Progress on energy.

Byline: The Register-Guard

After last November's elections allowed Democrats to regain control of the U.S. House, they promised to move the nation's energy policy away from oil and gas drilling and toward efficiency and cleaner sources of energy. Last week, they partially delivered on that pledge.

There's much to applaud in the 786-page New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security and Consumer Protection Act, which passed by a vote of 241-172. The bill includes a national renewable requirement, and allots funding for development of cleaner fuels and more efficient appliances, buildings and power grids. It would invest in developing methods to capture and sequester carbon emissions from refineries and coal burning power plants. Companion legislation also passed by the House would repeal $16 billion in tax breaks for the oil industry, and use some of that money to promote conservation, efficiency and renewables.

The renewable energy standard was not part of the original bill and was a welcome last-minute addition. It would require that 15 percent of electricity from private utilities come from solar, wind, geothermal or other renewable energy sources by 2020. At least 20 states already have renewable standards, and Oregon's, approved by the 2007 Legislature, is one of the toughest in the nation, requiring that the state's largest utilities obtain 25 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2025.

The new national standard would not pre-empt those of individual states, and it could provide an economic boost for Oregon's rapidly growing renewable energy industry, because it includes a provision that allows states to buy renewable energy credits from other entities to help meet the new requirements. A recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists predicts that a national renewable energy standard could generate as many as 350,000 new jobs, many of them located in rural regions of the country that are sorely in need of investment.

The nation's oil companies waged an all-out battle against the repeal of the billions of dollars in unnecessary tax breaks that Congress enacted in 2005, arguing that the move unfairly singled them out and would discourage energy production and drive up fuel prices. With the top four oil companies booking a combined $57.5 billion in profits in the first half of this year, such complaints lack any semblance of substance.

The bill's investment in the development of commercially viable carbon capture and sequestration technologies is a sleeper provision with immense potential. Given this country's massive coal deposits - so vast that the United States has been called as the Saudi Arabia of coal - finding a way to remove and store the prolific amounts of greenhouse gases produced by burning coal would have huge implications. Such technology also might be sold to other countries, most notably China, that rely heavily on coal-produced power, benefiting both U.S. industry and the worldwide fight against global warming.

But the House bill has some glaring omissions, most notably an increase in vehicle fuel efficiency standards. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow a vote on an amendment that would have boosted the standard to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 - the first increase in three decades. Pelosi did so to avoid a showdown with auto-state Democrats, in particular Michigan Congressman John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Pelosi hopes that the fuel efficiency increase will be restored in conference committee, when House and Senate leaders reconcile the House bill with a Senate version that includes a fuel-efficiency increase. But Pelosi's maneuver merely delays a showdown with Dingell, who will be a prominent and powerful presence in conference.

Finally, the energy bill fails to address the next major step that this nation must take in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - either a market-based cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax. Pelosi calculated correctly that the debate over such a proposal could have resulted in a meltdown that would have doomed the entire energy package. But eventually, Congress must tackle this difficult issue and make the hard choices necessary to slow the advance of global warming and reduce this nation's dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

Two rivers, two cities

But a House bill sidesteps fuel-efficiency standards

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