It’s Getting Hot In Here

Ethanol train derailment in western Pennsylvania, Oct 2006… one of many.

Well, if you haven’t heard yet, we lost on the Energy Bill… big time. We won a whopping 35 mpg by 2020 CAFE standard… something appropriate if it were still 1970. We didn’t get the big boosts for renewables that were originally in the legislation (though the dirty energy in those sections got cut out with it, thank goodness). We DID get a huge five-fold increase in the ethanol mandate, which is going to mean massive food price hikes, more biotech crops, serious water and soil depletion and hundreds of additional communities being targeted for polluting 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.

OK… enough on the tragedy of the energy bill. Here’s what you can still affect:

There are still HUGE coal and nuclear subsidies in the Appropriations and Farm bills.

Continue reading ‘Still time to Stop Billions in Coal/Nuke Subsidies’

The Energy Bill is getting dirtier as it moves towards passage in the Senate. What started off as a combination of decent and dirty policies is losing some of its better aspects and picking up dirtier ones.

The Energy Bill promotes ethanol, coal, nuclear, landfills and incinerators. All of these policies will irreparably harm the communities who must live with these dirty energy sources. All the while, the best policies to promote wind and solar were just ripped out of the bill today.

For those seeking some of the dirty details on the ever-changing energy bill, see our website at: www.energyjustice.net/energybill/

Today, after removing the Renewable Electricity Standard from the bill to pick up 7 needed votes to break a filibuster, they still fell one vote shy of the 60 they need, so Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is going to pull out the tax package (that moves oil and gas subsidies towards renewables) and try again later today.

Some of the dirty aspects are going away along with the clean parts of this and the Renewable Electricity Standard. However, the main dirty aspects still present in the bill are:

• the massive 5-fold increase in the ethanol mandate
• the coal subsidies (the tax credit may go away, but at least the subsidies for carbon sequestration experiments will be in there)
• expansion of a nuclear industry liability cap

Other, related dirty energy subsidies that are urgently needing action (but on other bills) are:

• the attempt to put UNLIMITED billions in loans for new nuclear power reactors into the Appropriations bill [more on this below]
• the attempt to put coal-to-liquids in the Farm Bill

APPROPRIATIONS BILL:

The “Omnibus Appropriations Bill” (which funds the entire government to operate for 2008) is in negotiation right now. The House-Senate Appropriation negotiators have tentatively agreed to giving an UNLIMITED loan guarantees to the nuclear industry (no legally-binding cap).

While there’s no legal cap, the report language (indicating congress’s intent) is to spend these amounts:

• $25 Billion for new nuclear reactors
• $10 Billion for renewables
• $10 Billion for Coal-to-Liquids
• $2 Billion for Uranium Enrichment
• $2 Billion for Coal-to-Gas

It would also include Iraq War spending with no restrictions!

So… what are you waiting for? Call your senators NOW. Leave a message if you can’t reach someone. Let them know to vote NO on the current energy bill and to the blank checks for coal and nukes in the Appropriations bill!

Thanks!

Mike Ewall
215-743-4884
Energy Justice Network