energy.agwired.com

While most of Congress was working on a bailout for the financial crisis last week, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill that would strengthen energy cooperation between the United States and Brazil to promote the production and use of sustainable biofuels throughout Latin America.

The legislation, authored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Dick Lugar, would promote accelerated development of sustainable biofuels and other renewable energy production, help establish voluntary carbon trading markets, leverage private investment in new energy, promote research, and further integrate the Hemisphere’s energy infrastructure.

“The United States and Brazil are the region’s biofuels leaders, but more countries in the region can and should get into the business of producing domestic biofuels to increase employment, boost rural incomes, improve trade balances, as well as gain protection from the whims of the international oil market whose gyrations have wiped out many nations’ recent gains in poverty reduction,” Lugar said.

Sections of the bill would expand and codify a Memorandum of Understanding signed in March of 2007 by Presidents George W. Bush of the United States and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

Just about half an hour into the presidential debate and ethanol has received its first mention, as Republican Sen. John McCain has declared that he would end current ethanol subsidies, if he’s elected president.

Not exactly what the folks who produce and use the green fuel would like to hear. I was a bit surprised that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama didn’t respond to that… but he did point out that McCain had supported tax cuts for the big oil companies. McCain countered that Obama had supported the current energy bill before Congress with those Big Oil tax breaks… which also contains important renewable energy provisions. So, on the surface, it certainly looks like that he who supports Big Oil would also be supporting renewable energy (kind of ironic, ain’t it?).

McCain also clarified that he is in favor of alternative energy… solar, wind and hybrid vehicles… but with the caveat that we need to have more nuclear energy to have those.

So, not a lot of talk so far about renewable energy. Although this was billed as a foreign policy debate, I would have thought that our domestic fuel sources should have been a bigger player in that foreign policy discussion.

I’ll keep watching and update you when they say something that might interest you.