Proposed Senate Energy Bill May Break Stalemate Over Greenhouse Gases Regulation

SUGAR LAND--April 20, 2010--Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The current legal and policy stalemate over regulating carbon dioxide and other industrial emissions that are thought to cause climate change may start breaking on April 26, when a new energy and climate change bill is scheduled to be introduced in the Senate. This draft legislation, the outline of which was leaked to the media by government and industry sources, reportedly scraps the controversial "cap & trade" mechanism contained in the Waxman-Markey energy bill that the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed last June. The draft bill also is said to preempt the ability of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary industrial sources like power plants, oil refineries, steel mills and cement makers.