By OGJ editors
HOUSTON, Jan. 12 -- Washington, DC-based Competitive Enterprise Institute and ten other public policy groups Monday urged the US Department of Energy not to establish a system of emissions credits as part of its greenhouse gases (GHG) reporting program and to resist further lobbying pressures to include said credits.
The public policy groups that joined CEI in its opposition were the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, American Legislative Exchange Council, Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Consumer Alert, Frontiers of Freedom, National Taxpayers Union, 60 Plus Association, and the Small Business Survival Committee.
DOE was scheduled to hold a workshop Monday on its proposed rule to revise the voluntary GHG reporting program. And while an emissions credit program is not part of the proposed rule, it was on the workshop's agenda and therefore open for discussion.
The creation of a crediting scheme for emissions reductions "would create the institutional framework and lobbying incentives for energy rationing," the groups stated. "Since credits attain full market value only under a mandatory emissions reduction target or 'cap,' every credit holder would have a financial incentive to lobby to make 'voluntary' reductions mandatory.
"In addition, neither the legislation that created the voluntary reporting program nor any other provision of law authorizes [DOE] or any other agency to establish a crediting program," stated the dissenters.
"Transforming the voluntary reporting program into an emission reductions credit scheme would be both illegal and unwise," said Marlo Lewis Jr., CEI senior fellow.
"It would be illegal because the Energy Policy Act, which authorized the voluntary program, furnishes no authority to award regulatory offsets for future emission reduction mandates, and unwise because a credit program would mobilize lobbying for energy rationing schemes such as the Kyoto Protocol, Sen. Jim Jeffords's [I-Vt.] Clean Power Act, and the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act," Lewis concluded.
