Oil Lobby Backs Climate Action Plan

The oil industry’s top lobbying group will push Congress for legislation to price carbon emissions across the economy, in a sharp policy turnabout a decade after the industry helped kill a similar effort to address climate change.

The board of directors of the American Petroleum Institute, one of Washington’s most powerful trade associations, which for years worked to play down the impact of climate change, on Thursday approved a “climate action framework,” a wide-sweeping plan to lower the emissions blamed for global warming.

It backs increasing government and industry collaboration, seeking to preserve a role for oil companies to solve a problem it says requires “continuous innovation.”

The plan supports a price on carbon dioxide that every emitter must pay, but doesn’t back any specific type of plan such as a tax. It also supports more federal research funding, federal regulation on methane emissions and improved industry efforts to track and reduce emissions, among other measures.

The Wall Street Journal first reported this month that the group was poised to approve such a plan in the face of new Democratic leadership in Washington that has pledged to address climate change.