US climate bill targets 15% renewables by 2020

WASHINGTON (AFP) – House of Representatives Democrats crafting legislation to fight climate change said late Wednesday that they would seek to get 15 percent of US energy from renewable sources by 2020.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee is due to start its formal debate on the "American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" come Monday, hoping to approve it by week's end and send it to the full House.

Democratic Representative Henry Waxman, the panel's chairman, and Democratic Representative Ed Markey, released details of a deal among Democrats on the bill's requirements.

It would require utilities, by 2020, to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable resources -- solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass -- and show annual energy savings of five percent from efficiency measures.

"This will spur jobs, investment, and growth in the renewable energy sector and overall economic activity. It achieves all these goals while ensuring substantial flexibility in how the renewable energy and efficiency objectives are met," Waxman said in a statement.

An earlier blueprint, unveiled in late March, called for utilities to get six percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2012, rising to 25 percent by 2025.

But the proposal ran into opposition from Republicans and Democrats from coal-producing and industrial states.

The European Union plan calls for getting 20 percent of all electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

The committee's top Democrats also unveiled plans to provide automakers with incentives to build electric and advanced-technology vehicles.

Under the so-called "cap and trade" mechanism for limiting overall pollution and selling pollution permits, automakers would get three percent of allowances from 2012-2017 and one percent through 2025.

US President Barack Obama had called for auctioning off 100 percent of emissions permits rather than granting them to certain industries.

Under the committee plan, 15 percent of allowances in 2014 will be distributed to US manufacturers that are in energy-intensive, trade-exposed industries.

Other allowances will go to the oil industry, though no figure has yet been made public.

The manufacturers would get allowances based on the average carbon emissions from the sector, scaled by the manufacturer's US production.

The industries would receive the allowances through 2025, at which time the US president will decide whether they are still necessary.

House Democrats late Tuesday had reached an agreement on a goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 17 percent from their 2005 levels by 2020.

The figure was lower than an initial goal of 20 percent reductions by 2020 included in the first draft of the bill unveiled in late March.

Obama, who is set to attend international climate change talks in Copenhagen in December, called last month for a "green revolution" in the United States.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), meanwhile, announced in mid-April that it would consider carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases a health risk.