Let’s consider the leading Senate advocates of nuclear energy in the current climate legislation debate (and we’ll exclude Republicans who would under no circumstances support such legislation). Topping that list would be Graham, Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) — all potential key votes for a climate bill. What do these senators have in common? They all represent states among those 19 that couldn’t support themselves with renewables. (Kerry’s Massachusetts, which could produce 105 percent of its energy demands from renewables, just barely exceeds that threshold.) It’s not hard to understand, then, why they’d turn to the other clean (but non-renewable) energy source.

Interestingly, none of the top five Senate recipients of campaign donations from the Nuclear Energy Institute in the 2010 campaign cycle — and just one of the top ten — comes from any of these 19 states. Perhaps as the nuclear debate comes into focus, the nuclear industry will shift its targets.

Here’s the map from the New Rules Project:

With President Obama playing a cameo role in a recurring TV ad sponsored by American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCE), you may be wondering just what the administration’s priorities are for energy innovation. Rest assured, under the stimulus bill passed by Congress, “clean coal” research will get less than a quarter as much federal money as energy efficiency, conservation and renewables, according to Department of Energy figures released last week.

With the announcement of $3.2 billion in block grants for local governments to spend on energy efficiency and conservation, the total stimulus spending on energy is now clear, notes Lane Burt of the National Resources Defense Council. Efficiency and renewable energy — including assistance to low-income homeowners, grants to state and local governments, federal office building improvements, and support for advanced battery manufacturers — will receive a total of $16.8 billion in the next two years while fossil energy research and development will receive $3.4 billion. That’s more than green crusaders like Al Gore  (“Clean coal’s like healthy cigarettes”) would like, but far from a top priority.

While the coal industry lobby in Washington seeks to rebrand its product as “clean,” and the fate of climate change legislation in Congress remains hostage to partisan maneuvering, two recent decisions by local power companies show a lower carbon future slowly taking shape.

Biomass magazine reported yesterday that the Georgia Public Service Commission has approved plans to convert Georgia Power’s 164-megawatt coal-fired power plant located near Albany, Ga., into a 96-megawatt, 100 percent wood-fired biomass plant. The result will be a carbon neutral plant with significant reductions in certain emissions pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and mercury, according to Georgia Power.

The decision trumps the company’s traditional ideological stand. Joseph Romm at Gristmill notes that Southern has long led industry opposition to national renewable energy standards which would require power companies to obtain electricity from solar, wind or other green resources.

In Wisconsin, Alliant Energy made a similar decision earlier this month. After the state Public Service Commission rejected its application to build a coal-fired plant, the company announced that it will dramatically boost its purchase of wind power. “The PSC expressed concern over carbon, and we listened,”  an Alliant spokesman told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The company canceled another coal plant in Iowa earlier this month.

The argument that there are no practical alternatives to coal appears to be dying by a thousand cuts.

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In the past year, the Obama campaign has made a lot of promises on energy, related to jobs, climate change, clean energy, gas prices and the list goes on. Now energy analysts, the environmental community and Americans struggling with a failing economy want to know exactly how the new president plans to deliver on these promises.

I was interested to see some of these issues broken down by Guy Caruso, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who formerly headed up the Energy Information Administration (the agency that does independent analysis for the Dept. of Energy). In an interview with E&E TV, Caruso discussed key points that Obama’s administration will need to keep in mind when tackling energy. Here are some that stood out.

Plummeting oil prices: Gas prices getting below $2.50 is good news for consumers faced with grim economic times, said Caruso. “[I]t’s like a tax cut when the average consumer now fills the car up for $40 instead of $60,” he said, implying that low gas prices will help Obama take on financial problems. But, that assumes Americans will use the same amount of gas that they used over the summer when gas was $4 a gallon. It’s still unclear whether consumer behaviors will change or remain the same, as I reported here.

Offshore drilling: Caruso says there’s no telling what position Obama will ultimately take on this. Obama, who initially opposed offshore drilling, eventually caved and publicly supported lifting the moratorium on drilling in coastal areas. This is exactly the same thing his opponent Sen. John McCain did — although Obama’s support didn’t quite reach the “Drill, Baby, Drill” levels that McCain’s did. Now, environmentalists are hoping Obama will flip-flop again, this time in their favor. Already, Obama Transition Team co-chair John Podesta, has said that the President-elect may reverse an executive order by lame duck President Bush which allows drilling in Utah. However, Caruso says, Obama may continue to support offshore drilling in other domestic areas in order to hold onto certain “bargaining chips.”

Green jobs: Over and over again, Obama has talked about creating 5 million green jobs. “And I think now reality sets in,” Caruso said. “I mean 5 million jobs is a huge number of jobs.” Plus, certain factors which could create green jobs could also eliminate other jobs. For example, Caruso talked about regulatory policies that affect fossil fuel industries. If a carbon tax is implemented, clean energy will gain a competitive advantage and green jobs will open up; but, that could potentially lose jobs for the oil, gas and coal industries.

Renewable Energy: While Caruso didn’t go into too much detail about how the new White House should think about clean energy, he mentioned a couple significant points. First off, the transition from dirty fuels to clean fuels will probably take decades. Obama, like most politicians, said Caruso, don’t like to talk about things in terms of decades. As for his administration’s first 100 days, Caruso suspects that Obama will have trouble getting a renewables-heavy energy package to pass Congress, even with a strong Democratic majority. However, incentives for renewable energy are sure to show up in a financial package, Caruso believes, so environmentalists can at least rest easy on that note.

In my reporting for the story, I came across a group called the Energy Action Coalition, which has run a nonpartisan campaign called “Power Vote” this election season. The campaign’s purpose is to galvanize young people to persuade other young people to vote for candidates or ballot referendums that promote clean energy, the creation of more green jobs and efforts to control climate change.

So far, Power Vote says it has secured commitments from 300,000 young people to vote this way.

Missouri, California and Colorado all have ballot initiatives dealing with clean energy. Missouri’s initiative calls for 15 percent of the state’s electricity to come from clean energy by 2021. California’s ballot measure, Proposition 7, requires the state’s utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable energy sources by 2010. (The proposition has stirred up controversy because many environmentalists oppose it because they consider its wording confusing and worry that it could backfire and retard renewable-energy growth.) And Colorado’s initiative, supported by Gov. Bill Ritter, seeks to end $300 million in tax subsidies for oil and gas companies and use that money for clean-energy projects and college scholarships.

More detailed accounts of these initiatives can be found here.

As I’ll discuss in today’s piece, voters age 18 to 30 view the environment as a higher priority than older voters. If young people turn out in big numbers tomorrow, they could help move energy and environmental issues to center stage.

Taxpayers will remember that the first round of stimulus efforts came in the form of direct-to-the-door rebate checks — $600 for individuals and $1,200 for married couples. This time around, lawmakers are focusing on infrastructure projects, social services like unemployment insurance and direct aid to states, many of which are struggling with budget deficits. There’s even an emerging effort to have green-energy investment a central focus of the bill.

During a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee on Friday, Democratic leaders conveyed a sense that, given the current economic conditions, Congress will have little choice but to pass something soon.

“It’s clear that it has to be done,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Cal), chairman of the panel. “And it’s going to be done by the Congress in relatively short order.”

Not that it will be easy. In September, House Democrats passed a $58-billion stimulus package that included many of the same elements now under discussion. Senate Republicans blocked the measure, and President George W. Bush had vowed a veto.

The cost of the evolving package remains up in the air, but economists are floating figures ranging from $150 billion to $400 billion.

This week, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino indicated that Bush would be open to some form of stimulus, but she seemed to reject the ideas included in the House-passed bill. That could set the stage for a post-election partisan showdown.

With that in mind, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has already said that Democrats are prepared to push their efforts into January if they can’t move the bill in November, according to Associated Press.

Look here next week for a short series on what measures the Democrats hope to include in their package — including green energy, infrastructure and aid to states — and how those provisions might work to get the economy back on its feet.

The stocks of alternative-energy companies, which had enjoyed boom times, have been slashed.

In the last three months, according to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, renewable-energy stocks have dropped 45 percent, according to New Energy Finance, a London-based consultancy. But this could change.

Congress’ renewal of federal tax credits for solar- and wind-energy companies a couple weeks ago is expected to attract tens of billions of dollars in new private investment.  But it’s unclear what will happen to these companies if tighter credit standards dry up bank lending. Green businesses that use newer technologies have the most to lose because they may entail more risk in the eyes of bankers.

I’ll be reporting more on the economic future of renewable energy. Meantime, green businesses still say that while there’s a lot to worry about, there’s also a lot to be hopeful for.

In South Dakota, the Rosebud Sioux tribe is working on a 30-megawatt wind farm that could bring some needed revenue for residents. Per capita income for tribal members is about $7,700 a year.

“We’re broke here,” tribal council president Rodney Haukaas told the New York Times. “We’re poor…The wind is free. There’s energy here all the time.”

The tribe has already had success with wind power, with a 750-kilowatt wind turbine that powers the Rosebud Casino.

According to the Times story, federal officials believe renewable energy could be the next casinos for Indian reservations in windy and sunny states. As we’ve reported, the Navajo Nation is moving in this direction for solar energy.

That move, the companies postulate, “may prove to be a significant measure in addressing our long-term fiscal health.”

Really?

Forget, for a moment, that oil is a finite resource that’s difficult to locate and filthy to extract. Forget that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita spilled 685,000 gallons into the Gulf in 2006, and Hurricane Ike spilled at least another 500,000 gallons more this year. Forget also that the United States sits on just 3 percent of the planet’s known reserves.

The real issue is economic, and the Energy Dept. has determined that opening the outer continental shelf to new exploration won’t have a tangible impact on production or prices before 2030.

That’s 22 years away.

Imagine, while we continue to peck away at fossil fuels, what Europe and Japan will be doing over that span to develop renewable energies, cleaner fuels and the engines that will run off them. Imagine the myriad industries that will arise from that development, the remarkable products devised and the countless jobs created.

In 2030, just as our expanded oil drilling is projected to benefit consumers, consumers may very well have graduated to another generation of vehicles fueled by something much cleaner than petrol. Honda, after all, is already selling zero-emission hydrogen-cell cars in California.

As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has pointed out, clean energy remains a fledgling enterprise, and “the country that most owns the clean power industry is going to most own the next great technology breakthrough.” The focus on more drilling, he adds, “is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.”

That’s a prediction much different from the one (unbiased, we’re sure) put forth by the energy industry. But if he’s right, new drilling — while it might prove a wonderful short-term boon to the oil industry — will have come a far cry from healing our long-term economic troubles.

But green business owners know that they face obstacles. This week, E&ETV looked at some of them in an interview with Natural Resources and Defense Council energy analyst Jim Presswood.

E&ETV’s Monica Trauzzi asked how the financial crisis will affect solar and wind industries. Although some businesses could feel the credit pinch as banks continue to struggle, Presswood said he thinks the rapidly growing solar and wind industries could help pull the economy out of its doldrums, especially as Americans look for alternatives to fossil fuels. The extension of the tax credits means that private investment will still be attracted to clean energy, Pressman added.

Trauzzi also asked how a Democratic-controlled Congress could battle over tax credits for solar and wind power for almost two years yet move quickly to lift a 30-year-old ban on offshore oil drilling.

I expected Presswood to say that the Democrats are a bunch of weanies. Instead, he talked about some of the legislative politics at play — with fights between the Senate and House, Democrats and Republicans and members trying to please commercial interests, including oil and gas companies.

Ultimately, the political game-playing resulted in the lifting of the ban on offshore drilling becoming “must-pass legislation” and the renewable-energy tax credits becoming “a vigorous game of ping pong.”

Presswood believes that alternative energy will receive even more attention in 2009 under a new president, and with that knowledge, green companies can more comfortably focus on growing.