Congress floats renewable energy bill

Just days after president Obama authorised around $100bn (£69.6bn) of spending and tax breaks for green projects by signing his economic stimulus package into law, US legislators have stepped up efforts to get a bill requiring energy companies to deliver minimum quantities of renewable power through Congress.

A new Renewable Energy Standard bill, currently at the committee stage, would require utilities to generate six per cent of their energy from renewables by 2012, rising to a quarter by 2025.

The bill was sponsored by Democrat Senator Tom Udall, who won New Mexico in November after long-term Republican senator Peter Dominici retired. It is co-sponsored by his first cousin, Mark Udall, senator for Colorado.

A federal renewable energy portfolio was a lynchpin of President Obama's energy platform. During his campaign, he too called for a quarter of the US energy mix to come from renewables by 2025, although he was more aggressive in the short term, targeting a 10 per cent renewable mix by 2012.

Since then of course the economy has tanked and, while the Obama administration has repeatedly insisted it remains committed to combating climate change and has made green projects a central plank of the stimulus package, there has been no announcement on whether the targets will be formally adopted.

Of the 30 states with renewable energy portfolio standards – three of them are voluntary – Oregon, Minnesota and Illinois explicitly set the same 2025 target as Obama's agenda and Udall's bill. Some have gone further, however; almost-bankrupt California mandated a 20 per cent target for next year, rising to a third by 2020. Meanwhile Tom Udall's own state, New Mexico, has set a target of 20 per cent renewable energy by 2020, while his cousin's state has the same target.

In related news, the climate change lobby got another shot in the arm this week when the Center for Biological Diversity launched its San Francisco-based Climate Law Institute. The Institute has a $17m (£11.8m) war chest to lobby for more effective climate-change laws over the next five years.