In a speech last week, President Obama announced a new outline of his administration's energy policy, a document called a "Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future." What's new about this latest foray into energy policy isn't the policy itself—which he said is essentially what he's been pursuing since he took office—but the packaging. Whereas he started out with a clear focus on climate change, the emphasis has shifted to decreasing dependence on imported oil and stabilizing gas prices.

In his speech, Obama announced a new goal: reducing oil imports by one-third. But there isn't much new in terms of policies to achieve that goal. There are no direct means of ensuring that this ambitious goal is met, such as a cap on oil imports or a tax on gasoline. What's in the blueprint is largely what's been a part of the policy all along: fuel economy standards, various government supports for biofuels, and support for alternative vehicles such as electric vehicles.

The other big goal in the blueprint is the clean energy standard that Obama announced in his state of the Union address. This also isn't new: it is essentially a substitute for the cap and trade policy to limit greenhouse gas emissions that Obama used to support, but that failed to become law. With a clean energy standard, the mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is requiring utilities to choose from a list of approved technologies for generating electricity.

The clean energy standard is now also a part of the primary focus of reducing oil consumption. It is presented as a way to enable electric vehicles by making electricity generation cleaner.

Will these policies work to reduce oil imports, stabilize gas prices (presumably at affordable levels), and reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Will they even become law or official regulation? I'm working on a longer article to try to make an educated guess. My inclination is to be skeptical. The 1970s oil shocks led to regulations that required the fuel economy of new cars to double by 1985. In 1982, the U.S. imported 3.5 million barrels a day (.xls file). Now it imports more than twice that much: about nine million. The policy may have slowed growth in imports, but it certainly wasn't enough to decrease them.

Will increasing fuel economy standards, and other policies that have been tried before, such as supporting biofuels, work now? I'm curious what TR readers think.

U.S. policy could do a lot better job supporting renewable energy, according to industry experts at a renewable energy conference today in Washington, DC, hosted by the American Council for Renewable Energy.

John Graham, the president of BP Wind Energy, renewed calls for long-term policy stability, citing sharp drop-offs in wind development as tax credits expired in 1999, 2001, and 2003. Since those credits are expected to expire again in the next few years--and since wind companies have three- to five-year time schedules--the wind industry could soon see another such slowdown, in addition to the hit its taken from the recession. He called on Congress to set up longer term credits, and a cap and trade system, to help wind projects get funding.

Steen Riisgaard, the CEO of Novozymes, based in Denmark, had more specific recommendations for the biofuels industry. He said the current 10 percent limit on the amount of ethanol in gasoline is slowing down the industry in the United States. He said that the EPA should raise what he called this "arbitrary limit" on ethanol content to 15 percent. The current limit effectively puts a cap on the amount of ethanol that can be sold in the U.S. Eventually flex fuel vehicles that run on E85 (85 percent ethanol) could increase the amount of ethanol purchased, but so far sales have been limited by the number of fueling stations that sell ethanol and the number of cars that can run on high percentages of ethanol. If the EPA raises the amount of ethanol that can be incorporated into regular gasoline, the market for ethanol could quickly climb. But higher percentages of ethanol are controversial because they could cause damage in some engines or void warranties.

Riisgaard's other suggestions sounded less controversial. He wants the federal government to require 50 percent of all new vehicles in the next couple of years to be flex fuel vehicles capable of running on 85 percent ethanol (which seems feasible given the low cost of doing this), to require 25 percent of the largest gas stations to install E-85 pumps by 2014 (funded by reducing subsidies to the gasoline industry), and to require federal agencies to buy only flex-fuel vehicles and use only E-85 in new vehicles. Finally he called on the Department of Energy to send out what remains of $480 million already approved for funding advanced biofuels. Do this, he said, and you'll create 100,000 jobs, and keep the rest of the world from overtaking the current U.S. lead in biofuels.

A draft of the Senate's version of a climate bill has been released. The official version is scheduled to be unveiled officially today in the Senate.

The move comes on the heels of President Obama's speech to the United Nations in which he called for action on climate change. A House climate bill passed back in May, but since then climate change has taken a back seat to health care reform. There's been some concern that no climate change legislation will be passed before a meeting in Copenhagen this December where world leaders are supposed to work out a new climate change treaty. With no law in hand, U.S. negotiators may find it hard to sell other countries on strict emissions reductions.

The draft bill tightens emissions caps somewhat compared to the House bill, calling for a 20 percent reduction in emissions by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, rather than a 17 percent reduction. It also contains sections devoted to reducing emissions specifically from transportation sources, as well as incentives for emissions reducing technology such as carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear power plants, and renewable energy.

But much work remains before the bill can become law. For example, some parts of the bill have only placeholder language, awaiting action from committees. Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has reportedly said that the bill is on track to be passed by the Senate before the Copenhagen meeting. That's not to say it will become law by then, of course, as it will still have to be reconciled with the House Bill.