Polluting energy companies and giant financial firms are once again allying to advance international offsets that have the potential to render a carbon cap entirely non-binding. The Coalition for Emissions Reductions Projects (CERP), wrote to Senator Maria Cantwell earlier this month criticizing the CLEAR Act she co-sponsored with Senator Susan Collins for not including an offsets program.

Membership of the CERP coalition includes: Alpha Natural Resources, American Electric Power, BlueSource, Global, C-Quest Capital, C-Trade Comercializadora de Carbono, Deutsche Bank, Dominion, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, EcoSecurities, Element Markets, El Paso Corporation, Environmental Credit Corp, Equator, John Deere, Leaf Clean Energy Company, Macquarie Bank, Natsource, Noble Carbon Credits, PG&E Corporation and Verdeo Group.

Public interest advocates, Public Citizen, are not intimidated and are fighting back against this industry consortium, writing in their own public letter to Senators John Kerry, Lindsay Graham, and Joe Lieberman:

"It has been alleged by companies that develop and trade carbon offsets that offset trading is crucial to climate legislation. We strongly disagree. To the contrary, we believe that offset trading prolongs U.S. dependence on foreign fuels, delays our development of clean domestic energy sources, shifts investment and jobs overseas, and fails to adequately protect consumers."

While polluting industries and financial firms continue to peddle offsets, and compromising (or should we say compromised?) green groups such as EDF and NRDC are still providing 'environmental cred,' numerous analyses reveal offsets as an extremely flawed route to environmental or global development goals.

Meanwhile, Breakthrough's analysis of the offsets program included in the House-passed American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) found that offsets would essentially render a cap on carbon emissions non-binding (or should we say meaningless?) for the next two decades. And, as both Breakthrough and Public Citizen have pointed out, EPA analysis of ACES shows that inclusion of offsets under ACES means the legislation will have little to no impact on the rate of clean energy deployment.

Although Public Citizen is fighting a formidable special interest, the underlying question they pose to Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham as their bipartisan legislation shapes up in the Senate is powerful: Will they allow carbon offsets to gut the Senate bill, the way it did under ACES?