By Martin Vaughan

WASHINGTON - Billions in federal subsidies for manufacturers of solar panels and wind- and solar-power facilities will end Jan. 1, 2011, unless lawmakers who negotiated a deal to extend tax cuts back down from their positions.

The clean-energy incentives were created by 2009 economic stimulus legislation. Republicans are taking a firm stand that they aren’t part of a deal reached with the White House, and shouldn’t be a part of broader legislation to extend tax cuts for individuals and businesses, according to GOP aides.

Democrats have sought to extend the programs, most recently in legislation from Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) that failed in the Senate last week.

Republican leaders Tuesday said the deal they reached with the White House is final, and only some specifics of the provisions that were part of the deal need to be ironed out.

Congressional staff of both parties began that process Tuesday, meeting behind closed doors for several hours with White House officials to began putting legislation together.

Ultimately some decisions about what to include will be subject to negotiations by GOP and Democratic lawmakers. One open question is an extension of Build America Bonds for state and local infrastructure projects. Democratic staff in Tuesday’s meeting pressed for those bonds to be extended as part of the tax package, participants said.

On the energy-tax breaks, solar- and wind-power facilities for the past two years have been able to get federal grants equal to 30% of the cost of installing new facilities. Tax credits have long been available for those costs, but the stimulus act removed the need for new solar and wind operators to tap the tax credit market for financing.

The American Wind Energy Association warned in a Tuesday press release that a refusal to extend the grant program could jeopardize 15,000 jobs in the sector. “We are risking those jobs by not sending a clear signal that America remains open for business in wind energy,” said CEO Denise Bode.

A one-year extension of the program sought by Mr. Baucus would have provided $3 billion in federal grants in 2011, according to congressional tax estimators.

A 30% tax credit for builders of plants that manufacture solar panels or other clean-energy components also appears set to be phased out, according to Republican aides. That provision, also created as part of the stimulus law, could have provided $2.5 billion in tax credits under the Baucus proposal.

See WJS post here. H/T GWPF

By Chris Horner

From the “Kyoto II” talks in Cancun, National Journal reports a surprising story, if one almost predictable, as well, given President Barack Obama’s current unraveling and fast-fading loyalty to campaign promises. Specifically, in “U.S. Tells the World It Will Pass Climate Bill,” we read that the Obama administration is seeking to forge an international “global warming” commitment on the premise that the administration will then coerce Congress into passing domestic legislation consistent with treaty promises made to China, Europe, et al.

Along the way, or so the argument goes, the Senate will ratify an agreement to ration Americans’ access to energy sources that work. In conclusion, these parties should take Team Obama at their word and agree to Kyoto II while there’s still an administration in town foolish enough to consider the prospect. Let the administration worry about the public and Congress (and, as necessary, minor constitutional impediments).

The desperation is palpable. Of course, as NJ’s Coral Davenport points out:

It’s a promise that the rest of the world has seen the United States make - and break - time and again. At the 1997 Kyoto summit, then-Vice President Al Gore made the same pledge - even as the Senate passed a resolution refusing to ratify the Kyoto treaty. At last year’s summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, President Obama declared that the United States would lead the way in forging a treaty to replace Kyoto, starting with action at home.

What I really don’t get is the conclusion that follows this recitation, “All sides agree this has put the United States in an extremely difficult position in these talks.”

No, it doesn’t. In fact, it ought to just be ignored. This would be made clear if at least one other side was represented in this chat. The side that says: Stick to the Constitution, and its prescribed order of affairs. It’s not complicated. Even if this approach reported by National Journal shows the administration inescapably and intentionally has it backward.

Things only get murky when you try and advance that for which there is no Article II “advice” to support it, or hope for gaining “consent.” Problems start when an administration seeks instead to engineer a circumstance pressuring the Senate to do what it is predisposed against doing - rather firmly, as has been the case for coming on 20 years. In fact we’ve seen this movie before. More on that momentarily.

It does seem almost pointless to concern ourselves with the absurdity that these other negotiators might give credence to the same thing they’ve been told, and had disproved, time and again. But an intervention does appear to be warranted - at least to remind them that there is one delegation with a responsibility to keep the U.S.’s constitution and interests in mind. And to remind the administration of its own promises.

Regarding the latter, for example, what happened to the rhetoric from throughout 2008 and 2009, with chief campaign adviser on energy Jason Grumet leading the charge, assuring the world that Team Obama learned from the Clinton administration’s mistake of agreeing to Kyoto first, despite there being quite obviously, then as now, no appetite among lawmakers for consummating the agreement?

Read more here.

By Christopher Booker

As delegates arrive in Cancun for the UN climate conference, the carbon trading lobby is desperate for an accord, says Christopher Booker.

Nice spot for a jolly: the beaches of Cancun, soon to be infested with the world’s eco-lobbyists Photo: ALAMY

It might seem mildly entertaining that the media’s warmist groupies, led by the BBC, have been so eager to report the latest claims of James Hansen and Phil Jones - of Climategate fame - that 2010 is the hottest year in history, while inches of “global warming” cover Britain with its most extensive November snowfall in 17 years, heralding what promises to be our fourth unusually cold winter in a row. The explanation for the recent renewed spate of warmist scare stories lies, of course, in the fact that several thousand politicians, officials and lobbyists from all over the world are today arriving in the Mexican holiday resort of Cancun, where they hope to salvage a binding UN treaty from the wreckage of last December’s fiasco in Copenhagen.

None of the lobbying has been more telling than a statement issued by 259 investment organisations, controlling “collective assets totalling over $15 trillion” - including major banks, insurance companies and pension funds. These are the bodies calling most stridently for “government action on climate change”, because they are the ones who hope to make vast sums of money out of it. They are desperate for a treaty of the type they failed to get at Copenhagen - even more so since the collapse of the US cap and trade bill - because they see their chance of turning global warming into the most lucrative fruit machine in history dwindling by the month.

Top of their wish list is “a rapid time-frame” for implementing the UN’s REDD scheme, which would enable them to make hundreds of billions of dollars by selling the CO2 locked up in the world’s tropical rainforests as “carbon offsets”, thus allowing firms from the developed world to continue emitting CO2. Under this scheme, for instance, environmental bodies including the WWF hope to share in the $60 billion which they estimate as the “carbon value” of the Brazilian rainforest.

But nothing better betrays their gloom about any result from Cancun than that they at least want it to give “a clear mandate” for the adoption of “a legally binding agreement” at the UN’s next conference, due in South Africa next year. This year, next year, sometime… With so much money at stake, they won’t give up. But as the climate scare dies, the sound of whistling in the dark grows ever louder.

See post and comments here.