Articles by Grist staff

The state of play on green incentives in the stimulus bill

The following is a guest essay from Josh Dorner, deputy press secretary of the Sierra Club.

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Greens were heartbroken last year when a package of tax incentives for clean energy and renewables fell short in a 59-40 vote during December's energy bill battle royale in the Senate. Greens, renewables folks, and the Democratic leadership have been looking for a clear path forward ever since. As these particular incentives actually do stimulate the economy, attaching them to the economic stimulus package now being debated is attractive both on the merits (more on that below) and for political reasons.

First, some stimulus package is all but guaranteed to pass and be signed by the President (an increasingly rare outcome for legislation these days). As the Democrats have been pretty strict about offsetting new spending with cuts somewhere else, attaching green initiatives to this package sidesteps the issue of the finding the money to pay for them.

(For reasons unclear to anyone of sound mind, taking the money out of Big Oil's hide bedeviled the energy bill's clean energy tax package. Only in Washington could the idea of shifting tax breaks and subsidies away from Big Oil toward renewables -- even as ExxonMobil reports a record $41 billion profit -- not be a shoo-in.)

After the economic stimulus package negotiated between the White House and House leadership failed to include the energy incentives, the fight moved to the Senate. Sen. Maria Cantwell deserves major kudos for leading the charge. Though Senator Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, initially expressed skepticism about including the incentives in the stimulus package, Cantwell marshaled the support of nearly 40 other Senators -- including key Republicans.

In addition to the support she pulled together, key players like Bingaman, Domenici, and Grassley, the Ranking Member of the Finance Committee, also weighed in favorably. Support became so strong that instead of offering the incentives as an amendment, a bipartisan deal was struck to simply incorporate them into the package prior to Wednesday's markup. In the end, it was approved by the Finance Committee 14-7.

The $5.7 billion package includes quite a few goodies:

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