With a Big Energy Bill Off the Table, at Least Take These Steps

President Obama said don't look forward next year to passing a magnum opus of an energy/climate bill.

Been there, didn't do that during the 111th Congress, which might have been the friendliest territory for such a bill in two generations.

Instead of a magnum opus, we're more likely to see attempts to write a few sonnets with a fair chance of becoming hits. "Chunks," Obama told Rolling Stone magazine.

Ideas for "chunks" have been percolating. Glenn Hurowitz from the Center for International Policy suggested four. One is cleaning up sooty emissions from commercial trucks, locomotives, and ships, which release swarms of particles, "black carbon," that absorb heat in the atmosphere and on the ground.

Cleaning up black carbon would mitigate a respiratory and cardiac health hazard, in case any members of Congress are interested in the cost reduction benefits of disease prevention.

There would be global security benefits too. Black carbon falling to earth is thought to be one of the culprits speeding up the melting of ice fields in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, the colossal reservoir at the roof of the world that supplies fresh water to more than a billion people on the Indian subcontinent, China, and Southeast Asia.

Here's another idea for a sonnet - a portfolio standard giving the wind, solar, and other renewable indsutries the kind of long-term policy certainty that the oil industry has enjoyed, such as the intangible drilling costs deduction that has been in place since today's centenarians were in short pants.

The wind guys are tired of the roller-coaster ride of short-term production tax credit extensions. Like the Sneetches of Dr. Seuss fame, the tax credits are "off again, on again, in again, out again, through the machine and back round about again..." Congress' fickleness makes long-term investment planning well nigh impossible.

Three times in the past decade, expiration of the credit caused wind development to collapse by three-fourths or more the following year.

The production tax credit is on the books through 2012. For projects placed in service this year and last, developers have the option of taking the credit as a Treasury grant. That option "saved the industry" when the recession dried up the market for tax-equity financing of renewables, Iberdrola Renewables' Don Furman said recently.

Periodically tossing the renewable energy industry a life preserver, however, does not an energy strategy make. If we must go down the road of doing energy in "chunks," then let those chunks be the confidence-building steps that lead toward long-term goals - less dependence on oil, fewer emissions of carbon and unhealthy pollutants, and more diversification of energy assets.

Otherwise, our energy policy will remain, in the words of GE CEO Jeff Immelt, "stupid." And we all know what Forrest Gump said about "stupid."