Senate quietly finetuning US climate package

US lawmakers may yet pass the clean energy proposals in President Joe Biden's reconciliation package, one of the Senate's top climate change policy advocates said.

Discussions around the long-languishing Build Back Better Act are ongoing, according to US senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), who said yesterday he remains optimistic that some version of it will ultimately clear the legislative gauntlet.

The bill cleared the US House of Representatives last year, but has since stalled in the Senate as a consequence of Democrat's narrow majority. While the deadline for passing the bill is 30 September, lawmakers will have to do the lion's share of the work before their August recess, Whitehouse said at the Climate Leadership Conference hosted by the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and the Climate Registry.

After leaving for the recess "there is very little likelihood that we will come back in time before the September 30th deadline to do much," he said. "So, we really as a practical matter have to have this resolved by August, and there is a lot of activity quietly happening in the Senate right now to try to get that squared away."

Biden's package features a number of climate-related measures, including updates and extensions to tax credits that would boost not only more established technologies like wind and solar, but also burgeoning ones like hydrogen. Trade group the American Clean Power Association estimates that the package would bring clean energy investment to $750bn over the next 10 years, enabling the US to reach 750,000MW of wind, solar and battery storage capacity by 2030, while cutting power sector emissions by around 70pc from 2005 levels.

The package also features a methane fee that would target emissions from selected entities in the oil and gas industry, with the version approved by the House calling for a price of $900/metric tonne, which would increase to $1,500/t after two years. It would be the first federally imposed, direct fee on greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Whitehouse said details around that fee in the Senate appear to be "negotiated to everyone's satisfaction," with the language "stable and ready to be dropped into a bill."

He also said the final package could include some form of carbon border adjustment, an idea that has gained steam on both sides of the aisle.

"Next week, we will be dropping, in final legislative language, a carbon border adjustment bill with a carbon price in it," Whitehouse said, adding that it would all be "subject to negotiation."

Although Whitehouse said "chances are perfectly good" for the carbon fees, he acknowledged that the contentious political environment and responses, ranging from ostensible disinterest to outright opposition, from industry groups ranging from banking to fossil fuels, make its prospects difficult to predict.

And incentives for zero-emissions vehicles could also be a sticking point.

"There is objection to some of the electric vehicle credits," Whitehouse said, adding that details are "to be negotiated."

By Patrick Zemanek