A bipartisan group of House members has unveiled a new compromise energy bill, roughly along the lines of the Gang of 10 bill released in the Senate last week.
"The National Conservation, Environment, and Energy Independence Act" would repeal federal prohibitions on offshore oil and gas production and lift the ban on finalizing regulations for oil-shale development. Some of the proceeds from offshore leasing would be spent on environmental programs: 15 percent on renewable energy, 10 percent on environmental restoration, 8 percent on the Conservation Reserve Program, and 5 percent on R&D for carbon capture and storage and nuclear-waste disposal.
The bill also includes a five-year extension of tax credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency. These tax extensions have passed repeatedly in the House, but they keep getting held up in the Senate where Republicans have blocked energy bills that don't include more drilling.
The new legislation also calls for 70 million barrels of light crude to be sold from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, with proceeds to be used for a variety of energy projects: $200 million for low-income weatherization and the home energy assistance program, $30 million for smart-grid development, $30 million for solar-energy research, $15 million for wind-energy research, and multi-millions more for a number of other renewable energy and efficiency projects. The real bank goes to carbon capture and storage R&D, which would get $385 million.
The bill comes from members of the House Bipartisan Energy Working Group, led by Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Peterson (R-Penn.). There are currently 119 cosponsors.
Mark Warner (D-Va.)
Can EPA regulations on CO2 be blocked?
Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)
Comments
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Wolverine Posted 7:47 am
09 Aug 2008
What people who support these deals don't get is that where a type of environmental harm due to the source of energy is identified, what's needed is a complete replacement of that source. Merely throwing some bones to the environment while continuing destructive behavior does nothing positive overall and in fact is quite negative.
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rahreh Posted 12:21 pm
09 Aug 2008
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rlhughes Posted 3:31 pm
09 Aug 2008
'The bill also includes a five-year extension of tax credits for renewable energy and energy efficiency. These tax extensions have passed repeatedly in the House, but they keep getting held up in the Senate where Republicans have blocked energy bills that don't include more drilling'.
Please tell us about HR 5984 which passed the Senate as S 2821 by a margin of 88 - 8. This Bill only concerned extending the tax credits and contains none of the pork barelling of the compromise bill.
HR 5984 goes much further in that it removes the existing cap on residential tax credits so consumers get as much as the corporations. The corporations still get the accelerated depreciation but this Bill was much more consumer friendly than any Bill originating in the House.
Please tell us why the Leadership refused to submit HR 5984 to a vote in the House instead of repeating their propaganda.
I will encourage my Congressman to vote against this compromise. I could not find the text of the Bill on Thomas.
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rlhughes Posted 3:50 pm
09 Aug 2008
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c110:1:./temp/~c110 ...
And I guess the statement is not false. Neither is this one:
Republicans have blockeed energy bills that don't include a death penalty for jay walking.
Before someone else nails me.
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stopgreenpath Posted 10:45 am
11 Aug 2008
rahreh, it sounds like your heart is in the right place, so i hope you can help me. i am curious when people equate "Americans" with "Big Oil Drilling in America," since oil is a global commodity, Big Oil is completely free to do as it likes, and the chances of you or i actually buying (or owning - ha!) the oil that comes from our neighborhoods is close to zero. it will get exported to China, we will buy other oil from the Saudis for high prices, and Big Oil will just get richer off of poisoning our environment and extending their monopolies a few miles and a few decades into the future.
why do you think that they would suddenly start keeping oil here, when they already export nearly all the oil they extract in the US? i suspect this is a red herring put out there to confuse people with a bogeyman of "foreign oil terrorists" or similar, because i have never heard mention that 100% of oil drilled in America will now be required to be sold and consumed in America - am i missing something?
the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.
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GlobalWarmingInc Posted 7:21 am
18 Aug 2008
Obviously, when you drill, you're poking a hole in something, so there is some destruction. But do you know that these huge offshore drilling rigs create a reef-like ecosystem where oceanlife flourishes? If this were known and supported by Al Gore and the fear-mongering greenies, they'd spin it to say that it's like investing in fish-carbon-credits, since it's offsetting overfishing in other parts of the world.
My point is that these rigs actually help ocean life by creating a man-made reef ecosystem. They are very clean, and will help us cut the cord on foreign oil. You do know that it's the oil tankers shipping oil half-way across the globe that pollute the most right? Even in hurricane Katrina, the big oil rigs spilled nary a drop of oil into the water...
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