What Does Obama’s Stimulus Plan Mean for the Energy Industry?
Obama said the heart of the new economic stimulus plan is “to create jobs.” So how will the plan effect professionals in America’s energy industry? The Senate bill includes a projected $50 billion in federal loan warranties that would likely go to nuclear power and liquid coal technologies. The quantity is just a fraction of what the nuclear power industry is seeking.
Last year, the industry asked Congress for $122 billion in loan guarantees in order to build twenty-one new nuclear reactors. But an alliance of environmental groups are calling on senators to remove a debatable provision from the $900 billion stimulus bill that could lead to the construction of a new generation of atomic power plants.
The 1,071 page bill, eight inches thick, bill was based on an loaded down congressional Web site late Thursday, giving lawmakers just a few overnight hours to read it before debate resumed in both the House and Senate Friday morning. Just on Tuesday, the House voted unanimously to recommend that lawmakers and the public have at least 48 hours to read the legislation before a vote.
The plan is the signature opening move of the entrant Obama presidency, which is betting that combining tax cuts of just a few dollars a week for most workers with an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars of government spending over the next few years will arrest the economy’s fall.
The $790 billion plan aggregates $286 billion in tax cuts with $311 billion in programs funded by the annexations committees and about $193 billion in spending for benefit programs such as unemployment assistance, $250 payments for millions of people receiving Social Security benefits, and extra money for states to help with the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled.
The preparation was added to the Senate’s $884 billion version of the stimulus package by Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah) at the advocating of industry lobbyists and approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee. Bennett’s amendment took $500 million from the $10 billion allocated to a new loan guarantee program for renewable energy and electric transmission projects and moved it to an existing loan guarantee program created by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.
No nuclear plant has been constructed in the United States since the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Critics of the proposal question the safety of nuclear energy, doubt the federal loan guarantees would provide much of an immediate stimulus to the economy. But supporters of nuclear energy say nuclear should be considered a clean, safe and emissions-free source of power.
Ranking Republican committee member Joe Barton of Texas said he considered the plan short changes financial backing for carbon capture and storage technology and ignores nuclear power.
Barton called the $2.4 billion dedicated to clean coal evolution in the economic stimulus legislation “relatively miserly.”
“In my opinion, the energy provisions before us over-stimulate a small area of our economy and neglect the rest,” Barton said in a statement.
At the hearing Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said the legislation’s loan guarantee program does not address nuclear power because the bill is focused on bolstering the economy within two years and no nuclear plants are set to come on line in that time.
Several other House committees will take up other parts of the economic stimulus package and then send the measure to the Senate.
The Democratic-controlled Congress hopes to have a final bill on United States. President Barack Obama’s desk for his signature into law by the Presidents Day holiday on February 16.
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee sanctioned $20 billion in energy tax credits and related financial incentives for inclusion in the economic stimulus package.
Read more about Barack Obama’s Energy Plan – Watch Video
