Climate Change Lobby

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Silhouetted against the sky at dusk, excess steam, along with non-scrubbed pollutants, spew from the smokestacks at Westar Energy's Jeffrey Energy Center coal-fired power plant near St. Marys, Kansas. AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Even as one of the largest utilities in the world, American Electric Power, signaled stepped-up defiance to proposed limits by the Environmental Protection Agency on hazardous emissions from coal-fired power plants, a new government study shows that half of all boilers attached to tall smokestacks across the country lack scrubbers encouraged by Clear Air Act amendments decades ago.

Using scrubbers on smokestacks is an old idea for reducing emission of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. A set of amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1977 encouraged use of pollution control equipment over so-called dispersion techniques – building tall smokestacks that would release air pollutants high into the atmosphere to protect local air quality.

But such stacks, often rising 500 feet or higher, also increase the distance pollutants travel and can harm the environment far downwind.

The Government Accountability Office found that 56 percent of boilers attached to stall stacks lacked scrubbers to control sulfur dioxide, while 63 percent lacked controls after burning that would capture nitrogen oxides. Some stacks exceed height limitations, as well.

In other words, despite greater use of pollution controls, the GAO said, at many plants utilities are still spewing pollutants without controls into the skies.

Attempts by the EPA to rein in emissions from coal-fired plants has met with stiff resistance by industry and by many Republicans on Capitol Hill.

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Climate Change Lobby

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New data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released today showing that 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record is almost certain to re-ignite debate on both sides of the climate issue. Already, influencers (many highlighted in a 2010 report by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism) are arguing over just how valid the evidence is, and what to do about it.

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Climate Change Lobby

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Like a lot of industry groups, the farm lobby says it would prefer that Congress tackle climate change rather than leaving the job to the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency. But now, the prospect of EPA greenhouse gas regulation looms large — mostly because agriculture and so many other interests haven’t liked any of the climate bills so far on Capitol Hill.

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Global Climate Change Lobby

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Washington — The next round of the battle over climate change policy on Capitol Hill will involve more than the usual suspects. Way more. Watch soup makers face off against steel companies. Witness the folks who pump gas from the ground fight back against those who dig up rock. And watch the venture capitalists who have money riding on new technology try to gain advantage in a game that so far has been deftly controlled by the old machine.

In short, even though President Obama pledged to the world at Copenhagen that the United States is committed to action on global warming, the domestic politics are only growing “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice might say from Wonderland. An analysis of the latest federal records by The Center for Public Integrity shows that the overall number of businesses and groups lobbying on climate legislation has essentially held steady at about 1,160, thanks in part to a variety of interests that have left the fray. But a close look at the 140 or so interests that jumped into the debate for the first time in the third quarter shows a marked trend: Companies and organizations which feel they’ve been overlooked are fighting for a place at the table.

In other words, as the action moved to the Senate in recent months, still more sectors of the economy waded into the battle. This occurred even though the issue and interests are already so complex that Congress failed to pass legislation this year as hoped, and even though the House more than doubled its draft bill to 1,428 pages to address an array of industry concerns and gain passage back in June. The amount of money involved likely rose as well. Although amounts spent on lobbying by issue are not disclosed, if the groups involved spent just 10 percent of their lobbying budgets on climate, they shelled out $30.5 million in the third quarter — up nearly 13 percent over the previous quarter.

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Global Climate Change Lobby

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Washington — Determining the influence of industry on legislation in the United States is tough. But tracking influence on an international scale can be a nightmare, as International Consortium of Investigative Journalism members found this year while reporting our Global Climate Change Lobby series.

ICIJ, an arm of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Public Integrity, runs a unique network of 100 journalists in 50 countries. In the run-up to the Copenhagen climate talks, ICIJ fielded an eight-country team of reporters to examine the special interests trying to influence the debate. Reporters interviewed top lobbyists, analyzed industry campaigns and strategy, and tried to obtain government reports on those lobbying on climate change issues around the world. Using computer-assisted reporting techniques, this last effort offered the hardest data but also proved the most frustrating.

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Global Climate Change Lobby

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COPENHAGEN — They started appearing at business and industry meetings in 2001 after Marrakesh — the UN climate meeting that established rules for a global market for trading greenhouse gases. Representatives for the emissions trading industry became increasingly more visible and today compete with rich, well-connected carbon-emitters for international influence.

“You’re seeing a new commodity emerging that has been 10 years in the making,” says Doug Russell, a former UN delegate from Canada who now consults on climate for private corporations. The industry was worth $126 billion this year, but that market could mushroom depending on the decisions being made in Copenhagen and in the years after.

Governments are turning to traders for expertise in how to reduce global emissions without collapsing the global economy, Russell says. “All representatives are looking at the International Emissions Trading Association.” For good reason: the IETA represents more than 160 companies worldwide, including many multinational heavyweights: top financial players (Citigroup, Deutsch Bank, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse), big oil (Shell, Gazprom, and Petrobas), large conglomerates (Mitsubishi , Dow Chemical, Rio Tinto) and others who smell big money in the new carbon economy (Deloitte and Touche, Lloyds Register, New York Mercantile Exchange).

Global Climate Change Lobby

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COPENHAGEN — More than almost any other industry, oil has a lot hanging in the balance as world leaders meet here to discuss a low-carbon future. The world’s two largest publicly traded companies, Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, together earned nearly $8 billion in the last quarter alone. They are leaders in an industry that employed more than 350 lobbyists in Washington during the first six months of 2009. Shell secured the lobbying expertise of a former U.S. senator. Exxon hired a former staffer for the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Each company now has proxies here in Copenhagen who sit through meetings and participate on panels. Yet unlike most industries, their representatives have shied away from discussing what they want from the talks and whether they think they’ll get it. The industry-backed International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association is scheduled to hold a side event next week featuring Chevron, Canada’s Nexen, Brazil’s Petrobras, Norway’s Statoil, and France’s Total — some of the biggest names in the biz. But an association rep declined to discuss the industry’s message with ICIJ.

Global Climate Change Lobby

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Tokyo — Takeshi Miyamoto is a man on a mission, but things haven’t been going his way. Earlier this year, his group, the Japan Iron and Steel Federation, an influential business association under the powerful Nippon Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), worked strenuously to convey its concerns to then-Prime Minister Taro Aso’s study group on climate change. As managing director of the iron federation, Miyamoto personally paid a visit to the offices of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to ensure officials understood the grim outlook for Japan’s manufacturing industry if the country adopted bold measures to combat climate change.

Then came the country’s historic August election which ended the business-friendly LDP’s nearly unbroken hold on 50 years of Japanese politics. In power now is the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), a coalition of disaffected LDP veterans, independents, and longtime opposition members. The DPJ vowed to wrest control of policymaking from the bureaucracy and interest groups, and set about trying to change the very decision-making process that the business establishment has relied upon to get its views across.

On climate change, the DPJ’s break with the past is striking. The new ruling party has called for an ambitious 25 percent cut of greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020, with a premise that all major economies would join in with similar goals. The target was far more aggressive than the eight percent cut proposed by the previous administration and it quickly upended earlier efforts by Miyamoto’s association to promote its position to the government.

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