While President Obama and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill continue to focus on legislation covering greenhouse gas emissions across broad sections of the U.S. economy, a small bipartisan faction of Senate moderates is examining the idea of passing a bill that deals only with the heat-trapping emissions from power plants.

“A power plant-only cap and trade could be doable on the Hill,” Mark Helmke, a senior aide to Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), said today.

Senate Democratic and Republican staffers are studying a package that combines a mandatory limit on power plant emissions with separate programs outside of the cap-and-trade program aimed at cutting greenhouse gases from other sectors of the economy. “It’d be done with efficiency standards for buildings and stronger CAFE [corporate average fuel economy] standards for transport,” Helmke said.

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