Levin hints that emissions timeline isn’t a deal breaker

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) wants a decade-long delay before manufacturing plants and other industrial facilities face greenhouse gas emissions limits, but the emerging Senate climate plan would instead begin phasing in limits in 2016.

While Levain said yesterday that he’s not thrilled with that aspect of the plan Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are crafting, he didn’t exactly throw down the gauntlet.

“It’s not the time frame I support,” Levin told reporters in the Capitol Thursday afternoon. “I assume that when a bill is introduced, it will have a lot of features to it, and that is going to be one feature that I don’t think goes far enough.”

But Levin added that “I’d look at the whole bill, not just one feature.”

The Senate plan would impose a cap-and-trade system on power plant emissions beginning in 2012, while limits on other types of industrial facilities would begin phasing in four years later. The plan, however, remains a work-in-progress.