[NukeNet] Energy Bill Update / Nukes in Appropriations Bill

[Mike Ewall]

Pick up the phone.  Call your Senators.  The Energy Bill that was 
voted down in the Senate this morning will be voted on again today.

"No on the Energy Bill"
"No Blank Checks for Coal and Nuclear in the Appropriations Bill"

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: http://www.energyjustice.net/energybill/

This morning, 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 the Price-Anderson nuclear industry liability cap

---------
This morning's cloture vote was a party-line vote with the following 
exceptions:

One Democrat voted NO: Landrieu (LA)

These 9 Republicans voted YES: Murkowski (AK), Grassley (IA), Lugar 
(IN), Collins (ME), Snowe (ME), Coleman (MN), Smith (OR), Thune (SD), 
Hatch (UT)

McCain (AZ) didn't vote and Sanders (I) voted YES with the Dems.
---------


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.  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
Energy Justice Network
215-743-4884
catalyst at actionpa.org
http://www.energyjustice.net


P.S. For those of you still in doubt... who may think the energy bill
is still something to support because big enviros say so, consider
this, from a personal email I got this morning from one of this
country's major solar and renewable advocates:

"with the dropping of the tax title by the Senate this morning,
there's no money to pay for the PTC [renewable energy production tax
credit], which would reward Utility-scale energy producers for
building renewable projects like wind farms."

"...the child is stillborn.  Renewable energy is dead.  The only
elements of significance left in the bill are CAFE standards for
automobiles and biofuels.  A whole year wasted."

[...and for those of us who think that 35 mpg by 2020 is terribly
weak and that biofuels are a human rights tragedy, it's even worse
than they put it.]