GQP Unveils Earth Day "Messaging": Plant Trees, Cut Mining Rules, Perma-Credit For "Carbon Capture"
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Instead of proposing limits on fossil fuel use or greenhouse gas emissions, Republicans largely reframed their existing ideas on issues like critical minerals and energy innovation as climate policy.
Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), for example, touted his "American Critical Mineral Independence Act," H.R. 2637, as a way to ramp up domestic production of the materials "that make up the chips, the turbines, the solar panels, the batteries that we need for this future economy." The bill, introduced last week, would speed mine permitting and advance critical minerals research (E&E Daily, April 16). House Natural Resources ranking member Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), meanwhile, reintroduced the "Trillion Trees Act" yesterday, a bill to promote reforestation that Republicans have held up as a reasonable step to sequester carbon.
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Also on the Republican agenda is a bill, H.R. 2633, to expand and permanently authorize the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture and a measure, H.R. 2578, from Graves and Foreign Affairs ranking member Michael McCaul (R-Texas) that calls for the Paris Agreement to be renegotiated to extract more ambitious emissions pledges from China (E&E News PM, April 16).
Energy innovation policies, including 45Q, are popular with members from both parties, and Congress passed a major bipartisan energy bill that was widely seen as a win for climate. But many in the GOP have also opposed other tax credits for wind and solar, and Republicans have offered few substantive proposals to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change or to put the United States on a path to net-zero emissions by 2050 — the target laid down by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063730379
