On March 31, Reps. Waxman and Markey released a “discussion draft” of a comprehensive climate and energy bill. The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACESA) sets out numerous provisions on promoting clean energy and energy efficiency. There is much to praise in this proposed legislation, particularly in its ambitious agenda for transforming US energy infrastructure and its recognition of the need for the US to help fund clean technology, climate adaptation, and forest protection in developing countries.

Unfortunately, the climate section of the bill is seriously weakened by its heavy reliance on offsets to substitute for actual emission cuts by large polluters. The draft bill allows up to two billion offset credits – each supposedly an avoided emission of one metric ton of carbon dioxide – to be used each year (one billion from domestic sources, and one billion from developing countries). An offset “credit” is essentially a permit to pollute more than the buyer would otherwise be able to do. Experience with existing offset programs shows that trying to define a ton of “avoided emissions” is inherently prone to cheating and that most offsets probably do not represent real reductions in emissions. The result is that actual emissions – what impacts the atmosphere – are higher than what is accounted for.

Attachments:

File	Description	File size
acesa_discussiondraft.pdf	Acesa Discussion Draft	1095 Kb
acesa_sectionsummary.pdf	Acesa Section Summary	84 Kb
acesa_summary.pdf	Acesa Summary	40 Kb