The recession may not prove as much of a barrier to a national carbon cap and trade scheme for the United States as pundits thought, according to the lead energy and environment advisor for Barack Obama’s campaign.
Although President-elect Obama has promised major environmental reforms for his tenure, many assumed that enacting a costly capping system would be put on hold while he works on restarting the economy. And besides Obama, there a number of potential hold-outs in Congress and the Senate, especially those in states like Michigan and West Virginia that could be hurt by carbon legislation.
However, the adviser, Jason Grumet, told a carbon trading conference that 2009 would be a “very, very busy” period for government, according to Reuters, indicating that Obama could ratchet up pressure to hammer out a cap-and-trade next year.
Additional pressure toward enacting caps could also come from the International Energy Agency, a typically conservative group that nevertheless warned this year that oil supplies will be tight going forward, and that governments are not doing enough to combat global warming.
While established industries will likely find a cap-and-trade system like the Lieberman-Warner Bill challenging, it will provide a bonanza not only for cleantech startups in wind, solar and other areas, but also for information technology companies.
A number of startups already exist to help track and trade carbon, like AMEE, APX and Planet Metrics, all of which have raised funding, and consumer applications like GoodGuide, an application that tracks the safety and environmental friendliness of products, also exist. But with Obama in office, many more could soon appear.
Update: The WSJ’s Environmental Capital blog also points to Obama’s transition leader, John Podesta, as a possible source. Podesta suggests that the Environmental Protection agency should regulate carbon from “day one” of Obama’s term.
