Hours before the President will address the nation about the need to end our dependence on fossil fuels, two new studies bolstered the case for the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act, the comprehensive climate protection and clean energy jobs bill.
The Environmental Protection Agency released its official analysis and found, according to the Kerry-Lieberman press release that the legislation “decreases energy bills for households through 2030 and [has] minimal impact on households’ overall costs through 2050.” Furthermore, according to a new ClimateWorks study touted in another Kerry-Lieberman press release, the bill “will create 540,000 jobs per year while providing $71 in savings on families’ utility bills.”
The reality may be even better that that. EPA notes that its analysis “do not account for the benefits of avoiding the effects of climate change.”
Grist’s David Roberts chided the EPA for lowballing:
…this kind of modeling tends to overestimate costs and underestimate the benefits of climate legislation. Even with those weaknesses, however, the analysis still shows costs that are, in the grand scheme of GDP growth between now and 2050, tiny. Cost is simply not a credible reason to oppose a carbon cap.
Nevertheless, the new reports give President Obama plenty to tout in his Oval Office address tonight. Let’s see if he does.
