Congress ready for final stretch on 800-page energy reform bill

Congress is going down to the wire on a bill to rewrite federal energy policy. 

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, industry groups and businesses have long hoped this Congress would produce the first major overhaul of federal energy laws in a decade. 

{mosads}As members return from their summer recess, they’re closer than they have been all session to that goal — but there’s a long way to go to get a final energy bill done. 

At issue is a nearly 800-page bill to reform federal laws dealing with energy generation, transportation, security and trade. 

The legislation, crafted in the Senate by Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and ranking member Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and by Republicans in the House, aims to streamline federal energy policies, expand liquefied natural gas exports, renew a federal conservation fund, encourage energy efficiency and protect the grid from cyberattacks. 

The Senate voted to go to a conference committee with the House just before the August recess, setting up the scramble to the finish line this year. Members will hold their first conference committee meeting on Thursday.

The energy bill has progressed in fits and starts over the course of this Congress. Members of both parties committed to forging an energy overhaul as early as 2014 and held a series of hearings on federal energy policies early in 2015. Both chambers had introduced versions of a reform package by the end of the year.

But the process has been a messy one, with filibusters in the Senate, a veto threat in the House and now promised fights over Republican policies in a conference committee. 

Lawmakers have cleared away several of the issues that have held up this process so far. They will not, for example, attach aid for the Flint, Mich., water crisis to this bill, a question that produced a Democratic filibuster and stalled consideration of the legislation for weeks earlier this year. 

Senate leaders, including Murkowski, have also promised to avoid adding anything that has attracted a veto threat from President Obama, such as several provisions the House GOP included in its version of the bill.

“I will reiterate my personal commitment to a final bill that can pass both chambers and be signed into law by the president,” Murkowski said in July. “Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to unilaterally disarm ourselves in conference negotiations, but my objective here is to deliver a law.”

There are several barriers remaining for final passage of the energy bill, chief among them the prospects for a contentious conference committee and the legislative calendar.

The Senate only voted to go to a conference committee once leaders there dismissed many of the conservative provisions the House had tacked on to its version of the bill earlier this year. These matters, including a GOP bill to fix the California drought and a measure to bypass environmental regulations for energy projects on Native American lands, angered environmentalists so much that they pressured Senate Democrats not to even go to conference with the House. 

But those issues will not die quietly, especially for their biggest boosters. Conference committee member Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, in July called it “a little bit bizarre” for Murkowski and others to dismiss the House provisions that had drawn the ire of the White House, greens and others. When the conference committee convenes, members will have to preempt a GOP split over the nature of the final package.

A bigger question might be whether there is enough time for Congress to come together on a rewritten bill. Energy staffers had preliminary discussions about the bill over the recess, but the 43-member conference committee has yet to convene, meaning it will need to craft a bill, clear it through committee, get the White House’s approval and move the bill through both chambers all in the seven weeks remaining on the legislative calendar. 

The bill won’t move quickly; House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) in July predicted a final measure would only be possible after November’s elections, meaning it would come up in a lame-duck session that could be dominated by higher-profile fights over federal spending.  

The constricted schedule lends itself to a frenzy of late-session lobbying. 

Over the recess, several groups wrote letters to lawmakers reminding them of their support for the energy bill. Business groups, for example, shot off three letters in mid-August highlighting their support for energy efficiency standards in the bill; trade groups got in on the game as well, with hydropower associations writing to lawmakers to plug a new report showing big growth in their industry and asking members to “include a strong hydropower title” in a final bill. 

“The Chamber [of Commerce] and other business groups have continued to work with staff in the House and the Senate to advance talks through the recess,” said Chamber spokeswoman Megan Van Etten. “We hope that members will return and continue negotiations.”  

Greens, though, are set to wage an opposing battle, encouraging members to pull conservative provisions out of the bill or drop the reform package entirely. 

Environmentalists say the bill gives too much to fossil fuel industries and provides little for renewable energy sources. The Sierra Club has been “touching base” with senators over the recess, said legislative director Melinda Pierce, and will look to make its case further once Congress returns. 

Greens’ concerns raise the possibility that liberals in the Senate could run out the clock on the energy bill this year, raising another barrier for legislation now nearly two years in the making.  

“In the rush to legislate, we want to remind folks of some of the more dangerous provisions,” Pierce said. 

“Obviously we are hoping that there is no movement and that conference conversations, which I believe really did not happen over the recess, are slow-walked, given that we oppose the bill on the table that the House passed.”