Final Senate Energy Bill Includes Many DRIVE Act PHEV Prrovisions
Jun 26, 2007 (From the CalCars-News archive)

Our high hopes for the Senate's energy bill have
been partially achieved. The petroleum reduction
targets are in; many of what we've been reporting
on for over a year as the provisions of the DRIVE
Act are included. And the carmakers found
long-time allies deserting them to support an
increase in the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) Standard.

However, though the consumer tax incentives for
PHEVs we described last week passed the Finance
Committee (along with limited credits for
conversions), the entire Finance Amendment never
made it into the Energy Bill. Rrenewable energy
programs were to be financed by lifting oil and
gas tax incentives, which the Chamber of Commerce
and the petroleum industry were able to block.

At least the non-tax PHEV programs, including
demonstration projects, are included. In the
midst of al this, Senate Majoritiy Leader Harry
Reid held a press conference focsing largely on
PHEVs and EVs, and the Prius and Escape PHEVs
from A123Systems were mentioned in quite a few reports on the event.

Next we see what happens in the House, which will
consider its own package including tax
incentives, but it is likely to be governed by
the same "Pay-As-You-Go" (now called "Pay-Go") policy.

Below we reprint Set America Free's report
(thanks Anne Korin for that and the update
above), followed by NYTimes Columnist Thomas
Friedman's evaluation of the Energy Bill and a
few pointers to more info on the Energy Bill.


Victories on the road to energy security
http://www.setamericafree.org/safupdate062207.htm
June 22, 2007

CAPTION: Senator Reid press conference Sen. Reid,
Sen. Kerry, Gal Luft, and representatives of
Tesla, A123, and the Electric Drive Transportation Assoc.

After weeks of deliberations (and at times
squabbles), the Senate passed an energy bill
which includes many provisions of the bipartisan
DRIVE Act based on the Set America Free
Coalition's Blueprint for Energy Security. By a
vote of 63-30, the Senate approved the DRIVE
Act's oil savings amendment, which directs the
Executive Branch to identify within 9 months, and
to announce within 18 months, federal
requirements in order to achieve a 2.5 million
barrel-per-day reduction in U.S. oil consumption
by 2016, a 7 million barrel-per-day reduction by
2026, and a 10 million barrel-per-day reduction
by 2031; and direct the Office of Management and
Budget (OMB) to publish an analysis identifying
the oil savings projected to be achieved by each
measure to be announced, and demonstrating that
the listed measures will achieve the overall
specified oil-savings. The amendment also
includes specific requirements for the Executive
Branch to evaluate, review, and update the action
plan. Click here to see how your Senators voted
on this provision. "The passage of this amendment
is a key victory in the battle to break America's
dependence on foreign oil and strengthen our
national security," said Senator Joe Lieberman,
who along with Senators Bayh, Brownback, Coleman,
and Salazar was a key architect of the legislation.

The Senate's energy bill, titled The CLEAN Energy
Act of 2007, includes most of the DRIVE Act's
provisions to advance the commercialization of
plug in hybrids and the use of electricity in the
transportation sector, critical for reducing oil
dependence since today hardly any U.S.
electricity is generated from oil. An amendment
that added these provisions to the bill was
passed by unanimous consent. On June 20 Set
America Free's co-chair Gal Luft joined Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senators John
Kerry and Evan Bayh as well as three leaders in
new energy technologies for a press conference to
discuss how energy-efficiency can sharpen America's competitive edge.

"We have the technology to become a more
energy-efficient nation, and we should embrace
it. Said Sen. Reid in front of two plug in
hybrids brought to the Capitol by A123 Systems, a
car battery developer, "Becoming a leader in new
energy technologies will sharpen America's
competitive edge, strengthen our security and
protect our environment." Sen. Kerry concurred:
"Plug-in car technology offers a blueprint for
clean, efficient, affordable driving if the auto
industry is willing to listen. I don't know of
anyone who isn't interested in getting 150 miles
to the gallon with their car, and that could soon
be a reality." Luft said: "Plug-in hybrid
electric vehicles allow Americans to use
made-in-America electricity rather than Middle
East oil. Since we no longer produce electricity
from petroleum, there is no better way to
strengthen America's security and remove the yoke
of our oil dependence than the electrification of our transportation system."

The CLEAN Energy Act also includes requirements
to produce 36 billion gallons a year of a variety
of biofuels by 2022 (a sevenfold increase over
production in 2006,) an increase in automobile
fuel economy standards and a requirement to
establish and implement an action plan to ensure
that 50 percent of the vehicles for sale in model
year 2015 are alternative fuel vehicles.

The legislation's path to passage is far from
complete. The House of Representatives is
considering its own version, which so far also
includes many provisions of the DRIVE Act.
Congressmen Dingell, the Chair of the House
Energy and Commerce Committee, issued a statement
earlier this week saying that for now his
committee will focus on issues around which
consensus can be achieved, avoiding some of the
more controversial items that the Senate took on.
How the two chambers will reconcile the
non-trivial differences between their approaches
is an open question. We will keep you posted as this develops.

PSA on board
Our friends at the Partnership for Secure America
(PSA) joined the chorus of security groups
calling for energy action. In a luncheon on
Capitol Hill Senator Gary Hart and Set America
Free's Robert McFarlane announced the
Partnership's energy statement. The statement's
signatories included, among others, three former
Senators, a former Congressman, a former
Secretary of State, two former Ambassadors, and
two former National Security Advisors. To read the statement click here.



The Capitol Energy Crisis
Op-Ed Columnist THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The New York Times June 24, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/opinion/24friedman.html

When you watch a baby being born, after a
difficult pregnancy, it is so painful and bloody
for the mother it is always hard to tell the
truth and say, “Gosh, that baby is really ugly.”
But that’s how I feel about the energy
legislation passed (and not passed) by the Senate last week.

The whole Senate energy effort only reinforced my
feelings that we’re in a green bubble — a
festival of hot air by the news media, corporate
America and presidential candidates about green
this and green that, but, when it comes to
actually doing something hard to bring about a
green revolution at scale — and if you don’t have
scale on this you have nothing — we wimp out.
Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we
are really doing something about it.

No question, it’s great news that the
Democrat-led Senate finally stood up to the
automakers, and to the Michigan senators, and
said, “No more — no more assisted suicide of the
U.S. auto industry by the U.S. Congress. We’re
passing the first bill since 1975 that mandates
an increase in fuel economy.” If the Senate bill,
which now has to go through the House, becomes
law, automakers will have to boost the average
mileage of new cars and light trucks to 35 miles
per gallon by 2020, compared with about 25 miles per gallon today.

But before you celebrate, pay attention to some
fine print in the Senate bill. If the
Transportation Department determines that the
fuel economy goal for any given year is not
“cost-effective” — that is, too expensive for the
car companies to meet — it can ease the standard.
That loophole has to be tightened by the House,
which takes up this legislation next week.

But even this new mileage standard is not exactly
world leading. The European Union is today where
we want to be in 2020, around 35 miles per
gallon, and it is committed to going well over 40 m.p.g. by 2012. Ditto Japan.

There are other things that make the Senate
energy effort ugly. Senate Republicans killed a
proposed national renewable electricity mandate
that would have required utilities to produce 15
percent of their power from wind, solar, biomass
and other clean-energy sources by 2020.
Twenty-three states already have such mandates.
No matter. Making it national was too much for the Republicans.

And the Senate, thanks again to the Republicans,
also squashed a Democratic proposal to boost
taxes on oil and gas companies that would have
raised some $32 billion for alternative fuel projects.

Despite all the new research on climate change,
the Senate didn’t even touch the idea of either a
cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax to limit
carbon dioxide emissions. An effort by Senator
Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota to legislate a
national reporting (“carbon counter”) system to
simply measure all sources of greenhouse gas
emissions, which would enable a cap-and-trade
system to work if we ever passed one, also got
killed by Republicans. We can’t cap and trade something we can’t measure.

Here is the truth: the core of our energy crisis
is in Washington. We have all the technology we
need right now to make huge inroads in becoming
more energy efficient and energy independent,
with drastically lower emissions. We have all the
capital we need as well. But because of the
unique nature of the energy and climate-change
issues — which require incentives and regulations
to build alternatives to dirty, but cheap, fossil
fuels — you need public policy to connect the
energy and capital the right way. That is what has been missing.

“We have to work to ensure that the House will at
least toughen the provisions that the Senate
passed,” said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s Global Warming Program.

The public wants it. But energy policy gets
shaped in the halls of Congress — where wily
lobbyists, legacy industries and politicians
greedy for campaign contributions regularly sell
out the country’s interests for their own. Only
when the public really rises up — as it has
finally done against the auto companies — do we
even get moderate change. Don’t look to the Bush team to lead the revolution.

“We are the only major country in the world where
no one even knows the name of the environment
minister — the head of our Environmental
Protection Agency,” said Representative Edward
Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat. “Whoever it is
— and most people don’t even know if it is a he
or a she — has been in a six-year witness
protection program. Until the Democrats took
over, no Bush E.P.A. administrator appeared
before the House committee in charge of energy and climate change.”

Folks, we’re home alone. So call your House
member — especially the Republicans. If you don’t, some lobbyist will.

To see more on the Energy Bill, at Joe Romm's Climate Progress blog:
http://climateprogress.org/2007/06/23/the-media-comments-on-the-energy-bill/
http://climateprogress.org/2007/06/22/energy-bill-grade-b/
and Green Car Congress:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/06/senate-passes-e.html