[TheForge] Cap and trade

[Paul Boulay]

Peter,

The issue is now in the Senate. The House passed their version on June 26.
H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (111th Congress)
see http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2454

Given the narrow margin on the House and the composition of the Senate it is likely that changes will be made and that schedule is not clear. 

>It's easy to imagine a black market for good coal forming.
-- I agree. The limits don't get very painful until about 2020 when the current legislators will have changed out a few times. But I think the stifling effect of the bureaucracy will have an effect on small scale users.
>Will they really bother to enforce cap and trade on our scale?
-- I'd guess that there is no plan to do so -- any enforcement will be at the coal mine.
>What would be the trees planted to bags of coal ratio?
I don't know but there is a concept of compensatory allowances. A very high stakes shell game.
>Do we need to start writing targeted letters?
It wouldn't hurt. I think the best place is to Republican Senators on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Paul Boulay

-----Original Message-----
>From: Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer <artgawk at thegrid.net>
>Sent: Nov 5, 2009 12:21 AM
>To: Paul Boulay <pboulay at earthlink.net>, Blacksmithing List Sponsored by ABANA <theforge at mailman.qth.net>
>Subject: Re: [TheForge] Cap and trade
>
>Thanks for clarifying the issue Paul;
>It's easy to imagine a black market for good coal forming.
>Will they really bother to enforce cap and trade on our scale?
>What would be the trees planted to bags of coal ratio?
>Do we need to start writing targeted letters?
>
>Paul Boulay wrote:
>> Peter,
>> 
>> I'm afraid I have to disagree. I actually tried reading the proposed legislation a few months back. It was tough to know for sure what it was saying because there was so much that was obviously in a state of flux not to mention being self contradictory. And the legislation leaves a lot of the implementation and details to the bureaucrats. However it looked to me that the big users of coal such as power plants had established positions at the coal feeding trough. Their percentage shares remain constant over time but their actual amount starts to shrink in around 2015 and keeps shrinking out to 2050. I don't remember if it is zero at that point. 
>> 
>> If you are a small user you have to get your coal from someone who does have a position at the trough. So there might be industrial coal distributors who hold an allocation and could still sell to us small fry (at an inflated price). It might also mean that a coal mine would be prohibited from selling to anyone who didn't hold an allocation. If you hold an allocation you could sell some of your shares to one of the other stakeholders. But I didn't see a way for us small time users to guarantee that there would be someone out there willing to sell small quantities. 
>> 
>> I did notice some exception clauses for small industrial users of gaseous fuels. But I saw no such exemption for coal. 
>> 
>> It might be necessary to find a legislator out there with a sympathetic ear for small scale users with artistic or traditional reasons to keep using coal to write a carefully crafted exception but the political winds clearly don't look favorable. Got a spare $100K to fund a lobbying campaign? (Before anyone even goes there, ABANA's organizational tax status prohibits lobbying.)
>> 
>> Paul Boulay
>> 
>> 
>>> Date: Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:24:07 -0800
>>> From: Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer <artgawk at thegrid.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [TheForge] Cap and trade
>> 
>>> I'd imagine that the costs of dealing with small scale emitters like us 
>>> will keep us safe for quite a while.
>>>
>> 

Paul Boulay
408-483-1986