A U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee panel held a June 19 hearing on five federal global warming bills to help decide which parts of the measures to cherry pick. The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality plans to incorporate selected provisions into climate change legislation it plans to develop over the next few months. This week’s hearing was the first of several the panel plans to hold in the next two months. Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said members of the subcommittee need to build on the existing greenhouse gas reduction legislation, all of which have a carbon cap-and-trade program at the core. “I have no illusions about the amount of effort it will take to build a coalition to pass responsible legislation, but pass it we must,” he said. Democratic lawmakers continued to warn that the cost of inaction on the global warming front was far too high for consumers, the economy, and environment. Republican committee members repeated their assertions that reducing emissions under the Lieberman-Warner climate change legislation, in particular, would hurt consumers and the economy. The bill by Senators Joe Lieberman ((I-CT) and John Warner (R-VA) failed to advance two weeks ago due to a shortage of votes to end a filibuster. Many stakeholders continued to insist that their industry--be it nuclear, coal or renewable energy--offered a path to a less carbon intense future subsidies. A new nuclear power plant costs $6 billion to $7 billion, according Frank Bowman, Nuclear Energy Institute president. Other witnesses included representatives from the electric, auto worker, fertilizer, and environmental sectors, as well as evangelicals. Conservative lawmakers generally promote nuclear power, and “clean” coal. Legislation to advance carbon capture and sequestration was introduced to direct funding to the coal industry to ensure its future. The fate of the measure, The Carbon Capture and Deployment Act, is less than certain given that the Department of Energy recently gave up on its $1 billion “clean” coal project, known as FutureGen, because of high costs and technical hurdles. Many agreed that new nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration--if successfully built--will not be on line for at least two decades. “We need to move as fast as possible,” said Thomas Kuhn, Edison Electric Institute president. “Early reductions will come from energy efficiency and renewable technologies,” he noted Editors’ note: For more details, please see our sister publication www.energymeetsclimate.com.
