Washington (Platts)--9Apr2009
The US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee plans to unveil in
the next two weeks a draft bill that would create a financial institution
within the Department of Energy to help finance innovative energy projects in
a flagging economy.
The "Clean Energy Bank" draft would be part of a comprehensive energy
bill that Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat, plans to
complete after the Senate returns from its spring break on April 21.
Bingaman and top Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are very close to an
agreement on the draft, but Murkowski spokesman Robert Dillon said
negotiations would not be complete until after the recess.
The new bank would benefit the same industries that currently are
eligible for DOE loan guarantees, including next-generation nuclear energy,
renewables, clean coal and other technologies. Committee spokesman Bill Wicker
said the bill would "shore up" the existing DOE loan guarantee program in the
short term, and then transition, after that initial phase, out of the
department to a "new, financially focused agency."
A similar bill Bingaman floated last year would have given the bank
authority only to securitize private lending as a way to help developers gain
access to less expensive private money. The panel's former top Republican,
Pete Domenici of New Mexico, proposed allowing the bank to make direct loans.
Wicker said committee staff was considering authorizing the bank to make
direct loans this time around, adding "that is a real possibility."
Domenici also proposed last year making the bank's services available to
more established low-carbon industries, including a broader swath of the
nuclear industry. Wicker said that this was not Congress' intent in
authorizing the DOE loan guarantee program in 2005 and that it was not the
role of the federal government to prop up mature industries, which should
"sink or swim on the merits of the technology."
Wicker added, "the loan guarantee program is intended to help new,
emerging technologies, not existing technologies." Industries like
conventional nuclear energy should find backing on Wall Street rather than at
DOE, he said.
Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat representing Maryland, last month offered a
generally similar measure in the US House of Representatives.
--Jean Chemnick, jean_chemnick@platts.com
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