US Proposes Innovative Trade Concept to Fight Climate Change

The United States supports taking “early action” to liberalize trade in products that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and believes that could spur progress in broader world trade talks on environmental goods and services, a U.S. trade official said on Wednesday. “We would be interested in early action on climate-friendly technologies. We are discussing this possibility with other countries,” Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Trade Representative’s office, told Reuters.

Negotiators from around the world are in Copenhagen through Dec 18 for U.N. talks aimed at reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming. Washington believes reducing tariffs and other trade barriers on technologies that help countries reduce carbon dioxide emissions could be an important component of international action to address climate change.

At the same time, the House of Representatives has aroused international concern by including language in its climate bill that would allow the United States to impose a “carbon tariff” on imports from countries the president believes are not doing enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That “would be a nuclear option in terms of trade consequence. For example, such an action by the U.S. and EU would be the equivalent of imposing a tariff of over 20 percent on China and India, resulting in lost exports of 20 percent,” a recent World Bank study said.

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US to boost solar manufacturing with tax credits

New York, 12 November: US Senators have introduced a bill that would extend the 30% solar investment tax credit (ITC) to equipment and facilities used to manufacture solar technology.

Solar Tax

Currently, the solar ITC can be drawn on for investment in or installation of solar power technology in operation in the US before 1 January 2017. Under the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act, equipment and facilities used to manufacture solar power technology would become eligible for the solar ITC. These technologies include solar cells, silicon, evacuated tubes and flat-plate solar collectors.

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Al Gore in Newsweek: The Plan That Saved The Planet

Not too many years from now, a new generation will look back at us in this hour of choosing and ask one of two questions. Either they will ask, “What were you thinking? Didn’t you see the entire North Polar ice cap melting before your eyes? Did you not care?”

Or they will ask instead, “How did you find the moral courage to rise up and solve a crisis so many said was impossible to solve?”

We must choose which of these questions we want to answer, and we must give our answer now—not in words but in actions.

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Senator Boxer Releases Full Draft of US Climate Bill

Senator Barbara Boxer released a 923-page draft of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act over the weekend, the Senate version of climate and energy legislation, for the first time specifying emissions allocations and costs proposed in the bill. “We’ve reached another milestone as we move to a clean energy future, creating millions of jobs and protecting our children from dangerous pollution,” Boxer, chairperson of the Environmental and Public Works Committee, who wrote the bill with Senator John Kerry, said on Friday.

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US stimulus money boosts wind power

Wind Power

New York, 22 October: The US renewable energy grant programme has led to a surge in wind project development in recent months, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

But it warned that development in the fourth quarter of 2009 is unlikely to be as strong, because wind turbine manufacturing still lags below 2008 levels.

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US Climate Bill will have modest Economic Impact

AFP, 14 October 2009 – Cutting greenhouse gases along the lines of a climate bill pending in Congress would modestly impact the US economy over the next few decades, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Wednesday in a report.

“Reducing the risk of climate change would come at some cost to the economy,” CBO director Douglas Elmendorf told a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, two weeks before the Senate takes up the climate change bill.

“Over the next few decades the economic losses from policies to avert climate change would exceed the economic gains in terms of climate change,” he added.

The House of Representatives passed its own version of the climate bill in June. Elmendorf said the Cap and Trade initiative it includes would reduce US gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.25 percent to 0.75 percent in 2020 and by 3.5 percent in 2050.

However, he added, CBO projects that inflation-adjusted GDP growth will be two-and-a-half times larger than today’s, “so those changes will be comparatively modest.”

He also said the House climate bill would have little impact on the standard of living of Americans — CBO projections see purchasing power dropping 0.1 percent in 2010 and 0.8 percent in 2050, averaging out to 455 dollars per year.

The House bill sets a target of reducing greenhouse gases from 2005 levels by 17 percent by 2020, chiefly through an emissions trading market (cap and trade) that would penalize the most polluting industries and reward cleaner ones.

The cap-and-trade system is strongly opposed by both Democrat and Republican lawmakers from oil-rich and coal-dependant states, who complain the measure would drive up unemployment and the cost of energy in their areas.

Supporters of cap-and-trade, for their part, believe unemployment would be offset by the job-rich development of alternative energy sources — wind, solar and nuclear power.

Elmendorf cautioned, however, that “one of the great uncertainties about the cost of reducing carbon emission is how readily the economy can move toward an economy that uses different sources of energy.”

“The rate at which that sort of revolution can occur is difficult to predict, but in particular areas, industries, there will be significant (job) losses,” the CBO chief added in response to a question from the panel.

The Senate on October 27 is scheduled to take up its own version of the climate change bill sponsored by Democratic Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer.

The debate comes six weeks ahead of the key international climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

The White House recently recognized the improbability of a Senate vote before the conference, making an international agreement on climate change in the Danish capital very unlikely.