Fresh off her approval of the White House's push for high CAFE standards by 2015, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has written a letter (available after the jump) to Republican leader John Boehner over gas prices. The letter is a response to the GOP's challenge on Tuesday that Pelosi should release her plan to lower gas prices. As part of their challenge, the GOP said they
"respectfully request that you reveal this 'commonsense plan' so we can begin work on responsible solutions to help ease this strain."

Pelosi's basic message in the letter is to say that the "New Direction Congress" (is that what we have now?) is working on ways to promote American energy independence through moves that promote renewable fuels. She lists four bills that address fuel and energy issues, and doesn't forget to mention that the majority of Republicans were against two of them. Isn't it great how they can argue while we're paying through the nose?

Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) reached a deal late Friday night with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA MI) on a compromise bill to raise fuel economy standards for new cars and trucks to 25 35 mpg 2020. As reported earlier this week, the same threshold would be maintained that was in the Senate bill passed last June. The biggest differences from the earlier Senate bill are the retention of separate standards for cars and trucks as well as calculating import and domestic fleet averages separately.

The last remaining issue that Dingell was pushing for was to clarify the responsibilities of EPA and NHTSA to ensure that the rules they establish are not in conflict with each other. Apparently this was intended to prevent the EPA from allowing California to set CO₂ limits that would in effect create mileage standards higher than those set by congress and NHTSA. Pelosi refused to give in on that issue and it was ultimately left out of the bill.

Biofuels did make it into the 1,000-page bill however. Car-makers will continue to get credit for building and selling flex-fuel vehicles even though availability and use of such fuels is still very limited. Biofuel producers also got a break with a provision that would require at least 20.5 billion gallons of biofuel (ethanol or diesel) to be blended into other fuels by 2015. A quarter of that amount will be required to come from non-food sources such as cellulosic ethanol or algae biodiesel. Beyond 2015 the biofuel requirement would be indexed based on increased production capacity.

The plan now is to put the bill to a vote in the House by Wednesday of next week. Senate negotiators were also involved in the discussions and the identical bill will be voted on in the Senate after the House passes it. This will avoid additional delays to get the bills matched up in conference committee afterward. Democratic leaders hope to send the bill to the President before the end of the year.

[Source: Detroit News, Automotive News - Sub. req'd]

Speaker of the House of the Representatives Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is tired of waiting for action on an energy bill including new fuel economy standards. Just as her home state of California filed suit against the EPA, she has called for a vote next week on the bill. Pelosi has met in recent days with both Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) about getting a vote soon.

The bill Pelosi is pushing includes a 35 mpg standard by 2020 that would encompass both cars and trucks. The likelihood of passing this bill seems unlikely given the wide support for the alternative Hill-Terry bill which has 160 co-sponsors. That bill would continue measuring cars and trucks separately and lower the standard to 32-35 mpg by 2022. It would also provide leeway to manufacturers if the standards prove to be unachievable. One possibility is that the standard in the bill Pelosi is supporting would be modified. Both cars and trucks would have to meet a 35 mpg standard but they would get different timelines with trucks getting longer to reach the standard.

[Source: Detroit News]