On March 25, Morgan Meguire’s Lori Pickford, Deborah Sliz and Tom Porter attended a briefing by APPA regarding the costs associated with the Lieberman-Warner climate change bill. APPA Legislative Representative James Williams briefed attendees on recent Capitol Hill meetings on timing of legislation moving through both chambers. Key messages from those meetings included:
- Although it has recently been reported that the House Energy and Commerce Committee will release a climate change bill next month, key House staff told APPA that the reported timeline is “too aggressive” and that legislation is more likely to be made public in June.
- Staff to Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said that they want to bring a modified Lieberman-Warner bill to the floor in June, but if there are any “poison pills” adopted as part of the floor consideration, Sen. Boxer will pull the legislation from consideration. One example of a poison pill could be an amendment to promote more development of nuclear power. Further, they are willing to receive more input from interested parties, but only if they are offering improvements and not to bash the bill. EPW Ranking Member James Inhofe’s (R-OK) staff is planning a week of briefings in April on the effects of the legislation on different industry sectors. APPA has been invited to present its economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner bill at the briefing on the electric industry. Morgan Meguire will provide this schedule of briefings when we receive it.
- In the House, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) is drafting a climate change bill, but has said he will work to “protect public power.” Although Inslee supports an auction of emissions allowances, he is willing to consider a “cap” on allowance costs and limits on entities that could participate in the auction. Separately, APPA will meet with staff to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), who has said he supports 100% auctions.
APPA’s Dianne Moody has done a detailed analysis, presented via a series of spreadsheets on the Lieberman-Warner bill’s allocation program, the number of allowances that would be available to public power under the program and the likely cost to consumers served by public power systems if the bill was enacted into law. The analysis includes a page that allows each public power system to estimate the cost to its consumers. These spreadsheets and more are located on the APPA secured site for members only.