Exelon Quits Chamber Over Climate Change Bill

The timing couldn't be more appropriate for companies, citizens, and advocates supporting action to cool the planet and heat up the economy with clean energy development. Just as the Senate is poised to consider a proposal to limit carbon emissions and speed development of clean sources of energy, one of the most influential opponents of both actions -- the US Chamber of Commerce -- is experiencing an internal meltdown. Prominent members are abandoning the Chamber in reaction to their anti-science, status-quo supporting position on climate change. The latest departure is one of the largest utility companies in the country -- Exelon, a Chicago company that sells gas and electricity in four states.

“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” said John W. Rowe, Exelon’s chief executive. “Breakthroughs on climate change and improving our society’s energy efficiency are within reach.” Exelon is also the largest operator of nuclear power plants in the country. Their Web site describes a plan to “reduce, offset or displace more than 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2020.” As of May 2009, Exelon says thy have achieved one-third of the goal, reducing 5.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

In withdrawing from the Chamber, Exelon joins California’s Pacific Gas & Electric and New Mexico’s PNM Resources. Other companies, including Nike and Johnson & Johnson, have also expressed differences with the Chamber recently over climate change. Nike said in a statement that it “fundamentally disagrees with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s position on climate change and is concerned and deeply disappointed with the U.S. Chamber’s recently filed petition challenging the E.P.A.’s administrative authority and action on this critically important issue.”

Recently senior Chamber officials attacked the EPA and called for a “Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century” about the science of climate change, although the Chamber’s CEO disavowed his colleague's statement, saying it “was wrong, inaccurate and obscured what the chamber is really doing.”

Climate advocates are pushing the Senate to take up the new bill this fall in time for a new global climate pact to be negotiated in Copenhagen in December. 

-- Suzanne Bopp