The Feingold-Ensign Support Renewable Energy Act, if signed into law, would require that all forms of renewable energy meet a new federal requirement, called the renewable electricity standard (RES). Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John Ensign (R-NV) have collaborated to sponsor this bill, which would be very good for the Geothermal Electric Generation community.

EnergyBoom.com reports:

Current RES proposals in Congress require utilities to use a certain amount of renewable energy, but limit the types of renewable energy that would qualify. This bill would allow all forms of renewable energy to qualify, such as small-scale renewable technologies that directly use renewable energy like solar water heating, geothermal heating, or alternative lighting technologies.

According to Feingold, as Congress considers reforming American energy policies, instead of picking winners and losers, it should be encouraging all types of renewable energy.

Atlantic Geothermal encourages all supporters of clean, green, alternative energy to call their senators and representatives and urge them to support this bill. The time is running out for creative solutions to today's energy problems that are going to help with the global warming / climate change problem the Earth faces today. If we wait too long, it will be too late.

This bill is a serious attempt to address many of the structural impediments that keep green energy from being commercially viable. Subsidies for the Oil, Coal, Nuclear, and non-green energy sector keep the market price for energy produced by these technologies artificially low. If it wasn't for the Price-Anderson Act, for instance, the number of commercial nuclear power plants that would have been built in the United States would have been ZERO. The insurance companies weren't going to insure them. Without insurance, they couldn't be built, because no banks would finance them. The congress had to step in and shield the insurance companies from liability should a total disaster happen.

That's right, the US taxpayer gets to subsidize the nuclear power industry if anything melts down. Actuaries can do math pretty well, and they new the risk was WELL above zero, which is what the early promoters of nuclear power would have had us believe.

Nuclear is NOT the answer. Large-scale geothermal electric generation using the CLEM geothermal model IS the answer, in our opinion, and we think this bill will help make that a reality.