Politico is reporting that senators from both sides of the aisle wrapped up their energy-and-climate-legislation powwow today with President Obama, who apparently reiterated his desire for a price on carbon and told everyone present to "aim high." With an energy and climate bill already out of the House, this places the burden squarely on Harry Reid and the Democrats to come up with legislation that can pass the Senate before the end of the congressional session. To that end, here are the various bills Reid will be drawing on to construct the package:
- The American Power Act (Formerly the Clean Energy Jobs Act). This bill was crafted by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Joe Lieberman, as well as Sen. Lindsey Graham, who, as we all know, has since pulled back his support. The bill would institute cap-and-trade across all carbon-emitting portions of the economy, initially giving most carbon permits away but then transitioning to an auction system. But it contains a large number of offsets -- basically bonus permits given to anyone who can demonstrate carbon-dioxide-reducing technology -- which critics fear could undermine the goal of the carbon cap. In an overview of the bill, Climate Solutions declared it "much less than we need and much more than we currently have."
- The CLEAR Act drafted by Sens. Maria Cantwell and Susan Collins. Like the APA, this bill would institute a cap-and-trade system. But unlike the APA, it would auction off all permits from the get-go and return that revenue to taxpayers and would not include nearly as many offsets. Those differences, along with the fact that it's a compact 50 pages, have won the CLEAR Act some support among environmental activists. But Grist's David Roberts, riffing off this assessment from the Sightline Institute, has argued that the bill's brevity betrays a lack of detail and regulatory precision.
If an economy-wide cap-and-trade system proves too controversial, the possibility of a more limited system that only affects utilities has been floated as a fallback. But, should cap-and-trade be abandoned entirely, the Senate would most likely substitute a grab bag of new subsidies and regulations meant to improve energy efficiency and green technology throughout the economy. (The preferred outcome would be for the Senate to do what the House did and pass a bill that combines both approaches.) Here are the three "energy only" bills in the Senate:
- The American Clean Energy Leadership Act, which emerged from a committee chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, has clean energy requirements so anemic that they're less than what we'd get from no legislation at all. On top of that, its efficiency provisions would also save far less energy over the next two decades than equivalent provisions in the House bill.
- Sen. Richard Lugar's Practical Energy and Climate Plan boasts some pretty tough requirements when it comes to things like fuel-economy standards and more energy-efficient building codes. But it also suffers from a lot of the same weaknesses as the Bingaman bill, so it's not clear this option would be much of an improvement on the status quo either.
- Finally there's the plan Sen. Jeff Merkley recently released, so far dubbed "America Over a Barrel." While it hits the same major areas as the other two bills -- electric cars, fuel-economy, building codes, etc. -- this plan does so without the same lackadaisical efficiency standards, making it by far the most promising of the "energy only" options. David Roberts has the goods here. Of course, being the best of the options, this plan is also the most neglected by the Senate's movers and shakers -- for the moment, Merkley seems to be the only person pushing it.
-- Jeff Spross
