Hill Heat

The House will have the floor debate on the $1.1 billion in member earmarks to the FY 2008 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (HR 2641) approved last week by the House Appropriations Committee in a voice vote.

The measure, House Report 110-185 Part 2 (full pdf), amounts to about 3 percent of the $31.6 billion the bill would provide to the Energy Department, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation and several independent agencies.

The committee estimates that $3.4 billion of the bill goes to elements dealing with climate change, $1 billion more than in the President’s budget request. More on the original bill below the fold.

American Association for the Advancement of Science and the British Embassy will sponsor a discussion on climate change and its implications for maintaining economic growth. The speaker will be United Kingdom chief science adviser David King. Contact: Earl Lane at 202-326-6431 or [email protected]

House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee (Chairman Markey, D-Mass.) will hold a hearing on the potential of plug-in hybrid vehicles. Contact: Moulton, David – Democratic Staff Director at 202-225-4012 Note: There will be a hands-on demonstration of plug-in hybrids at New Jersey Ave S.E. between C and D Sts. after the hearing.

• Frank Gaffney – president, Center for Security Policy
• Rob Lowe – actor and adocate
• David Vieau – president and CEO, A123 Systems
• Will Wynn – mayor, Austin, Texas

The nominations of Clarence H. Albright, of South Carolina, to be Under Secretary of Energy, Lisa E. Epifani, of Texas, to be an Assistant Secretary of Energy (Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs), and James L. Caswell, of Idaho, to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management

• Harlan Watson – special representative and senior climate negotiator, Bureau of Oceans and International Environment and Scientific Affairs, State Department Panel II
• Elliot Diringer – director of international strategies, Pew Center on Global Climate Change
• Margo Thorning – managing director, International Council for Capital Formation

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to learn about national renewable electricity portfolio standards such as those that have been introduced in the Senate and are likely to be introduced in the House as part of the climate change legislative package Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) has called for this Fall. A Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is a market-based mechanism that requires utilities to gradually increase the portion of electricity produced from renewable resources such as wind, biomass, geothermal, solar energy, incremental hydropower and marine energy. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have RPSs, covering 40 percent of the nation’s electrical load. A national RPS has passed the Senate in the last three Congresses, although it is not included in the recent Senate energy bill.

H.R. 2850, Green Chemistry Research and Development Act of 2007 and H.R. 2337, Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007