The Senate Climate Solutions Caucus co-launched by Senators Mike Braun and Chris Coons announced the rest of its membership. On the working group, as previous reported, are Utah’s Senator Mitt Romney and Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Joining them is Senator Lindsey Graham from South Carolina. Democrats include: Senators Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) and Michael Bennet (Colorado) as well as Angus King (Maine), who identifies as Independent but caucuses with the Democrats.
“Addressing climate change is going to require significant private sector investments and a major global breakthrough in innovation and technology,” Romney said in a statement. “To that end, Congress should explore ways to incentivize the research, development, and deployment of clean technologies. This caucus will serve as a starting point for a productive bipartisan dialogue so we can begin to come up with solutions for addressing climate change.”
The group held its first meeting on Tuesday with members of the CEO Climate Dialogue, which represent energy, chemical, automotive, construction products, finance and consumer goods companies and environmental groups and include leaders of DuPont, Dow, Citi, Ford Motor Co., Shell, BP, Unilever, the Nature Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund. Braun and Coons’s offices said the group “discussed their support for the bipartisan development of legislation that will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions using market-based approaches that are durable, equitable, and supportive of the American economy.”