E&E News Jean Chemnick, E&E reporter Published: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 The Obama adviser who oversaw the White House's failed effort to get a climate change bill through Congress said yesterday that the push to curb greenhouse gas emissions was undone by the Senate running out the clock in the health care debate. "Unfortunately, the congressional process around health care ate up the clock, if you will," former climate and energy adviser Carol Browner said on a podcast produced by the left-leaning Center for American Progress. Browner returned to CAP as a senior fellow after leaving the White House earlier this year. The House passed its climate change bill in June 2009 and its health care legislation in November of 2009. But the Senate took up health care first, and it became law in March 2010. The effort to hold a Senate vote on cap and trade was abandoned in June 2010. While climate legislation is no longer on the congressional agenda, Browner said President Obama has looked for alternative ways to reduce emissions and encourage renewable energy. "The president hasn't just sat on his hands," she said. "He's looked to what other tools are available." The other tools include U.S. EPA rules for mercury emissions, which Browner said would "result in super-old dirty polluting coal-fired power plants shutting down, which will create opportunities for new clean energy sources." "So it's a combination of continuing to use the president's authorities but also engaging Congress," she added. Conservatives have argued that if the Obama administration intends its rules to nudge U.S. utilities toward one fuel or another, it is a misuse of the Clean Air Act. Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson came under fire when she appeared to make this connection in a televised interview. "What EPA's role is to do is to level the playing field so that pollution costs are not exported to the population but rather companies have to look at the pollution potential of any fuel or any process or any plant or any utility when they're making their investment decisions," Jackson said. The Wall Street Journal said in an editorial the air-pollution law was not intended to direct industrial planning. "It certainly doesn't contain a roving mandate for Ms. Jackson to guide investment decision," it said. Browner, who led EPA under President Clinton, said that aside from cleaning up the air, the agency's rules would also stimulate job creation by requiring utilities to retrofit existing plants and spurring new investment. "Every single regulation ends up with somebody having to build something, design something, install something and manage something," she said. "Those are all American jobs. "I think we have a long history in this country of understanding and believing that we can both grow our economy and protect our environment," she added. Matt Letourneau, a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the combined effect of EPA's air quality program would be to reduce the supply of electricity and make it more costly. "Taking electricity offline and forcing consumers to pay higher energy costs is not a recipe for job creation or a sound economy," he said. On the podcast, Browner said environmentalists have judged Obama harshly for what he has failed to accomplish -- a cap-and-trade bill, the revised ozone emissions standard he stepped away from in September and delays to some environmental rules. Instead, she said, he should be judged for what his administration has done. On that list, she said, are record investments in renewable energy and efficiency made as the result of the economic stimulus bill he championed and advances in fuel economy requirements for cars and trucks. Joe Romm, Browner's colleague at CAP, agreed with Browner about the administration's accomplishments, but he assigned Obama a substantial share of the blame for putting health care ahead of cap and trade. "The decision that turned out to be the critical one was the decision to put health care in front of climate," he said. "I think that was a mistake. I didn't realize at the time what a big mistake that was." The months it took for both chambers to pass the health care bill combined with the atmosphere of partisanship that accompanies that battle helped sink chances for a climate bill, he said. See the full article here.