Energy Bill Passes House and Fails in Senate

After months of negotiations, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this week agreed to bring a strong energy package to the floor of each house.  Unfortunately, while the bill passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, it was defeated by a Senate filibuster this morning and will now likely be dramatically scaled back before being sent to the president.

The bill, though not perfect, would have been a major step forward.  Here’s a breakdown of the key provisions:

• A requirement that utilities produce 15 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources by 2020 (the bill’s most important advance)
• The repeal of $21 billion in subsidies for big oil – funding that will now be used to promote clean energy (Friends of this Earth helped author this provision when Speaker Pelosi included it in her “100 hours agenda”)
• Incentives for the development of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which can get up to 100 miles to the gallon
• A 40 percent increase in fuel economy standards by 2020 (definitely a step forward, but far less than is achievable – U.S. cars and light trucks will not be required to average 35 mpg until 2020 – that’s a standard that already been achieved in China and surpassed in Europe)
• A massive five-fold increase in domestic biofuel use (the most concerning part of the bill, which could lead to increased deforestation and agricultural runoff as well as higher food prices – fortunately, Friends of the Earth was able to win the addition of key environmental safeguards)

The bill did NOT include $50 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear industry—a provision opposed by Friends of the Earth that would have jump-started a new era of reactor construction across the U.S.  However, while the nuclear provision will no longer appear in this year’s energy bill, the nuclear industry is trying to pass it elsewhere, so our work continues

[Check out our interactive tool that outlines why nuclear power is a bad idea at www.NuclearFacts.org.]

If this bill had become law, it would have represented a paradigm shift in the way our nation approaches energy and global warming.  But we clearly don’t yet have the votes in the Senate, and even if we did, we’d still have a president who opposes progress.  Congress is now likely to enact a much weaker measure, and more substantial progress will have to wait another two years.