WASHINGTON – Congress will return today ready to engage in a historic debate on whether the country should shift to cleaner and more efficient use of energy and reduce the heat-trapping gases building up in the atmosphere.
Before leaving for Memorial Day, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a bill that would set the country's first mandatory limits on greenhouse gases, promote renewable energy and increase the efficiency of buildings, appliances and vehicles.
The bill now will be considered by other committees and should reach the floor of the House of Representatives for a vote this summer.
This month is expected to feature lawmakers publicly airing concerns about costs and the impact on agriculture and heavy industry.
Environmentalists will try to strengthen the bill, arguing that its efficiency measures and other provisions will hold down costs.
As it now stands, the measure would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, and continues to an 83 percent cut by 2050 by setting a declining limit, or cap, on the amount of emissions companies can produce.
Companies covered by the bill must hold permits, known as allowances, for each ton of emissions, and they can trade these allowances as needed.
More than 80 percent of the allowances would be given to utilities and businesses in the early years after the program starts in 2012, while the rest would be auctioned.
Many of the free allowances are designed to pass savings on to consumers, partly by spreading some of them to regulated local distribution companies, whose mandate is to keep costs down. Others are intended to help businesses adjust to higher energy costs or make up for competitive disadvantages.
Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said it's hard to estimate the economic impact of climate change. But, he added, "I think the consensus view is that climate change will have some costs for U.S. economic activity."
Scientists say the 500 billion tons of carbon – and growing – that humans have added to the atmosphere in the industrial era is putting Earth on a course to soon being warmer than it's been in millions of years.
International negotiators will meet in December in Copenhagen, Denmark, to try to get the cooperation necessary for global emissions reductions.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, said his committee's clean energy bill not only would cut global warming pollution but also would break U.S. dependence on foreign oil and make the United States a leader in clean energy technology.
The bill still needs to be considered by as many as eight more House committees before it gets to a vote by the full House this summer.
Call David Lightman, McClatchy Washington Bureau, (202) 383-6101.
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