Of course, it’s not completely fair to assess the three current front-running presidential candidates’ voting records on solar energy alone. The US Congress has yet to address solar and renewable energy as an issue worthy of its own “isolated” bill. Instead, potential solar and renewable energy legislation gets packaged into larger energy bills that wrap renewable and nonrenewable energy provisions together.
Still, it is intriguing to look at Senators Clinton’s, McCain’s, and Obama’s stance on the big energy bills that included solar policy. This past December, the provisions that would have included tax incentives for renewable energy were stripped from the 2007 Energy Independence and Security bill at the last minute. In fact, it fell ONE vote short of 60 votes needed to override a Republican filibuster. Clinton and Obama took time off from the campaign trail to vote “yes” for the first version of the Act before it was stripped of the renewable energy incentives. McCain, however, was absent; he was the only senator not to cast a vote.
In the final version of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, none of the three senatorial presidential candidates stuck around to vote (the final bill passed in the Senate 79 to 14, with 7 senators refraining).
Senators McCain, Clinton, and Obama voted differently on the 2005 Energy Policy Act (the one that instituted residential tax credits for solar installations). At that time, Clinton and McCain voted against the bill, Obama voted for it.
On Senator McCain’s website, McCain defended his vote and argued that the 2005 legislation “contains numerous provisions that will distort competitive markets for energy through subsidies, tax breaks, special projects . . . and it is unlikely to have any positive short-term effect on energy prices.” Clinton expressed displeasure for the legislation because “it simply ignores several of our most pressing energy challenges, such as our dependence on foreign oil.” Obama likely voted “yes” for the bill because it included favorable provisions for ethanol production, an issue near-and-dear to the State of Illinois.
Ah, the messy side of politics. Luckily solar power is here to stay. Of course, it would move faster with robust federal incentives. However, state and local mandates also nurture alternative and renewable energy policy. Cooler Planet will continue to track how solar energy policy fares at both the national and local scale.