Washington (Platts)--9Jan2009

Despite conventional wisdom that climate change legislation might be hard
to pass in the face of a weak economy, the US House of Representatives' new
leader on energy issues said Thursday that he was "determined" to move a bill
through committee in 2009.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman,
Democrat-California, told reporters Thursday that the bill would pass the
committee in a bipartisan fashion, with strong support.

He said that all the members of the committee would have a voice in
drafting the bill, and everything, including a carbon tax, would be on the
table. "But I support cap-and-trade," he said.

The committee has undergone a coup in leadership this year that has
landed Waxman and fellow liberal Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts
at the top of the committee and its new subcommittee on Energy and
Environment, replacing moderate Democrats John Dingell of Michigan and Rick
Boucher of Virginia.

Boucher, who will now take control of the panel's telecommunications
subcommittee, was an ally of his state's coal industry, and a proponent of a
cap-and-trade program that would have required only modest reductions in
carbon emissions in early years in order to give that industry an opportunity
to develop and deploy carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

Waxman and Markey, by contrast, are generally supportive of auctioning
all carbon dioxide emissions credits and cutting emissions comparatively
quickly, which could put great pressure on coal-fired power plant operators.

Waxman said that regulating coal was "a very difficult question we have
to deal with. I think there needs to be a future for coal. We have to
sequester the emissions. Coal is a natural resource in the United States and I
expect it will play a critical role in our overall sources of energy."
--Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick@platts.com