Editorial: Bipartisan energy bill is too ambiguous to be achievment

It appears Congress finally found something they can all get behind.

But don’t let the newest piece of energy legislation fool you — they still haven’t.

On Wednesday, the Senate overwhelmingly approved a broad energy bill that includes numerous initiatives that aim to encourage renewable energy and updated infrastructure, but regresses on many other issues.

The bill, which is the brainchild of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, is 350 pages of various measures on the less contentious energy issues, such as cyber security for power plants, liquefied natural gas exports, energy efficiency in buildings and modernizing the grid.

While the bill may include initiatives that seem like strides in cleaning up the environment such as half a billion dollars of energy research spending, hydrokinetic energy demonstration projects and improving the electric grid, it’s lacking many big-ticket issues such as reducing the United States’ carbon footprint or combating climate change. The bill also repeals existing Department of Energy programs that aim to improve efficiency at manufacturing facilities, and delays and limits project reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, which contradicts the green and eco-friendly trajectory the bill sounds like it has.

And that’s why it propelled through the Senate.

This isn’t a clean energy or climate bill that signifies the advent of Congress’ mutual recognition of the need to transition to more environmentally friendly alternatives. It’s a facade that merely boasts a congressional unison to the tune of the clean energy crisis that Republicans in Congress have been so vehemently against.

If there was anything monumental proposed in this bill, it probably wouldn’t have passed the Senate without the usual partisan wrangling — we know better than to expect anything different.

We need to see this bill for what it really is and what it isn’t. It may have sent satisfied lobbyists home, but it shouldn’t do the same for us or our representatives.

House and Senate Republicans don’t have an agenda particularly aimed at achieving energy reform. Former Speaker of the House John Boehner, for example, voted “no” on enforcing limits on carbon dioxide global warming pollution through the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. The argument Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Virgnia, gave was that while the bill had important consequences in prescribing standards to define and measure electricity savings, it had devastating consequences on the future of the economy.

Current Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also voted “no” on another energy bill when he was a senator. In 2011, Ryan voted “no” to the New Direction for Energy Independence, National Security and Consumer Protection Act which would move forward energy independence and security and reduce carbon emissions, among other green initiatives.

This bill isn’t “too good to be true,” because it’s not too good. It’s faulty and hardly accounts for the issues that Republican members of Congress have voted “no” on.

Voting histories tell a story of little acquiescence on either party’s behalf. The senators who proposed this bill didn’t Trojan horse the bill through a less-than-cooperative red Senate. It simply bodes very little change, so little that it posed no threat to their agenda.

No, folks, this isn’t the crux of cooperation and productive discourse in achieving clean energy, so don’t throw in your towels quite yet.