From Hill Heat:
As he previously announced he would, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) released the first of a series of white papers on climate legislation today, Scope of a Cap-and-Trade Program.
Based on the hearings earlier this year, the Committee and Subcommittee Chairmen have reached the following conclusions: The United States should reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by between 60 and 80 percent by 2050 to contribute to global efforts to address climate change. To do so, the United States should adopt an economy-wide, mandatory greenhouse gas reduction program. The central component of this program should be a cap-and-trade program. Given the breadth of the economy that will be affected by a national climate change program and the significant environmental consequences at stake, it is important to design a fair program that obtains the maximum emission reductions at the lowest cost and with the least economic disruption. The Subcommittee and full Committee will draft legislation to establish such a program.
My Take
The white paper makes no recommendations on how credits should be allocated, though Boucher has stated his resistance to auctions in the past.
- 80% reduction from 1990 levels should be the MINIMUM acceptable
- Otherwise the paper avoids any contentious policy subjects and is a reasonable overview of how to cover industries with cap-and-trade legislation
- Avoided issues include: how to allocate credits (should be by auction), how to deal with offsets, CAFE standards, renewable energy standard, funding carbon sequestration, subsidies, etc.
The white paper argues that complementary measures are necessary:
"Even with a broad-based cap-and-trade program, complementary measures (such as a carbon tax or other tax-based incentives, efficiency or other performance standards, or research and development programs) will also be needed. For example, funding for research, development, and deployment of new technologies would assist industries that will need to adopt new technologies. In addition, efficiency or other performance standards might be appropriate for some economic actors that would be inappropriate to include directly in a cap-and-trade program, but that should contribute to an economy-wide reduction program in some other way.
Measures that have been proposed range from Dingell's carbon tax, increased CAFE standards, appliance and lighting efficiency standards, a federal renewable energy standard, to carbon sequestration funding. Some of these are mentioned in the white paper, but they're not really analyzed or promoted.
A future white paper will discuss carbon offsets in the agricultural sector, which include both big-ag stuff like manure tank methane capture and sustainable agriculture stuff like high-carbon-content soil.
Action steps
Make sure your Representative and Senators are participating in Step It Up 2: Who's a Leader?