News + Events
Washington partner on cap-and-trade and the intricacies of D.C.
Public Utilities Fortnightly Magazine
July 2010
Washington partner Peter Glaser had his article “
Is Cap-and-Trade Kaput?” published in the July issue of
Spark, an online newsletter of
Public Utilities Fortnightly Magazine.
“With Majority Leader Harry Reid’s announcement on July 23, 2010, that a greenhouse gas (GHG) cap-and-trade program will not be included in energy legislation that he intends to bring to the floor before the August recess, most observers agree that cap-and-trade is all but dead in this Congress,” Glaser stated. “A more intriguing question is whether cap-and-trade as a means to reduce U.S. GHG emissions can be resurrected at all in the next and future Congresses.”
Glaser’s article examines the Obama Administration’s hopes for enacting a cap-and-trade program to address GHG emissions, the congressional debate on cap-and-trade, the EPA’s GHG regulation under the Clean Air Act, and what’s to be done now and in the future with these issues.
“Enacting legislation requires real and…painful compromise. In the end, a deal between the environmental community and the utility industry, even if one can be reached, may not be enough. The compromise will need to be bipartisan and must attract the votes of members concerned about taxes and economic impacts,” argued Glaser. “Without such compromise, cap-and-trade may indeed be kaput.”