Waxman Said to Propose Emission Cuts, Renewable Energy Sources

By Tina Seeley and Jim Efstathiou Jr.

March 31 (Bloomberg) -- Representative Henry Waxman, chairman of the House energy panel, will unveil draft legislation to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent and require that utilities use some renewable sources of power, according to two people familiar with the measure.

Waxman, a California Democrat who heads the Energy and Commerce Committee, will release the proposal today, according to the people, who declined to be identified because the plan isn’t yet public.

“The Waxman bill is the opening shot in the battle about what we do about global warming,” said Daniel Becker, director of the Washington-based Safe Climate Campaign. “So it’s pretty important.”

President Barack Obama has called for the U.S. to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050, and get a quarter of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Waxman’s proposal would follow those goals.

The first hearing for the legislation will be the week of April 20, and a full committee vote may occur by the week of May 11, according to one of the people, an energy lobbyist.

The president’s proposed budget for 2010 assumes greenhouse gas limits are in place and the federal government will begin to receive revenue from auctioning off pollution credits by 2012. Selling all such permits would raise at least $646 billion by 2019, according to the administration.

The Waxman plan doesn’t specify whether any allowances will be given for free, as some companies have requested. The committee staff favors auctioning a majority of them, according to the energy lobbyist.

Climate Partnership

Waxman’s plan to cut emissions is similar to a proposal by the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group that favors federal action on emissions limits and includes utilities, oil companies and environmental organizations. The group in January proposed reducing such greenhouse gases by up to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

Members of the climate group include Duke Energy Corp., BP Plc and the Dow Chemical Co. Jim Rogers, chief executive officer of Charlotte, North Carolina-based Duke, has called on the government to give away as much as 80 percent of the pollution credits and use the revenue from the rest to fund research into low-carbon technology.

The Waxman legislation includes a national requirement that 25 percent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2025. The requirement could be reduced to 20 percent if certain energy efficiency standards are met.

Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia now have programs for renewable energy sources, according to the Clean Energy States Alliance, based in Montpelier, Vermont.

To contact the reporters on this story: Tina Seeley in Washington at tseeley@bloomberg.net; Jim Efstathiou Jr. in New York at +1- jefstathiou@bloomberg.net.