• A Bargain? $1.19 Trillion for a Cap-and-Trade System

    Smoke Stacks 

    It seems like everybody’s got a blog these days. Over at the Congressional Budget Office Director’s Blog is a newly-released cost estimate of S. 2191, otherwise known as the America’s Climate Security Act of 2007 or the Lieberman-Warner climate bill. This Senate bill proposes a series (well, two) of greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade systems which initially gifts permits to greenhouse gas emitters (such as power plants, any facility importing or producing petroleum and/or natural gas, and any facility which produces a certain amount of hydrofluorocarbons) while, over its decade-long implementation, segueing to an auction-based permit system. The cost estimate of the system between 2009 and 2018? 1.19 trillion dollars (read the whole report here). This large influx of revenue would, however, be allocated and spent by the government. The bill allocates:

    • $64 billion to the Energy Assistance Fund, which would support various energy assistance programs for low-income families;
    • $12 billion to the Climate Change Worker Training Fund, which would promote training programs for “green-collar jobs;”
    • $31 billion to create the Adaptation Fund, which will support research and education to assist fish and wildlife in adapting to climate change;
    • $16 billion to the Climate Change and National Security Fund;
    • $6 billion to the Energy Independence Acceleration Fund, among other allocations.

    With such immense costs of implementation for the private sector (but also noble programs like the aforementioned which are funded as a result), most of these costs will be passed onto consumers through higher prices. Given this reality, the American public may not be so keen for the bill’s passage. We at Shrinking Footprints, however, will closely monitor its progress throughout the remainder of the congressional session.