Reid to use spill to fashion new energy and climate bill

(Photo of Harry Reid from Flickr and talkradionews.)

The Great Gulf Oil Spill of 2010 should make it easier to pass climate legislation to get us off fossil fuels, now that we’ve seen the damage deepwater drilling can do. Right?

Not necessarily. Pundits have been saying the Kerry-Lieberman bill will lose the possibility of any GOP support if it backs away from more offshore drilling, and it will lose Dem support if it encourages it. The lines have hardened.

So how can Dem leadership improve its chances of passing a climate and clean energy bill before the November elections, when Republicans are sure to pick up more seats?

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has had an “aha moment.” He’s going to turn this into a Spill Bill, with emphasis on holding oil companies accountable and reducing their tax breaks. With public concern about the spill running high, detractors would have more trouble voting against such a bill, he reasons.

Last week Reid sent a memo to eight committee chairmen with a role in climate and energy, asking them to put forth ideas about how to make oil drilling safer, make the companies pay for damage they cause and reduce some of the tax breaks they gained over the past decade.

Reid wants to bring a bill to the floor in July. Whether it will be a combination of oil spill and Kerry-Lieberman or oil spill and energy-only (no cap, no trade, no carbon limit) is still to be determined.

President Obama voiced his support for a comprehensive bill of the Kerry-Lieberman variety last week, but he may have to settle for less.

Reid will meet with the relevant committee chairs next Thursday to talk about how to proceed.

However they shape it, a climate/clean energy bill is going to be hard to pass before November.

My guess is they’ll end up with a Spill Bill that also encourages clean energy (perhaps with a renewable electricity standard) and other incentives to produce and use clean energy – and probably nuclear power. That may be the only way to get 60 votes, and even that will be hard.

Big Oil still has many supporters. Witness calls from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) to drill off their coasts, because their economies depend on it.

Stay tuned.

(Sources: Mother Jones, Politico, E&E News PM, Climate Progress)

Climate bill waits in Senate for health reform

Climate action in the Senate is being pushed back to autumn because health reform is now dominating the agenda. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said last week he is delaying until Sept. 28 the deadline for 6 committees working on the Senate version of cap-and-trade.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), taking the lead on the Senate’s comprehensive climate legislation, said her Environment and Public Works Committee would wait till after the August recess to complete markup of the bill. Democrats have a strong majority on her committee so she’s not likely to have trouble getting approval and moving it to the floor. Meanwhile, she and several other committee chairs have started holding hearings.

Finance Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.), who will work with Boxer to draw up specifics of carbon-allowance distribution, is currently taking the lead on health legislation.

The extra time will also allow advocates to press for the 60 votes needed to avoid a filibuster.

How the vote stands now
As of July 7, there are 45 yes and probably yes votes, according to an analysis by Environment and Energy Daily. (See where your senators stand at www.eenews.net/eed/documents) And there are 32 firm and probable no’s. The yes votes include Independents Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (both Maine and both probable.) All the solid no’s are GOP.

The 23 fence-sitters (17 of them Democrats) are being barraged by both sides and will likely force some concessions to come over to the yes side. This could make the Senate bill even weaker than the House version, while environmentalists hope it will be stonger. Many in the middle have their hot-button issues. For Mary Landrieu (D-La.) it’s increasing traditional oil and gas production. For some Midwesterners it’s protecting manufacturing. The trick is to collect 12 votes (maybe 13, depending on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s health) without crippling the bill.

The Agriculture Committee is likely to follow the lead of its counterpart in the House to make additional demands, said Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), committee chair. He is expected to want provisions more favorable to ethanol and farms. After winning concessions in intense negotiations, the ag bloc gave the House version enough votes to pass 219-212.

Other committees having a say include Energy, which already approved a bill dealing with energy but not cap-and-trade; Foreign Relations; and Commerce. Boxer intends to draw on the energy bill for hers. It includes a 15% Renewable Energy Standard (RES) many see as too weak and allows drilling much closer to the west coast of Florida.

Reid and the White House hope to have passage of the bill in time to influence the next big international (post-Kyoto) negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

So the proverbial “whole world is watching.”

(Sources: E&E Daily, Greenwire)

California voters OK bonds for high-speed rail, Missouri passes renewable electricity standard

(Photo of ballot marked yes for highspeed rail from Flickr and and photographer Brad Lauster)

News Update: A smattering of good news from around the nation:
• California authorized $20 billion in bonds to construct a 700-mile high-speed train line from San Diego to San Francisco. Not surprisingly, the coastal communities wanted it, because they’ll benefit, but the inland voters did not. The project will need additional federal and private funding for completion, not an easy ask in these tough economic times.
• Two other California propositions, opposed by environmental groups, were voted down: The T. Boone Pickens-backed proposal that encouraged natural gas use for autos and a poorly written plan for 50% RES by 2025. (Bad news: San Francisco’s effort to take over the local utility and shift to renewables also failed.)
• Missouri voters OK’d a 15% renewable electricity standard by 2021, the third state to vote for an RES after California and Washington (others have been approved by state legislatures).
• Voters in 11 coastal towns south of Boston gave 87% approval to the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound. None of the towns are on Cape Cod, where opposition is strongest. The project has the state’s environmental OK and the state’s Siting Board begins hearings this week. Final hurdle will be the U.S. Interior Dept. A ruling there is expected this month.
• In Seattle, 3 urban counties around Puget Sound, approved $22.8 billion for bus and rail transit.
• Florida voted for a modest measure giving tax exemptions for rooftop solar installations.
• Colorado voters reduced tax credits on oil and gas, with money to be used for a number of purposes including renewable energy and efficiency. So the states inch
(Sources: ClimateWire, Greenwire)

Wins and losses in this Congress in fight against global warming

Washington Report: Congress has left Washington for the election campaign, and a lame duck session in November is unlikely to bring much action on the global warming front. So we can probably go ahead and assess what this Congress has done for us in the fight to curb greenhouse gases. There was a flurry of activity, with multiple committee hearings and dozens of proposed bills, so the topic was high profile. But what was really accomplished? Not much.
• The biggest victory was passage for the first time in 2 decades of a corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard for cars and light trucks. They will have to average 35 mpg by the year 2020. That bill also had a renewable fuel standard, which encouraged a controversial increase in the use of corn ethanol, which does nothing to curb greenhouse gases and drove up food prices.
• Left on the drawing board, passed by the House but not the Senate, was a renewable electricity standard of 15% by 2020 to force power plants to use less fossil fuel and more renewables.
• Failed to summon the 60 votes needed to debate a compromise and watered-down global warming bill by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (Va.)
• Permitted the 26-year-old off-shore drilling ban to expire, as well as a ban on oil shale extraction in Western states. (Though Democrats are hoping to reinstate the offshore ban, at least partially.)
• Extended renewable tax credits for wind, solar and other renewable sources, adding incentives for plug-in cars and wave energy, but also for fossil fuels in the form of refining oil shale and tar sands, producing coal-to-liquid, and sequestering carbon. The tax credits were on their way to oblivion when the Senate leadership attached them to the $700 billion bailout bill at the 11th hour.
So, the fossil fuel interests basically won every round except auto fuel efficiency, if you see extension of renewable credits as maintaining the status quo. There’s been a lot of activity, but not much progress. We need to get those 60 votes in the Senate.

House approves energy bill with off-shore drilling, tax credit extensions for renewables, RES

(Photo of Capitol Building from Flickr and photographer seansie/Sean Hayford O'Leary)

Washington Report: The House on Tuesday voted 236-89 to pass a comprehensive energy package that allowed for more off-shore drilling but at the same time rolled back oil tax breaks to fund renewable energy and efficiency. HR 6899 would:
• Allow drilling more than 100 miles of both coasts and, if states said OK, drilling 50 miles off their shore; maintained the ban on drilling within 125 of the west coast of Florida; protected Georges Bank fishing grounds off New England from drilling.
• Create a renewable electricity standard (RES) mandating 15% of electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, though one-fourth of the mandate could be met with efficiency.
• Roll back $18 billion in oil tax breaks to fund renewable energy and conservation.
• Extend investment tax credits for solar energy 8 years, production tax credits for wind 1 year, and other renewables like geothermal and wave energy 3 years.
• Make $1 billion in tax credits available for coal plants that use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.
• Lift a moratorium on oil shale leasing in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, though the states must pass laws to permit it.

The politics behind the bill
Environmental groups, while liking the renewable provisions, objected to the bill’s offshore drilling, oil shale and CCS provisions. Democrats said they backed down on offshore drilling because public opinion favors it and they wanted to give cover to moderate Dems in tough re-election fights. They also noted the offshore drilling ban expires at the end of September, which would permit drilling as close as 3 miles offshore if Congress doesn’t act. They added CCS and oil shale at the last minute to garner more support. GOP leaders, who wanted much broader offshore drilling, complained they had no input into the bill and said it would not add to domestic oil production because states would have no financial incentive to allow drilling off their shores. The White House threatened to veto the bill, based on the rollback of oil tax breaks and the RES. (Sources: Congressional Quarterly, E&E Daily,
thedailygreen.com)