Under a law that President Bush signed in 2007, the Department of Energy on Jan. 1, 2012, was supposed to begin enforcing a ban on the incandescent bulbs that Thomas Edison perfected 132 years ago.

But the House and Senate’s massive spending bill to yet again avert a federal government shutdown includes a rider that will prevent the lightbulb rules from taking effect until at least October. Proponents of the lightbulb legislation promote it as an easy and logical way to improve the nation’s energy efficiency, but, to others, the law smacks of textbook government overreach.

Aficionados of the pear-shaped lights are stocking up on them at Home Depot — which reports lightbulb sales are up 10 to 20 percent over a year ago — and elsewhere before they fade away.

In Texas, the legislature passed a bill permitting the manufacture and sale of the traditional bulbs within its borders even though there is not a single lightbulb factory in the state.

Over the summer, a bill to repeal the energy-efficiency standards died in the House. Reps. Diana DeGette, Jared Polis and Ed Perlmutter, all Colorado Democrats, opposed it. Reps. Scott Tipton, Doug Lamborn, Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman, all Colorado Republicans, favored it.

Now there is a reprieve for the incandescent bulbs, but it may be too little, too late.

Even if Republicans are successful in further pushing back the efficiency standards that the incandescent bulbs don’t meet, the industry is already moving forward with a focus on compact fluorescent, halogen and light-emitting diode versions. With many of the world’s other leading nations also phasing out the old energy-guzzling bulbs, companies are investing in newer technologies.

Democrats, along with lightbulb manufacturers such as General Electric Co. and environmentalists, are urging for new rules to take effect sooner than later, citing energy and cost savings.

“If America is to have a rational energy policy, we need to make progress in efficiency,” Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said in a prepared statement. “Blocking funds to enforce minimum standards works against our nation getting the full benefits of energy efficiency.”

Speaking at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition event on Saturday were Atlanta businessman Herman Cain; U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann; Texas Gov. Rick Perry; former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich; U.S. Rep. Ron Paul; and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. About 1,000 people attended the  group’s 11th annual fall banquet at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Tickets were $55.

Cain said if he had to choose one energy-related decision to change, he would have allowed people to decide what light bulbs to use in their homes.

“America believes in choice,” he said. “Green energy is a joke. You ought to be able to pick what light bulbs you want.”

Bachmann called the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve “the most perfect place in the world to drill for oil,” and said “God has given us such a tremendous gift” through the country’s energy resources.

“I want to open up American energy production and be the leader in the world and be the head and not the tail,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann also called for shutting down the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy, saying tasks performed by those agencies should be left to the states. And she said the moratorium on deepwater drilling is worse than the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“The one that has really hurt the economy in the most devastating way is the moratorium that President Obama put on after the oil spill that occurred,” Bachmann said “There was devastation that occurred because of the oil flow that occurred but there was nothing that was worse than the moratorium that he put on.”

Perry went after the deepwater oil drilling moratorium as well, saying it’s the most devastating energy policy from the current administration.

“This president has killed more jobs with his regulatory schemes that have gone forward and that knee-jerk reaction of stopping drilling and that is some of the fastest things that we can turn around with a new president,” he said.

He also called for more domestic energy production and limiting the roll of the EPA, saying he has a plan to make America more energy secure.

“The idea…that we would send hundreds of billions of dollars offshore to countries that are hostile to our future is nonsensical to me,” Perry said.

Gingrich advocated for replacing the Environmental Protection Agency with what he called an environmental solutions center, and said he would make permanent any kind of tax credit for wind and solar energy and continue development of crop-based fuels.

“This is the most anti-American energy administration in history and it’s just unbelievable,” he said.

Paul didn’t call for eliminating the EPA but did say he’d get rid of the Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior. And Santorum called for drilling “anywhere we can” and cutting all energy subsidies, saying he believes the ethanol industry can compete on a level playing field.

“There’s either a deliberate attempt by this administration to destroy the energy future of our country or they’re just simply incompetent,” he said.

The letter is addressed to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and United States Trade Representative Ron Kirk.

Markey asks whether the administration has determined whether China is in fact blocking rare earth mineral exports to the United States (China has denied the reports) and what implications a a shortage of the minerals would have on national security and clean energy technology. Rare earth minerals are used in key military communications and smart bomb technology as well as in wind turbines and hybrid vehicles.

Markey also said he was planning on having a hearing on the issue.

For background on the rare earth mineral issue, see the following posts:
Obama Administration Says It Will Investigate China’s Green Tech Trade Policies
China Dismisses U.S. Investigation of Its Green Tech Trade Policies as Midterm Politicking
Report: China Blocking Rare Earth Mineral Shipments to U.S.
DOD Near Completion of Report on Military’s Use of Rare Earth Minerals

Here’s the letter, via The Hill.

Michigan Republican candidate Dan Benishek promotes the "4Rs" in a campaign ad. (Benishek for Congress)

Dan Benishek, a Republican favored to win the congressional seat in Michigan’s First District, has loads of ideas for reducing the federal deficit. “The Department of Energy was created in the 1970s to make us energy independent, and look at us now,” he said. “So what is its purpose, then?” He also sees potential savings in American military bases in Germany. “We’ve had troops in Germany for the last 60 years. Are the Germans contributing to the price of those troops? I don’t know all the answers but I know we need to look at all that.”

[GOP1] Republicans are expected to gain around 50 seats in Congress in next month’s midterm elections, largely running on a platform of deficit reduction. But interviews with a number of Republican candidates who are likely to join the House of Representatives in January reveal that while they have a wealth of creative ideas to cut federal spending, their plans are often lacking in details or far too limited to bring about the level of deficit reduction the candidates are calling for so forcefully on the campaign trail.

“Consolidate Commerce, Agriculture and Interior into one agency with elimination of duplicate services,” suggested Trey Gowdy, a Republican likely to win South Carolina’s Fourth District seat, in an email relayed by his campaign manager.

“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — we can find 30 billion worth of cuts there,” said Steve Chabot, who is favored to win back his old congressional seat in Ohio’s First District. “We also shouldn’t hire those 16,000 new IRS agents required under the new health care bill.”

“I support increased competition in the educational system by giving tax credits to families that send their children to private or choose to home school,” Marlin Stutzman, who is favored to win in Indiana’s Third District, suggests on his website as a solution to the “federal government’s mind-set of spending its way out of trouble.”

“Operational audits,” added Benishek. “A lot of departments aren’t doing their jobs efficiently, and in private companies, you’d audit their procedures. For instance, Fed Ex — they monitor their procedures all the time. We do audits but we don’t do the same kind as in the private sector.”

But some experts say that the areas in which these candidates are advocating cuts — mainly non-defense discretionary spending in the federal agencies — are precisely the places where cuts are the most difficult to find and the least meaningful in terms of deficit reduction.

The problem with the plans that focus on consolidating federal agencies and making them more efficient, said Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, is they distract from real debates about the role of government. “The idea that we can simply rearrange things and reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies is engaging a lot of wasted energy.”

In addition, most candidates advocate taking spending back to 2007-8 levels, which, though politically expedient because it conjures up the pre-Obama era, don’t represent as significant a reduction in the deficit as candidates are claiming. “They’re trying to say, ‘Let’s go back to pre-stimulus levels,’” said DeHaven. “Unfortunately, that’s going back to the decade when Congress shot spending though the roof. And they’re only talking about non-defense discretionary spending, which is a very small portion of federal spending.”

And the approximately $100 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary spending that Republicans are proposing represents a “big piece of a rather small pie,” says DeHaven, meaning they’d be especially difficult to find. As a result, many Republican House candidates, while eager to tackle the federal deficit, were reluctant to list specifics about their plans to do so and offered few details when pressed.

“Bill supports reducing overall [non-defense discretionary] spending to 2007/2008 levels and ensuring it remains one percent below inflation until the budget is balanced” was all that a spokesman for Bill Flores, a Republican favored to win the House seat in Texas’ 17th District, was willing to offer via email in response to a query about which aspects of the budget Flores would most like to see cut.

“Just look at the website — all the issues are up there,” said a spokesman for Steve Stivers, who is likely to win in Ohio’s 15th District. “You can easily see what Steve Stivers is all about.” (Stivers’ website pledges to “work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to stop this reckless behavior. I will work to pass a line item veto law, cut discretionary spending and stop adding to our national debt.”)

A few GOP hopefuls said that spending on programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — which together now represent approximately 40 percent of the federal budget and are expected to continue growing as the population ages — would have to be scrutinized, but they offered many caveats about their plans for doing so.

“We do need to look at entitlements, realizing of course that there are a lot of people who rely on our current system,” said the campaign manager for Tom Reed, who is favored to win the open House seat in New York’s 29th District. “So a promise made must be a promise kept, but for future generations we need to look at what levels they’ll be at down the road.”

“I’m in favor of personal [savings] accounts,” said Benishek, “but [I want to] guarantee that they don’t lose any money.”

Steve Griffin, who is leading the House race in Arkansas’ Second District, proposes reforming entitlement spending on his campaign website but also opposes privatizing social security or raising the age at which one qualifies for benefits. (He did not respond to repeated requests for more details about his plan.)

Facing serious criticism from Democrats on the issue of privatizing social security, most GOP candidates, however, have steered clear of the issue of entitlements and focused on one-time budget cuts and other popular GOP talking points about repealing Obama-enacted legislation like the stimulus and health care.

“I don’t think it’s realistic to believe that Congress is going to make those cuts to Social Security,” said Chabot of Ohio. “It’s not going to happen, so to act like it’s going to happen is just going to scare seniors, which is what Democrats do in every election.”

The biggest cut that Chabot proposes would be to withhold the remainder of the Obama administration’s stimulus package, which the candidate estimates would represent a one-time savings of approximately $250 billion. In addition, he’d like to repeal the health care reform bill, which many Republicans argue will add to the deficit, despite a Congressional Budget Office estimate that the act will reduce the deficit by more than $100 billion over the next ten years.

“I don’t like the savings that they found in there,” Chabot said. “They went after the Medicare Advantage plan that’s been proven to work and be popular among seniors. To cut that is a big mistake, and I don’t buy that they’re going to make these cuts anyway.”

For all their worries about spending and deficits, GOP candidates argue for the extension of the Bush tax cuts, even though Congressional Budget Office estimates predict that a permanent tax extension will force the nation to borrow an additional $3.9 trillion over the next decade. The candidates argue that an extension would stimulate the economy, and that higher incomes would help offset the lost government revenues.

“The problem isn’t that we’re under-taxed,” said Chabot. “The problem is that we overspend. When you reduce taxes, most of that revenue will come back through the resulting growth in the economy. It happened under a Democrat, John F. Kennedy, and a Republican, Ronald Reagan.”

Speaking at a meeting on deepwater oil drilling blowout containment today, Salazar said, according to his prepared remarks:

To achieve our objective of safer offshore energy production, we must eliminate the gap between the technology and knowledge that allows oil and gas companies to tap reserves beneath 5,000 feet of water – and the technologies and strategies that allow us to deal with emergencies at those depths.

Salazar also said the meeting would help shape upcoming Interior Department regulations on offshore drilling.

Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) unveiled a proposal Tuesday to increase use of renewable energy. (Flickr, Auntie K)

A bipartisan coalition of senators today unveiled a proposal that would require a certain percentage of the country’s electricity to come from renewable sources like wind and solar. The announcement revived hopes that the measure could move this year, but it remains unclear if there is enough time or political will in the Senate to pass the legislation this session.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has not committed to setting aside floor time for the proposal this year. And the bill’s author, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), told reporters today that he would wait to cement the necessary votes before approaching Reid to schedule a vote.

Renewable energy advocates and environmentalists praised the announcement, while noting that the renewable energy standard, or RES, is not stringent enough. The last six months have been difficult for environmentalists, who faced a string of legislative defeats — first on economy-wide cap-and-trade, then on a narrow cap-and-trade bill. And now there are legitimate questions about whether the Senate will be able to pass a slimmed-down energy bill or an oil spill response bill, even after the mid-term elections.

So the RES announcement was, for many environmentalists, a welcome respite from months of disappointment. Sean Garren, clean energy advocate at Environment America, said, “Senator Bingaman’s renewable electricity standard would commit America to beginning the move towards a clean energy economy.  While the standard is weaker than America can and should achieve, the Senate must pass the bill quickly to deliver to the entire country the benefits that states with standards are already enjoying.”

The bill, which is sponsored by Bingaman and Sam Brownback (R-Kans.), has early support from a number of Democrats, including Sen. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.). Two other Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and John Ensign (Nev.), also lent their support to the proposal.

The proposal, which is nearly identical to a provision in an energy bill passed by Bingaman’s Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year, requires that 15 percent of the country’s electricity comes from renewable sources by 2021. Entities can meet the standard by producing or purchasing renewable energy like wind, solar, biomass and some hydropower. They can also meet the standard through energy efficiency savings. The RES will not affect state programs, many of which are more stringent than the federal proposal, according to a summary of the bill.

But a 2009 analysis of a similar RES proposal by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a research arm of the Department of Energy, found that it likely won’t increase renewable energy development beyond a business-as-usual scenario. The analysis is based on Bingaman’s original 20 percent by 2021 RES proposal, which was cut down to 15 percent to win support from Republicans on the committee.

Bingaman said he believes he has the 60 votes necessary to pass the new RES bill. “I think that the votes are present in the Senate to pass a renewable electricity standard,” he said in a statement. “I think that they are present in the House. I think that we need to get on with figuring out what we can pass and move forward.”

Franz Matzner, climate center legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the RES proposal “doesn’t deliver the goods the way we’d like to see it.” The bill is a “band aid” measure, he says, arguing that the Senate needs to move on comprehensive climate change legislation. But Matzner says, “If this is the best place we can get bipartisan agreement, it’s better than getting nothing done.”

It’s too early to say whether the bill will be able to pass the Senate this year. There are very few legislative days left before the Senate breaks for the mid-term elections, and it’s unclear how long a lame-duck session might be. “They could have an eight-hour lame-duck session or they could have a productive two weeks or they could sit and do nothing,” Matzner says.

Reid’s spokeswoman, Regan Lachapelle, notes there is very little time left in the year to pass the RES bill. “Senator Reid strongly supports a national renewable electricity standard,” LaChapelle says. “But, there is very limited time before the October recess and probably even during the lame duck, so the proponents of a stand-alone RES will need to demonstrate they have 60 votes for swift floor action before floor consideration could be scheduled.”

One environmentalist — who has been closely following the issue but is not authorized to speak on the record — said passage of the RES could be dependent on whether it moves as a stand-alone measure or is packaged together with other provisions. At the same time, the environmentalist says, much will depend on the outcome of the mid-term elections. “The bigger the Republican success on election day, the less likely anything will be accomplished during the lame duck session,” the environmentalist says.

Many environmentalists have called for a 25 percent RES by 2025, but before the August recess a coalition of renewable energy advocates endorsed the Bingaman 15 percent RES, noting that it was the only proposal that could win bipartisan support. “In this political climate, we have to do what we have to do,” American Wind Energy Association President Denise Bode told reporters in July.

Why the decrease in coal consumption? EIA suggests that it was part of a broader decrease in electricity generation that resulted from the economic downturn and weather.

The decline in coal consumption during the year was the consequence of the domestic economic conditions combined with the weather in 2009, which resulted in lower demand for electricity. Preliminary data show that total generation in the electric power sector (electric utilities and independent power producers, including useful thermal output) in the U.S. decreased in 2009. Coal-based generation also decreased, resulting in a 104.0 million short ton drop in coal consumed in the electric power sector.

According to The Hill:

[T]he economic development organization for Coles County, which houses Mattoon, rejected the idea Wednesday.

“It is with great disappointment that I must inform you that the citizens, neighbors near the site, business leaders, and community leaders in Coles County are nearly unanimous in the belief that the pursuit of FutureGen 2.0, as proposed, is not in our best interest,” said Angela Griffin, president of Coles Together, in a letter to Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).

As I explained last week, DOE announced plans to create FutureGen 2.0 by retrofitting a coal-fired power plant in Meredosia, Ill., with “advanced oxy-combustion technology,” and that it would dedicate $1 billion of funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to the project. Mattoon, the original site of FutureGen, was given a consolation prize. The concentrated carbon dioxide produced in Meredosia will then be transported through a pipeline to a new carbon storage facility in Mattoon.

The now-defunct FutureGen project — which, if completed, would have been a near-zero emissions coal-fired power plant — was seen by many experts as the nation’s test-case for whether the country can adequately capture and store harmful greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants.

This Thursday in Wilmington, N.C., officials from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the government agency responsible for overseeing the country’s nuclear energy activities, are slated to present a report laying out the environmental impacts of a proposed uranium enrichment facility, a key step in approving the facility’s license. While NRC staff will spend nearly five hours in Ballroom 5 of the Warwick Center at the University of North Carolina going over the details of their report, it is what they won’t discuss that has arms control advocates worried.

[Security1] Advocates are focusing their attention on the proposed General Electric Hitachi uranium enrichment plant in Wilmington to shine a spotlight on what they see as a systemic flaw at the NRC: The commission does not conduct broad assessments of the proliferation concerns associated with licensing projects.

The proposed facility would, if successful, use laser technology for the first time to enrich uranium to power commercial nuclear reactors. Arms control advocates say that commercialization of the technology in the United States could lead other countries to follow suit, raising concerns about the technology falling into the wrong hands. Countries like Iran and South Korea have worked in the past to develop laser enrichment programs, and the experts fear successful commercialization of the technology in the United States would prove the technology’s viability and lead them to redouble their efforts.

There are a number of lingering questions surrounding the technology. Arms control advocates say it is unclear just how easy it would be to produce highly enriched uranium, which is used to make nuclear weapons, with the technology. And they worry that laser enrichment facilities could be difficult to detect for purposes of inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the group responsible for enforcing nuclear safeguards.

“The benefits might be worth the risks,” said James Acton of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “But the problem we have at the moment is we don’t know what the risks are. We don’t know how serious or significant they are. There’s just no way to make an informed decisions.”

The NRC and the Department of Energy have no mandatory framework for answering these questions, the arms control advocates say. While the Energy Department has conducted voluntary assessments of proliferation risk in the past, the NRC has long maintained that it does not need to conduct such an analysis.

GE Hitachi, for its part, maintains that the Energy Department and the State Department have “been tasked” with considering proliferation risks of the project, but the company could not provide any details on the results of any such assessment. The NRC, though it maintains that a separate proliferation assessment is not warranted, says that it follows a number of procedures to “guard against the unauthorized transfer of the technology.”

Responding to a Jan. 20 letter from Tom Clements, Southeast nuclear campaign coordinator for Friends of the Earth, the NRC said the commission “considers a nuclear nonproliferation impact assessment outside the scope of the agency’s statutory responsibilities.” The letter — signed by Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards Director Michael Weber — notes that the NRC already “limits the availability of special nuclear material”; “controls proliferation of sensitive technologies, both information and equipment, through physical protection, personnel security, information protection, and export controls”; and “participates in international activities to control nuclear materials, technology, facilities and equipment.”

Clements, in an interview with TWI, said the unwillingness of NRC to conduct a proliferation assessment “reveals a dangerous double standard, in my opinion, that the U.S. is more concerned about the proliferation risk of other countries and not from U.S. technology and materials which in the long run may pose global proliferation risks.” Clements, who is a staunch opponent of nuclear power, said the Energy Department has voluntarily prepared proliferation assessments in the past, but there is no requirement to do so.

“The lack of proper review of the proliferation risk of nuclear technologies is a problem endemic with both the NRC and [the Energy Department],” Clements said. “I am not aware of any requirement for the preparation of a document assessing the proliferation risk of U.S.-origin nuclear technologies.”

Miles Pomper, senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, says that other countries are more likely to begin to adopt laser enrichment technology if GE Hitachi is able to demonstrate its success on a commercial level. The federal government needs to determine what the proliferation risks are if other countries begin commercializing this technology, he said. “What we’ve really been looking for is just someone to take this into account before moving forward with the technology,” Pomper said. “There’s no kind of studies, there’s no kind of action in terms of the government or others doing anything about this.” Pomper added that the Energy Department has no “formal responsibility” for conducting such an assessment.

Pomper, along with a number of other arms control advocates, signed on to a Sept. 30, 2009, letter to the NRC raising questions about the proposed laser enrichment facility. “Given the great difficulty of detecting laser isotope enrichment facilities, their spread could undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts and the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear activities,” the letter said.

Acton, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, raised similar concerns. Although he says he is not “ideologically opposed” to laser enrichment technology, he pointed to what he calls the “follow the leader” effect. “Once one country tries to commercialize a technology like laser enrichment, if it does so successfully, it’s more or less inevitable that other countries are going to follow,” he said.

Acton laid out two main questions that need to be answered in a proliferation assessment. The first is how easily the technology can produce highly enriched uranium, which is used in nuclear weapons. The second is whether laser enrichment facilities would be difficult to detect and inspect if they were used in other countries like Iran. Acton said it is very difficult to detect the presence of nuclear centrifuge plants for the purposes of inspection.

“So, what about laser enrichment? Would a small, secret laser enrichment plant be easier to detect than a centrifuge plant? If the answer is yes, I’m not particularly worried about it,” Acton said. “If it’s harder to detect than a centrifuge plant, it would add to our problem very significantly.”

Michael Tetuan, a spokesperson for GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, said “protecting this technology is obviously our highest concern.” He also said that both the State Department and Energy Department “have been tasked with looking at the proliferation aspects of this,” but he was not able to offer any further details on what specifically the departments considered. Tetuan also said that much of the information is likely classified, leaving little opportunity for the public to evaluate the proliferation risks.

Responding to the concerns, David McIntyre, an NRC spokesperson, said, “The idea that U.S. development of laser enrichment technology would set an example that other countries would follow presupposes that other countries would be able to procure or develop the technology.”

NRC’s current procedures ensure against proliferation, McIntye said. “NRC limits the availability of special nuclear material; controls proliferation of sensitive technologies, both information and equipment, through physical protection, personnel security, information protection, and export controls; and participates in international activities to control nuclear materials, technology, facilities and equipment,” McIntyre said. He also noted that the government conducted an assessment of the proliferation risks of laser enrichment technology when it negotiated an agreement with Australia to allow use of the technology in the United States.

“As to whether U.S. development of laser enrichment capacity will set an example for other countries to follow, that is a policy question for the president, other federal agencies such as the Department of State, and the Congress,” McIntyre said.

A spokesperson for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry’s trade association, directed requests for comment to GE Hitachi. An Energy Department spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

Anti-nuclear activists are already raising concerns about an extension of the DOE program, arguing that the loan guarantees put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars. The program currently has $18.5 billion in loan guarantee authority, more than $8 billion of which has been set aside for a nuclear project in Georgia. The $25 billion in new authority would allow DOE to offer loan guarantees to projects on its unofficial short list, which many in the industry say includes projects in Texas, South Carolina and Maryland.

An Appropriations Committee spokesperson did not know when the bill would come before the full committee.