Baucus noted increased interest but said it’s unclear whether the idea of a carbon tax can gain any real political momentum.

Obama has reportedly been telling Democratic donors at closed-door fundraisers he will unveil new proposals.

James Hansen, the outspoken climate scientist who recently left NASA, says a Democratic carbon tax bill has some flaws. Check out his comments to The Denver Post here. Read more...

STATE OF PLAY: There’s plenty of time for new Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to fall out of favor with top Republicans.

But after his first Capitol Hill hearing as secretary, Moniz drew praise from a senior GOP lawmaker who collided with his predecessor.

“I think he is much better than [former] Secretary [Steven] Chu myself. I think he is more knowledgeable. I think he has a more practical approach to the political arena over there,” said Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Energy and Power subcommittee, which grilled Moniz for more than two hours Thursday.

“I know we obviously will have differences. We all have differences, but I think we will be able to work with him very well,” Whitfield told reporters of Moniz, who has been on the job for three weeks but was also a high-level energy official in the Clinton administration.

Whitfield kept the cheers coming: “I think his confirmation being 97-0 illustrates that people have great confidence in Secretary Moniz,” he said.

Read more...

The Justice Department (DOJ) and the state of Arkansas are suing Exxon Mobil Corp. for the Pegasus pipeline oil spill that occurred in March.

The nearly 70-year-old pipeline ruptured March 29, spurting 5,000 barrels of oil that contaminated 22 homes in Mayflower, Ark.

Democrats from states hit by Hurricane Sandy are putting fresh political pressure on the White House to impose carbon emissions standards on power plants, claiming the storm makes the case for tougher steps to confront climate change.

Five senators from New Jersey, New York and Connecticut sent a letter Thursday to President Obama saying the “superstorm” that tore through the Northeast last year “brought home the increasing costs of global warming for millions of Americans.”

The Democratic senators' letter notes Sandy wrecked tens of thousands homes and businesses, and inflicted major damage to infrastructure, transit systems and the coastline.

“Even when the damage caused by Sandy is repaired, the cost of infrastructure projects to mitigate future natural disasters caused by extreme weather events could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. Superstorm Sandy, and the possibility of even more devastating storms in the future, clearly demonstrates the urgency of squarely addressing the causes of climate change and its effects,” states the letter from Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.).

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said he has created a cybersecurity council to bring together various Energy Department branches, a move that underscores increasing political and policy focus on cyber threats.

“What we are trying to do is to make sure that we bring all these assets together to look at everything from grid reliability and resilience to, frankly, protecting our own national security secrets,” Moniz told the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Thursday.

Moniz, who is three weeks into his tenure, said the council includes representation from the department’s electricity office, its intelligence division, the chief information officer and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

NNSA, a branch of the Energy Department, oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile and a number of nuclear nonproliferation programs.

House legislators are weighing public safety and corporate confidentiality as they begin to review the laws regulating toxic chemicals.

As the Senate considers new legislation to update the 37-year-old law granting the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the authority to test and ultimately ban dangerous chemicals, lawmakers in the House on Thursday began their own exploration of flaws in the current system.

Though the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) has been largely criticized as ineffective for years, reforming it has been slow in coming.

House lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce's Environment and Economy subcommittee were hesitant to comment directly on the Senate's proposal, beyond noting its value in precipitating some sort of reform, but many Democrats were quick to pounce on the current law's failings. 

TSCA "has not lived up to expectations," said Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the panel.

The Senate's Environment committee will consider a carbon tax bill as part of a broader hearing on climate change.