S. 329: Sustainable Energy Act

Introduced:
Feb 14, 2013 (113th Congress, 2013–2015)
Sponsor:
Sen. Bernard “Bernie” Sanders [I-VT]
Status:
Referred to Committee

The bill’s title was written by the bill’s sponsor. S. stands for Senate bill.

Track this bill

GovTrack’s Bill Summary

We don’t have a summary available yet.

Library of Congress Summary

The summary below was written by the Congressional Research Service, which is a nonpartisan division of the Library of Congress.


2/14/2013--Introduced.
Sustainable Energy Act - Amends the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to repeal the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to reduce or eliminate royalty payments for oil and natural gas leases in the Outer Continental Shelf. Amends the Mineral Leasing Act to increase minimum royalty payments for coal, oil, and natural gas leases.
Repeals the program for ultra-deepwater and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum resource exploration and production.
Amends the Oil Pollution Act to eliminate the limitation on liability for offshore facilities and pipeline operators for oil spills.
Rescinds all unobligated balances made available to the World Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the Export-Import Bank, the Advanced Research Projects Agency in the Department of Defense (DOD), and other international financing entities to carry out any project that supports coal, oil, or natural gas.
Terminates the Office of Fossil Energy Research and Development in the Department of Energy (DOE) and the authority to carry out any of its programs.
Amends the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to eliminate from the categories of projects eligible for loan guarantees for innovative technologies:
(1) projects involving advanced fossil energy technology, and
(2) and crude oil refineries.
Prohibits the Secretary of Agriculture from making loans under the Rural Electrification Act of 1936 to carry out projects that will use coal, oil, or natural gas.
Prohibits the use of Department of Transportation (DOT) funds to award any grant or other direct assistance to any rail or port project that transports coal, oil, or natural gas.
Amends the Internal Revenue Code to:
(1) limit or repeal provisions allowing tax incentives for investment in fossil fuels;
(2) extend, through 2020, tax incentives for the production of electricity from renewable resources and the energy tax credit for alternative energy sources; and
(3) extend, for a five-year period, allocations of the advanced energy project tax credit.
Increases the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund financing rate.
Imposes a 13% tax on the removal price of any taxable crude oil or natural gas from the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico. Designates the Powder River Basin in southeast Montana and northeast Wyoming as a coal producing region.
Eliminates accelerated depreciation for property that is receiving a subsidy for fossil fuel production.

House Republican Conference Summary

The summary below was written by the House Republican Conference, which is the caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives.


No summary available.

House Democratic Caucus Summary

The House Democratic Caucus does not provide summaries of bills.

So, yes, we display the House Republican Conference’s summaries when available even if we do not have a Democratic summary available. That’s because we feel it is better to give you as much information as possible, even if we cannot provide every viewpoint.

We’ll be looking for a source of summaries from the other side in the meanwhile.

The bill contains the following citations to other parts of U.S. law:

United States Code

The United States Code is the compilation of permanent laws enacted by Congress. Temporary and other non-permanent laws do not appear in the United States Code. (About half of the United States Code is the law itself, called positive law. The other half is merely a compilation of the laws but has no legal significance.)