25x’25 Recommends Climate Change Bill Improvements

The National 25 x ‘25 Alliance, with a goal of getting 25 percent of our energy from renewable resources like wind, solar, and biofuels by the year 2025, last week called S.1733 (the Kerry-Boxer Climate Change bill) “a work in progress that will need serious modification” before it can maximize the role of farms, ranches and forestlands in reducing the nation’s carbon footprint and combating global climate change.

The alliance said that S.1733 fails to explicitly exclude the U.S. agriculture and forestry sectors from rules that cap emissions, and to allow the sectors to deliver quick, low-cost, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions in a volume significant enough to help meet the national goal established in the bill, which starts at 20-percent below 2005 emission levels by 2020.

According to 25 x ‘25, the offsets title of S. 1733 falls far short of ensuring a viable program that is a key opportunity for the agriculture and forestry sectors to contribute and benefit. Lawmakers must address the entire set of biological sequestration offset issues inherent to a cap-and-trade regulatory system. Biological offsets can only be delivered in the quantity expected and at the prices desired if the program is designed to be operationally efficient.

The alliance also said that any cap-and-trade system must address operationally and environmentally acceptable duration (the so-called “permanence” issue); leakage; the potential for reversal and program risk management mechanisms; liability immunization for both offset buyers and sellers; and offset-to-allowance (one-for-one exchange equivalence, also known as fungibility).

Source: Energy Resources Group