The Senate voted Tuesday to move ahead on a comprehensive energy bill that had been stalled for weeks because of a slew of controversial policy riders in the House version of the bill.
After weeks of negotiations on how to move ahead, Democrats and Republicans broke the gridlock with a plan to remove the most objectionable parts from the House legislation and hold a conference on the bill.
Conferees have been designated in both chambers of Congress, which is the final step in the process to get the bill to the president’s desk.
“I will reiterate my personal commitment to a final bill that can pass both chambers and be signed into law by the president,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, ahead of the vote.
“Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to unilaterally disarm ourselves in conference negotiations, but my objective here is to deliver a law,” she added.
Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate energy committee, said the policy riders would have prompted President Obama to veto the bill, she told reporters.
“What we were most concerned about was pursuing an agenda that definitely couldn’t get past the White House and veto threats,” she said.
House leaders said last month that their goal was to move a bill out of conference that the president would sign.
The bill, the Energy Policy Modernization Act, has the support of both fossil and renewable energy groups. The bill would expedite the approval process for natural gas export terminals as well as streamline the process for bringing more hydroelectric projects online, among other measures.
Soon after the 84-3 vote on Tuesday, a number of groups praised the decision to move ahead.
“This bill could help continue this U.S. energy renaissance by strengthening our nation’s energy infrastructure, ensuring that American natural gas has a dominant place on the world market, and putting in place a 21st century workforce,” said Louis Finkel, the American Petroleum Institute’s executive vice president for government affairs.
“It’s estimated that almost a million jobs could be created by 2020 if our nation’s current renaissance continues,” he said.
The hydropower industry hailed the vote as a major step forward on improving the “outdated” regulatory process that has made it difficult to site new hydroelectric projects in the United States.
“The energy bills shine a light on an outdated hydropower regulatory process — one that can take projects up to a decade or longer to complete,” said Linda Church Ciocci, executive director of the National Hydropower Association. “The bipartisan provisions included in the bills seek to add predictability and increase coordination and timeliness of the process — all while protecting environmental values.”
Hydropower is the largest source of renewable electricity in the country, last year outproducing wind and solar power combined.
