There were some significant changes to the energy efficiency tax credits in the stimulus bill, signed by President Obama on Feb. 17th.  This one is less of a surprise than a couple of the earlier gems we found buried in the package to move the country toward energy independence and lower cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. 

The highlights of the energy efficient home improvement provisions, according to the governments EnergyStar site, are:

A Snohomish County biogas plant converts cow manure from surrounding dairies into methane gas, which can then be burned to create electricity.  The plant was built by a nonprofit group, Qualco Energy, on land owned by the Tulalip Tribe.  It is now selling power to Puget Sound Energy to be used by hundreds of local homes.   

This is one of the win-win-win, innovative solutions that may, along with hundreds of others, get us out of the collective energy pickle we have gotten ourselves into. 

Near the end of the negotiations for the final stimulus package agreement last week, the White House inserted $8 billion for high-speed rail.  In an interview, Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, said, “I put it in there for the president . . . The president wanted to have a signature issue in the bill, his commitment for the future.”

There are some gems buried in the stimulus package.  One appears to be $400 million in funding for a new mini agency within DOE called the Advanced Research Project Agency - Energy.  Eli Kintisch, writing at Science Insider, a science policy blog, has talked about the importance of focusing on energy research - the kind that is risky but has the potential for huge payoffs down the line.  Steven Chu, now the Secretary of Energy, was one of the authors of The Gathering Storm report, commissioned by the Senate and published by the National Academy of Sciences in 2007, which called for the creation of the agency.

Last week the State Senate Democrats unveiled a package of proposed laws to boost energy efficiency and create "green jobs" in a plan called "Clean Energy, Green Jobs".  According to the AP, in an article in the Olympian, they propose to use $180 from the anticipated federal stimulus package plus some money from the state's construction budget to "green" buildings.  It is one of several aspects of a plan designed to move the state towards less use of fossil fuel while providing more jobs in this bad economic time. 

Additional proposed laws would:

The U.S. Navy wants to find out if tides are a viable source of future energy.  There are expecting to conduct a 1-year pilot project off the eastern side of Marrowstone Island, southeast of Port Townsend, in Admiralty Inlet in 2010. 

"The purpose of the $2 million project is to help determine the usefulness of tidal power in the future", Naval spokeswoman Sheila Murray said in an article in the Everett Herald.