Senate Committee Leader Plans Energy Bill

U.S. Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) conducted a full committee hearing on December 10 as part of his effort to develop a record for passing an energy bill in 2009 that will promote investment in clean-energy programs.

The hearing’s dual purpose is to help Congress write a stimulus bill as well as plan for future energy legislation.

Several renewable energy industry experts called on Congress to revise the production tax credits and investments tax credits for renewable energy to make them refundable to investors and users so the credits would have a broader application and be more useful.

The tax credits are currently in the non-refundable category, which means that tax liability is reduced only if a solar or wind company is making a healthy profit and paying taxes.  This is not always the case in the current economic downturn.

Contact Deidra Ciriello.

Obama Transition Team Making Plans for Clean
Energy in Stimulus Package

Two advisors to President-elect Barack Obama said that the presidential transition team is drafting several clean-energy provisions that will be added to a major economic stimulus package that Congress plans to take up in January.

Former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who was recently named Health and Human Services secretary, and Dan Reicher, a former Energy Department assistant secretary, spoke of the President-elect’s commitment to renewable energy during a meeting on Capitol Hill of the nation's renewable energy industry, which is sponsored annually by the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE).

Reicher said the transition team is looking at renewable energy programs and policies that will have the biggest impact over the next couple of years to be included in stimulus package. During the presidential campaign, Obama pledged to spend $15 billion a year over the next decade on a clean-energy transformation program. He called for a program to build 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles in seven years.

Transition team members are also looking at investments in the so-called smart grid to employ new technologies, which are expected to make the nation's transmission system more responsive to consumers and more efficient.

In addition, they would help build a national superhighway of high-voltage transmission lines that could move power from remote renewable energy sites to major population centers around the country.

Contact Deidra Ciriello.

Group Urged Congress to Remove Greenhouse Gas Authority

U.S. Marine Corps General James Jones (ret.), named by President-elect Barack Obama as his new national security adviser, is head of an organization that has called on Congress to remove any authority the EPA has to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

As assistant to the president for national security affairs, the national security adviser will have influence over administration policy on international relations.   Both climate change and energy are considered big issues in international affairs.

Obama energy advisers have said the President-elect will reverse the policy of the Bush administration and move forward with regulations on greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

This contrasts with recommendations to Obama on energy and climate policy issued November 17 by the Institute for 21st Century Energy, headed by Gen. Jones.

In recommendations included in its Transition Plan for Securing America's Energy Future, the Institute specifically called for removing the direct authority of EPA and states to regulate greenhouse gases.

The group also said that a new climate change policy should not be implemented without “an international agreement that requires full international participation.”

This is similar to the Bush administration's policy, which has resisted greenhouse gas regulation without an international agreement. The Administration  also has resisted committing the United States to emissions reductions, preferring instead energy efficiency targets.

Contact Deidra Ciriello.

Transition Team Considers Advisors for Energy, Environmental Issues

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team is discussing the creation of a new advisory board at the White House to advise the president on energy and environment issues, transition board member Carol Browner said.

Browner said she envisions an advisory board as having more of a “coordinating role” to help the president, similar to the economic and national security advisors that report to the President.

Browner, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator in the Clinton administration, declined to directly say whether she plans to take a post in the Obama administration, but she did not rule it out.

There is wide speculation Carol Browner will be tapped for the new White House position overseeing and coordinating energy and climate policy.

Contact Tom Carter or Kevin Walgenbach.

New Energy Secretary Named, Other Appointments to Follow

President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, to be the next energy secretary.

The appointment suggest the President-elect plans to make a strong push for measures to combat global warming and programs to support energy innovation.

Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work in the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light." In an interview last year with The Washington Post, Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several years ago.

"I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed," he said. "Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation."

He sought and won the top job at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004, leaving the Stanford University faculty to focus on energy issues. According to his web site, Chu has been on a "mission" to make the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory "the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy."

In related news, the job labeled as “White House Energy Czar” is expected to go to Carol Browner. Browner served as EPA Administrator during the Clinton Administration, and will face the challenge of coordinating and meshing all federal agency policies relating to the environment and energy, most importantly including climate change.

Also, Lisa Jackson is expected to be appointed as the next EPA Administrator. She is the former New Jersey commissioner of environmental protection and currently serves as chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine.  

Nancy Sutley will head the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She is currently the top environmental counselor to the mayor of Los Angeles, and has served as a special assistant to former EPA Administrator Carol Browner.

President-Elect Obama is expected to make an official announcement regarding these appointments in the coming days.

The team is considered to form the foundation upon which the new Administration will likely deal with climate change regulation and overhaul U.S. energy policy.

Contact Deidra Ciriello, Tom Carter or Kevin Walgenbach.

Infrastructure Funding Included in Stimulus More Likely

Amid calls for another economic stimulus package and the U.S. Labor Department’s recent announcement about the number jobs lost in November, there is more talk of investing in infrastructure construction and rehabilitation, which are widely seen as having a positive effect on the economy..

Last Friday, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) released a survey of all 50 states citing 5,148 ready-to-go highway projects totaling $64.3 billion. It is believed there actually may be even more projects that could be initiated quickly.
.
In addition, the U.S. Conference of Mayors on Monday released a report detailing 11,391 infrastructure projects in 427 cities, totaling over $73 billion, that could be funded in part by the stimulus package.

On the heels of AASHTO’s announcement, President-Elect Barack Obama, announced last Saturday that he has asked his “economic team to develop an economic recovery plan for both Wall Street and Main Street that will help save or create at least two and a half million jobs, while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil and saving billions of dollars."

According to the Federal Highway Administration, every $1.25 billion invested in transportation infrastructure creates roughly 35,000 jobs. 

Contact Tom Carter  or Leif Wathne.

House Transportation Chairman Proposes Short-Term Infrastructure Funding Level 

U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) on Monday recommended including $45 billion for infrastructure funding in a proposed economic stimulus package expected to be taken up by the 111th Congress next January. 

Chairman Oberstar estimated such an amount for infrastructure would create 1.2 million jobs and noted the figure could increase in  view of the increased number of ready-to-go projects.  The funding would break down as follows:

..........• $18.25 billion - highway transportation
..........• $2 billion - Amtrak and rail
..........• $1 billion - aviation
..........• $9 billion - environmental infrastructure
..........• $5 billion - water projects with the Army Corps of Engineers
..........• $2.5 billion - “greening” of federal buildings
..........• $420 million - Coast Guard
..........• $65 million - Maritime Administration shipping projects

Contact Tom Carter,  Kevin Walgenbach or Leif Wathne.

New Hours of Service Rule Under Fire

Just a few weeks after the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) published its long-anticipated, controversial final rule on hours of service (HOS), some outside groups and at least one member of Congress are pledging further litigation or Congressional action.

Any changes to the HOS regulations jeopardize a handful of provisions that currently benefit the ready mixed concrete industry.

Jim Berard, spokesman for the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee, said, “This will likely be addressed by the committee in some form in the 111th Congress, quite possibly in the [next] surface transportation authorization.”

Committee Chairman Jim Oberstar (D-Minn.) said in a statement he was “disappointed that FMCSA is going down a path of trying to continue new standards for daily and weekly maximum driving time, when these standards have twice been rejected by the courts.”

Public Citizen, a safety advocacy group, and the Teamsters Union, both of which were parties to previous litigation against the current HOS regulations, have pledged to continue their fight against FMCSA’s HOS rule.

Even so, a handful of trucking-related industries and groups have suggested any Congressional action might be farfetched. 

Contact Kevin Walgenbach.

Questions about this newsletter? For more information or to unsubscribe, send an e-mail to info@cement.org