Bloomberg

By Tina Seeley

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Congress should approve legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions this year, even if the targets aren’t “perfect” and need to be tightened in the future, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved legislation last month that would reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming 17 percent by 2020, less than the 20 percent cut originally proposed by the panel’s chairman.

“I would like to see a climate bill passed, a 17 percent by 2020, rather than waiting for something better a year down the road or two years down the road,” Chu said in an interview yesterday. “I would rather frankly see something happen this year, for a lot of reasons, including getting other countries to move as soon as possible.”

Chu, 61, is the former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Chu, who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997, said his decision to revive FutureGen, a project in Illinois to develop clean-coal technology, was based on science, not politics. He also said lawmakers can rest assured that legislation to require utilities to use renewable sources of power won’t cause “undue” hardship for consumers.

House leaders are negotiating further alterations to the climate-change measure in an effort to line up the votes it would need for passage, and the Senate may take up the issue later this year.

Environmental groups Greenpeace USA and Friends of the Earth have criticized the legislation, saying its emissions reductions weren’t aggressive enough. Greenpeace said the measure had “fallen prey to political infighting and industry pressure.”

Making Adjustments

“I know there’s some people who said, ‘It’s so far from being perfect, we don’t want it,’” said Chu. “I’m not in that camp.”

“As we more learn more about the science, learn more about other things, we can make adjustments,” Chu said. “Rather than quibble about whether it’s 20 percent or 17 or 15 percent, let’s just get it going.”

Chu said he meets regularly with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, White House energy and climate coordinator Carol Browner and others to discuss the Obama administration’s energy policies.

For now, the administration is going to “stand by” and “let the House figure out what it thinks it can pass” on climate change and energy legislation, Chu said. “Similarly the Senate.”

‘No Merit’

Chu said there was “no merit” to suggestions he was under political pressure to revive FutureGen, a public-private partnership to create a coal-fired plant that could capture and bury carbon dioxide emissions. Former President George W. Bush’s administration had canceled the project after its predicted costs rose.

The secretary said he made the decision to reconsider the project after talking to experts in the field. FutureGen is backed by Illinois lawmakers, including Dick Durbin, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat.

“I was being convinced by people whose opinions I trust, who are, again, not in the Illinois delegation, not so much coal companies,” he said. The $1.8 billion project “has some critical steps that still have to be gone through before it’s a go.”

Giving Assurance

Chu also said that projections by the Energy Information Administration “should give assurance” to lawmakers that renewable energy requirements won’t harm the economy.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved legislation yesterday that would require utilities to get 15 percent of their power from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2021. About a quarter of that could be offset by gains in energy efficiency.

The climate-change measure approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee would require as much as 20 percent renewable power by 2025, with a quarter of that potentially offset by efficiency measures.

The Energy Information Administration, the statistical unit of the Energy Department, issued a report in April finding that about 11 percent of U.S. electricity would come from renewable sources, not including new hydropower, by 2025 without any new legislative requirements.

“It should be giving the people who are on the fence more assurance that it’s not going to cause undue economic hardship,” Chu said.