Energy Bill

I think I haven't given the landmark energy legislation passed by the House its due, but Dave Roberts lays it all out for you. This is good, good stuff. And the even better news is that there's majority support in the US Senate for passing it as well. But of course as we all know just because something's a good idea and most Senators want to pass it doesn't mean it'll pass. Indeed, just the reverse! But the margins on this one are pretty close, so if the Democrats win some Senate seats in 2008 the dynamic stands a very good chance of changing, and even passing the Senate at this point probably woudn't do any good since Bush would veto it.

Meanwhile, I thought I would highlight this one piece of analysis because I think liberals tend not to give enough credit to the most powerful genuinely progressive politician in America: "Nonetheless, what came out of the house was stronger than almost anyone expected, a fact that can be attributed in large part to the tenacity of one woman: Speaker Nancy Pelosi."

Comments

That's All About The War, right? Flip it around; suppose Pelosi had held ground on the war, but passed a compromise energy bill. Would people be frustrated with her? Even with the FISA et al. capitulations? I doubt it.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | December 8, 2007 5:20 PM

Unless the GOP favors it, you need 60 to pass it. That is GOP policy.

[S]aid Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, people can expect to see plenty of filibuster threats. “I think we can stipulate once again for the umpteenth time that matters that have any level of controversy about it in the Senate will require 60 votes,” he said.

(Oddly enough the NYT corrected this article to identify the AEI as a conservative group, not as nonpartisan. Pressure works.)

Posted by md 20/400 | December 8, 2007 7:11 PM

This energy bill is a tribute to Pelosi's far left philosophy, not common sense - along with a lack of knowledge of science, engineering, and energy economics.

1. Votes for pie in the sky impractical, expensive solar and wind power while ignoring nuclear, and discouraging oil exploration when our most urgent energy need is a better oil policy. More of it, with far more conservation, and less transfer of our wealth to Arabs..

2. Plug-in hybrids! Oh, how fine! Coming from the limitless power available if you only "plug-in" to your wall outlet? Would that be for the wind energy costing the equivalent of 95 dollars a gallon? It wouldn't be from all the present coal and nuke plants Pelosi's confederate Markey wants to shut down, nor hydro from all the dams liberals want torn down so they can recreate in their kayaks.

3. Same people pushing conservation here on the Left are the same people pushing Open Borders for illegal and legal immigrants. With a US Census projected 50% in America's population and ensuant massive increase in energy demand in 50 years completely wiping out anything up to a 50% conservation gain. (363 million by 2030, 430 million by 2050)

4. Her bill wants new, massive subsidies for diversion of crop growing into ethanol just when the scientific consensus is ethanol from global grain food supply is not only fool's gold, but dangerous to the cost and availability of critical global food stocks. Ethanol from grain costs 2 BTUs of fossil for every 3 BTUs of ethanol made available. And, even having the potential for mass famine and grain elsewhere is diverted into a cash crop for the wealthier nations export trade.

On Thursday, just over a year after winning the majority, Democrats in the House of Representatives voted through an energy bill that represents a stark departure from the administration's approach. It would raise vehicle fuel efficiency (Cafe) standards for the first time in over 30 years, by 40%, to 35 miles per gallon for both cars and light trucks and SUVs. A renewable energy standard mandates that utilities generate 15% of their power from renewables by 2020. It would set a renewable fuel standard aiming to generate 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022. A tax package would roll back some $13.5bn in oil industry subsidies and tax breaks to help pay for $21bn worth of investments in clean energy development, mainly in the form of investment tax credits for wind and solar, along with the development and purchase of plug-in hybrid vehicles. And it would raise efficiency standards for appliances and buildings.

Better CAFE standards are long overdue. But a 40% savings is likely unrealistic. Same with mandates that electricity generators be forced to make 15% of their generation renewable in 8 years - which amounts to them being forced into a massive investment in expensive, unreliable "alternate" energy and passing those inefficiencies and massive cost increases along to the consumers and economy as a whole.

Pelosi's grand dream of energy policy dreamed up by lawyers and technologically ignorant activists is unrealistic and opposed by many Dem Senators that want more LNG, coal liquification, oil, renewable nuclear. And by pro-nuclear, pro coal Presidential candidates like Obama. She has her little bill as a sop to Lefties and activists knowing full well it gets killed in the Senate unless the scope is reduced and the ethanol pork, alt energy pork, mandates to utilities are rationalized in committee. CAFE will pass, but not on Pelosi's scienticically ignorant and grandiose 40% savings in 8 years.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 8, 2007 7:35 PM

Shorter Chris Ford: Waah, waah.

You denounce the bill and Pelosi as lacking common sense, "far left" and "scienticically ignorant", but the best you can come up with is that 40% better CAFE is "likely unrealistic". Oh, snap! Any, you know, facts to back that up?

I agree with you about corn-based ethanol, it's a dangerous political sop to the corn belt, and I also agree that "far more conservation" is needed.

But coal liquidification w/o CCS, which is in any case unproven? Really bad idea.

Posted by Jeff S. | December 8, 2007 8:44 PM

Oh, and Chris? Name one "on the Left", pushing conservation or not, who advocates for "Open Borders for illegal and legal immigrants".

Posted by Jeff S. | December 8, 2007 8:48 PM

I'll give credit where it's due: Pelosi et al did a marvelous job on this one. HOWEVER, I expect this to be much better in the next Congress, which will be even more Democratic and hopefully slightly more progressive. And Pelosi is something of a negative as speaker because she doesn't speak particularly well in public. She can't think on her feet. at least not on television. Neither can I, but it's not *my* job.

Also, ignoring nuclear is STILL the right thing to do. Here's why: they haven't actually solved any of the safety, long-term storage, national security, or cost issues that scuttled new nuke plants after the Three Mile Island incident. At most, they've improved the existing technology.

You hear a lot about "completely safe" pebble-bed reactors, but they don't actually exist outside of research facilities. The new reactors that are being strongly considered for Kentucky (or is it Tennessee?) are variations on standard boiling water reactors. They are "safer," but not "completely safe". And you still have to dispose of the spent fuel. Where you gonna ship it? Iraq?

That said: yes, Ethanol is a really bad idea, but that's a separate battle, involving truly evil mega-agribusiness, and we're not strong enough to fight that one yet. The problem there is that not enough laypeople understand the issues. Everyone can understand the issue with oil companies: raking in record profits while gas prices are rising to record levels. On the face of it, it looks like simple price gouging. It's actually more complicated than that, but it's really easy to make the case.

Posted by Shim Walke | December 8, 2007 9:40 PM

dams liberals want torn down so they can recreate in their kayaks.

Dams increase recreational boating.

Posted by Kolohe | December 8, 2007 9:55 PM

Would it be asking too much for Harry Reid to force the Republicans to actually carry out one of their threatened filibusters THIS time?

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 8, 2007 9:55 PM

Would it be asking too much for Harry Reid to force the Republicans to actually carry out one of their threatened filibusters THIS time?

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | December 8, 2007 9:56 PM

Also, ignoring nuclear is STILL the right thing to do. Here's why: they haven't actually solved any of the safety, long-term storage, national security, or cost issues that scuttled new nuke plants after the Three Mile Island incident. At most, they've improved the existing technology.

Safety-
TMI killed no people, nor actually cause any health issues for either the public or workers. As long as you maintain gov't oversight and political accountability, it's safer than many other activities we take for granted like flying in jets, or driving in cars. When you have an economically and politically corrupt system, you get Chernobyl.

Long Term storage-
keeping everything on site, or putting everything in one place, both have its pro's and con's. Either way, the really nasty isotopes go away in a few years, and the predominate problematic activity (Co-60) goes away in about a century. Here's the thing: unlike every other process, including solar (manufacturing processes), we don't just dump the problem into the larger environment. W/ nuclear, we can quantify, manage, and reduce the harm far greater than say smokestack exhaust, and more generally carbon emissions.

Nat'l Security-
So your worried about brown people being able to split atoms. Never figured you for a neocon w/ all the other stuff in your post.

Cost-
Here, you have a point. Nuclear is more expensive than any fossil fuels, even at 100/bbl prices, on the order of 50-100%. But compared with solar, wind and others of the like, it is an order a magnitude cheaper with current tech, and capable of sustaining both peak and continuous loads that alternatives yet cannot.

I have no problem with increasing research in solar, wind, geo, tidal, etc. But failure to use nuclear as a bridge is irrational and only helps the establishment maintain the fossil fuel status quo.

Posted by Kolohe | December 8, 2007 10:13 PM

Solar and Wind cannot be used without backing; electricity must be available at all times, and neither is a 100% uptime source. Which means that for every kilowatt of solar/wind you have... there has to be a kilowatt of 100% uptime energy available. Meaning, oil, coal, gas - or nuclear. Personally, I'd prefer nuclear, but the environmentalists are hell bent on preventing that.

Ethanol has its own problems, not least of which is taking crop land out of food production. Here's a simple question: how much of the current surplus production do you want to stop sending to impoverished nations in order to use fuel that is less efficient than gasoline, and at least as polluting?

Ultimately, this is a stupid bill that will be useless at best, harmful and expensive at worst. It would be far better if Pelosi and company chose to push nuclear - at least there, the supplies are all from friendly countries.

Posted by James Robertson | December 8, 2007 10:23 PM

If the bill passes the Senate, and Bush vetoes it, it would accomplish something. Energy conservation is now somewhat popular, as oil approaches $100 a barrel, and a bill that addresses it that passes Congress but which Bush vetoes adds to the argument that the Democrats should get a chance of controlling all three branches of government.

One point to note is that this time, every Democratic presidential candidate, even Richardson, Kuchinich, and Gravel, have amassed most of their experience in DC. This won't be the case of an outsider with little ties to the DC power network coming in, as what happened with Carter in the 1970s. So if a Democrat gets elected President in 2008, and the Democrats keep control of Congress, there is no excuse if they screw up. This is particularly true if Clinton, Biden, or Dodd gets the nomination, but applies to some extent to all the candidates.

Posted by Ed | December 8, 2007 10:34 PM

The problem with ethanol is farmers are taking hops out and planting corn and feeding barley to cattle making beer prices rise. Lets throw some money at solar,wind and the storage problem. It will improve things. Heck, it might even be a solution.

Posted by cheflovesbeer | December 8, 2007 10:36 PM

I'm not entirely sure if God having a wife is part of Mormon doctrine, but its fair to point out that the Catholic conception of Mary comes very close to having her fulfill that role.

Posted by Ed | December 8, 2007 10:41 PM

So your worried about brown people being able to split atoms. Never figured you for a neocon w/ all the other stuff in your post.

I think its pretty clear that the national security risks Shim refers to have to do with the targeting of nuclear facilities and maintaining the security of nuclear and radioactive materials and not with brown people splitting atoms halfway around the globe. Not every claim concerning national security is an authoritarian/racist/Republican plot, you know.

Posted by DMonteith | December 9, 2007 8:53 AM

Pelosi?

yeah, um, to hell with her

Posted by cleek | December 9, 2007 9:15 AM

TMI killed no people, nor actually cause any health issues for either the public or workers. As long as you maintain gov't oversight and political accountability, it's safer than many other activities we take for granted like flying in jets, or driving in cars. When you have an economically and politically corrupt system, you get Chernobyl.

So take a look at the Republican party, take a look at the spineless Dems in Washington, and then tell me whether you just made an argument FOR nuclear power... or AGAINST it.

Posted by Dave | December 9, 2007 9:26 AM

As for nuclear being safe he is something from Germany
http://in.reuters.com/article/health/idINL0867723820071208

Posted by cheflovesbeer | December 9, 2007 10:29 AM

Kolohe - Cost-
Here, you have a point. Nuclear is more expensive than any fossil fuels, even at 100/bbl prices, on the order of 50-100%.

Not true, nuclear is now cheaper than even coal as fuel. The cost is in the high initial capital investment in building light water reactors. But even without cheaper and simpler passive or pebble bed units - all the 70s calculations that assumed a 45-year lifetime went out the window as utilities and vendors so what good condition larger reactor plants remained in and successfully petitioned and got 25-year extensions on plant lifetime, and allowed a longer span for amortizing costs. With that, nuclear became cheaper than all but coal and old hdro plants which have paid off most construction costs decades ago.

What stops nukes is the political opponents who have choked off new plants with the threat that the spent fuel would never leave the plant, never be recycled.

France, Japan, Sweden, S Korea already have long-term storage solutions and are already reprocessing a portion of their fuel to separate, burn in reactors, get rid of those actinides, like plutonium - which are the "long-lived" part of spent fuel.

They'd be doing a lot more of it, but for now they are using the post-Cold War bonanza in excess HEU and plutonium in inventory and in warhead scrapping that is diluted and made into mixed-oxide fuel and burned up.

The rest of spent fuel, besides 1-3% plutonium, is 90-95% uranium that can be recycled, and the 2-3% intensely radioactive, but short lived, fission fragments. (Radioactivity is all but gone in 300 years from those fragments.) And each fuel assembly has non-fuel components like zircalloy cladding, stainless steel structural components.

The solution to waste is well known. Burn the longer lived stuff you separate by reprocessing and also get free energy from the plutionium recovered. Separate out the deadly radioactive fission products and vitrify them in glass and store them in containers so they will be largely inert in 300 years. Politics blocks it.

But we have to do it, because if we get lucky and get fusion to work for large scale power generation, the most efficient fusion reactor will have a blanket of U-238 areound it that fissions and makes more power and more fuel (plutonium) from fusion's fast neutrons from the tritium-deuterium reaction sent into the "blanket".

Unless you believe in unicorns, rainbows, and the ability of "conservation", flourescent lightbulbs,solar, wind, food crops, and blessed hemp oil and other products will preclude going that way.

Nuke critics tend to have no practical understanding of Nuke power, except for a cadre of Lefty scientists more concerned about misuse of civilian nuclear power than technical problems. The amount of waste by volume from a single coal plant is staggering, 5 million tons of CO2 annually from a large plant and 1.2 million cubic feet of ash with tens of tons of toxic heavy metals mixed into the ash.

A 1200 MWE nuke plant generates just 160 cubic feet of high-level waste (spent fuel in a year). Which would be down to 8-10 cubic feet plus storage containers if everything was recycled but the fission fragments and activated steel casings.

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But coal liquidification w/o CCS, which is in any case unproven? Really bad idea.
Posted by Jeff S

Obama is pushing coal and coal liquidification with the common sense observation that even if slightly higher than oil, we make it and get more energy independence and unstable OPEC nations get less money for Jihad.

Just one other big problem. I Would rather camp the rest of my life on Yucca mountain than be living anywhere close to a reservior of 5 million tons of CO3 undernath their feet (From a American coal plant "sequestering carbon).

Read about Lake Nyalo in Africa sometime about what happens when earthquakes or geologic, water conditions put a million tons of the deadly gas onto an inhabited land.

======================
Mass Immigation, not bigger cars, was the main factor in wiping out all our energy conservation gains of the 70s -90s. We all use less energy, on a per capita average, than people in 1972 did. But energy demand is up 30% from 1972.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 9, 2007 1:24 PM