Article published Nov 1, 2007

Baucus backs coal in global climate change bill

Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON — Montana Sen. Max Baucus threw his political weight behind a bill Thursday that would crack down on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and at the same time stuck up for the state’s coal industry.

Baucus joined two fellow Democrats and one Republican to support America’s Climate Security Act during subcommittee debate. The bill would require utilities, manufacturers and others to reduce their carbon emissions 63 percent by 2050. It now moves on to the full Environment and Public Works Committee for consideration.

Global climate change, along with the droughts and wildfires it has brought to the state, threatens Montanans’ outdoor heritage, Baucus said during the debate. 

“I’m committed to doing my part to ensure that our outdoor heritage is protected for years to come,” he said. 

But Baucus also said he supports the state’s coal industry and is pleased that the bill has incentives for coal-fired power plants to develop and use technologies to capture their carbon emissions and store them in deep geologic formations, a process called carbon sequestration. 

Montana has the nation’s largest coal reserves. 

Coal is plentiful, Baucus said, and even if the U.S. were to stop using it, developing countries like China will grow more dependent on it as a fuel source. 

“We need to find a way to use (coal) and use it properly,” said Baucus, a senior member of the committee and an important swing vote for the measure. “Let’s develop carbon capture and sequestration technology here so we can use it domestically as well as export it.” 

But committee member Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, said the legislation would allow new coal-fired power plants to be built. Coal-fired plants are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions thought to contribute to global warming. 

Sanders also is concerned that the bill offers no guaranteed funding for clean energy sources such as solar and wind. It does offer subsidies to the coal industry to develop cleaner coal-burning technology and to the automobile industry to re-tool its plants to create more fuel-efficient cars. 

Baucus voted against an amendment offered by Sanders that would require Congress to put the same amount of money into developing renewable energy as it does for developing advanced coal and sequestration technologies. The amendment failed. 

“There are a lot of politics that are going on here,” Sanders said after the hearing. “Coal is an important industry in Mon-tana, Wyoming, West Virginia, Virginia and other states. So the coal industry is very powerful here in Washington. The solar and wind industries don’t have that kind of clout.”