Climate Security Act 2008

Background
Following the introduction and debate of several bills aimed at combating climate change, Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Warner announced in August 2007 they would introduce a bill containing a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse gas emissions. This bill is an update of that previous effort, which was the America's Climate Security Act of 2007.

Bill Summary

 * Starts to cap carbon emissions at 5,775 million units in 2012 and reduces that amount by 70 percent to 1,732 million units by 2050 (Sec. 201).


 * Establishes a Greenhouse Gas Registry to monitor emissions in the U.S. that includes methods for avoiding the double-counting of emissions, protocols to prevent any avoidance of reporting requirements, and methods to verify and audit submitted data, and establishes consistent policies for calculating carbon content and greenhouse gas emissions for each type of fossil fuel reported (Sec. 102).


 * Establishes a market for carbon emission allowances that provides holders with the ability to freely trade, transfer, or sell allowances (Sec. 401, 402, 411, 412).


 * Allows owners or operators of entities that fall under the emissions caps to borrow up to 15 percent of their emissions allowances from the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Sec. 511).


 * Requires the Administrator of the EPA to hold an annual carbon emission allowance cost-containment auction from 2012-2027 that is separate from other emission auctions and limits prices to $22-$30 per allowance for 2012 with readjusted prices each subsequent year (Sec. 522, 523, 526).


 * Requires states that rank in the top 20 for annual usage of home heating oil to use at least 5 percent of the state's emission allowances to prevent consumers from suffering hardship due to increases in home heating oil prices (Sec. 614).


 * Allows the Climate Change Technology Board to auction a percentage of emissions allowances to fund awards to pay up to 30 percent of manufacturer costs for reequipping, expanding, or establishing manufacturing facilities in the U.S. that produce qualifying advanced technology vehicles, qualifying components, or engineering integration of qualifying vehicles and components (Sec. 1115).


 * Establishes the Efficient Buildings Grant Program to provide grants to owners of buildings that are newly constructed highly efficient buildings with a minimum score of 75 from the Energy Star program or to owners of existing buildings that have been renovated to increase efficiency by 30 points or more until 2012 when emissions allowances start being distributed to reward construction or improvement of high-efficiency buildings (Sec. 111, 801, 802).


 * Creates the Super-Efficient Equipment and Appliances Development Program to provide grants to retailers and distributors for increasing sales of high-efficiency building equipment, consumer electronics, and household appliances until 2012 when emissions allowances start being distributed to reward retailers and distributors for increasing sales of high-efficiency products (Sec. 112, 811, 812).


 * Authorizes $2 billion in appropriations from fiscal years 2009-2011 for funding international capacity building programs that develop methods and programs to measure greenhouse gas emissions and reductions, assess technology and policies for greenhouse gas mitigations, and provide other forms of technical assistance; and requires the Administrator of the EPA to regulate the acceptance and issuance of carbon emission allowances to foreign countries or entities (Sec. 114, 202, 302, 321, 322 ).


 * Allows the auction of a percentage of carbon emissions allowances to grant additional funding to programs to help people transition to a fuel efficient economy, create a tax initiative program to prevent higher energy costs, and fund EPA programs for habitat conservation, species protection, and non-emergency wildland fire suppression (Sec. 532, 535, 541-542, 561-562, 581-582, 585, 1202, 1211-1212, 1222, 1231, 1233-1236).

Current status


Reasons to Oppose

 * The bill will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions effectively enough
 * For the bill to be an effective measure against global warming and greenhouse gas emissions it must reduce the percentage to at least 80% below that of what the emissions were in 1990 by the year 2050.
 * The progress of decreasing the greenhouse gases also need to be lowered to that of 25% less than what it was in 1990 if the United States is going to make a powerful impact in limiting global warming.

=Articles and resources=

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
 * climate change
 * global warming
 * Kyoto Protocol

External articles

 * Zachary Coile, "Senate taking up key climate-change bill," San Francisco Chronicle, June 2, 2008.
 * Donny Shaw, "The Battle Over a Global Warming Bill", OpenCongress, February 6, 2008.