Lawmakers could either pass or stall a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks in Iowa as early as next week. House File 5, passed by a subcommittee to the Iowa House this week, was drafted in response to the intentions of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, an abortion doctor in Nebraska, to open a clinic performing late-term abortions in Iowa. The bill would ban abortions after 20 weeks. Current state law prohibits abortion procedures after 24 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases where the mother’s health is jeopardized.

Twenty-four weeks is considered by many doctors to be the time when a fetus is typically developed enough to live outside the womb.

Other pro-life bills have been voted down this session, including House File 153 or the “Personhood Bill,” which would mandate the state to recognize life starting at conception, and consequently limiting access to birth control and services to treat complications like ectopic, or tubal, pregnancies. This caused some Republicans, who wanted to see abortions at all stages of pregnancy illegal, to give half-hearted support to the late-term abortion bill.

However, House File 5 specifically states life would be considered to start at conception, not 20 weeks, and could effectively end all abortions in Iowa, pro-choice advocates argue.

Speaker of the Iowa House Kraig Paulsen (R-Hiawatha) said House File 5 will get the support of the full Iowa House, which is held by the Republicans. As the bill was assigned to the Government Oversight Committee, it is protected from dying in the funnel. Senate Democrats, who hold the majority in that chamber, said they will consider the bill according to legislative procedure.

Democrats and Republicans will also consider a bill guiding the Iowa Utilities Board on setting the rates of a nuclear plant an energy company is thinking about building. MidAmerican Energy is exploring the construction and operation of a nuclear plant. Should it be financed by investors, the Iowa Utilities Board would have to approve the plant.

Nine senators, all Democrats, have urged the voting on Senate File 390 be delayed, in light of the nuclear plant destruction and malfunctions caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan last week.

However, both Democrats and Republicans indicated the issue is non-partisan, and an interest of those on both sides of the aisle.

“I think we all have concerns about this,” Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal (D-Council Bluffs), who is not one of the nine, said Thursday. “I commend these nine for asking tough questions. There are questions that will need to be asked as we move forward on this issue.”

Though both Republicans and Democrats agree that renewable fuel and energy need to be a legislative priority, Paulsen said the division was created over disagreement “on the right direction to go. Right now, we’re vetting (Senate File 390).”

Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley (R-Chariton) added, “Most people who are playing politics here are playing politics with Iowa’s future. I don’t know if it’ll take rolling blackouts for people to finally do something.”

Republican leaders said the events in Japan may change the discussion on nuclear power and Senate File 390, though Republicans intend to continue advancing the legislation. The bottom line, Paulsen said, is that nuclear power is “solid, clean, reliable energy.”

Iowa has one nuclear plant, Duane Arnold Energy Plant, which is in Paulsen’s district.

A committee was expected to take up Senate File 390 for discussion yesterday afternoon, with MidAmerican Energy officials present.

With cap-and-trade all but dead, President Obama has decided to focus on energy provisions that can garner Republican support. This includes some things that environmentalists love, like energy efficiency and electric vehicles legislation. But it also includes natural gas and nuclear power, which make environmentalists shudder.

Some environmentalists and clean energy advocates have been more open minded about natural gas. The Center for American Progress has called it a “bridge fuel.” But overall, expanding the country’s reliance on natural gas isn’t ideal for the environmental community. In order to access vast shale gas reserves, for example, the natural gas industry injects chemicals and huge quantities of water into the ground.

Obama’s comments about natural gas this week at his post-midterm press conference did not go unnoticed by the natural gas industry. The Hill noted today that an Exxon executive touted his remarks on the company’s website today. “I hope that lawmakers from both sides are listening to the president’s words, so that the U.S. can reap the benefits of natural gas for decades to come,” Ken Cohen, of Exxon, wrote.

On nuclear, it’s a similar story. Environmentalists and clean energy advocates have long blasted nuclear power as too expensive and they’ve pointed to long permitting delays at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the same time, they’ve raised the specter of the nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island to underscore the potential danger of the power source.

Boehner also said current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called him to wish him good luck in his new role. But apparently she didn’t get through. “Speaker Pelosi left me a very nice voicemail,” Boehner said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who joined Boehner at the press conference, said last night’s election was “clearly a referendum” on the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress. In voting to give Republicans the majority in the House and increasing the number of Republicans in the Senate, the American people said “they appreciated us saying no to the things that the American people indicated they were not in favor of,” McConnell added.

McConnell also said he hopes to work with the president on areas in which there is some agreement, specifically citing so-called clean coal technology and nuclear power. “It’s clear that we’re going to have to have some kind of bipartisan agreement,” McConnell said.

While it’s unclear exactly what presumptive House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) energy agenda will be, we can get some idea of his thinking from the American Energy Act, a bill introduced by House Republicans last year as an alternative to cap-and-trade.

Here are the four main point of the bill, according to a summary:

• “Increase production of American-made energy in an environmentally-sound manner.”
• “Promote new, clean and renewable sources of energy such as nuclear, clean-coal-technology, wind and solar energy.”
• “Encourage greater efficiency and conservation by extending tax incentives for energy efficiency and rewarding development of greater conservation techniques and new energy sources.”
• “Cut red-tape and reduce frivolous litigation.”

Expect a great deal of discussion about expanding nuclear power. The House Republican bill calls for bringing 100 new nuclear power plants online in the next 20 years and streamlining the approval process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the same time, the bill calls on the NRC to continue its review of the embattled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository “without political interference,” a clear reference to the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent the site from accepting waste.

The bill also calls for expanded drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Arctic (this bill, of course, was introduced before the oil spill, so it remains to be seen how it would change as a result of the disaster). House Republicans would then use revenue from increased drilling to create a fund for renewable and “alternative” energy technology like wind, solar, so-called “clean coal” and biomass.

The proposal also calls for “cutting red tape and reducing frivolous lawsuits.” This includes curtailing environmental reviews and limiting the review time allowed in environmental lawsuits. Here are two key sections from the summary:

Legal Reform: The bill curtails dilatory lawsuits that are designed to obstruct American energy exploration. While ensuring people a day in court, it expedites judicial review by imposing a 60-day deadline on legal challenges and requires cases to be filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, to prevent forum shopping. …
Environmental Review: The bill reduces red-tape and cost to the Environmental Protection Agency arising from having to needlessly identify alternative locations for renewable energy projects, while ensuring a proper environmental review for the proposed action and no-action.

Graham’s “clean energy standard” is a potential threat to the support that Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) have garnered for their renewable energy standard legislation, which would require that a certain percentage of the country’s electricity come only from renewable sources like solar and wind. Republicans have long called for including nuclear and coal with CCS in the standard, but environmentalists and many liberal Democrats have bristled at the idea.

A summary of Graham’s proposal from his office says that the Bingaman-Brownback bill  ”short changes nuclear power.” Graham’s proposal, the summary says, will “lead to a renaissance in nuclear power.”

Graham continues:

When it comes to clean energy I have an ‘all of the above’ approach.  I believe the CES I have introduced will reinvigorate our nation’s nuclear energy sector, create jobs, make us more energy independent, and produce a cleaner environment than other standards which have been discussed.

The standard can also be met through increased energy efficiency and retiring old coal-fired power plants. Wind, solar and ocean energy, like in the RES, are also eligible.

The proposal would require that 13 percent of the country’s electricity come from the sources by 2013 and 20 percent by 2020, ratcheting up by five percent every five years.

Lawmakers sent a version of the letter to Reid last month; this one includes five more signatures. The lawmakers call for the passage of the “strongest possible” RES and discourage Reid from allowing other “non-renewable energy sources,” like nuclear or coal coupled with technology to reduce its emissions, to count in such a standard. Republicans have long called for a so-called “diverse energy standard,” which would take into account nuclear and “clean coal.”

Reid has consistently said he does not have the votes necessary to pass an RES, but that isn’t going to stop the renewable energy industry from lobbying for inclusion of the standard. Yesterday, a key industry source told me it’s “very likely” that the industry will renew its RES push.

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.

Markey says the leak “appears to be just another in a long line of failures of buried piping systems at our nation’s nuclear plants,” accusing the NRC of neglecting to carry out “serious and comprehensive” inspections of the country’s nuclear piping systems.

He continues:

The current inspection regimes for buried pipes — physical inspections conducted only in those rare instances when pipes are dug out for other purposes — is incapable of ensuring the integrity of decades-old piping systems.

According to an NRC fact sheet on tritium, “The health risks include increased occurrence of cancer and genetic abnormalities in future generations.”

I just got off the phone with Rob Gramlich, a senior vice president for policy at the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the leading lobbying group for the U.S. wind industry. He says wind industry CEOs are preparing to lobby senators in the coming days to strengthen key provisions in climate and energy legislation that could benefit the industry.

AWEA is calling for an increase in the so-called renewable electricity standard (RES) included in various energy and climate proposals currently on the table. A federal RES would require that a certain percentage of the country’s electricity be produced from renewable sources like wind and solar.

Without the votes for an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions, an RES appears likely to be one of the central provisions in a climate and energy package, leaving liberal Democrats with the task of claiming victory on a bill that falls far short of their policy goals.

AWEA is working to increase the RES well above the requirement included in the energy bill passed by the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee last year, which calls for 15 percent of the nation’s electricity to come from renewables by 2021. The group is advocating for a proposal to increase the RES to 25 percent by 2025.

Gramlich says the group will be targeting farm-state Democrats and Republicans in wind-rich regions, dispatching the heads of number of major wind developers to lobby key senators.

“There are a number of swing vote members who could come onto the legislation, there are farm-state Republicans who support wind energy in particular,” Gramlich said, arguing that a higher RES could help get 60 votes for an energy and climate bill.

But Republicans are also calling for a so-called “diverse” energy standard that would allow nuclear energy and coal with carbon capture technology to count in the overall standard, a proposal that rankles many in the wind industry. Sen. Richard Lugar’s (R-Ind.) energy proposal includes such a standard.

“We are closer than we’ve ever been to a breakthrough,” Kerry said. “We want to make this the Senate where we finish the job.”

“We would not be here today if we did not feel that … we can and will adopt the American Power Act in this session of Congress,” Lieberman added.

But they made their announcement without their colleague Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who worked with them to draft this bill but then backed out of the process to protest the Senate leadership’s prioritization of immigration reform. Graham was confident that he could obtain key Republican support for the bill, and his absence raises questions about the chances of passage for the bill, which already faces a steep uphill climb in a deeply divided Senate.

Kerry acknowledged the difficult road ahead. “This should be an easy vote,” he said. “And yet history teaches us again and again that fundamental change doesn’t come without a fight.”

Still, he was confident that senators would come to appreciate the political value of the legislation. “There will be those who say this is the wrong political season,” he said. “But we are here today because we believe that good policy is also good politics.”

One advantage the senators have over past advocates of clean energy legislation is the support of key industry groups. Kerry pointed out that representatives of companies that opposed climate change mitigation efforts in the past were now standing behind him to speak in support of the bill.

But various concessions to industry have earned the bill opposition from some environmental groups, who argue that handouts to coal, oil and nuclear undermine the climate goals the bill purports to achieve.

Lieberman dismissed such criticism. “I’m very proud of this bill,” he said. “It’s strong, it’s balanced, and it will work.”

For a summary of the draft legislation, see here.