These two quotes from this Washington Post article sum the story of the bill well:

"Could this bill have been better? Of course it could have," said Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), comparing it to a split decision in a boxing match. But he said it was still "a good bill."

and

Elizabeth Martin-Perera, climate policy specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said, "Congress should be congratulated for taking the first step in the sprint to solve global warming." But she added, "We're disappointed that there were some things left on the cutting-room floor."

My main area of involvement was the renewable fuel standard, which increased and extends the existing standard from requiring 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuel by 2012 to requiring 36 billion gallons by 2022. As importantly as the number the bill adopts the first ever global warming performance requirements and strict protections for sensitive lands.

I'll return to the details, but first it's important to acknowledge what an incredible team effort this was for the environmental community. While three of my colleagues (Jim Presswood, Franz Matzner, and Debbie Hammel) deserve particular credit, they worked hand in hand with experts from American Lung Association, Climate Action Network, Defenders of Wildlife, Earthjustice, Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, National Audubon Society, National Wildlife Federation, NET, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, Western Organization of Resource Councils, and the Wilderness Society.

This broad coalition of groups started working together back in January of this year and together we tried to figure out what it would take to make biofuels a sustainable source of global warming reductions. We also watched the politics behind the renewable fuel standard heat up and jointly decided that we had to try to make the RFS as good as possible. We developed the performance standards and safeguards and won virtually all of them. Each of these groups will speak for themselves as to their opinion of the RFS and energy bill overall, but they deserve credit for starting to move our biofuels policies towards performance based policies and setting clear boundaries to help the biofuels industry develop on the green and narrow.

On the bill specifics, the 36 billion gallon requirement includes 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels, which are defined as renewable fuels other than ethanol produced from corn starch. 16 billion gallons of the advanced biofuels requirement comes from cellulosic biofuels, which are produced from plant material such as switchgrass or wood chips. The bill requires all of the biofuels to have lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions at least 20 percent less than gasoline. The advanced biofuels must all have emissions at least 50 percent less, and the cellulosic biofuels must have emissions at least 60 percent less. Importantly, we won wording changes that make the definition of lifecycle emissions broad enough to capture both the direct and indirect emissions caused by land-use change.

I believe that no provision will do more to protect fragile, carbon rich lands around the world, than the lifecycle standards, but we also won clear parameters for sustainable sourcing of biofuels feedstocks that guard against the loss of native forests and prairie. These provisions also protect threatened, imperiled, and endangered species and public lands. While additional safeguards are needed for biofuels (and all agriculture) to protect and preserve soil and water quality, the language in this bill takes a big step towards recognizing the broad range of impacts that biofuels can have if done carelessly.

Assuming these provisions are signed into law, we still have a lot of work cut out for us. While the energy bill is a down payment, it's not substitute for comprehensive mandatory carbon caps. Similarly on biofuels, the GHG standards are a big start, but we also need a low-carbon fuel standard to move beyond the minimum requirements established here. And of course how EPA actually implements the lifecycle emissions accounting is tremendously important and we're going to need to match the industry's resources to make sure the accounting is done on a rigorous, scientific basis. Finally, the land and feedstock safeguards won't mean anything unless we enforce them.

So a small, but important step for Congress and the US towards real climate policy, a big step on biofuels policy, but still just the first steps in what will be a long march.

Still no action on the House energy bill. The House got bogged down in a huge partisan food fight last night and today, and the chaos was compounded when the computer system that tallies votes broke down in the middle of a contentious vote this afternoon.  If it hadn't involved our national elected officials, the screaming matches on the House floor might actually have been funny. The result is that the House has fallen behind in its schedule of bills to complete before leaving for August recess. We expect to know which amendments will be ruled in order late this evening, then at some point tomorrow the House will take up the energy bill.

What we do know is that no CAFE amendment will be offered, so we're throwing all our resources at passing the RES [renewable electricity standard]. The amendment that was filed with Rules is now a 15% RES (down from the 20%) with 4% efficiency, and we're still out there battling for votes. Florida Governor Crist just sent a note up to the Hill opposing the RES as a "one-size-fits-all" mandate and EEI is lobbying with the same message so it's going to be tight.

We also expect a tough vote on a Republican motion to recommit that will probably have liquid coal provisions, possibly very weak CAFE language that we won't like, and other bad things designed to split the Democratic caucus, and also on the vote for final passage. Final passage has been complicated by the partisan bickering of the last 24 hours, and moderate Republicans who were inclined to vote for the bill are now being cagey about their positions.

While she doesn't mention it, we also expect that the House will not take any action on increasing the renewable fuels standard. Rep Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)has offered an amendment that would largely follow the same lines as what the Senate has adopted: 36 billion gallons by 2022 broken down between 15 billion gallons of "conventional biofuels" (read corn ethanol) and 21 billion gallons of "advanced biofuels" (read everything else). While the Senate bill requires that conventional biofuels have lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions 20% lower than gasoline, we think that Herseth's also requires advanced biofuels to provide 50% reductions. Herseth has also include a few important but ultimately insufficient environmental protections beyond those included in the Senate.

NRDC and the other environmental groups that we've been working closely with on biofuels issues have decided that we'd rather see the House do nothing on a renewable fuel standard in its energy bill than an incomplete measure. If the House passed something partial, then when the House and Senate appointees meet, they tend to end up somewhere in the middle. If the House simply hasn't acted, then the House conferencees have pretty wide latitude to push stronger provisions than what's in the Senate bill.

It's a risky strategy. Conference can be a wild and wooly place with a lot of quick action and side deals, but at this point it's our best chance to get a renewable fuel standard that gets biofuels right.

The good news is that we could avoid these types of impacts. We know how to grow crops using much less fertilizer, herbicides, and pesticides and to manage the land so that much less of what we apply runs off into our streams and rivers. In this post, I linked to a great analysis by WRI and summarized their recommendation for the farm bill that would help minimize the impacts of the surge in corn production for ethanol.

We can also require better management of lands used to produce crops for biofuels and require and provide incentives for best practices as part of an expanded renewable fuel standard. In this post, I linked to a bunch of material environmental groups are using to try to educate the House on how to do a responsible renewable fuel standard.

The bad news is that many in Congress seem unwilling to connect the dots between their support for biofuels and the need to mitigate and manage the impacts. In their mind, all biofuel are green because they come from farms. Unfortunately, under the status quo, so does a lot of water pollution.