House select committee to unveil long-awaited report

June 29, 2020

After months of pandemic-related delay, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis will release its report with a news conference tomorrow on the steps of the Capitol.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will join Chairwoman Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and the panel's other Democrats to unveil the document, widely seen as a guide to climate policy for House leadership.

Pelosi created the committee at the outset of the 116th Congress to offer climate policy recommendations to the standing committees across jurisdictions. The report was initially set for release in March but was delayed when COVID-19 derailed congressional work.

The report will likely recommend an array of energy innovation, regulatory and transportation programs to slash greenhouse gas emissions across the United States economy.

Committee members have said the document will include economywide policies, such as a price on carbon.

It certainly will not speed up the sluggish pace of the climate debate on Capitol Hill, but it could lay the groundwork for broad legislation in the future, should Democrats win control of the Senate and White House in 2021.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a member of the committee, said he expects the report to run "500-plus pages." "Set aside some reading time," Huffman said in an interview.

Absent from the guest list for the report's rollout tomorrow are the committee's Republicans, who have criticized the kind of sweeping climate policies that Democrats have talked up for the last two years.

Portions of the committee's hearing have been bipartisan, particularly on adaptation and carbon sequestration issues, but the report is expected to be a largely Democratic affair.

Republicans on the committee have not seen the report and did not contribute, GOP spokesman Michael Lehmann said in an email.

"So, this is a Democratic staff report, not a committee report," he said. "The rules state that the committee cannot issue views without a vote."

The release also comes as the House prepares to vote on a massive green-tinged infrastructure bill that draws heavily on the select committee's work.

The "Moving Forward Act," H.R. 2, includes a grab bag of policies to boost energy efficiency, accelerate electric vehicle deployment and extend tax breaks for renewable energy — all issues likely to get ink in the select committee report (see related story).

"Those of us on the select committee were working on both fronts simultaneously, so a lot of our work is reflected in this 'Moving Forward' package," Huffman said. "And frankly, there's a lot of consistency between the two, and that's a good thing."


By:  Nick Sobczyk
Source: E&E News