SENATE SNAPSHOT: The Senate's draft of the climate bill has a few key differences from the House-passed version.
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An early version of Senate climate legislation obtained today by E&E confirms that Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) largely plan to follow the path their Democratic colleagues pursued in the House-passed climate bill.
But the 684-page Senate draft bill diverges from the House measure in its push for a 2020 emissions target of 20 percent, compared with the House's bill's 17 percent limit.
Both the House-passed bill, H.R. 2454, and the preliminary Boxer-Kerry proposal contain the same longer-term emissions limits of 42 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 and an 83 percent cut for 2050.
A senior Boxer aide cautioned that the draft bill does not reflect proposed changes that have recently been incorporated from senators both on and off the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The latest version, which the aide says stretches for more than 800 pages, is scheduled to be released tomorrow during a Capitol Hill press conference with about a dozen senators, veterans, environmentalists and industry officials.
"It's a snapshot in time of our restructure of the [House] bill, but it doesn't really reflect where the bill is now," the Boxer aide said.
Overall, the early draft of the Boxer-Kerry legislation includes four titles that take aim at greenhouse gas emissions across multiple economic sectors, as well as a "transition and adaptation" section aimed at helping the nation cope with the costs of a climate bill and the expected repercussions of global warming.
Both the early draft and the Boxer-Kerry bill due for release tomorrow will leave blank key information about how the senators intend to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in emission allowances. Following the path of Democratic leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, those figures will come next month when Boxer releases a chairman's mark of the bill before an EPW Committee markup.
To deal with economic uncertainties, the draft Boxer-Kerry plan would establish a strategic allowance reserve that allows U.S. EPA to sell credits into the carbon market via an auction in the event credit prices rise faster than expected.
The draft also mirrors the House on offset projects that allow industry an alternative compliance option to pay farmers and other landowners for environmentally friendly projects. Both the House-passed bill and this early Senate draft allow capped sources to collectively use emissions offsets to meet 2 billion tons of their obligations annually -- divided evenly between domestic and international credits, with the amount of international credits allowed to increase if insufficient domestic offsets are available.
The early draft of the Boxer-Kerry bill heeds environmentalists' requests by removing a section of the House bill that would have restricted EPA's ability to enact climate change regulations.
Like the House bill, the Boxer-Kerry draft would provide emissions allowances to fund commercial deployment of carbon capture and sequestration, although it does not provide specifics. It also establishes performance standards for emissions of greenhouse gases from new coal-fired power plants.
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11 Comments
Add Commentit is time for such change in our government and our countries way of doing business. we as a nation need to convert our thought processes and leadership to gain leadership in green energy markets and production of such energy for our own homes an businesses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreetings all
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have several points to make.
Firstly why not just tax carbon and green house gasses?
If your "emissions trading scheme" is anything like that in Australia its so complex that reasonably intelligent people cant understand it. It seems like a complex smoke and mirrors con to allow the carbon industry to continue business as usual.
In Oz the word is under emissions trading we will continue to significantly increase our carbon emissions but still satisfy our goals under emissions trading. From what I can gather we will simply buy credits from PNG and Indonesia et al and go hell for leather continuing to pollute. How we monitor the reserved rainforest in these notoriously corrupt, logging mad countries Is beyond me.
I get that old feeling that the big boys have the game sewn up and in the end they will clean up and we will be left holding the baby AND the bill. Just like the economic crisis, and that aint over by a long chalk yet!
Hows this for an idea, divide world population by our carbon tonnage goal. Every body gets X tons of carbon to use. If you want more you buy it off some poor person in the developing world or other carbon miser. So simple, fair, and transparent. Keep reducing tonnage by year till goals are reached.
It is going to be a lot of happy talk about how we can rely on cap and trade. It will advertise dramatic reductions with almost no cost to the consumer and no significant lifestyle changes. In other words, it will be complete and utter nonsense.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy not be honest about it, and directly tax carbon based fuels? Because if they did, Americans would be overwhelmingly against it, as they would be against this bill if the truth were being told.
"Draft Boxer bill available here!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Click here (below) for the 801-page draft version of the much-anticipated Boxer climate bill — the Senate response to Waxman-Markey. "
http://greenhellblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/boxer-801.pdf
From JunkScience:
http://greenhellblog.com/2009/09/29/draft-boxer-bill-available-here/
In reading the Bill, it might be useful to keep in mind:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) The earth's temperature has been steady or cooling for about 10 years.
2) CO2 emissions have declined due to global recession.
3) Even NASA published a discussion of the possibility of a solar grand minimum.
"Whether [the current downturn] is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen," Livingston and Penn caution in a recent issue of EOS. "Other indications of solar activity suggest that sunspots must return in earnest within the next year."
Whatever happens, notes Hathaway, "the sun is behaving in an interesting way and I believe we're about to learn something new."
NOAA. “Are Sunspots Disappearing?.” Scientific. NASA - Science@NASA, September 3, 2009.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/03sep_sunspots.htm?list36246.
The best these irresponsible politicians can come up with is Cap and trade and carbon sequestration nonsense when we are a little as ten years away from civilization destroying peak oil and climate tipping point with permafrost methane emissions and ocean acidification forming the leading edge of a very steep slope. This just in:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/09/current-emissions-may-mean-4c-temperature-hike-before-2100.ars
We can stop this and save money if we increase our green electric capacity sixfold with two thousand new gigawatts of baseload 24/7 green power. That's two nuclear plants taking up a couple of acres, 3000 giant windmills in farms occupying 1000 sq miles of land, or 100 sq miles of desert destroyed with solar panels every week for 10 years.
Mass produced nuclear power is by far the least expensive green energy available, at less than $1000 a kilowatt. Google China Westinghouse nuclear. As we replace natural gas/oil generation, we can use electric heat and heat pumps to replace the gas/oil furnace, and a massive nationwide natural gas vehicle conversion (Utah is the example at $1 a gal) to replace oil.
Nuclear waste will be reused as reprocessed fuel in Gen 3.5 nukes, or as fuel in generation four nukes like Sandia's new product. The tiny bit of Gen 4 nuclear waste is no more dangerous than the original uranium.
The nuclear payback would be only a few years paid for by the end of oil imports and the export of America's domestic oil production. An enormous job boosting nuclear domestic and export market would be created.
America's example would be copied around the world ending global warming in less than ten years.
These politicians are really just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic hoping to get some votes and campaign donations.
Just in . India announced plans to build 450 gigawatts in nukes as their answer to global warming.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Washington politicians blather while in India they build. How far the once mighty "can do" US has fallen.
Following facts 1, 2, and 3 in conjunction: approximately steady temperatures concurrent with both a decrease in emissions and a solar minimum. What's keeping the temperature so warm then?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI mean, every single year in the 2000s has been warmer than every single year of the 1990s (except for 1998, of course). If immediate emissions and the sun were really in control, temperatures should be dropping quite obviously.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI finally agree with soccerdad, just cap and tax. The price of oil, coal is going up with a bullet next yr and the only question is who gets the money, the gov or Iran, Russia, oil dictators, oil, coal companies.
By far better is the gov so we can get a tax cut, help switching to more eff or alt fuel cars, trucks, semi's and trains on the transport side and RE on the electric side. To do otherwise will mean we will be broke from high fossil fuel prices hitting $150/bbl next yr.
You can say nuke is cheap all you want but recent nuke plants priced in Fla are $8.5k/kw, far more costly than wind, solar CSP, kinetic hydro, storage, biomass, geothermal, etc. Now if the price comes down it's a different story but it hasn't yet.
OK jerryd. Now that you agree with me on something, repeat after me.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love coal ...... I love coal.....
Just an aside; the dendrochronology on which the IPCC bases its entire MMGW thesis has just been discredited. The full disclosure of the data set as demanded by Nature and Science found that the data was cooked beyond all recognition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know its a small point, but should not the the implosion of the entire MMGW hypothesis and its relegation to the circular file have an impact on not only the form of legislation, but perhaps it's need?