Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, released a Chairman’s Mark of the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (S. 1733) last week, complete with a summary of allowance allocations.

The counterpart to this legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES, H.R. 2454), passed the House of Representatives in June. The Washington Post compared key provisions to the House bill. The article discussed overall emission reductions, cap and trade provisions, allowances, and offsets. A ClimateWire article in the New York Times considered differences between the House and Senate versions of the bills, describing the impact the legislation as it stands today would have on various interests.

The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee began hearings today on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, S. 1733. The hearings are streamed live at senate.gov.

The Senate Environment & Public Works Committee is holding hearings today through Thursday on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. Nine panels will hear from more than 50 witnesses, including Exelon Chairman and CEO John Rowe, who made news by pulling his company out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's aggressive stance against climate legislation.

In the lead-up to the hearings, various agencies and groups have released a flurry of reports on the economic effects of climate legislation. The U.S. EPA issued an economic analysis concluding that S. 1733 would not significantly change the cost to American families of the House-passed legislation. The EPA estimates that the legislation would cost the average household 22 to 30 cents per day, or $80 to $111 per year.

Most such reports, however, are issued by groups with an interest in seeing the bill pass or fail, and it would take several advanced degrees to unpack the analyses behind them. Yesterday, several Midwest states issued reports in unison, and held media conference calls throughout the day to announce them. Today, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient America (ACEEE) is releasing a new report "setting the record straight" about how energy-saving investments will create jobs and save consumers money on monthly energy bills.

As the hearings began this morning, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) gave the opening remarks. Kerry, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is holding a conference call with business leaders on Thursday to discuss bill timing and legislative strategy, and to promote the business opportunities that strong legislation could encourage. Kerry introduced draft language for the climate portions of the legislation last month.

Five Senate committees must approve S. 1733 before it can go to a debate by the full Senate. With healthcare debates dominating the agenda, the committees are unlikely to complete their work on the legislation before Thanksgiving. Once the Senate passes a bill, it must be reconciled with the House version, then the final bill must pass a full vote to become law.

The Hill ran an interesting article over the weekend on this debate and the sectors with strong interests in seeing carbon legislation fail. The article cited a study by the Center for Public Integrity that counted 1,150 companies and advocacy organizations registered to lobby on climate in the weeks before the June vote in the House. The Hill predicts that a number of those stakeholders will show up for this week's hearings.

President Obama has been drumming up support for clean energy legislation, speaking recently at MIT. He firmly rejected arguments that climate change is not real and that mitigating it will destroy the economy. Consensus is building, he said, to transform our energy system and grow the economy, and America is up to the task.

Whether Congress is up to the task is another question. We are not likely to have the answer in time for Copenhagen.