So after much debate, some watering down, and a lively vote that dragged well into a Saturday night, the House has passed a wide-ranging energy bill with some pretty big environmental implications. The bill, which has been a priority of Speaker Pelosi's in her first year leading House Dems, most significantly will require utilities to produce 15% of their electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind, a provision dubbed the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). "It's a big, big deal," boasted Rep. Edward Markey (D-Ma), adding, "there has been no legislation like this for a generation."

On top of the RES, the Energy Bill has some other rather progressive provisions:
--setting aside funds for the development of alternative fuels and for increasing efficiencies in appliances and buildings;
--the federal government (one of the world's leading single greenhouse gas-spewing entities) must be carbon neutral by 2050;
--outlawing the sale of 100-Watt incandescent bulbs by 2012, and demanding that all lightbulbs be 300-times more efficient by 2020.

Still, this House Energy Bill lacks one major feature that the Senate managed to push through in their parallel bill passed back in June: an increase--the first in two decades--to federal fuel efficiency standards in automobile production. The Senate is insisting that all cars and light trucks get 35mpg by 2020. The House couldn't get the votes.

What's more--many House Republicans are counting on their fossil fuel-friendly counterparts in the other chamber to dilute the bill further in the House-Senate conference committee that's used to reconcile the two divergent bills before being passed along to the West Wing. And, of course, the Pres is threatening a veto of the whole shebang anyway. Tune in after the our reps return from summer recess in September...