Daily Score Blog

A new video featuring US Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) does a good job of explaining how the federal stimulus bill will help pay for clean energy initiatives and create green-collar jobs.

Watch it to get the whole story, or here's a summary of the funding he highlights:

• $11 billion to make the nation's electricity grid smarter, more flexible and more responsive, including funding for the Northwest's Bonneville Power Administration.
  
• $6.3 billion for energy efficiency projects, including home weatherization.
  
• $4 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy, helping companies raise capital for solar plants, wind turbines, geothermal projects and other innovations.
• $4.5 billion to make federal buildings more energy efficient.
• $3.1 billion in state energy grants to create jobs and train a clean tech workforce.

This week in Washington, DC, the House Education and Labor Committee will consider HR 2187 the 21st Century Green High Performing Public Schools Facilities Act. The legislation is co-sponsored by Oregon’s David Wu and would allocate more than $6 billion for fiscal 2010 to support energy efficiencies in local schools.

I'm about a month late here, but I had to jot down some notes on the new cap and trade bill from Congressman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland (which is co-sponsored by Oregon's Earl Blumenauer.) It's not often that I actually enjoy reading a bill, but The Cap and Dividend Act of 2009 was an exception. For my money, Van Hollen's bill gets most everything right.

First off, it sets an emissions-reduction target of 85 percent below 2005 levels by 2050, with interim decadal targets plus a provision to alter the reduction-schedule if climate science dictates.

But the real hallmark of Van Hollen's bill is that it's undiluted Cap and Dividend: it auctions 100 percent of the carbon permits and then dividends 100 percent of the auction proceeds on an equal per capita basis. (The auctions are quarterly and the dividends are monthly.)

Like most versions of Cap and Dividend, Van Hollen's program allows for permit trading on the secondary market, which helps firms comply with the program at the lowest cost. However, the bill does restrict both the auction and the trading market in some interesting ways. For instance, it allows only regulated firms to purchase permits -- which means that brokers and financial houses are excluded from the auction -- and further, it restricts the percentage of permits that any one firm can acquire at auction or can hold at any one time during the program.

So that's the main stuff. If you want to get into the weeds a bit -- or if you want to hear my quibbles with it -- everything else is below the jump.

Paul Krugman weighs in with an argument for auctioned cap and trade ASAP: legal emissions limits can be a macroeconomic stimulus.