Monday, May 25, 2009

Energy Legislation Update

Update:  The House Committee passed the  American Clean Energy and Security Act (Waxman-Markey) by a party line vote of 33-25.  The bill contains a target of only a 17% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2020.  Recently in Copenhagen, business leaders endorsed a 50% reduction by 2050 in accord with the IPCC's recommendation in their 4th Global Climate Assessment.

While Americans enjoy the long weekend and the semi-official start of summer, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service has kept track of energy legislation moving through committee work on Capitol Hill. Together with a national health insurance program, alternative energy development will be the most profound accomplishment of 44's tour of duty in the White House.   The Senate Energy Committee is considering S.949 and the House Energy Committee is considering the Waxman-Markey climate change bill.  The Senate committee, thankfully, rejected Senator Lisa Murkowski's (R-AK) amendment that would have given payments to communities accepting "interim" storage of radioactive wastes.  Now that the national repository at Yucca Mountain has lost funding, the storage of high-level waste is becoming a pressing problem.  The vote was tied 11-11, with Committee Chair Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) ruling the amendment defeated.  The other Arkansas senator, Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) voted present.  Other pro-nuclear, pro-reprocessing amendments offered by Repugnants were also defeated by narrow margins.  But they will try again when the legislation reaches the floor.

The House climate change bill has caused an eruption of about 450 dilatory amendments from Repugnants who see the legislation as anti-business and anti-growth and are attempting to kill the legislation with "poison pills".  The House Committee approved by a vote of 51-6 a clean energy bank bill that will provide a source of federal loan guarantees for the development of clean energy technologies.  Unfortunately the proposal still includes nuclear power development and coal technologies.  The amended bill offered by Representatives John Dingell (D-MI),  Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Bart Gordon (D-TN) does limit the amount of loan guaranties to any one technology, by no more than 30% of the bank's total funding.  Priority is supposed to be given to the technologies that produce the greatest greenhouse gas reductions per invested dollar, and the earliest reductions in emissions.  The Senate version of the energy bank bill does not have these notable improvements.