[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 142 (Wednesday, November 19, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6149-S6153]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. WHITEHOUSE (for himself and Mr. Schatz):
S. 2940. A bill to provide for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gas emission fees; to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here now for the, I guess, 80th
time in my weekly series of speeches about carbon pollution to ask the
Senate and Congress to wake up to the growing threat from climate
change, and today I am also announcing the introduction of the American
Opportunity Carbon Fee Act.
Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere
and the oceans. We see it everywhere. We see it in storm-damaged homes
and flooded cities. We see it in drought-stricken farms and raging
wildfires. We see it in fish disappearing from warming and acidifying
waters. We see it in shifting habitats and migrating contagions.
All of these things we see carry costs--real economic dollars-and-
cents costs--to homeowners, to business owners, and to taxpayers. That
cost is described as the social cost of carbon. It is the damage that
people and communities suffer from carbon pollution and climate change.
None of those costs from carbon pollution are factored into the price
of the coal or the oil or the natural gas that releases this carbon.
The fossil fuel companies that sell and burn those products have taken
those costs and offloaded them onto society--onto the rest of us.
That is not fair. If you rake your lawn, you don't get to dump all
the leaves over your neighbor's fence and leave him or her the problem
of cleaning up your leaves. If you are located on a river, you don't
get to dump your garbage in the river and leave it to the downstream
property owners to clean up your mess. Yet the big carbon polluters
transfer the costs--all those costs of climate change--onto everyone
else--all the rest of us.
The U.S. Government has done some estimating about what that social
cost of carbon pollution is and their estimate is that it is around $40
per ton of carbon dioxide emitted, and that that amount rises over time
as carbon pollution creates more and more harm and havoc. So a climbing
$40 per ton is the cost, but the current effective price on carbon
pollution is zero.
By making their carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel
companies to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars annually. By
making their carbon pollution free, we actually rig the game, giving
polluters an unfair advantage over newer and cleaner technologies. It
is a racket. It is a form of cheating. And corporate polluters love it
because it gives them advantage, and they fight tooth and nail to
protect it in this body. But it is wrong.
As University of Chicago economics professor Michael Greenstone
recently explained, this concept--that offloading social costs is wrong
and that there should be a proper price on carbon--is very widely
accepted. Here is what he said:
The media always reports that there's near consensus among
scientists about the fact that human activity impacts climate
change. What does not receive as much attention is that
there's even greater consensus among economists, starting
from Milton Friedman and moving into the most left-wing
economists that you could find, that the obvious correct
public policy solution to this is to put a price on carbon.
It's not controversial.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record,
at the conclusion of my remarks, an article from The Economist
magazine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. The economics editor of The Economist magazine--which
is certainly no hotbed of left wing sentiment--Ryan Avent, has posted a
comment on climate policy and his question is: ``Do economists all
favour a carbon tax?'' He says:
The economic solution is to tax the externality--
That is the offloaded cost.
--so that the social cost of carbon is reflected in the
individual consumer's decision. The carbon tax is an elegant
solution to a complicated problem.
So today I am introducing this bill to put a price on carbon
emissions. It is simple. It will require the polluters to pay a per-ton
fee for their pollution and all of the revenue generated by those
payments will go back to the American people.
I want to thank Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii for cosponsoring this
measure. He has been a great colleague on environmental issues and on
our discussion regarding climate change. The bill that we introduce
today establishes an economy-wide fee on carbon
[[Page S6150]]
dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, tracking that social cost
of carbon, starting at $42 per ton and going up by 2 percent per year,
plus inflation.
We know how much carbon dioxide each unit of coal, oil, and natural
gas produces, so we assess the fee on fossil fuel producers,
processors, and importers. That makes it simple to administer. The
whole bill is only 29 pages long.
For other varieties of greenhouse gases and nonfossil fuel sources of
CO2, we assess our fees only on the very largest emitters--
those emitting more than 25,000 tons a year. This is the same universe
of companies that we already require to monitor and report on their
carbon emissions.
A significant greenhouse gas concern is the methane that escapes
throughout production and distribution. To address this, we require
annual reports on methane leakage and direct the Treasury Secretary to
adjust the fees on fossil fuels to account for that leakage. This fee
will promote innovation and help further reduce carbon emissions.
Fossil fuel companies that capture and sequester or use carbon
dioxide or innovate new ways to encapsulate it in materials or products
will get credits to offset the carbon fee.
We also take care to ensure that American manufacturers are not put
at a competitive disadvantage globally. Imports from nations that don't
price emissions will face a tariff that the Treasury Secretary is
authorized to impose at the border. Likewise, the Secretary is
authorized to rebate American producers on their exports.
I would note one thing. Since regulation is usually a response to
market failure, a well-designed carbon fee would also properly open a
conversation about which and, indeed, whether carbon regulations are
still needed. A carbon fee by itself is much more efficient and
predictable than complex regulations, and I am open to that
conversation.
That is it. It is that simple. Make the polluters pay the full costs
of their products; end the cheating; level the playing field for other
forms of energy, such as wind and solar, to compete fairly; keep the
fee mechanism simple; and maintain a border adjustment that keeps
American goods competitive. Twenty-nine pages.
On the flip side, the carbon fee will generate significant new
Federal revenue. The technicians are still working on the official
revenue estimate for the bill, but it should be at least $1.5 trillion
and perhaps more than $2 trillion over the 10-year budget periods we
work with in Congress and on the Budget Committee.
Whatever the exact number is, all of it should be returned to the
American people. So the bill establishes an American opportunity trust
fund to hold the revenue and return it to the American people. This
could include through tax cuts, through student loan debt relief,
through increased Social Security benefits for seniors, through
transition assistance to workers in fossil fuel industries, or even
just a direct dividend back to the American family. I am looking
forward to deciding with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle what
is the best way to return this revenue, but I do believe every dollar
should go back to the American people in some form. To use economic
jargon, this should be revenue neutral.
This is one example to consider, just a hypothetical: What could we
do? We could cut the corporate tax rate in America from 35 percent to
30 percent. That has been a bipartisan goal for a long time. It was
part of Romney's Presidential campaign. We could accomplish it with
this measure.
We would have enough money left to go to the payroll tax and for
every worker rebate the first $500 they paid in payroll tax. So every
American worker who paid more than $500 in payroll tax would get a $500
check to spend on whatever they wanted. The first tax reduction at the
corporate level uses about $600 billion to offset. This uses about $700
billion to offset.
Third, we could add to that a boost to the EITC--the earned income
tax credit--which supports many American families at the very low end
of the economic spectrum. We could do that by literally hundreds of
dollars a year for millions of lower income families. Again, there has
been bipartisan support for expanding the earned income tax credit.
Three important goals, all reducing taxes or adding to a tax credit--
all should have strong bipartisan support.
The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act has revenue that could make
our companies more competitive, could give every single worker a tax
rebate, and could boost benefits for struggling low-income families.
Last month the Des Moines Register ran a column titled `` `Carbon
tax' would help Iowa, planet.'' The column said this:
The United States could take the lead by acting on its own,
watch its economy grow, and let the rest of the world catch
up.
In the process, the United States would gain mastery of the
sustainable-energy technology that will drive economic growth
in the future.
I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record at
the end of my statement.
George W. Bush's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson gave the same
message earlier this year, saying:
A tax on carbon emissions will unleash a wave of innovation
to develop technologies, lower the costs of clean energy and
create jobs as we and other nations develop new energy
products and infrastructure.
Emphasizing that, coincidentally, is an article in today's New York
Times headed ``A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Green Energy.'' As we all
know, green energy jobs are exploding in this country, and we need more
of them.
Treasury Secretary Paulson continued:
Republicans must not shrink from this issue. Risk
management is a conservative principle.
Secretary Paulson is not alone. Conservative figures such as George
Shultz, who was Secretary of State under President Reagan, emphatically
support a carbon fee as the best way to address carbon pollution.
Art Laffer, one of the architects of President Reagan's economic
plan, had this to say about a carbon tax and related payroll tax cut:
I think that would be very good for the economy and as an
adjunct, it would reduce also carbon emissions into the
environment.
I ask unanimous consent that a 2013 New York Times op-ed be printed
in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. In this New York Times op-ed, Bill Ruckelshaus,
Christine Todd Whitman, Lee Thomas, and William Reilly wrote:
A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the
best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
I know the big carbon polluters want this issue ignored. I know that.
They want to squeeze one more quarter, one more year of public subsidy
for their product from the rest of us. From their point of view, lunch
is good when someone else is picking up the tab. But notwithstanding
the power of the big carbon polluters, I still believe this is a
problem we can solve.
Not long ago this would have been a bipartisan bill. Not long ago
leading voices on the Republican side agreed with Democrats that the
dangers of climate change were real. Not long ago leading Republican
voices agreed that carbon emissions were the culprit. And it was not
long ago that leading Republican voices agreed that Congress had a
responsibility to act. One Republican Senator won his party's
nomination for President on a solid climate change platform. Other
Republican colleagues in the Senate introduced, cosponsored, or voted
for meaningful climate legislation in the past. Some of the proposals
were market-based, revenue-neutral solutions aligned with Republican
free market values, just like my bill today.
The junior Senator from Arizona--a Republican--was an original
cosponsor of a carbon fee bill when he served in the House of
Representatives. That proposal, introduced with former Republican
Congressman Bob Inglis, would have placed a $15-per-ton fee on carbon
pollution in 2010, more than $20 in 2015, and $100 in 2040. At the
time, our colleague from Arizona had this to say:
If there's one economic axiom, it's that if you want less
of something, you tax it. Clearly, it's in our interest to
move away from carbon.
We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work
together in good faith on a platform of fact and common sense. We know
this can be done because it is being done.
[[Page S6151]]
At the end of a speech about the American Revolution, the historian
David McCullough was asked by someone in the audience why it was that
our Founding Fathers had the courage to pledge their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor to the cause of independence when
signing the Declaration was signing their own death warrant. He had a
very simple answer. He said: It was a courageous time.
Well, clearly in courageous times Americans have done far more than
simply stand up to polluters to serve the interests of this great
Republic. It only takes courage to make this a courageous time too.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From The Register, Oct. 4, 2014]
`Carbon Tax' Would Help Iowa, Planet
(By Richard Doak)
Six years ago, the Canadian province of British Columbia
decided to go it alone in fighting climate change. It imposed
a tax on fossil fuels--coal gasoline, diesel fuel, propane
and natural gas.
By most accounts, the ``carbon tax'' has been a success. It
made fossil fuels more expensive, so British Columbians began
to conserve them and use them more efficiently. Revenue from
the carbon tax allows other taxes to be reduced, so the
province enjoys the lowest personal income tax rates in
Canada and some of the lowest corporate taxes in the
developed world.
Contrary to fears, the carbon tax did not cause the economy
of the province to collapse. Economic growth is slightly
better than in the rest of Canada, and the forward-looking
energy policy gives British Columbia a reputation as a world
leader in green entrepreneurship.
Why can't Iowa be like that?
Indeed, Iowa should be like that, and circumstances might
be right for Iowa to become the first American state to
employ a full-fledged carbon tax.
Iowa and other states already have partial carbon taxes. We
pay them at the pump when we buy gasoline or diesel fuel.
In Iowa, all gasoline and diesel fuel tax revenue is
earmarked for highway construction, maintenance and
administration. Paying the gas tax is how motorists pay for
the bridges and highways.
After the November election, when candidates are no longer
afraid to talk about taxes, a consensus will probably develop
to raise Iowa's motor fuel taxes. The current gasoline tax of
21 cents per gallon (19 cents for ethanol blend) and diesel
tax of 22.5 cents bring in about $450 million but leave the
state an estimated $215 million short of what's needed for
highways every year.
Closing that gap would require raising motor fuel taxes by
about 10 cents per gallon.
Instead, why not abolish motor fuel taxes and replace them
with a carbon tax?
A carbon tax would apply to all fossil fuels, not just
gasoline and diesel fuel. The tax on each fuel would be based
on its carbon content. Carbon-dense coal would be taxed more
heavily than relatively carbon-light natural gas.
The carbon tax on gasoline and diesel fuel could be
calibrated to bring in about the same amount of revenue as
the existing motor fuel tax. Additional revenue to close the
highway-funding gap could come from the carbon tax paid on
coal and natural gas used to generate electricity. This would
be a way for electric car owners to begin paying their share
of highway maintenance.
Electric cars contribute less for highway maintenance than
gasoline- or diesel-burning vehicles. (Electric cars don't
pay gasoline tax, but they do pay license fees and use
taxes.) In the future, if electric vehicles become
ubiquitous, it will be essential to have some source of
highway money beyond the gasoline tax. Having a carbon tax
would put Iowa ahead of the game of paying for roads in an
electric-car future.
Additional revenue from a carbon tax, beyond that needed
for roads, could be used to lower other taxes, as in British
Columbia. Since the biggest burden of a carbon tax would fall
on low-income people, reductions or credits for low-income
people should be the first priority. Lowering for abolishing
the corporation tax, as an incentive for businesses to locate
in Iowa, might be the second choice.
The idea of a carbon tax is to use market forces to reduce
the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere when
fossil fuels are burned. Economists use the term carbon
pricing. When the price of something goes up, people use less
of it. A carbon tax is intended to raise the price of fossil
fuels enough to discourage consumption as well as to create
an incentive to find alternatives.
As leader in biofuels and wind turbines, Iowa should be for
anything that incentivizes the switch to alternatives.
Perhaps Iowans should even be cheering for a carbon tax to
be imposed nationally, because, among the states, Iowa may be
one of the best positioned to benefit from it.
Of course, a national carbon tax is off the table as long
as Congress is full of climate-change deniers who are
beholden to the fossil-fuel industries. But, outside of
Congress, the carbon tax and other carbon-dioxide-reducing
strategies appear to be gaining credibility.
A number of major corporations, banks and institutions have
begun to question the conventional thinking that the economy
would suffer if carbon dioxide emissions were curbed. Most
recently, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, a
group of heavyweight international leaders and economists,
issued a report showing that reducing carbon emissions would
cost the economy very little and might actually stimulate
economic growth. Other research published by the
International Monetary Fund suggests that carbon taxes,
rather than being a drag on an economy, can be a benefit.
It also appears that cutting carbon emissions can help a
country's economy even if other countries don't go along.
British Columbia has shown that a state can go it alone
without other states.
Nationally, the United States is waiting around for some
big international agreement that will require all countries
to reduce their emissions in unison. That shouldn't be
necessary. The United States could take the lead by acting on
its own, watch its economy grow, and let the rest of the
world catch up.
In the process, the United States would gain mastery of the
sustainable-energy technology that will drive economic growth
in the future.
Sadly, the odds of the president and Congress acting that
boldly on climate change are roughly nil. But maybe the
little state of Iowa, out here in the heart of America, could
nudge the nation in the right direction by setting an example
on its own.
____
[From the New York Times, August 1, 2013]
A Republican Case for Climate Action
(By William D. Ruckelshaus, Lee M. Thomas, William K. Reilly and
Christine Todd Whitman)
Each of us took turns over the past 43 years running the
Environmental Protection Agency. We served Republican
presidents, but we have a message that transcends political
affiliation: the United States must move now on substantive
steps to curb climate change, at home and internationally.
There is no longer any credible scientific debate about the
basic facts: our world continues to warm, with the last
decade the hottest in modern records, and the deep ocean
warming faster than the earth's atmosphere. Sea level is
rising. Arctic Sea ice is melting years faster than
projected.
The costs of inaction are undeniable. The lines of
scientific evidence grow only stronger and more numerous. And
the window of time remaining to act is growing smaller: delay
could mean that warming becomes ``locked in.''
A market-based approach, like a carbon tax, would be the
best path to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, but that is
unachievable in the current political gridlock in Washington.
Dealing with this political reality, President Obama's June
climate action plan lays out achievable actions that would
deliver real progress. He will use his executive powers to
require reductions in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by
the nation's power plants and spur increased investment in
clean energy technology, which is inarguably the path we must
follow to ensure a strong economy along with a livable
climate.
The president also plans to use his regulatory power to
limit the powerful warming chemicals known as
hydrofluorocarbons and encourage the United States to join
with other nations to amend the Montreal Protocol to phase
out these chemicals. The landmark international treaty, which
took effect in 1989, already has been hugely successful in
solving the ozone problem.
Rather than argue against his proposals, our leaders in
Congress should endorse them and start the overdue debate
about what bigger steps are needed and how to achieve them--
domestically and internationally.
As administrators of the E.P.A. under Presidents Richard M.
Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W. Bush, we held
fast to common-sense conservative principles--protecting the
health of the American people, working with the best
technology available and trusting in the innovation of
American business and in the market to find the best
solutions for the least cost.
That approach helped us tackle major environmental
challenges to our nation and the world: the pollution of our
rivers, dramatized when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland
caught fire in 1969; the hole in the ozone layer; and the
devastation wrought by acid rain.
The solutions we supported worked, although more must be
done. Our rivers no longer burn, and their health continues
to improve. The United States led the world when nations came
together to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals. Acid rain
diminishes each year, thanks to a pioneering, market-based
emissions-trading system adopted under the first President
Bush in 1990. And despite critics' warnings, our economy has
continued to grow.
Climate change puts all our progress and our successes at
risk. If we could articulate one framework for successful
governance, perhaps it should be this: When confronted by a
problem, deal with it. Look at the facts,
[[Page S6152]]
cut through the extraneous, devise a workable solution and
get it done.
We can have both a strong economy and a livable climate.
All parties know that we need both. The rest of the
discussion is either detail, which we can resolve, or
purposeful delay, which we should not tolerate.
Mr. Obama's plan is just a start. More will be required.
But we must continue efforts to reduce the climate-altering
pollutants that threaten our planet. The only uncertainty
about our warming world is how bad the changes will get, and
how soon. What is most clear is that there is no time to
waste.
____
[From the Economist, Sept. 19, 2011]
Do Economists All Favour A Carbon Tax?
(By R.A. Washington)
Last week, a Twitter conversation broke out among a few
economists concerning whether any serious economists opposed
a carbon tax. No, concluded the tweeters, but Tyler Cowen
begged to differ. Mr. Cowen writes that he personally favours
a carbon tax but can imagine a number of principled reasons
other economists might not.
Why would we expect economists to support a carbon tax? Its
very close to the economic ideal. Global warming is a
phenomenon associated with emissions of greenhouse gases over
and above natural cycles--largely those resulting from the
burning of carbon fuels humans have dug up out of the ground.
We expect normal economic activity to maximise social good
because each individual balances costs and benefits when
making economic decisions. Carbon emissions represent a
negative externality. When an individual takes an economic
action with some fossil-fuel energy content--whether running
a petrol-powered lawnmower, turning on a light, or buying a
bunch of grapes--that person balances their personal benefits
against the costs of the action. The cost to them of the
climate change resulting from the carbon content of that
decisions, however, is effectively zero and is rationally
ignored. The decision to ignore carbon content, when
aggregated over the whole of humanity, generates huge carbon
dioxide emissions and rising global temperatures.
The economic solution is to tax the externality so that the
social cost of carbon is reflected in the individual
consumers decision. The carbon tax is an elegant solution to
a complicated problem, which allows the everyday business of
consumer decision making to do the work of emission
reduction. It's by no means the only economically sensible
policy response to the threat of climate change, but it is
the one we'd expect economists to embrace.
Mr. Cowen argues for caution on this point for several
reasons. A carbon tax will be less effective if it's not
universally applied, potentially leading to carbon leakage to
countries with looser environmental rules. He worries that
where carbon fees have been applied innovation has not been
quick to respond. He fears that good substitutes for carbon
fuels don't exist, especially in the transport sector, and
worries that higher fuel prices might harm the economy. He
suggests that a ``green-energy subsidies first'' policy might
make more sense, and he talks about distributional and rent-
seeking costs of the policy.
I think the weakness of these arguments is telling, and
it's not surprising that Mr. Cowen continues to support a
carbon tax. What if a carbon price doesn't immediately drive
emission reductions? Then the tax will be an effective
revenue raiser, much more efficient than a tax on income.
Either way you win. The worry about carbon leakage is a real
one, but this dynamic also implies that each new country that
prices carbon increases the benefit of existing carbon-price
policies in other countries.
Substitution in the transport sector is somewhat
problematic, but a viable carbon price would not have much
effect on petrol costs at the outset. A carbon tax of $30 per
tonne of CO2 would only increase petrol costs by about 9
cents per gallon. This is dwarfed by moves in the market
price of petrol. The vulnerability of the American economy to
oil shocks argues for an increased tax on petrol, but that's
a different policy debate. Mr. Cowen seems to ignore the fact
that oil is just one small part of the American economy's
fossil-fuel use.
A carbon tax would attract rent-seeking, but arguably less
than alternative policies, like subsidies or a cap-and-trade
system. Importantly, money spent on adaptation or post hoc
climate-disaster relief is also subject to rent-seeking and
corruption issues. Given that many poor countries with weak
institutions are likely to feel the brunt of the impact of
global warming first and are likely to be poor spenders of
the aid money that will invariably flow, a carbon tax looks
like one of the policy solutions best suited to the
minimisation of these ills.
Mr. Cowen doesn't mention what I see as one of the most
important roles of a carbon tax: as a check on other ill-
advised programmes. A carbon tax would have quickly made the
net dirtiness of corn-based ethanol obvious (by helping to
offset subsidies and making corn-based ethanol more
expensive). It would be more difficult to roll out and
sustain such misguided programmes with a carbon tax, and the
ones that went ahead anyway would do less damage. A carbon
tax is also the easiest way to capture whatever low-hanging
emission-reduction fruit is out there. Right now, consumers
are generally indifferent between similarly-priced goods with
wildly different carbon profiles. A carbon tax encourages
consumers to realise the easy carbon gains available from
switching to good low-carbon substitutes wherever they exist.
The biggest problem with a carbon tax is that America's
government seems unable to deliver one. Attitudes may change,
however, and near-uniform economist support for the policy
(probably) doesn't hurt its odds of eventual passage.
____
[From the New York Times, Nov. 18, 2014]
A Carbon Tax Could Bolster Green Energy
(By Eduardo Porter)
ECONOMIC SCENE
A couple of years ago, the smart money was on wind. In
2012, 13 gigawatts worth of wind-powered electricity
generation capacity was installed in the United States,
enough to meet the needs of roughly three million homes. That
was some 40 percent of all the capacity added to the nation's
power grid that year, up from seven gigawatts added in 2011
and just over five in 2010.
But then a federal subsidy ended. Only one gigawatt worth
of wind power capacity was installed in 2013. In the first
half of 2014, additions totaled 0.835 gigawatts. Facing a
Congress controlled by Republicans with little interest in
renewable energy, wind power's future suddenly appears much
more uncertain.
``Wind is competitive in more and more markets,'' said
Letha Tawney at the World Resources Institute. ``But any time
there is uncertainty about the production tax credit, it all
stops.''
Wobbles on the road to a low-carbon future are hardly
unique to the United States. In its latest Energy Technology
Perspectives report, the International Energy Agency noted
that the deployment of photovoltaic solar- and wind-powered
electricity was meeting goals established to help prevent
temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6
degrees Fahrenheit) above the average in the preindustrial
era, the limit agreed to by the world's leaders to avoid
truly disruptive climatic upheaval.
In the same report, however, the organization noted that
other technologies--bioenergy, geothermal and offshore wind--
were lagging. And it pointed out that worldwide investment in
renewable power was slowing, falling to $211 billion in 2013,
22 percent less than in 2011.
These wobbles underscore both the good news and the bad
news about the world's halting progress toward reducing the
greenhouse gas emissions that are capturing heat in the
atmosphere and changing the world's climate.
The good news is that humanity is developing promising
technologies that could put civilization on a low carbon path
that might prevent climate disruption.
These technologies allowed the Environmental Protection
Agency to pass new rules aimed at achieving a 30 percent
reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from American power
plants by 2030, compared with 2005.
They allowed President Obama last week to promise that the
United States would curb total greenhouse gas emissions by 26
to 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025--a big step that,
White House officials say, can be achieved without further
action from Congress. And they allowed China to commit to
start cutting emissions after 2030.
The bad news is that civilization is mostly not yet on such
a low carbon path. While promising technologies to get there
have been developed, it is unclear whether nations will
muster the political will and mobilize the needed investments
to deploy them.
New energy technologies have become decidedly more
competitive. The United States' Energy Information
Administration projects that the levelized cost of onshore
wind energy coming on stream in 2019--a measure that includes
everything from capital costs to operational outlays--could
be as little as $71 per megawatt-hour measured in 2012
dollars, even without subsidies. This is $16 less than the
lower cost projection four years ago for wind energy coming
online in 2015.
Similarly, projections for the levelized cost of energy
from photovoltaic solar cells have tumbled by more than 40
percent, much faster than the cost projections of energy from
coal or natural gas.
Challenges remain to relying on intermittent energy sources
like the sun or the wind for power. Still, experts believe
that hitching solar and wind plants to gas-fired generators,
and using new load management technologies to align demand
for power with the variable supply, offer a promising path
for aggressively reducing the amount of carbon the power
industry pumps into the atmosphere, which accounts for nearly
40 percent of the nation's total carbon dioxide emissions.
And new Energy Information Administration projections to
2040 show prices for renewables falling even lower. By then,
electricity from photovoltaic solar plants could be generated
for as little as $86.50 per megawatt-hour, without subsidies.
In some areas wind-based plants could produce it for as
little as $63.40.
Nuclear energy is also becoming more competitive. Without
any subsidies, new-generation nuclear power coming on stream
in 2040 could cost as little as $80 per megawatt-hour, all
costs considered. This is only marginally more expensive than
electricity produced with coal or natural gas, even without
the added cost of capturing the carbon dioxide.
[[Page S6153]]
And there are much more optimistic cost assessments out
there than the Energy Information Administration's.
But for all the optimism generated by cheaper renewable
fuels, they do not, on their own, put the world on the low-
carbon path necessary to keep climate change in check.
Progress is faltering on several fronts. The precipitous
fall in the prices of photovoltaic cells from 2008 to 2012
pretty much stopped in 2013, after rapid consolidation of the
industry.
The International Energy Agency now projects that installed
global nuclear capacity in 2025 will fall 5 percent, to 24
percent below what will be needed to stay on the safe side of
climate change. And carbon capture technologies, which will
be essential if the world is to keep consuming any form of
fossil fuel, remain hampered by high costs, meager investment
and scant political commitment.
``The unrelenting rise in coal use without deployment of
carbon capture and storage is fundamentally incompatible with
climate change objectives,'' noted the International Energy
Agency in its Technology Perspectives report.
Despite the falling costs of renewable energy in the United
States, the Energy Information Administration's baseline
assumptions project that in 2040 only 16.5 percent of
electricity generation will come from renewable energy
sources, up from some 13 percent today. More than two-thirds
will come from coal and gas. Without some carbon capture and
storage technology, drastic climate change is almost
certainly unavoidable.
What is necessary to get us on a safer path?
White House officials trust that the administration has the
tools, including fuel economy and appliance efficiency
standards, the Environmental Protection Agency's new limits
on power plant emissions and regulations to limit other
greenhouse gases.
Yet the Energy Information Administration's projections
suggest how hard the task will be. Though they were developed
before the Environmental Protection Agency issued its new
rules, they included hypothetical outlines that could mimic
some of its effects. In one, coal power plants were
decommissioned more quickly; in another, subsidies to
renewable energy were kept until 2040. In another, the price
of renewables fell faster than expected. None of them did
much to move the carbon dial.
There is one tool available to trim carbon emissions on a
relevant scale: a carbon tax. That solution, however, remains
off the table.
If a carbon tax were to be imposed next year, starting at
$25 and rising by 5 percent a year, the Energy Information
Administration estimates, carbon dioxide emissions from
American power plants would fall to only 419 million tons by
2040, about one-fifth of where they are today. Total carbon
dioxide emissions from energy in the United States would fall
to 3.6 billion tons--1.8 billion tons less than today. By
providing a monetary incentive, economists say, such a tax
would offer by far the most effective way to encourage
business and individuals to reduce their use of fossil fuels
and invest in alternatives.
Is this enough? No. This proposal still leaves the United
States short of the 8o percent cut in greenhouse gas
emissions that the White House is aiming for and that experts
consider necessary by 2050 to prevent climatic havoc. But at
least it's in the same order of magnitude.
Most important, perhaps, the Energy Information
Administration's estimates make clear that the real
constraint lies not in our ability to develop the necessary
technologies but in our political will to deploy them.
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