Right now, every state is flush with tax credits and rebates for energy efficiency upgrades. (image: dsireusa.org)

Despite the recession’s effect on many people’s disposable income, it may still be a good idea to buy that more efficient refrigerator—or oil heater. The year 2010 is a golden age of energy efficiency incentives.

In addition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the known more generally as “the stimulus”), which in 2009 renewed a federal personal tax credit for home energy efficiency improvements, state-level credits of the same type are also available and are meant to be used concurrently with federal perks. On top of these existing tax credits are the much-anticipated rebates through HomeStar, a proposal put forth by President Obama. Once known as “Cash for Caulkers,” the program plans to offer up to $3,000 to homeowners for upgrades and retrofits.

And on top of THIS is the Energy Star appliance rebate program offered through state energy offices and funded by the Department of Energy. We first reported on this program in Pennsylvania, where the state will soon offer $500 rebates for upgrades that include home heating oil equipment like furnaces and boilers. Under Energy Star, every state receives funding based on their population and decides on their own which appliances to make eligible for the program.

This handy map shows you each state’s version of the rebate. Those states that offer or will shortly offer rebates for oil-fired furnaces include: Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, and Idaho.

Those states that offer or will shortly offer rebates for gas or propane-fired furnaces include: Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Oklahoma.

The starting dates range from February-April 2010, and the rebates are available until funds run out, likely a 3-4 month window. To apply, you simply have to save your receipt for the appliance purchase and mail it to your state’s designated energy office. Consumer hotlines for each state are available here.

Other states, including Kentucky, Montana, and Oregon each offer their own incentives for new oil furnaces in addition to the programs mentioned above.

It’s true that heating equipment that meets these programs’ efficiency standards is expensive, running over $1000 for an oil-fired burner, for example. But because people are allowed and encouraged to combine rebates and tax credits, the actual cost of eligible appliances to the consumer can be reduced significantly. Also, do not underestimate the energy savings that follow from replacing old heating oil systems with highly efficiency ones: the Department of Energy states that a family’s annual oil consumption is often cut in half after converting.

Browse the map above to scour all funding available for the appliance of your choice, including those offered by utilities or directed at businesses and schools. Financing programs also exist to further encourage the investment.

Pictured, Obama discussing weatherization at a Home Depot in Virginia in December. Today Obama will announce a revised version of his energy rebate program.

President Obama will revive his plan to boost employment, reduce energy costs, and cut emissions by offering rebates to homeowners for energy-efficiency improvements in his visit to Savannah, GA on Tuesday, reports Politico. The Home Star program, also known as “cash for caulkers” despite the objections of one of the program’s creators, was left out of a House jobs bill in December. The administration hopes that Congress will include the program in a future job creation bill.

The $6 billion proposal would offer homeowners up to $3,000 in rebates for energy-efficiency renovations. Consumers would receive the rebates immediately, and the government would then reimburse businesses’ rebate payouts. The program would operate for a limited time, but the administration expects that up to 3 million households would take advantage of the rebates.

By creating the incentive for homeowners to make upgrades or renovations, Obama hopes to boost employment among construction workers, contractors, and companies that make insulation and other materials that would be covered by the rebates. Energy-efficiency upgrades would also save homeowners money on energy costs, which would give households more money to spend for years to come—something Obama memorably called “sexy.” Although the program is being pitched as a vehicle to create jobs and save on energy bills, there are environmental benefits, as well; by consuming less energy, efficient homes produce fewer carbon emissions.

There are two tiers to the Home Star program: Silver Star rebates and Gold Star rebates. Silver Star rebates cover 50 percent of the cost of a number of straightforward upgrades, including insulation, duct sealing, HVAC units (such as boilers and furnaces), windows, and doors. Each Silver Star rebate would be good for $1,000-$1,500, and each home would be eligible to receive multiple rebates up to a total value of $3,000.

Gold Star rebates would be offered for more comprehensive retrofits that would achieve a 20 percent reduction in energy costs, as determined by a home energy audit. Gold Star rebates would be in the amount of $3,000, and consumers could receive more rebates for improvements that gain more than a 20 percent reduction in energy costs.

Obama’s latest version of the Home Star program reduces the total amount of rebates available to each home. When announced in December, the program offered homeowners up to $12,000 in rebates, with rebates covering 50 percent of the costs of home improvements.

Perhaps the reduced version of the program will help it win congressional approval. As with Obama’s proposal last December, the revised Home Star program requires congressional action before homeowners can receive any rebates to make their homes more efficient and save money on energy bills.

Representative Markey receives his award from NEADA Executive Director Mark Wolfe. (image: markey.house.gov)

On Tuesday, Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) received an award for his continued support of government heating assistance through the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), the Belmont Citizen-Herald reported. Markey’s award came from the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA), a private organization that bills itself as “the primary educational and policy organization for the state and tribal directors of the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).”

As the representative for a heating oil-dependent and populous cold-weather state, Markey has long been a champion of LIHEAP. Most recently, he sponsored the Energy Assistance for American Families Act, which would increase LIHEAP funding from 2011 to 2014 and expand the program to make more Americans eligible to receive help with their heating costs. The bill has not yet been brought to a vote in either house of Congress. Speaking at an award ceremony in Washington, D.C., Markey stressed the widespread need for heating assistance in the Northeast this season:

New England was the site of the perfect storm off our coast, the winds rising as the barometer dropped and temperatures plunged. This winter, rising heating oil prices, an economic downturn, and plunging temperatures have created an economic perfect storm onshore for millions of New England families.

This year is the third in a row in which requests for LIHEAP assistance set a new all-time high. In addition to introducing the assistance bill, Markey announced a four-part plan to continue expanding LIHEAP: requesting the release of $100 million in remaining emergency funds by President Obama this heating season, pressing Congress to pass a supplemental appropriation to ensure all those who need it get assistance this year, advocating an immediate increase in LIHEAP funding for next winter, and passing the Energy Assistance for American Families Act.

In his remarks, Markey gave special attention to the plight of heating oil users, indicating that he is well acquainted with the unpredictability of heating oil prices and the toll it can take on Americans. Although the troubled economy could prevent the significant increases in LIHEAP funding that Markey is pushing for from passing, his efforts will keep the issue of heating assistance in the minds of his fellow legislators.

Heating oil users who struggle to pay their bills can take comfort in knowing that they have a tireless advocate in Congressman Markey.

Freefalling oil barrels illustrate a net export collapse. And yet there are still barrels. (image: gettyimages.com)

President Obama pledges to attain national energy independence, only to be publicly rebuked days later by the Saudi oil minister for his lack of practicality. Two prestigious energy tracking agencies (CERA and the UK Energy Research Center) study the issue and release hefty reports in the same month with opposite conclusions. These are some of the examples given by host Jim Puplava in a January 30 segment of Financial Sense Newshour to introduce the increasingly fierce peak oil debate.

But to independent petroleum geologist and guest expert Jeffrey Brown, a crisis of world peak oil production is less critical than a crisis of peak oil exports.

Most of the peak oil debate centers on supply, analyzing the productivity of oil fields both known and yet-to-be discovered. There is no consensus on the amount of oil left in the world. Experts diverge considerably in their estimates due to the lack of truly reliable data and the powerful political motivations involved. Brown takes a different angle by using a different model, one developed with colleague Dr. Samuel Foucher and originally inspired by Matthew Simmons. Dubbed the Export Land Model, it analyzes a nation’s net oil exports—the difference between a nation’s production and consumption of its total liquid oil products.

According to Brown, it’s the future net exports, not production, we should be paying closest attention to when searching for signs of peak oil, because that’s the factor that crashes first, and hardest. Brown’s analytical model is unique in that it emphasizes the tendency of oil exporting nations to experience economic growth even as their oil supplies diminish.

* * *

The model’s reasoning goes like this: A nation only exports the surplus of its vital resources. Following a peak in oil production, a nation is flush with capital after exporting more oil than ever in its history—oil that is often sold at previously unreached high prices as well–and its economy responds with growth. But with an expanding economy comes growing demand for oil, causing the nation’s domestic oil needs to cut into a supply that recently began a steady decline. These two sources of pressure on the nation’s oil surplus cause it to deplete at an ever-faster rate. Unless the nation does the unprecedented and keeps its rate of domestic consumption always at or below its exponentially declining rate of production, the surplus vanishes and exports stop.

The “iron triangle” of the Export Land Model. Increasing consumption causes a nation’s net export decline rate to exceed its production decline rate. (image: wikipedia.org)

It’s because the decline in oil exports accelerates that the bottleneck in oil made available to importing nations occurs as a “crash,” not the steady decline, or “long gradual tail” so often pictured by authorities like the IEA. As Brown said on the OilDrum discussion board: “I’ve compared a typical production decline profile to a commercial airliner doing a normal gradual descent for landing. An export crash, like the UK and perhaps Mexico, looks more like a terrifying near vertical dive into the ground.”

UK oil production and exports. The production curve is the classic “peak oil” curve. As can be seen, the drop-off in net exports is dramatically steeper than the drop-off in production. (image: energybulletin.net)

But even an airplane crashing into the ground still stops at the ground. Not so with an export crash, which is only one step on a still-lower descent. Brown discussed with Puplava how a net exporter can become a net importer within a matter of years, and gave the UK as an example, which peaked in net oil exports (as well as production) in 1999, and hit zero export status in 2005.

As these exporters slip into importer status, not only are they not delivering oil into the market, they’re creating additional demand for the remaining volume of exported oil. And these exporters are simply falling into the path that the US and China followed. We went from being a major oil exporter in the Second World War to net importer status only three years later in 1948. (from the interview with Puplava)

According to Brown, the UK is a “classic example” of his model, because it saw a rapid export crash with “virtually no increase in consumption.” The example of the US is also highly illustrative, as its fast consumption rate made it a net importer long before its production peaked—a margin of 22 years.

That’s why Brown’s comparison above is particularly daunting. If other countries are following the US’ pattern, the world could experience a supply shortage far in advance of a global production peak, or what most people talk about when discussing “peak oil.”

* * *

To an oil-exporting nation, a decline in its oil surplus means it needs to start selling some other product. But to a global community dependent on oil, a depletion of net exports may as well be a supply crash. That’s the insight that makes net export analysis so powerful, but it is still surprisingly ignored in most peak oil discussions.

According to Brown’s ELM analysis from 2008, net oil exports from the world’s top five producers have already peaked. A graph supporting this fact showed the price of oil against the average annual net oil exports from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. As prices rose, these countries’ cumulative net oil exports also rose—presumably out of the desire to cash in on increasing demand indicated by higher prices. But in 2005, crude oil exports from these countries dropped sharply. The decline continued even as prices skyrocketed on their way to the all-time peak of $147 per barrel in July of 2008. Brown explained the significance of this pattern in an email to HeatingOil.com:

I brought up the post-2005 production and net export volumes versus price because it does provide evidence that the post-2005 decline in crude production and the decline in net oil exports were, [in my opinion], largely involuntary, much like the Texas & North Sea declines. My point was that if producers and exporters were happy to meet rising demand from 2002 to 2005, why were they suddenly unwilling to meet higher demand from 2005 to 2008?

If we are to believe the Export Land Model, the answer is that they did not have the oil to export. The model, using EIA data for these nations’ oil consumption, production and exports showed that these nations had already reached peak oil production and export capacity, and would approach zero net liquid fuel exports by 2030. Because these countries are responsible for about half of all the world’s oil exports, the 2008 paper that presented these results predicted a literal “draining-away” of the world economy’s lifeblood. It is worth noting that according to the IEA, which does not engage in ELM analysis, 2020 is the projected date of the global peak in oil production.

In an article published on GetRealList on February 8, energy analyst Chris Nolen, after studying two of the top three exporters to the US, declared “The Oil Export Crisis Has Arrived.” Finding that Mexico and Venezuela together exhibited an 8% decline in exports since 2005, he suggested that a crisis has been present for some time, but has not fully manifested because of the recession’s dampening effect on the US economy and demand for oil.

* * *

The Export Land Model is just a theory, like any other. But what makes it compelling is that even if it’s a little right, it says that whatever happens will happen quickly.

Brown happens to think both a production peak and export peak has been reached. He has said that the spike in oil prices from 2005 to 2008 was the result of a furious bidding war for dwindling exports—a theory at odds with the belief that the price run-up of the past few years was a result of excessive speculation, not market fundamentals. That is how oil can be selling for $80 a barrel even though supplies are at record highs and demand at record lows (as had been the case in recent months). But if Brown is correct (and it’s possible that both were contributing factors), then current prices are not a confounding anomaly, but a reflection of true demand for a critical resource in advance of pending export scarcity.

NordStream’s simulation of a robot scanning the seabed for unexploded mines from World War II. (image: nordstream.com)

To transport natural gas from Russia to Western Europe, the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom is leading an effort to build a new pipeline called Nord Stream across the Baltic Sea. They’ve hit a possible snag, though, says Yonah Freemark of The Infrastructurist—the Baltic Sea is still littered with mines from World War II. Enter Bactec International and its mine-detecting robots, which will detonate and clear all mines in the pipeline’s path.

Paolo Scaroni, the CEO of Eni, an Italian oil company, worries about the future of international oil companies and writes in the Wall Street Journal that they may have to change their business strategy. The solution? Be more like Eni.

The Times of London reports that some people are trying to lower their heating bills by burning wood instead of oil or gas. What they don’t mention is that consumers who heat their homes exclusively with heating oil or natural gas have cut their expenses on wood and wood burners to as low as $0.

At Energy Tribune, Robert Bryce examines how the Senate climate bill, which seemed like a sure thing at the time of President Obama’s first address to Congress last February, has gotten derailed. Burgeoning skepticism about climate change and the resurgence of Republicans play big roles in his story, but the takeaway is that any real legislative action will happen at the local and state levels instead of in the US Congress.

Higher efficiency burners and boilers, like this model that boasts an AFUE rating of 95.5, have contributed to lower heating oil demand in the US. (image: redmonheating.com)

Stepped-up conservation efforts by US heating oil users, supported by recent government initiatives, have curbed heating oil demand in the last year—a trend that will likely continue permanently, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

In the 35 years leading up to 2008, heating oil demand declined steadily as increasing numbers of heating oil users switched to other fuels like natural gas. But the rate of converting away from heating oil slowed in 2008: according to the US Census, 320,000 US households switched to natural gas in 2005, but only 52,000 converted in 2008.

But that slowing in conversion away from heating oil has recently been compensated for by conservation efforts by heating oil users. Since the recession began, millions of Americans have dialed back their thermostats with the goal of lowering their heating bills. It’s difficult to determine how much this financially-driven conservation trend has contributed to lowering demand in recent years, but Shane Sweet of the New England Fuel Institute, for one, believes the trend is here to stay. “There have been a lot of conservation measures that wiped away gallons. That is demand we will never get back,” Sweet told Reuters. Besides individual conservation, demand for heating oil has also been cut back by increasingly efficient burners and boilers, as well as a federal programs to fund home energy audits and weatherization improvements included in President Obama’s Recovery Act.

The effects of falling heating oil demand can be seen in the trajectory of heating oil prices this winter: despite several powerful snowstorms and cold snaps that have hit the heating oil-reliant East Coast this year, prices have remained relatively steady. Decreased demand and consumption allowed stockpiles of heating oil to grow to record levels this fall and winter, which provided a buffer against short-term demand increasing bringing price spikes. To commodities analyst Stephen Schork, this amounts to a paradigm shift in how the heating oil markets move. “Weather and winter type fundamentals are becoming less and less relevant,” he said. If Schork is right, he appears to be ahead of the times. Fellow analysts polled for predictions ahead of weekly inventory reports “overestimated the amount of the expected decline in distillate inventories in 11 out of 18 weeks” so far this season, with their thinking presumably guided (at least in part) by considerations of weather and temperature.

For heating oil consumers, this trend is a boon to price stability. If it continues on its current path of expansion, one-day increases of 8 cents or 15 cents per gallon may soon be a thing of the past. It’s all about basic macroeconomics: the less demand for heating oil, the lower heating oil prices will go. So keep conserving, heating oil users—you’re saving yourself money in more ways than one.

President Obama tours the job training center at IBEW headquarters in Lanham, Maryland where he spoke about energy policy and announced new government support for the construction of nuclear power plants. (image: baltimoresun.com)

President Obama once again hammered home his belief that green energy technology development is the most important avenue to economic recovery and a brighter future for America. Speaking at a training center for energy technicians in Maryland yesterday, Obama announced federal loan guarantees that will allow for the construction of a new nuclear power plant in the US for the first time in over 30 years (watch a video of the speech below).

Obama fit the announcement into a larger context, once again calling for comprehensive energy legislation that provides incentives for the energy industry to move away from fossil-fuel sources that produce carbon emissions and toward low- and zero-emissions electricity generation. Although nuclear reactors do produce dangerous waste, they do not produce carbon dioxide or any other greenhouse gas emissions, unlike CO2-spewing coal-powered plants, which generate the bulk of US electricity. Obama framed the move as an embrace of bipartisanship, as many Republicans have favored construction of new nuclear power plants to help meet America’s energy needs.

Early on in his ten-minute speech, Obama mentioned biofuels as an important part of America’s clean energy future, reiterating the support he voiced in his State of the Union speech last month. He also made clear his belief that comprehensive energy reform (including provisions to encourage greenhouse gas emissions reduction and development of renewable energy technology) is a necessary part of American energy evolution. Despite that support, three separate energy reform bills are currently stalled in Congress, with little hope of moving forward any time in the near future.

Much like his State of the Union Speech, Tuesday’s remarks by the President offered renewed support for energy reform but no specifics. Obama’s continued touting of biofuels as a crucial part of the nation’s future energy mix keeps hope alive for future government support for biofuel development. Putting some money behind Obama’s words, the Department of Energy did announce $80 million in funding for biofuel research last month. The current reality, however, is harsher: the domestic biofuel industry is reeling after Congress allowed the $1 per gallon producer credit to expire at the end of 2009, and a renewal of that credit was recently dropped from a Senate bill.

Looking forward, it seems that government funding and incentives for biofuel development will continue, though it will probably be sporadic and relatively focused. Despite Obama’s words, increases in the prices of crude oil, gasoline, and heating oil will likely do more to spur growth in the biofuel industry than will intermittent and unpredictable government support.

For heating oil users waiting for biofuel heating oil to really make a splash in the heating oil market, rest assured that the time will come. But with low oil prices and a slow-moving federal government, that time may be several years or even a decade away.

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With more robust government support, the US biofuels industry will be able to bring down production costs and grow quickly, making increased volumes of biofuel available at lower prices to heating oil dealers and consumers around the country.

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President Obama and the EPA have endorsed biofuels, but ethanol groups remain nervous. (image: treehugger.com)

In a meeting Wednesday with a bipartisan group of governors, President Barack Obama outlined a strategy for increasing the development and production of biofuels as a clean domestic energy source, according to a press release from the Energy Department. Following through on the agenda laid out in his State of the Union address and building on the report issued by the Biofuels Interagency Working Group, a presidential task force, Obama noted that biofuels production is currently far below the level demanded by Congress and called for further and better-coordinated investment, with an emphasis on “next-generation” or “advanced” biofuels.

In 2007 Congress approved a renewable fuels standard (RFS) that established a goal of producing 36 billion gallons of biofuel annually by 2022; the US currently produces 12 billion gallons per year. In their report titled “Growing America’s Fuel,” the Biofuels Working Group stated that the US was not on pace to meet the mandate of 36 billion gallons and pointed to the recession, a lack of public and private financing, and public funding that left gaps in the biofuel supply chain as obstacles to meeting Congress’s goal.

Obama’s push for biofuels coincided with the release of the EPA’s revised rule to implement the RFS program, also released on Wednesday. Last spring the EPA’s proposed rule created controversy and opposition from biofuels groups when it concluded that corn ethanol and soy biodiesel could create more carbon emissions than gasoline. The controversy centered on the EPA’s assessment of emissions from international land-use changes—that is, emissions caused by deforestation abroad when farmers grow crops to compensate for US crops withdrawn from the food market and given over to fuel. The EPA’s revised RFS program maintains that such indirect land-use emissions are part of ethanol’s lifecycle emissions, but changed its calculations of emissions and concluded that corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than gasoline or diesel and their use counts toward the RFS mandate.

The Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol industry group, applauded the administration’s endorsement of biofuels, but was disappointed that the EPA continued to measure indirect emissions. Growth Energy, the ethanol group led by Wesley Clark, says it will continue to fight the EPA’s authority to include international land-use emissions when measuring ethanol’s carbon footprint, reports The Hill’s E2 Wire blog.

Ethanol groups may be right to worry. While corn ethanol and soy biodiesel will be included in the administration’s push to boost biofuel production, the agenda laid out by the Biofuels Working Group shows a clear preference for advanced biofuels, saying that “Advanced next generation biofuels will be one of the nation’s most important industries in the 21st century.” Previous legislation has defined advanced biofuels as biofuels not derived from corn or biofuels that have 50 percent less lifecycle emissions than gasoline or diesel; examples include algal biofuels and cellulosic ethanol.

The administration’s agenda and the EPA’s revised RFS program give biofuels a privileged place in America’s energy future, but not all biofuels are equal. Biofuels that don’t raise concerns about international land-use changes—and therefore considered by the EPA to have fewer emissions—will likely be the focus of government funding. This trend is already clear, as the Department of Energy has directed many new grants projects working on algal biofuel.

Federal support for biofuels will help the heating oil industry meet legislative requirements to include biofuel content mandates that are already in place in Maine and Massachusetts, and being considered elsewhere. The EPA’s distinctions among biofuel types could also lend a helping hand to the heating oil industry; while ethanol and soy biodiesel were developed as transportation fuels, many new developments in biofuels are being applied to heating systems.

Heating oil consumers may be worried, and reasonably so, that a transition to biofuel heating oil will raise prices for them. Yet if the government continues to give full-throated support for biofuels, the biofuel industry and heating oil consumers could both stand to benefit.

Three senators at the center of the debate over cap and trade’s place in energy legislation (left to right): Graham, Kerry, Liebeman. (image: mnn.com)

Key Senate Democrats say they will support an existing energy bill that does not include a cap and trade provision, and are trying to convince their colleagues to do the same, an article on the website MotherJones.com reported on Tuesday. Buzz about a climate change of heart on the part of the Democrats grew louder last week, when the media reported that Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who are trying to win bipartisan support for their own compromise energy and climate legislation in the Senate, were planning to do away with cap and trade altogether. The two anti-cap and trade movements represent a larger trend in the Democratic caucus: the perception that dropping cap and trade (or any carbon dioxide emissions limits) from climate legislation is the only way to get it passed.

Possible elimination of the cap and trade provision from the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA), which was approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June, raises several concerns. For starters, doing away with a carbon cap may spell doom for an international climate treaty. Other big carbon emitters, most notably China, want to see the U.S. make meaningful reductions in carbon emissions before they commit to their own reductions. In November, China agreed to curb its carbon intensity 40–45 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, although it does not want these emissions targets to be legally binding.

Another potential problem with the bill, according to environmentalists, is that it could increase, rather than decrease, carbon emissions by making too many concessions to big energy interests. The bill would lift a ban on drilling on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, just 45 miles off the Florida coast. In addition, an expansion of federal authority over the placement of power lines called for in the bill could increase emissions, said David Lashof, director of the climate center at the National Resources Defense Council. He explained that more electricity infrastructure without a corresponding cap on carbon would make it easier to bring new coal plants onto the grid and increase output at existing plants.

ACELA also contains few provisions for clean, renewable energy. Although it requires utilities to produce 15 percent of power from renewable resources within the next 11 years, solar and wind advocates say that renewable electricity standard is not ambitious enough Grist.com reported.

Although the bill would establish an agency called the Clean Energy Deployment Administration, or CEDA, it also would empower the Department of Energy to distribute an unlimited number of loan guarantees to underwrite the construction of nuclear power plants without congressional review. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the chance of default on these loans is at least 50 percent, so the bill could wind up costing taxpayers billions of dollars.

Those who support ACELA include Democrats Jim Webb (Va.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Evan Bayh (Ind.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Kent Conrad (N.D.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.). Republicans Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Sam Brownback (Kan.), Bob Corker (Tenn.), and Jeff Sessions (Ala.), who voted the bill out of committee, could also come on board.
Supporters of the bill argue that getting the measure passed is more politically feasible than getting a cap and trade provision thorough the Senate. In an omission that cold signify the White House’s quiet assent to the elimination of cap and trade from climate legislation, President Obama did not refer to a cap and trade system or any plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions in last week’s State of the Union speech.

Obama did, however, praise the House of Representatives for passing the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), also known as the Waxman-Markey bill, which includes a cap and trade provision. He also urged the Senate to make a bipartisan effort to do the same.

ACES calls for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in the US to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. It also requires utilities to generate an increasing amount of power from renewable sources and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

The Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (CEJAPA), sponsored by Sens. Kerry and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and a companion bill to ACELA, would begin with the same 3 percent cut in carbon emissions by 2012 as ACES, but would require a sharper cut of 20 percent by 2020. Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham have proposed cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 by about 17 percent of 2005 levels, the same goal put forth in the Waxman-Markey bill.

Both ACES and CEJAPA would establish a system of carbon credits, in which regulated industries would have to acquire carbon permits. However, the Waxman-Markey bill would establish a relatively free carbon market, allowing emitters to purchase carbon credits as needed, while the Boxer-Kerry measure would try to control costs to polluting industries by capping the price of credits at $28 per unit. Kerry, Lieberman, and Graham initially pledged continued support to the concept of a cap and trade system, although the senators said that they do not support the name “cap and trade.” Take a look at this comparison of the various climate bills in Congress posted in October of last year to get a more detailed description of each piece of legislation.

As cap and trade loses favor in Congress and the chances of passing comprehensive climate and energy legislation appear as bleak as ever, the Natural Resources Defense Council has stepped up efforts to force legislative action. The NRDC’s Action Fund this week launched a web-based video in which Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of Hollywood stars, with Cornell West of Princeton University thrown in the mix, exhort Americans to urge their senators to support comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

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The campaign uses online tools such as social networking, blogs, and e-mail to tell the Senate that the country needs legislation that will reduce carbon pollution and create clean energy jobs. It appears that the NRDC believes that grassroots action by green-minded citizens reinforced by major star power could turn around the fate of climate legislation. However, the way the political winds are currently blowing in Washington, it would take no less than a hurricane of constituent pressure to change the minds of senators who have taken up firm positions against the enactment of any greenhouse emissions reduction laws any time soon.