Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
11/21/2014
Companies using carbon capture and storage technologies would be eligible for a refund under the carbon fee proposed in a bill introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I) this week. The “American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act” would put in place a carbon fee starting in 2015 at $42 per ton of carbon emitted which would increase by 2 percent annually. The fee, which would apply to coal, oil and natural gas produced in, or imported to, the United States, would be collected by the Department of the Treasury with help from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Information Administration.
According to a statement from Whitehouse’s office, the fee could result in revenue exceeding $2 trillion over 10 years. The bill states that this revenue would be placed in a newly created fund and that those funds will be made available for various uses including “providing economic assistance to low income households or households in regions with disproportionately high energy costs; Transfers to the general fund of the Treasury to offset tax cuts; … Investing in improvements to the infrastructure of the United States; Providing dividends directly to individuals and families; Providing transition assistance to workers and businesses in energy intensive and fossil fuel industries; [and] Investing in mitigation and adaptation measures that promote national security, protect public health, conserve natural resources, or fulfill international climate commitments made by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”
The bill, if passed, would shift the social cost of carbon to those producing the emissions and off of U.S. citizens, Whitehouse said in introducing the bill on the floor of the Senate. “Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing the atmosphere and the oceans,” Whitehouse said, noting several environmental impacts of climate change. “All of these things we see carry costs—real economic dollars-and-cents costs—to homeowners, to business owners, and to taxpayers. That cost is described as the social cost of carbon. It is the damage that people and communities suffer from carbon pollution and climate change. None of those costs from carbon pollution are factored into the price of the coal or the oil or the natural gas that releases this carbon. The fossil fuel companies that sell and burn those products have taken those costs and offloaded them onto society—onto the rest of us,” Whitehouse said.
