Elmendorf’s testimony was in response to a revision of CBO’s original report on the cost of the Waxman-Markey bill. When the original report came out, IER showed that CBO’s own numbers demonstrated that the economic costs of Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade scheme far outweighed its benefits to American citizens, and arguably even to the world as a whole. In the present post, we explain why Elmendorf’s three key points are misleading. Elmendorf calls hundreds of billions of dollars in lost future economic growth a “modest” reduction, he obfuscates by focusing on purchasing power instead of on the reduction in total income, and contrary to economic theory, assumes that low- and middle-income families will benefit from free allowances handed out to utilities. By simply stressing different aspects of the same underlying CBO analysis, one could have painted a much bleaker picture of the costs of cap-and-trade than Elmendorf chose to convey.

Writing off Billions of Dollars in Lost Future Economic Growth as “Modest”

The first trick Elmendorf deploys is to dismiss reductions in GDP as “modest” because they won’t occur until Americans are wealthier than they are today:

Reducing the risk of climate change would come at some cost to the economy. For example, the Congressional Budget Office…concludes that the cap-and-trade provisions of H.R. 2454…would reduce gross domestic product (GDP) below what it would otherwise have been—by roughly ¼ percent to ¾ percent in 2020 and by between 1 percent and 3½ percent in 2050. By way of comparison, CBO projects that real (inflation-adjusted) GDP will be roughly two and a half times as large in 2050 as it is today, so those changes would be comparatively modest.

Although the CBO director brushes it off, a potential cost of 3.5 percent of total economic output is enormous. In 2008, US GDP was $14.4 trillion. The high-end cost estimate of 3.5 percent works out to $504 billion. Yes, it’s certainly true that if you asked people back in 1970 if 3.5 percent of GDP forty years in their future was a big deal, they probably would have said “Not really.” Yet the people in 2008 would certainly have been upset if $504 billion were sucked out of the economy because of a program implemented forty years earlier.

While CBO calls a 1 percent to 3.5 percent reduction in GDP by 2050 a “modest” cost, what about the benefits? The true irony here is that Elmendorf’s testimony provides an estimate of the cost of global warming. CBO argues that “a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product [GDP] is about 3 percent…by [the year] 2100”. So if Elmendorf is allowed to blow off 1 percent to 3.5 percent in GDP because people will be so much richer by 2050, why are we rushing through legislation to avert potential climate change that the same CBO predicts might cost 3 percent of GDP at the end of the century? Won’t Americans be really wealthy by 2100?

Focusing on Consumption Purchasing Power Rather Than Total Income

After assuring the senators that reductions in GDP were modest, Elmendorf then changed the measuring rod:

In the models that CBO reviewed, the long-run cost to households would be smaller than the changes in GDP. Projected GDP impacts include declines in investment, which only gradually translate into reduced household consumption.

This statement is technically true but it is very misleading. Suppose a household currently enjoys a take-home income of $100,000, out of which they put $10,000 into funding retirement and the kids’ college tuition, while the other $90,000 they spend on the mortgage, dining out, clothes, gasoline, and other household necessities. The politicians come along and propose a new tax that will grab an extra $5,000 a year, leaving the family with a new after-tax income of $95,000.

Now most people would think, “Wow, I’m $5,000 a year poorer.” But the apologists for the tax hike could argue, “Actually you’re not really $5,000 poorer, in terms of your lifestyle. You won’t cut out your spending on groceries and food by the full $5,000. Because of your lower income, you will reduce your savings to $9,000 a year, and your other spending down to $86,000 a year. So really the hit to your household’s consumption is only $4,000 per year.”

Would anybody buy that argument? Of course not. Income is income. The “long-run cost to households” will certainly be affected by declines in investment spending, which is counted in GDP. By focusing on a decline in “purchasing power” of 1.2 percent for households by 2050—rather than their estimate of 1.1 percent to 3.5 percent of lost GDP—the CBO is effectively sweeping half the impact under the rug.

Reporting Allowance “Rebates,” Not Gross Compliance Cost

The last trick we’ll note is that the CBO analysis simply takes the government at its word that low-and middle-income families will benefit from the free allowances that will be handed to utilities under the provisions of Waxman-Markey, even though this flies in the face of standard economic theory. As a recent IER study showed, Congress plans on using allowance handouts in order to transfer money from consumers (through higher prices) into the pockets of special interests.

The reader may be interested to see the CBO’s estimates of the actual hike in household costs from Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade scheme, before adding in the free allowance handouts:

As the first column makes clear, middle class families are expected to suffer a hit of more than $1,000 per year in higher prices. (And remember, this figure is the one that has already been cut in half using the total output vs. consumption trick explained above.) Whatever happened to “a postage stamp a day”? Does the CBO know something about the Postal Service’s intentions that we don’t?

Conclusion

During a recent hearing, Elmendorf made clear there were substantial costs to cap-and-trade. According to the Washington Post he said:

“The shifts will be significant,” the CBO director said. “We want to leave no misunderstanding that aggregate performance—the fact that jobs turn up somewhere else for some people—does not mean that there are not substantial costs borne by people, communities, firms in affected industries and affected areas. You saw that in manufacturing, and we would see that in response to changes that this legislation would produce.”

Even Elmendorf agrees there are substantial costs to cap-and-trade. And as we have shown, he and the CBO are still underestimating the costs.

Even more surprising, the CBO report reveals (without trumpeting the result, of course) that the costs borne by the U.S. may exceed the benefits to the entire world. This should be surprising indeed to the casual observer who thought there was a “clear consensus” on the net benefits of the cap-and-trade component of Waxman-Markey.

CBO Says: Waxman-Markey’s Costs to U.S. Economy May Outweigh Benefits to U.S. Economy

For all the warnings about the dire consequences of ignoring the threat posed by climate change, the reader of the latest CBO report may be shocked to discover this admission:

Despite the wide variety of projected impacts of climate change over the course of the 21^st century, published estimates of the economic costs of direct impacts in the United States tend to be small. Most of the economy involves activities that are not likely to be directly affected by changes in climate. Moreover, researchers generally expect the growth in the U.S. economy over the coming century to be concentrated in sectors—such as information technology and medical care—that are relatively insulated from climate effects. Damages are therefore likely to be a smaller share of the future economy than they would be if they occurred today.

As a consequence, a relatively pessimistic estimate for the loss in projected real gross domestic product is about 3 percent for warming of about 7° Fahrenheit (F) by [the year] 2100. [CBO p. 3, emphasis added.]

It’s true there are much larger estimates of projected impacts from climate change if we include “non-market” activities and include scenarios of “abrupt changes”; we will explore those in more detail in a later section. But it is worth stressing that when environmental economists set out to carefully quantify the likely effects of uninterrupted climate change if governments “ignored” the problem, their best-guess estimate is a loss of 3 percent of GDP a century from now.

In contrast, what are the estimated costs of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and trying to mitigate this potential 3 percent hit to GDP in 2100? The CBO gives this information in a convenient table, though the reader has to flip ahead to page 13 to find it. Once there, we learn that the CBO’s estimate of the hit to the U.S. economy from H.R. 2454 is in the range of 1.1 to 3.4 percent of GDP by the year 2050. Here’s CBO’s graph:

This is quite simply a bombshell revelation, and the skeptical reader only needs to look at the two pages (3 and 13) of the CBO report [.pdf] to make sure we’re not making this up. The CBO is admitting that even a pessimistic estimate of the danger posed by climate change is 3 percent of GDP, which won’t occur until 2100. On the other hand, the high-range estimate of the cost of Waxman-Markey’s cap-and-trade program is 3.4 percent of GDP, which will hit 50 years earlier.

These revelations alone are sobering enough, but it’s much worse than the difference of 0.4 percentage points. First, the time element matters. Put most simply, people prefer to have a dollar today than a dollar 50 years from now because we do not know what the future holds. Future benefits (such as averted climate damage) need to be discounted by some factor, simply because they accrue in the future. This is not a “climate change skeptic” debating point; all sides agree on the principle, they simply disagree on the appropriate number to use when discounting the future.[1] Therefore, the fact that the full economic damages of Waxman-Markey hit fifty years before the full (alleged) benefits kick in, is quite significant.

But second and more important: It is wildly inappropriate to judge the cost of Waxman-Markey (1.1 percent – 3.4 percent of GDP by 2050) against the full damage resulting from unrestricted climate change (possibly 3 percent of GDP by 2100), because Waxman-Markey will not stop global climate change in its tracks. In the extreme case, standard models show that if the U.S. complies with the Waxman-Markey emission caps, while the rest of the world continues with their baseline emissions growth, then the increase in global temperatures (in the medium emission scenario) will only be slowed by two-tenths of one degree Fahrenheit.

Of course, the proponents of Waxman-Markey say that the U.S. government needs to show its own commitment to limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and then we will see the rest of the major governments following suit (even though they have said explicitly that they won’t). That’s fine. So what these proponents need to do, is lay out an actual scenario, showing at what dates various other governments will limit their own emissions. Then U.S. policymakers will be in a position to make an informed decision as to whether the projected costs to the U.S. economy are counterbalanced by likely benefits.

But as it stands currently, all of the published work rests on a complete non sequitur. Even if Waxman-Markey cured the world of the threat from climate change, the CBO’s own figures show that its price tag might be too high, in terms of benefits and costs to the U.S. economy. But once we realize that Waxman-Markey is, by itself, a largely symbolic gesture that may not lead to similar commitments from other governments, the case for Waxman-Markey is far more dubious.

CBO Says: Price of Carbon Allowances Are Definitely Too High to Benefit Americans, and Possibly Even the World as a Whole

Rather than looking at GDP figures, there is another way to see that the CBO report shows Waxman-Markey will cost Americans far more than it will benefit them. We will show that the CBO’s projections for the market price of carbon allowances are much higher than the lower-end estimates that the government places on the “social cost of carbon.” On page 10 the CBO report says:

CBO estimates that the price of the allowances under H.R. 2454 would be $15 in 2012, the initial year that the cap took effect, and would rise at an annual real rate of 5.6 percent over the course of the policy, reaching $23 in 2020 and $118 by 2050 (all in 2007 dollars).

Now the whole theoretical justification of capping emissions is that they constitute a “negative externality,” meaning that emitting a ton of carbon dioxide imposes damages on others that the emitter is not correctly taking into account. The solution, in standard economics textbooks, is for the government to impose an artificial cost (through either a tax or mandating an allowance that carries a market price) to make the emitter “internalize the externality.”

But in order for this to be efficient, the size of the penalty—the tax on carbon or the price of an carbon allowance—has to match up with the alleged externality. In the climate change literature, this externality is called the “social cost of carbon,” or SCC.

The CBO has just shown us what it projects the price of carbon allowances will be in the U.S. market, under the cap-and-trade program outlined in Waxman-Markey. As the cap tightens over time, the price of the allowances will rise, reaching a level of (inflation-adjusted) $118 by 2050. In order to know whether this is too high, too low, or just right, we need to compare this projected path of allowance prices, with the estimated path of the social cost of carbon.

The CBO report doesn’t have this information, but the Federal Register (Vol. 74, No. 167) [.pdf] does. On page 44948 we read:

The interim judgments resulting from the recent interagency review process can be summarized as follows: (a) DOE and other Federal agencies should consider the global benefits associated with the reductions of CO2 emissions resulting from efficiency standards and other similar rulemakings, rather continuing the previous focus on domestic benefits; (b) these global benefits should be based on SCC estimates (in 2007$) of $55, $33, $19, $10, and $5 per ton of CO2 equivalent emitted (or avoided) in 2007; (c) the SCC value of emissions that occur (or are avoided) in future years should be escalated using an annual growth rate of 3 percent from the current values); and (d) domestic benefits are estimated to be approximately 6 percent of the global values.

When we combine the above paragraph with the CBO’s projections of allowance prices under Waxman-Markey, we reach some startling conclusions. First, if we use the two low-end estimates of the global SCC (namely $5 and $10 per ton), then from the year 2012 onward, the price of allowances under Waxman-Markey is inefficiently high. In other words, American businesses would, from day one, be paying more for a permit to emit carbon, than the global damage resulting from an additional ton of emissions.

Second, if we use the mid-range estimate of the SCC, namely $19 per ton in 2007, then by the year 2028, and continuing from that point onward, the cost of an allowance under Waxman-Markey will be too high. (The reason is that the price of allowances grows at 5.6 percent, while the SCC grows at only 3 percent.) The inefficiency gets worse and worse over time, so that by the year 2050, the CBO projects a price of a carbon allowance of $119 (with rounding), whereas the mid-range estimate has the social cost of carbon in the year 2050 at only $68 per ton. That is an enormous discrepancy.

Now it’s true, under the two highest estimates of the SCC (namely $33 and $55 per ton in 2007), the price of allowances under Waxman-Markey are lower than the SCC for all of the years up through 2049. (Even in the $33 case, in the year 2050 the price of an allowance becomes too high.) So from the standpoint of textbook economic theory—and assuming these numbers were correct!—the costs of complying with Waxman-Markey’s caps would be justified by the benefits of avoided climate damage.

However, these figures for the SCC are global estimates. As the Federal Register quotation showed in point (d): “domestic benefits are estimated to be approximately 6 percent of the global values.”

Even in the worst-case estimate from the Federal Register of a social cost of carbon of $55 in 2007, the cost to the United States of an additional ton of emissions is only $3.83 by the year 2012. Contrast that to the CBO’s projected price of an allowance of $15. By the year 2050, even using the highest government estimate of the social cost of carbon, American businesses would be paying $119 for the right to emit an additional ton, when the cost to the U.S. of that ton of emissions would be a mere $12.

Of course, the issue of global climate change involves all nations, not just the United States. It may very well be true that the correct metric to use, when evaluating legislation such as Waxman-Markey, is global benefits versus global costs. Yet we think policymakers and the American public should realize just how altruistic they are going to be.

Certain proponents of a “green economy” have stated that cap-and-trade and other measures will help the American economy. But as the government’s own analyses indicate, this is not true at all. Only by using the high-end estimates of the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions can Waxman-Markey be justified on a global scale, and even then, the United States’ economy endures all of the pain but only 6 percent of the benefits.

What About the Really Big Threats?

After admitting that the U.S. economy will suffer only a 3 percent hit to GDP by 2100, even under a pessimistic scenario, the CBO report does what it can to rebuild the reader’s support for climate legislation. It says that this figure of 3 percent does not include “non-market” damages, nor does it account for truly catastrophic scenarios of runaway climate change. Once we figure in these, CBO tells us:

The most comprehensive published study includes estimates of nonmarket damages as well as costs arising from the risk of catastrophic outcomes associated with about 11°F of warming by 2100. That study projects a loss equivalent to about 5 percent of U.S. output and, because of substantially larger losses in a number of other countries, a loss of about 10 percent of global output. [CBO, p. 4]

Scary stuff, indeed. Yet if we look to the footnote to discover what the “most comprehensive published study” is, we find it is William D. Nordhaus and Joseph Boyer’s 2000 book, Warming the World: Economic Models of Global Warming.

Ironically, a newly published, peer-reviewed paper[2] critiques the procedure by which Nordhaus and Boyer generated their alarming projection. The full explanation is too involved for a blog post; the interested reader should consult pages 14-17 here [.pdf]. The catastrophic impact estimates were not derived from a careful modeling of the global climate system, and then an economic analysis of the projected damages. On the contrary, Nordhaus simply surveyed various experts for their point estimate of the number, and then changed their answers later on, in light of new information about potential risks. (In other words, he didn’t go back to the same experts and ask them for a new guess.) Here is the summary of the changes he made, when updating the answers to his original survey of experts:

Nordhaus in 1994 asked experts to estimate (among other things) the probability of global GDP loss of 25 percent in the event of 3˚C warming. The surveyed experts gave him their answers, from which he computed the mean. By 1999, further research had made these scenarios seem more plausible and/or catastrophic. So Nordhaus (and Boyer) took the original average of probabilities reported by the experts, doubled it, and then assigned this as the probability for a 30 percent loss of GDP rather than the 25 percent the experts had been told to consider, for a less significant warming of 2.5˚C rather than the 3˚C mentioned in the original survey. (Murphy, “Rolling the DICE” [.pdf], pp. 16-17)

We do not mean to suggest that William Nordhaus has done anything intellectually dishonest. The point is, policymakers (and the CBO staff itself) might be very surprised to discover how fragile the estimate of “10 percent of GDP loss” really is. And as the CBO says, this is from the most comprehensive published study of the matter.

Conclusion

A careful reading of the latest CBO report on climate legislation shows just how dubious the case for Waxman-Markey really is. If proponents of its cap-and-trade program want to say, “We need to stop emissions immediately, regardless of the cost, because there is a chance the world will end,” then they are free to make that case. We obviously cannot prove them wrong. But by the same token, physicists could request $1 trillion to build a space-based laser system, since there is a definite chance that a killer asteroid will otherwise destroy the earth in the year 2075.

Proponents of cap-and-trade will also point out that there are plenty of reasons to support Waxman-Markey besides mere dollars and cents. Again, they are free to make that case. All we insist is that they tell us quite honestly and plainly how much Americans are going to pay for these “non-market benefits.”

The rhetoric from Waxman-Markey supporters up until now has led Americans to believe that this bill will actually be good for the U.S. economy. As the recent CBO report itself shows, this is nonsense. American consumers will pay higher prices, particularly for electricity and gasoline, which don’t avoid a comparable amount of climate damage even under the government’s own mid-range estimates. Once we factor in everything the government reports leave out, the answer is obvious: Waxman-Markey’s costs will far outweigh its benefits.

[1] Some economists, such as Nicholas Stern, favor a very low discount rate, because they think future generations’ happiness (or “utility”) should be given as much weight in current decisions, as the happiness of the present generation. Yet even Stern agrees that some discount should be applied, since it’s possible that nuclear war (or a giant asteroid) could kill billions of people between now and the year 2100. In that (very unlikely but possible) event, our present efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions would be a waste, since few people would be around in 2100 to enjoy the moderate climate. That’s why all economists agree that future benefits must be discounted at some rate, relative to present costs.

[2] Murphy, Robert P. “Rolling the DICE: William Nordhaus’ Dubious Case for a Carbon Tax,” The Independent Review (Vol. 14, Number 2, Fall 2009), pp. 197-218. An early version of this paper is available at: http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/2008/06/05/ier-economist-murphy-takes-on-nordhaus-case-for-a-carbon-tax/

To estimate the costs and benefits of cap and trade legislation, economic models rely on computer models. The accuracy of these models depends on many assumptions. The problem is that some assumptions cannot be calibrated to actual data because those data, in many cases, do not exist. Some of the most troublesome assumptions concern the cost and availability of technologies for controlling greenhouse gas emissions. Many of these technologies are either not currently commercially available or have yet to be constructed in the U.S., making their true construction costs no more than assumed estimates. If these technologies are either more expensive or their date of commercial availability is later than assumed by the modelers, costs of compliance with the proposed legislation will be greater than predicted. These costs will be borne by the consumer regardless of what proponents of the measure tell us.

A number of organizations have estimated the cost of Waxman-Markey including the Congressional Budget Office[2], the Environmental Protection Agency[3], the Heritage Foundation[4], and the Black Chamber of Commerce.[5] All these studies predict that most of the CO2 reductions will come from the electric generating sector because coal generates 49 percent of the electricity generated in America. Coal is a carbon dioxide intensive hydrocarbon, but it is also the least expensive generating technology. To replace this coal, modelers believe that nuclear; renewable; or carbon, capture and sequestration technology will be used—all more expensive technologies than traditional coal.[6]

Nuclear Power

What are the problems with this approach? No nuclear plant has been built in the United States since 1977[7] and the Administration has substantially reduced funding for Yucca Mountain,[8] the expected repository for spent nuclear fuel. And while the Energy Information Administration estimates that a future nuclear plant can be built for about $3300 per kilowatt (2007 dollars)[9], electric utility companies (NRG, Florida Power & Light, Duke Energy, Progress Energy) are estimating costs between $5,000 and $10,000 per kilowatt[10]. Underestimates of construction costs will result in higher compliance costs and alternative compliance strategies with cap and trade legislation.

Renewable Technologies

Renewable technologies that qualify under the Renewable Energy Standard of the House-passed legislation are limited in a number of ways. First, these sources of energy are more expensive than traditional coal and natural gas generating technologies. Second, they are limited to certain areas with renewable resources (in the case of solar and wind). Third, these resources are extremely costly for central station electricity generation (in the case of solar and offshore wind). And fourth, they are not yet commercially available (in the case of biomass gasification). EIA’s revised Annual Energy Outlook 2009, which incorporates subsidies and incentives included in the federal stimulus package, projects wind to be 50 percent more expensive than traditional coal-fired generation (without subsidies) in 2016[11]. This is most likely due to the fact that the best wind sites are used by then. Solar technologies are estimated by EIA to be 2.5 to 4 times the cost of traditional coal-fired technologies[12], and, as such, are not the renewable of choice in climate change scenarios.

Biomass technologies tend to supply much of the renewable power generated in many cap and trade scenarios since they supply base load power and are available in areas of the country with limited wind and solar power (e.g. the Southeast). However, while modelers predict substantial biomass capacity to be built to comply with cap and trade regulations, recent construction attempts show the public to be less favorable. In Greenfield, Massachusetts, for example, a developer wanting to construct a 47-megawatt biomass-fired plant fueled by “clean” wood energy from the surrounding forests,[13]has found local residents concerned about depletion of their forests, pollution from the plant, truck haulage and water usage issues.[14] The assumption of modelers is that the carbon dioxide released by the plant will be absorbed by trees in the growing process, resulting in zero net greenhouse gas emissions. Renewable advocates also believe that the future fuel for biomass technology will be energy crops (e.g. switch grass, poplars) grown near the generating plant, but these energy crops have yet to be grown in the U.S. on a commercial scale. Future ethanol plants are also expected to be fueled by energy crops to reach the renewable fuel mandates already legislated by Congress.[15]

Carbon Capture and Sequestration

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology is not currently commercially available. The costs of CCS are an assumption rather than a reality. Some modelers believe that some of the existing coal-fired technology will be retrofitted with CCS technology and new coal-fired units will be built with CCS to replace existing technology that will be prematurely retired. The result would be like replacing a perfectly good automobile (cash for clunkers, anyone?) or home appliance before it has served its useful life. Only in this case, it is not the automobile or appliance owner’s decision to incur higher investment costs since the consumer will be charged for the new plant every time electricity is used. Also, significant CCS will require a way to dispose of the carbon and a transportation system to get the carbon to the disposal site.[16]

Modeling Uncertainties

The Energy Information Administration just released its analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill.[17] In their analysis, they included a scenario that modeled the bill, but limited the penetration of certain technologies (nuclear, fossil with CCS, and biomass gasification) to their reference case levels, i.e. to their projected levels with current laws and regulations included. In this case, called Limited Alternatives, electricity prices were 33 percent higher in 2030 than in EIA’s reference case.[18]

Another uncertainty in modeling the Waxman-Markey bill is whether international offsets would be severely limited by cost, regulation and/or slow progress in reaching international agreements covering offsets in key countries and sectors. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office has been criticized for the amount of international offsets they allowed in their analysis because of the uncertainty surrounding their implementation. For example, under the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism program, which allows companies to invest in offsets in developing countries, the ultimate availability of projects was some 2 billion tons lower than initially anticipated. The shortage derived from a variety of reasons, including the simple start-up time to create a project.[19] To represent this uncertainty EIA modeled a No International Offsets Case that assumed all emission reductions would need to be domestic. This resulted in average electricity prices 26 percent higher than the reference case in 2030.[20]

But marrying these two cases (a situation that is not out of the realm of serious possibility), results in electricity prices 77 percent higher than the reference case in 2030. U.S. consumers would be paying 17.83 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity (in 2007 dollars) on average.[21]

But this price increase will not be uniform because electricity prices vary widely from state to state. For example, during the first 4 months of 2009, Connecticut’s average electricity price was 17.4 cents per kilowatt hour and Wyoming’s average electricity price was 5.9 cents per kilowatt hour—a spread of 11.5 cents per kilowatt hour.[22] States like Wyoming could see their electricity prices disproportionately skyrocket.

Of course, a redistribution of electricity prices would take place among States since generation fuels would change from being mainly coal-based to being natural gas, wind, and solar-based. In this case, coal-fired generation would be reduced by 85 percent over the next 2 decades, resulting in premature retirement of coal-fired generating capacity.

Unfortunately, when EIA’s analysis is quoted, most reviewers will quote the basic case where all of these major uncertainties are assumed away, providing proponents of the Waxman-Markey bill to sell this to the public as all gain and no pain when the reality is just the opposite.

Conclusion

Can politicians wave a magic wand and spur faster growth in these replacement technologies? Perhaps, but Congress does not have a good track record at picking “next generation” technologies. We have been told for years that advanced biofuels will soon be commercially available. Congress even passed a law mandating the production of large amounts of advanced biofuels, including cellulosic ethanol, to begin in 2009 and reach 22 billion gallons by 2022.[23] Now that it is 2009, this appears unlikely. So what compels our lawmakers to continue to pass legislation that has so many uncertain elements? For starters, just follow the money.

[1] Environment and Energy Daily, June 26, 2009, http://www.eenews.net/EEDaily/2009/06/26bn/1/#1 .

[2] http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10262/hr2454.pdf

[3] http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/economics/pdfs/HR2454_Analysis

[4] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Energyandenvironment/wm2438.cfm

[5]  http://www.crai.com/uploadedFiles/Publications/impact-
on-the-economy-of-the-american-clean-energy-and-security-act-of-2009.pdf

[6] http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/levelized-cost-of-new-generating-technologies.pdf

[7] http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_the_last_nuclear_power_plant_built_in_the_US

[8] Washington Post, March 4, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/03/AR2009030303638.html

[9] Energy Information Administration, Assumptions to the Annual Energy Outlook 2009, Table 8.2, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/tbl8.2.pdf

[10]Robert Peltier, July 10, 2009, Master Resource, http://masterresource.org/?p=3539

[11] http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/levelized-cost-of-new-generating-technologies.pdf

[12] Ibid.

[13] Feeling the burn: Developer plans biomass power plant, Greenfield Recorder, January, 15, 2009, http://www.recorder.com/story.cfm?id_no=5676106

[14] Greenfield Recorder, July 3, 2009

[15] Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Public Law 110-140, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ140.110.pdf

[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

[17] Energy Information Administration, Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act 0f 2009, July 2009, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/hr2454/index.html.

[18] Ibid, Table 2

[19] Climate Wire, CBO report studies offset costs and reliability, August 4, 2009, http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2009/08/04/4/ .

[20] [20] Energy Information Administration, Energy Market and Economic Impacts of H.R. 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act 0f 2009, July 2009, Table 1, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/hr2454/index.html.

[21] Ibid, Table 1

[22] Energy Information Administration, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_b.html

[23] Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, Public Law 110-140, http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ140.110.pdf