Senate Energy Bill

After blogging on the House energy bill a couple of months ago, I noticed that the Senate energy bill narrowly passed a bill with a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) yesterday, 52-48.  Plus, the Finance Committee passed a $14 billion tax incentive package for energy efficiency and alternative fuels.  However, the Senate rejected a bill 53-47 that would have required us to reduce our oil imports by 40 percent over the next 20 years.  Articles in the Washington Post, and in the New York Times here and here, today summarizing the debate, or at least the rehearsed quotes of the various leaders from each party.  Knowledge Problem, the energetic economist, has a short post on ethanol.

Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) offers a predictable criticism of the idea of a federal energy policy as an intrusion into states' rights: “It imposes a one-size-fits-all mandate on the whole country”.  I suppose that he thinks that we're fighting a war in Iraq as individual states, also.  Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) throws in the obligatory, hoary gas-tank analogy: “The Bush administration is running on empty when it comes to our nation's energy policy,” though I like his follow-up: “As long as America's energy needs are tied to the interests and profits of oil cartels, we have no control over our future.”  Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes a cartel.

Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) makes some weirdly mocking comments about the Segway: “I envisioned everybody this summer or next year traveling with their little Segways - two or three piled on each one - going out to the Nationals' games.”  This was his prepared quote presumably about the impact of the energy bill on transportation, and seems in keeping with his political personality, which is generally humorless, controlled, and generally off-topic, as in a “I'm-trying-too-hard-to-indicate-my-dislike-for-liberals” way.  His unnatural, contortionist efforts to play to the conservative base, if not so dull, would be amusing -- do you think he keeps his Princeton and Harvard degrees in the closet?

There's an interesting reference in the NYT article about Senator Robert Byrd's (D-WV) calling attention to a “Government Accountability Office [GAO] study that characterized the nation's energy policy as a vast assortment of uncoordinated programs with few clear ways to measure their effectiveness” (NYT).  The abstract of the report can be found here, with links to the entire report in pdf format.  The report describes the huge number of policies:

“Over 150 energy-related program activities and 11 tax preferences address eight major energy activity areas: (1) energy supply, (2) energy's impact on the environment and health, (3) low-income energy consumer assistance, (4) basic energy science research, (5) energy delivery infrastructure, (6) energy conservation, (7) energy assurance and physical security, and (8) energy market competition and education. At least 18 federal agencies, from the Department of Energy (DOE) to the Department of Health and Human Services, have energy-related activities.... ”

“While DOE reports that most of the 2001 NEP [National Energy Policy, May 2001] report recommendations are implemented, it is difficult to independently assess the status of efforts made to implement these recommendations because of limited information and the open-ended nature of some of the recommendations themselves. For example, the NEP report recommended the development of energy educational programs, including possible legislation to create education programs funded by the energy industry. However, DOE's January 2005 status report on NEP implementation provided only an overview of federal energy education efforts and made no mention of possible legislation to create such programs. In addition, some of the recommendations are open-ended and lack a specific, measurable goal, which makes it difficult to assess progress. Without a specific, measurable goal, it can be difficult to understand how and to what extent activities are helping to fulfill a recommendation.”

This is actually something I find myself thinking about quite a bit: how do we get government to meet its goals?  Somebody said something to me terrific a few weeks ago, and I find myself thinking about  how to implement the point of it:

“We know that government agencies can hit their environmental targets when they want to.... but how do we get them to want to do it all of the time?”

I can't get out of my head the importance of clear principles and strategies for translating government intentions into action, and asking myself, what are the simple, easy-to-make and easy-to-communicate arguments about energy, or about environmental issues in general?  For energy, good places to start are energy security, energy efficiency, and global warming.