The omnibus bill was packed with energy and environment policy

Enlarge

The legislation passed by the US Senate Monday was downright frankensteinian: a pile of unrelated bills stitched together. Apart from the pandemic relief measures, it contained thousands of pages of government funding and tax credit extensions, like a semester's worth of homework stapled to the final exam.

But in the end, it includes the most significant federal energy and climate policy in years, setting the agenda for Department of Energy research programs and authorizing higher funding levels for clean energy priorities.

Shortly before the 2016 US election, the Obama administration joined an international agreement to phase out another generation of refrigerants with negative environmental consequences. This agreement-called the Kigali Amendment-was added onto the 1987 Montreal Protocol that banned ozone-depleting CFCs. Some were replaced with ozone-friendly HFCs, but these turned out to be quite potent greenhouse gases.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments