Just before the August 2003 congressional recess the Democratic Party, in an unprecedented maneuver, agreed to substitute last year's Senate Energy Bill, passed when the Democratic Party was in the majority, for this year's Republican-written Senate Energy Bill. The result? The energy bill moved out of the Senate stalemate and into a Conference Committee.

As ILSR's David Morris writes in a recent column, "We Don't Need a National Energy Bill (August 5, 2003), the only justification for the Democratic strategy is that they feel the nation desperately needs a national energy bill. "In this they are wrong", he writes. It would be good to have a national energy bill that promoted decentralized and renewable energy and energy efficiency. But at this time, and perhaps in most times, Washington is not the place one should look for such a bill. Any energy bill that comes out of Washington will:

• encourage national, read, "centralizing" strategies.
• invariably preempt state and local authority.
• lengthens the distance between the energy user and the energy producer and separate by ever-longer distances those who make the decisions from those who feel the impact of those decisions.

Happily an energy policy is being developed, from the ground up.Opposing a federal energy policy from the top down does not mean opposing a national energy policy from the ground up. Rooftop solar cells, farmer-owned ethanol plants and wind turbines - these are the technologies that will inhabit a renewable and decentralized energy future. Indeed, in the last five years states have begun to design a much more appealing and powerful energy policy than anything contained in either the Democratic or the Republican energy bills.

Examples:

• State Based Renewable Electricity Portfolio Standards
  At this writing, thirteen states with almost half the nation's population have enacted such mandates. Many more may soon do so. The Senate energy bill requires a 10 percent renewable percentage, preempting state standards. For example, a federal standard could overrule Nevada's 15 percent renewable standard.
• State-based Renewable Fuels Initiatives
  The centerpiece of federal energy legislation for Senator Daschle and many other midwestern legislators is the renewable fuels standard. This provision, contained in both the House and the Senate bills, require the oil companies to sell five billion gallons of ethanol by 2012. Although a worthy initiative, actions at the state level have already moved us more than half way there as of mid-2003. Fourteen states have begun phasing out MTBE, a widely used gasoline additive that contaminates local water supplies. As this occurs, ethanol use will rise, probably exceeding 3.5 billion gallons by 2005.
• R&D, Efficiency and Renewable Energy Funding
  Even when it comes to research and development, states are viable alternatives to federal agencies. In the wake of deregulation 23 states assess electricity users a small sum to fund energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives. This year these funds will spend more than $2 billion, a sum that rivals what the federal government is offering (outside of the federal weatherization program).

One aspect of the federal energy bill that may better be accomplished than at the state level is a national tax incentive like the wind energy production tax credit. Yet here such bipartisan support exists that an extension could easily be attached to a far less controversial and damaging piece of legislation.

At the state and local level, the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution are commensurate. It is at the local and state level that the energy sources available - sunlight, wind power, geothermal, biomass and efficiency - are also the most popular energy sources. It is at the local and state level that factors such as job creation and economic development can be taken into account, as well as the more qualitative psychic rewards that come from being independent not only of OPEC but of one's increasingly remote electric company.

Other Resources:

• Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of Our Electricity System
  is the newest book from the New Rules Project by David Morris.
  Order Online Now! $15.00
• Power Surge: How We're Adding Energy From Below - by David Morris, The Washington Post, August 27, 2001
• Looking Locally: A Bottom-Up Energy Solution - David Morris commentary on TomPaine.com, August 2, 2001 (Listen Here in Real Audio)
• Birth Throes of a New Electricity System: The US Experience - David Morris' article from Cogeneration and On-Site Power Production, May-June 2001
• Solutions to Electricity Crisis - Column by David Morris and Daniel Kraker, The Oakland Tribune, June 5, 2001
• Local Innovation Can Fix National Energy Shortages - Column by David Morris and Daniel Kraker, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, June 3, 2001
• A Bottom Up Energy Policy - Column by David Morris, May 16, 2001
• Senate, FERC Decisions Contradict Efforts to Build Local Electricity Systems - Press Release, April 27, 2001