One of the Senate’s top Democrats is keeping focused on legislation to impose a carbon price, even as President Biden and many other Democratic lawmakers are coalescing around a clean electricity standard as their preferred climate policy.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the chamber, unveiled legislation March 10 that would set a $25 per ton fee on carbon emissions beginning in 2023 that would increase $10 each year. The fee would apply first to emissions from fossil fuel production, expanding to cover nonfossil fuel high-emitting entities in 2025, according to a summary of the bill.
Under Durbin’s bill, called America’s Clean Future Fund Act, around three-quarters of the revenue from the carbon fee would be paid through rebates to low- and middle-income households.
CARBON TAXES ARE OUT, AND CLEAN ELECTRICITY STANDARDS ARE IN
The rest of the proceeds would support clean energy investments, reward facilities that capture and store carbon, help farmers finance a transition to climate-friendly practices, and provide grants to both fossil fuel-heavy regions that could lose industries and areas facing damages from climate change effects such as extreme weather.
The bill is largely similar to a version he introduced in August of last year, with slight updates to direct at least 40% of the funding for clean energy and climate projects to benefit the minority and low-income regions most-affected by polluting facilities. That goal matches Biden’s similar initiative outlined in his climate change executive order.
Durbin, in a statement, said the bill “can be an important part of a comprehensive plan to protect our environment and combat climate change.”
Nonetheless, as Durbin reiterates support for carbon pricing, backing for the approach appears to be waning among other Democrats.
Biden’s “whole-of-government” agenda to curb climate change doesn’t feature a carbon price. The approach was also absent from the sweeping climate bill top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee unveiled on March 2.
And even as big business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute appear to be warming to a carbon price, most Republican lawmakers remain opposed to the policy. Some centrist Republican senators, such as Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, have recently suggested they would be open to considering a carbon price, but that hasn’t yet translated to explicit support for the legislation.
“I think it’s time to try something new,” New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the committee’s chairman, told reporters during a press call on his climate bill, noting carbon pricing schemes have floundered in Congress.
“The votes are just not there for a price on carbon,” he added.
Instead, the House Energy and Commerce Democrats and Biden are pushing a clean electricity standard that would target carbon-free power by 2035.
The policy concept, although not the deadline Democrats chose, already has the support of one Republican lawmaker — West Virginia Rep. David McKinley, who has introduced bipartisan legislation with Oregon Democratic Rep. Kurt Schrader.
Their bill would massively scale up federal investment in clean energy technologies over 10 years, after which a clean electricity standard would kick in, targeting 80% clean power by 2050.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
In the Senate, Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith has said she plans to reintroduce an updated version of clean electricity standard legislation she unveiled in 2019. Smith has argued the Senate should attempt to pass a clean electricity standard through the budget reconciliation process, technical legislative rules that allow lawmakers to bypass the 60-vote threshold created by the filibuster.
“It should be the center of an infrastructure plan we look forward to working on,” Smith said last month during an event hosted by Evergreen Action and Data for Progress.
