An Energy Bill.... At Last

[NATO AIR]

he presents a view different from the CW that nevertheless is based in a lot of fact....

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2005/1003/035_print.html
An Energy Bill--At Last
Caspar Weinberger, 10.03.05, 12:00 AM ET

Throughout his first term and for half the first year of his second, President Bush besieged, pleaded with and literally begged Congress for a comprehensive energy bill. His predecessors had also spent years asking for an energy bill that would encourage the use of domestically available energy sources, as well as the development of new cleaner sources that would lessen our dependence on unreliable foreign ones.

In July Congress finally passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the same week it passed a highway bill that was nearly as controversial. (There's nothing like an approaching election to spur legislative progress.) The energy bill the President signed into law Aug. 8 contains at least the average number of "compromises" (read: the Administration's giving up programs it really wanted and needed, such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and obtaining higher fuel-efficiency standards in cars and trucks). But that aside, the Administration did score major goals:

• A new form of federal risk insurance to encourage the construction and licensing of new nuclear power plants.

• Funds to promote hydrogen-fuel-cell technology and the launch of a state-of-the-art program to develop hydrogen-fuel-cell cars able to compete in the marketplace by 2020; $200 million for the Clean Cities program, which will provide grants to state and local governments to acquire alternative-fuel vehicles; tax credits for consumers who buy fuel-efficient hybrid or clean-diesel cars and trucks.

• New tax incentives to promote clean-coal technology; the extension of existing tax credits for energy produced from renewable resources, such as wind, biomass and landfill gas, as well as new incentives to promote clean, renewable geothermal energy; and a new tax credit for residential solar energy systems. Altogether $14.6 billion in federal funds will be used to encourage the use of new, alternative and renewable resources.

There are a raft of other things in the bill, such as modernizing and increasing the reliability of our power grids and instituting the reform of transmission-siting rules for power lines. The bill--to placate legislators from farm states--establishes a renewable fuels standard that will add 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol (made from corn) and other renewable-based fuel to the nation's supply of gasoline by 2012. In 1990 Congress mandated the use of oxygenates: Fuelmakers could choose MTBE or ethanol (more expensive and at the time not produced in large quantities). MTBE has since been found to contaminate drinking water. The bill provides for an innovative program (in partnership with some countries in the Pacific Rim) that encourages the biggest new energy consumers, China and India, to use clean, modern and efficient energy technologies and helps wean them from their heavy dependence on fossil fuels--of vital importance as their energy demands grow. And in an attempt to meet the demands that these two giants' growth will put on existing oil supplies, the bill seeks a new inventory of oil and gas resources on the Outer Continental Shelf. This provoked arguments on both sides of the aisle: Florida and North Carolina say it will only encourage pressure for more U.S. drilling; others say it will help identify energy sources before those two countries are consuming supplies full bore.
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