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While declining to offer the Senate advice on how to proceed on climate change legislation, a key White House official offered three principles on which the measure should be based.

Carol Browner

These principles include an economy-wide scale, transition allowances giving affected industries time to come into compliance, and an awareness of impacts on consumers, said Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change.

Legislation will be successful only if it adheres to these principles, Browner asserted at an April 20 event sponsored by the National Journal.

She indicated that the administration supports combining limits on carbon with support for enhanced domestic production of fossil fuels and nuclear power.

“Nuclear needs to be part of the mix,” the administration official said. Financial assistance is needed, she added, because the industry’s infrastructure has been impacted by the gap of more than 30 years in plant orders.

Turning to enhanced domestic energy production, the official said that “tremendous opportunities” exist for natural gas. She said that the administration believes domestic drilling must be part of a comprehensive bill.

Browner said that it was vital to give industry “predictability and certainty” on reducing greenhouse emissions. This would unleash “a flood of capital investment” now sitting on the sidelines, she forecast.

The White House official, who led the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton administration, said that she had learned over the years that legislation can be passed if the environmental community and the business sector agree action is needed.

“We’re getting close,” she predicted.

Tags: Cap and Trade, Climate Change Legislation