DENVER-
In a meeting at the White House Friday, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar urged President Bush to take the lead on a new comprehensive bill that would consolidate the “thousands of ideas” circulating on renewable energy.
The Democrat was one of 10 senators from both parties invited to the White House by Bush to talk about energy. Vice President Dick Cheney and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman were also there.
Salazar said the meeting was an opportunity to promote the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden.
Bush proposed cutting the lab’s budget by 3 percent just a couple weeks after he said in his State of the Union address that the country could cut gasoline use by 20 percent in the next 10 years by increasing use of alternative fuels.
Salazar said the president, who visited NREL about a year ago, told him he understands the lab’s importance, but wants to make sure that federal funds are being spent on improving energy efficiency rather than being diverted through earmarking.
“I told (Bush) that I believe that NREL held the keys to technological breakthroughs that we need to make,” said Salazar, a member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
He said he’ll keeping talking to the Department of Energy about fully funding the lab.
Other members of Colorado’s congressional delegation have pledged to keep pushing for more funding for NREL. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., meeting in Denver Friday with legislators and renewable energy advocates at the state Capitol, said she and Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Colo., hope to hold field hearings to highlight the research being done at the lab.
In his 2008 budget proposal, Bush decreased his request for the lab to $181.5 million from $187.5 million last year.
Last year, the renewable energy lab faced a $28 million shortfall after members of Congress earmarked the funds for other energy projects across the country. That forced layoffs of eight researchers and 24 other employees.
The jobs and some of the funding were restored just before Bush visited the site last February.
Salazar said Bush talked at length about “cellulosic” ethanol made from wood chips, switchgrass and other feedstocks.
Range Fuels Inc. of Broomfield is one of six companies that would get funding over four years to demonstrate the commercial viability of producing ethanol in untraditional ways. The company would receive up to $76 million for a plant to be built near Soperton, Ga. that would use timber scraps to produce 40 million gallons of ethanol per year and 9 million gallons annually of methanol.
Salazar said he suggested that Bush and Bodman convene a forum on developing comprehensive legislation consolidating all the energy proposals.
“One of the frustrations, frankly, is that there are thousands of ideas and hundreds of pieces of legislation,” Salazar said.
DeGette, the new vice-chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said she is working on legislation aimed at getting utilities to use more renewable energy likely through tax credits and other incentives.
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Associated Press Writer Colleen Slevin contributed to this report.
