WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Saturday passed a Democratic rewrite of U.S. energy policy that strips $16 billion in tax incentives away from Big Oil and puts it toward renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.
The 786-page bill, passed in a rare Saturday vote, was a top priority for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and is an amalgam of bills assembled by about a dozen of the chamber's committees in recent months.
Republicans called it a "no-energy bill" because it lacks new drilling incentives, and they derided the new emphasis on renewables as "green pork." The White House threatened to veto the bill on concerns that it could boost energy prices.
OPINION: It's time for Washington to get green. Here's a proposal - cut military spending in half, then redistribute the money to clean power, health and education initiatives worldwide.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070805/bs_nm/usa_energy_house_dc_3
Thursday, August 9, 2007
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Energy Surge
Editorial - NY Times
8/11/07
Buried in the rancor and confusion of the House’s prevacation windup last week was final passage of an energy bill aimed at moving the country toward a cleaner and more secure energy future. The bill will be negotiated with the Senate, which passed a companion measure in June. If they approve the best elements of both, the negotiators would produce the most useful energy bill in many years — and a modest, but important, down payment on the task of reducing oil dependency and global warming emissions.
There are no guarantees that this will happen. The House must accept a Senate provision increasing fuel economy standards, and the Senate must accept a House provision demanding that utilities generate 15 percent of their electricity from a renewable source like wind or through efficiency savings. Both provisions have implacable enemies in industry and in Congress.
Meanwhile, President Bush is threatening a veto. His main complaint is that neither version does anything to encourage oil exploration. He seems particularly annoyed by the House bill, which imposes a few modest (and long overdue) environmental safeguards on oil drilling in fragile Western lands while repealing some generous and wholly unnecessary tax breaks that the oil and gas producers received in the last energy bill.
His opposition is more than a little mystifying, even accounting for his reflexive bias towards an industry that is already awash in record profits. In his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush pledged to reduce oil imports and (finally) global warming emissions. Congress wants to do both. In addition to requiring improved fuel efficiency and expanding renewable power, the bills would encourage the production and distribution of ethanol from sources other than corn, and would put some serious money behind the search for a way to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The Natural Resources Defense Council estimates that a final energy measure incorporating the most important House and Senate provisions would achieve about one-quarter of the reductions necessary to put the country on a path that stabilizes concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
That’s not everything, but it’s surely a start. It could also set the stage for the much bolder measures that will be required in the future
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