White House, Senator, spar over energy efficiency order

The White House is feuding with a Senator over what President Clinton views as an effort to undercut energy conservation efforts at federal office buildings.

Last week, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., added an amendment to the Senate's fiscal 2000 Interior appropriations bill that could block up to $1 billion worth of energy efficiency and renewable power programs.

The amendment would prohibit any funds "to study, develop or implement" plans to establish energy efficiency or use rules other than those based on the Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1975.

The Clinton administration believes the amendment was specifically designed to block an executive order issued by the President a month ago that seeks to increase energy efficiency in 500,000 federal buildings by 35 percent, relative to 1985 levels, over the next 10 years.

Meeting that goal, Clinton said, would reduce the federal government's emissions of so-called greenhouse gases by 30 percent.

Cochran, however, said he offered the amendment because he fears the programs are designed as a "backdoor" way of implementing the Kyoto global warming treaty, which the Senate is unlikely to ratify.

Energy Department officials said the order simply would buttress an ongoing program that allows private companies to install energy efficient technologies in government buildings, and then keep a share of the government's energy savings.

"What Cochran is doing is standing in the way of the government being able to do this on a broad basis," said a senior DOE official.

In a speech last week, Clinton said the program is a "no- brainer," and noted the program already saves the government $750 million each year and has cut the government's energy use by 17 percent since 1985.

"You have to understand," he told his audience at Georgetown University on Friday, "this doesn't cost you anything. ... It's no money, nothing."

Clinton said he was confident the administration could remove the rider; on Monday, Energy Secretary Richardson fired off a letter to House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ralph Regula, R-Pa., asking him to block any similar amendment.

Regula and House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young, R-Fla., have promised to keep their spending bills clean this year, and the subcommittee Tuesday approved a bill that did not include the amendment.

Nonetheless, there are reports that a related amendment could be offered to the bill during Friday's full House Appropriations panel markup of the bill.