One of the year’s most important national environmental initiatives – a wide-ranging package of federal energy legislation – will head to conference committee in September, where the House [1] and Senate [2] will work to hammer out the differences in their versions. With Americans overwhelmingly concerned about climate change, the bills include several provisions that would the stage for a more sustainable future.
Among the issues that will be most hotly debated in conference is a renewable energy standard [3] that would require 49 states, except for Hawaii, to generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by the year 2010. Versions of this standard are already in place in more than 20 states.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman contends that the House energy bill would increase dependence on foreign oil. The tightening of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE [4], standards will be another focus of negotiations. The Senate’s bill calls for increasing the average mileage of cars and trucks to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, up from the current 25 miles per gallon. The move would reduce U.S. fuel demand by 2.3 million barrels of oil a day. The Senate bill has been vigorously opposed by automakers for this reason, and the House version does not include a similar provision.
The House also passed the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act of 2007 [5], which includes tax incentives and benefits for energy efficiency and “clean” energy sources like solar, wind, biomass, and other forms of renewable energy. The bill would pay for these programs by reducing subsidies to the oil and gas industries estimated to be worth around $15 billion. There are also more than a dozen lesser-known provisions directly related to climate change, affecting policies on wildlife, public lands, oceans, coastal zone management, water supplies and oceans.
The largest question that looms over the conference committee is the fate of any bill that is eventually put forward: President George Bush has threatened to veto the House bills and accompanying tax package. A statement [6] by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman contends the legislation “does little to increase our nation's energy security or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the bills will actually lead to less domestic oil and gas production and increased dependence on imported oil.”
Bodman has been encouraging legislators to enact the administration’s Twenty in Ten Initiative [7] instead.