Looking Ahead to the Senate Energy Bill

Looking Ahead to the Senate Energy Bill. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

The Senate has recently premiered their version of the energy bill and many people are currently in the process of digesting the substantial text. Kathy Hadley, Executive Director of the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) says that it is too early to get very excited about any kind of energy legislation.

HADLEY: I think lots of people are trying to go through the pages and pages of it but in general you know there is a House bill and Senate bill on clean energy policy changes for this country and it’s focused on trying to deal with the bigger issue, the global issue of climate so I think until the House and Senate bills are conferenced and they figure out what the real bill will, none of us really know what the final bill will look like.

Hadley believes that there is good intention in both the current bills.

HADLEY: I think though the intention is to create a bill that will change our energy future from what it’s been in the past which is basically fossil fuel based to embrace the idea of clean energy as a path forward for the country in terms of both our energy economy but also our jobs economy. And when it comes to agriculture I think both bills try to address the issue of agriculture and brand new opportunities I hope for agriculture producers in the future if these bills are passed.

She believes out of the final bill will come new ag opportunities.

HADLEY: Right now some of the opportunities for agriculture focus on the whole issue of carbon in our environment and agriculture producers I think will have new opportunities to adopt agriculture practices that will help us store carbon in our soil and when they do that I think there’s going to be new programs that will provide incomes to farmers for carbon storage practices.

Some of those include no-till farming and organic farming. Hadley believes there is great promise for rural America when both the House and Senate finally come to an agreement.

HADLEY: I think that there’s lots of excitement an interest around the country from farmers on the whole issue of biofuels as a new crop and we’ve learned a lot of lessons with the first generation of those that I think the path forward is going to be opportunity for farmers, opportunity for new incomes and for restoration of our rural economy.

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

www.harvestcleanenergy.org