Energy Bill: Something for Everyone, Everything for No One

The energy bill cometh. That was how The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein characterized the scene in Washington today—the start of the official debate about the nation’s plan to combat climate change and craft a new energy landscape. (You can read the full bill here, or an official summary here.)

There’s a lot in there, packed in tight. Nuclear proponents get the green light for new plants and research with $54 billion in federal loan guarantees. Renewable energy folks also get a boost with extended subsidies. There’s a directive to increase research on carbon capture and sequestration (a.k.a. clean coal), an intricate system to reduce greenhouse gases, and a full plan to integrate job creation at every step. Plus, about 15 pages in the 987-page bill address the hot-potato topic du jour: oil drilling, which will increase. But the difference is that states will be allowed to veto drilling projects within 75 miles of their coastline. And if that’s not enough, a revenue-sharing process will compensate coastal states for stomaching the risks.

The conventional wisdom since the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been that energy legislation is dead, primarily because drilling concessions would be needed to bring Republicans, and even some Democrats like West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller, on board, and that drilling's image was too soiled at the moment. But there’s an equally strong—and perhaps even stronger—argument that the gulf spill has greased the probability of energy legislation getting passed before November. That’s because after a two-month period that included a deadly coal-mine disaster and a devastating oil spill, the political winds are blowing in the direction of passing something—and almost anything would do—to change the high-risk and fairly low-reward way that we get energy.

Considering that the Kerry-Lieberman bill contains a little something for everyone, it’s likely to pass (although not without the obligatory food fight and face-saving charades that will morph the bills in minor ways). At the press conference to roll out the bill, Kerry stood beside Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn and proclaimed that he and colleagues were “closer than we've ever been to a breakthrough.” But that’s exactly what makes it not such a good bill. New wind and solar projects don’t have the intended “greening” effect when added drilling and coal mining also get the go-ahead. Nor does nuclear energy seem a silver bullet after the proposal to store waste at Yucca Mountain was scrapped last year and replaced with no plan other than “continuing research.” The aim to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 may sound good, but doesn’t actually avert the significant impacts of climate change. And the biggest snag: despite the name of the bill—the American Power Act—there’s nothing legally binding that mandates oil or natural gas drilled in the U.S. or off its coast to be sold in the U.S.

Environmentalists, who have been holding their collective breath since Obama’s inauguration, weren’t exactly thrilled with the Kerry draft. Only a few hours after a draft leaked last night, the Center for Biological Diversity fired off a statement calling the bill “a disaster.” Friends of the Earth called it “a step backward.” Neither are terribly surprising—after all, it takes a lot for the most die-hard tree hugger to endorse anything printed on paper coming out of Washington—but the bristles do speak to the difficulty of keeping the left on board. Ten senators urged Kerry in March not to expand drilling at all. That kind of bloodletting from the left would be worse in the House, which already passed a fairly strict cap-and-trade measure last year. Getting 218 votes could make health care look like a birthday party. When it comes to the future of the planet and the energy landscape, far fewer will be willing to compromise. In other words, this one’s about policy, not politics.

Already, there are signs of how the bill will transform. Interior states will argue that drilling revenues should be shared equally among everyone. Wind and solar trade groups will claim that if they still have to compete with cheap fossil fuels, they’ll need extra subsidies. And environmentalists, as they often do, will repeat the refrain that if we’re serious about transitioning to sustainable and domestic power over years and not decades, well, then something’s gotta give.