TFI testifies on climate change as House vote nears

Washington-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has scheduled a vote for Friday, June 26, on the Waxman-Markey climate-energy bill, and agriculture interests have been stepping up pressure to exert their influence on the final product. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said June 23 that he had reached an agreement with Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) allowing the Agriculture Department to oversee farm carbon sequestration initiatives instead of the Environmental Protection Agency. The compromise also specified that agriculture will not be required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the bill. The Fertilizer Institute President Ford B. West testified June 11 before the House Agriculture Committee at a hearing held to examine the Waxman-Markey bill, and once again took aim at the bill’s cap and trade language. “The fertilizer industry has gone to great lengths to advocate environmental stewardship,” West said in his testimony, highlighting greater natural gas efficiency in the production of ammonia and related reductions in GHG emissions. West said that in order for the domestic fertilizer industry to remain competitive under the proposed cap and trade policy in the Waxman-Markey bill, however, the industry will need to achieve even greater efficiencies. “While our industry is committed to additional energy efficiency projects, there will come a point where, due to the constraints of chemistry, the U.S. fertilizer industry will not be able to achieve additional efficiency gains,” he said. Noting that the U.S. nitrogen industry has closed 26 nitrogen fertilizer production facilities since 2000 due primarily to the high cost of natural gas, West cautioned that the remaining domestic nitrogen production cannot stay operational through any transition period of a cap and trade system where utilities switch to natural gas and fertilizer producers are forced to buy emission credits on the open market. “What Congress needs to understand is that this cap and trade proposal may place our industry at a serious competitive disadvantage compared to global fertilizer production and could force the domestic fertilizer industry overseas to countries that have no carbon reduction policies in place,” he said. “Congress must tread cautiously and consider the fact that without dramatic changes, the current climate change bill will render the U.S. nitrogen industry uncompetitive and result in a loss for the economy and for the cause of reducing CO₂ emissions.”