Bill Loveless

for USA TODAY

Putting a price on carbon emissions remains a divisive topic in the USA, even as polls indicate considerable public support for actions to address climate change.

Voters in Washington state may show the way Nov. 8 when they decide on a referendum that would assess a carbon tax on coal, oil and natural gas, a move aimed at lowering emissions that contribute to climate change without digging deeply into people’s wallets.

Backed by a campaign called Carbon Washington, the initiative is designed to be revenue-neutral, gradually increasing the carbon tax while reducing sales and other state taxes. A similar levy was established by neighboring British Columbia in 2008.

Initiative 732 is stirring up controversy in the Pacific Northwest state, and polls show that its outcome on Election Day is uncertain. If enacted, it would be the first state carbon tax in the USA.

Among those pointing to the referendum as a possible prototype for the USA as a whole is Clay Sell, a former top energy official under President George W. Bush.

Sell told a Washington, D.C., audience the other day that it’s time to end the political debate over the cause of climate change and address the phenomenon with a business-friendly policy.

“The great challenge for the next administration using the bully pulpit will be to end this fiction, act upon the science and design a carbon pricing scheme that will provide the certainty and efficiency that energy investors desire,” Sell told a forum held by the U.S. Energy Association.

“I hope both (political) parties will take that up, as it will allow the benefits of all clean energy technologies to be properly valued in the marketplace,” he said.

To be clear, Sell has a vested interest in clean energy as the president of Hunt Energy Horizons, the renewable energy subsidiary of Hunt Consolidated, a Dallas-based energy, real estate and investment corporation controlled by billionaire Ray L. Hunt, whose family’s fortune began with oil.

Nonetheless, Sell, who was the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy from 2005 to 2008 and an energy adviser to Bush before that, said interest in a carbon price is growing among business executives, even if it hasn’t reached all corners of the oil and gas industry.

“If I were to take you to the wildcatters’ dinner at the Petroleum Club, you would not find me in the broad majority,” he said when I asked him how his views go over in Dallas. “But people need certainty.”

Sell criticized the “patchwork of overlapping subsidies, mandates and tax benefits” that federal, state and local governments established over the years to promote clean energy and reduce emissions.

Among the mistakes, he maintained, is the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would cut carbon emissions from power plants but not other sectors, such as transportation. He called it “completely inadequate” to manage the “global impacts” of carbon emissions.

That plan, developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after Congress failed to pass climate legislation, is challenged in court by 24 states.

Sell was just as critical of those in the Republican Party and elsewhere who resist a consensus among scientists that human behavior is the leading cause of climate change. Among them is the GOP nominee for president, Donald Trump.

“I think we need to work more to restore and defend the primacy of science in all policy discussions and decisions,” Sell said. “Now, for those Democrats in the room, you may be saying, ‘Of course, that’s what we’ve been saying for years on climate change. When are you Republicans going to come around?’

“And I will tell you, I think the Republicans should come around on the primacy of science on that issue,” he said. “But you know what? People need to come around on the primacy of science as it relates to hydraulic fracturing (for oil and gas drilling), on the primacy of science on what it tells us about Yucca Mountain (in Nevada) and its suitability as a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel, and for other projects and initiatives where we allow politics to trump science.”

In the meantime, look to the Pacific Northwest, Sell suggested.

“I think there are some lessons that could be learned from the initiative in Washington state about a revenue-neutral carbon tax,” he said.

Bill Loveless — @bill_loveless on Twitter — is a veteran energy journalist and podcast host in Washington. He is the former anchor of the TV program Platts Energy Week.