With today's green energy boom (and over 100,000 existing jobs in the wind and solar industries alone) hanging in the balance, the Senate voted this morning by an overwhelming 88 to 8 margin to attach short-term extensions of key clean energy tax incentives set to expire at the end of this year -- the Production Tax Credit that mostly goes to wind power, the Investment Tax Credit for solar, and other incentives for energy efficient appliances and the like -- to the housing bill that the Senate then went on to pass by an also overwhelming 84 to 12. (None of the presidential contenders were around for today's votes, for those keeping track of such things.)
(The overwhelming popularity of wind power was also clearly on display this morning. An effort by wind-hatin' Sen. Lamar Alexander [R-Tenn.] to double the extension to two years by cutting the subsidy to wind in half was trounced on a 15-79 vote -- fewer votes than similar efforts by Alexander have received in the past.)
Today's victory -- the first time this Congress that the Senate has approved even short-term extensions of these clean energy incentives -- is sweet, to be sure, as it underscores the strong, bipartisan support for these measures and the urgent need to extend them. However, unless the House and the Senate can bridge some key differences, this particular strategy may not ultimately result in victory on this make-or-break issue.
As faithful Gristmill readers know, extending these incentives has been a major priority for enviros, renewable energy folks, big box retailers, appliance manufacturers, and others for over a year now. The Senate first voted on a renewables tax package last July. (It lost by two votes.)
Will you pay or will you go?
While the House of Representatives has passed expansive, multi-year extensions several times over the past few months, these efforts have fallen short by one or two votes in the Senate on three previous occasions. Under the Democrats' strict "pay-go" rules -- rules requiring new spending to be offset by a cut somewhere else -- the green for green energy came from repealing approximately $13 billion in unnecessary tax breaks and other giveaways to Big Oil. Despite skyrocketing profits at Big Oil, Senate Republicans apparently felt that $13 billion out of the $519 billion -- yes, that's a half-trillion dollars -- that the five biggest oil companies have raked in in profits between 2001 and 2007 and was just too much to ask and filibustered such measures.
In early February, Senators made an effort to sidestep the pay-for issue by trying to attach a package almost identical to the one passed today to the original economic stimulus package. This effort, however, also fell short by one vote.
What now?
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a major champion on energy and environmental issues, remains committed to finding a way to get these incentives finalized. The House, after all, passed a $17 billion package of clean energy incentives by a comfortable 236-182 margin just over a month ago. As with previous House packages, however, the funding for this package came out of Big Oil's hide and faced dim prospects in the Senate.
After Sen. Cantwell (D-Wash.), who has been the driving force on this issue in the Senate, teamed up with Sen. Ensign (R-Nev.) to put together the bipartisan coalition needed to achieve today's successful (but not paid for) result, Speaker Pelosi reiterated via email ($ub. req'd) that "[House Democrats] are committed to pay as you go in our effort to restore our nation's fiscal responsibility and strongly support the House-passed legislation."
An additional hurdle is a fundamental disagreement between the Senate and the House about the shape of any housing-related aid package. The House appears to prefer a package more focused on the needs homeowners rather than the broader housing industry as a whole. Expect that debate to develop further over the coming days.
Given the urgent need for action and Pelosi's proven commitment and ability to get it done when it comes to green issues, I am confident that folks from both Chambers will continue working hard to find a way to navigate these thorny issues.
Those efforts may get a boost in the coming days as Sen. Baucus (D-Mont.), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, unveils a broad package of "extenders." This package, covering some three dozen expired or expiring tax provisions, would come with a $50 billion price tag. But it would be 100 percent paid for, thus posing no problem for House Democrats eager to maintain budgetary discipline. As the offsets themselves and the scope of the package have yet to be unveiled, it remains unclear whether and/or how vocally Senate Republicans might object.
In short, today's vote won't be the last word in the Senate or otherwise when it comes to this issue, but it does illuminate at least one additional path forward and keeps the issue on the front burner.
In any case, the coalition of very strange bedfellows indeed -- the Sierra Club and NRDC lobbying alongside Wal-Mart and the National Association of Home Builders, to cite but one example -- will continue its full-court press on members from both sides of the aisle in both chambers until a bill is on the president's desk.
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Comments View as Flat
Sean Casten Posted 7:03 am
10 Apr 2008
Don't clap too hard
This is better than nothing, but is really goofy, in the sense that it will do nothing to encourage clean energy deployment. Getting one year of production tax credits serves only to provide additional cash to projects that were already in development and going forward. With ~1+ year development times on just about any energy project (and another year to build), it just isn't possible to move quickly enough so that a one year tax bill changes any behavior.
Note that this is not a criticism of clean energy incentives per se - simply that this is a pretty JV way to do it. (As I said to a geothermal developer I was with in DC yesterday, given the choice between "would you like congress to F up a lot, or F up a little, the latter is clearly preferable. But they're still f'ing up.)
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amazingdrx Posted 1:33 am
11 Apr 2008
It is better?
It is better than the alternative Sean, no PTC.
The assumption by investors will be that a more GHG free energy policy will come in with the fall election. And that this short term PTC extension will bridge the gap.
But will they wait until the actual election results to fund new projects? Probably. Having gone through the 2000 "appointment" fiasco, Watching stock markets dip and dive with every new legal opinion on the Fla "hanging chad" migration.
The effort to divert a paltry 13 billion over 10 years from oil company subsidies to subsidies for renewables and conservation was narrowly defeated.
I think politicians are waiting for a chance to institute cap and trade, with cash aquired from the sale of carbon emission permits going to their favorite allegedly green pork projects, like ethanol fuel farming, clean coal, and nuclear power.
A big sell out of the environment and the movement is in the works. The hedge fund managers and big DC eco-lobbyists are salivating. Will this mean new mistresses for the lot of 'em? Yep. Don't be a player hater, these lowlifes are soo horny, hehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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dcprell Posted 5:06 am
11 Apr 2008
PTC extension
Sean,
Your impulse is correct, but extending the PTC for another year does not mean extending PTC payments for just one more year.
The PTC is a 10 year tax credit that triggers for a project on the date it is placed in commercial service. What a PTC extension does is it extends the placed in service sunset date for another year. In other words, a wind project developed in 2009 will no be entitled to 10 years worth of PTCs.
Like I said, your impulse is correct, though. Significant renewable energy development won't occur unless there is a longer period of PTC certainty. Projects that take 3-4 years to develop need to know that the PTC will be there at the commercial operations date. If the PTC is uncertain, the project never happens.
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birdbrainscan Posted 12:47 pm
11 Apr 2008
That one last Senate vote
It's just so galling to watch 2008 dribble away with the Senate regularly one vote short of passing so many green measures.
What really gets my goat is that Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (R-ID) is still in there voting against anything remotely green. You'll recally that Sen. Craig pled guilty to soliciting gay sex in an airport washroom... then asked to un-plead when the story broke. He said he'd resign (in disgrace) from public office -- then changed his mind and chose to tough it out. His wife "stood by her man", he denied that he's gay or bi, and the Moral(istic) Majority happily forgave him or bought his lively excuses including "I have a wide stance" (when he tapped feet with the undercover cop next door) and "I was reaching for a piece of TP stuck to my shoe" (when he held hands with him).
In a priggish, prudish and homophobic culture, somehow it's still okay to solicit gay sex in a public bathroom if you are just really really conservative.
If only the public had been just a bit less tolerant, and Sen. Craig had bowed to public pressure to resign. Then maybe we'd have the more robust energy bill, the national Renewable Electricity Standard, etc.
As it is, we can wait and hope for the next session. Everyone please take a look at the League of Conservation Voters, a pro-environment congressional watchdog: http://www.lcv.org
Their environmental voting scorecard for Sen. Craig (result: 13% green) is at:
http://capwiz.com/lcv_stage/bio/keyvotes/?id=206&cong ...
I just hope more people catch on to how Sens. Craig, Inhofe, Stevens, McConnell and all the LCV's "dirty dozen" are stuffing their pockets with oil and coal PAC funding, voting to increase pollution, and making a mockery of the "conserve" in conservative.
http://birdbrainscan.blogspot.com/
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amazingdrx Posted 4:29 pm
11 Apr 2008
One reason
We couldn't pile on Craig for being gay, only for hypocricy. Our side is too tolerant to use the tactics of the real haters. The Rove, fauxnews, limboob wing nut squad.
There is nothing at all wrong with being gay. It's a fact!
People like John Waters, Rachel Maddow, Barney Frank, to name only a few mighty earth shaking gay culture heroes highlight this obvious truth. We just can't throw out principle, even to put an ass like Craig out on his ass.
We'll have to wait, once again.
But you know without some important enlightenment on the right GHG free energy and ag policy, even a democratic sweep will just boost the wrong stuff. Namely ethanol fuel farming, nuclear power, and clean coal.
I'd say the time frame to get to all our democratic incumbents and democrats about to be elected with the real cure for climate disaster is about the same as the time to the next election. So every donation ought to be paired with a clear statement on real energy and ag policy reform.
Politicians listen to cash. Send 10 bucks at a time with a nice crisp note dissing nukes, ethanol, and coal and boosting direct subsidy diversion to solar, wind, and farm biogas zzzaping through a renwable distributed smart grid to power plugin hybrids and geo heat exchange building heating/cooling systems.
That's the ticket, millions of messages with cold hard cash backing them up. send one to each of your reps and candidates each month from now until the election. If millions did it? Well? 100 millon bucks or so? With 10 million notes?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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