U.S. Senate to get its own climate bill

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- Mandatory U.S. limits on greenhouse gases and federal oversight of the carbon trading market are provisions of the Senate's climate bill introduced Wednesday.

"This is the beginning of one of the most important battles we will face, as legislators and as citizens," said co-sponsor Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. "It is time to reinvent the way America uses energy."

The legislation, also sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., could be pivotal as foreign leaders watch to see whether the United States can commit to meaningful carbon reductions as part of a binding global agreement and as a climate change summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, approaches, The Washington Post reported.

President Barack Obama, in a statement, lauded Boxer and Kerry, saying the legislation moves America closer to "control of our energy future and making America more energy independent."

The bill would set a 2020 target date to achieve a 20 percent reduction of carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels, compared to a 17 percent reduction in the House-passed bill, The New York Times reported. Both bills would set a long-term target of an 83 percent reduction by 2050.

The bill would direct the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to set regulations to provide federal oversight for the carbon trading market without specifying what the rules would be. It also would establish an emission allowance rebate program aimed at trade-sensitive, carbon-intensive U.S. industries, excluding the oil industry, the Post said.

The bill would set up a cap-and-trade system to achieve emissions targets, allowing entities to buy and sell permits within an overall emissions ceiling. Left unaddressed, however, is how the permits would be distributed among relevant businesses and utilities.

Boxer said hearings in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which she leads, would begin Oct. 20.