Climate and energy

From the Post, by Juliet Eilperin:

The Obama administration might agree to postpone auctioning off 100 percent of emissions allowances under a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas pollution, White House science adviser John P. Holdren said today, a move that would please electricity providers and manufacturers but could anger environmentalists.

In one of his first interviews since being confirmed March 20 as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Holdren said a group of Cabinet-level officials is trying to establish a set of principles to guide the climate legislation that has just begun to move in Congress.

During the presidential campaign, Obama called for auctioning off all greenhouse gas emissions permits at the outset, rather than just a portion of them. Many industry leaders say a phase-in will be essential to easing the transition to a low-carbon economy.

“The idea, obviously, is to end up with a bill that reflects both the thinking of Congress and the administration, a bill that the president can sign,” Holdren said, adding that when it comes to a 100 percent auction, “Whether you get to start with that or get there over a period of time is something that’s being discussed.”

Holdren’s comments shed light on the administration’s behind-the-scenes effort to shape national climate policy, an issue that Obama has identified as a top priority but has so far left largely to lawmakers to flesh out.

Last week House Energy and Commerce Committee Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), who chairs the panel’s energy and environment subcommittee, released a draft climate bill that they have vowed to send to the full House by Memorial Day. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which has primary jurisdiction over the issue in the upper chamber, has yet to take up a bill.

In an e-mail, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt wrote that Obama has asked Congress to deliver “comprehensive energy legislation that would spur a transition to a clean energy economy, create thousands of green jobs, and wean us off our dependence on foreign oil.”

“He said during the campaign that his preferred approach was 100 percent auction to create incentives for companies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions,” LaBolt wrote. “Members of Congress are looking at a variety of policy options to help us make that transition, and the administration will be flexible during the policymaking process as long as those larger goals are met.”

For weeks the president’s assistant on energy and climate change, Carol M. Browner, has convened regular meetings with roughly a dozen key administration officials to develop national energy and climate policy. They include Holdren; the secretaries of the Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Transportation departments; and the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, White House Council on Environmental Quality, National Economic Council, Council of Economic Advisers and Office of Management and Budget.

The group, whose deputies meet at least once a week if not more, have explored questions ranging from how to pursue offshore wind energy to agricultural practices and a new national greenhouse gas emissions standard for vehicles.

Keith Trent, chief strategy, policy and regulatory officer for Duke Energy Corp., said utility executives are hoping for a 10-year transition to a 100 percent auction so they can install pollution controls without raising electricity costs too high. He added that emitters would still have an incentive to cut carbon dioxide because of the overall federal cap on carbon emissions: “The cap is what makes the system’s environmental integrity, and you can’t exceed that cap because you need an allowance to do it.”

But environmental advocate Erich Pica, director of domestic programs for Friends of the Earth, said giving utility providers free allowances would be less efficient than rebating the revenue from auctions directly to taxpayers. A 100 percent auction, Pica said, “forces the polluters from Day One to pay for the transition to a clean energy economy, and keeps low and middle-income consumers whole during the transition.”

Holdren, a Harvard physicist who served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was one of President Bill Clinton’s scientific advisers, was an outspoken proponent of addressing climate change while in academia. He said in the interview that the time had come to stop debating precise national targets for curbing greenhouse gases and to settle on an overall trajectory for reducing them.

Using the analogy that we are facing dangerous climate change in much the way that passengers in car with bad brakes might be heading toward a cliff in a fog, Holdren said, “The sensible passengers will certainly say, ‘Let’s put on the brakes even if we don’t know it will save us. It may be too late. We don’t know exactly where the cliff is. . . . Let’s get on with it.”

Holdren oversees an array of high-profile science policy issues in his new post, including space exploration, scientific integrity, stem cell research and others.