Washington (Platts)--21Nov2008

A special committee on climate change will continue into the next
Congress, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday.

"I think we do have a need for one more term, because our work is not
finished," Pelosi said Friday at her weekly press conference. "We do not have
the climate change legislation that I had hoped we might be closer to, at
least at this point."

The principles the select committee outlined would guide the House's
greenhouse gas reduction mandate, but "we want to do it right and we want to
do it in a bipartisan way," Pelosi said. Pelosi created the Select Committee
on Energy Independence and Climate Change when Democrats regained control of
the House in 2006.

Her assertion that the select committee's work would set the parameters
for GHG cap-and-trade legislation was a dismissal of a parallel effort from
Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell of Michigan, whose committee has
jurisdiction over energy and climate-change issues.

The select committee, led by Massachusetts Democrat Ed Markey, was
granted no legislative power when it was created as a concession to Dingell,
who objected to sharing jurisdiction. Dingell was ousted Thursday as chairman
of the Energy and Commerce Committee, when his Democrat colleagues voted to
replace him with California Democrat and Pelosi ally Henry Waxman.

Dingell, who is closely allied with the Detroit auto manufacturers and
other industrial interests, spent much of the last two years holding hearings
and releasing white papers on responses to climate change.

In October, he and Energy and Air Quality subcommittee chairman Rick
Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, released a preliminary proposal for a climate
change bill. While the environmental community considered the bill a credible
first step, it contained early goals for GHG reduction that were seen to be
too modest to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

Waxman -- who, like Pelosi, is closely allied with environmentalists --
has proposed more stringent GHG reduction targets, especially in the near
term.

Pelosi praised Markey for his "magnificent job" at the head of the select
committee and added that he should retain that position. The Massachusetts
lawmaker, who also is a senior member of Energy and Commerce, has been
mentioned as a possible challenger to Boucher to head of the Energy and Air
Quality subcommittee.

--Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick@platts.com