Democratic Bill Would Bolster Carbon Emissions Goals, Overhaul Tax Credits

Earlier this week, Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the ranking member on the Senate Energy Committee, rolled out the ambitious climate bill that sets a higher target to for cutting carbon emissions than the U.S. EPA’s Clean Power Plan. By lifting the restrictions on oil exports put in place in the 1970s, the GOP bill would spur increased production of shale oil.

Although the bill has no prospect of passing in a Republican-controlled Congress, Democrats hope voters will approve of the preview of their energy policy approach if they regain control of the Senate in 2016.

Among Wyden’s proposed clean-energy tax incentives are technology-neutral tax credits for domestic production of clean electricity and clean transportation fuel, as well as performance-based tax credit for energy efficient homes and tax deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings – the more energy conserved, the larger the incentive.

The Obama administration, in a landmark climate agreement with China previous year and in a more recent pledge to the United Nations, has vowed to reduce US greenhouse-gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent by 2025 compared with 2005 levels.

“This is going to be a huge issue in the 2016 campaign”, Senator Chuck Schumer, who is expected to take over as the party’s Senate leader from Reid, said at the news conference.

A plan to raise taxes on energy and pick winners and losers in the marketplace released Tuesday by Senate Democrats is backward-facing and could threaten America’s energy revolution and harm consumers, according to API Executive Vice President Louis Finkel.

The bill would re-introduce the Production Tax Credit for wind projects, providing a credit of as much as 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. “America’s oil and natural gas industry pays one of the highest tax rates among US businesses, generating billions of dollars every year in revenue for the federal government”.

“This bill is built around the proposition that the law ought to reward clean energy with incentives that spark innovation in the private economy”, said Sen. Putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions has always been a favored policy of many environmental economists, but it became political taboo after Midwestern Democrats killed a landmark cap-and-trade bill in 2009.

The extensive bill summary also includes provisions for open-source distribution planning, microgrid and storage pilots for the DOE, upgrades to the gas pipeline system and electric grid, and the establishment of a national Energy Efficiency Resource Standard, among other proposals.

“Change happens incrementally”, she said. It focuses on industries that will modernize the country’s power infrastructure while reducing the carbon emissions that are blamed for warming the planet.