ANYTHING FOR AN RES AND CAP&TRADE

Obama makes nuclear compromise to pass clean energy bill; Endorsement of nuclear revival suggests president is open to further compromises in order to pass climate change bill
Suzanne Goldenberg, 8 July 2009 (UK Guardian)
and
Cabinet Members Push Climate Bill on the Hill
Paul Kane, July 7, 2009 (Washington Post)
and
Obama Admin Urges Senate to Pass Energy, Climate Bill
Darren Sammuelsohn, July 7, 2009 (NY Times)

SUMMARY
It appears this is the choice: Pay off the Old Energies in order to get a "framework" for big New Energy incentives in place and in order to get a "someday" effective and "potentially" effective price on greenhouse gas emissions (GhGs). Or pay off the Old Energies and get nothing.

The Obama administration clearly chooses the former. Appearing before the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif), Secretary of Energy Steven Chu gave a full-throated, uncompromising endorsement to the backing of new nuclear energy initiatives.

Secretary Chu’s endorsement carries enormous weight because of his authority as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and the former Director of the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory. He said DOE is in the process of approving $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for 4 new nuclear facilities. No new nuclear plant has been built since before the Three Mile Island near disaster and the Chernobyl tragedy in the 1980s.

One of the Senators on the Committee mentioned he would be more supportive of nuclear energy if there were a solution for how to safely manage radioactive nuclear waste. The topic was not pursued.

The endorsement of federal spending for new nuclear plants may make it hard for conservative Democrats and more moderate Republicans to turn their backs on the controversial energy and climate bill now making its way through the Senate after winning passage by the House of Representatives in June. Because he cannot be accused of being unaware of the risks nuclear energy represents, Secretary Chu's backing of it must be seen to be an affirmation of how urgent it is to the Obama administration to get the energy and climate bill passed.

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The Energy Secretary said as much with his descriptions of summer Arctic polar ice cap losses (half in the last half-century), rapidly rising sea levels and an approaching tipping point after which it will be impossible to stop a 10-degrees Fahrenheit global average temperature increase.

Secretary Chu appeared before Senator Boxer’s Committee along with Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. None of the other Obama administration lieutenants objected to Chu’s endorsement of new nuclear plants.

Secretary Salazar gave the strongest pitch for New Energy, stressing the capacity of it to supply a significant portion of U.S. power if it gets adequate policy support and the necessary new transmission.

Secretary Vilsack talked about how the cap&trade portion of the energy and climate legislation could be of big economic benefit to farmers, ranchers and rural landowners when they learn how to earn offset credits for using soil sequestration methods to reduce GhGs.

The House energy and climate bill and the Senate’s version of it include historic breakthrough provisions including the first-ever U.S. Renewable Electricity Standard (RES), requiring regulated utilities to obtain 15% of their power from New Energy sources by 2020, and the first-ever U.S. cap&trade system, putting hard caps on U.S. emissions that would mandate a GhG reduction of 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% by 2050 and creating an emissions trading market to facilitate the reductions.

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Activist progressives have accused House Democratic leaders of having compromised effectiveness out of the legislation to get it passed. When asked if she endorsed the bill, EPA head Lisa Jackson urged the Subcommittee to give New Energy stronger backing so the U.S. would not be left at a disadvantage in the emerging international New Energy economy. She described the development of New Energy as the “space race” of this time.

In a later session of the Committee, Governor Haley Barbour (R-Miss), who some say is considering a 2012 Presidential bid, gave strong testimony against cap&trade. Not an overt climate change denier, he nevertheless opposes a trading system to cap GhGs because he feels it is a scheme that will be abused by the financially sophisticated at the expense of U.S. utility ratepayers.

Conservatives do not like cap&trade. (click to enlarge)

Chairwoman Boxer says she intends to finish work on the bill and submit to the rest of the Senate before the summer recess in August but there are reportedly few indications the Committee’s minority will cooperate.

Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri) complained, as many Republicans in both houses of Congress have, of the the legislation’s daunting (6,706 pages, Bond said) voluminousness. Committee Ranking Member Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) echoed the complaint. Chairwoman Boxer said she has always planned to accommodate Republican requests.

The public strongly supports an RES. (click to enlarge)

COMMENTARY
Secretary Chu’s endorsement adds impetus to the drive by the nuclear energy industry to regain a share of the building of new power generation in the U.S. because the Department of Energy (DOE) which Chu oversees is in charge of all U.S. nuclear matters, from weapons and waste to facility decommissioning.

The Obama administration faces the political dilemma of how to get its energy and climate legislation, which won House passage by essentially a single vote, through the Senate, where it must be backed by 60 of the 100 members in order to avoid blockage by a filibuster-weilding minority.

Though the addition of Senator Al Franken (D-Minn) gives Obama’s Democratic Party 60 votes, it is a tenuous, testy coalition that includes progressives and conservatives. Compromises in the bill that pleases those at one end of the spectrum is likely to alienate those at the other end.

Some environmental groups do not support the energy/climate bill (click to enlarge)

With this move to back a “nuclear renaissance,” the Obama administration appears to have chosen to move toward the wing of its party that might garner it some Republican support as well. Senator John McCain (R-Ariz), Obama’s opponent for President in last year’s election, is a nuclear energy advocate and has called for 100 new nuclear power plants by 2030, as has Republican Senate power broker Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn).

It is likely the endorsement of nuclear is tied to new reports from pollster Mark Mellman that the public is not responding positively to cap&trade and has even recoiled from the subject of “global warming.” Mellman's advice to Democrats is to focus on the goals of reducing dependency on foreign oil and creating new jobs and to stay away from “scientific” concepts like cutting carbon emissions.

In Committee testimony, Ms. Jackson called the energy and climate bill “a jobs bill.” Secretary Salazar said it is “about saving our children.”

Environmental groups tend not to be enthusiastic about nuclear energy either. (click to enlarge)

There is probably no strategy or language that will win over Senator Inhofe (R-Okla), probably the most adamant and irrational climate change denier in the Senate. He has repeatedly proclaimed that "the science isn't there" and once gave a speech calling the sophistiated computer modeling used by climate scientists "games."

The support for nuclear will find strong support (France) and strong opposition (Germany) among EU nations when the President goes to the crucial Copenhagen summit in December. Controversy may cool if the President's strategy pays off in the passage of his energy and climate legislation. With the U.S. on an equal footing with the other nations of the world in having a stated New Energy requirement and a cap&trade program, Mr. Obama would be in a strong position to push emerging economies like China, India and Brazil on cooperation at cutting GhGs.

Senate Democratic leaders hope to get a version of the energy and climate legislation through 6 other committees -- Agriculture; Commerce, Science and Transportation; Energy and Natural Resources; Finance; and Foreign Relations – and to the Senate floor for a vote by mid-September.

The RES that made it through the House is not this strong and if one gets through the Senate it may be weaker. But it can still accomplish these goals. (click to enlarge

QUOTES
- Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy: "I think nuclear power is going to be a very important factor in getting us to a low carbon future…Quite frankly, we want to recapture the lead on industrial nuclear power. We have lost that lead as we have lost the lead in many energy technologies and we want to get it back."
- Lisa Jackson, head, EPA: ""That is what the president wants, that's what I want…I believe many senators want the same thing. Please consider the Environmental Protection Agency a partner in this effort to get America running on clean energy. And please, please keep up the momentum…It sends the right signal and you all in the Senate have work to do…Clean energy is to this decade and the next what the space race was to the 1950s and 60s and America is behind…Governments in Asia and Europe are ahead of the United States in making aggressive investments in clean energy technology."

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- Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla), Ranking Member, Senate Environment & Public Works Committee: "[The Senate energy and climate change legislation is a way of] subsidizing the East and West Coasts at the expense of the heartland."
- Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.): "As we [double the number of U.S. nuclear plants] we could begin to close dirty coal plants…Why are we ignoring the cheap energy solution to global warming, which is nuclear power?"
- Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri): "What needles are the majority trying to hide in the haystack?"
- Governor Haley Barbour (R-Miss), describing a recent discussion about cap&trade at a bipartisan gathering of Southern business leaders: "There was little dissent about who would bear the cost . . . the consumer…Many Americans worry it will end up being an Enron-style manipulation scheme."
- Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy: "Denial of the climate change problem will not change our destiny…A comprehensive energy and climate bill that caps and then reduces carbon emissions will…America has the opportunity to lead a new industrial revolution of creating sustainable, clean energy. We can sit on the sidelines and deny the scientific facts, or we can get in the game and play to win."