As Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) gears up for her continued role as Ranking Member of Senate Energy and Natural Resources, she has offered her own energy policy strategy, titled “Energy 20/20 A Vision for America’s Future“.
Much of the document focuses on policies that would encourage more fossil fuel production to make the U.S. energy independent (but still subject to global pricing regimes) by the year 2020. But there are at least three areas of interest to energy innovation advocates, including: (1) the need for policies to finance and incentivize energy efficiency retrofits (pages 62-70); (2) an exploration of ways we could reform the way we finance first commercial-scale production for all innovative energy products, including an assessment of the DOE Loan Guarantee Program, Master Limited Partnerships, and reverse auctions (pages 77-80); and (3) an expressed interest in fostering rapid developments in electricity storage technologies to make renewables like solar and wind more integrated into the grid (pages 36-42).
Given Senator Murkowski’s positive working relationship with Chairman Wyden (D-OR), the 38 North Solutions team sees some potential for bipartisan energy policy coming out of the Senate in the 113th Congress.
