EEI's Kuhn Outlines Views on Climate Bill

EEI President Tom Kuhn cited the partisanship in Washington and the closeness to the November elections as reasons that there were only modest chances that climate change legislation would clear Congress this year. Kuhn, who appeared on the Platts Energy Week broadcast on Sunday, along with Mark Crisson of the American Public Power Association, emphasized that "if you're going to have a price on carbon, and I think we need to if we're going to move forward, I think cap-and-trade is the best way to go."

Crisson said he was skeptical about cap and trade because there were insufficient emission allowances for utilities: "While it's failed to gain support, I wouldn't necessarily say it's off the table or dead," he said. "But this may provide an opportunity to explore other options."

Wrote Platts: "President Barack Obama last week continued to call on Congress to pass climate-change legislation, and Senator John Kerry, Democrat-Massachusetts, a leading advocate of such a measure, indicated he may try to rekindle the issue in a lame-duck session following the November congressional elections. Kuhn and Crisson also agreed that legislation on climate change, with provisions to mitigate the impact of emissions reductions on consumers, remains preferable to regulation by the Environmental Protection Act under the existing Clean Air Act."

Sens. Lieberman, Kerry Inching Toward Utility-Only Climate Bill

Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman, I-Conn., and John F. Kerry, D-Mass., said they may turn to utility-only GHG emissions limits in the effort to pass their climate change legislation, ClimateWire reported. Lieberman said the option was "not my first choice, but it's important that we get started in what we're trying to do." Kerry said the strategy might achieve the primary goal of "pricing carbon" by providing a solution to the challenge of obtaining a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority. Democrats expressed some support for the strategy.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., was quoted as saying: "I don't expect that we will get much Republican support for legislation beyond the energy bill." Bloomberg reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., emphasized the central role of the White House in helping "us get something done." Kerry said "the president is fully committed. He's fully engaged. He intends to try to move votes himself and he understands the seriousness of this effort."

EEI spokesman Jim Owen was quoted as saying of utility-only legislation: "We have been concentrating on economywide, so this is a game-changer with so many moving parts in the middle of a very fluid legislative situation overall."

- Related stories also appeared in CNN.com, Dow Jones Newswire, Financial Times, and Reuters.

Focus Increases on Utilities-Only Bill

In a lead-in to Wednesday's scheduled meeting between President Obama and a bipartisan group of senators on climate and energy legislation, Bloomberg Businessweek reported that the session was expected to focus on new ways to target GHG emissions from power plants. On legislation aimed far more broadly, Pew Center on Global Climate Change President Eileen Claussen was quoted as saying the "longer we keep batting around proposals that do not have much of a chance, the less likely we are to get something that does have a chance" approved before elections in November.

EEI spokesman Dan Riedinger said investor-owned utilities have yet to take a position on legislation aimed solely at power plants because they were concentrating on economy-wide cap-and-trade proposals. Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein wrote that a "utilities-only cap-and-trade program should be designed such that it can eventually become an economy-wide cap-and-trade program."

EEI's Kuhn Says Consumer Protection Vital for Climate Legislation

EEI President Tom Kuhn said in a National Journal opinion piece that climate change and energy legislation must include "strong consumer protection measures" in order to win support. Kuhn noted that the House-passed bill included provisions to allocate GHG emissions permits to utilities "to help mitigate electricity price increases," and that design "proved an important concept around which many lawmakers rallied."

Kuhn pointed to the House example as a sign of the need for senators to also focus on consumer protection. Kuhn asked President Obama and senators to put protection "among the issues that top the agenda" at their meeting to discuss the bill. He praised the Kerry-Lieberman bill for allocating additional emissions permits for utilities and adopting "a hard price collar" for permits. Kuhn said that EEI was continuing its effort "to develop workable legislation that will combat climate change while also safeguarding the nation’s continued economic well-being."

President Obama to Discuss Utility-Only Climate Bill With Senators

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said President Obama will discuss the option of utility-only GHG emissions limits in his climate change legislation meeting with senators on Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Emanuel said "a wide range of ideas will be discussed," and the concept of utility-only limits "will also be welcomed."

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was expected to be invited to take part in the talks, along with Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., Joseph I. Lieberman, ID-Conn., Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and several others. Emanuel said Obama wanted to talk with "a wide range of people who have ideas" about the shape of the legislation. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., said it will "be difficult to do in this climate," but added that "an energy-only bill is a great idea."

Brian Wolff, EEI's senior VP of external affairs, said EEI will discuss the utility-only option with its members, Politico reported. Wolff was quoted as saying: "We have not fully discussed utility-only since we have been working on a more comprehensive climate approach. However, we believe any utility-only energy and climate legislation would have to include major consumer protections to gain 60 votes in the Senate."

- Related story also appeared in the Washington Post via the Associated Press.

Lindsey Graham 'Floating' Utility-Only Bill in Senate

Greenwire reported that Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who abruptly dropped out of the tripartite Senate effort to revive a comprehensive climate change bill in late April, was "floating yet another alternative to price carbon emissions by focusing on just power plants." The utility sector is "most in need of a market signal for pricing greenhouse gases," the newsletter reported, adding that leaving other sectors out of a bill could also help win additional Senate votes.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, who along with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-CT, co-authored the latest draft unveiled in mid-May, was insisting that legislative efforts remain focused around a comprehensive bill. But other senators beyond Graham "also have expressed an interest in a less sweeping plan for controlling greenhouse gases," Greenwire reported.

EEI's Brian Wolff, senior vice president for external affairs, said the Kerry-Lieberman draft has encountered headwinds in overcoming "the gas tax" label, adding that the transportation component of the bill "was really going to be hard for people politically." Wolff told Greenwire that there have not been any discussions with member companies yet about the power plant-only option, adding "it's not been baked at all."

EEI also plans calls to key senators in the coming weeks on the Kerry-Lieberman bill, which was welcomed by the association "because it included valuable allocations that help the industry compensate customers for otherwise higher energy prices," Wolff was quoted as saying. "We've been focused on each legislative effort, whether it's the House effort or the Senate effort, on what we can do to improve it and what we can do to support it," Wolff said.

EEI's Kuhn Signals Hard Work Remains to Fine-Tune Climate Bill

EEI President Tom Kuhn said the trade association membership would be taking a long, hard look at the specifics of the climate-energy bill introduced by Sens. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., and Joseph I. Lieberman, ID-Conn., according to the National Journal's Energy and Environmental blog.

Said Kuhn: "We're supporting the bill moving forward, and basically there's still a 1,000-page bill you've got to look at." Kuhn said that a key focus would be to examine "measures that would reduce emissions of coal-fired plants in a cost-effective way," the blog reported. "There's a lot to do," he said.

Duke Energy President and CEO Jim Rogers was quoted by the blog as also saying the measure "needs some work." Rogers said there are "pieces of it" he wants to see tweaked but wouldn't elaborate on what those pieces were, the blog stated, adding: "What he liked about the bill, he said, was that it would give his company--the nation's third-largest consumer of coal--a sense of certainty." Rogers was quoted as saying: "With a price on carbon, it will inform my choices going forward."

League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski called the initiative "the single most important piece, far and away, because that's what is needed to get the job done." Natural Resources Defense Council Climate Change Director Dan Lashof added: "The core limits on carbon pollution in the bill are a solid foundation for legislation. The mechanism they have to limit price volatility works. It maintains the environmental integrity of the emissions limits. It looks good. It's actually a good design."

EEI's Kuhn Joins Senators for Climate Bill Rollout

Appearing Wednesday with Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., as they unveiled their new climate change bill, EEI President Tom Kuhn called the package an "historic achievement" and said EEI supports "continued Senate debate" on the legislation, Greenwire and other news organizations reported. Kuhn cited the bill's inclusion of a "hard" price collar and its provision of emission allowances as signs of progress.

Duke Energy Chairman, President and CEO Jim Rogers was quoted as saying the legislation "helps get the transition right to a low-carbon world." FPL Chairman and CEO Lew Hay added that "it protects all the customers." Kerry said his proposal had support from "people from across the ideological spectrum," including the Pentagon as well as environmentalists, the Associated Press reported.

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., was quoted as saying: "It's important to try to get it done. Whether we can succeed or not, I don't know. It is a long shot."

According to the Los Angeles Times: "The proposed legislation mandates reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels via a so-called cap-and-trade system for power plants and, eventually, factories -- with strict curbs on the types of trading that could be done. It would require oil companies to obtain emission permits at a set price not determined by the trading market. The legislation would immediately send two-thirds of the revenue from emissions permit sales directly back to consumers as refunds on their utility bills, Kerry said, and eventually refund nearly all of the proceeds to consumers, in an effort to blunt energy cost increases."

- Related stories also appeared in the New York Times and Christian Science Monitor.

EEI's Kuhn Says Climate Bill Needed for Investment Certainty

EEI President Tom Kuhn, on National Public Radio, said that the climate bill squabble on Capitol Hill was a distraction to the goal: "We all know that there is an objective to move to lower carbon fuels in the future, and it is extremely important to us when we are making billions of dollars worth of investments to have the certainty."

On Capitol Hill, a maneuver by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to bring forward an immigration bill, brought a rebuff from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the key Republican partner in the triumvirate bringing the climate legislation forward. The other senators, John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., stalled their expected announcement of a final version of the climate bill on Monday, looking for a compromise with Graham. Politico reported that Graham said the effort by Reid "dooms everything" because it was "breaking faith."

On American Public Media's Market Watch, EEI spokesman Jim Owen noted that utility CEOs "see a lot of challenges going forward in terms of what kinds of power plants to build and where to build them," and the continued uncertainty over the climate bill was creating problems for planning investments in new generation. Exelon spokeswoman Judy Rader was quoted as saying: "We are disappointed by this temporary setback. We remain hopeful that the issues will be resolved quickly, and that the U.S. Senate will make passage of an energy and climate bill an urgent priority."

Graham noted that the immigration bill "has no chance" to pass and the issue had come "out of left field" just before the planned unveiling of the climate bill. Graham disavowed speculation by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that he withdrew because of pressure from other Republicans. Graham added: "I've made it perfectly clear that if you bring up immigration you're breaking faith with me. The faith was broken when immigration was interjected in the 11th hour."

Reid spokesman Jim Manley saw "no reason why we can't do climate change first" and then work on the immigration bill, and said it was "difficult to understand why we have gotten this reaction to Reid demonstrating his commitment to the issue." Lieberman said "we're working really hard to get" the climate partnership with Graham "back together," and he asked for Obama administration support in that effort.

- Related stories also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Politico, and National Journal.