean energy standard in exchange for a higher standard (20% clean energy by 2020, 25% clean energy by 2025). While I'm philosophically opposed to counting "clean coal" toward a clean energy standard, there's a perverse appeal here: given the long lead times for nuclear and clean coal, it's possible that a clean energy standard by 2020 might be a back-door renewable energy standard.
Again, a renewable/clean energy-only bill is far more politically popular than any bill capping carbon, whether by cap-and-trade, cap-and-dividend in the Cantwell-Collins CLEAR bill, or a carbon tax pony; again, it's likely that Obama will try, unsuccessfully, to convince the world that it's good enough for a carbon treaty, that the world will not believe him, and that no carbon treaty will be negotiated in Cancun this December or ever.
The fourth option is to do nothing:
to set aside the idea of pressing for passage of an energy bill this year. Under that political calculation, sources say the White House would continue pushing Republicans to engage the issue, but no bill would be introduced.
This is a great idea, since engaging Republicans and hoping that they would change has worked out so well for healthcare.
Carbon cap proposals are still being bandied about. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was said to be fiddling with the idea of a carbon tax offset by a payroll tax cut. CLEAR has its supporters. I wouldn't be surprised to see a bill unveiled by Graham to have some variation on the CLEAR bill. However, I don't see any sign that any cap on carbon can be passed in this hyperpartisan Senate.
- EPA Delays Action
Many environmentalists have seen the EPA as the cavalry, riding in to save the day where the Senate fails. In December, the EPA announced formal findings that greenhouse gases endanger human health, the first step to publishing rules originally envisioned to start in March 2010. By the end of last week, at least sixteen different petitions contested the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases. Friday night, eight Democrats from coal states, led by Jay Rockefeller, challenged the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases.
Today, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson blinked. Regulation of large power plants won't begin in March, but in 2011. Brad Johnson reports details, but the headline says it all: Lisa Jackson Announces EPA Will Delay and Weaken Proposed Greenhouse Standards.
- Meanwhile....
New USGS research shows that every Antarctic ice front is disappearing and has been disappearing from 1947 to the present, with the worst shrinkage occurring since 1990. Separately, a conservative paper lowballing sea level rise was retracted yesterday. In other words, what's another year or two of delay, when political fortunes are at stake?