Energy Policy

Energy Reading

Speculators, Pension Funds, McCain, and Ducks

• A Christian Science Monitor op-ed on the biofuels debate over using land set aside for conservation purposes to grow crops used for biofuel production instead. [Biofuels put bucks over ducks]
   
• A Wall Street Journal editorial on speculation in energy markets. [Political Speculators]
   
• A MarketWatch article on yesterday’s congressional hearings on regulating oil markets and analysts’ claims that gasoline could come back down to $2/gallon under certain regulatory schemes that limit market speculation. [Gas could fall to $2 if Congress acts, analysts say]
   
• Another MarketWatch article on a plan developed by Senator Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., to ban large pension funds and other institutional funds from commodities trading (which would include oil). [Plan to bar funds from commodities garners few fans]
   
• A Wall Street Journal piece profiling Representative Randy Forbes, R-Va., and his proposals to end U.S. reliance on foreign sources of energy. [Capital Journal: Oil Woes Fail to Stir Leadership]
   
• One more Wall Street Journal piece looking at John McCain’s energy proposals; it finds him to be “all over the map.” [Senator’s Broad Range Of Energy Policies Defies Categories]

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 4:28 pm
File As: Energy Policy, Biofuels, Energy Politics

McCain’s Energy Plan

A Battery Prize, Reduced Car Emissions, and a Flex-Fuel Mandate

Republican presidential nominee John McCain sees building a more energy-efficient car battery as central to reducing U.S. energy consumption. He announced Monday that, as president, he would establish a $300 million prize for anyone who creates a battery that can be used with plug-in hybrid car, the type of cars U.S. automakers are currently trying to develop:

[I]n the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure. From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success.

I further propose we inspire the ingenuity and resolve of the American people by offering a $300 million prize for the development of a battery package that has the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars. This is one dollar for every man, woman and child in the U.S. -- a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency -- and should deliver a power source at 30 percent of the current costs.

(Related: This month, the heads of Ford and GM spoke in Washington at a conference and outlined what they need from Washington to make plug-in hybrids a reality for American consumers.)

McCain also wants to give “substantial” new incentives to carmakers to reduce CO2 emissions:

My administration will issue a Clean Car Challenge to the automakers of America, in the form of a single and substantial tax credit based on the reduction of carbon emissions. For every automaker who can sell a zero-emissions car, we will commit a 5,000 dollar tax credit for each and every customer who buys that car. For other vehicles, whatever type they may be, the lower the carbon emissions, the higher the tax credit. And these large tax credits will be available to everyone -- not just to those who have an accountant to explain it to them.

And he announced his support for the flex-fuel vehicle mandate that New Atlantis contributing editor Robert Zubrin has proposed:

Instead of playing favorites, our government should level the playing field for all alcohol fuels that break the monopoly of gasoline, lowering both gasoline prices and carbon emissions. And this can be done with a simple federal standard to hasten the conversion of all new vehicles in America to flex-fuel technology -- allowing drivers to use alcohol fuels instead of gas in their cars. Brazil went from about five to over 70 percent of all new vehicles with flex-fuel capacity. It did all that in just three years. Yet those same automakers that helped Brazil make the change say it will take them longer to reach the goal of 50 percent new flex-fuel vehicles for America. But I am confident they can do more, and do it faster, in the interest of our energy security. And if I am elected president, they will. Whether it takes a meeting with automakers during my first month in office, or my signature on an act of Congress, we will meet the goal of a swift conversion of American vehicles away from oil.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 5:23 pm
File As: Energy Policy, Biofuels, Energy Politics

Obama and Ethanol

The New York Times today looks at Senator Barack Obama’s support for the domestic production of ethanol, an alternative fuel that has come under fire recently amid global speculation that turning crops into fuel is connected to rising food prices. The article contrasts Obama’s pro-ethanol position to Republican nominee John McCain’s opposition to federal subsidies for ethanol.

The article finds a contradiction in Obama’s efforts to classify himself as a reformer and his support for one of the most powerful and successful lobbies in Washington:

Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.

The article also examines Obama’s ties to ethanol-industry companies and groups, and cites Tom Daschle as a central figure.

Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, “he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy.”

Mr. Obama’s lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet, came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr. Daschle and Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.

Not long after arriving in the Senate, Mr. Obama himself briefly provoked a controversy by flying at subsidized rates on corporate airplanes, including twice on jets owned by Archer Daniels Midland, which is the nation’s largest ethanol producer and is based in his home state.

The article also looks at McCain’s opposition to ethanol subsidies, a stance that may well end up hurting him in the general election in farm states:

[McCain and Obama] offer sharply different visions of the role that ethanol, which can be made from a variety of organic materials, should play in those efforts.

Mr. McCain advocates eliminating the multibillion-dollar annual government subsidies that domestic ethanol has long enjoyed. As a free trade advocate, he also opposes the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff that the United States slaps on imports of ethanol made from sugar cane, which packs more of an energy punch than corn-based ethanol and is cheaper to produce.

“We made a series of mistakes by not adopting a sustainable energy policy, one of which is the subsidies for corn ethanol, which I warned in Iowa were going to destroy the market” and contribute to inflation, Mr. McCain said this month in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de São Paulo. “Besides, it is wrong,” he added, to tax Brazilian-made sugar cane ethanol, “which is much more efficient than corn ethanol.”

To read the rest of the article, go here.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 2:40 pm
File As: Energy Policy, Biofuels

John McCain's Views on Drilling

This week, Republican presidential nominee John McCain ventured to Houston, the Oil Capital of America, to lay out his proposed energy policy. When it comes to domestic oil production -- drilling -- McCain told the audience, “We do have resources, and we do have a choice.” He called for lifting the federal moratorium on offshore drilling (which has been in place since 1981), saying that he believes states should get to decide whether or not they want to grant access to energy companies off their shores:

In oil, gas, and coal deposits, we have enormous energy reserves of our own. And we are gaining the means to use these resources in cleaner, more responsible ways. As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston. Yet for reasons that become less convincing with every rise in the price of foreign oil, the federal government discourages offshore production...

But the stakes are high for our citizens and for our economy. And with gasoline running at more than four bucks a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians. We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.

We can do this in ways that are consistent with sensible standards of environmental protection. And in states that choose to permit exploration, there must be an appropriate sharing of benefits between federal and state governments. But as a matter of fairness to the American people, and a matter of duty for our government, we must deal with the here and now, and assure affordable fuel for America by increasing domestic production.

Although later in the week, Senator McCain suggested that he might possibly rethink his position on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (video available here), in his Houston speech on Tuesday he reaffirmed his anti-drilling stance:

Quite rightly, I believe, we confer a special status on some areas of our country that are best left undisturbed. When America set aside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, we called it a “refuge” for a reason.

Even before Senator McCain delivered the Houston speech, the Democratic National Committee released an advisory about McCain’s “flip-flop” on offshore drilling, saying he used to oppose it but now says he is in favor of it.

Not so fast. Senator McCain’s position on oil drilling doesn’t actually seem to be a switch -- at least not based on his votes in the Senate and his past comments on the subject. It seems more accurate to say he has had a “mixed position” on this issue over time -- consistently opposing drilling in ANWR and allowing for state preferences when it comes to offshore drilling. Using records from Project Vote Smart and the Library of Congress’s Thomas database, it is possible to track whether and how Senator McCain’s position has evolved.

Senator McCain has repeatedly said that he is opposed to drilling in ANWR. A search of the congressional record shows McCain has made a distinction in the past between drilling in ANWR and drilling elsewhere.

A December 10, 2007 Associated Press report of a McCain speech in Aiken, South Carolina notes that, “in response to a question from an audience member, McCain said he believed offshore drilling should be left the coastal state closest to the proposed project. He also said he did not support opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.”

The DNC memo, however, pointed back to articles from 1999 describing Senator McCain’s support for a moratorium on offshore oil drilling when he last ran for president. And going back further to 1992, Senator McCain voted to kill an amendment to energy legislation that year which would have strengthened the role of coastal states in federal offshore drilling decisions.

In 2000 (USA Today and AP reported), the candidates were asked “Should companies that together spent over $1 billion to secure oil leases off the California coast be allowed to drill on them or should an existing moratorium be expanded to ban drilling in those waters?” McCain’s answer:

The leases for offshore oil drilling should never have been granted without allowing Californians a legitimate voice in the decision-making process. I believe it is up to the voters of California to determine the fate of these leases, and as president, I will respect the decision they make regarding the leases. The people of California deserve to be heard, without being forced to resort to legal action against their own government. As president, I will see to it that the interests of the people of California rise above the special interests of Washington, D.C.

So even as far back as 1992, Senator McCain’s position was strikingly similar to his current position: that states closest to the project need to be given a voice.

Based on Senate votes, Senator McCain has supported expanded exploration in non-ANWR areas:

In 2005:

• He voted yes on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Drilling Amendment; passage would have kept the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge closed to oil drilling.

In 2006:

• He voted yes on the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006 (S. 3711), which would provide “for exploration, development, and production activities for mineral resources in the Gulf of Mexico.”
  
• He also voted yes on an amendment that would “provide funding for implementing the Energy Policy Act of 2005 from ANWR.”

In 2007:

• Senator McCain was not present for the vote on legislation aimed at allowing governor of Virginia to petition the U.S. Secretary of the Interior to allow for natural gas exploration and extraction at least fifty miles from the coastal zone.

In 2008:

• Senator McCain was not present for a vote (S. Amdt. 4329 to S Con Res 70) that allowed for, among other things, “the development of oil and natural gas resources in coastal areas not covered by a Presidential or Congressional Moratorium.” Senator Obama voted yes.
  
• Senator McCain was also not present a vote (S. Amdt. 4207 to S. Con. Res. 70) that allowed for more funding for “the development of natural gas off the coast of Virginia and the development of oil shale resources on public lands.” Senator Obama voted no.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 11:28 pm
File As: Energy Policy

Wired goes nuclear

The cover of Wired magazine’s June 2008 issue says it all:

The article inside even more directly takes on the environmental movement, starting with its title: “Inconvenient Truths: Get Ready to Rethink What It Means to Be Green.” The article outlines a list of ten “inconvenient truths” (a play on the title of Al Gore’s documentary and book, which has also been recently parodied by Iain Murray). The article argues that “winning the war on global warming” -- the paramount goal of today’s environmental movement -- “requires slaughtering some of environmentalism’s sacred cows.” That means greens cannot “afford to ignore...the carbon-free electricity supplied by nuclear energy.”

Although this is Wired’s most blunt statement in favor of the use of civilian nuclear energy, it’s worth noting that a few years ago the magazine also dedicated considerable space to a friendly profile of Patrick Moore, the Greenpeace co-founder who now advocates for nuclear power.

The ten “inconvenient truths” are here:

1. Live in Cities
2. A/C Is OK
3. Organics Are Not The Answer
4. Farm the Forests
5. China Is the Solution
6. Accept Genetic Engineering
7. Carbon Trading Doesn’t Work
8. Embrace Nuclear Power
9. Used Cars — Not Hybrids
10. Prepare for the Worst

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 10:12 pm
File As: Energy Policy, Nuclear Energy

“It’s a crisis for this country”

T. Boone Pickens on U.S. energy policy

Billionaire oil investor T. Boone Pickens (reportedly worth around $3 billion, and the country’s highest paid hedge fund manager in 2005) had a lot to say about U.S. energy policy at Oil and Gas Investor’s Energy Capital Forum in Houston this week. He expects oil to hit $150 a barrel (it’s now around $135). Pickens is the former owner of Mesa Petroleum, which was one of the largest independent oil companies in the world. (He sold it in the mid-1990s.) Pickens is the founder and a principal of BP Capital LLC.

From the Domestic Fuel Blog:

“Energy is not a debate; it’s a crisis for this country,” Pickens said. “We cannot continue down the path were on. It’s that desperate.”...

Pickens said he plans to elevate the issue into this year’s presidential election campaign through a series of television ads talking about energy.

Hart Energy Publishing’s take on the businessman’s speech:

The energy crisis is a result of decades of lack of leadership that has led to a breakdown. Now, “somebody has to show up to fix it.” He doubts the candidates understand the urgency of the circumstances.

Pickens chided Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama for “throwing around the windfall profits tax like a piece of balsa wood.

“I don’t think the senator knows anything about energy. He sounds good for about two minutes.”

Republican candidate Sen. John McCain received little more support. “I don’t know how much he knows either. He wants to lower the gas tax during the summer. What the hell is he talking about? Will that fix anything?”....

He said there is “no question” that America must embrace alternate energy sources to alleviate the $700-billion transfer of wealth out of the country to oil imports....

Ethanol is “an ugly baby but it’s ours and it will move cars,” he said, emphasizing that he prefers the less-than-perfect fuel over imported oil. Biofuels, however, will never account for more than 10% of the U.S.’s energy needs, he predicts.

There are more excerpts from Pickens’s remarks in this article from Oil and Gas Investor.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 11:19 am
File As: Energy, Energy Policy, Biofuels, Gas and Oil Prices

Speculating about speculation

Energy committee chairman asks government to "dig deeply" on oil prices

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman Jeff Bingaman (D.-N.M.) sent a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) this week asking the agency to “dig more deeply” as it investigates the role of speculation and non-commercial, institutional investors in raising the price of oil to today’s levels. Senator Bingaman also questioned the “adequacy” of CFTC’s regulatory oversight. The letter comes as lawmakers face continued pressure to soften the impact of fuel prices for American families and businesses.

Bingaman’s biggest concerns, according to the press release explaining the letter:

the CFTC does not collect data on or analyze the fastest growing segment of energy commodity trading, lumps speculators together with more traditional energy market participants in its analyses, and has much lower transparency requirements for energy compared to agricultural commodities.

Bingaman says he understands that “tight oil market fundamentals and geopolitics” are playing a key role in determining oil prices — but recent analysts’ testimony suggesting supply and demand for physical barrels of oil simply cannot fully explain prevailing oil prices has Bingaman looking for other answers, specifically “the impacts of speculative investment” on prices.

A main concern for Bingaman and others critical of the energy trading platform is that more and more trading activity for crude oil is taking place on foreign boards of trade and in over-the-counter markets. Here the CFTC has limited oversight.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 3:29 pm
File As: Energy, Energy Policy

... but in Kansas, proposed coal plants are nixed

A veto by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of two proposed 700-megawatt coal-burning coal-fired plants stands. According to news reports, members of the state House rebuffed the effort to override her veto of the power plants.

"The Kansas House voted 80-45, falling four votes short of the required two-thirds majority needed in the 125-member chamber to override the veto," according to the Lawrence Journal-World & News.

Speaker Melvin Neufeld, a Republican, reportedly kept the roll call open in the House for two hours and kept the chamber under lock-down (members could only leave with permission and had to return quickly) while proponents of the project tried to muster the needed votes -- to no avail.

But the two chambers of the state legislature were divided over the veto. On Wednesday of last week the state Senate overrode Sebelius’s veto 32-7, five votes more than the required two-thirds majority.

Apparently, the original rejection of the permit for a coal-fired power plant by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment marked the first time that any government agency in the United States cited carbon dioxide emissions and greenhouse gas concerns in rejecting such a permit.

 

Speaking at a Yale climate change event two weeks ago (I was in attendance), Governor Sebelius said she was opposed to the plants because much of the electricity they produced would be exported to other states (namely Colorado and Texas) while Kansas residents would be forced to live with the emissions pumped into the air and the effects of climate change.

Prior to the veto override vote, lawmakers approved a separate bill that would have increased the amount of energy from the project for Kansas residents from 200 megawatts to 400 megawatts.

According to the Energy Department, seven coal-fired power plants supply more than 75% of electricity to Kansas residents. Almost all of the coal used in Kansas’s power plants is shipped by railcar from other states -- mostly from Wyoming.

The Kansas supreme court decided in April to put on hold its review of the commission's decision blocking the power plants to allow legal challenges to be considered in district court and in administrative hearings involving the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, according to news reports.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 3:41 pm
File As: Energy Policy, Coal

Biofuels and the Price of Food

 

Also at the White House press conference on Monday (previously discussed here), Press Secretary Dana Perino was asked about worldwide food shortages and whether President Bush feels “any responsibility himself for that, because he’s been such a hard backer of ethanol,” specifically corn-based ethanol which some claim is driving up the price of food.

Perino responded:

There are a lot of factors that go into higher food prices or food shortages in countries that need help in order to feed their populations. One is demand; demand is extremely high. You also have transportation costs. And of course energy costs come into that, when people are trying to move food from one place to the other. In addition, you have weather-related events, such as the drought in Australia, in which their wheat crops have been not as fruitful as in the past, and so the prices have gone up there.

We recognize that moving from an oil-based economy to one that’s based more on renewable or alternative fuels is going to be one that requires a transition period. That’s one of the reasons that the President, in the State of the Union in 2006, suggested that we move to cellulosic ethanol, which, as you remember, the famous line of using switchgrass or wood chips.

But that technology is advancing, and the President was able to go to a Dole plant where they were showing how to — I’m sorry, I’m not sure if it was Dole, excuse me. I can’t remember the name of the plant, but I remember going to the event, and looking at how the scientists were approaching this issue with gusto, with a lot of money behind them, because there is going to be demand for alternative fuels, because we realize that we have two problems: one, we are too dependent on foreign sources of energy; and two, we have environmental concerns that we want to address.

The question came amid reports of riots in Haiti, Bangladesh, and Egypt (along with recent reports of riots in Senegal, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire) over the soaring costs of food. The White House said Monday it planned to make $200 million in emergency food aid available through the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Also on Monday, Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, spoke out against biofuel policies like the U.S. mandate to produce corn-based ethanol: “We’ve been putting our food into the gas tank — this corn-to-ethanol subsidy which our government is doing really makes little sense.”

At the moment, no one is questioning whether there is a global food crisis. The debate is over why food prices are surging so suddenly now and how much can be attributed to increasing demand for biofuels. An article in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday had this take on the situation: “According to the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf, the world’s poorest countries can expect the cost of imported food to rise 56 percent, even though the world’s cereal production is forecast to increase slightly. That will spell extreme hardship for developing countries that already spend a large portion of their gross domestic product to buy food from abroad.”

New York Times reporter Andrew Martin offers a “news analysis” piece on the food versus fuel debate titled, “Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing.” As Martin points out, it is difficult to figure out how much of the rising price of food can be attributed to the growing demand for biofuels. “Many specialists in food policy consider government mandates for biofuels to be ill advised, agreeing that the diversion of crops like corn into fuel production has contributed to the higher prices,” Martin writes. “But other factors have played big roles, including droughts that have limited output and rapid global economic growth that has created higher demand for food. That growth, much faster over the last four years than the historical norm, is lifting millions of people out of destitution and giving them access to better diets.”

Martin points to C. Ford Runge, director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota, who agrees that it is “extremely difficult to disentangle” the impact of biofuels on food costs. Runge, it should be noted, co-authored an article last year on “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor” (in the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs).

Martin also points to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, which has suggested “that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices,” and a U.N. agency that predicted late year that biofuel production would increase food costs by 10-15 percent.

Meanwhile, at a press conference on Sunday (transcript here), World Bank President Robert Zoellick claimed there is a clearcut connection between biofuels and rising food prices: “Our work shows and other work shows, there clearly is an issue linked here with some of the food‑based biofuels that has got to be part of the puzzle.... I mean, the biofuels are clearly linked to what’s going on in the underlying energy market more generally, you also have changing diets. You have the higher energy price affect the ability to produce food.” Zoellick, who also addressed the subject last week (where he used food props, as pictured above) and in a recent NPR interview, has been referring to a new World Bank report that examines the connection between increased biofuel production and the rise in food prices. That report finds the following:

• increases in global wheat prices rose 181 percent over the 36 months leading up to February 2008;
• overall global food prices increased by 83 percent for the same period;
• food crop prices are expected to remain high in 2008 and 2009 and then begin to decline;
• from 2004 to 2007, global corn (maize) production increased 51 million tons, and biofuel use in the United States increased 50 million tons;
• U.S. wheat export prices rose from $375/ton in January to $440/ton in March;
• Thai rice export prices increased from $365/ton to $562/ton.

The report bluntly concludes that “increased biofuel production has contributed to the rise in food prices.” It specifically points a finger at U.S. policies and corn production:

Almost all of the increase in global maize production from 2004 to 2007 (the period when grain prices rose sharply) went for biofuels production in the U.S., while existing stocks were depleted by an increase in global consumption for other uses. Other developments, such as droughts in Australia and poor crops in the E.U. and Ukraine in 2006 and 2007, were largely offset by good crops and increased exports in other countries and would not, on their own, have had a significant impact on prices. Only a relatively small share of the increase in food production prices (around 15%) is due directly to higher energy and fertilizer costs.

The World Bank report says the benefits of biofuels — energy independence, less reliance on oil, and reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases — “have to be weighed against the potential costs of rising food prices” and points to a recent IFPRI study that finds “most scenarios of increased use of biofuels imply substantial trade-offs with food prices. These trade-offs are dampened, although not eliminated, when technological advances in biofuel and crop production are considered.”

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 0:32 am
File As: Energy Policy, Biofuels

A Bush administration about-face on climate change?

On Monday, the Washington Times shocked observers when it reported that President Bush is poised to “change course and announce as early as this week that he wants Congress to pass a bill to combat global warming.” According to the article, President Bush is supposedly preparing a list of “principles” to guide lawmakers and is going to call for legislation addressing climate change directly (as opposed legislation mandating higher vehicle fuel efficiency or promoting nuclear power plants, both of which are a step removed from direct cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and both of which have been supported by the administration in the past).

The Times explains the administration’s reasoning this way: “Bush administration officials have told Republicans in Congress that they feel pressure to act now because they fear a coming regulatory nightmare.” A similar story was published by the Associated Press on Monday.

Energy and manufacturing industry leaders have been warning lawmakers for years of an increasingly complicated maze of state efforts to address greenhouse emissions and climate change and the need for firm federal regulations to guide industry investments. While Wall Street dislikes regulation, it truly hates ambiguity; it would rather get fixed regulations so companies can begin to prepare for change than endless speculation and waiting. “This is an attempt to move the administration and the party closer to the center on global warming,” the Times quotes an administration source close to the White House who is familiar with the planning. Such a move could also bring the administration closer to Senator John McCain’s position on climate change.

It’s worth noting that nothing in the Times story comes out and clearly says the president is going to announce support for mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reductions, which the administration has consistently opposed. White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, when asked questions about the stories at the White House press briefing on Monday referred to establishing a “national goal.” She said the “regulatory path that we are on right now is not sustainable” and “we aren’t necessarily against cap and trade proposals.”

But Perino wouldn’t commit the White House to support for a legislative proposal per se. “We are considering how to move forward on the regulatory path that we have. We are considering how to respond to legislative proposals that are in front of Congress right now,” she said when pressed on whether the White House was prepared to support a legislative proposal to address climate change.

Perino was then pressed again as to whether the White House will specifically put forward a legislative proposal on climate change:

Reporter: Has there been no decision whether to put forth legislation, or is there a decision to do that?

Perino: That’s true.

And later:

Reporter: Is there a package that you’re developing that’s primarily legislation, or is it more regulatory in whatever it is that you --

Perino: I would say it’s neither.

But Perino also would not say that an announcement isn’t forthcoming. Question from reporter: “Are you saying nothing will be coming out imminently?” Perino: “I’m saying that — no, I’m not going to say that. There could be something. I just don’t have anything for you today.” Asked whether the announcement might come on Earth Day — next Tuesday, April 22nd — Perino said: “It could be next week, it could be never. I just don’t have anything for you.”

Some Republicans see the White House’s apparent shift as bad news. “Republican members of Congress who were briefed last week let top administration officials know that they think the White House is making a mistake, according to congressional sources and others familiar with the discussions,” the Times reported. Lawmakers who are less-than-happy with the White House’s change-of-course (if it happens): Reps. John Shimkus (R.-Ill.) and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R.-Wisc.), according to the article. One Republican source in the AP story noted that “‘The meeting [on the Hill] was set up to float a few trial balloons’ and it did not go well, with some participants viewing it as ‛political appeasement’ on global warming.”

Meanwhile, the Senate is slated in June to debate a bipartisan climate change bill authored by Senators Joe Lieberman, (I.-Conn.) and John Warner, (R.-Va.), that would cap greenhouse gas emissions. (You can see that bill, in PDF format, here.)

The White House has clearly been making some moves on climate change recently. Earlier this month White House Council on Environmental Quality Chairman James Connaughton (the administration’s go-to guy on climate change) confirmed that he had met with Rep. Rick Boucher (D.-Va.) and Rep. Fred Upton (R.-Mich.), respectively the chairman and the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality — the panel in charge of writing climate change legislation.

Ultimately, Perino refused to be pinned down on the issue when asked during Monday’s press briefing when an announcement would come. “We haven’t come forward yet and said definitively where we are, and that’s because we’re having a very robust discussion,” she said. She did, though, reiterate the White House’s opinion of the Lieberman-Warner bill, as well as of the general climate change regulatory framework:

Here in this country we are dealing with what we call a regulatory train wreck. We have several different laws that were never meant to deal with — to address climate change, heading down a path that we believe is not reasonable, nor sustainable, would hurt our economy, and is not good public policy. This would have the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act all addressing climate change in a way that is not the way that they were intended to....

We have been not shy about saying that we don’t support legislation that is currently on the Hill. We think that it would be bad for the economy, and that it wouldn’t — ultimately, it wouldn’t address the problem.

Perino noted that there will be a meeting with other major economic powers in Paris later this week that administration officials are slated to attend. The topic of climate change is expected to be on the table.

posted by Stephanie Cohen | 11:33 am
File As: Energy Policy, Environmentalism, Global Warming

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