Tracking Lieberman-Warner: A friendly spin?

Posted by Brian Beutler (Guest Contributor) at 9:09 AM on 15 Nov 2007

Read more about: politics | legislation | climate | energy | Barbara Boxer

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA): "This bill provides billions of dollars for coal. It's like a Manhattan Project for coal."

Noted without comment.

For story: Tracking Lieberman-Warner: A friendly spin?
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BC 2035 - 1990

Even assuming big coal pays for all of its credits in a market based system, if this bill is enacted as I read it, after taking into account provisions allowing for 15% of emissions in offsets, allowing for banked allowances, borrowed allowances (less interest), and bonus allowances for C&S, not even including a provision for offset reversals, actual annual ghg emissions from coal use will fall back to 1990 levels sometime between 2030 - 2035.

An offset defined other than offsetting dirty power removed from the grid with sustainable power is a risky proposition, especially considering the cap here is weak to begin with, the difficulty tracking sequestration projects (and poor record doing so to date), and the blow back and costs associated with sham offsets.

This bill concedes too much to dirty power. It allows 18 months to set up the systems for C&T and monitoring offsets (regardless of who pays). If something has to be passed, funding and putting into place those little pieces as a first step, which should not be difficult, is as far as I trust dem pols in r gov now.

by ids at 1:05 PM on 17 Nov 2007

On second look . . .2026 - 1990

Offsets in this bill is giving dirty power six additonal years to get to the bill's 2020 goal, by my calculation.

Allowance (per sec.1201) for yr. 2020 is 4,432.
Allowance for yr. 2026 is 3,856.
Add 15% (per sec.2404 of s.2191) allowed for offsets and actual additional ghg in 2026 is 4,434.

So not until 2026 will actual emissions equal the allowance for 2020.

by ids at 7:13 PM on 18 Nov 2007

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