On Friday, Senate Environment and Public Works chair Barbara Boxer released an outline of what promises to be the version of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act that actually gets debated and amended on the Senate floor in early June. David posted the full document summarizing the manager's amendment earlier today. It's only an outline, not the full text, but from a cursory glance, here are some significant differences from the previous incarnation of Lieberman-Warner (special thanks to Hill Heat):
- It includes a cost containment mechanism, or "emergency off-ramp," which is likely to cause a lot of anxiety for enviros, depending the price level at which that would kick in. There isn't a dollar figure in this outline. It reads simply, "If the price of carbon allowances reaches a certain price range, there is a mechanism that will automatically release additional emission allowances onto the market to lower the price."
- It sets aside $800 billion through 2050 for consumer tax relief, to help those in need of assistance with energy costs. This is considerably more and more direct than the consumer assistance in previous versions.
- The spending is much more prescribed and itemized -- the document reads like a massive wishlist, with "transition assistance" for every fossil fuel and heavy industry, and handouts to agriculture, the building sector, renewable energies, coal CCS, cellulosic biofuels, truck fleets, firefighters, state programs, on and on. It's monopoly money that's been spent down to the penny for the next 40 years. Hope no new needs come up between now and then!
- It includes a line about "deficit neutrality": "This section auctions allowances and transfers the proceeds to the Treasury to ensure that the bill is deficit-neutral." In regular person terms, that means it will impose no net cost on the federal government.
The actual language of Boxer's amendment is expected to be released tomorrow, which will provide more clarity about the specifics of these proposals. This new version of the bill comes after months of negotiations between Boxer and the bill's sponsors, Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), as well as others in the Senate. The bill is expected to hit the Senate floor during the first week of June.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 1:51 pm
19 May 2008
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David Roberts Posted 2:05 pm
19 May 2008
But that provision was already built into the cost-containment of the original LW draft. So it's hard to see what's new here. Are they just trying to highlight this rhetorically? Or is there something more devious in the fine print?
Guess we'll find out tomorrow.
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Brad Johnson Posted 10:12 pm
19 May 2008
The Wonk Room
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F James Handley Posted 8:29 am
27 May 2008
Otherwise, price spikes will completely destroy political support. Imagine the screaming if electricity rates tripled in the middle of a hot summer!
Boxer doesn't include provisions to auction ALL the pollution permits (as Friends of the Earth, Obama and Clinton have suggested), and doesn't return the revenues as tax reductions or dividends, which means it isn't revenue-neutral. It's a net tax increase.
Not necessarily bad, except for where she'd spend it: Among other things, more carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research. To "capture" (condense) CO2 from the hot gases leaving a coal-fired power plant requires a lot of energy. What's the energy source for that? Coal. How much net energy after we capture the CO2? CCS looks a lot like is a bandaid for the coal industry, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel. It helps justify building new plants that supposedly could be retrofitted.
100% wind-generated electricity from PEPCO Energy Systems here in DC runs me about 25% more than coal-generated power. Which suggests to me that wind power is ALREADY much cheaper than coal would be with CCS. No way they're going to capture and sequester CO2 for less than a 25% energy premium. And wind will get cheaper as we go. CCS will get more expensive as the easy places to sequester CO2 are used up.
Let's stop with the subsidies. That's how we got corn-based ethanol. The government should not be in the business of picking technology winners (certainly not this early in the race).
A gradually-increasing carbon tax would soon make wind economical and let coal die and would push everyone to make carbon reductions.
Boxer needs to start over with a revenue-neutral carbon tax as British Columbia is implementing. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that a carbon tax would be FIVE TIMES as effective as a fixed cap with emissions trading.
Now that we're starting to agree on the disease: Global Warming, let's be sure we pick medicine that works: Carbon tax and dividend. See http://www.carbontax.org.
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