The claim is that HR 2998, drafted in large part by Duke Energy, will protect ratepayers, reduce carbon emissions, and help solve global warming. But it is an attempt to maintain business as usual in the electric utility industry.

The reason for HR 2998 is that in the past 2 to 3 years numerous coal plants have been cancelled because lenders would not assume the risk of financing overly expensive and polluting coal-fire power plants that take years to build. Instead, the market was (and is) pushing renewables and efficiency. For once, the market is heading the right direction. However, HR 2998, as written, would stunt the growth of the renewable and energy efficiency sectors of the economy in favor of expensive, polluting coal plants.

Remember, the only power plants that have been completed since Governor Mitch Daniels took office are wind farms in Northwest Indiana. Daniels did nothing to provide incentives for these wind farms. The only incentive was a federal production tax credit. Coal plants, the other hand, require massive taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies to be built and to keep running, such as: state tax incentives; federal loan guarantees (putting federal taxpayers on the hook); Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) so that utilities can recover financing costs from ratepayers during construction; and automatic rate adjustment mechanisms (trackers that increase rates) to invest in air pollution control technology. Coal plants are already financially unviable. Now utility companies need HR 2998 to keep their coal plants running and have an excuse to build more.

To find out more about what this bill does, and what you can about it, click here!

• Give away billions of dollars to the utility industry in the form of emission permits (allowances) for carbon dioxide and create loopholes to keep the existing fleet of obsolete coal plants running.

• Force electric ratepayers through a surcharge on their bills to pay for research & development that the industry should be paying for to determine if capturing carbon and injecting it deep underground is feasible.

• Create a sham moratorium on the construction of new coal-fired power plants by exempting 45 plants, including Duke’s proposed coal gasification plant at Edwardsport.

• Create a Renewable Electricity Standard that maintains the status quo for renewable investment. Research conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that the RES in HR 2998 will most likely be weaker than what the market is doing today in terms of wind and other renewable energy investment.

• Prohibit the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon dioxide emissions.

• In 2007 the private health insurance system cost $2.4 trillion.

• In the U.S., we spend more per capita on health care than any other country on earth.

• America’s health care system is ranked 37th in the world, right after Costa Rica, by the World Health Organization.

• 1 in 7 Americans have no health insurance coverage at all. That’s 47 million people, 15% of the population. Millions more struggle with increasing premiums, deductibles, and co-pays.

• The uninsured live sicker and die younger. The Institute of Medicine calculates that 18,000 people die every year purely because they don’t have any insurance.

• Medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy. 75% of those declaring bankruptcy had insurance at the time they got sick.

• Public opinion polls consistently find that 65% or more of Americans surveyed favor Single Payer health insurance (Medicare for everyone), even if it means tax increases. More and more, business and labor groups are coming to the same conclusion. In a 2008 poll of U.S. physicians, 59% favored Single Payer health insurance.

• Both the General Accounting Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reached the same conclusion: Eliminating private health insurance and covering everyone under a Single Payer public program would increase efficiency and cut overhead so much that it would leave enough money to cover all the uninsured.

• 96% of Indiana’s electricity comes from coal-fired power plants.

• From 2003 to 2007 electric rates in Indiana increased almost 30%.

• Despite the high cost of living in California, the average electric bill in California ($83.60/mo) is cheaper than the average electric bill in Indiana ($87.44/mo) because of California's aggressive implementation of energy efficiency and renewable sources of electricity.

• $5 billion each year is spent in Indiana (and nearly $170 billion nationwide) on health care costs and job related losses due to the particulate matter emissions (soot) coming out of the smokestacks of coal plants.

Penalizing Pollution While Rewarding Consumers: Tax is not always a dirty word
HR 2998 would attempt to establish a market-based system to trade pollution allowances (much like trading stock). The idea is to reduce CO₂ emissions by capping the number of allowances available and reducing them over time. This is called a cap and trade system. But instead of forcing big polluters to pay for the allowances up front, HR 2998 gives most of them away. The bill also provides for loopholes (known as offsets) to allow utility companies to keep emitting carbon dioxide. This means that we’ll be seeing more speculation and gaming to make money on allowances than actual reductions in carbon emissions.

Conservative and liberal economists agree that a carbon tax (or dirty fuel fee) is preferable because a carbon tax:

• Is transparent;

• Avoids gaming and corruption;

• Creates price stability;

• Envisions the proceeds to be used in the public interest, not a private giveaway;

• Does not require additional bureaucracy, unlike the cap and trade system; and

• Penalizes the unproductive end of the economy (pollution) and rewards the productive end of the economy.

Revenue from the carbon tax could be used for offsetting increases in energy costs, helping to reduce the cost of public health insurance, and defraying payroll taxes.

Please call, write, and/or e-mail:

1. Tell them to oppose HR 2998!

2. Urge them to replace cap and trade with a carbon tax (like HR 1337, authored by Rep. Larson).

3. Encourage them to use the revenue from the carbon tax to help transition to Single Payer health insurance, or Medicare for everyone (like HR 676, authored by Rep. Conyers).

Senator Bayh refuses support a strong Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) in the U.S. Senate. He says he is concerned about near term rate increases from an RES, but he also publicly supported Duke’s proposed coal plant in Edwardsport, IN that will result in much larger rate increases than an RES ever would.

Moreover, in 2007, his wife, Susan Bayh, collected $248,700 in cash and stock as a board member of Anthem/WellPoint, one of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. She also sits on four other health-related boards. Senator Bayh says he is “agnostic” about health care and refuses to recuse himself from votes regarding health care, despite this obvious conflict of interest.

And finally, Senator Bayh said he is in the U.S. Senate to “protect business interests.”

Tell Senator Bayh to start protecting consumer interests instead of business interests by:

1. Supporting a carbon tax;

2. Supporting a strong Renewable Electricity Standard of at least 25% by 2025; and

3. Recusing himself from any votes regarding Health Care. His family's income from Anthem/Wellpoint creates an obvious conflict of interest!