Impact of climate-change regulations could be dire

Oct 02, 2009 | 12:21 PM | Corinna Petry

Love it or hate it, everybody has something to say about the climate-change/cap-and-trade legislation, the latest iteration of which came out of the Senate in the past week.

General Electric Co. (GE), a global conglomerate with $40 billion in annual revenue derived from the energy sector, sees the profit-making potential, as does Timken Co., which makes gigantic bearings for wind towers, but an analyst warns that a unilateral decision by the United States to cap carbon emissions will raise electricity rates and push energy-intensive industries like steel manufacturing to lower-cost markets offshore.

Brennan Downes, commercial development manager of steel within GE's Energy Infrastructure division, said at AMM's Infrastructure and Steel Conference in Chicago that the world, especially developing economies like China and India, is creating more demand for energy and that some of the demand will be met by renewable energy sources, which are growing at a compound annual rate of 26 percent.....