Every month over the past two years, chief executive officer Ralph Izzo (pictured) of the utility Public Service Enterprise Group Inc. travelled to Washington from Newark, New Jersey, to meet with more than 50 senators and advocate for climate-change legislation. His efforts may have been in vain.Izzo is among the army of lobbyists, CEOs, and advertising experts deployed by utility companies to push the Senate to pass a cap-and-trade bill that would create a system for power companies to buy and sell pollution rights.Even though the utility industry spent almost $68m on lobbying in just the first three months of this year, more than any other sector except pharmaceuticals, according to data compiled by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, their campaign couldn’t compete against a recession and divisive campaign season.Last week, Democrats abandoned their efforts to pass a measure this summer.“I don’t know what more you can do,” Izzo said. “We are essentially volunteering to be the first to be regulated and people don’t want to do it.”One of the architects of the legislation, Democratic Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, said he’s still working to negotiate a cap-and-trade system that the Senate may consider in a lame-duck session after the November congressional elections.Utility companies say they doubt the legislation will be enacted anytime soon.They have little expectation Kerry will be successful this fall and predicted Republican gains in the elections would make a climate bill unlikely to pass when the next Congress reconvenes in January.“The odds are still very long,” David Brown, senior vice president for federal government affairs at the Chicago-based utility Exelon Corp. said.Utility companies anticipate Congress will eventually pass legislation that mandates reductions in greenhouse gases and favors renewable sources of energy, rather than letting the US Environmental Protection Agency decide how best to regulate.Still, not knowing when Congress will step in makes planning investment difficult.“There’s a lot of capital sitting on the sidelines just waiting for more regulatory clarity,” Lewis Hay, CEO of Juno-Beach, Florida-Based NextEra Energy Resources LLC said.In the meantime, the utilities will keep pushing for a bill.A group of companies and environmental groups held a conference call July 23 to plot future advocacy efforts, Brown said. Participants included Duke Energy Corp., Dominion Resources Inc., PNM Resources Inc., NRG Energy Inc., Xcel Energy Inc., and Exelon.Josh Freed, director of the clean energy program at the Washington-based research organisation Third Way, which favors cap-and-trade legislation, attributed the industry’s defeat to “powerful election forces.”Democrats don’t want to cast another tough vote four months before the midterm elections, particularly one that appears to create a big government program, he said.Republicans, some of whom previously supported a climate bill, are now under party leaders’ pressure to stay unified before the elections.In addition, members in both parties want to avoid criticism from the Tea Party movement, which has targeted lawmakers who backed climate measures. There is relief among utility executives the bill won’t be taken up this year. Coal-dependent Midwestern utilities said it could hurt their ability to compete against companies with larger renewable portfolios and nuclear investments.The Standard and Poor’s 500 Electric Utilities Index, which comprises 35 companies including Duke Energy and NRG Energy, rose 2.5% on July 22, the day Reid announced the cap-and- trade plan won’t be part of the upcoming energy bill. Companies that sell coal to utilities did better, with Peabody Energy Corp. rising 5.1% and Arch Coal Inc. 7.2%.
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