CCL Suggests Strategy for advocacy after Manchin’s “veto”

Hi Folks,

You know that reconciliation roller coaster ride we are all on? Well, we just hit the twisting loop section so hold onto your hats!

Quick recap: On Friday the NYT reported that the Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP) was in big trouble. Then on Saturday they reported that Democrats were weighing a carbon tax, which as we know, they have been doing for weeks and months.

Over the weekend we’ve seen everything from excitement to confusion to despair about all of this so I wanted to provide a little perspective and a strategy update.

Here is your TL;DR summary:

• Stay calm. We can do this.
• A carbon price, even if it is low, can hit our goals
• Hold Biden to his pledge of 50% emissions reductions by 2030
• Get everyone to write Pres. Biden at http://cclusa.org/white-house now
• Increased focus on the dividend.

While the CEPP was a central focus of the Democrats’ climate plan there are lots of other things in the mix that hopefully will make it through to final legislation. Some of the big ticket items include extending/expanding the clean energy tax credits, a price on methane, EV incentives and charging infrastructure, and more. Some models estimate that these other provisions would get us 40% reductions by 2030 which is a good chunk of the way to the 50% by 2030 target. The CEPP was supposed to help get us to 45-50%, so dropping it is significant and we should really be pushing for something to pick up the slack.

Luckily the carbon price that Senate Finance committee has been proposing would do just that. Ideally, in my opinion, we’d have both a CEPP and a strong carbon price, but even a modest carbon price can drive the same emissions reductions as the CEPP, and even get us to a similar level of clean energy. RFF modeled a $15/ton fee rising at 5%/year showing it could get us to 73% clean energy with the tax credits. Harvard just modeled a $20/ton fee rising at 3%/year and saw 81% emissions reductions in the electricity sector by 2030.

Obviously we’d love to see carbon pricing that gets to a much higher price sooner, but it is important to recognize that even a modest carbon price can have a huge impact on emissions. Make sure as we advocate to avoid saying that a low price won’t have any effect. The effect will be smaller than with a higher price but a moderate price can still make a big difference, especially as part of a package with other policies. And it will be much easier to advocate for raising the price once it is in place (as we saw in Canada).

My sense of the key thing right now is to try to hold Democrats and especially President Biden to the pledge of at least 50% reductions by 2030, which he made as part of the Paris Accords (FYI that’s reductions from the U.S. peak in 2005). That is something that all climate advocates can easily get behind and so is a way to make common ground with our allies (check out Leah Stokes on NPR). We want to hold Democrats feet to the fire and not let them back down from those goals. And, it’s a quick pivot to a carbon price is an excellent way to get there. Do this in LTEs, on social media, when talking with friends, with grasstops influencers, etc. Keep the focus on 50 by 2030.

So how do we hold Biden to his pledge. Get everyone we know to write Biden now. And if you’ve done that join our phone and text banks.  Democrats are pushing now to try to have legislation ready by Oct 31. They may not make that deadline but there is no reason to wait. Now is the time to mobilize. This is the big push. It may not be the last time to push hard, but these next two weeks are critical. We are close. Let’s keep our drive going.

This is also a great time to add additional focus on the dividend. Senate Finance chair Ron Wyden has been clear that they intend to “use the revenue for tax rebates or checks for poor and working-class Americans”. Call it a rebate or a dividend or a carbon cashback, but the key thing here is to make sure people know they will be taken care of and that we can have clean, reliable energy that we can afford. No matter how often we say this people still miss it sometimes so repeat, repeat, repeat! Senators are also talking about a gasoline exemption, which you may or may not like, but it will do a lot to avoid people feeling like their costs will go up too much.

As always, y’all are doing amazing work. I hope you are fired up because it is game time!