Senate Swaps Energy Bills to Break Partisan Deadlock

by Bill Williams

Faced with stiff opposition to the Republican energy bill from Democrats, and time running out before Congress' annual August recess, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) turned to the version he felt had a better chance of passing — the Democrats' version. In an unusual twist that surprised all observers, the Senate passed a bill identical to the one passed by Democrats in 2002.

At that time, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed a comprehensive energy bill, but Congress adjourned before differences could be worked out between the Senate version and a version passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. As with all pending legislation, the bill died when the 107th Congress adjourned for the year.

After picking up seats in the 2002 elections, Republicans now control both Houses of Congress. In the weeks leading to Domenici’s action, the House of Representatives had once again passed energy legislation, but the almost evenly divided Senate had not been able to agree on several contentious issues and so its bill seemed doomed to fail again this year. Enter Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). The Democratic Minority Leader, facing perhaps a tough reelection campaign for the first time in years, and eager to see ethanol subsidies signed into law, offered a compromise solution to Sen. Domenici: the Senate would substitute the language passed in 2002 for the language in this year’s bill and schedule a vote on that. The compromise worked and the bill passed by a surprising 84-14 margin.

The Differences Are Varied

Final passage of an energy bill is far from a certainty. A joint House-Senate Conference Committee now has the daunting task of working out considerable differences between the House-passed version and the Senate-passed version. For example, the House version contains a divisively controversial provision that would open 2,000 acres in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, while the Senate version does not. On the other hand, the Senate version includes a mandate for utilities to produce 10 percent of their electricity by renewable resources by the year 2020; calls for the creation of a new White House Office on Climate Change; and if utilities do not satisfy certain emission goals in five years, now-voluntary registry of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions will become mandatory. It also contains provisions that strengthen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) control and oversight of energy markets, provisions not included in the House bill.

Other notable Senate bill provisions include repeal of the Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) and the Public Utilities Regulatory Policies Act (PURPA); doubling the use of ethanol as a gasoline additive; and expediting approval and construction of a natural gas pipeline in Alaska. As the majority party, the Republicans will be able to determine how the two bills are reconciled, so the final version of the bill will likely resemble the House version more closely when it passes out of the Conference Committee. The reconciled version would then go back to each chamber for final approval before it could be signed into law.

Meantime, following passage of the Democrats' version, Sen. Domenici announced plans to write into the conference report the production, diversity and research provisions contained in  the Energy Policy Act of 2003 (S. 14), which the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee crafted under his leadership. “This deal is not how I envisioned getting an energy bill to conference,” Domenici said, “but if it gets us closer to our goal, I consider it a win.”

“I look forward to chairing the conference on this bill,” Domenici added. “I promise you we will write many of this year’s energy provisions into the bill at conference. We will do more for production. We will do more for energy diversity. We will do more for research. The final bill will look more like what I produced in committee (last) spring than it will the bill we are passing tonight. Tonight’s bill is just a vehicle to get us to conference.”

IEEE-USA Supports Reliability Standards in H.R. 6

This summer's Northeast Blackout, which affected some 50 million people in the northeastern United States, and parts of the Midwest and Canada, underscored the urgent need for Congress to enact stronger electricity reliability standards for utilities. Despite the differences between the House and Senate energy packages, IEEE-USA supports electric reliability provisions included in both, and encourages U.S. IEEE members to contact their members of Congress and ask them to support the electric reliability provisions contained in the Energy Policy Act of 2003, H.R. 6 (both House and Senate versions are now referred to as H.R. 6). Those provisions call for formation of a non-governmental electric reliability organization with the authority to enact and enforce rules to ensure transmission system reliability and security.

IEEE-USA Policy Forum

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Bill Williams is IEEE-USA’S legislative representative for Technology Policy Activities.