The big talk up the Hill at the moment is whether some energy tax rebates will be refundable or not. Really thin gruel. An interesting fight between the senate Democrats and the incoming administration. But perhaps best characterized as somewhere between a drop in the bucket and 7/8 drop in the bucket in terms of major investments in new green technologies that could lay the groundwork for future economic growth, real progress on global warming and real progress shifting our reliance from the toxic encumbrance of oil.
Meanwhile, though, there are some kernels of more ambitious ideas. Rep. Van Hollen (D-MD) and Zach Wamp (R-TN) sent a letter to the president-elect Obama about so-called ‘Green Banks’, specifically something called the National Clean Energy Lending Authority. The idea is a government chartered authority which would be empowered and funded to do a certain amount of lending to green projects but also, and perhaps more significantly, issue government guarantees that would make it easier and cheaper for green projects to get funded in the private sector.
As the two write in their letter, “The current financial crisis has not only thrown us into recession, it has significantly derailed or killed off virtually every alternative energy project in the pipeline making renewable energy yet another victim of the economic fallout.”
