A Fossilized Energy Bill Jeff Rickert and Brian Siu June 29, 2005
Jeff Rickert is interim director and Brian Siu is an energy policy analyst at the Apollo Alliance.
The passage of the energy bill in the Senate represents a lost opportunity to take the nation in a new direction. With energy prices soaring and conflict in energy-producing regions escalating, Congress should be enacting a crash program to achieve energy independence. The public support is there. The Apollo Alliance and all the groups and individuals who fought to deliver a new vision of our energy future are testament to that will and that opportunity. Yesterday, America lost a chance to not only make the nation more secure, but to make an investment that would create millions of jobs, produce a healthier environment and build stronger communities.
Certainly, the Senate did better than the House, but the bar was not set all that high. The House of Representatives, in April, passed the same tired business-as-usual energy thinking that amounts to little more than a corporate giveaway for traditional energy producers. Out of $8 billion in tax incentives, the House bill allocates $500 million (only 6 percent) to efficiency and renewables. It includes an amendment that would repeal the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, a provision that is the last line of defense between stable electricity delivery and putting the entire nation in peril of an Enron-like crisis. Further, it gives the federal government the authority to override the will of states in determining sites for liquefied natural gas plants. These facilities raise serious health and safety concerns for the surrounding communities. And, most notoriously, the House bill includes the controversial MTBE provision that would shield oil and gas refiners from the billions of dollars of liability they face for groundwater contamination.
The Senate version made modest—but ultimately inadequate—progress. The slate of amendments debated on the Senate floor clearly demonstrates movement of the debate about our dependence on foreign oil and climate change. At various points in the debate, the Senate passed a landmark “renewable energy standard,” considered a provision that would bolster made-in-the-U.S.A hybrids, and debated three competing climate change amendments that addressed concerns about jobs, technology investment and environmental protection.
But the few positive amendments that passed and a few breakthrough debates are not enough to lead us off the dangerous path of oil dependence and economic insecurity. The Senate ultimately passed the weakest of the three climate change amendments. Republican leadership balked even at the passage of the moderate climate-change amendment proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, derived from the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy and supported by many labor and business leaders, including Steel Workers President Leo Gerard. The Senate was able to secure the passage of a Renewable Energy Standard, but one that is only half as ambitious as the renewable energy targets that many states have taken on. And the Senate failed to take any meaningful action to secure our economic future and domestic security by reducing our reliance on oil.
To add insult to injury, as the GOP quashed Sen. Maria Cantwell’s energy independence amendment—to simply set a goal for oil savings and shift our reliance back to the United States—subsidies to the traditional energy industries from the House Energy Bill were actually increased, hightening our dangerous dependence.
The leadership of many in the Senate made real progress that is to be commended. The efforts of saner minds in the House, the tireless work of environmental organizations, labor unions and industry to affect the outcome demonstrated a powerful and growing coalition. The successes already underway in states and cities prove that the political will is there. But the nation awaits federal leadership to make it happen, and as for now, there is no relief in sight.
As oil prices hover around $60 a barrel, draining American pocketbooks and billions from our economy, the time has come for real leadership out of this precarious situation. The potential payoff is huge. The Apollo Alliance estimates that a major project to root our energy dependence in the United States would create 3 million jobs and more than a trillion dollars in economic activity that would easily repay the project in increased tax revenue. It would return those benefits to regions of the country that need them most. Conservation, energy efficiency projects and smarter planning would create jobs in the urban core. The increased manufacturing activity would return jobs to the battered Midwest. The transition to cleaner fuels would promote a cleaner environment while creating jobs for Detroit and the Great Plains.
That opportunity now appears to have slipped away, dooming us to revisit our energy policy in a piecemeal manner as our security gets worse.
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