LEGISLATION: 3 key senators offer their version of a 'framework' for a climate law

Christa Marshall, E&E reporter

A bipartisan trio of Senate leaders released a new framework yesterday for a climate bill that raises as many questions as it provides answers.

In their blueprint sent to President Obama, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) backed an emissions cut "in the range of" 17 percent by 2020 for the first time together publicly. That number matches legislation passed in the House and supported by Obama as he heads to Copenhagen next week for negotiations on a post-2012 international climate pact.

"We hope as we release this framework today ... that we send a message to the delegates in Copenhagen that the movement for climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate is alive and well and moving forward," said Lieberman at a press conference on Capitol Hill with Kerry and Graham. He pledged that a bill would pass "in this session of Congress."

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement that the senators took "another significant step" and that the president looks forward to "signing comprehensive energy climate legislation as soon as possible."

Yet the four-page document left out many details about the exact structure of a climate regime and the amount of money to be spent on nuclear power, coal technology, offshore drilling and other measures. Instead, it provides broad statements in 11 topic areas such as "successful climate legislation will not send existing jobs overseas" and "our legislation will provide funding to train the next generation of nuclear workers."

Pressed, for example, on whether he supports a "hard" collar on carbon prices that would set definitive low and high ceilings, Graham said "wait and see." A Senate bill passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee did not include such a provision, which is backed by many energy-intensive manufacturers and coal-dependent companies.

High on vision, low on details

"In our view, a hard collar is an essential prerequisite to transparent and predictable cost containment," said Scott Segal, a lobbyist for utilities and energy companies.

Similarly, Lieberman did not say definitively whether an ultimate bill would endorse carbon tariffs on goods imported from nations with less stringent climate policies.

The reason the framework was not more specific is that the three men wanted to "honor the process" in the Senate and let committees with jurisdiction over a climate and energy package first provide their input, Kerry said.

He said that Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) intends to hold hearings in January on climate legislation. The heads of other committees with jurisdiction over a climate bill, including Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), also have stated their intent to hold hearings in the new year.

The negotiating timeline gives leaders an opportunity to "to pull this language together in January or February," Kerry said. The importance of yesterday's developments is that "we have a grouping of steps that has never appeared before in a framework or otherwise as a full group," he added.

There are existing pieces of legislation, such as recently released legislative text by Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) on agriculture, that provide the various parts for an ultimate comprehensive package, noted Tim Profeta, a former Lieberman aide who heads Duke University's Nicholas *Institute* for Environmental Policy Solutions.

The three senators also emphasized that their plan combines the work of separate energy bills passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The Environment and Public Works version focused specifically on climate change, while the Energy and Natural Resources measure did not.

60 votes still seems elusive

"Those few senators still advocating an energy-only bill are wasting their time," said Joe Romm, a senior fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund.

But if comments from several moderate Democrats yesterday are an indication, the trio has a long way to go in getting 60 votes behind a global warming package to block a filibuster. Lieberman acknowledged as such when he said there are not yet 60 votes behind any plan, although many are "in play."

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a potential swing vote on the issue, said yesterday that the emissions target for 2020 needs to be moved to 14 percent, a number backed by segments of the coal industry. Emphasizing the dominance of other issues on the congressional calendar, he said he had not heard about the idea of capping emissions only at power plants, an idea under consideration by some senators as an alternative to an economywide approach.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said "no" and shook his head when asked whether the new Kerry-Graham-Lieberman proposal moved the Senate closer to 60 votes.

Adding to the mix is a bipartisan bill  being released today from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) that offers a variation of the cap-and-dividend concept, which the lawmakers term "cap and refund."

Their plan would funnel most of the revenue -- with up to $1,100 per year going to a family of four -- raised from the auctioning of "carbon shares" to fuel producers back to consumers. Unlike the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman plan, it would cut emissions 20 percent by 2020.

Needed: more Republicans

Asked about Collins and Cantwell, Graham said to reporters that "we don't own the market" on how to price carbon.

"If she could find a better way to do it, go for it," Graham added, saying he has not worked with Collins or Cantwell.

In the months ahead, Democratic leaders will have to meld a complicated variety of concepts, emission targets and suggestions on how to reach Obama's stated goal to reduce the output of heat-trapping gases some 80 percent below 2005 levels.

In the process, negotiators will have to figure out how to bring Republicans on board through sweeteners for industry without driving environmentalists and the left flank of the Democratic party away from the table.

Profeta said that the earliest that senators could get a plan to the floor would be "early" next year under the most aggressive assumptions. That raises the prospect of conferees between the Senate and House meeting through the summer to hash out differences in what could be a highly contentious midterm election year.

Currently, many environmental groups are expressing support for the bipartisan efforts, but some concerns are bubbling to the surface in the process. Yesterday, the executive director of the Sierra Club, Carl Pope, praised Kerry, Graham and Lieberman even as he said money would be better spent on "cleaner, safer alternatives" than coal, nuclear and offshore drilling.

"We must protect our treasured coasts from oil drilling, stop new investments in conventional coal plants and require existing coal plants to meet modern pollution standards, and not squander all-too-scarce federal dollars on expensive nuclear power plants that will set us back in the race to solve global warming," said Environment America in a statement.