Business leaders blast Congress for cap-and-trade indecision

Power company executives expressed their frustration at Congress last week, urging political leaders to resolve the debate over carbon pricing even as plans for cap-and-trade legislation appeared to wither on the vine.

Chief executives at some of America's largest energy firms warned that continued uncertainty over climate change legislation on the Hill is making it difficult to invest in green technologies.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's Eco:Nomics conference in Santa Barbara, Royal Dutch Shell chief executive Peter Voser said that industry needs "certainty on the carbon price, certainty on legislation".

Although he does not believe that the climate change bill currently stalled in Congress will make it to the president's desk this year, Voser nevertheless reiterated Shell's membership in the three-year-old US Climate Action Partnership, the business coalition that has been lobbying Washington for the introduction of a national emissions cap-and-trade scheme.

His comments came after Shell competitors BP and ConocoPhillips controversially left the group last month.

American Electric Power chairman Michael Morris also expressed scepticism that a bill would pass this year, but insisted comprehensive climate change legislation was essential to America's long-term economic competitiveness. "We need this done. America needs to lead the world [in clean technologies]," he said.

Lew Hay, chief executive of FPL Group, joined the call for a swift resolution to the climate change debate. "We need some certainty about the economics," he said at the conference. "Are we going to have a price on carbon and, if so, what's it going to be?"

He argued that the current uncertainty "puts a lot of investment dollars on the sideline", adding that while FPL Group is hoping to spend up to $18bn on nuclear power plant development, it was difficult to proceed with the investment without greater certainty over the legislative landscape.

Hay also criticised what he saw as the slow execution on green stimulus funding for the White House. According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, he complained that even though his company had been awarded grant money for the development of smart grid technology, neither he or other companies have yet seen the money.

The climate change bill is still stalled in Congress, and its passage looks increasingly tenuous since Republican Scott Brown sent shock waves through the US political system by taking a long-held Democrat seat in Massachusetts. US senators John Kerry, Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham are working on a bi-partisan climate proposal that would scrap the cap-and-trade plan in the House version of the climate change bill, but numerous influential senators on both sides of the House have now said they do not expect to see a bill pass this year.