Cap and Trade is a Good Way of ‘Hiding’ Carbon Taxes from the Public

Obama Commerce Nominee: U.S. Has 'Obligation to Lead' on Climate Change Legislation

May 31, 2011

CNSNews.com – John Bryson, President Barack Obama's nominee to be secretary of commerce, said it was “incredibly important” that the United States pass cap and trade legislation and that America needed to be a global leader in combating man-made global warming.

“I regard it as incredibly important that the United States comes forth in this year with federal climate change legislation as a foundation for moving ahead,” Bryson told the U.N. International Energy Conference in late August 2009. “I think we in the U.S. have an obligation to assist in significant ways in providing leadership in this community of nations that you represent and addressing energy and climate change.”

Bryson, in stating “in this year,” was speaking about the U.N. Climate Change Conference scheduled for December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Formerly the CEO of Edison International, Bryson has long been an advocate of some sort of federal plan for regulating greenhouse gasses. While still at Edison, he called for a national cap and trade system.

Under cap and trade, in general, the amount of carbon an industry could emit into the air would be capped. For companies that expect to exceed that cap, they could buy (“trade”) carbon credits to supposedly offset their emissions; the money spent for the credit would be redirected to supposedly greener, less polluting companies.

“A deliberate and coordinated effort is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the entire energy sector,” Bryson said in a July 2004 Edison press release.

“Long term, a reasonable and balanced ‘cap-and-trade’ system for reducing carbon dioxide emissions could be adopted once new carbon- dioxide removal technology has been developed and becomes commercially available.”

Bryson, a co-founder of the liberal environmentalist group Natural Resources Defense Council, was most recently a member of the United Nations’ Advisory Group on Energy and Climate Change, a panel of scientific and industry experts tasked with providing advice on combating global warming.

Bryson’s nomination to head Commerce must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Obama's Commerce Nominee: Cap and Trade Good for ‘Hiding’ Carbon Taxes

June 1, 2011

CNSNews.com – John Bryson, President Obama’s nominee to head the Commerce Department, told a University of California Berkeley audience in 2010 that a cap and trade system was a good way to hide a carbon tax from the public.

Bryson, formerly the CEO of Edison International, said that a carbon tax was the new “third rail” of politics because politicians wouldn’t want to tax energy directly.

“I think it’s still unlikely there’ll be a carbon tax bill because I think in the end a very high percentage of the members of Congress think it’s kind of the third rail to support a tax, even if it’s a carbon tax,” Bryson said.

“Greenhouse gas legislation, either with a tax or with cap and trade – which is a more complicated way of getting at it but it has the advantage of politically sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax – but that’s what you’re trying to do,” he added.

Bryson said that carbon taxes – whether open or hidden in a cap and trade regime – were still not the best way to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gasses. The best way, he said, was a robust system of regulations that penalized energy producers for producing more energy than the government deemed necessary.

“In the great debate between economists and others about whether we ought to be proceeding primarily with market signals or regulatory steps, I believe we ought to do both,” He said. “But the regulatory steps act right now [with] immediate requirements.”

Bryson explained that setting high targets for renewable energy production was the best way to go, rather than waiting for a carbon tax to take effect in the market.

“At our company [Edison International] for example we have quite a large wind energy business across the United States – the drivers are the portfolio standards, the renewable portfolio standards, those are mandates – it’s like the investor-owned utilities in California – 33 percent [renewables] by 2020. That’s a driver. You’re not messing around with what’s the price signal going to be. If you don’t get that done, you get penalized in a big way.”

Bryson was explaining how regulations that force energy companies to adopt a certain amount of green energy worked faster and more directly than policies like a carbon tax or a cap and trade system.

With a carbon tax or cap and trade regime, the government simply tries to put a price on carbon emissions, under the assumption that utility companies will begin producing more green energy because it isn’t affected by the tax or the carbon caps. With regulation, the government simply sets the amount of renewable energy a company must produce, rather than trying to nudge the companies to do it.