Senate gives green light to Obama's New Deal

The Senate has approved a plan with about $100bn of spending earmarked for green projects

The US green business movement was celebrating last night after the Senate narrowly voted in favour of an estimated $838bn spending bill, including about $100bn of spending earmarked for green projects.

The bill just reached the 60 vote mark needed to pass after 58 Democrats were joined by three Republicans.

House and Senate negotiators are now expected to meet later today to begin work on reconciling differences between the Senate bill that passed by the House last week. The aim is to have the bill finalised and in front of the president by early next week.

Only about 10 to 20 per cent of the bill has been changed by the Senate with the bulk of the changes focused on the Senate's decision to strip out a number of education and health provision reforms, as well as a number of proposed tax breaks.

The bill passed by the Senate also included fractionally more green funding than that put forward by the House and as a result funding for a number of Obama's proposed schemes are now up for negotiation.

For example, the Senate proposed $53.8bn to be spent on energy efficiency and grid programmes, compared to $48.9bn by the House, while it also proposed that more be spent on improving the energy efficiency of Federal buildings and fleets. It also proposed that an additional $2bn in grants be provided to manufacturers of advanced battery systems.

However, defence-related green projects would lose out under the Senate bill, which proposed that spending should be cut from $4.5bn to $3.4bn, while renewables campaigners expressed concern over the Senate's decision to cut a proposed renewable energy loan guarantee programme from $8bn to $7bn and scrap a Department of Energy grant scheme.

But overall the Senate vote was broadly welcomed by environmental campaigners who have characterised the bill as a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape US energy infrastructure and slash emissions while creating jobs.

Greg Wetstone, senior director for governmental affairs at the American Wind Energy Association hailed the bill as "a critical down payment on long-term policies to enhance energy security, encourage new economic investment in jobs, and address climate change", adding that it should help restore momentum to the US wind energy industry after a turbulent few months.

Meanwhile, speculation is mounting that president Obama could make his first appearance at the UN next month to attend a "mini summit" on the on-going climate change negotiations.

According to Reuters reports, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is to invite the president to attend the meeting in New York in late March, where he hopes Obama will confirm the "sea change" in US climate change policy and meet with negotiators from other large polluters such as China, India and the EU.

US officials said that the president had not yet decided whether to accept the invite, but UN diplomats are hopeful his presence would provide fresh impetus to the current international negotiations, which some observers fear have stalled in recent months.

"If it happens, this would be Obama's debut appearance at the United Nations, " one diplomat told Reuters. "It would also send a strong signal if he comes and uses the occasion to show the world that he wants a sea change by reversing the environmental policies of Bush."