The hits just keep on coming for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as two more of the country’s largest utilities — Exelon Corp. and PNM Resources — have announced over the last few days that they are also dropping their memberships over the chamber’s opposition to federal climate change legislation.

“Sensible” climate change legislation that puts a price on carbon with a focus on energy efficiency should be a top priority for U.S. utility industry leaders, regulators and policymakers, Exelon CEO John W. Rowe told the audience at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s national conference in Chicago.

An Exelon spokeswoman confirmed that the company is pulling out of the Chamber of Commerce because of the chamber’s “strong opposition” to climate legislation. “We support climate legislation,” the spokeswoman added.

Rowe highlighted the need to balance the nation’s fragile economic recovery with the need to address climate change and pointed to energy efficiency as a lower-cost way to meet those goals.

“The carbon-based free lunch is over,” he told the audience. “But while we can’t fix our climate problems for free, the price signal sent through a cap-and-trade system will drive low-carbon investments in the most inexpensive and efficient way possible. Putting a price on carbon is essential because it will force us to do the cheapest things, like energy efficiency, first.”

Based in Chicago, Exelon is one of the nation’s largest electric utility companies. Through its subsidiaries it distributes electricity to approximately 5.4 million customers in northern Illinois and southeastern Pennsylvania and natural gas to approximately 485,000 customers in the Philadelphia area.

Rowe discussed how Exelon utilities ComEd and PECO plan to spend $290 million per year over the next five years on energy efficiency and demand response programs. He said the plan aims to help customers reduce their energy use by more than 3.7 million MWh and cut peak load by 388 MW. The chief executive said Exelon’s energy efficiency programs place the company third among the nation’s utilities in terms of customer energy savings.

He noted that to drive additional energy efficiency investment, the nation’s response to climate change also must incorporate competition and the power of markets.

“Inaction on climate is not an option,” said Rowe. “If Congress does not act, the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] will, and the result will be more arbitrary, more expensive and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution.”

Under the company’s environmental and business strategy, known as Exelon 2020, energy efficiency is a key ingredient of the plan to reduce, offset or displace more than 15 million metric tons of Exelon’s greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2020. In April Exelon said it had reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 35% from 2001 to 2008.

Albuquerque-based PNM Resources, which through its subsidiaries has more than 2,700 MW of generation resources and serves electricity to more than 884,000 homes and businesses in New Mexico and Texas, said late last week that it is also exiting the chamber due to the group’s opposition to federal climate change legislation.

“At PNM Resources, we see climate change as the most pressing environmental and economic issue of our time. Given that view, and a natural limit on both company time and resources, we have decided that we can be most productive by working with organizations that share our view on the need for thoughtful, reasonable climate change legislation and want to push that agenda forward in Congress,” said Don Brown, a spokesman for PNM, New Mexico’s largest electricity provider.

“We strongly disagree with the chamber’s position on climate change legislation and particularly reject its recent theatrics calling for a ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ to put the science of climate change on trial,” PNM said in a statement. “We believe the science is compelling enough to act sooner rather than later, and we support comprehensive federal legislation to meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect customers against unreasonable cost increases.”

The organizations that share PNM’s views on climate change include the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) and the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a group of businesses and environmental organizations of which PNM is a founding member, he noted.

PNM and Exelon join San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E), which pulled out of the U.S. Chamber last week over what it called “fundamental differences” on climate change (see Daily GPI, Sept. 24).

A strong critic of the Obama administration, the Washington, DC-based Chamber, a major organization for big business, has told Congress that climate change legislation would kill jobs while making little to no difference on global carbon dioxide concentrations.

“We find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored,” said PG&E CEO Peter Darbee in a letter informing the organization that PG&E was dropping its membership.

Darbee drew a sharp distinction between the chamber approach and the “constructive and consensus-building” approaches of EEI and the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.

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