Members of Congress remain on Thanksgiving recess this week, but staff for the energy committees and leadership is working to complete a slimmed-down version of the "energy independence" bill in the hope that it will be brought to the House floor when Members return the first week in December. If successful, the bill/conference report would then move to the full Senate for consideration.
The bill will likely NOT contain a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) or a tax title, as both apparently are too controversial to win the 60 votes needed in the Senate to avoid a filibuster.
The House bill contains an RPS that exempts federal, municipal and cooperative utilities. The Senate bill is silent on an RPS, but Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) still supports a program that would draw in municipal and cooperative utilities that sell more than 4 million megawatt hours of energy per year at retail. Despite Bingaman's strong support for the RPS, however, it seems he still has not been able to attract the votes needed for it to pass in the Senate.
The tax title in the House bill is controversial because it gives tax incentives to a range of renewable energy technologies, and "pays for" those incentives by eliminating existing incentives for the oil and gas industry; there is no tax title in the Senate bill. The Senate Finance Committee approved a package that "pays for" renewable incentives in a similar fashion, but it was prevented from becoming part of the bill by Senators from oil and gas states. This has prompted a number of Senators to say that they will not vote for the bill if the House tax title is included.
Still part of the bill are provisions that would mandate an increase in: production of alternative fuels, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for vehicles, and efficiency standards for additional large appliances, among other provisions.
Decisions about the fate of the bill are being made primarily by the offices of the House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader. Although things are still in flux, we believe that if the leadership wants to pass any "energy independence" bill this year, it will have to drop the more controversial matters, like an RPS and a tax title, and move to pass a narrower package.