Senate Committee to Vote on Dangerous Energy Bill

Media Contacts

Environment America

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will consider the Clean Energy Finance Act of 2011.  The bill would create an energy deployment administration with broad authority to provide financial support for a wide array of energy technologies.  While energy use and production remains the largest source of pollution in the U.S., the deployment administration could support energy technologies that are as dirty as our current energy sources.  For electricity, the bill could subsidize nuclear power, advanced coal, natural gas and municipal solid waste along with truly clean technologies such as wind, solar power and energy efficiency.  In the transportation sector, the bill could subsidize fuels that are as dirty as gasoline, which is responsible for more global warming pollution than any other fuel source in the United States.  Finally, the bill could also support technologies like coal-to-liquids or tar sands oil as long as their emissions were comparable to those of gasoline.

Sean Garren, Clean Energy Advocate for Environment America, said:

“Pollution from our current energy mix causes asthma, premature death and cancer; unchecked global warming that increases the frequency and severity of extreme weather like droughts, fires and tornadoes; and environmental destruction of treasured landscapes.  Meanwhile nuclear disasters like the one unfolding in Japan are reminders of the inherent dangers of nuclear power.  Unfortunately, the Clean Energy Finance Act of 2011 would support energy technologies that do nothing to improve our energy mix.

“We can and must move away from energy technologies that put our environment and families’ health at massive risk.  We should repower our country with clean, renewable energy, like wind and solar power.  Unfortunately, because it could subsidize dangerous nuclear and fossil energy this bill might divert us from a path towards a truly clean energy future.”