The article below from the The New York Times and the editorials from The Washington Post which I will post in the next email do a fair job for the mainstream media of explaining the situation in Washington D.C. right now.
The Senate has failed to pass HR 6 (still using the House bill number from January) because of an impasse over the Bingamen/Reid for Renewable Portfolio Standard, which the legislative alerts were all about. (modest and even pathetic as it is.) There is also, though not addressed in HR 6 a big fight over the already pathetically low proposed fuel economy standards. Jeanne THE NEW YORK TIMES June 14, 2007 http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Senate-Energy.html Senate Impasse Over Renewable Energy By H. JOSEF HEBERT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 7:56 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Democrats, eager for a vote on energy legislation, ran into staunch Republican resistance Thursday to a proposal to require utilities to use more wind, solar and other renewable sources to produce electricity. The impasse over renewable fuels came as the Senate prepared to vote on an equally contentious matter: whether to allow limited natural gas development in waters off the mid-Atlantic coast despite a long-standing drilling moratorium. Democrats were forced to set aside -- at last until next week -- their renewable fuels proposal after it became clear they did not have the 60 votes needed to proceed. The bill would require power companies to increase use of wind turbines, solar panels, biomass, geothermal energy or other renewable sources to produce at least 15 percent of their electricity by 2020. Only about 2.4 percent of the country's electricity is produced that way now. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., the measure's chief sponsor, said the mandate is needed to stimulate expansion of fuel sources other than coal and natural gas. He said if his plan is enacted, greenhouse gas emissions from power plants will fall by nearly 7 percent from levels projected for 2020. Opponents argued that some regions of the country couldn't meet the requirement and that it would cause electricity prices to increase in those areas, especially across the South. By a 56-39 vote, senators rejected a GOP alternative that would have allowed utilities to meet the requirement by also building more nuclear power plants and taking conservation measures. Republicans balked and refused to allow a vote on Bingaman's measure. If the early going is any indicator, it looks like a bumpy path toward final approval for the energy bill before the Fourth of July recess as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has promised. It also became increasingly clear Thursday that there will be a tough fight over automobile fuel economy as a group of senators close to the auto industry unveiled their alternative proposal, which -- unlike a measure already in the energy bill -- they say automakers can achieve. The substitute calls for increasing auto fuel economy by 30 percent to 36 miles per gallon by 2022 and for SUVs and small trucks to reach 30 mpg by 2025. ''It will force industry to bend and not break,'' Sen. Kit Bond, D-Mo., said. Currently in the bill: a more stringent fuel economy increase that the auto industry strongly opposes, to 35 mpg for both cars, SUVs and trucks by 2020 and 4 percent higher each year after that. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., prompted a sharp floor debate Thursday when he proposed allowing natural gas development in waters along the Atlantic coast where a drilling freeze has been in place for a quarter-century. Warner, R-Va., wants the Senate to let his state seek a waiver from the Interior Department to the freeze. The plan brought a quick responses from senators from other coastal states. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said such drilling off Virginia ''could cause a ripple effect ... and the consequences can be very significant.'' He added, ''This would leave other states helpless. The debate on the renewable fuels proposal was equally divisive. Senators from the South said utilities in their states could not meet the 15 percent requirement because they lack the wind power and other renewable resources prominent elsewhere, especially the West. ''I'm not impressed with wind being the national energy source for America,'' said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who led the opposition to the renewable fuels standard. Twenty-three states have renewable fuels requirements; nine of them are equal or more aggressive than the proposal federal requirements. But Bingaman said, ''You don't drive development of these technologies if it's up to each state to decide whether to participate.'' He rejected claims that some regions could not meet the mandate. The senator noted, for example, that much of the South has an abundance of trees and other plants to make biofuels as well as other renewables aside from wind. The measure also would permit utilities that cannot find enough renewable sources to buy credits from other utilities that have exceeded the 15 percent or from the Energy Department, Bingaman said. That did not sway Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. He said that in his region, utilities would have no choice but to buy credits at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour and ''the cost is going to be very significant ... with nothing to show for it.'' The renewable fuels proposal has been the subject of intense lobbying by utilities. The Georgia-based Southern Co. has made killing the measure its legislative priority. Sessions said the Tennessee Valley Authority, which like Southern is a leading electricity provider in the South, estimated it would cost $410 million a year by 2020 for it to meet the 15 percent renewables. Bingaman questioned those costs. He cited a report from the federal Energy Information Administration that said the renewable fuels requirement would add less than 1 percent to the cost of electricity in 2020 and cause natural gas costs to decline. The report also said the requirement would triple the use of biomass and increase the use of wind by 50 percent and solar cells by 500 percent. Critics of the bill disputed the agency's cost findings, saying it did not examine regional price increases. (This above article also appeared in The Washington Post. See an editorial by the Post below.) THE WASHINGTON POST The Senate Energy Bill Ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room EDITORIAL Thursday, June 14, 2007; A26 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/13/AR2007061301939.html GIVEN THE alternative of doing nothing about global warming -- which President Bush and the Republican-led Congress excelled at for the past six years -- the flurry of activity on climate change in Washington is welcome. President Bush at least agreed at the recent Group of Eight summit in Germany to international talks on the topic, and the Democratic-led Senate is debating an energy bill designed in part to limit greenhouse gas emissions. But here's the problem with the latter: Nowhere in its 277 pages does the legislation even entertain the notion of incentives to curb greenhouse gas emissions, through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system or both. There are useful provisions in the Senate bill, as well as some areas of concern. The drive for greater efficiency, with the federal government taking the lead, is good. For instance, the fleet of federal vehicles would have to reduce petroleum consumption by 20 percent by October 2015, and "all general-purpose lighting" in federal buildings would be switched to Energy Star products. The bill would push for the use of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels in vehicles by 2022, and there would be an emphasis on creating that renewable fuel from plant material other than corn, such as switch grass, and from waste materials, such as crop residue and animal waste. The requirement that automakers boost their fuel economy to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 also makes sense; senators in thrall to the auto industry shouldn't be allowed to weaken that provision. The funding devoted to testing carbon capture and sequestration -- where the carbon dioxide emitted from coal-powered plants would be stored underground, not released into the atmosphere -- is a good use of public money, as long as the expenditure is not supporting a foregone conclusion that sequestration is the answer to our prayers for a solution to global warming. The emerging coal-to-liquid movement, on the other hand, would be a sop to the coal industry that would pump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That is not the way to go. What Congress should do is find the courage to put a price on carbon and then let the market determine how best to limit emissions. With that, the United States -- the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide -- would finally start doing its part in the battle against global warming. Without a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, or at least a serious debate about them, anything Washington does is tinkering around the edges -- expensive tinkering, perhaps, but tinkering nonetheless. And a fairly sympathetic Post column with a much-needed splash of humor; I think the columnist would actually support stronger measures. A Wind-Powered Town, an Energy Bill and a Lot of Hot Air By Dana Milbank http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/14/AR2007061401876.html Friday, June 15, 2007; A02 There's a certain irony in Washington's failure to devise a modern energy policy. This is, after all, the one place on earth that is powered almost entirely by wind. Lawmakers are growing further apart on energy legislation, as Democrats demand alternative fuels and Republicans insist on more drilling. But for both sides, the ability to talk about energy is both plentiful and renewable. While the Senate held its fourth day of debate on an energy bill, three congressional committees held hearings on the subject yesterday, and the House and Senate Renewable Energy Caucuses held an all-day "expo and forum" in the Cannon Caucus Room. Democratic senators held two news conferences on the subject, Republican senators held a third, and bipartisan groups of lawmakers contributed a fourth and fifth. Not to be left out, the National Association for Business Economics, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, the Electric Power Supply Association, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and a coalition of environmentalists all hosted energy events of their own. Talk about a large carbon footprint. The amount of CO2 emitted from the mouths of all these lawmakers, lobbyists and activists was enough to cause part of Greenland to melt into the sea. "This bill's going to have a tough time," said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), demonstrating his mastery of the obvious at one of yesterday's many news conferences. "My guess is there are many hours of lengthy debate ahead." That's a safe guess, given that the Senate plans for about eight days of debate on the bill -- and Republicans such as Craig are hinting at a filibuster that could derail the whole thing. "I don't think it's ever going to become law," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) forecast after his own news conference, staged in front of two plug-in hybrid cars. "It's lamebrained." The courtly senator reconsidered. "I shouldn't call it lamebrained," he revised. "But that's how I feel." Lamebrained or not, the Senate energy legislation is fairly modest. It stays away from radical policies, such as a carbon tax or a cap on carbon emissions. Its toughest provision, a plan to increase fuel-efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, is under siege by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from car-manufacturing states. "The Senate energy bill started out fairly weak, and we don't see the debate getting any better," complained Eric Pica, who represented Friends of the Earth at a protest by environmentalists on the Senate grounds yesterday. The coalition of conservation groups had planned to dump a ton of coal on Senate parkland -- they had hauled the anthracite from Baltimore in a rented cargo van (12 miles per gallon). But Capitol Police objected, and the environmentalists had to settle for 20 small buckets of the stuff. "We're going to blacken our hands with the coal," one of the organizers offered the disappointed camera crews. Minutes later, Republican lawmakers assembled in the Senate television gallery to voice similarly bitter objections to the bill -- for completely opposite reasons. "It doesn't do anything to lower the price of gasoline," argued Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the Senate Republican leader. Next, Craig lamented a plan to produce 15 percent of the nation's electricity with renewable sources by 2020. The proposal "skews dramatically the reality of what a country can or cannot do," he said. "In the Southeastern states, this is a very big tax because they don't have wind." It's unclear why the calm winds of the southeast would trouble a man from Idaho, but he warned that Republicans are "very concerned." Did that message get out? Not without some difficulty. The Republican event was squeezed in between a Senate hearing on "the impact of rising gas prices," and a pair of House committee sessions on biofuels and "climate change mitigation." Within minutes of the GOP's departure from the television studio, Democrats walked in with a rebuttal. "We do not believe in the president's theory, the Republicans' theory: Drill, drill, drill, more of the same," Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Senate majority leader, taunted. "It reminds me of Iraq." The senators displayed a chart contrasting two families: The energy-efficient "Baileys," who spend $1,600 a year less than the inefficient "Martins." "You notice it's not just any old chart," said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). "There are families mentioned on that chart." His colleagues had forgotten to tell Casey that the Martins and the Baileys were fictitious. The subject had been pretty much exhausted, but Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wanted to add an anecdote about her own "Energy Star" light bulbs. "My husband first bought the wrong ones and so all of our hallways were blue," she said, "and my daughter said it looked like we were living in a bowling alley." That line would have brought down the house over in the Cannon Caucus Room, where the renewable energy caucus was caucusing among displays of pea pellets, switch grass and filament-free light bulbs. Exhibitors were on hand to talk about landfill gas and to hand out lollipops and bumper stickers saying "I {heart} Wind Energy." It was a festive gathering, but Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), a champion of renewable energy, delivered a somber message about progress in the capital. "We've been crawling at a snail's pace," he said. "We've been doing little more than nibbling at the edges." ________________________________________________________________________ AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at AOL.com. _______________________________________________ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
