America versus Canada might conjure up images of hockey. However, the Brookings Institution put out a new study that looks not at hockey but perceptions of climate change. The findings show that there are some key similarities and differences between the two countries’ citizens.

The report, released earlier this month, summarizes the results of polls taken in both countries. Overall, results shows Canadians are more accepting of the science of climate change than Americans by a long shot.

The Results
Eighty percent of Canadians accept that the globe is warming while only 58 percent of Americans do. Conversely, the percent of Americans who don’t believe the globe is warming is nearly double that of Canadians.

In both countries, political affiliation plays a role in determining views on climate change. Conservatives were much less likely to accept the reality of a warming world. However, the differences are much more dramatic in the U.S. with Republicans significantly less likely to think climate change is occurring.

What’s interesting, though, is how liberals in each country compare. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats in the U.S. are on board with climate science. But in contrast, around 90 percent of the members of Canada’s four more liberal parties* are. U.S. Democrats are actually more on par with Canada’s Conservatives, 64 percent of whom accept the reality of climate change.

Which of these groups is closest to the people who know the most about climate change i.e. climate scientists? It turns out liberal Canadians. A 2010 report showed that 98 percent of climate scientists accept the evidence that humans are causing climate change.

So how do 42 percent of Americans manage to justify such a high level of disagreement with the experts? By believing scientists are overstating the case of climate change of course. Currently, about half of the American public believes scientists are masters of embellishment. In comparison, only about a third of Canadians subscribe to this view.

All of this leads to some perhaps unsurprising answers on how much each group of citizens is willing to spend to mitigate climate change. Nearly 60 percent of Canadians were willing to pay up to $50 a month for cap and trade while only 18 percent of Americans were.

So What?
The survey is the first of its kind to do a cross-country comparison between the US and Canada. It reveals some pretty stark differences when it comes to accepting that climate change is happening. What might the cause for difference?

I spoke with a colleague who is a citizen in both countries. Her take? The difference in media between each country is a major factor. In the US, opinion often passes as fact, particularly in the case of Fox News. In contrast, Canada recently decided not to let Fox News set up shop in part because in Canada there are pretty stringent laws about actually telling the truth if you’re a news channel. Surprisingly, Fox didn’t pass this litmus test.

Unfortunately for the U.S., that means Americans are exposed to a lot more opinion about climate change than their Canadian counterparts. The result of this is clear in the poll results.

The other big difference between the two countries is the role of special interest money. The influence of the billionaire Koch brothers in proliferating climate denial in the US has been well documented. They’ve recently set up shop in Canada, too, but they’re far behind the curve in comparison to the work they’ve done in the US.

This isn’t to say that Canada is a bastion of progressive climate change action. Tar sands are being extracted at ever-increasing rates. Canada also owns the dismal title of biggest emitter per capita.

And despite having an informed and willing citizenry, Canada shares an unfortunate similarity with the U.S.: a lack of political effort to address climate change. The Canadian Senate killed a climate bill last year under very contentious circumstances. Perhaps they were following the lead of the U.S. Senate, where a climate bill also died earlier last year.

Canada also happens to be holding elections on May 2. Yet the leaders of all the parties have been distinctly quiet about addressing climate change. Ditto for Barack Obama in the U.S., who only mentioned climate change four times in his energy speech a few weeks ago.

If there’s one silver lining in this scenario, it’s that young people in both countries care far more about climate change than older generations. As they become a larger part of the voting public, it will hopefully translate into a political system more proactive about climate change.

*For American readers unfamiliar with Canada’s political system, there are five major parties. Or four if you were watching the Leader’s Debate last night (which is comparable to presidential debates in the US). For readers looking to better understand the Canadian political system, the Wikipedia page on Canadian politics is pretty solid. The Awl also recently published an interesting piece on the current state of Canadian politics and the recent string of minority governments.

Article by Brian Kahn, appearing courtesy Justmeans.

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Experts from both sides of the U.S. climate debate are urging more federal investment in clean energy innovation — and the scrapping of cap-and-trade proposals — in the aftermath of the U.S. Senate’s failure to pass a climate bill. In a joint report, the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank; the more left-leaning Brookings Institution; and the Breakthrough Institute call for a “post-partisan” climate policy that reduces the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, invests as much as $25 billion annually in clean energy research and development, and overhauls the federal incentives system to reward innovation that reduces the costs of clean energy.

The groups suggest that lawmakers drop the controversial cap-and-trade option, which would place a steadily-rising cap and price on CO2 emissions. “The entire climate and energy agenda that we’ve been talking about for several years now has hit a dead end, so it’s time to hit the reset button,” said Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute and a co-author of the report.

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The Obama administration is frustrating environmentalists by urging the US Supreme Court to vacate a decision by Federal Court of Appeals that Climate Change is a public nuisance. In a brief filed on Tuesday, by Solicitor General Neal Katyal on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the administration asked the court to vacate the decision that allows groups and individual’s to sue the utility companies for contributing to global warming, citing that the EPA is already regulating this issue.

Background:
In 2005, Connecticut, seven other states and the City of New York, joined by environmental groups sued greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting energy utilities claiming that their climate change causing emissions were a public nuisance. The suit was aimed at six big offenders: American Electric Power, Duke Energy, Southern Company, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Xcel Energy and Cinergy Corp. In September of 2005 the district court ruled in favor of the utility companies finding that the regulation of greenhouse gases is a non-justiciable political question (in other words they felt it was an issue more appropriately addressed by another branch of government).

In September of 2009 the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision citing that “simply because an issue may have political implications does not make it non-justiciable.” The defendants argued that the issue is addressed by the Clean Air Act and that Federal Jurisdiction displaces any common law claims, adding that in 2007 in Massachusetts v. EPA, the court held that global warming gases fall under the regulatory jurisdiction of the EPA. Despite the EPA’s announcement in April of 2009 that they were going to start regulating them, the court denied the claims pointing out that “the EPA does not currently regulate carbon dioxide.”

This ruling allows affected parties to seek redress against greenhouse gas polluters by bringing common law nuisance claims to the court. In a nuisance claim, a property owner is claiming that the defendant is interfering with the owner’s enjoyment of his own property and asks the court to stop the defendant or force them to pay damages. In the Connecticut v. AEP, the plaintiffs claimed that by contributing to global warming, the utility companies were decreasing property values, hurting local economies, destroying natural habitats and putting human health and welfare at risk. Instead of damages, they sought to have the court mandate caps on the utility companies’ GHG emissions.

Today:
The utility companies argue that the EPA is moving forward on these regulations, and further action should be taken by Congress, not individual plaintiffs. Their petition says:

“The ramifications of this holding, if it is allowed to stand, are staggering. Virtually every entity and industry in the world is responsible for some emissions of carbon dioxide and is thus a potential defendant in climate change nuisance actions under the theory of this case.”

The administration supported this side in their own brief stating that:

“Since this court held in 2007 that carbon dioxide falls within that regulatory authority, EPA has taken several significant steps toward addressing the very question presented here. That regulatory approach is preferable to what would result if multiple district courts — acting without the benefit of even the most basic statutory guidance — could use common-law nuisance claims to sit as arbiters of scientific and technology-related disputes and de facto regulators of power plants and other sources of pollution both within their districts and nationwide.”

The plaintiffs in the case argue however that the EPA regulations don’t go into affect until 2011 and some in 2016. They state that even then, they only address the largest and newest sources of CO2 and give a pass to existing coal fired power plants. Many feel that the dates that have been set are too far off in the future and will get pushed further away as the industry challenges them in court. Many of the concessions that have been made on climate change were given to gain support from industry leaders and conservatives to gain support for a climate bill which Congress can’t seem to pass.

Clearly, a flurry of individual civil suits aimed against the utility companies isn’t the most efficient way to address the problem, but at least the Connecticut v. AEP ruling provides environmentalists with an alternative avenue to combat climate change if the EPA and the Congress fail to do their jobs. This is why the administration’s involvement is so frustrating. Many feel betrayed by an administration that has not been as progressive on the environment as they hoped. Matt Pawa, an attorney representing plaintiffs lamented:

“We feel stabbed in the back. This was really a dastardly move by an administration that said it was a friend of the environment. With friends like this, who needs enemies?”

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Ample blame exists for the demise of climate legislation in the U.S. Senate, from President Obama’s lack of political courage, to the environmental community’s overly ambitious strategy, to Republican intransigence. A way forward exists, however, to build on the rubble of the Senate’s failure to cap carbon emissions.

Following the rocky path of climate legislation in the U.S. Congress these past years brought me back to the 1980s, and my time as a crime reporter in New York City. After a shooting in those days, a homicide detective named Marty Davin would go to the hospital and intercept the gunshot victim on a gurney outside the emergency room. If the victim was conscious, Davin would lean over and ask, “Who killed you?”

That usually got the victim’s attention, along with an I’m-not-dead-yet protest. Davin would reply, “You are going to die. You might as well tell me who did it.”

As I interviewed the sponsor of whichever emissions-reduction bill had just been gunned down, I often thought of Davin. The politicians and climate campaigners would assure me that they were still alive — passage of a carbon cap was inevitable, they’d say — and I’d remind myself that they had survived countless near-death experiences.

But what happened last week, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would not even try to bring a compromise climate bill to the Senate floor, was not just another setback. Sometimes dead really is dead — and for this Congress, barring a miracle, climate action is finished. With an ugly election looming in November, it may be years before we get another chance to debate a bill that prices carbon. And the consensus approach to federal climate action — the idea that cap-and-trade was the most politically viable policy — may well be dead, too.

This is a time to take stock. The first question is whether this was a failure of policy; a failure of politics, message, and messenger; or both? Second, is there a Plan B around which the climate campaign should now unify? And third, what needs to be done to allow a better outcome when the next opportunity finally does appear?

No one who follows climate politics could have been very surprised by Reid’s move. The bigger shock was his decision to remove from the bill a mandate that utilities must generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. (Proponents hope to offer it as a floor amendment.) It was if the Senate was saying: Anything remotely effective, we’re not going to do.

When Reid pulled the plug, I thought back to a snowy afternoon in Copenhagen last December. Sitting with Al Gore in an empty hotel café, I asked him to contemplate this very moment. “If the United States doesn’t act,” he replied, “if the Senate defeats the legislation or waters it down to a point where it is not even worth having a bill, that is an event horizon beyond which it is difficult to see.”

He parsed the same issues then that climate campaigners are parsing now: “It may mean there is a fundamental flaw in the international political approach, but I’m not sure there is a good alternative. The reality is so dire that a new plan would have to emerge — but just now I can’t imagine what it would be.”

It was as if the Senate was saying: Anything remotely effective, we’re not going to do.

Gore had a point. When the goal is emissions reduction, there aren’t many alternatives: You’ve got to reduce emissions. The Plan B options now being offered by various advocates should be vigorously debated, but all of them seem vulnerable to the same polluted politics that killed the cap. Advocates of the carbon tax are ready to take a run at their goal, and Godspeed — but it is hard to see how politicians who were terrified to support a cap (because opponents labeled it a tax) will suddenly become bold enough to support a carbon tax. Policy groups such as the Breakthrough Institute argue that instead of making dirty fuels more expensive, it’s time for intensive energy research and development to make clean fuels cheaper. That sounds reasonable, but without the revenue stream that a cap or tax would provide — and in an era of budget cutbacks — it is hard to see government supplying the massive, long-term funding their plan requires.

Is the cap so fundamentally flawed that it should be abandoned forever? I don’t think so. I believe it needs to be liberated from legislative bloat and rehabilitated as a modest first step: a tool for regulating power sector emissions, the job it performed so successfully in the 1990s, when America tamed acid rain. It’s worth remembering that while climate politics were bogging down, climate policy mechanisms were being improved. Clever wonks found ways to cushion consumers and high-carbon industries from the price impact of the cap, while preserving a price signal for generators. Trading restrictions were added to keep speculators out of the carbon game. Though the term cap-and-trade has been demonized, the cap itself isn’t broken.

Some will argue that this latest setback is proof that the U.S. will never cap carbon. I reject that view. All we can say for sure is that the U.S. will never cap or price carbon until the politics of the issue change — so the first order of business must be to begin improving the political atmosphere. During the three years I worked on The Climate War, a narrative of the campaign to pass a carbon cap, I came to realize I was writing a political thriller, a whodunit with multiple culprits. Let’s look for lessons by considering some of the culprits, starting with the most obvious.

1. The Professional Deniers. Gore and environmental leaders made a tactical error several years ago when they declared the science “settled” and refused to engage the forces of denial and delay. The basic science was indeed settled, but the resulting message vacuum was the perfect medium for those who sow doubt and confusion about global climate change. It shouldn’t be surprising that so many Americans remain skeptical about global warming. For 20 years, this loose network of PR pros, working for industry associations and anti-tax think tanks, has spread doubt about climate science and fear about climate economics, claiming that any attempt to cap CO2 would wreck the American economy. Their disinformation, amplified via the Internet, helped poison the debate. To counter the deniers’ campaign, President Obama needs to speak out forcefully, and champions of the clean energy economy must point to the new jobs that are already being created by the renewable energy economy and show Americans precisely where they fit into it.

2. Senate Republicans. Most climate campaigners understand the folly of trying to remake the American energy system without bipartisan support. But it’s hard to forge centrist solutions when an entire party is denying there’s a problem and vilifying the solutions. A scaled-back approach, one that can be sold as a modest, incremental step and not a new industrial revolution, might fare better.

It’s hard to forge centrist solutions when an entire party is denying there’s a problem.

There was a time — 2007 and 2008, to be precise — when some Republicans were moving away from deny-and-delay tactics. (In 2007, briefly, Newt Gingrich supported the carbon cap.) More recently, opposition to climate action has become a litmus test in the GOP. Arizona Republican John McCain, who sponsored the Senate’s first serious climate bills but now faces a primary challenge from the right, recently called a successor bill “a farce.” His mantle of Republican climate courage passed to Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who took so much heat from his own party that he withdrew from the climate bill he helped write. Graham’s position has been incoherent since then, but he has signaled support for a cap on the power sector. That could be something to build on.

3. Senate Democrats. After Reid pulled the plug, Democrats were quick to blame Republicans for obstruction. But what about the obstructionists within the Democratic ranks? Harry Reid didn’t have the clout to force action on this issue because a dozen or more centrist Democrats — from states that either mine coal or produce much of their electricity from it — were dug in against it. It is impossible to tell if the senators were truly concerned about what the cap would do to their state economies — nonpartisan studies suggest its impact would be minimal — or just worried about what attack ads would do to them. Again, a more modest first step could change the dynamic. The crucial thing is to get started.

4. The Green Group. At a meeting in February 2007, the Green Group, an unofficial association of the leaders of the big U.S. environmental non-profits, told Harry Reid they supported a single legislative goal: An economy-wide cap. Their strategy was to assemble the broadest possible coalition to push the broadest possible bill. Given the magnitude of the crisis and the need to reduce emissions quickly, this made sense. Politically, though, it proved disastrous, because it led to bills of such cost, scope, and complexity that they scared the pants off timid legislators.

The Green Group wanted too much and ended up with nothing.

The Green Group held out for an economy-wide bill even after it became clear, in late 2009, that it was unachievable in the Senate. Only recently did environmental leaders try to negotiate a compromise cap on electric power plants, which account for 40 percent of U.S. emissions. Passing a utility cap would have been a great first step, but the talks got started too late. The Green Group wanted too much and ended up with nothing.

5. The Power Barons. When the eleventh-hour search for a compromise began, the utilities got too greedy. If they had to go it alone, they argued, they deserved virtually all of the carbon allowances in the program for free. This left too few for other crucial purposes, such as cushioning manufacturers from higher electricity prices. Worse, in exchange for supporting a carbon cap, some utilities demanded relief from Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations governing conventional pollutants such as mercury. Like the greens, they asked for too much and got nothing. (The greens, however, were overreaching on behalf of the planet, not their own coffers.) Some utility bosses were relieved to see the bill die. Those feelings may prove short-lived as the battle to reduce emissions moves to the EPA and the courts.

Some advocates, such as Lee Wasserman of the Rockefeller Family Fund, regard the decision to negotiate with the power barons as the height of folly. Washington, they argue, should simply dictate the terms of surrender to the polluters. Such a stance ignores an important fact: It isn’t possible to remake the U.S. energy system without negotiating with the power barons. Punishing generators means punishing households that pay electricity bills. That doesn’t mean, however, that the politicians should give the barons everything they want. But there was only one player with the clout to cut a fair deal with them, and he was missing in action.

6. The President. Barack Obama chose not to lead on this issue. His decision to address health care reform before energy and climate change doomed the latter. With advisors Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod whispering that climate was a losing proposition (a self-fulfilling prophesy, to be sure), Obama never threw himself behind a particular climate bill. He left it to the Senate, the Green Group, and the power bosses — all of whom were sorely in need of adult supervision.

The real grownups in this tale were Rep. Henry Waxman and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who last year surprised the Obama Administration by taking a comprehensive climate bill to the House floor. The White House had no choice but to help whip the vote, and it passed. Then Obama stopped trying, and the Senate refused to take up the legislation. It was a colossal failure of nerve, and a decision that likely destroyed any chance of achieving climate action in Obama’s first term.

Since the president and his political advisers thought an economy-wide cap was too heavy a lift, Obama should have led a tactical retreat to what, in the past several months, became the last-ditch compromise position: the cap on the electric power sector. Had negotiations focused on this months ago instead of weeks ago, and had the president thrown his weight behind it then, we might today be celebrating a step forward instead of mourning another failure. Only Obama had the authority to call this audible early. The environmental NGOs and their allies were too invested in the economy-wide approach; they needed Obama to lead them.

Welcome to the ‘glorious mess’ — the tangle of regulation and litigation that follow when Congress fails to act.

He refused. To the bitter end, the White House pursued what his aides called a “stealth strategy” that deployed the president only sparingly. As a result, he failed to take advantage of the BP oil spill. When its terrible scope became apparent, in June, Obama began talking about the need to cap carbon and accelerate the transition to clean energy. But it was a fleeting moment. Many climate campaigners knew the climate bill was dead on June 15, when Obama gave his long-awaited Oval Office address on the oil spill. Instead of making an explicit connection to the climate bill — and explaining that by capping carbon the U.S. could speed its transition to clean energy and help break its addiction to fossil fuels — Obama whiffed. He had a road map but didn’t try to share it with the people. “We don’t yet know precisely how we’re going to get there,” he said. Today, with that map in shreds, we surely don’t.

As climate campaigners wait however long it takes to get another shot at legislation, there is important work to be done. Greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. have been dropping — and not just because of the recession. The task is to build on this trend during the economic recovery. Changes in our energy infrastructure are making this possible. In Texas, our highest-emitting state and a bastion of climate skepticism, carbon emissions have been declining since 2004 thanks in part to a renewable energy standard — signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush — that accelerated the installation of wind power and created thousands of jobs along the way.

The Department of Energy now has 7,000 clean energy projects across the country — projects that save money, create jobs, and reduce emissions. According to an analysis by the World Resources Institute, by leveraging existing authority over the next ten years the U.S. could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent to 12 percent below 2005 levels. This is far short of the 17 percent reduction Obama promised in Copenhagen and nothing close to what needs to be done. But if we continue cutting emissions before asking voters to embrace a cap, we prove that cuts are both technologically feasible and economically sustainable. And we’ll be in a better position when the next legislative opportunity comes.

Until then, the climate war will be waged by cities, states, regional cap-and-trade programs, and, above all, the EPA, which early next year is set to begin regulating stationary sources of CO2 — power plants and large factories.

Welcome to the “glorious mess” — Michigan Rep. John Dingell’s phrase for the tangle of regulation and litigation that will follow when Congress fails to act. We are about to experience precisely the sort of costly, protracted, plant-by-plant trench warfare the cap was intended to avoid. Since the utilities and the manufacturers weren’t willing to cut a deal, this is what they get. The fragile period of compromise and cooperation between environmentalists and big business may now be coming to an end. Green groups that have invested time and money into the legislative process are now putting on their war paint and returning to the courts, with a renewed focus on stopping new coal-fired power plants and shutting down the oldest and dirtiest ones.

Tough new EPA rules for conventional pollutants will help, and so will new EPA carbon regulations. Perhaps these strict new regulations will refresh the power bosses’ appetite for a cap. But they have plenty of lawyers, and the long, ugly battles over implementation of EPA regulations could extend the current period of uncertainty by many years. Republicans (and some Democrats) will try to strip EPA of its authority over carbon, or at least delay implementation of its new rules.

In effect, the Senate will be saying that Congress alone should have the power to act — so that it can then not exercise that power. Obama’s aides say the president will be fully engaged in the battle to save EPA authority over carbon. It is a fight that he can’t possibly duck, because it is our last line of defense. As Gore reminded me in Copenhagen, “The fact that this is extremely hard doesn’t mean we should quit.”

Article by Eric Pooley, appearing courtesy, Yale Environment 360.

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(Reuters) – President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday to keep pushing for legislation to fight climate change despite a move in the U.S. Senate to focus energy reform more narrowly on offshore drilling.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is expected to unveil a bill later on Tuesday that does not include setting caps on carbon emissions — the key element of a more comprehensive energy and climate bill that did not find sufficient support in the Senate.

Obama said the revised bill was “an important step in the right direction” but he said it would not be enough.

“I want to emphasize it’s only the first step and I intend to keep pushing for broader reform, including climate legislation,” he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden after meeting with congressional leaders.

“If we’ve learned anything from the tragedy in the Gulf, it’s that our current energy policy is unsustainable.”

Among its provisions, the bill will likely force companies to spend more money to cover the costs of oil spills, raising the liability cap to $10 billion or more from $75 million.

Obama did not set out a timetable for a future climate push and it is very unlikely that any legislation on the subject will be passed this year.

If likely Republican gains in November elections change the balance of power in Congress, climate change legislation would face an even more uncertain future.

Obama’s comments were likely meant as a nod to the international community and environmentalists, who are counting on U.S. action to help advance U.N. talks to form an international pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.

Obama said climate change legislation would create high-wage U.S. jobs in the renewable energy sector.

“We can’t afford to stand by as our dependence on foreign oil deepens, as we keep on pumping out the deadly pollutants that threaten our air and our water and the lives and livelihoods of our people,” he said.

Article by Jeff Mason; edited by Eric Beech; appearing courtesy Reuters.

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(Reuters) – U.S. Senate Democrats said on Thursday they will wait until September at the earliest to take up broad climate-change legislation, a potentially fatal blow to the White House push to curb greenhouse gases.

The delay means Democrats have little time to advance the complex legislation amid intense political pressure in the weeks before November congressional elections.

It also could derail global climate change initiatives, as the world’s major economies and greenhouse gas emitters insist the United States play a leading role.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he plans to bring up a narrower energy bill next week that would revamp offshore oil drilling rules in the wake of the BP oil spill while returning to the broader legislation sometime after senators return from their summer recess in September.

“Unfortunately at this time we don’t have a single Republican on board,” Reid told reporters.

Democrats said they hope to pass the scaled-back bill before leaving town for their August recess.

Some Democrats hoped to attach climate legislation to that bill with the hope of attracting Republican support.

But Reid said he could not get any Republicans to back a comprehensive energy bill that would include provisions intended to combat climate change such as caps on carbon emissions or mandates for power companies to generate more alternative energy.

“We will fight that out in September,” said a Democratic senator who did not wish to be quoted by name. “It will be tough to win.”

Republicans have been near unanimous in their opposition to climate change legislation, saying the bill would be little more than an energy tax that would imperil an economy struggling to recover from recession.

SERIOUS SETBACK

President Barack Obama has made action on climate change a priority and the House of Representatives approved a wide-ranging bill last year. But lawmakers and environmentalists are increasingly doubtful a comprehensive bill can pass the Senate this year. If Republicans make gains in November’s elections, the effort could be stalled for some time.

Environmentalists said the decision to delay action on the broad climate legislation marked a serious setback.

“It would seem like the longest of long shots to me because the window for opportunity in the fall before the election season goes into high gear is very small,” said Frank O’Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an activist group.

Democrats need at least some Republican support to advance legislation in the Senate since they control 59 seats, one short of the 60 needed to overcome procedural hurdles.

The scaled-back energy bill would promote natural-gas vehicles in a bid to cut oil imports. It also would promote energy-efficient houses and businesses, Reid said.

Reid said the bill would ensure that BP pays for the cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and prevent future disasters, though he did not offer specifics.

Several Democrats said they thought the bill had enough support to pass the Senate — including Senator Ben Nelson, who frequently votes against his own party.

Utility stocks in the Dow Jones Utility Average closed up 1.6 percent, slightly lagging the broader market.

‘NOT GOING AWAY’

Democrats hope to pass legislation that would curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that scientists say contribute to rising global temperatures.

U.S. scientists have said that this year has been the hottest on record across the world.

Congressional inaction would cast a pall on global talks that have lost momentum since December’s summit in Copenhagen.

“This must not stand, it will hurt us, hurt our children and hurt the regard the world has for U.S. leadership,” said David Hawkins, the director of climate programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council activist group.

China, which led a bloc of developing-world countries opposed to mandatory carbon limits, might impose more pollution controls on its economy than the United States. China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, plans to launch a carbon trading market during the next five years to boost energy efficiency, according to the China Daily newspaper.

Obama has pushed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take unilateral action if Congress fails to pass a bill. The EPA has begun issuing rules to cut emissions from cars and requiring power plants to have permits to emit carbon dioxide.

Democratic Senator John Kerry and independent Senator Joe Lieberman have crafted a bill that would impose carbon caps on utilities. Previous legislation also would have put caps on emissions from manufacturers and transportation.

Some power companies such as Duke Energy want a climate bill so they can move ahead with billions of dollars in investments in new low-carbon power plants.

Lieberman said the Senate could take up their bill in September. “I think there’s going to be a lot of interest in doing something broader when it comes to energy independence than just oil spill,” he said.

Kerry was upbeat that a climate bill with carbon caps would eventually pass.

“This is not going to die, absolutely rest assured this is not going away,” Kerry told visitors to Congress.

“As long as I am in the Senate and I’ve got another four years … we are going to keep pounding away on this.”

He said he met earlier on Thursday with one Republican, who has “indicated willingness” to work toward greater coalition in the Senate for a larger climate change bill.

Article by Timothy Gardner and Thomas Ferraro; additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Alina Selyukh, Tom Doggett, Ayesha Rascoe and Emma Ashburn; writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Russell Blinch and Will Dunham; appearing courtesy Reuters.

photo: cliff1066™

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After a meeting between President Obama and a bipartisan group of U.S. senators, leading Senate proponents of climate and energy legislation say the only climate bill with a chance of passage this year would be a measure placing a cap on the carbon dioxide emissions of electric power utilities.

At least two Republican senators — Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both of Maine — involved in Tuesday’s meeting with Obama said they would support placing a cap and price on the CO2 emissions of utilities, provided that most or all of the proceeds were rebated to taxpayers.

A key sponsor of climate and energy legislation in the Senate, John Kerry (D-Mass), suggested he might be willing to drop his move to place a cap and a price on CO2 emissions throughout the economy in favor of a more limited bill capping the emissions of electric utilities. During the meeting with 23 senators, Obama “was very strong about the need to put a price on carbon pollution and make polluters pay,” said Sen. Joe Leiberman (I-Conn), although senators said Obama did not endorse any specific legislation.

A key to getting a climate and energy bill passed before the Senate recesses in August is the support of electric utilities, and the president of one utility — New Jersey-based PSEG — said his company would support a bill placing a cap and a price on CO2 emission for utilities.

photo: mangpages

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The Oil Spill’s Unlikely Victim: As oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill continued to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, it tarred the feathers of an endangered creature: the climate bill. Sens. John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced a retooled American Power Act on Wednesday to little fanfare. Perhaps that’s because the media’s klieg lights were already divided between the grilling of oil executives on Capitol Hill or the so-far hapless efforts to plug the leak. Or maybe it’s because the two senators took to the dais without their erstwhile Republican ally, Lindsey Graham. Nevertheless, it was ironic to see a solution to our fossil-fuel addiction pushed to the side because of a fossil-fuel disaster. Must we cap the gusher before we get a cap on CO2?

More Electric Cars Roll to the Starting Line: You’ve heard that the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt are on the way, but how about the Think and the Wheego? Wheego, a maker of electric putt-putt vehicles based in Atlanta, hopes that 200 highway-ready copies of its Whip Life will roll off the assembly line by August, months ahead of the well-publicized launch of the Leaf. Meanwhile, the Norwegian carmaker Think raised $40 million this week and plans to start assembly of the tiny Think City in Elkhart, Indiana in early 2011.

How Is an Electric Car Like an iPad? The CEO of Coda Automotive announced a novel approach to manufacturing and selling his company’s electric car — less a come-on-down dealership blitzkrieg and more like a visit to Apple’s Genius Bar. “We are looking at this not as a new-car-model introduction, but as a new-technology introduction,” CEO Kevin Czinger told a transportation conference in Ohio. But that’s just one way Coda is creating an auto company on the cheap. Models will be partially assembled at a factory in China, imported to the U.S. as “parts” to avoid import duties, and finished near company headquarters in California. Coda will have just one dealership in Los Angeles but seven satellite stores where the curious can come for a test drive — kind of like the way Steve Jobs warmed people up to the iPhone and the iPad. Models are due in 2011 for $30,000 to $40,000.

Toyota Bets on Hydrogen: Toyota surprised everyone by announcing it would debut a somewhat affordable, hydrogen-powered sedan by 2015. By whittling down the use of expensive materials like platinum, the company’s engineers dropped the cost of production by a factor of ten, and said they could offer the car for $50,000 and get within striking distance of a profit after launch.

How Does Power from Nantucket Sound? Less than two weeks after winning its hard fight for approval, the Cape Wind wind farm off Nantucket Sound closed a deal to sell half of its electricity. National Grid, the utility for a chunk of the Eastern Seaboard from New York to New Hampshire, will buy power at 20.7 cents per kilowatt-hour — a rate that will increase the average homeowner’s bill by about $1.59 a month. The $1 billion project is expected to start feeding power in 2013.

China: Winds of Change. U.S.: Pocket Change. The Department of Energy announced some nice grants for renewable energy projects this week. Investments include $13 million in seed money for projects that will help make industry emit less CO2, $62 million to develop concentrated solar power, and another $33 million on the way for innovations in biomass-to-fuel. That’s $108 million. Not bad!

Then China Longyuan Power Group, one of the largest wind-energy concerns in China, announced its own investment to become the world’s leader in installing wind turbines in five years. The amount? $13 billion.

Innovation Watch: Australia works on the world’s first biofuel helicopter; MIT grads invent a shock absorber that generates electricity; and Dell wonders if it could prosper without ever building another data center.

Article by David Ferris appearing courtesy Matter Network.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate is close to wrapping up talks ahead of introducing a compromise climate change bill, said a top Democratic lawmaker who discussed ideas with industry groups on Wednesday.

“We’re planning to button up our efforts somewhere I hope next week,” Senator John Kerry told reporters after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry and paper companies, Big Oil, steel, mining, electricity and others.

Kerry is working with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman on a bill to require U.S. industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

Indicating there was still work to be done, Kerry said, “We’re trying to build support as we develop (bill) language.”

Bruce Josten, an executive vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, left Wednesday’s meeting with the three senators and told reporters: “They’re being very constructive; they’re trying to figure out how to make this work for the American economy.”

The measure will not take the exact approach of legislation approved by the House of Representatives in June, and by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in November. This would set an economy-wide “cap and trade” direction to reducing carbon pollution.

Kerry said that while “a lot of language is there” to craft legislation, “we don’t have a full outline” yet of a bill.

PRICE COLLAR AND FUEL FEES

The climate bill has been stalled in the Senate and supporters have missed several informal deadlines for producing and passing a bill.

Under cap and trade, companies would face limits on the amount of carbon pollution Washington would let them emit. Those limits would become stricter over the next 40 years, when supporters want an 80 percent reduction from 2005 levels. Also, required pollution permits could be sold on a regulated market.

The three senators also talked about pollution reductions of 17 percent by 2020 below 2005 levels, a goal President Barack Obama has embraced.

The Chamber of Commerce, which says it represents more than 3 million U.S. businesses of all sizes, is staunchly opposed to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of carbon dioxide.

The three senators said on Wednesday the bill would pre-empt the EPA from regulating the gases, said a source with knowledge of the meeting.

The EPA is ready to issue final regulations as early as March 31 for automobile carbon emissions. That would clear the way for expanding regulations to smokestack emissions, although the agency prefers Congress tackles that problem.

Instead of an economy-wide cap and trade, the three senators are aiming to impose the market system initially on power companies, which contribute about 40 percent of carbon emissions.

The senators are “talking about allowances for that sector that are built around pollution-reduction targets and prohibiting price spikes,” Josten said.

Power plants would face emissions limits starting in 2012 while big manufacturers and energy-intensive industry would not face limits until 2016, the source said.

The senators presented an eight-page outline to the industry groups but took it back at the end of the meeting, he added.

The bill would also include a hard price collar that would keep carbon prices between $10 and $30 a ton. Any polluter emitting below 25,000 tons a year would not be regulated, the source said.

As for a possible oil industry tax, the senators discussed a fee on fuels linked to the market price of carbon. The fee would be visible to consumers at petroleum pumps and on airline tickets, the source said.

A tax at the oil refinery level that would not be as visible to consumers has also been discussed by the senators.

Once a bill is put together, the Congressional Budget Office will analyze the potential costs to the federal government and the economy. EPA also is expected to conduct a six- to eight-week analysis of the bill before it could be debated on the Senate floor, possibly in June.

Article by Richard Cowan and Timothy Gardner, editing by Mohammad Zargham; appearing courtesy Reuters

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama outlined a strategy to boost biofuels production on Wednesday, seeking to nudge the country toward energy independence while balancing the environmental costs of grain-based motor fuels.

The move is part of the administration’s effort to gain more votes for a climate bill stalled in the Senate that will seek to boost production of clean, low-carbon energy and help the country reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels.

The climate bill faces further hurdles after the election last month in Massachusetts that gave Republicans a Senate seat long held by Democrats, depriving the president’s party of 60 votes that could overcome procedural hurdles.

The biofuels strategy, which also aims to boost jobs as the country faces double-digit unemployment, is laid out in a report by the Biofuels Interagency Working Group, a body the president established to help spur investment in biofuels and make the industry more environmentally friendly.

The goal is straightforward: getting the country on track to meet a congressional goal of producing 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) of biofuels a year by 2022.

“This is a substantial goal, but one that the U.S. can meet or beat. However, past performance and business as usual will not get us there,” the report said.

The United States is far away from its target now, currently producing 12 billion gallons per year, mostly from corn ethanol.

The report offers solutions that would iron out problems in getting ethanol from producers in the U.S. Midwest to consumers near the coasts.

Such snags include filling stations that have been slow to adopt pumps to distribute a fuel blend that is mostly ethanol, called E85, and a lack of dedicated pipelines for biofuels.

In addition, loan guarantees for ethanol plants could be targeted more effectively to support new biofuels plants, the report said.

Obama and members of his cabinet are scheduled to meet with a handful of state governors to discuss energy policy on Wednesday.

Energy Revamp

The president is pushing for the United States to overhaul its energy habits by switching to less-polluting fuels and reducing its dependence on foreign oil.

The departments of agriculture and energy and the Environmental Protection Agency will work together to create a regional supply chain to make sure all parts of the country will make biofuels markets more robust, the report said.

Coinciding with Obama’s announcement, the Environmental Protection Agency also could issue new rules on measuring carbon dioxide emissions from biofuels such as ethanol.

Under a 2007 energy law, ethanol made from corn must emit less CO2 than gasoline over the life cycle of the fuel, from production to being burned. Cellulosic fuels, made from crop waste and the woody bits of nonfood crops, would have to be even cleaner.

The struggling biofuels industry is concerned that the Obama administration will move too quickly away from ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, to more difficult techniques using wood chips and other biomass.

Obama’s push for ethanol could also shore up his support in farm states, where ethanol helps support demand for corn.

The president may touch on other energy policies, such as technology for capturing and storing carbon emissions, during the meeting with governors.

Since his State of the Union address last week, the president has embraced a range of fuel alternatives, including nuclear and clean coal technology, to help win support of some wavering Democrats in coal states and Republicans.

Some expect that Obama will seek to add the energy initiatives to a climate change bill to win broad bipartisan support for legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

The biofuels working group was asked to develop a strategy to increase biofuels production, investment in the industry, and the use of “flex fuel” cars, which can run on either gasoline or fuel that is mostly ethanol.

Biofuels are mostly made from corn and other grains, while companies are beginning to make advanced cellulosic fuels from organic matter such as wood, and crop and animal waste.

Critics do not see them as the perfect replacement to high-polluting fossil fuels, however.

Environmentalists and some scientists say production of U.S. biofuels from corn and other grains can drive out production of other crops, prompting farmers in other countries to burn down forests and clear land to grow those crops — creating new sources of CO2, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

Article by Jeff Mason and Timothy Gardner, editing by Eric Walsh; appearing courtesy of Reuters

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