Kate Sheppard

Reporter

Kate Sheppard is a staff reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. She can be reached by email at ksheppard (at) motherjones (dot) com.

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Her work has also been featured in the New York Times' Room for Debate blog, the Guardian's Comment Is Free, Foreign Policy, High Country News, The Center for Public Integrity, the Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capital. She misses trees and having a congressional representative with voting power, but thinks DC is pretty great anyway.

Obama's Big Power Play

Energy Secretary Steven Chu explains how we could revolutionize energy use by turning our dumb grid into a smart grid.

—By Kate Sheppard

| Fri Nov. 6, 2009 4:00 AM PST

President Barack Obama likes to point out that when President Dwight Eisenhower built the federal highway system in the 1950s, he created a network that fueled postwar America’s economic rise. Now Obama’s administration wants to do the same for the green economy with the smart grid—a system of interlocking technologies that could transform the way we use electricity. By receiving real-time data on their energy use, consumers could save big on their power bills by running appliances when electricity is cheapest, rather than during peak demand periods when it’s most expensive. Power distributors could use the system to transport excess energy from one region to another, instead of simply allowing it to go to waste as they do now. The bottom line of such efficiency measures? The US would need to build far fewer new coal-fired power plants.

[Read the full article]

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The Anti-Chamber

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Nov. 5, 2009 2:10 PM PST

The Chamber of Commerce may be taking an ever-so-slightly less obstructionist approach to climate issues lately. But now it has some new competition in the lobbying realm: American Businesses for Clean Energy, a coalition that has formed to push for climate legislation.

The group, which debuted on Wednesday, has 23 members, ranging from retailers like The Gap to major utility PNM Resources of New Mexico, one of the companies that quit the Chamber over its climate stance.

"There's a real hunger on behalf of businesses to have their voices heard, and for Congress to realize they are really clamoring for legislation," says Jenn Kramer, a spokesperson for New Jersey utility PSEG, another member of the new coalition. "Absent a price on carbon there's a real paralysis in the energy industry in terms of making investment decisions."

The group isn't pushing for specific targets, timetables, or funding for various energy sources. Their stated goal is simply to encourage Congress to enact "clean energy and climate legislation that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

The new coalition isn't the only pro-climate business group out there. The U.S. Climate Action Partnership, launched in January 2007, is a business-environmental coalition that includes 26 major companies, and crafted a blueprint for climate legislation in January that became the framework for both the House and Senate bills. Two USCAP members—FPL, a Florida utility, and PNM—are also part of the new coalition.

And in March, the sustainable business group Ceres launched Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (or BICEP, for short) to advocate for climate legislation. That group is more oriented to companies that provide consumer products, like Levi Strauss & Co., Nike, and Starbucks.

Boxer Overrides GOP Boycott, Advances Climate Bill

—By Kate Sheppard

| Thu Nov. 5, 2009 10:25 AM PST

Democrats on the Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday voted to send the climate and energy bill from Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) out of committee without amending it—thus overriding the Republican boycott of the markup.

According to committee rules, two members of the minority need to be present in order to begin marking up the bill. So the Democrats took advantage of a rule that allows them to simply report a bill out of committee with a simple majority vote, bypassing the markup altogether. It passed by 11 to 1. "It's unfortunate we had to go the route we did, but the Senate can't be paralyzed," said Boxer after the vote. "We did what we had to do."

The only Democrat to vote against advancing the unamended bill was Max Baucus (D-Mont.). He outlined two specific areas that he had wanted to change—lowering the 2020 emissions reduction target to 17 percent, with the ability to raise it back to 20 percent if other nations follow suit, and adjustments to the agricultural provisions. But Baucus affirmed that he will work with others in the Senate to "get climate change legislation that can get 60 votes."

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Is There a Tri-Partisan Path Forward for a Climate Bill?

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Nov. 4, 2009 4:21 PM PST

With the climate bill stalled in the Environment and Public Works Committee, a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday announced that they're working on an alternative path to passing legislation.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said they are meeting with fellow senators and with administration officials to work out a proposal on climate and energy legislation that they will hand over to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The proposal will incorporate the components of legislation being crafted within the various committees of jurisdiction, along with work with senators outside those committees.

Kerry emphasized that this process won't replace the work being doneby the Environment and Public Works Committee, where chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) is currently trying to work around a Republican boycott of the markup. "We'll take the best of what Sen. Boxer produces and we will build on it," said Kerry. "Our effort is to try to reach out to broaden the base of support beyond the six committees of jurisdiction."

I don't think this announcement is as big a deal as some have suggested. It has always been the case that Reid would have the ultimate authority to combine and tweak a final bill with the goal of garnering 60 votes. And in the weeks since Kerry and Graham coauthored their editorial calling for climate action, it has become clear that there is a separate track of negotiations occurring outside of Boxer's committee, designed to appease senators who want a greater role for nuclear, coal, and domestic oil.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

It's Official: No Climate Bill This Year

—By Kate Sheppard

| Wed Nov. 4, 2009 7:37 AM PST

It's official: climate legislation has zero chance of passing before the big summit in Copenhagen this December. Many observers have assumed this for a while, though some (myself included) were hanging on to a shred of hope that senators could produce something in time for the meeting. But on Tuesday Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a full run of studies after he combines the various components of climate and energy legislation into a single bill. The EPA says this process will take about five weeks. Copenhagen kicks off on Dec. 7, just 32 days from now.

If the Environment and Public Works committee (EPW) could approve a bill before Copenhagen, that would be better than nothing. But right now even that prospect looks dicey, since Republicans are boycotting the markup. The committee's head, Sen. Barbara Boxer, could technically forge ahead without them, since the chair pretty much gets to set the rules. And with a 12-7 Democratic majority, she doesn't actually need Republican votes to pass a bill. But some worry that this approach would widen the partisan divide over the issue, giving moderate Republicans and Democrats in the wider Senate yet another excuse to vote against the measure.

But even if Boxer's committee does pass the bill, several other panels still need to weigh in before the legislation is ready for EPA review and then a vote in the full Senate. Only Energy and Natural Resources has passed its component so far. Finance, Agriculture, and possibly Commerce could stake a claim—and none have even scheduled any markups yet. Now Commerce chair Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) is arguing that his panel should wait to do so until after the 2010 midterm elections. Without the urgency imposed by the Copenhagen deadline, any little momentum that the climate bill had could disappear very fast.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]