UPDATE: House Passes Energy Bill!

By a vote of 235-181, the House passed an energy bill that repeals $13 billion in tax breaks to oil companies and promotes renewable energy.

"We will send our energy dollars to the Midwest, not the Middle East," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while Republicans voiced concern over government mandates and higher energy prices.

After thirty years of gridlock, corporate resistance, and political neglect, can our leaders pass an effective energy bill? Given $3 a gallon for gasoline, the inescapable realities of global warming, a Democratic majority in Congress, and the  support of auto-industry ally John Dingell, the answer is:

Maybe.

After days of tense  negotiations, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on Friday that she had reached an agreement with Michigan Democrat John Dingell that could lead the way to a 35 mpg fuel efficiency standard by 2020. Dingell is a powerful Detroit lawmaker who has long been an advocate for car manufacturers, and a staunch opponent of increased fuel efficiency standards.

With Dingell’s support, the proposed bill “appears certain to win the support of majorities in the House and Senate” says the LA Times . If it does, the 2008 Energy Bill which could be markedly different than the legislation passed by Republican Congress in 2005 with its emphasis on “increased production of oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear power.” This bill focuses instead on raising energy efficiency, and promoting cleaner fuels.

“This landmark energy legislation will offer the automobile industry the certainty it needs, while offering flexibility to automakers and ensuring we keep American manufacturing jobs,” said Pelosi.

A Senate bill passed in June containing the same mileage requirements and timeline, however, was opposed by Detroit automakers and Toyota on the same grounds they’ve been using for years: it will cost jobs, raise prices, limit choices, and be unsafe. Chrysler executive Tommy LaSorda claimed it would add $6000 – almost 40% - to the cost of their cars.

But those arguments have become increasingly difficult to make at a time when the public is hungry for fuel-efficient vehicles, every company out there is scrambling to put alternatives on the road, and pollution has moved from being a health hazard to a full blown global crisis.

When Congress mandated in 1974 that fuel-efficiency reach 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985, they stuck to it. The problem is that 1985 has come and gone, while fuel-efficiency is still stuck in the past. The only thing that has changed is the invention of the SUV, a monster passenger vehicle disguised as a truck to avoid the efficiency regulations. Which is why the  fleet average for SUV’s - and thus a large part of the American car market - hovers at 22.5 miles per gallon.

With the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling earlier this year that SUV’s were plainly passenger vehicles, and striking down their fuel-efficiency exemptions; and California and other states suing the EPA for the right to control pollution, it appears that neither the courts nor the congress will be willing to buy auto-industry objections for much longer.

In fact, Ford CEO Alan Mulally stated on Monday that Ford is confident it can meet the new standards. “Our commitment is to improve the fuel efficiency of all the vehicles no matter what the size,” he told auto workers. “We have to do it, and we have the best people in the industry getting ready to do it,” he said.

Of course, ‘getting ready,’ to make improvements and promoting vehicles and that are perenially ‘coming soon’ is another staple of industry rhetoric. We’d all be driving plug-ins and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles if the predictions made just a few years ago had come to pass.  But if Pelosi and Dingell can persuade Senators to go along with them, they hope to have a bill on the President’s desk in the next few weeks. If he signs it, then auto-companies may once again be held responsible for increasing the fuel-efficiency of their vehicles.

Those are two big ‘ifs’ however. But environmentalists were hopeful over the weekend. Phyllis Cuttino, director of the Pew Charitable Trusts Campaign for Fuel Efficiency, said in a statement Saturday, “Senators and representatives will return to Washington next week after spending two weeks at home with very angry constituents who are facing record-high gas prices. They are hearing a simple message. Do something.”

And Sierra Club lobbyist Melinda Pierce told the LA Times “I can’t imagine that President Bush can veto a bill that Congress has passed, the automobile makers have signed off on, and the American public is clamoring for.” But the President has shown he is able to support unpopular policies, and willing to veto popular ones more than once.

There are still some sticking points that will need to be hammered out before the 2008 Energy Bill can reach the President’s desk:

    - Whether to mandate that utilities generate greater amounts of solar and wind power
    - How much support will be given to farmers to grow ethanol
    -What incentives will be put in place for other bio-fuels.
    -whether to grant controversial credits to manufacturers for vehicles which are capable of running on biofuels with no guarantee that they actually are.
 
On another tricky issue, Representative Dingell had fought to make sure the EPA will not be allowed to override the new bill with its own (perhaps less stringent) plan to reduce emissions; nor to claim that the new bill supercedes its authority, and that it therefore can’t regulate emissions. The EPA is expected to rule on California’s emission standards in the next few weeks.

As the longest serving member of the House, and a voice at the heart of this controversial issue for decades, John Dingell knows the twists and turns of politics as well as anybody. On Saturday, he said , “We probably have a pretty good compromise. Because not everybody is satisfied with everything.”

Still, the fact that the issue is being raised at all represents progress. Representative Ed Markey is Chair of the new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, created at Pelosi's urging in March to address an issue that had gone virtually unmentioned by the Republican congress. “A 35-mpg standard is something that just a year and a half ago most people in Washington thought would never see the light of day,” said Markey.

The new energy bill has a bit of travelling to do before it sees the light of day, but lets hope that when it does it takes a strong stand for efficient use of clean, renewable, domestic energy.

photo courtesy of watthead