WASHINGTON, DC, May 30, 2008 (ENS) – Congress will consider climate change legislation in a variety of forms next week when legislators return to Washington. Both House and Senate have bills to work with and changes to measures previously introduced.

A measure that would reduce greenhouse gases according to scientific targets and reinvest any revenue to create American jobs and fund research and development was given its first public airing on Wednesday by Congressman Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

At a speech at the Center for American Progress, Markey, who chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, and is a senior member of the Energy and Commerce and Natural Resources committees, laid out his science and consumer-based vision for climate legislation.

“I am here today because the chorus for change is deafening. The time for action is now,” said Markey. “We must cap pollution, we must invest in consumers, jobs and the technology of tomorrow, and America must lead the world in solving our greatest challenges, and we must start now.”

The bill is called the Investing in Climate Action and Protection Act, or iCAP for short, the small “i” a tip of the cap to the technological potential of clean energy, Markey explained. The bill will be introduced next week when Congress is back in session.

The legislation offers what Markey calls “a new paradigm in global warming legislation – the Cap-and-Invest system.”

The coal-fired Pleasant power plant in
coal-rich West Virginia is operated
by Reliant Energy. (Photo by
Stefan Schlöhmer)

The bill caps pollution at 85 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. It then establishes an auction system that sets a price on carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions, and allows companies to compete for reductions, or buy or trade credits within the system.

The measure takes $8 trillion in revenues that Markey expects polluters will pay to emit greenhouse gases over the length of the bill, and reinvests that money back to American families and workers and into promoting a clean energy economy.

More than half of the funds generated by the cap and invest system would go back to low and middle income American families to offset any increases in energy their costs as the economy transitions to low or zero-carbon energy sources, Markey explained..

iCAP invests in green collar job training for workers in a clean energy economy, mass transit and smart growth, energy efficiency programs, adaptation measures here in and around the world.

“We must invest in the American economy and in American workers, and launch an energy technology renaissance that will rival the information technology revolution of the past decade,” said Markey. “We all benefited from the Industrial Age, and we have watched the dawn of the Information Age. Today, let’s start the Clean Energy Age.”

In the Senate, a greenhouse gas emissions cap and trade bill by John Warner, a Virginia Republican and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Independent, will be debated on Monday.

It has been revised by the addition of an amendment by Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The Boxer Substitute Amendment to the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act allows a declining amount of greenhouse gas emissions between 2012 and 2050, reducing them by about two percent per year from 2005 levels.

The amendment would reduce emissions from covered facilities 19 percent below current levels by 2020, and 71 percent by 2050. It is estimated to reduce total U.S. emissions from all sources, capped and non-capped by up to 66 percent by 2050.

The amendment sets aside a nearly $800 billion tax relief fund through 2050, which will help consumers in need of assistance related to energy costs.

The National Association of Clean Air Agencies, representing air pollution control agencies in 53 states and territories and over 165 metropolitan areas, endorsed the amendment in a letter to Boxer on Thursday because it preserves the rights of states and localities to develop standards, limitations, prohibitions, requirements or caps beyond the federal program.

“Retaining the ability of states and localities to serve as laboratories of innovation, as well as to take whatever steps they deem necessary to best protect human health and welfare in their respective jurisdictions, is imperative,” wrote association co-presidents Andrew Ginsburg and Ursula Kramer in their letter.

The ability of California to regulate its own greenhouse gas emissions and those of 17 other states under the Clean Air Act has been blocked this year by the refusal of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to waive weaker federal standards.

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WASHINGTON, DC, April 9, 2008 (ENS) – Gasoline prices could top $4 a gallon this summer, with prices expected to average $3.54 over the summer months, and a peak, monthly average of more than $3.60 in June, predicts a new report by the federal Energy Information Administration, EIA, issued Tuesday.

The EIA numbers for diesel are even higher, with a predicted average of $3.90 during March and April, and a summer average of $3.73, an increase of 88 cents over the 2007 summer average.

At these prices, the average cost to fill up a 300-gallon tank in a typical long-haul tractor trailer would reach $1,170.

“This forecast tells American families they shouldn’t expect relief from skyrocketing prices this summer,” said Congressman Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

“The prospect of $4 gas is the result of the Bush administration’s policy of tax breaks for Big Oil and tough breaks for American families,” he said.

General David Petraeus testifying before
the House Armed Services
Committee (Photo courtesy
U.S. Army)

America’s top military commander in Iraq told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today that an early pullout by American troops could disrupt the flow of oil from Iraq.

General David Petraeus told the House Armed Services Committee that might push today’s record U.S. gasoline prices even higher.

On March 31, the national average for a gallon of gas hit a new all-time record of $3.28 per gallon, according to a survey done by the American Automobile Association.

The EIA reports that high gasoline prices are motivating drivers to conserve by driving less and purchasing more fuel-efficient transportation. Consumer sensitivity to gasoline price changes increases during periods when retail prices exceed $2.50 per gallon, the agency says.

High gasoline prices and a slowing economy, which have reduced gasoline demand in recent months, are also projected to impact demand during the 2008 summer driving season, according to the EIA.

U.S. consumption of liquid fuels and other petroleum is expected to decline in 2008 by about 85,000 barrels per day as a result of the economic slowdown and high petroleum prices, the EIA said. “After accounting for increased ethanol use, U.S. petroleum consumption is projected to fall by 210,000 barrels per day in 2008.

As part of a three-point plan to alleviate the strain on consumers and move America towards renewable alternatives to oil, Markey called on the Bush administration to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve at the rate of 70,000 barrels per day to send a signal to oil speculators.

He also called on the oil companies to increase their investments in renewable alternatives to oil and to drop their defense of billions in tax breaks.

Pumping gas is projected to be more costly
than ever this summer.
(Photo credit unknown)

“While the financial commitment that American families are being forced to make to drive their cars and heat their homes keeps rising every month, Big Oil’s only commitment seems to be to opposing the renewable energy investment package that would provide American consumers with relief,” said Markey.

Last week, Chairman Markey and the Select Committee held a hearing with top executives from the world’s five largest oil companies, which brought in over $123 billion in profits last year and spent more than $50 billion on schemes to prop up their stock prices.

At the April 1 hearing, Markey called on the companies to invest 10 percent of their profits into renewable energy alternatives to oil, noting that the bottom 20 percent of wage earning families in America are now spending 10 percent of their income on gasoline due to the current high prices.

The five largest oil companies spent only about one percent of their profits on alternatives last year, with ExxonMobil making more than $40 billion in profits, while spending just $10 million on research into alternatives to oil.

The companies are currently defending $18 billion in tax breaks that they receive but that Congress is trying to shift towards renewable energy.

J. Stephen Simon, senior vice president of Exxon Mobil told the Select Committee that currently the energy industry pays record levels of taxes.

“While our worldwide profits have grown,” he said, “our worldwide income taxes have grown even more. From 2003 to 2007, our earnings grew by 89 percent, but our income taxes grew by 170 percent.”

“Over the last five years, ExxonMobil’s U.S. total tax bill exceeded our U.S. earnings by $19 billion,” Simon said.

“Over the next five years, ExxonMobil plans to invest at least $125 billion,” he said. “We depend on high earnings during the up cycle to sustain this level of investment over the long-term, including the down cycles.”

The four other oil executives gave similar testimony, speaking of high investments, long investment cycles and high tax rates.

Chairman Markey was not persuaded. He said, “Oil companies like Exxon have consumers over a barrel and refuse to invest money in solutions that will reduce prices, help our economy and protect our planet.”

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WASHINGTON, DC, March 12, 2008 (ENS) – Two powerful House Democrats Tuesday introduced legislation that would require new coal-fired electric generating plants to use state-of-the-art control technology to capture and sequester emissions of carbon dioxide, CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change.

Congressman Henry Waxman of California, who chairs the House Government Oversight Committee and Congressman Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who chairs the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, introduced the bill known as the Moratorium on Uncontrolled Power Plants Act of 2008.

The lawmakers said in a joint statement that “comprehensive economy-wide regulation to address global warming” will soon be introduced, but new coal-fired power plants are being built today, without controls on CO2 emissions.

The moratorium proposed in the bill would extend until a comprehensive federal regulatory program for global warming pollution is in place.[img=/UPLOADS/blog/.ecommunity_news/blogpost_data/08_03_10/20080312_091_powerohio.jpg]Cinergy’s Zimmer coal-fired power plant in
Ohio was built in 1991. (Photo by
Stefan Schlöhmer)[/url]

“The alternative is senseless,” said Waxman, “locking in decades of additional global warming emissions and requiring greater emissions reductions across the U.S. economy to compensate.”

“If we lose control of coal, we will have lost control of the climate,” said Markey. “This bill will make companies prepare for the future and prevent them from building low-tech coal-fired power plants before a global warming bill is passed that will necessitate the use of the newest, most climate-friendly technology.”

Without emissions controls, a new coal-fired power plant will emit hundreds of millions of tons of global warming pollution over its 50 year lifetime, the lawmakers said. Over 100 new plants have been proposed, and even if just a portion of these are built, they will emit over a 100 million tons of carbon dioxide a year.

One of these plants alone could offset the reductions that will be achieved through the Northeastern states’ Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, said the legislators, referring to a cooperative effort by nine Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states to design a regional cap-and-trade program covering carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in the region. Groups of states in other regions are engaged in similar initiatives.

The bill places a moratorium on either the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency or states issuing permits to new coal-fired power plants without state-of-the-art control technology to capture and permanently sequester the plant’s carbon dioxide emissions.

The bill also bars a new coal-fired power plant without state-of-the-art control technology from receiving any free or reduced cost emissions allowances under a future federal program to address global warming.

“It’s important for ratepayers and regulators to understand the financial risks if their power company wants to build a new uncontrolled coal-fired power plant,” said Waxman. “Those plants will be a lot more expensive to operate when global warming pollution is regulated. Ratepayers need to make sure they won’t be stuck with the bill.”

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