Senate Energy Bill

Renewables, Efficiency Emphasized in Senate Energy Bill, Energy package leaves out most controversial issues, By Andrzej Zwaniecki, Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- A bipartisan energy bill that would boost energy production, especially from renewable sources, and promote energy efficiency and conservation has been approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The committee voted 21-1 on May 26 to approve the legislation, which aims to expand production of renewable energy, including nuclear power, increase energy efficiency, encourage the use of hybrid vehicles and support the development of new technologies such as clean-burning coal and hydrogen-fueled vehicles. It also calls for more oil and natural gas development on federal land.

The bill's estimated cost of more than $11 billion would exceed the $8 billion estimated cost of the House energy bill. The details of Senate tax incentives are laid out in a separate bill by the Senate Finance Committee that must be completed before the Senate approves a final energy bill.

Requirements and incentives contained in the Senate energy committee’s bill are projected to reduce energy use in the United States by around 2.5 percent by 2020, according to a fact sheet published on the committee’s Web site.

“We are sending a bill to the [Senate] floor that does more for conservation and efficiency than Congress has done before,” Committee Republican Chairman Pete Domenici said in a prepared statement.

Senator Jeff Bingaman, a senior Democrat on the committee who was working with Domenici on the legislation, said it “pushes forward on developing and commercializing new technologies on the energy supply side that will be cleaner than what we now have in place.”

During a May 31 press conference, President Bush said he appreciates action by both chambers.

“Now they need to … get me a bill before the August recess,” he said. “That's what the American people expect, and that's what I expect.”

The energy bill must be approved by the full Senate and then reconciled with the House version, which was passed April 21. To become law, a compromise bill must be passed by both chambers and signed by the president.

Reaching a compromise is not going to be easy, lawmakers and congressional observers say. The Senate measure does not include provisions on the two most controversial issues in the House bill. One of those provisions would give liability protection to producers of a gasoline additive called methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), which is suspected of drinking water contamination in more than a dozen states. The previous attempt to pass an energy bill failed in the Senate in 2003 partly due to the MTBE dispute.

Another provision in the House bill absent from the Senate bill would allow drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska. Such activities, according to Democrats and environmental groups, could spoil one of the most pristine areas in the world.

However, earlier in 2005 both chambers approved budget resolutions that procedurally pave the way for drilling in ANWR.

In addition, the Senate version would require reducing oil consumption by 1 million gallons by 2015 while the House version has no mandatory reduction requirements.

The Senate version calls for an inventory of oil and gas resources in U.S. offshore waters, something that the House version does not. But this provision created controversy even within the Senate committee because some Democrats argued it could lead to drilling in areas now off limits because of environmental protection regulation.

The legislation also would modernize and expand the U.S. electricity grid, relax federal government rules governing mergers between utility companies and give the federal government power to override states’ objections to the selection of sites for liquefied natural gas terminals.

Some of these issues are likely to come up again June 6 when the full Senate is expected to take up the bill.

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: usinfo.state.gov) 31 May 2005