A Senate energy bill was voted out of committee yesterday, but not before losing the support of two Democrats and a dozen leading environmental organizations.
The measure would be the third energy bill in four years — not counting the huge energy provisions in this year’s economic stimulus bill. Like the others, it is rife with controversy over new offshore drilling plans near Florida, the sharing of federal offshore oil and gas royalties, and a mandate for renewable energy that alternative-energy executives and environmentalists say is too weak. It would require 15 percent of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2021, but would allow exemptions that would diminish that target.
The proposed bill would also create a new “clean energy” financing agency that would extend subsidized loans and loan guarantees to a variety of projects, including nuclear plants. While it would set tough energy-efficiency standards for new buildings, it would also ease restrictions on the federal government’s use of petroleum from Canadian tar sands, whose energy-intensive production generates more greenhouse gases than conventional oil. The bill would also create a 30 billion-barrel strategic reserve for refined petroleum products; the current reserve contains only crude oil.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) said the bill would “help shift our country to cleaner sources of energy, and more secure sources as well.” He won the support of the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who said she would press for additional nuclear-energy provisions on the Senate floor.
But a dozen environmental groups yesterday said they opposed it. In a joint letter to the committee, they called the renewable-electricity standard too lax because it allows noncompliance fees to go back to companies, exempts new nuclear plants and certain new coal plants from baseline calculations, and allows energy-efficiency savings to substitute for renewable energy.
Expansive Energy Bill Advances In Congress – Washington Post
