Bush seeks cuts in power sector emissions by ‘25

16 April 2008 21:09  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--President George Bush set on Wednesday a new goal to halt the growth of US greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025, chiefly by reducing pollution from electric utilities through technology but without inhibiting broader industry.

Bush said that his administration and Congress should work toward a national emissions-control plan that “will not impose tremendous costs on our economy and American families without accomplishing important climate-change goals.”

He said the US can move beyond recently passed legislation that increases automotive fuel efficiencies and sharply boosts production of biofuels to slow and eventually reverse greenhouse gas emissions by the power sector.

Bush said that “to reach our 2025 goal, we will need to more rapidly slow the growth of power-sector greenhouse-gas emissions so that they peak within 10 to 15 years and decline thereafter” to cap electric utilities’ emissions at a level below their 2002 output.

“There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies,” Bush said.

Although the president made no specific legislative proposals, he outlined what he termed core principals based on technology advances rather than punitive taxes and restrictions that would undermine US economic and energy security.

“The wrong way is to raise taxes, duplicate mandates or demand sudden and drastic emissions cuts that have no chance of being realised and every chance of hurting our economy,” Bush said. “The right way is to set realistic goals for reducing emissions consistent with advances in technology, while increasing our energy security and ensuring our economy can continue to prosper and grow.” 

“The wrong way is to jeopardise our energy and economic security by abandoning nuclear power and our nation’s huge reserves of coal. The right way is to promote more emission-free nuclear power and encourage the investments necessary to produce electricity from coal without releasing carbon into the air,” he said. 

“The wrong way is to unilaterally impose regulatory costs that put American businesses at a disadvantage with their competitors abroad, which would simply drive American jobs overseas and increase emissions there,” he added.

Many US chemical industry leaders have warned that draconian emissions reduction legislation could force more utilities to natural gas as a power fuel, driving gas prices higher and forcing more US chemical and other gas-dependent manufacturing offshore.

The principal emissions-control legislation now pending in Congress, Senate bill S-2191, would impose a cap-and-trade system on US manufacturing, transportation and power sectors to reduce overall US emissions to a level 63% below 2005 levels by 2050.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush could not support that or other emissions-control bills pending in Congress, charging that congressional climate change plans would be a “regulatory train wreck.”

Bookmark Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels

By: Joe Kamalick
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