WASHINGTON — A bill to create the first national limit on greenhouse-gas emissions was approved by a House committee Thursday after a week of late-night debates that cemented the shift of climate change from rhetorical jousting to a subject of serious, if messy, Washington policymaking.
The legislation would create a cap-and-trade system: Over the next decades, power plants, oil refineries and manufacturers would be required to obtain allowances for the pollution they emit. Those who need more or less could turn to a Wall-Street-like market in the allowances.
The 33-25 vote was a major victory for House Democrats, who had softened and jury-rigged the bill to reassure manufacturers and utilities — and members of their own party from the South and Midwest — that they would not suffer greatly.
The vote gives this bill more momentum than any previous legislation to clamp down on greenhouse gases, but it still faces hurdles. In the House, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has said he wants to take up the bill in his Agriculture Committee, seeking to change rules for those who raise corn for ethanol.
The Senate has shot down previous cap-and-trade proposals.President Barack Obama supports the bill, an aide said Thursday, though some provisions are weaker than he advocated for.
The bill employs vast incentives and slow-growing punishments to shift from high-polluting fossil fuels to sources such as wind, solar power and plant-based fuels. The bill calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050.
Only a small segment of businesses, including utilities, factories and refineries that produce gasoline and other fuels, would have to buy pollution allowances. But the costs would probably be spread through much of the economy.
The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that the overall impact would be too small to significantly dampen economic growth. But the conservative Heritage Foundation has said it might cost a family $4,300 per year in a few decades.
This week’s debate in the House Energy and Commerce Committee was, in essence, over before the first gavel. Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., had won over a majority by selling Democrats from heavy-polluting states with promises to distribute pollution credits free and to lower the bill’s target for reducing emissions by 2020.
