Now a Kerry-Lieberman-Graham Climate Bill is in the Works

And it won't have much to offer if you don't support offshore drilling or believe in "clean coal".

Tossing another layer on top of the anarchy that has erupted in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee over the proposed Kerry-Boxer climate bill, Senator Kerry himself announced today that he would also be pushing a second climate bill on a "dual track" outside of the committee process, even as his first bill struggles forward. He will be working on this bill behind closed doors with Senators Graham (R, SC), and Lieberman (I, CT).

As this Washington Post article notes, other Senate committees have been working on their own climate bills as well, and all will have to be reconciled in the end. This just adds another to the heap. But the action by Kerry, who made his announcement alongside Senators Lieberman (I, CT) and Graham (R, SC) today, shows that Senate leaders don't have much faith that the Kerry-Boxer bill will win the necessary 60 votes in the end. (Or, you could look at all this with rose-colored glasses, like the Boston Globe, which is reporting that "Sens Kerry, Graham, Lieberman join forces to rescue climate bill.")

This country has a lot to do to curb GHG emissions, and strong federal mandates for renewable generation and energy efficiency should form the core of any good bill. Waxman-Markey emerged from the committee process in the House so badly weakened that environmentalists were privately dismayed, and publicly almost ready to withdraw support. So its a major (major) disappointment that the Senate may end up pitching more of the Waxman-Markey framework overboard. (Kerry-Boxer was 90% based on Waxman-Markey.) Even more worrisome, according to the Post "Graham said that the bill should protect the climate, but also allow for more offshore drilling, an expansion of nuclear energy and an emphasis on 'clean coal' technology." And Lieberman confirmed that the three were committed to a "cap and trade" scheme, "but noted that the scheme had 'a lot of moving parts you could negotiate on.'"

The Huffington Post does not mince words, reporting the story as "Kerry, Graham, Lieberman Working on Weaker Climate Compromise," here.

Another One Bites the Dust!

Environmentalists chalked up another victory on Monday when investors scrapped plans for the Big Stone II coal plant in South Dakota. MDU Resources group announced that they were not going ahead with their plan for a 500-600 MW coal-fired power plant because they were unable to find an investor to replace the lead developer, which pulled out in September, citing the economy and uncertainty about the cost of climate legislation.

Evening News Roundup: Day Three of Senate EPW Climate Bill Hearings

The big news out of today's hearings seems to be Boxer's determination to press ahead with her plan to get the bill out of committee on November 3--this coming Tuesday. The objections, presaged in Republican questioning of Tuesday's cabinet-level panelists, as described here, are that the Congressional Budget Office has not done a full analysis, and neither has the EPA. Boxer apparently replied that neither of these pass the "smell test," since CBO analyses usually don't occur until after a bill is out of committee, and since Kerry-Boxer borrows so heavily from Waxman-Markey, the EPA analysis of the differences between the two bills was sufficient. Politico reports on this here, the Washington Post here, and Dow Jones here. In response, Reuters reports in this article, committee Republicans are dangling the possibility of boycotting next week's committee work sessions to prevent a vote from happening at all (since they don't have the votes to keep it in committee if they do meet.)

Meanwhile, this Greenwire article reports that Senator Specter (D, PA) is now officially pushing to get a Clean Air Act preemption clause in the bill, and that Senator Baucus (D, WY) has told reporters that he has not made up his mind on the bill. Senator Boxer can do without their votes in committee, but will need them later on in the process, as explained in this earlier post.

Morning News Roundup on Kerry-Boxer Bill: Day Three

This morning, Politico is describing the tough path ahead for the Senate climate bill, given the doubts expressed by Senator Baucus (D, WY), but also reports that Senator Boxer (D, CA) is determined to get the bill out of committee even without Baucus, given negotiations she conducted with Senator Carper (D, DE) "who played a major role in negotiating a deal with coal-state members and is expected to back the legislation." (It looks, given the grumvblings reported in the article, like Senator Boxer knew that she had to overshoot Waxman-Markey's 17% GHG reduction goal initially in order to hold firm on it in the end, because a lot of folks are taking aim at the 20% figure.)

ClimateWire is reporting that the generosity initially seen in Kerry-Boxer in allocating more allowances to pro-climate moves like sustainable transportation and energy efficiency (as an earlier post discusses here) may not really improve on the House bill, given required deficit-reduction measures, in "Reality Sets In; Senate Allocation Pie Smaller Than House Climate Bill's."

And NPR reports on the "Battle of [the] Statistics" at yesterday's hearings, in which Senator Boxer announced to the assembled Republicans "Since you held up a chart [on Tuesday] we're going to have our little chart wars today — you hold up one and we hold up one; it's kind of equal time." (Its nice to see Boxer tackling the naysayers head-on: On Tuesday, she responded to statistical pronouncements and descriptions of research papers that she felt were distorted immediately, prompting Republicans to complain that she might drag the proceedings into a tit for tat.) According to NPR, Boxer's tough tone didn't stop (fossil fuels) industry executives from trying to invoke scary job-loss numbers, however. The full article can be seen here.

Does Kerry-Boxer Improve on Waxman-Markey?

Plus, NGO reactions to the bill and hearings

The Chairman's Mark of the Kerry-Boxer climate bill is huge--923 pages. But the good news for those following the debate is that almost all of the material is derived from the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House last June, with a few changes. The most important differences between the Senate bill and Waxman-Markey are that the Senate bill:

• improves on the GHG emissions reduction goal, from 17% by 2020 to 20% by 2020
• places more emphasis on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), which is needed to attract support from coal states.
• specifically allocates allowances to transportation-sector improvements that will reduce GHG emissions.
• increases allowance allocations to utility-scale renewable energy projects
• specifically allocates allowances to energy efficiency programs, including a requirement that allowances going to the states be dedicated to the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) program implemented by State Energy Offices.
• sets floors and ceilings on the price of emissions permits.

Reactions are beginning to come in from the NGO community. Francis Beinecke, president of Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), posted her reaction on the NRDC website today, saying she was encouraged by the draft, but that she would still like to see the bioenergy loophole (which treats all use of biomass for fuel as carbon neutral, whether mature trees or crop waste) closed, and would like to see strengthened energy efficiency provisions. (Recall, the original version of Waxman-Markey contained a separate energy efficiency resource standard (EERS) alongside the renewable energy portfolio standard (REPS). Once Dingell (D, MI) and Boucher (D, VA) were done with it, the EERS was folded into the REPS, and made no separate requirements.) Her comments can be viewed here.

[Update: Defenders of Wildlife is choosing to wear rose-colored glasses, announcing that "Sens. Bingaman, Baucus, Whitehouse and Udall champion legislation," here. And EarthJustice makes a statement here.]

The Breakthrough Institute, which put together a spreadsheet of how allowances are distributed in both Kerry-Boxer and Waxman-Markey over the weekend, is unhappy that: "[l]ike its House sibling, the . . . Kerry-Boxer climate bill allocates the vast majority (64%) of the tens of billions annually in emissions allowances created by the bill's cap and trade program to shield energy consumers and industry from the impacts of carbon prices. Just 13% of the value of allowances . . . are invested in clean energy technologies." (The spreadsheet can be downloaded here, and a pie chart of the allowances here.)

ACEEE issued a report, timed to coincide with the start of committee hearings, urging that the place of energy efficiency be elevated in any bill to come out of the Senate.

Unfortunately, its not clear when any such amendments can be made. The bill will move quickly through EPW: Senator Boxer said this morning that she wants the bill to be out of the Environment and Public Works Committee by November 3. If Waxman-Markey is instructive, the bill will get watered down, not strengthened, as it goes through other committees in the Senate (although I would love to be corrected on this). And Senator Inhofe was intoning darkly this morning about what will happen when the bill gets to the floor.

Morning News Roundup on Kerry-Boxer Bill

This morning, several newspapers have unfurled their analyses of the newest version of the Kerry-Boxer climate bill, which was released in its "Chairman's Mark" form late Friday night. The bill is similar to Waxman-Markey in its awesome length (923 pages) and breadth. For now, though, now it has a lower overall reduction target (GHG emissions 20% below 2005 levels by 2020, as compared to 17% in Waxman-Markey), and seems to place a greater emphasis on shoring up the coal power industry through carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). As the New York Times describes it, the Kerry-Boxer bill

largely mirrors a House version of legislation that passed in June, with a few tweaks here and there. The similarities between the two bills leave lobbying interests largely in the same place they were in months ago[ with e]nvironmentalists . . . settling in to defend the new bill's stronger emissions reduction targets, . . . [and] many industries and interest groups . . . unsatisfied with their share of the proceeds.

Of course, the idea that environmentalists are simply settling in to defend the bill is a little misleading, since internally at least, the environmental community was quite disappointed in the final version of Waxman-Markey. (In their eyes, it started out a little weak, and got significantly weaker, and more compromised, as it went through the committee process.) What environmentalists would have liked to see was a much stronger version of the bill coming out of Boxer's committee, with reinvigorated renewable and energy efficiency targets, stronger protections for forests and natural resources in the scramble for biofuels, and less emphasis on trying to curb the negative effects of (what they see as) irredeemably dirty sources of energy, like coal. (Many in the environmental community have severe doubts that CCS will ever happen.)

The rest of the Times story can be read here. The Wall Street Journal, which notes that the oil industry, in particular, is unhappy with its share of the pie, posted an article here. The Washington Post's take can be found here.