We Can't Wait for Politicians to Embrace Clean Energy

By Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org. Posted October 15, 2007.

Conventional wisdom among environmentalists today says it would be unwise to pass a major climate change bill too soon. As long as the Bush veto looms and Republicans retain the filibuster club in the Senate, any climate change bill that passes through that birth canal is likely to be a stunted, shriveled thing. Better to wait until a strong bill can be passed than establish a weak policy now.

But energy is supposed to be different. President Bush has admitted that America is "addicted to oil," and he is a big booster of technology as the solution to global warming. At his major economies meeting on climate change in September, Bush called for an international fund to help developing nations finance clean-energy projects to stem climate change. But when he refused to offer a funding commitment or any other mechanism to implement the plan, international delegates turned up their noses and said they would wait till 2009 to engage the US on climate.

You might expect that Bush would be more willing to put his money where his mouth is where the US is concerned, but that does not seem to be the case.

Both houses of Congress passed energy bills last summer. The Senate, in particular, made a big effort to produce a bi-partisan consensus. Environmentalists are calling the new energy bill "a down payment on efforts to combat global warming." But President Bush has not come out in support of either the House or Senate version of the bill.

Meanwhile, getting both houses of Congress to sit down and reconcile what are two very different bills has been difficult. In early September, Democrats sent discouraging signals about any bill passing this session. Perhaps they heard from their constituents, because by the end of the month, Senator Reid was promising to appoint conferees soon. It was to have been last week and has now been postponed until after the Senate gets back from its Columbus Day recess. On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with other Democrats to discuss bringing an energy bill directly to the floor.

There is no question that public support for clean renewable energy is at an all time high. This is showing up at the state level where 31 states have now passed some sort of mandate to produce energy from solar, wind and other renewable sources. The National Governor's Association is proceeding to coordinate programs as best it can in the vacuum of federal energy policy. At an NGA forum on renewable energy, Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (a Republican) said, "Energy is the defining issue of our time. The public is way ahead of the politicians ... there is enormous running room for policy makers to make significant advances ... there's an urgency to this issue, and none of us, Democrats, Republicans, politicians and the public have acted as urgently as we need to."

With such strong public support, why have the Democrats found it so difficult to produce an energy bill?

Cars, Coal and Nukes

One problem has been Michigan Rep. John Dingell, who chairs the House energy committee. Backing the position of Detroit automakers, Dingell refused to allow any increase in CAFE fuel mileage standards.

And while the House bill has no CAFE increase, the Senate bill lacks a Renewable Energy Standard (RES). The House passed an RES requiring utilities to generate 15 percent of their power from renewable sources (mostly solar, wind and biomass) by 2020. The US is one of the few nations left that has not adopted such a standard, but Bill Wicker, on the staff of Senate energy committee Chair Jeff Bingaman, said that the Republicans "blocked every effort" to include a national RES in the Senate energy bill.

Matt Letourneau, energy policy aide to Sen. Pete Domenici, the ranking member of the Senate energy committee, said that a national RES would be unfair to some regions of the country that don't have abundant renewable resources, particularly the Southeast. He said the standard is too high and it is "not possible" to get 15 percent of the region's power from renewable energy.

But Scott Sklar, a solar energy lobbyist, said that there is plenty of renewable energy in the Southeast. "The Southeast is biomass rich and solar rich. Solar could provide 5-6 percent of the region's power, wind, 1-2 percent, and biomass, 10-15 percent. The waste biomass from Hurricane Katrina alone could provide power for 30 years." Utilities can also substitute up to 4 percent of the target with increases in efficiency.

Lynn Hargis, a former attorney with FERC, who now works for Public Citizen monitoring energy regulation, said that the real problem is giant utility companies in the South like Duke, Entergy and Southern Company that want to make huge profits selling cheap coal-generated power in unregulated markets.

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Kelpie Wilson is Truthout's environment editor. Trained as a mechanical engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection activist, then returned to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power industry.

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