WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday started debating its first comprehensive energy legislation since the George W. Bush administration, a bipartisan measure meant to update the nation’s power grid and oil and gas transportation systems to address major changes in the ways that power is now produced in the United States.
Since passage of the last major energy law, in 2007, the United States has gone from fears of oil and gas shortages to becoming the world’s leading producer of both fuels.
The use of wind and solar power is rapidly accelerating as those sources become cheaper than fossil fuels in some parts of the country. And President Obama’s clean air regulations are reshaping the nation’s power systems, as electric utilities close coal-fired power plants and replace them with alternative sources.
But the nation’s energy infrastructure has not kept pace with those changes.
Throughout the Obama administration, partisan differences over energy policy and climate change meant that meaningful energy legislation had essentially no chance of passage. When bills were offered, they were partisan measures meant to score political points rather than to enact substantive policy.
People tracking the process on both sides of the political divide express some optimism that this time may be different and that the new legislation could make it to the president’s desk. That will depend on whether debate over the bill spills into the presidential campaign, where it could be used as a proxy for issues like climate change, oil and gas drilling and Obama’s regulatory agenda.
The energy measure is cosponsored by the Republican chairwoman of the Energy Committee, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and the ranking Democrat on the committee, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington.
It is a rarity in today’s largely gridlocked Congress: compromise legislation that has been carefully written over months of hearings, passed through the energy panel on a bipartisan vote of 18-4.
It has the support of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, and the minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, who typically try to block the other’s agenda.
In order to achieve a bipartisan consensus, Murkowski and Cantwell had to significantly scale down the scope of the bill.
It is chiefly focused on modernizing energy infrastructure and improving efficiency. It does not include any language to drastically increase fossil fuel production, as most Republicans would like, nor does it boldly address climate change, as most Democrats want.
The current bill would give a win to fossil fuel producers by requiring the Energy Department to accelerate approval of permits to build coastal terminals for shipping American natural gas abroad. The bill would also help producers of renewable energy.
The new bill would require operators of the electrical grid to perform major upgrades to the system, with a focus on building new large-scale storage systems for electricity.
The bill would create and strengthen several programs devoted to improving energy efficiency in buildings and address the threat of cyberattacks on the nation’s electrical grid.
