Is a serious plan finally in the making to limit carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S.?
It very well could be since a number of key Democrats in Congress, including Rick Boucher from the Virginia coalfields, have agreed to a number of closed-door compromises that might make it fly. The bill is being shepherded by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat.
If passed, the bill could have huge implications for Virginia. For one reason, it would affect how much CO2 that Dominion, one of the largest coal-burning utilities in the country, can pump into the air. Ditto American Electric Power, the nation’s No. 1 coal-burner, and Old Dominion Electric Cooperative, a Henrico County-based utility serving rural areas in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware, that wants to build a monster $6 billion coal-burning plant in Surry County, not all that far from the tourist havens of Williamsburg and Jamestown.
As it now stands, the bill would set a limit on greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide would have to be cut by 17 percent by 2020 compared with 2005 emissions, and 83 percent by 2050. Unlike a policy favored by President Barack Obama, the right to emit greenhouse gases — making up 85 percent of the total — would be given away. Obama wanted them sold at auction.
Utilities would get 35 percent of the allowances and billions of dollars would be spent to help research new technologies that would capture CO2 at big generating plants and somehow send it deep in the earth into a kind of permanent storage. Doing so, would keep utilities using coal and thus help the Virginia coalfields. Boucher helped orchestrate the idea and it has support from such coalfield groups as the United Mine Workers of America.
Not everybody likes the effort. Eric Cantor, the Henrico Republican who is Minority Whip, told a luncheon at the World Affairs Council of Greater Richmond Monday that the bill “would do nothing but raise costs.” I was at the luncheon since I am a WAC member and later spoke to Cantor who said that the Waxman bill is much more restrictive than another proposal shot down last year that had been pushed by Senator Joe Lieberman and our own John Warner. I find Cantor’s position curious since his own party’s candidate for president last year backed some kind of cap and trade law.
The Waxman bill is drawing fire from the other side of the aisle, too. Greenpeace USA says that Waxman’s initially laudable effort has been undermined by lobbyists.
So, what to make of this? First off, something needs to be done about CO2 and global warming despite the head-in-the-sand naysayers, including (dare I say it) our very own and beloved Jim Bacon, founder of this blog. Secondly, giving away rather than selling allotments in “cap and trade” does favor utilities and that is reason for pause. Thirdly, finding a way to deep six CO2 in the earth sounds good but the technologies aren’t mature and it might further other bad aspects of coal, such as mountaintop removal. Clearing the way for more coal use (55 percent of electricity in the U.S. comes from coal) might only aggravate the serious damage mountaintop removal is doing to Central Appalachia.
True, the economy is still a mess, but what happens with Waxman’s bill will have huge long-term implications, such as whether large portions of the Eastern Shore and Virginia Beach face a waterlogged future.
Peter Galuszka
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