[Jadykeery]

It's official: Congress passes 35 mpg CAFE standard

Posted Dec 18th 2007 2:24PM by Sebastian Blanco
Filed under: Ethanol, MPG, Legislation and Policy, Green Daily, USA



This afternoon, the energy bill that requires 35 mpg by 2020 CAFE handily passed Congress. After passing in the Senate last week, the first increase in average fleet fuel economy in 32 years sailed through the House of Representatives 314-100. The auto industry's best friend in Congress, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., "was key to a compromise on vehicle efficiency increases," as the AP put it. As we mentioned, part of that compromise meant stripping out tax provisions for renewable energy requirements and the elimination of new incentives for plug-in hybrid vehicles. Oil companies were also spared higher taxes. President Bush has said he will sign the bill.

The new CAFE standard is part of a broad energy bill and includes a massive boost to ethanol producers. As the AP reports:

In a dramatic shift to spur increased demand for nonfossil fuels, the bill also requires a six-fold increase in ethanol use to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022, a boon to farmers. And it requires new energy efficiency standards for an array of appliances, lighting and commercial and government buildings.

With the negotiations over, the auto industry now needs to get all of their wonderful concepts out of the auto shows and onto the roads. Thirteen years should be plenty of time, even in the notoriously slow auto industry. They'll need to work hard, based on the number of cars we can buy today that will offer 35 mpg - not many.

[EvonsRorgon]

House Passes Energy Bill, Sending It to President

By JOHN M. BRODER

Published: December 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — Legislation that will slowly but fundamentally change the cars Americans drive, the fuel they burn, the way they light their homes and the price they pay for food cleared the House on Tuesday by a large margin. President Bush said he would sign the hard-fought energy bill on Wednesday.

The bill, which passed on a bipartisan vote of 314 to 100, sets higher fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks by law for the first time in 32 years and requires the production of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022, a nearly fivefold increase from current ethanol production levels.

The measure, known as the Energy Independence and Security Act, also establishes new efficiency requirements for household appliances and government buildings and aims to phase out the incandescent light bulb within 10 years.

Its passage marks one of the largest single steps on energy that the nation has taken since the Arab oil embargoes of the 1970’s. But its full costs will not be known for years. Critics contend it will make cars and trucks less safe and more expensive, divert farmland to costly production of feedstock for ethanol and other synthetic fuels, and raise the price of food because of competition for corn and grain between fuel refiners and livestock growers.

The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, described the bill as groundbreaking because it would reduce oil imports, cuts production of the gases that scientists blame for global warming and significantly increase the efficiency of the nation’s auto fleet.

“You are present at a moment of change, of real change,” she told her House colleagues before the vote was taken.

Ms. Pelosi and other supporters of the bill expressed disappointment that it did not include a requirement that utilities produce a growing share of electric power from renewable sources and was stripped of a package of subsidies for wind, solar, geothermal and other alternative energy sources that would have been paid for by higher taxes on oil companies.

“It could have been stronger,” said Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California. “It’s really unfortunate that we didn’t have the renewable electricity standard or the incentives for wind and solar. But we’ll fight for those another day.”

[adsexpist]

Good that it has been passed, but I wonder if SUV's are included.

Also, it is a shame that certain incentives for hybrids have been removed. I think this is a step in the right direction, but definitely a lot smaller than we could have taken with minimal reprocussions.

[OlegSan]

I think they are.

Good that it has been passed, but I wonder if SUV's are included.

Also, it is a shame that certain incentives for hybrids have been removed. I think this is a step in the right direction, but definitely a lot smaller than we could have taken with minimal reprocussions.

[Breevereurl]

Thumbs down on this one. Congress should have repealed CAFE, an unnecessary intrusion into the free market.

Not everyone wants to drive a Prius.

[babopeddy]

They also should repeal the Clean Water/Air Acts... an unnecessary intrusion into the free market.

Not everyone wants their kids to be healthy.

[jeepgrandch]

What free market, Bob? In relation to oil and energy consumption, there is no free market.

The free market is just a myth, like a unicorn. It just doesn't exist. Especially considering all of the corporate welfare and subsidies in this country.
It works both ways Bob.

[oemcheapdownload]

That is patently, unquestionable, absurdly false.

I was around during the early 70's oil shock. The market worked fine. OPEC decided it would screw with us. At first it worked. Everyone was driving behemoth land yacht cars (think full size SUVs but not as tall). People were stuck with them, but started driving less. Eventually, the weird little cars from our old enemy, Japan, started looking interesting, and people started buying them in large number. Everyone was insulting their houses. In short, the people started conserving, and you know what happened? It worked. By the 70s, early 80s timeframe, the drop in demand caused oil prices to collapse. At the height of the oil crunch they had hit in excess of $1.50 a gallon (quite a bit back then, considering they were down under $0.50 a gallon before the Arabs got frisky), by the mid-80's by which time I was driving, and buying gas, prices were back down well under a buck.

There are two lessons out of this. First, the market works. I works well, it just takes time for the prices to sink in, and for people to make arrangements to deal with it (like replace their cars with more fuel efficient ones). Second, we really don't need new technology to deal with this. Everything we need to cut automotive fuel consumption was in the '79 Honda Civic. Between modern gas engines and diesels, we could easily cut fuel consumption in half, people justneed to get their heads around the concept fo smaller vehicles.

What free market, Bob? In relation to oil and energy consumption, there is no free market.

The free market is just a myth, like a unicorn. It just doesn't exist. Especially considering all of the corporate welfare and subsidies in this country.
It works both ways Bob.

[bonyclayd]

Go to Europe and see all the Smart cars. They are properly named.

[BoboStin]

If you want one, they're coming here.

Personally, a Mini is about as small as I'd go.

[kimaddison]

Thumbs down on this one. Congress should have repealed CAFE, an unnecessary intrusion into the free market.

Not everyone wants to drive a Prius.

Um.... yeah.

1. There is no restriction to horsepower. You can still egt a 35 MPG car to get more than 200 HP, you just have to engineer it better. So your "prius" comparison is ill-suited.

2. We are SO good with resources that we should not have any restrictions on milage, pollution or anything else that companies try to take the most of as quickly as possible w/o regard to what would happen in the future or to others.

Come on Bob! This has absolutely NOTHING to do with "free market" and you know it!

[margoaroyo]

Mike.

For starters, a nation controlling an asset is not "free market". It is actually the antithesis of free market. THEY control the market. Our dependence on this resource has made it so that if a guy like Chavez decides to up the price to, what is it $100 a barrel?, that we stop buying SUV's (sales for the larger ones have been down the past few years. FORD is suffering a lot).

That is not free. That is a reaction driven industry based on someone elses choice of management of a limited resource.

You make it mandatory for cars to get better milage and you ease this control. You might even say it gives people more of a choice of what they want since everything is on teh same playing field. You want a truck? Fine! It is not going to cost you $2000 more a year because OPEC decided to reduce oil shipments to the West.

Second, "people started buying small cars from our old enemy"?

WT@ is that? WWII had VERY LITTLE to do with people's opinions of what was coming over. The fact that they were little plastic vehicles had more to do with what people thought of them. The oil embargo was enough to allow Japan to sell cars to a previously American dominated market to the point where their industrial base stripped that title away from us.

GJ!!!

So in this whole "free market" we can have a third party institute a policy that makes an industrial base shift out of the US and go to another country. That is not exatly "free". I don't remember having any say in it.

[Kt-viagra]

Ninja,

You miss the point entirely. OPEC tried to corner the market on oil, and drive up the price, to their benefit. In the end, the market reasserted itself, through reduced demand, and, eventually, that attempt blew up in their face.

[Kiliunjubl]

Ninja,

You miss the point entirely. OPEC tried to corner the market on oil, and drive up the price, to their benefit. In the end, the market reasserted itself, through reduced demand, and, eventually, that attempt blew up in their face.

No, you missed my point.

That no market is truly free when it relies on others for its own operation.

This is not a case of which MP3 player is the best, or whether you like McD's over BK. This is not what apparel you are wearing. So the free market model, and argument, oes not fit well to the car milage standards.

You can argue that certain things should not be imposed on the industry, but your choice of supporting material does not fit what you are trying to defend.

I am a bit of a nit-picker that way!

[MaraReenece]

@ Mike W.

Remember, OPEC is by definition a cartel. The fact that the supply of a commodity and as a result its price is controlled by a loose affiliation of partners who function more as partners than competitors undermines the presumption of a free market which is based on competition, and access.

The same can be said of Big Oil companies whose standard operating practices include partnering on the build out of delivery infrastucture sush as pipelines. These partnerships undermine the basic principle of the "free market"

And don't get me started on refineries.

[BlackBird]

Guess who's one of the ethanol industry's best friends? Jeb Bush. I have no problems with minimum fuel efficiency standards for cars, but the ethanol issue is not so cut and dried. Bloomberg Markets had an article recently on the working conditions for cane cutters that made me want to take a closer look at the investments my international funds were making. I've also read a lot of conflicting information on the overall efficiency of using corn and sugar-based ethanol. One report indicated that it takes more energy to produce the end fuel product than it produces.

Not everyone wants to drive a Prius, but they are a very good fuel-saving option (not to mention those pesky environmental issues).

[nakeseireo]

^
Sugar cane works well. Corn, not so much. It has to be broken down to sugar before it can be fermented/distilled.

[CalBettaulp]

Isn't most of the US-based ethanol production from corn? I know most of the ethanol derived from sugar comes from Brazil (those really nasty working conditions I referred to in my last post), but I thought the US had been investing more heavily in the Midwest farm products.

[crumoursegemo]

I believe the vast majority of US biofuel is ethanol from corn. The corn-ethanol piece of the energy bill, to me, seems like pure pork-barrel legislation by the Cornbelt congressmen (as well as a bit of green-wash). Under current technologies, it takes about as much fossil fuel to produce corn-ethanol as is saved. Sugar cane has a somewhat better efficiency. Greater promise lies in switchgrass (cellulose) and algae.

[k1ePRlda]

Someone needs to genetically engineer a non-tropical sugar cane.