EcoTech Today

Passing a energy bill through the White House is no easy task. The Senate and the House each passed their own versions of the energy bill in the past few months, so now we’re waiting on the Democratic leaders to appoint a committee to figure out how to meld these two versions of the bill into one. Sounds like that’d be pretty simple to do, right? Um, not exactly.

“Unfortunately … it doesn’t appear that we will be able to get a conference,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday. “But … that doesn’t mean we won’t be going forward.”

(Good luck Pelosi, you’ll need it.)

The new plan is that Democratic leaders will hold closed-door talks to draft a new energy bill they hope can win approval in both houses of Congress. Pelosi said earlier this week she hopes to pass an energy bill by year’s end.

These bills are designed to standardize the amount of electricity utilities are required to get from renewable sources (that’s called a “renewable portfolio standard,” or RPS). These standards are currently mandated by the states, and not every state has an RPS right now.

The bills also set aside varying amounts of money for cleantech research and production. Where does that money come from? Well, that’s one of the big causes of the controversy and the delay. The version of the bill passed by the Senate earlier this summer asks to repeal almost $16 billion in tax breaks to oil companies, and would redirect a portion of that to clean energy programs. Not everyone is thrilled with that idea.

Yet another subject of controversy is the CAFE standard for cars, which would raise the average fuel economy standards for automakers. Of course, most of the automakers aren’t happy about that.