Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., is poised to add some spice to the Senate’s consideration of climate and energy legislation. She’s drafted a yet-to-be-introduced bill she’s calling CLEAR— Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal.
The bill is a “blessedly brief” 32 pages that could prove to be a game-changer in the climate debate, according to David Morris who lauds the bill with praise in a post at AlterNet.
He says Cantwell’s plan is fundamentally different from the legislation passed by the House last May. Instead of regulating carbon output it would regulate carbon input.
By shifting the responsibility upstream to the wellhead or mine or port of entry, the bill slashes administrative costs to a fraction of what they will be under Waxman-Markey. Only a few thousand energy-producing or importing firms would be covered, versus the hundreds of thousands or more entities covered under Waxman-Markey.
The bill calls for a 100 percent auction of carbon emissions permits, offers direct consumer refunds to help cushion the blow of energy price increases, and proposes strict trading structures that would keep speculation and hoarding in check.
Cantwell’s CLEAR bill would also place an upper and lower limit on auction prices, $21 and $7 respectively in 2012, which increases at an aggregate rate calculated from the rate of inflation and the rate of return on capital investments. This provision effectively places a price collar on auction prices, a mechanism popular with some climate and energy policy observers: see here, here, and of course here.
