Greenpeace Warns Obama: Congress is Undermining the Clean Energy Future

Greenpeace warned President Obama in a report released today that Congress is on track to undermine his promises of a clean energy future. Without the president's intervention, climate legislation moving through Congress will simply result in a continuation of business as usual.

The report is a five-count indictment of the House and Senate legislation, highlighting their maximum dangers to successful U.S. climate policy.

In the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) bill — and potentially in the proposed Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, headed into Senate hearings next week — Greenpeace says Congress is planning to:

• Undermine the Clean Air Act,
• Set carbon caps that would be far too weak,
• Sanctify coal as the nation's primary “clean” energy,
• Give away the lion's share of pollution allowances to big polluters, and
• Do virtually nothing to accelerate a national shift to renewable energy.

“Individually and together, these points of danger constitute an existential threat to the integrity of the law and the ability of the United States to resume its place as a respected leader in the world,” Greenpeace writes in the report Business as Usual.

With the right direction from the president, however, the Senate still has time to rectify the problems and take effective action.

Obama has an opportunity to provide that first firm push on Friday, when he is scheduled to give a speech on clean energy at MIT. If he stands up for his principles and demands better legislation from Congress, he could be hailed as a hero when hundreds of thousands of people around the world gather on Saturday for the 350.org International Day of Climate Action.

Without significant changes, the Greenpeace report concludes, the current climate bills will not decrease emissions or do much to discourage fossil fuel use:

“In other words, federal climate legislation currently pending in Congress will deter a clean energy economy and fail to avert catastrophic climate disruption."

On Count 1 of the indictment, undermining the Clean Air Act, Greenpeace highlights how the House-passed ACES bill would expressly prevent the EPA from regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

Greenpeace argues that that would create a perverse incentive that would encourage energy companies to continue operating their oldest, most-polluting plants rather than replacing them with more efficient plants.

Greenpeace isn’t the only group concerned. Several other environmental groups, as well as MoveOn.org and members of Congress, began speaking out about protecting the EPA's authority after the Clean Air Act limitations were included in Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey's (D-Mass.) ACES bill.

So far, the draft Senate bill proposed by Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) leaves in tact the EPA’s authority to use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Greenpeace wants to keep it that way.

Count 2, the weakness of the carbon caps in the current climate bills, may be doing the most to damage Obama's global reputation as a changemaker.

Scientists and the IPCC have been calling for developed nations to cut their emissions to a level 25% to 40% below their 1990 emissions by 2020. Germany has committed to cutting its emissions 40% below 1990 levels. The EU as a whole has pledged to cut emissions at least 20% below 1990 levels.

And the United States? The House bill's proposes to cut U.S. emissions to 4% below 1990 levels by 2020. It has made the U.S. the couch potato of international climate talks. The Senate isn't expected to do much better.

On Count 3, that the legislation sanctifies coal as a “clean” energy choice, Greenpeace writes:

“There is probably no better indication of the persistence of business as usual than the fact that both the House and Senate climate legislation prioritize support for the primary industrial source of greenhouse gas. That’s right, the largest federal investment is to subsidize coal.”

Those investments include bonuses for developing carbon capture and storage (CCS), what Lee Sprauge of the Michigan Sierra Club likens to turning the smokestacks upside down and using the Earth as a giant waste dump. U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu is a vocal booster of the technology — so far unproven at commercial scale — even though it does nothing to clean up coal’s other environmental problems, such as the contamination of streams from mountaintop mining.

Coal-state congressmen, led by Virginia Rep. Rick Boucher, have also made certain that energy producers will be well compensated through another major stink bomb built into the House bill: free allocations and access to almost limitless offsets.

Count 4 is the danger posed by all those handouts and loopholes.

In a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing this morning, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) reminded her colleagues of how carbon polluters piled on during the House climate bill negotiations, slugging it out for every permit they could get their hands on.

“I think we should view it as a warning sign,” Murkowski said. “By picking winners, the House bill advantaged some energy sources and disadvantaged others. … There’s not a lot of pie that is available out there to satisfy all the groups that are vying for it.”

“Our climate policy, no matter what form it takes, is meant to be an environmental policy, not an appropriations bill.”

Boxer, Kerry and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) have yet to release their plans for allocations in the Senate’s version of the bill.

Obama initially called for a 100% auction of the emissions permits, and he even included that in his budget proposal. Greenpeace is urging him to keep that position because it “upholds the fundamental principle that polluters must pay for the pollution they cause.”

Citing a recent Point Carbon analysis, Greenpeace also notes that allocation giveaways are counter-productive because they perpetuate the nation’s existing, carbon-intensive energy infrastructure.

The 2 billion tons of offsets that would be allowed under the House-passed ACES bill would create the same problem — corporations would be allowed buy offsets and keep pumping out CO2 for less than it would cost them to clean up their own emissions.

Finally, on Count 5, looking at the shift to clean energy, Greenpeace notes that the two bills, both with “clean energy” in their names, give short shrift to actual clean energy.

The House bill proposes that utilities get 20% of their power from renewable energy sources, but an analysis by ICF International shows that once the bill’s extra credits for energy efficiency, nuclear power, CCS and hydropower are factored in, the requirement ends up at less than 10%. Most state governments are already on a better trajectory. In fact, if the clean energy sector continues to grow at its current pace, that alone will be enough to surpass Congress’s targets.

“After more than 20 years of effort and attention to the issue, America has never been closer to enacting climate legislation. The tantalizing prospect of having a climate law on the books has created a dangerous willingness to accommodate unacceptable compromise," Greenpeace writes.

“Let us stand firm not to adopt legislation that locks in a permanent and endless fossil fuel future. Let us insist that this constellation of great leaders be the enemy of impending catastrophe.”

Over the next week, this site will be running sections of the report, which was written on behalf of Greenpeace by SolveClimate Founder David Sassoon.

See also:

Clean Energy Climate Bill Gives Coal a Competitive Future

Polluters' War on Climate Legislation Is Taking a Toll

Senate Returns with No Clear Plan for Climate Bill Allowances

5 AGs Urge Senate to Let States Set Higher Climate Standards

Gaping Hole in Climate Bill Would Give Polluters More License to Pollute

Cap and Trade in Perspective: Stopping Acid Rain

Cap and Trade in Perspective: Carbon Trading in the Northeast

Cap and Trade in Perspective: The European Version

(Photo: Official White House photo by Chuck Kennedy)

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