In Anticipation of Pope Francis, Senate Democrats Push Sweeping Energy Plan

Top Sen­ate Demo­crats are try­ing to seize the polit­ic­al of­fens­ive on en­ergy as Pope Fran­cis, who is­sued a de­tailed call to ac­tion on cli­mate change in June, is mak­ing a high-pro­file trip to Wash­ing­ton.

Seni­or law­makers are re­leas­ing a wide-ran­ging en­ergy plan Tues­day that sets a new “car­bon-sav­ings goal” to help tackle cli­mate change, stat­ing that it’s U.S. policy to cut the coun­try’s car­bon emis­sions by at least 2 per­cent an­nu­ally through 2025.

Sen­ate Minor­ity Lead­er Harry Re­id and Demo­crat­ic lead­er-in-wait­ing Chuck Schu­mer are among the law­makers sched­uled to join Maria Can­t­well, the top Demo­crat on the Sen­ate’s en­ergy pan­el, at a Tues­day press con­fer­ence to pro­mote the plan. Ron Wyden, the top Demo­crat on the Fin­ance Com­mit­tee, is also slated to be there.

While the plan is little more than a mes­saging ef­fort in a GOP-con­trolled Con­gress, Schu­mer told The New York Times that it could be a tem­plate for le­gis­la­tion that Demo­crats will push if they re­gain Sen­ate con­trol in the 2016 elec­tions.

“A plan that looks something like this is go­ing to be high on the next Con­gress’s agenda,” Schu­mer told the pa­per.

The 437-page plan swipes at the oil in­dustry by nix­ing a suite of tax in­cent­ives for the biggest oil com­pan­ies, like Ex­xon and Shell. It would end write-offs for drilling costs and big com­pan­ies’ abil­ity to claim a luc­rat­ive de­duc­tion on do­mest­ic man­u­fac­tur­ing in­come, among oth­er in­cent­ives.

It also sets new fees for some oil and gas wells, and cur­tails a pro­gram that al­lows roy­alty-free pro­duc­tion in deep Gulf of Mex­ico wa­ters.

Else­where, the bill would cre­ate a new sys­tem of tax in­cent­ives for low-car­bon elec­tri­city and trans­port­a­tion-fuel pro­duc­tion that would stream­line the ex­ist­ing patch­work of cred­its, cre­at­ing a more flex­ible sys­tem that’s based on the level of emis­sions cuts. (It’s sim­il­ar to a green-tax over­haul that then-Sen­ate Fin­ance Chair­man Max Baucus floated in late 2013.)

Demo­crats are also dust­ing off a long­stand­ing plan to man­date more en­ergy sav­ings in the power sys­tem by re­quir­ing that elec­tric and nat­ur­al-gas util­it­ies cut en­ergy use by 20 per­cent by 2030.

As for the 2 per­cent an­nu­al car­bon-cut­ting tar­get, if met, it would en­able at least a 30 per­cent cut from 2005 levels by 2025, giv­en that U.S. emis­sions are already down about 10 per­cent over the last dec­ade. (Al­though, they’ve ticked back upslightly in 2013 and 2014.)

The Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion, in a land­mark cli­mate agree­ment with China last year and in a more re­cent pledge to the United Na­tions, has vowed to re­duce U.S. green­house-gas emis­sions by 26 to 28 per­cent by 2025 com­pared with 2005 levels.

The big bill con­tains a wide ar­ray of oth­er meas­ures in top­ics in­clud­ing cy­ber­se­cur­ity; im­prov­ing en­ergy in­fra­struc­ture, such as nat­ur­al-gas dis­tri­bu­tion sys­tems; ini­ti­at­ives to mod­ern­ize the elec­tric grid; boost­ing R&D in­to green­er cars and trucks; and much more.

The meas­ure ar­rives as Demo­crats are bat­tling GOP ef­forts to dis­mantle Pres­id­ent Obama’s cli­mate agenda, es­pe­cially first-time EPA car­bon-emis­sions rules for power plants.

However, the bill does not in­clude cli­mate policies long-sought by en­vir­on­ment­al­ists as well as many Demo­crats that would ex­pli­citly put a price on car­bon emis­sions, either through a car­bon tax or a cap-and-trade sys­tem.