Waxman offers compromises to win committee votes

Waxman Said to Offer Free Permits in Climate Talks

By Jim Efstathiou Jr., Daniel Whitten and Lorraine Woellert

May 7 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Henry Waxman, sponsor of a plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions, is offering power producers and companies such as steelmakers free pollution permits, said people familiar with the negotiations.

Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, made the proposal in an effort to win approval in his panel for legislation to establish a carbon- trading program, said the people, who declined to be identified discussing the private talks. The free permits may be worth as much as $40 billion a year, according to Mike McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, a policy consulting firm based in Washington.

Waxman’s offer marks a break from President Barack Obama’s original proposal to auction off all permits to pay for a middle-class tax cut. Businesses and some lawmakers of both parties opposed the president’s approach.

“Polluters should have to pay for the privilege of dumping their stuff into the atmosphere,” Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington environmental group, said in an interview. “The problem is purely a political one as they try to round up votes in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.”

The cap-and-trade legislation proposed by Waxman would require companies to obtain a permit for every ton of carbon dioxide they pump into the atmosphere. In 2012 when the program begins, 4.7 billion permits would be issued, after which they could be traded on a market.

‘Significant Consensus’

“There has been significant consensus reached in the last 24 hours,” Representative Jay Inslee, a Washington Democrat who serves on the committee, said today on a conference call with reporters.

Karen Lightfoot, Waxman’s spokeswoman, declined to discuss the talks. Waxman of California, who has pledged to act before Memorial Day on May 25, delayed action on the climate-change measure in a subcommittee this week as negotiations continued.

Obama originally proposed auctioning all permits. He later said some could be given away. A program viewed as too costly for businesses wouldn’t be politically viable, he said.

Waxman’s draft was silent on how permits would be distributed. Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat who represents Virginia’s coal-producing region, was among committee members who said utilities should get free permits for all of their emissions.

The free permits are needed because cutting greenhouse gases will raise electricity prices, Jeffry Sterba, chairman of Albuquerque-based PNM Resources Inc., told the House panel in April. Michael Morris, chief executive officer of American Electric Power Co., the biggest U.S. producer of electricity from coal, said utilities should get all permits for free.

Memorial Day Goal

“The president would still like to see a bill by Memorial Day,” Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, said in an interview this week. “That’s going to be difficult to do.”

Under the proposed compromise, about 55 percent of the pollution permits could be given to utilities, refiners and manufacturers, according to McKenna, who added that the specifics may change as the talks continue.

“Much of the debate internally between moderate Democrats in the coal states and the other Democrats on the subcommittee is really with respect to the transition and the allocation of allowances,” Jim Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy Corp., said this week on a conference call with analysts.

17% Reduction

A target for emissions reductions would drop to 17 percent by 2020 from Waxman’s original proposal of a 20 percent decline, according to a Democrat on his committee who sought changes in the draft bill and declined to be identified. Sponsors of projects to capture and bury carbon emissions from coal plants would get $10 billion, the lawmaker said.


more at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601072&sid=a22ABxy4p9ak

Global warming battle heats up

From The Washington Independent

Four Democratic senators demanded late last month that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency must go. Their call for EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson's resignation -- after eight months of looking into his actions as agency chief -- is largely due to Jason K. Burnett, Johnson's former deputy in developing global warming policy.

Since resigning in May as the No. 3 official at EPA, Burnett has helped congressional investigators build a compelling case that the White House strong-armed Johnson into denying California a waiver to police greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions and also stopped the EPA from setting a national greenhouse gas standard...

Close observers of the EPA are skeptical about Burnett's recent turn against the Bush White House...

"Nobody knows for sure why he went public and started ratting out his colleagues," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch. "He was one of the political insider's at EPA. People [on staff at EPA] are stunned that he's trying to rewrite history and say that he was a good guy all along."

More at http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/global-warming

Great Falls (Montana) paper details special Baucus deal in Lieberman-Warner climate bill

WASHINGTON — Montana's rural electric cooperatives could get a break from a nationwide crackdown on greenhouse gas emissions for more than two decades, thanks to U.S. Sen. Max Baucus.

Montana's senior senator inserted a provision into a climate change bill pending in Congress that would give the rural electric co-ops in his state until 2035 to fully curtail their greenhouse gas emissions. The bill requires utility companies in other states to comply by 2012....

"I'd call that a special deal for a special senator whose vote was desperately needed on that committee," said Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, a Washington-based environmental group. "It's called quid pro quo."

more at http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007711070338

EPA Joins Settlement of Lawsuit but Adds a Waiver

[from the Washington Post]

Although the Environmental Protection Agency joined in a legal settlement this week to force the largest power-plant pollution cleanup in U.S. history, the Bush administration signaled in the agreement that it has no intention of taking enforcement actions against the utility for the same kind of Clean Air Act violations in the future.

The language of the settlement indicates that the administration has not wavered in its distaste for a Clinton-era policy of using the law to force power plants to upgrade their pollution controls whenever they significantly update or expand a plant. That marks a significant victory for the power industry, which has strenuously opposed the "New Source Review," saying that it penalizes them for efficiency improvements that ultimately benefit consumers and the environment....

both Scott H. Segal, a lobbyist for utility and coal companies, and Frank O'Donnell, who heads the advocacy group Clean Air Watch, said in interviews that this week's court deal does not mean that the legal fight over air policy is over.

"Seven or eight years ago, the U.S. electric industry was frantically on the run because federal enforcers were going after them at every turn," O'Donnell said. "Then the Bush administration called off the dogs."


more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002389.html?hpid=topnews

Coal Fuels A Debate Over Obama

from today's Washington Post

Democrat Stuck Between Industry and Environment

By Alec MacGillis and Steven MufsonWashington Post Staff WritersSunday, June 24, 2007; Page A01

BENTON, Ill. -- In 2004, as a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama came to this small town 300 miles from Chicago to pledge support for southern Illinois' struggling coal country.

More than just an obligatory visit to the more conservative and rural part of the state, it was a chance for Obama to affirm his reputation as the rare politician who could see both sides of an issue and form alliances across traditional divides.


"It doesn't matter if you are a Republican or Democrat, you've got to be able to work with people to accomplish some common-sense policies and make people's lives a little bit better," he said from the steps of the county courthouse.

Three years later, with Obama now a candidate for president, his embrace of southern Illinois and its dominant industry is showing signs of strain. Obama finds himself caught between his advocacy of huge federal subsidies for liquefied coal for transportation fuel, a technology that the Illinois coal industry views as a salvation, and environmental groups that reject it as a boondoggle that would set back efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the fight against global warming.

After co-sponsoring legislation earlier this year for billions of dollars in subsidies for liquefied coal, Obama more recently began qualifying his support in ways that have left both environmentalists and coal industry officials unsure where he stands. His shift has helped shape this month's Senate debate over how to reduce both dependence on foreign oil and carbon dioxide emissions; on Tuesday, he voted against one proposal to boost liquefied coal and for a more narrowly worded one. Both failed.

More broadly, Obama's contortions on coal point to the limits of the role he likes to assume, that of a unifier who can appeal across traditional lines and employ a "new kind of politics" to solve problems. In reaching out to the coal industry, some observers say, he may have been trying to show that he is a different sort of Democrat, but the gesture had the look of old-style politicking and put him in a corner, where he wound up alienating some on both sides of the issue.

"He was trying to throw a bone to the southern Illinois coal interests . . . and was surprised when people started saying, 'What the heck are you doing?' " said Frank O'Donnell, president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch. "That's a rookie mistake for a presidential candidate, to think you can get in the middle of a controversial issue and no one will notice."

[more at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/23/AR2007062301424.html?hpid=topnews ]

Boucher blows hot air -- an editorial from the Roanoke Times

Boucher blows hot air

His reasons for blocking California emissions standards just don't make any sense.

Rep. John Dingell's role in pushing a bill to limit the ability of California and other states to cap greenhouse gas emissions from cars is easy enough to figure out.

Dingell represents Detroit, after all, and carmakers are big donors.

But why is Southwest Virginia's Rep. Rick Boucher joining Dingell in pushing this bill, which is angering top Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein?

Boucher, whose district is home to the last vestiges of Virginia's dwindling coal industry, gets a lot of campaign money from mining and utility interests. It wouldn't be as surprising to see him playing the spoiler on emissions controls for coal-fired power plants.

But cars?

The legislation Boucher's subcommittee is drafting would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing a waiver to California and other states that would allow them to impose more stringent standards on greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

His proferred rationale makes little sense: Because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the Environmental Protection Agency must regulate greenhouse gas emissions. That, Boucher said, would potentially put automakers under the authority of the EPA, the federal Department of Transportation and the various states considering emissions limits.

"The automakers are understandably concerned about this regulatory confusion," Boucher said. "You could have at least three different regulations that would be inconsistent and make it impossible for them to manufacture their product."

That's nonsense. California has long had stricter standards for different emissions than the federal government. The auto industry has not seemed confused by that.

In fact, California has often led the way for better pollution controls nationwide. The populous state represents such a large portion of the domestic market that once a technology is perfected to meet California's requirements, carmakers put it in place in all their vehicles.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with governors from seven other states, sent a letter to Boucher opposing the bill he and Dingell are drafting.

"Congress must not deny states the right to pursue solutions in the absence of federal policy," the letter said.

Until the EPA adopts serious regulations for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, Boucher should abandon his efforts to stop states that want to make a difference.

Lead -- or let states lead the way on global warming

from the Eugene (OR) Register-Guard:

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/06/07/ed.edit.emissions.phn.0607.p1.php?section=opinion

Lead - or let states

A Register-Guard Editorial

Published: Thursday, June 7, 2007

If neither Congress nor the Bush administration are willing to enact strict regulation of tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases, they should step aside and let California, Oregon and 10 other states do it on their own.

For more than a year, the Bush administration has refused the states' requests for permission to exceed inadequate and outdated federal standards regulating carbon emissions. It shows no signs of relenting, even though the U.S. Supreme Court last month ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has the authority - and responsibility - to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases in auto emissions.

Now, some Democrats in Congress are playing the role of obstructionists, as well.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., both leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, have drafted energy legislation that would prevent states from exceeding federal standards on auto emissions.

The legislation would specifically bar the EPA from granting states the waivers they need to put their new emissions rules into effect. As Frank O'Donnell, president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch, observed, the draft bill "looks as if it could have been written in the boardroom of General Motors."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, responding to pressure from officials and environmental groups in her home state of California, swiftly issued this warning: "Any proposal that affects California's landmark efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or eliminates the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions will not have my support." Without the speaker's blessing, Boucher and Dingell don't have a prayer of getting their energy proposal to the House floor as long as it contains a provision pre-empting states' efforts to limit emissions.

That's mildly reassuring. But Pelosi and other Democratic leaders should be doing more than waging a defensive battle on emissions. They should be pushing for a comprehensive energy policy that includes serious new limits on tailpipe emissions and gasoline consumption.

Despite the Supreme Court's ruling, the Bush administration has already made its intentions clear. President Bush recently ordered federal agencies to develop proposals for regulating vehicle emissions and reducing fuel consumption by the time he leaves office in January 2009. In other words, he intends to run out the clock and then hang the millstone of global warming around the neck of his successor.

Oregon and a growing number of other states understand delay is no longer a viable option. A recent United Nations study warned that the world - including the leading producer of carbon gases, the United States - must stabilize greenhouse emissions within eight years or face dire consequences.

If the Bush administration and Congress won't respond to such clarion warnings, they must step aside and let the states lead the way.