Feb 12 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Thomas Content Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Action will heat up next year in Congress and the Legislature to craft policies to tackle global warming, federal and state lawmakers said Monday.

Congress will pass a law in 2009 or 2010 requiring greenhouse gas emissions to be curbed and reduced, predicted Jim Hoecker, an energy lawyer and former commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

That proposal was debated by two members of Wisconsin's congressional delegation in separate speeches on the Midwest's energy future at the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center. The session offered a preview of arguments that will be taking place in years to come as Wisconsin and the country wrestle with sweeping changes in the way consumers get and pay for their energy.

U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, a Madison Democrat, said the House of Representatives will gear up next month on a plan that would set up a cap-and-trade system to reduce global warming emissions.

An investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy and carbon-abating technologies on the scale of the Apollo space program is needed because tackling climate change "is essential to life on Earth," she said. "We will leave a legacy, and the question is what will that legacy be?"

But Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Menomonee Falls said he worries that Congress will create more problems through its attempt to solve rising global warming emissions.

"We might cause damage in a vain effort to fix it," he said. "Congress is clamoring for a legislative solution. What they are developing is a job-killer, one that particularly insults the Upper Midwest severely because we use a lot of coal to make electricity."

Several panelists said it would be more efficient for Congress to enact a tax on carbon emissions or on energy itself, as has been suggested by a group of national economists.

Taxing fossil fuels would stimulate change in energy use, but that proposal would never gain widespread support from politicians -- even if it were offset by sweeping cuts in income taxes, conference speakers said.

The state and the nation will have to face big energy challenges, with the public and investment banks becoming more critical of plans for new coal-fired power plants.

Nuclear plants don't emit any greenhouse gases, but concerns still linger over the safety of nuclear plants and the disposal of radioactive waste left over from the generation of electricity.

In the short term, the state will need to look to strategies such as stepped-up use of energy-efficient technologies to cut energy use and emissions, said Dan Ebert, chairman of the state Public Service Commission.

Over the long term, options such as nuclear plants "must be on the table," said state Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee), chairman of the Senate utilities committee.

That debate won't begin in earnest until next year, after a task force on global warming appointed by Gov. Jim Doyle issues its recommendations. Still, speakers said, policy is moving swiftly toward encouraging more renewable energy and cutting global warming emissions.

The energy bill Congress passed in December requires big gains in cars' and trucks' gas mileage. The law also will require the phase-out of incandescent light bulbs and will require new biofuels to be sold that generate far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than the corn-based ethanol sold today.

The quickest way to reduce emissions in the near term is to curb energy use through energy efficiency and conservation, said Michael Corradini of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's nuclear engineering department.

"All of us have a personal duty to think about how we live our daily life, if we're really concerned about climate change," he said.