The House of Representatives recently again passed "the parts that
were left out of the energy bill" -- including provisions that could
provide a $4-$6,000 tax credit for plug-in hybrids. (That would go
far in addressing the "first cost" issue of PHEVs. Much of the
attention in trying to get the bill passed by the Senate and signed
by the President involves the funding of the measure -- removing tax
credits given to oil companies at a time when their profits were a
fraction of what they are today. Here's a joint statement by
advocates, followed by an editorial in The New York Times.

http://blog.google.org/2008/03/googleorg-calls-on-us-congress-to.html

Google.org Calls on U.S. Congress to Support Renewable Energy
Wednesday 3/05/2008 10:02:00 AM

Posted by Michael Terrell, Program Manager, Google.org

Yesterday Google.org, along with representatives from the business
and venture capital community, called on the U.S. Congress and the
Bush Administration to work together to quickly approve extensions of
the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Investment Tax Credit (ITC). The
PTC and the ITC are tax incentives designed to spur the market for
renewable energy and are critical to financing a new renewable energy
generation. The credits are currently scheduled to expire on December 31, 2008.

Speaking at a news conference at the Washington International
Renewable Energy Conference, Dan Reicher, Google.org's Director of
Climate Change and Energy Initiatives, said: "We are at the dawn of a
green energy revolution that could fundamentally reshape the way the
world generates energy. It is critical that we get the policy right
in order to drive investment in clean energy and push these
technologies out of the lab and into the mainstream. Policy makers
can make or break this revolution."


The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), TechNet and the
National Venture Capital Association sponsored the press conference
which also included representatives of GE Energy Financial Services,
Credit Suisse, and the venture capital firm Nth Power.

In a recent ACORE letter to Congress, over 350 industry leaders
warned that a failure by Congress to immediately pass ITC/PTC
extensions could jeopardize U.S. job creation and over 42,000 MW of
planned renewable energy projects currently in development in 45
states. (That's an amount equivalent to 75 base load electricity
generation stations and enough to power 16 million homes.)


Here's a link to a February New York Times editorial on the subject,
"Clean Power or Dirty Coal,"
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/opinion/10sun2.html and a more
recent and more succinct editorial:

Editorial: The Senate Shills for Big Oil
Published: March 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon4.html

The House had approved the credits but insisted -- under the
Democrats' pay-as-you-go rules -- that they be paid for by
eliminating the same amount in tax credits for oil and gas producers.
Industry (which is rolling in cash these days) howled, President Bush
lofted veto threats, and the Senate caved.

The damage was immediately apparent. New investment in clean,
non-fossil-fuel energy sources -- which need the help until they
become competitive with older, dirtier energy sources -- began to shrivel.

The Senate now has a chance to redeem itself. Last week, the House
approved a new $17 billion package of credits, spread over 10 years,
to encourage the development of renewable energy sources and to
promote energy-efficient buildings and appliances.

As before, the House insisted that the credits be paid for by
terminating an equivalent $17 billion in tax breaks over 10 years for
oil and gas companies. And right on schedule, Senate Republicans
began complaining that increasing industry's taxes would discourage
investment in domestic oil and gas production.

What will it take to wake the Senate up? It should be clear to even
the most obtuse members that a country that consumes one-fifth of the
world's oil but has only 3 percent of its reserves cannot possibly
drill its way to energy independence.

It should be equally clear that an industry whose five biggest
producers generated $145 billion in profits last year can easily
sacrifice $1.7 billion in annual tax breaks it does not need to help
develop the cleaner fuels the country does need.

If those arguments aren't enough, we offer the Senate some words from
President Bush. In a 2005 address to the American Society of
Newspaper Editors, Mr. Bush spoke forcefully of the need for an
energy strategy that looked to the long term and emphasized
conservation and renewable fuels.

Of the oil and gas industry, he said pointedly: "I will tell you with
$55 oil we don't need incentives to the oil and gas companies to
explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a
strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent."

The question for Mr. Bush and the Senate is clear: If that was true
at $55 a barrel, why isn't it even more valid and urgent at $100 a barrel?

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Felix Kramer fkramer@...
Founder California Cars Initiative
http://www.calcars.org
http://www.calcars.org/news-archive.html
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