Washington (Platts)--23Jan2013/519 pm EST/2219 GMT
The White House on Wednesday ruled out proposing a tax on carbon emissions, two days after President Barack Obama called for action on climate change in his inaugural address. Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and hard-line environmentalist, said Tuesday he plans to introduce legislation in February that would penalize companies for their carbon emissions, while also ending fossil fuel subsidies. But White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to say Wednesday whether Obama would support such a plan and insisted that the president would not propose a carbon tax. "What I can tell you is that we have not proposed and have no intention of proposing a carbon tax," Carney said in a briefing with reporters. Carney confirmed that Obama would finalize greenhouse gas emissions standards on new power plants, which are due in April. But he would not say what, if any, other actions the administration would take to tackle climate change, including issuing GHG standards for existing power plants. "I can certainly confirm that the president intends to continue progress on the new national standard for harmful carbon pollution from new power plants and to implement that standard," Carney said. "I can't comment on any specific future actions that he might take except that he has demonstrated in his record during his first term that we can together take action that is not only helpful to our environment in that it addresses the issue of climate change, but is also helpful to our long-term economic vitality," he added. Sanders, in a statement, said his bill would charge companies an unspecified fee for their carbon emissions, while issuing rebates to Americans to "offset any efforts by the fossil fuel companies to jack up their prices." It would also roll back subsidies to the oil and gas industry, as well as increase investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. "We must do nothing less than transform our energy system away from fossil fuels into energy efficiency and sustainable energy," Sanders said.--Herman Wang, herman_wang@platts.com --Edited by Keiron Greenhalgh, keiron_greenhalgh@platts.com