House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats unveiled a framework for comprehensive climate legislation Wednesday that they say includes tested policy approaches that can both prompt robust emissions cuts and garner political consensus, at least within their own party.
Even so, it doesn’t appear likely to garner the Republican support that it would need to be more than another political messaging bill, especially since Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone of New Jersey suggested he wasn’t necessarily focused on courting Republican support. Many climate hawks say that a major climate policy would have to be bipartisan to be durable.
“We would love to have Republicans, but it’s hard when there’s so many climate deniers,” Pallone told reporters during a news conference on Wednesday.
“I don’t want you to see this as a message bill. We are going to try to move this bill and, certainly, pieces of this bill, when we can,” he said, though he noted the committee wouldn’t wait for Republicans.
“What choice do we have? Australia is burning,” he said. “We can’t just sit here and say, ‘Oh, well, Republicans might not like this.’”
The framework, the basis for the draft Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s Future, or the CLEAN Future Act, outlines a number of new climate policy programs that would in some ways mirror existing federal and state authorities. It even includes some Republican-championed ideas, such as energy efficiency provisions, Democrats said on Wednesday.
Republican leaders on the Energy and Commerce Committee, though, told reporters they hadn’t seen the framework Democrats unveiled. They expressed some optimism that they could move smaller bipartisan pieces of legislation, dealing with energy efficiency and funding for technologies such as carbon capture and advanced nuclear.
Republicans are “genuine” about addressing climate change, said Greg Walden of Oregon, the top Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee, adding Pallone should take advantage of the areas where there is already common ground.
But he also scoffed at Pallone’s comments that most Republicans were rejecting the science.
“See, he’s behind the messaging curve again,” Walden said. “We’ve made it clear. I’ve made it clear. We’ve put it in writing. I got tired of certain Democrats saying what I am for and what I’m against.”
House Energy and Commerce Democrats unveiled only a framework Wednesday, though it is multifaceted and includes programs across the economy. Pallone said the full text of a draft bill will be released later in the month.
“It is not symbolic legislation,” said Rep. Paul Tonko of New York, chairman of the committee’s environment and climate change panel who has worked closely on the draft bill.
One of the key elements of the framework is a program, directed by the Environmental Protection Agency, through which states would submit plans to reach a 100% clean economy, according to a memo circulated by the committee Democrats.
The EPA would develop model concepts for states to adopt, but the states would ultimately determine their own paths, Tonko told reporters, calling it a “race to net-zero” program with its “roots in time-tested provisions of the Clean Air Act.”
The draft bill would also set up a first-of-its-kind national climate bank, similar to state-level green banks that leverage public and private investments in clean energy technologies, and institute a federal “buy clean” program.
The memo also outlines explicit new climate change authorities for federal agencies. It would direct the EPA, for example, to ratchet up climate regulations, including greenhouse gas tailpipe standards and oil and gas methane limits.
The draft measure also incorporates pieces of other climate bills Democrats have proposed, including setting a national clean electricity standard by 2050, according to the memo.
Democrats could face questions, though, about how their new proposal is distinct from the last time the party attempted to pass major climate legislation in 2009, through a cap-and-trade system. That legislation passed the House but died in the Senate, even though both were controlled by Democrats at the time.
Walden, when shown a brief description of the clean electricity standard proposal, said, “It’s new language, but it says the same thing” as the failed cap-and-trade bill.
Environmental groups, though, were optimistic about the draft plan’s prospects to address climate change.
The plan “would reestablish the United States as an international leader on climate and put us on the path to eliminate climate pollution,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president of climate and energy for the center-left think tank Third Way.
Environmentalist also view the draft plan as a starting point, not the finish line. Elizabeth Gore, senior vice president of government affairs for the Environmental Defense Fund, also acknowledged the committee’s work might not be a this-year action, particularly given election-season politics, but could tee up legislation to move in 2021.
“There’s a benefit in vetting different policies and engaging in the conversation now so that we’re positioned to act quickly if there’s a new administration,” she said.
