Grading a Climate Bill: 8 Ways ACES Must Be Strengthened

In Part 1, I described four tests that I believe will determine whether a climate bill approved by Congress this year should be judged a success. The bottom line is that the Senate must adopt legislation that is considerably stronger than the Waxman-Markey bill approved by the House.

Here are eight key ways the climate bill that eventually reaches the president's desk should be stronger than the one that came from the House.

I will not try to analyze Waxman-Markey’s pluses and minuses in detail. Others already have done that very well, including David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council in a 40-page critique that he delivered to the Senate on July 2, and the Citizen’s Guide to Climate Policy by Lois Parshley and Ben Wessel. The Guide explains the House's American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill about as clearly as one can; its recommendations for a final climate bill come much closer to meeting the four tests.

Require Deeper, Faster Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The United States’ goal should be at least as strong as the European Union’s – a 20 percent reduction by 2020. Twenty-five percent would be better. That’s compared to 1990, not 2005.

Institute a More Aggressive Renewable Electricity Standard

The standard should be at least 25 percent renewable power by 2025, large enough to encourage sustained and robust capital investment in solar, wind and other genuinely clean energy technologies.

Members of Congress who consider 25x25 to be unachievable should take a lesson from states like Colorado and Texas, which established their own renewable energy standards and quickly found they were met much faster than anticipated. Once it saw how rapidly wind and solar power took hold in its economy, Colorado doubled its standard.

Consider Full Life-Cycle Costs of all Energy Choices

A critical issue being debated both on the Hill and in the White House is how to define “clean”, or more specifically whether nuclear generation and one of the most mythical of fuels, clean coal, should be considered low-carbon technologies.

Climate legislation—and policy makers in general—must consider impacts of our energy choices on the basis of full life-cycle performance in regard to carbon emissions, as well as water consumption, public health, ecosystems and ecosystem services, environmental burdens we will leave our children, economic stability and national security. By that standard, neither nuclear power nor that most mythical of energy technologies—“clean coal”—is clean.

Retain EPA’s Authority to Regulate Greenhouse Gases

As Hawkins points out, it makes sense to suspend EPA’s authority to regulate emissions from some sources that the Clean Air Act is not well suited to deal with. But most of EPA’s regulatory authority should remain intact so we fight emissions with more than one weapon.

It is perverse public policy to tell the nation’s principal environmental watchdog it can’t do anything about pollutants that have been officially declared a threat to public health and welfare. At minimum, EPA’s authority over big carbon polluters should be preserved as a fail-safe tool in case the cap-and-trade system approved by Congress doesn’t work as well or quickly as expected.

Empower States, Cities and Corporations to Innovate

We should cap carbon emissions, not innovation and leadership. It would be possible but wrong to establish a cap-and-trade system that allows other polluters to emit more greenhouse gases if companies, states or cities emit less. Nor should Congress make it generally illegal for states to exceed federal standards for efficiency, renewables and carbon-cutting.

Congress should ensure that cities and companies have the authority and resources to find new ways to reduce emissions below what the law requires.

Move Emissions Trading Upstream