Despite complaints from some committee members that she is moving too quickly, Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has scheduled a Dec. 5 full committee mark-up on S. 2191, America's Climate Security Act, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA). The Subcommittee on Private Sector and Consumer Solutions to Global Warming and Wildlife Protection approved the bill on Nov. 1.
The subcommittee approved Lieberman-Warner bill would establish a federal program to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 63% by 2050. Under the program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would allocate emissions allowances to electric power, transportation and manufacturing sources that, taken together, account for 75% of those emissions. The "cap" on emissions would be set at 2005 emissions levels for 2012 and ratchet down over time, to 19% of 2005 levels by 2020 and 63% of 2005 levels by 2050.
In advance of the full committee mark-up, last week Chairman Boxer released a revised version of the subcommittee-approved bill. The revised bill, called the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2007, makes several changes in an apparent attempt to garner enough votes for committee passage. One major change to the bill Boxer makes involves an "upstream" cap placed on GHG emissions that come from natural gas processors. With the new bill's natural gas section, more than 80 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from the U.S. economy will be covered under the legislation. (Previously, the bill dealt with emission from about 75 percent of the U.S. economy.)
Another change in the legislation is that it "ratchets up," by five years, from 2036 to 2031, the end date for the free emission credits given out to power plants, manufacturers and other industrial sources.
One of the potentially divisive issues of this bill is how to distribute emissions allowances to utilities. The question has been whether they should be allocated based on "historic emissions" that is, based on actual emissions of GHG in a baseline year, or if they should be allocated based on a utility's retail sales, which would provide significant allowances to utilities that do not burn coal.
The subcommittee approved Lieberman-Warner bill attempts to create a compromise by allocating 19 percent of 2020 allowances to "covered facilities" based on historic emissions and allocating another ten percent of 2020 allowances to "load serving entities" based on retail sales. Sens. Lieberman and Warner devised this compromise as a way to try to meet the concerns of senators from states where coal is burned (or coal-fired energy is consumed) and those from states that do not burn coal or use coal-fired energy.
Even if the bill passes out of committee this month, it is not likely to advance on the Senate floor next year, given an expected filibuster by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and others and President Bush's opposition to mandatory emissions controls.
House Action On-Hold
Although earlier this year House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) and Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-VA) stated they would begin work on a comprehensive climate change bill this fall, they have reversed coarse and now say they will not move forward on climate issues until a final "energy independence" bill is completed. Therefore, no House climate change action will take place prior to adjournment.