By Marianne Lavelle, Nicholas Kusnetz, Inside Climate News, July 28, 2022

The legislation includes unprecedented tax incentives for renewable energy and electric vehicles but requires additional oil and gas leasing on millions of acres of federal land for a decade.

PHOTO ~ Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) speaks to reporters before a hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on July 19, 2022 in Washington, DC.

To seal their surprise climate deal with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Senate Democrats conceded that their only hope for advancing a plan for a clean energy future in Congress was to bind it up in a lifeline for fossil fuels.

The legislation they propose to bring to the Senate next week still contains the heart of President Joe Biden’s climate plan — an historic $370 billion investment in transforming the U.S. power and transportation sectors and more than $60 billion in grants to help pollution-burdened disadvantaged communities achieve environmental justice.

But the package — now called the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022″— also would invest in ensuring a future for U.S. fossil energy in a carbon-constrained world. The legislation hikes tax incentives for expensive carbon capture technology 70 percent. It also requires that, for the next decade, the federal government offer tens of millions of acres offshore for oil and gas drilling as a prerequisite to the expansion of offshore wind energy development.

And Manchin said that he has obtained a commitment from Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that they will advance separate legislation this fall that streamlines the permitting process for energy infrastructure, including pipelines and export facilities.

“It is truly all of the above, which means this bill does not arbitrarily shut off our abundant fossil fuels,” Manchin said in a statement.

Climate action advocates were poring over the 725-page draft text, coming to varying conclusions as they tried to weigh the bad against the good.

“This is the ultimate clean energy comeback—the strongest climate action yet at the moment we need it most,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “This is not the bill we would have written. It’s time to break, not deepen, our dependence on fossil fuels and all the damage and danger they bring. But this is a package we can’t afford to reject.”

He urged the Senate to pass it without delay, while the climate movement continues to work on other steps “to ensure a just and climate-safe future.”

Meanwhile, other environmental groups were drafting a letter urging the Senate to reject the compromises for fossil fuel development as incompatible with goals to eliminate greenhouse gases.

“This is a climate suicide pact,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/28072022/senate-democrats-produce-a-far-reaching-climate-bill-but-the-price-of-compromise-with-joe-manchin-is-years-more-drilling-for-oil-and-gas/