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February 17, 2012 06:43 PM UTC

U.S. House Passes Absolutely Ridiculous "Energy Legislation"

  • 22 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s Troy Hooper reports:

A bill designed to encourage oil shale development cruised through the House on Thursday evening. But a wind production tax credit didn’t fly, and now layoffs and abandoned projects loom…

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, bundled the energy bills into a broader transportation package, most of which still hasn’t made it out of the House. Despite a century of failed efforts to make oil shale profitable, along with a Congressional Budget Office report that projects oil shale leases will total less than $100,000 annually over the next decade, Boehner has said energy drilling will fund his $260 billion transit package. The Congressional Budget Office report, however, projected Boehner’s bill would, over 10 years, leave the highway trust fund $78 billion in the red.

“Oil shale will not fund a single road or bridge repair,” said Matt Garrington, the Colorado-based deputy director of the Checks and Balances Project. “I’m afraid the Speaker and Rep. Lamborn have sold Congress on a plan that will actually increase the national deficit. Oil shale is a failed resource which will generate zero revenues, and Americans will have to pay the price.”

…Indeed, it was a good week in Congress for fossil fuels and a bad one for renewable energy.

An extension of the wind production tax credit was initially folded into an earlier version of a plan to extend the nation’s payroll-tax cut and unemployment insurance bill. But when a deal was reached Thursday, the wind production tax credit was left out. All of Colorado’s congressional delegation except Lamborn support the extension of the wind tax credit, which debuted in 1992.

We’re trying to figure out how the U.S. House of Representatives could have possibly delivered a more confused or out-of-touch message on energy policy than the items they passed, and didn’t pass, in the last week. Rep. Doug Lamborn’s bill to “boost” oil shale production, ostensibly to fund transportation projects as part of a larger package from Speaker John Boehner, was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to have basically no value over the next ten years. Along with Rep. Scott Tipton, who has pushed “snake oil” shale development with similar grandiose forecasts and blanket condemnation of the Obama administration and who backed Lamborn’s bill, this was a substitute for effective action on energy–a political exercise that only works if the target audience doesn’t understand the facts.

Meanwhile, the wind energy production tax credit that didn’t make it into the final payroll tax-cut compromise–supported by every Colorado member of Congress except Doug Lamborn–has to wait, and an industry responsible for thousands of Colorado jobs waits in the lurch with it.

Seriously, folks, could they have done any worse for Colorado’s actual energy economy?

Comments

22 thoughts on “U.S. House Passes Absolutely Ridiculous “Energy Legislation”

      1. When and if the technology ever DOES make oil shale feasible (I’m betting it won’t), everyone will want to do it.

        This legislation helps a few companies lock up land positions before that happens.

        RE the financial part, the bill also screws local communities out of royalties, which is just fine with the people who would have to pay them.

        1. remember all, it’s the American gilded age once again. Instead, this time it isn’t the railroad corporations getting rich off of governmental largesse while locking up American real estate (under the guise of “building” a transportation system).

          Congressmen concerned only for their next handout of Cre’dit Mobilier stock . . . or, whatever is today’s Citizen’s United equivalent . . .

          Sign me,

          Waiting for Roosevelt

          PS. What’s taking him so damn long?

  1. It’s simple: Alternative Energy and Energy Efficiency threaten oil industry profits.

    The big oil companies already own a lot of oil field leases. The value of these leases depends on high oil prices, due to supply-demand. Supply is fixed, therefore boosting demand, and restricting alternatives is a good business strategy.

    National interest? What national interest!

    When Ronald Reagen became president, he didn’t get rid of the Solar Energy Research Institute in Golden, he simply eliminated all immediately effective programs, like building code workshops to encourage efficient construction.

    1. to carry a turbine connected to their ass. You really wouldn’t just put it around. They only work like a third of the year now. Waste, waste, waste.

      Anyway, what color would they paint them? Now we have a whole third of a year tied up! More waste. (Tut, tut.)

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