Max Bialystock, where are you?
Today the American Gas Association asked for 12% of the carbon allowances in the Waxman-Markey climate change bill to be allocated free to natural gas utilities in the same way that the bill is expected to allocate a big chunk, maybe 40%, to electric utilities.
AGA had recommended earlier that gas utilities get allocations if and when they were covered by Waxman-Markey, which is in the throes of tough negotiations right now in the House of Representatives. But just as we go into the weekend before Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey are to come out with a new draft of their measure, AGA wrote to them recommending the 12% figure, which AGA says would be equivalent to their contribution to total baseline emissions in 2005.
We'll learn more next week, but at first blush it felt like, my goodness, here's somebody else with a percentage request. Yet another country heard from. If electric utilities get 40%, gas utilities get 12%, refineries get 5%, steel companies get a percent, and cement companies, and there is a set-aside for carbon capture and storage, and ... there have got to be other industries yet to come forward ... eventually Waxman and Markey could pull a Max Bialystock. "Selling" more than 100% of the allowances to buy a cap-and-trade bill.
In "The Producers," Bialystock and Bloom sold more than 100% and deliberately tried to make a massive flop of a show. Way different from what's going on with Waxman-Markey. But with some music and a chorus line ... are there possibilities?
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