Chu reiterates support for carbon price as competing bill emerges

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Just hours after a senior Republican US Senator introduced climate-change legislation to compete with a Democratic measure, Energy Secretary Steven Chu–in a letter to that minority party lawmaker–reiterated his support for the Democratic approach.

Earlier Wednesday, Senator Richard Lugar, Republican-Indiana, introduced a bill, the Practical Energy and Climate Plan Act of 2010 (H.R. 3464), that seeks to cut greenhouse-gas emissions through energy efficiency measures, the increased use of nuclear power and other measures.

The bill is meant as an alternative to a climate bill proposed by senators John Kerry, a Democrat, and Joseph Lieberman, an independent, which unlike the Republican bill contains a measure to put a price on carbon.

While Chu lauded Lugar’s emphasis on energy efficiency, he echoed the Obama administration position that a price on carbon was crucial to encouraging the adoption of new energy technologies, such as nuclear plants, low-emissions coal plants and renewable sources of energy.

“I continue to believe that to fully capitalize on these opportunities we need comprehensive legislation that puts a price on carbon and makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy,” Chu said.

The letter to Lugar comes a day before Chu is to meet with President Barack Obama to discuss the Kerry-Lieberman bill and the ongoing oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, a senior DOE official said Wednesday.

Chu has been in Houston assisting BP in its efforts to stop the flow of oil from its Macondo well.

Also on Thursday, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, Democrat-Nevada, will meet with the heads of committees to discuss how to go forward with the Kerry-Lieberman climate legislation in that chamber. Last week Reid asked committee heads to finish their work on the bill by July 4, with the intention of bringing it to the floor for debate later that same month.

Also last week, Obama said that the oil spill underscores the need for clean energy, and pledged to put his weight behind finding the votes needed to gain the 60 needed to pass a Democrats’ climate bill.

Those votes may be hard to find. Lugar’s bill has already attracted support from fellow Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Graham originally worked with Kerry and Lieberman on their bill, but pulled out over another issue.

Over 200 Department of Energy scientists and other experts, including Chu, a Nobel Prize winning physicist, have been deeply involved in many aspects of the leak in the Gulf, including the effort to cap the leaking well head and attempts to determine the rate that oil is leaking from the well.
–Derek Sands, [email protected]

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Posted on June 16, 2010 · in USA

Tagged as: America carbon • Carbon Price • climate change