Sam Brownback: “I am please to join Senator McCain today in introducing the Emission Reductions Incentive Act of 2001. This bill will…”

“I am please to join Senator McCain today in introducing the Emission Reductions Incentive Act of 2001. This bill will put into place a voluntary registry for greenhouse gas, GHG, reductions house in the Department of Commerce. Furthermore, the bill establishes structure for the independent measurement and verification of GHG reductions. This is an important step in providing an incentive for companies who wish to reduce their emissions, and it will provide assurance that companies who take positive action on climate change today will be rewarded in the future. All this can be accomplished with barely any cost to the government, since it will be private, third party groups that undertake the burden to measure, verify and prove actual greenhouse gas emission reductions. There are those who wonder why such a measure is needed, given the fact that there is an existing registry in the Department of Energy and the uncertainty on the climate change issue. First, the new registry will only hold information that has been independently verified. Like the current registry, this new registry would be completely voluntary. However, unlike the DOE program, this registry will focus on keeping track of proven greenhouse gas reductions, and will therefore, encourage more companies to undertake measures to reduce emissions since they will have the ability to defend these reductions as real if future regulations are put in to place.”