From: Politico

The federal government should expand access to offshore oil and gas, phase out the wind production tax credit and preserve a key Energy Department loan guarantee program promoting clean energy, a broad coalition of former senators and industry, environmental and labor officials said as part of sweeping recommendations the group issued Wednesday.

The Bipartisan Policy Center’s 20-member Strategic Energy Policy Initiative dipped into other contentious debates over energy exports, military biofuels investment and climate change in recommending a host of ideas in its report. The recommendations are intended to expand both conventional and alternative energy production along with energy efficiency.

Not all members of the diverse group agree on each individual recommendation.

“Taken together, however, we believe this set of recommendations provides the blueprint for a balanced and effective plan for enhancing the nation’s prosperity, energy security and sustainable environmental quality in the 21st century,” according to the report.

That’s an approach Congress should emulate, one of the initiative’s leaders said.

“It’s a clear indication of what can be done,” said former Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who joined former Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) as one of the leaders of the effort.

Lott, a former Senate majority leader, also offered some advice to current Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “Quit always trying to take up legislation where you know there’s going to be a fight,” and instead, pursue a bipartisan energy bill.

Lott said he and Dorgan were heading to Capitol Hill after their Wednesday morning news conference “to meet with one of the key players to talk about what we’ve recommended here.”

“It is one of the most unique and interesting things I have ever been involved in — an advisory group that was that diverse,” Dorgan said.

The blueprint recommends that Congress expand access to oil and gas exploration and production in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico and says the Interior Department should speed up leasing off the mid- and South Atlantic states only in areas that have been “reviewed and approved based on a rigorous coastal and marine spatial planning process.” It adds that lawmakers and Interior should update permitting and leasing onshore to include “adequate resources,” consistent requirements and creation of a new commission to identify potential regulatory reforms.

The Interior Department should also “consider reopening its current five-year plan to include at least one lease sale in the Atlantic,” the report says.

It argues against limiting liquefied natural gas and other exports, arguing more broadly that “restricting international trade in fossil fuels is not an effective policy to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions or to advance domestic economic interests.”

Proposals for LNG exports have become a hotly debated topic in and out of Congress, but they were not controversial in the discussions toward formulating the report, project staff said.

The report also recommends that lawmakers, as part of broad tax reform, “review the full range of tax energy expenditures and develop a reasonable phase-out plan for those tax expenditures that constitute subsidies for mature fuels and technologies.”

It recommends extending the renewable-energy production tax credit — initially at its current level but moving toward a complete phase-out by the end of 2016. While some groups want a phase-out to last until 2019, and others want to scrap the incentives right away, 2016 “was the compromise position,” said Tracy Terry, the project’s director for energy security.

In addition, DOE’s Section 1703 loan guarantee program for clean-energy sources, created under the 2005 energy bill, “should be maintained and reformed,” the report recommends. Changes would include improved risk management, more stable staffing and funding and more transparent data management and record keeping.

Republicans have targeted all of the department’s loan guarantees in the wake of the failed $535 million loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt solar manufacturer Solyndra. That specific guarantee came from DOE’s now-expired Section 1705 program, which was financed by the 2009 economic stimulus law.

As for climate change, the group said tackling the issue “can and should be a matter of bipartisan consensus.”

It calls on Congress and the Obama administration to work on “responsible and efficient policies” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and says the U.S. should work with other governments on a strategy “that both promotes the most cost-effective emissions reductions and addresses the competitiveness issues associated with carbon policy.” Government and businesses should come up with “cost-effective” emission reductions and support “market-based efforts to accelerate the integration of low-carbon energy technologies,” it says.

The report defends Defense Department investments in biofuels — an investment some Republicans have sought to limit or eliminate — and says Interior and other federal agencies should continue to fully fund and implement steps to expedite approval of renewable-energy projects on federal lands.

While members of the project “have diverse views” regarding the congressionally mandated renewable-fuel standard that the Environmental Protection Agency oversees, “we uniformly believe the nation should continue to develop advanced renewable fuels, and we support the role that the [RFS] can play in promoting these fuels.”

The coalition in late November announced one of the recommendations of the report — a call for the White House and Congress to create a national energy strategy council to produce policy and coordinate the activities of federal agencies. It said the process would be similar to what the U.S. uses for national security policy.

Other recommendations include modernizing the electric grid to include more renewable power, continuing DOE and private efforts to develop carbon capture and storage and expanding congressional investment and federal agency work toward better training and data for energy-sector jobs.

The report doesn’t mention the Keystone XL pipeline.

“You correctly characterize it as very controversial; so controversial that we don’t touch it,” William Reilly, who was EPA administrator under former President George H.W. Bush, said in response to a question regarding the pipeline at Wednesday’s press conference. “We could not, frankly, agree on that.”

Besides, Executive Director Margot Anderson said, the project members thought a decision on the pipeline “would be made by now.”

Likewise, the report makes no mention of whether the federal government should regulate hydraulic fracturing.

The project is the culmination of about 18 months of work and five meetings among board members, led by Dorgan, Lott, Reilly and former National Security Adviser Jim Jones.

Representatives also came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, ExxonMobil, Honeywell International, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Southern Co. and DuPont, among others.