The Senate on Wednesday passed the first broad energy bill
since the George W. Bush administration, a bipartisan measure to better align
the nation’s oil, gas and electricity systems with the
changing ways that power is produced in the United States.
The bill, approved 85 to 12, united Republicans and
Democrats around a traditionally divisive issue — energy policy — largely by
avoiding the hot-button topics of climate change and
oil and gas exploration that have thwarted other measures.
Its authors, Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, chairwoman
of the Senate Energy Committee, and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the panel’s
ranking Democrat, purposely stepped away from any sweeping efforts to solve or
fundamentally change the nation’s core energy challenges.
Still, the measure, known as the Energy Policy Modernization
Act, would respond to the rapidly transforming energy landscape. It includes
provisions to promote renewable energy, improve the energy efficiency of
buildings, and to cut some planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution.
It would also speed the export of domestically produced natural gas.
House and Senate negotiators will now try to forge a
compromise between the Senate bill and a similar measure that passed the House
last year.
Passage would represent the first time since 2007 that a
significant energy bill reached the White House for the president’s signature.
“What we’ll be moving now is what was achievable in the
Senate,” Ms. Murkowski said in an interview. “Most people thought we couldn’t
achieve anything, but we have demonstrated that we can legislate — and we can
even legislate, oh my gosh, in an election year.”
Since passage of the last major energy law, the United
States has gone from fearing oil and gas shortages to becoming the world’s
leading producer of both fuels. The use of wind and solar power is accelerating
as those sources become cheaper than fossil fuels in some parts of the country.
And President Obama’s environmental regulations are reshaping power systems as
electric utilities close coal-fired power plants and replace them with
alternative sources.
But the nation’s energy infrastructure has not kept pace
with those changes.
The bill would promote renewable energy by requiring
operators of electricity lines, transformers, and other elements of the
electrical grid to upgrade the system, with a focus on large-scale storage
systems for electricity to better accommodate the expanding production of wind
and solar power. The bill would create and strengthen several programs devoted
to improving energy efficiency in buildings.
It would also deliver a long-sought victory to
conservationists by permanently authorizing the national Land and Water
Conservation Fund, a program for protecting and maintaining national parks and
wilderness sites.
It would give a victory to fossil fuel producers by
requiring the Energy Department to accelerate approval of permits to build
coastal terminals for shipping American natural gas abroad.
And it includes provisions to address the threat of
cyberattacks on the nation’s electrical grid.
“There’s so much change going on in the energy sector now,
we need to have an energy bill every year,” Ms. Cantwell said. “The speed of
the transition in energy now is like telecom in the ’90s.”
The bill has drawn support from a wide range of business and
environmental groups, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Alliance to Save Energy and the Pew
Charitable Trusts.
But some environmental groups offered only grudging
responses to the measure.
“This bill is the V.H.S. tape of climate policy: tolerable
in the ’80s or ’90s, but not in tune with the scientific realities of 2016,”
said Jason Kowalski, the policy director for 350.org,
an environmental advocacy group that led protests against the proposed Keystone XL oil
pipeline between Canada and the United States.
“We need Congress to get with the times and stop writing
bills that prop up the fossil fuel industry that’s wrecking our climate,” he
added.
Ms. Murkowski acknowledged that almost no one is completely
happy with the measure.
“To have a bill that everybody likes is not only unusual,
it’s just not going to happen,” she said.
The measure came to the Senate floor in January, but it
stalled for three months after Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan,
sought an amendment to provide $600 million to aid the victims of lead
poisoning in Flint. Mich., and deal with the ongoing water crisis there.
Republicans opposed her.
Last week, Ms. Stabenow and a handful of other senators
relented and lifted their blockade of the energy bill.
Ms. Stabenow said that she would continue to push for a vote
on the Flint aid.
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