On Thursday the Senate voted (65-27) to pass the new energy bill(HR. 6 full text). In a move driven mostly by democrats they included a package of renewable energy and efficiency measures.

You might remember the last “clean energy” bill under the republican lead congress in 2005. It was the one in which Dick got in hot water for not telling who was on his energy committee. It was widely understood that the bill was written for oil companies by oil companies. Reading the bill its not hard to see why. It’s a literally money buffet for big oil and gas companies. This time however the main focus was on renewable and alternative fuels and efficiency. Something I welcome.

After a lot of fighting the senate created a bill that included:

much more after the fold.

A 10 mpg rise in corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. The first hike in over 2 decades. Car makers will have to average a fleet wide average of 35 mpg by 2020, a rise of about 10 mpg. The good thing is that this now includes SUV’s and trucks, something that CAFE didn’t include before. 35 miles per gallon isn’t that much, if they really wanted to be bold they would have gone to at least 45 mpg. However it took an 11th hour compromise just to get 35, my guess is big auto and big oil called in a lot of favors on this one.

A requirement to use 36 billion gallons of ethanol annually by 2022 – seven times what the industry produced last year. This seems to me to be a blatant handout to agricultural states. It does specify that at least 60% of those 36 billion gallons must be met by “next generation” biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol. Hopefully this will encourage the big players in ethanol right now to invest a lot of money to kick the corn habit so we can get away from the “food or fuel” issue. I am worried however that without the removal of the tax breaks for oil (more below) that there will not be much money around to provide incentives for such research.

Antigouging provisions that would make it a crime to charge “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other oil-based fuels. I thought this was a waste of time. In my opinion the high cost of oil and gas is a good thing. It reflects the true cost to the environment that burning fossil fuels cause. Artificially keeping fuel prices low is what got us into this mess in the first place.

New energy-efficiency standards for appliances and lighting. Efficiency is the low hanging fruit of conservation. These measures are years overdue. Making all lighting in America efficient would radically reduce our energy consumption. This is the best part of the bill in my opinion.

Grants and other incentives for research on fuel-efficient vehicles. More research is needed on battery technology to move away from internal combustion vehicles all together. I am not sure if the bill will effect electric cars.

I was very disappointed to see that a lot of really good amendments didn’t make it.

The bill leaves out a $28.5 billion tax on oil companies to help fund $32 billion in incentives for wind power, ethanol, and other renewable fuels. It also lacks the proposed requirement that power plants produce 15 percent of electricity from cleaner energy sources. Both of which would have been huge steps forward in the fight to move this country towards renewable energy.

“Democrats want to change the direction of energy policy in America, and we took good a great step toward that goal last night,” says Sen. Maria Cantwell (D) of Washington.

“While the bill provides marginal improvement in some energy-efficiency standards for appliances, it fails to make the comprehensive reforms needed to shift subsidies away from the coal, oil and nuclear industries to investments in home renewable energy and energy efficiency initiatives,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program. I have to say I agree with Tyson. I was happy that we didn’t have a repeat of the money hemorrhage for oil companies of two years ago, but global warming is not something that is going to wait around for us to baby step our way towards progress.

Republicans opposing the bill bitched that it didn’t do enough to deal with high gas prices. High gas prices reflect one main issue. High demand low supply. It’s a simple problem, and one that is going to get worse the more gas we burn. Every time you fill up your tank you are doing your part to keep gas prices high. If republicans want to do something about high gas prices they need to start putting up wind farms, solar panels, and encouraging the development of electric vehicles. Lets see OPEC raise the price of wind and sunshine. I say we let the oil companies price themselves out of existence.

Senate Republican Mitch McConnell had this to say about the bill. “This is really an anti-energy bill. It does nothing to bring down high gas prices; in fact, it would actually increase prices at the pump. It does nothing to increase domestic oil and gas production to make us less dependent on foreign oil,” he says.

It is just me or does this sound like lunacy? INCREASE domestic oil and gas production?! Our main concern should be to REPLACE oil and gas usage with clean renewable sources as fast as possible. If you are addicted to crack that is produced in another country (lets say Saudi Arabia), producing more crack at home is not going to help you kick the addiction. Crack kills people, crack kills.

20 Republicans joined 43 Democrats and two independents came together for the final vote, 4 Democrats and 23 Republicans opposed it. Want to see if your senator voted for this bill, check here Don’t like the way they voted, make sure you let them know about it.

The house is expected to build upon this bill with more money for renewable energy production, and if we are lucky even things like a renewable portfolio standard. The current bill is missing a lot. It leaves out any money for bad things like coal to fuel, and the expansion of nuclear coal or oil plants. However it also doesn’t address the massive energy waste in the industrial or construction industry. Overall this bill is a good start, but we can not afford to spin our wheels here, global warming will not wait around for us to dawdle on this issue.