DC Hill climate update, pre-Inauguration edition--1/16

With Congress gearing up for an exciting couple weeks, we've seen a lot of action on the Hill lately. Our friends and allies are working hard as well, pulling all-nighters drafting stimulus language, creating a unified call for bold action in the press, and pushing our newly-elected leaders to act on their mandate for change. We're all very excited, but as this list demonstrates, there is still much work to be done.

Greening the Stimulus (aka "Recovery")

In the last 4 weeks or so, recommendations on stimulus sizes have gone from $200-$400 billion, to upwards of $900 billion (ala Robert Reich). Initial "green stimulus/recovery" proposals began at $100 billion over 2 years, and are now being tripled, and even quadrupled. 1Sky's recommendation seeks to maximize the green portion of the stimulus (>$200bil) in a way that benefits low -and middle-income communities and avoids false economic solutions (e.g., no new roads or fossil fuel infrastructure).

Meanwhile, on Thursday, January 15, the House released a draft bill--here are PDFs of the summary and bill text. We'll be sharing our analysis of this piece shortly.

Waxman, Markey, and the next big climate bill

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) has vowed to move climate legislation out of his committee by Memorial Day (May 25th). For some context, the Lieberman/Warner bill came out of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in early December of 2007. The draft bill was complete almost 2 months earlier, and a floor vote was held 6 months after the bill left committee (with a complete substitute amendment coming out 5 months later).

Rep. Ed Markey's iCAP bill is poised to be the blueprint for action (i.e. the best bill we've ever had). His Subcommittee on Energy and Environment will have jurisdiction over the first draft that goes before Committee, which has led most offices to believe that the iCAP will act as a general framework . As Markey has said:

I am committed to moving a bill as quickly as possible, because the urgency of the problem demands swift action.

However, in terms of bold broad policy with (reasonably) broad political support, the main discussion points will come from the Waxman-Markey-Inslee principles for a strong climate bill, endorsed by 152 members.

Obama Appointments

A number of President-elect Obama's Cabinet picks went through their confirmation hearings this week. Some highlights:

• Secretary of Energy-designate Dr. Steven Chu said he opposes a hard moratorium for nukes and coal plants. He thinks that efficiency and renewables are more viable, but he doesn't want to take dirtier/more expensive options "off the table."
  
  
• Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry each talk about climate as a key piece of international diplomacy.

Congressional hearings of note

U.S. Climate Action Partnership’s (USCAP) cap and trade proposal: This coalition of high-emissions businesses (i.e. Duke Energy, Xerox, AIG, and others), Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund came out with a weak proposal for cap and trade legislation on Thursday. Waxman hosted a hearing for them on Thursday.

On the Plus side:

• Businesses support a cap on carbon;
  
  
• Businesses support cutting carbon 80% by 2050;
  
  
• Businesses and enviros are working together.

Unfortunately:

1Sky and Obama have called for 100% auction, but the blueprint included polluter loopholes (40% of the permits will be given away for free, for example, to local distribution companies like natural gas – it says the benefits will be passed to consumers via the distribution companies);

• The short term targets were poor (14-20% cuts below current levels; 1Sky/IPCC benchmarks call for 35% cuts);
  
  
• The blueprint allows more dirty coal plants to be built for the next four years, and calls for money to be pumped into coal research that could be spent on energy efficiency and renewables;
  
  
• The plan was criticized by 1Sky and almost all the environmental groups who are not members of USCAP (see for example Friends of the Earth).

See our press release with our reaction to USCAP's proposal. And here's some coverage of 1Sky and other critics' reaction in the Wall Street Journal. House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans, namely Joe Barton (TX) and John Shimkus (OH), were not supportive:

"There's not one CEO here today whose stock price is even close to what it was a year ago," Barton said. "We're in a very serious economic recession, and you cannot tell me that if we adopt one of their principles of a mandatory cap-and-trade program on CO2 emissions for our economy that it's going to help their stock prices."

Founder of Green for All and 1Sky board member Van Jones testified before the Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence on greening the economic stimulus package and establishing a Clean Energy Corps. Here's some video of the hearing:

For more information about the Clean Energy Corps check out this Green for All white paper.

Finally, check out this quote from a press release yesterday:

Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said, "President-elect Obama's goal of reducing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 falls short of the response needed by world leaders to meet the challenge of reducing emissions to levels that will actually spare us the worst effects of climate change."

Please share with us your thoughts about this week's climate policy happenings in the comments below.