President Obama and Senate Democrats have committed to pursuing an energy bill this month with limited climate change initiatives. But where the actual components of the bill come from is still up in the air.
Two new bills were unveiled this week by separate groups of Democratic Senators in an effort to influence the pending energy package.
Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) introduced the Securing America’s Future with Energy and Sustainable Technologies Act (SAFEST), which establishes a renewable electricity standard (RES) of 25% renewable energy by 2025.
It would also include an energy-efficiency resource standard of 1% per year, as well as incentives for developing biofuels and biofuel infrastructure, and targets for the availability of advanced vehicle technologies.
Recent studies indicate that the RES in the bill could create more than a quarter-of-a-million clean energy jobs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% in 2020, Klobuchar’s office said in a release.
The proposed RES is stronger than the one passed by the U.S. House last summer, and is set at a level that would thrill the renewable energy industry.
U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Tom Carper (D-Dela.), Tom Udall (D-N.M), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) have introduced the Oil Independence for a Stronger America Act with a goal of reducing oil consumption in the U.S. by over 8 billion barrels per day by 2030.
The bill includes steps to ramp up production and use of electric vehicles, increase travel options and improve infrastructure, develop alternative transportation fuels and reduce the use of oil to heat buildings. It also would create a National Council on Energy Security, housed in the White House, to ensure a sustained focus on reducing the use of oil.
Ulitmately, the energy package taken up by the Senate will fall short of the promise President Obama made in Copenhagen last December to cut U.S. emissions 17% by 2020. And it’s unclear whether or not the EPA will move forward with greenhouse gas regulations, if a scaled back cap-and-trade program is passed into law.
But passage of even less ambitious carbon measures is anything but certain. Winning even a few Republican votes is a long-shot, and numerous Democrats still resist the idea.
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