Duke Energy CEO: Obama must stand up on energy bill - Charlotte Business Journal

Duke Energy CEO: Obama must stand up on energy bill - Charlotte Business Journal

Thursday, June 24, 2010, 2:53pm EDT Modified: Friday, June 25, 2010, 3:25pm
With hope fading for meaningful energy legislation in this year’s Congress, Duke Energy’s Jim Rogers is back in Washington pushing strongly for legislation he can support — and strongly against legislation he won’t.

Jim Rogers
And he says it is time for President Obama to stand up, as he did on health care, and push action by outlining what his administration wants in the legislation.
“I think it's necessary that they stand up with specific proposals and drive the process in the Senate,” Rogers said in a phone interview Thursday.
Presidential leadership
Rogers had little to say about Obama’s speech on energy last week. That was a disappointment to many in the environmental community and to supporters of caps on carbon emissions.

Eileen Claussen
Obama said nothing about carbon in calling for energy legislation. Rogers said he was more encouraged by an appearance by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. Emmanuel said energy legislation would have to deal with carbon, though he floated the idea already bubbling around Washington that a first step would be to set limits on emissions in the power industry.
Op-ed
Rogers and Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, took that line in an op-ed piece published online Wednesday by D.C-based newspaper and website Politico. The piece said “a meaningful energy and climate bill this year will be challenging — but not impossible.” And it noted that electric utilities have been reaching consensus on the need for carbon controls and could be asked to go first.
It also warned “utilities may be willing to go first. But they are not going to be willing to go alone.” Rogers says such a move has to be a first step to a comprehensive approach to energy and climate-change issues.
National requirements
Rogers wants legislation that addresses carbon control, and he thinks it should be coupled with congressional action on sulfur dioxide, mercury and other regulated pollutants. He emphatically does not a bill that imposes a national renewable portfolio standard.
Duke supported the renewable standards in North Carolina — which set a relatively low goal of 12.5% of power sold in the state by 2021 to be produced from renewable energy sources or energy efficiency.
Such standards should be left to the states, Rogers says. He wants incentives for renewables and nuclear energy in the legislation he envisions. But national requirements on renewables would be a deal-killer for him.
“I would be against any bill that has an energy portfolio standard,” he says.
‘Swing vote’
His position could be important. The Charlotte Business Journal will publish an interview Friday with BusinessWeek editor Eric Pooley, who has just published his book, The Climate War, on the battle to cap U.S. carbon emissions.
Pooley explains in the interview that he chose Rogers as one of the key players in his book because he is the “swing vote” in the debate among politicians, environmentalists and business groups: “Someone who, if he swung for a climate bill, it would be more likely to pass, and if he opposed it, it would pretty much kill it,” Pooley says.
Rogers says there are just nine working weeks left in the current Congress. If a bill does not pass the Senate by the end of July, the issue is dead for the year, he says.
Key indicators
A meeting Thursday of Senate Democrats on the energy issue could give early indications of the legislation’s chances. More important, Rogers thinks, is a meeting with senators scheduled for Tuesday at the White House.
With so little time left to act, Rogers is very specific in what he thinks the bill should contain — and the president should fight for. There should be incentives for nuclear power, he says. There should be rules on pollutants that give power companies clarity and consistency about what future regulation will involve. And most of all, the legislation has to deal with carbon.
“I don’t think an energy bill that doesn’t deal with carbon will not be embraced by the environmental community,” Rogers says. “Then it's difficult to bring the people you need to pass the legislation to the table.”