Reps. David McKinley and Kurt Schrader said they’ve crafted what’s long been a unicorn in Washington: a climate bill that can appeal to both parties and prompt serious emissions cuts.
In fact, McKinley, a West Virginia Republican who fights vigorously for a future for coal, and Schrader, an Oregon Democrat who stresses the urgency of addressing climate change, argue their approach is the only one with a chance of garnering substantial bipartisan support. That buy-in from both parties, they said, is necessary to create durable climate policy that won’t be chipped away over time by partisan politics.
“For the 10 years I’ve been in Congress, I see us making no real progress on it,” McKinley said of climate change. “It’s being used as a political football.”
His and Schrader’s bill, he added, can eliminate the partisan tug of war on climate policy that power companies and other industries often find themselves in the middle of as administrations turn over and regulations change dramatically on the issue.
“What a novel idea is if we can make it into law, and then we’ve got something to work with,” McKinley told the Washington Examiner in an interview. “It removes the uncertainty.”
In recent weeks, McKinley and Schrader have been talking with their colleagues in the House and Senate and various stakeholders, soliciting feedback on a discussion draft of their bill unveiled last month.
That draft offered a first glimpse at the congressmen’s “innovate first, regulate after” approach. The draft outlines a massive scale-up of research and development for clean energy technologies through 2030, after which regulation would kick in, requiring utilities to slash their emissions by 80% by 2050.
“One of the consistent arguments we get against just regulating standards is there’s no way you get there,” Schrader told the Washington Examiner. “The standards are beyond our immediate technology or innovative ability and, as a result, make it extremely difficult for different sectors of the energy industry to be competitive, perhaps unfairly putting lots of jobs at risk.”
That’s especially true for fossil fuel industries critical to the Midwest and the South, and that should be taken into account, he added.
The congressmen said the impetus behind their approach is to put federal government muscle and dollars behind making clean energy technologies affordable and readily available to utilities.
The 10-year innovation program in their discussion draft would include a dramatic increase in appropriations for research and development of a suite of clean energy technologies including renewable energy, advanced nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, clean energy transmission, and battery storage.
It would also expand federal incentives for those technologies. For example, the draft bill extends deadlines for tax credits for carbon capture by six years and for onshore wind and solar power by 10 years. It also creates new tax incentives for energy storage, offshore wind, carbon capture on natural gas-fired power plants, and existing nuclear power plants.
McKinley said the benefits of a more robust energy innovation program extend far beyond the U.S. borders.
What the draft bill is trying to do is give U.S. researchers and scientists space to bring down the costs of low-carbon technologies, such as carbon capture, that the U.S. can then “market around the world,” the West Virginia congressman said. That can “be a tool in the toolbox on trade” with China, India, and other countries to “incentivize them to reduce their carbon footprint,” he added.
The bill isn’t all innovation, however. Once the clean energy standard kicks in, the congressmen want it to have some real teeth.
If utilities aren’t making progress toward reducing their emissions, “they get shut down. That’s pretty serious,” Schrader said. It’s more than a fine or a “slap on the hand,” meaning there’s “huge incentive” for utilities to turn to clean energy, he added.
Nonetheless, the 80% by 2050 goal the draft bill would set is far less ambitious than the climate targets Democrats are coalescing around. Democratic nominee Joe Biden has set a goal to zero out carbon in the power sector by 2035. The Green New Deal championed by left-wing Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for the United States to meet 100% of power demand with “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” within 10 years.
Many utilities are setting their own goals to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The two congressmen, however, described their target as most realistic. Both said they’d like to reach zero carbon emissions from the power sector by 2050, but they said that affordability remains a big question.
The 80% reduction goal is “something we can actually tangibly do,” Schrader said, contrasting it with the Green New Deal.
“This is actually real. This actually has a chance of happening,” Schrader added. “Getting something done by 2035… I love [Biden], but that is just total bullshit. That’s never going to happen, and we’ve got to get real about this.”
Both Schrader and McKinley said they’ve already received interest in their approach from colleagues in the House and the Senate. That includes House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, and bipartisan members of the Senate.
But they acknowledge they’re likely to face pushback from Republican members who don’t want to see any climate regulation and from Democratic members who say their approach isn’t aggressive enough.
The congressmen also admitted they could face a more difficult path forward if Democrats win the White House and the Senate and keep the House.
With control of all three chambers and especially if Democrats eliminate the Senate filibuster requiring 60 votes for major legislation, Democrats could easily pass aggressive climate legislation, McKinley said.
If that happened, the next time Republicans are back in power, “We would chip away with it,” he said, suggesting it would be “deja vu” with the Affordable Care Act, when Republicans spent years trying to undermine the Obama administration healthcare law.
“I would hope that Democrats would learn that even if we have all three sectors of government in Washington, D.C., that we would still make sure that this is a bipartisan bill that will stand the test of time,” Schrader said. “Climate change is a serious existential threat. We cannot afford to miss out on this one.”
