Senate Republican leadership and the White House are blocking efforts to add legislation reducing potent greenhouse gas refrigerants to a broader energy package the Senate is considering this week.
The roadblock persists even though the coolant bill’s sponsors, Louisiana Republican John Kennedy and Delaware Democrat Tom Carper, say they are confident they’d have the support of nearly two-thirds of the Senate for their measure and despite cross-party negotiations to attempt to resolve Republican leadership’s concerns. The bill, S. 2754, already boasts 32 co-sponsors, split equally between parties.
But Wyoming Republican John Barrasso, who chairs the Senate Environment Committee that oversees the bill, is objecting to holding a vote on the coolant bill. Kennedy and Carper are hoping to offer it as an amendment to a sweeping energy package from Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, which would be the biggest update to energy law in more than a decade. Senate leadership is currently negotiating which amendments will get a vote.
“We were promised an open amendment process. In other words, if you don’t agree with the proposed amendment, you vote against it,” Kennedy told reporters Wednesday. “That’s why God made roll call votes.”
“But apparently, we have a rule that we’re all equal on the Republican side but some are more equal than others,” he said. Kennedy, whose state is home to major chemical manufacturing plants, said he’s threatened to block other amendments and hold up the entire bill if his amendment doesn’t get a vote.
The White House has also told senators it strongly opposes the coolant language as an amendment, suggesting it wouldn’t support it without a clause prohibiting states from setting their own limits on the refrigerant chemicals, known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
“The transition from hydrofluorocarbon use in the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration industry is a matter that should be applied consistently across the country,” the White House told the bill’s managers, according to a statement obtained by the Washington Examiner. Broadly, the legislation would give the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to issue federal standards restricting the production and use of the coolants.
“We also have concerns with a policy that mandates significant changes for the private sector and mandates consumers buy new products without any consideration of cost,” the White House added.
The bill, known as the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, has strong support from appliance makers, chemical manufacturers, and environmental groups.
The coolant bill “appears to have well more than filibuster-proof support from Senators on both sides of the aisle because it is a win-win-win for the environment and jobs and American technology, strongly supported by industry and the environmental community alike,” said Stephen Yurek, president and CEO of the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, which represents most U.S. major appliance and chemical manufacturers.
“Given that support, it is surprising that its inclusion is not assured,” Yurek added in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
Kennedy’s legislation would direct the EPA to regulate HFCs consistent with a global deal limiting the refrigerants, which are also potent greenhouse gases that warm the atmosphere hundreds of times faster than carbon dioxide. Meeting the agreement’s targets could avoid around half a degree Celsius of global warming, according to scientists’ estimates.
Industry strongly backs the global deal, known as the Kigali Amendment, and for the first two years of the Trump administration lobbied the White House to support it, to little avail.
The bill from Kennedy and Carper would allow manufacturers to meet the Kigali reduction targets, even if the full deal isn’t ratified by the Senate in this administration.
Barrasso, though, has raised concerns that the bill would leave the door open for states such as California and New York to set stricter coolant limits than federal standards, something a handful of states are already moving forward on. Several House Republicans share his worries, and they’re pushing for the bill to include preemption provisions, essentially prohibiting states from working on their own standards.
Any amendment on HFCs “must include real state preemption language,” a spokesperson for Barrasso told the Washington Examiner.
“The Chairman has concerns with any legislative effort that will layer new federal rules on a patchwork of current or future state rules,” the spokesperson said. “Since the bill has had no process, there are other problems with the way the amendment is constructed that can be fixed if and when real preemption is added.”
Kennedy, though, said Carper, his Democratic counterpart, already offered to discuss preemption language in a potential compromise, what he thought was a “very fair” approach, but it was rejected.
“In fact, I was surprised that my Democratic friends went as far as they did,” he said of the negotiations.
There were “informal discussions” among Carper, Kennedy, and Barrasso in which the Democrat offered to discuss a compromise on how to address Republican concerns, but Carper didn’t offer any written language on the issue, a spokesperson from Carper’s office told the Washington Examiner.
Carper “shared broad ideas” with the two Republicans “about what a compromise could eventually look like,” Carper’s spokesperson added, noting the senator had “mentioned some of the aspects of the preemption provision” in the 2016 bipartisan update to the Toxic Substances Control Act “that was resolved after years of work and negotiations.”
However, Carper “has not offered written preemption language. Discussions did not get to that point,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Kennedy said the amendment introduced by the senators Wednesday reflected the text of the original coolant bill, with no preemption language. “The only broad agreement I’m aware of on this amendment is that it’s worthy of a vote on the floor,” the Kennedy spokesperson said.
Carper, in remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday, appeared less open to preemption language, though he didn’t fully close the door on it.
“Allowing the states to act helps hold the federal government accountable,” Carper said, expressing concern the Trump administration wouldn’t properly regulate the coolants even if ordered by Congress to. “However, once a strong federal program is in place, states will not need to act and will spend their resources elsewhere.”
Any preemption provision, however, risks jeopardizing Democratic support in the House.
“I always have concerns about preemption,” New York congressman Paul Tonko told reporters Wednesday, following remarks at the American Council on Renewable Energy forum.
Tonko, a Democrat who sponsored the House version of the HFC bill and chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s environment and climate change panel, expressed concerns with any provision that would hamstring progressive states such as New York from pushing forward more strongly on climate change.
Yurek, of AHRI, said manufacturers strongly back efforts to add the HFC bill to the Senate energy package.
“This is important to our industry, to American jobs and the economy, and to American technology preeminence, and we are hopeful that it will be recognized as such and included in the Senate energy bill,” Yurek said.
Murkowski, Kennedy said, wants him and his fellow senators to drop the fight over the amendment to allow the bill to move through, but he isn’t willing to give up yet.
“You know, my son would like a Porsche for his birthday. He’s not getting it,” Kennedy quipped. “I’m not going to give in. So that’s where we are.”
