"Climate Bill Set Aside, What's Next for U.S. Energy Policy"
Breakthrough's Energy and Climate Director, Jesse Jenkins, appeared today on 88.9 KCRW Santa Monica and Public Radio International's nationally-syndicated show "To the Point" to discuss the recent withdrawal by Sen Harry Reid (D-NV) of a compromised Energy bill based on...
Breakthrough's Energy and Climate Director, Jesse Jenkins, appeared today on 88.9 KCRW Santa Monica and Public Radio International's nationally-syndicated show "To the Point" to discuss the recent withdrawal by Sen Harry Reid (D-NV) of a compromised Energy bill based on largely on a framework of Cap and Trade.
After more than $100 million in lobbying by green groups and allied industry players, and the bill's eventual watering down to a "utility-only" cap, Majority Leader Reid confessed that there was still no way he or the party would be able to muster the sixty votes necessary for the beleaguered legislation to pass.
This is the fourth time in seven years that this cap and trade strategy has been shot down. This time, with the Democrats just one seat shy of a super-majority and with the White House occupied by a president who came to office promising to make climate change a top priority, perhaps the latest episode in the serial failure of cap and trade indicates that it is time to bury the failed policy and develop an entirely new strategy -- one capable of overcoming the political obstacles that doomed cap and trade while successfully making clean energy cheap enough to sustainable power an energy-hungry planet.
You can listen to the roughly eight-minute discussion below. Just hit play and skip to 45-minute mark for the segment.
There have been arguments that Cap & Trade is, in principle, a poor means of limiting carbon dioxide from fossil sources going straight into the atmosphere. Indeed, much of the purpose seems to be providing a "guarantee" that large amounts of coal will remain the principal fuel for electric generation for decades to come (not that we'll be likely to be able to do much about that in the short term anyway -- EXCEPT via CCS with Algae, or Vinod Khosla's new CCS cement process). Indeed, although Jim Rogers of Duke Energy has been exceptionally cooperative and supportive of the Kerry/Lieberman proposals, he specifically says in his open letter to Harry Reid that without it, there will be few "new" coal technology (and new nuclear) plants in their future.
To me, the irksome part of Cap & Trade is that the assumption that the existing big "polluters" will be "granted" permits, like they are rewards for making a mess in the past, rather than SOLD at auction initially (with a government-set floor price [although that will doubtless be obscenely too low anyway because of industry lobbying]). The "and Trade" part also suggests profits for brokerages who are brokering such trades, but again it is ill advised to allow Wall Street to turn this into another "derivatives market" in which only those who already hold "cap" permits will be likely to be able to afford to trade in any case, and therefore will argue that there is "no reason" to make this information public. It should, instead be forced into the open, with a mechanism that requires government regulatory approval of trades and generates government revenues (an excise tax) equal to, or greater than the value of the permit itself. Indeed, although I too am frustrated with the delays and lack of accomplishments in this area, I definitely think that some additional thought needs to be put into the fundamentals as well as the "teeth" this legislation and the administration of it should have.
Sincerely,
There have been arguments that Cap & Trade is, in principle, a poor means of limiting carbon dioxide from fossil sources going straight into the atmosphere. Indeed, much of the purpose seems to be providing a "guarantee" that large amounts of coal will remain the principal fuel for electric generation for decades to come (not that we'll be likely to be able to do much about that in the short term anyway -- EXCEPT via CCS with Algae, or Vinod Khosla's new CCS cement process). Indeed, although Jim Rogers of Duke Energy has been exceptionally cooperative and supportive of the Kerry/Lieberman proposals, he specifically says in his open letter to Harry Reid that without it, there will be few "new" coal technology (and new nuclear) plants in their future.
To me, the irksome part of Cap & Trade is that the assumption that the existing big "polluters" will be "granted" permits, like they are rewards for making a mess in the past, rather than SOLD at auction initially (with a government-set floor price [although that will doubtless be obscenely too low anyway because of industry lobbying]). The "and Trade" part also suggests profits for brokerages who are brokering such trades, but again it is ill advised to allow Wall Street to turn this into another "derivatives market" in which only those who already hold "cap" permits will be likely to be able to afford to trade in any case, and therefore will argue that there is "no reason" to make this information public. It should, instead be forced into the open, with a mechanism that requires government regulatory approval of trades and generates government revenues (an excise tax) equal to, or greater than the value of the permit itself. Indeed, although I too am frustrated with the delays and lack of accomplishments in this area, I definitely think that some additional thought needs to be put into the fundamentals as well as the "teeth" this legislation and the administration of it should have.
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
Posted by: Stafford Williamson at July 26, 2010 1:30 PMhttp://lifestyle.psyrk.us
http://daochienergy.com