Tricky Course Lies Ahead for Browner on the Environment

By STEPHEN POWER

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's effort to remake federal energy and environmental policy will undergo some rigorous tests in the coming weeks -- and so will his environmental-policy czar, Carol Browner.
When Mr. Obama picked Ms. Browner to be his top White House aide on climate and energy issues, his opponents and many business groups braced for the worst. Ms. Browner is "a proud liberal who has long advocated an environmentalist agenda that would drive up energy costs on families and put thousands of Americans out of jobs," said Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who sits on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
During her first three months on the job, Ms. Browner has proven to be a less controlling or controversial figure than her critics might have imagined.
With only a handful of aides, she has been occupied with organizing and leading meetings among the many agencies involved in energy policy, reviewing scientific data on climate change and reassuring members of Congress nervous about proposals requiring businesses to pay a price for emitting greenhouse gases.

Carol Browner
"Comprehensive energy and climate legislation is a very, very significant undertaking," Ms. Browner said in an interview Wednesday. "I've spent a lot of time on the Hill listening to people and getting an understanding of their...concerns and what they want to see achieved."
Congress is expected next week to begin debating proposals to institute a system that would compel businesses to buy permits to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Separately, the Environmental Protection Agency is on track to declare that greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles "endanger" health and welfare. After that, the agency is expected to try to forge new federal emissions standards that would match California's still-to-be-implemented greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles and be in sync with automobile fuel-economy regulations now being developed by the Transportation Department.
The task before Ms. Browner is figuring out how to get all these agencies on the same page. The costs of new regulations could become a concern for the government if it winds up owning a stake in General Motors Corp. as part of a restructuring effort being led by a Treasury Department task force.
Ms. Browner declined to say how the administration will resolve the auto-emissions issues.
"We're looking at how you achieve a national policy that preserves the legal authority of each of the agencies," she said. "The question is, how do we weave those authorities together, to create something that's more than just the sum of the parts, and in the case of the auto industry, also recognizing they are in a difficult time? That's what this office was created to do, and we're making good progress."
Administration opponents are skeptical. The Transportation Department, they note, is required by law to consider the economic impact tougher fuel-economy regulations will have on auto makers and their operations nationally. No such legal requirement exists for the California Air Resources Board, though a spokesman for the agency said "it is in all of our interests to ensure a viable and profitable automotive industry."
Raymond Ludwiszewski, a former EPA general counsel who now represents auto makers opposed to California's standards, said the agencies "all have different mandates, and getting them to the same endpoint is going to require a lot of flexibility."
On the broader climate-change issue, Ms. Browner has avoided dictating specifics to lawmakers. The 648-page climate-change bill introduced last month by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) was drafted largely by the lawmakers and their aides, people familiar with the matter say.
When House Democrats recently met with Ms. Browner to discuss Mr. Obama's desire for legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, she gave the group no firm deadline for getting a bill to Mr. Obama's desk, even though the administration has said it wants a bill by December, when governments around the world are scheduled to hold talks on forging an emissions-reduction pact.
"She was basically asking us what we think. It was like, 'Let's get the conversation started,'" said Rep. Ron Klein, a Florida Democrat who attended.—Siobhan Hughes contributed to this article.
Write to Stephen Power at stephen.power@wsj.com