"Little Energy Bill That Could" Gets Closer to Hilltop
It’s been nearly a decade since the last major piece of energy legislation passed the U.S. Congress, and the world of energy has seen dramatic change in the meantime.
But regulation and legislation in Washington, D.C., have not kept pace with these changes since 2007, before hydraulic fracking and solar and wind capacity began to grow dramatically. Instead, hyper-partisanship became the norm and froze nearly all policymaking in Congress. The only meaningful exception to this inaction could be seen at the end of 2015, when language to lift a 40-year-old ban on U.S. oil exports was combined with a five-year extension of production tax credits for wind and solar power.
Video: Interview with Sen. Lisa Murkowski
Now, Senate and House energy committee leaders want to see if lightning can strike twice by advancing an “energy repair bill” to tune up an American energy system whose current regulation is at times overbearing, derelict, or obtuse, and sometimes all three at once.
So far, two versions of an Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2016 have made it all the way through the Senate and the House and are on their way to a conference committee, where the two sides will hash out a compromise. The Senate bill passed in April, 85-12, and would increase the rate that liquefied natural gas export terminals get approved by the Department of Energy, would update building codes to improve efficiency, and reauthorize a $500 million per year conservation fund to support public lands.
The House bill passed in December by a vote of 248-175, but the measure has several provisions supporting oil, coal and natural gas production, prompting a veto threat from President Obama.
“We are waiting for the House to respond; there are some areas with different perspectives,” said Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who has been shepherding the bill through the upper chamber. “It’s the first time [since] 2005 to go to conference on an energy bill. It’s not the big, sexy process, it’s pretty methodical.”
Murkowski will be leading the conference committee, whose membership from both chambers has yet to be announced. The chances of failure are still large, given the recent history of bipartisan energy legislation that becomes weighed down and stalled by non-energy political events.
Last year, a separate bill targeting efficiency measures that will cut energy use in businesses and factories -- the Shaheen-Portman Efficiency Act – was undermined in the House when an amendment was attached banning the flying of the Confederate flag at federal parks.
And this year, political anger over the Flint, Mich., lead-poisoning crisis postponed floor action in the Senate for two months, which in turn has shrunken the amount of time available for the conference before the presidential nominating conventions take place in Cleveland and Philadelphia in July.
To get the bill passed by the Senate, Murkowski had to strip it of partisan elements, while making sure to deliver some necessary policies for her legislative partner, Maria Cantwell of Washington, the Energy Committee’s senior Democrat, to be able to build support within her caucus. For Cantwell, additional funding for energy research and increased attention to cybersecurity at Northwest hydroelectric facilities is what helped persuade her to support the bill. The inclusion of much of the Shaheen-Portman language likely increases the chances of a final passage, since efficiency policy has been a special focus of the Obama administration -- but 2016 is not a normal election year.
House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop of Utah is said to be unhappy with a number of Senate provisions, and would like to see Land and Water Conservation Fund money struck from the bill. But given the recent successful compromise over the oil export ban and the desire by many in Congress to earn themselves credit for doing something tangible during this election season, the odds that a bill could land on President Obama’s desk for his signature in the next six months are probably 50/50 -- pretty high considering the current political environment.
