2007 Energy Bill

Look Before You Leap!

Decem­ber 13, 2007

Help STOP Sub­si­dies to the Ethanol, Coal, Land­fill, Incin­er­a­tor and Nuclear Industries!

WE LOST. Late in the day on 12/13/2007, the Sen­ate passed the bill in an 86–8 vote. It’ll soon coast through the House and be signed by res­i­dent Bush. The bill passed with­out the tax sec­tion and with­out the renew­able elec­tric­i­ty stan­dard. These omis­sions gut­ted some of the best aspects of the bill as well as some of the bad parts we high­light below. How­ev­er, the ethanol man­date passed, rep­re­sent­ing a major tragedy for all of the com­mu­ni­ties that will be impact­ed by this. Many hun­dreds of addi­tion­al com­mu­ni­ties are now going to become tar­gets for ethanol biore­finer­ies, includ­ing “advanced” bio­fu­els, which will include even more use of biotech­nol­o­gy and which will clear our forests and crop lands to liq­ui­date them to fuel vehi­cles. Even more trou­bling is that much of this will cre­ate a demand to try to turn trash, sewage sludge and oth­er con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed waste streams into liq­uid fuels. We’re already busy enough try­ing to help com­mu­ni­ties fight these things and our work is going to get FAR big­ger. The more we suc­ceed in stop­ping these insane “bio­fu­el” schemes in the U.S., the more we’ll end up import­ing it and con­tribut­ing to defor­esta­tion and glob­al hunger in oth­er coun­tries …and on the CAFE stan­dard, it is NOT worth it. 35 mpg by 2020 is a joke. With­out doing any­thing, the sus­tained high price of oil alone would do more to change the fleet of what (or IF) peo­ple choose to dri­ve 12 years from now. Take one look at the price trend on oil and this should be self-evi­dent. 35 mpg was a good idea for the 1970s. Any seri­ous goal for 2020 needs to be more around 60 mpg (or rather zero mpg, since we should­n’t be burn­ing gal­lons of any­thing, but should be using clean elec­tric­i­ty for the reduced amount of vehi­cles we should have by then).

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No Ethanol Mandate!
Clean Electricity for Vehicles, NOT Dirty “Renewable” Fuels!

ACTION: Cut out the Renew­able Fuels Stan­dard …and don’t just move it into the Farm Bill!

TALKING POINTS: The five-fold increase in “renew­able fuel” use, man­dat­ed by the bill, will con­tin­ue to dri­ve up food prices, while con­tribut­ing to water and soil deple­tion, the spread of biotech crops, pol­lut­ed ethanol refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties and will fur­ther our reliance on import­ed fuels and fer­til­iz­ers, bring­ing on rain­for­est destruc­tion and star­va­tion in poor coun­tries. We urge the Sen­ate to remove the ethanol man­date and replace it with an equal­ly strong pol­i­cy to sup­port clean mass trans­porta­tion and elec­tric vehicles.

Corn-based ethanol plants are made pos­si­bly only with large amounts of coal, oil and gas, and import­ed fer­til­iz­ers made with nat­ur­al gas. Cel­lu­losic ethanol is even less effi­cient, paving the way for dirty “trash-to-ethanol” plants and oth­er pol­lut­ing, biotech-rid­den exper­i­ments. The U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture does­n’t even expect cel­lu­losic ethanol to be com­mer­cial­ly viable for at least anoth­er 5–6 years. We can’t afford to wait for these inad­e­quate and dirty fuels while we can be invest­ing right away in elec­tric vehi­cles which are many times more effi­cient, and can be pow­ered with clean wind and solar power.

Title II of the ener­gy bill includes the Renew­able Fuel Stan­dard (Sec 202) plus many oth­er sub­si­dies to burn­able agri­cul­ture- and waste-based fuels. We urge the removal of sec­tions 202–203, 207, 221–227, 229–234, 241–246, 248 and 1521–1527 — and urge that the fund­ing for these pro­vi­sions be used to enhance the fund­ing for the tran­si­tion to use of elec­tric vehi­cles. For details on what the bill requires, see Title II start­ing on page 68 of the ener­gy bill.

MORE INFO:

• Ethanol Fact­sheet
• Cel­lu­losic Ethanol (Alter­na­tive Fuels) Factsheet
• Biodiesel Fact­sheet
• Biodiesel Real­i­ty Check
• Prob­lems with Agrofuels
• Rain­for­est Action Net­work’s Agro­fu­els campaign

Elec­tric Vehi­cles and Plug-in Hybrids:

• Cal­Cars
• Plug In Partners

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No Coal!

ACTION: Cut out the bil­lions in sub­si­dies for build­ing new coal gasi­fi­ca­tion pow­er plants and for the “car­bon cap­ture and stor­age research, devel­op­ment and demon­stra­tion pro­gram” which includes 7 large-vol­ume car­bon seques­tra­tion tests. Remove coal tech­nolo­gies (coal gasi­fi­ca­tion and more) from the renew­able ener­gy tax cred­it extension!

TALKING POINTS: There is no such thing as “clean coal.” It all relies on the same old dirty min­ing and still pro­duces tox­ic emis­sions and wastes. Nature fig­ured out that the best way to sequester car­bon is to leave fos­sil fuels in the ground. We can’t even store sol­id nuclear wastes for 50 years with­out leak­age. There’s no way we’ll be able to per­ma­nent­ly bury tril­lions of tons per year of a gas under­ground and not have it leak out and suf­fo­cate near­by com­mu­ni­ties. The car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion fund­ing specif­i­cal­ly sup­ports new coal pow­er plants, which ought to be can­celed, not sup­port­ed. Coal min­ing and waste dis­pos­al will nev­er be clean, even if the smoke­stacks are. “Clean coal” plants aren’t eco­nom­i­cal and are being can­celed left and right.

The entire Car­bon Cap­ture and Seques­tra­tion Title (Title VII — Sec­tions 701–714) as well as the Title XV (Sec­tions 1507–1512) should be removed from the ener­gy bill.

The inclu­sion of coal in the renew­able ener­gy tax cred­it exten­sion was added by the sen­ate’s new ver­sion on 12/12/2007, and will ben­e­fit the “spray the coal with chem­i­cals for a tax cred­it” scam and may even include IGCC (as it includes “gaseous” fuels from coal). See the IRS Sec 45 tax code if you’d like to under­stand the new ver­sion of the ener­gy bill that updates it.

MORE INFO:

• “Clean” Coal Factsheet
• Why Car­bon Seques­tra­tion Won’t Save Us

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Landfills and Incinerators are NOT Renewable Electricity Sources!

ACTION: Remove sup­port for land­fills and incin­er­a­tors (includ­ing the “bio­mass” vari­ety) from the major renew­able ener­gy poli­cies in the bill: the Renew­able Elec­tric­i­ty Stan­dard (Title XIV), the exten­sion of the Renew­able Ener­gy Pro­duc­tion Tax Cred­it (Sec 1501), and the Ener­gy Effi­cien­cy and Con­ser­va­tion Block Grants (Sec 544. 11 and 13(D)).

The Renew­able Elec­tric­i­ty Stan­dard should have a spe­cif­ic set-aside for solar tech­nolo­gies (as sev­er­al state laws have), since with­out one, solar will not ben­e­fit from the pol­i­cy. The Renew­able Ener­gy Pro­duc­tion Tax Cred­it exten­sion is a great idea, but return it to its orig­i­nal pur­pose — sup­port­ing zero-emis­sion clean renew­ables like wind — not sup­port­ing trash, poul­try waste and land­fill gas burning.

TALKING POINTS: Incin­er­a­tion is the dirt­i­est option for man­ag­ing trash, wood waste, ani­mal waste and land­fill gas. Burn­ing crops and trees in the guise of “bio­mass” is not clean, envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able or even nec­es­sary. Sup­port­ing these tech­nolo­gies along­side wind pow­er will harm the mar­ket for wind and encour­age waste indus­tries, log­ging and more abuse of agri­cul­tur­al lands. Europe, the World Bank and the Inter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change have all con­clud­ed that the best way to avoid green­house gas pol­lu­tion from land­fills is to keep organ­ic waste out of them to avoid cre­at­ing methane — not by cap­tur­ing mar­gin­al amounts of gas from them. Incin­er­at­ing trash, poul­try waste and land­fill gas is about as dirty as burn­ing fos­sil fuels and can be even worse by some mea­sures, includ­ing green­house gas pollution.

DETAILS:

Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit

Good News:

• The tax cred­it won’t be extend­ed for “refined coal” or “Indi­an coal” in the House ver­sion. (Facil­i­ties burn­ing either of these fuels will still ben­e­fit from the cred­it if they start oper­a­tions by 1/1/2009.) The Sen­ate ver­sion dis­con­tin­ues only the “Indi­an coal” credit.
• The tax cred­it will be extend­ed for four years (until 1/1/2013) instead of the usu­al two year exten­sions and will apply to wind pow­er, solar ener­gy and small irri­ga­tion pow­er. (It’ll also apply to many dirty sources — see below).

Bad News:

• The Sen­ate’s new ver­sion on 12/12/2007 extend­ed the renew­able tax cred­it to “refined coal” which includes the “spray the coal with chem­i­cals for a tax cred­it” scam and may even include IGCC (coal gasi­fi­ca­tion or “clean coal”).
• The cred­it will be extend­ed for new or expand­ed trash incin­er­a­tors, land­fill gas burn­ers and many forms of “bio­mass” (includ­ing poul­try waste incin­er­a­tion).
• The Sen­ate’s new ver­sion on 12/12/2007 expands the trash incin­er­a­tor def­i­n­i­tion to include even MORE types of trash incin­er­a­tors (gasi­fi­ca­tion, plas­ma, pyrol­y­sis and oth­ers — as long as they gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty from trash somehow).

See the IRS Sec 45 tax code if you’d like to under­stand the new ver­sion of Sec­tion 1501 of the the ener­gy bill that updates it.

Renewable Electricity Standard

[Update: On 12/12/2007, the Sen­ate’s “com­pro­mise” bill dropped the Renew­able Elec­tric­i­ty Stan­dard entire­ly, in order to try to pick up the extra votes they need to sup­port the bill.]

Good News:

• Trash incin­er­a­tion was­n’t includ­ed as a renew­able ener­gy source (but was still sup­port­ed with a “qua­si-renew­able” sta­tus; more below)
• Fos­sil fuels and nuclear pow­er did­n’t get put into the pol­i­cy, as some very mis­guid­ed state laws of this sort have (in PA, VA and NC).
• A few of the dirt­i­est and most dam­ag­ing forms of “bio­mass” incin­er­a­tion were not includ­ed (or were explic­it­ly exclud­ed), such as burn­ing tires, treat­ed wood and wood from cer­tain forests sources.

Bad News:

• Solar pow­er won’t ben­e­fit since it’s in com­pe­ti­tion with a bunch of tech­nolo­gies that are cheap­er. Sev­er­al states solved this in their state renew­able laws by cre­at­ing a spe­cif­ic min­i­mum require­ment for solar power.
• Poul­try waste incin­er­a­tion: the bil­l’s lan­guage was altered (prob­a­bly with the lob­by­ing help from Fibrowatt) so that burn­ing “ani­mal waste or ani­mal byprod­ucts” counts as renewable.
• Land­fills sub­si­dized: the inclu­sion of land­fill gas means that land­fills will receive sig­nif­i­cant sub­si­dies, help­ing them under­cut the mar­ket for wind as well as their clean com­pe­ti­tion in the waste reduc­tion, recy­cling and com­post­ing sectors.
• Bio­mass incin­er­a­tion: more forests will fall, more abu­sive monocrop agri­cul­ture will be feed­ing indus­tri­al burn­ers, tox­ic con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wood prod­ucts will slip into boil­ers, pol­lut­ing com­mu­ni­ties despite efforts in the bill lan­guage to avoid this.
• Exist­ing trash incin­er­a­tors and hydro­elec­tric dams — while not includ­ed as renew­able ener­gy — still ben­e­fit, since their ener­gy pro­duc­tion is not sub­ject to the renew­able elec­tric­i­ty stan­dard. This is a tricky way of grant­i­ng “qua­si-renew­able” sta­tus to these tech­nolo­gies, cre­at­ing the incen­tive to keep these facil­i­ties oper­at­ing. The def­i­n­i­tion of “retail elec­tric sup­pli­er’s base amount” (p800 of the ener­gy bill) excludes these tech­nolo­gies, mean­ing that the per­cent­age require­ment (15% by 2020) is cal­cu­lat­ed based on all elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion minus ener­gy pro­duced from these sources. This is the same sneaky trick that Vir­gini­a’s renew­able ener­gy law cre­at­ed with regard to nuclear pow­er. Because hydropow­er and incin­er­a­tion total about 8% of our elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply, this waters down (par­don the pun!) the 15% goal, mak­ing it a “13.8% by 2020” stan­dard. This loop­hole will pre­vent many more wind farms from being built.

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants

These grants should not include sub­si­dies to land­fills or “bio­mass” incinerators.

MORE INFO:

• Land­fill Gas Factsheet
• Poul­try Waste Incineration
• Poul­try Waste Incin­er­a­tion Com­pared to Coal
• Trash Incin­er­a­tion

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No Nukes!

ACTION: Sec­tion 206 of the ener­gy bill calls for a study of pro­vid­ing cred­its for use of renew­able elec­tric­i­ty to pow­er elec­tric vehi­cles. This is a great idea, but the bill requires that they also study the use of nuclear pow­er for this pur­pose, which is utter­ly ridicu­lous. This lan­guage — Sec 206©(2)(B) — ought to be deleted.

Sec­tion 934 expands the Price-Ander­son Act (a fed­er­al cap on nuclear indus­try lia­bil­i­ty in the case of an acci­dent) to addi­tion­al nuclear activ­i­ties (includ­ing those over­seas). This is yet anoth­er — quite sig­nif­i­cant — nuclear indus­try sub­sidy which ought to be com­plete­ly removed from the bill.

[VICTORY on bil­lions of nuclear loans… so far. The $50 billion/year loan guar­an­tee lan­guage was cut out of the ener­gy bill, but Sen­a­tor Domeni­ci (R‑NM) is now plan­ning to include $25 bil­lion in tax­pay­er loan guar­an­tees in the upcom­ing Fis­cal Year 2008 appro­pri­a­tions bill. There’s also been talk about amend­ing it into the renew­able sec­tion of the Farm Bill. Keep read­ing for more info on this.…]

Cut out the $50 bil­lion in loan guar­an­tees for new nuclear reac­tors. Cut out all oth­er sup­port for nuclear pow­er (includ­ing Price-Ander­son lia­bil­i­ty lim­i­ta­tions) …and no try­ing to sneak the loans into the Farm Bill!

The $50 bil­lion pro­vi­sion not only would help finance new nuclear reac­tors, but would allow mon­ey to be appro­pri­at­ed with­out annu­al con­gres­sion­al bud­getary oversight.

TALKING POINTS: Nuclear pow­er is not clean, safe or afford­able ener­gy. It can’t be built in time to solve our glob­al warm­ing cri­sis, even IF there were enough ura­ni­um left and IF nuclear pow­er did­n’t release radioac­tive pol­lu­tion and cre­ate unman­age­able wastes. We should­n’t be throw­ing bil­lions of dol­lars at a “mature” industry.

TARGETS: Mem­bers on an Appro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee should receive spe­cial atten­tion. These Mem­bers have the most to lose polit­i­cal­ly from the loan guar­an­tees: a) they would lose pow­er if the guar­an­tees are removed from the annu­al appro­pri­a­tions process; b) they will be the first to be blamed if util­i­ties default on the loans — and remem­ber that the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Office pre­dicts 50% of the loans in this pro­gram will default, which would cost tax­pay­ers bil­lions of dollars.

MORE INFO:

• Nuclear Pow­er Factsheet
• Nuclear Ener­gy Economics
• Ener­gy Bill Loan Guar­an­tee Backgrounder
• Ener­gy Bill Loan Guar­an­tee Pro­vi­sions Summary
• Stay updat­ed through our NukeNet Email List