WASHINGTON - Ignoring a veto threat from President Bush, the House yesterday passed a landmark energy bill that calls for the first major increase in automobile fuel economy standards in 32 years and demands that electric utilities produce 15 percent of their power from renewable energy sources such as the wind and the sun.
The new fuel standards will be phased in, reaching their peak in 2020, the same year of the renewable-energy source deadline.
The measure, passed on a 235-to-181 vote, goes immediately to the Senate, where opponents have vowed to try to remove the legislation's repeal of $13.5 billion in tax credits to the country's five largest oil companies as well as the provision requiring electric utilities to use renewable energy.
Bush also opposes ending tax breaks to oil companies and believes that the legislation will increase consumers' energy costs. The White House said in a statement that the bill amounts to "punitive treatment" for oil companies, gives foreign oil companies an unfair advantage, and does nothing to reduce costs now.
But Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who has repeatedly introduced legislation to increase fuel economy standards for cars and trucks since 2001, said the tax breaks for oil companies would mostly be transferred to alternative energy, such as wind, solar, and electricity generated from burning wood chips. "At $90 a barrel, the biggest five oil companies don't need all these tax breaks, but the new fuels, the new technologies, do," Markey said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat who held fast to a 35-miles-per-gallon standard for cars, small trucks, and sport utility vehicles by 2020 despite opposition from powerful members of her own party, said the bill would significantly lessen the country's energy dependence on foreign oil. The country now imports 61 percent of its oil.
"This legislation will be a shot heard 'round the world for energy independence for America," Pelosi told the House, quoting a line from Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 poem "Concord Hymn" about the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the first military fight of the Revolutionary War; the line was later used to describe the home run hit by New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thompson that gave his team the National League pennant in 1951. She held aloft a baseball signed by Thompson.
The cornerstone of the bill is a measure to significantly raise the fuel economy standards, known as CAFE, for the first time since Congress wrote the standards in 1975.
"Most people think of CAFE as a place to eat. Well, our cars and trucks have been eating too much energy while our planet has been taking a beating," said Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, who said the debate reminded him of a Paul Simon song, "Still Crazy After All These Years."
The improvement in gas mileage is estimated to save 1.2 billion barrels of oil a day by 2020, a savings of tens of billions of dollars a year. Several congressmen estimated that it would eventually save consumers an average of $700 to $1,000 a year.
In addition, the legislation calls for a fivefold increase in the availability of renewable fuels by 2022, including ethanol made from plant material such as grass and wood chips, rather than just corn.
Another provision would set new efficiency standards for products such as light bulbs, washing machines, and dishwashers. For light bulbs, it would mean the phasing out of incandescent bulbs within the next several years.
In all, the bill is supported by a $21 billion tax package, which includes a range of incentives for many types of energy producers, except nuclear and liquid coal.
John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, said he favored the bill's provision to raise fuel efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, but he lambasted the Democratic leadership for legislation that "was written in secret" without significant input from Republicans. The bill, which runs more than 1,000 pages, was released at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Boehner said he saw several shortcomings in the bill. "There's nothing in here that will lower gasoline prices in America, nothing that will help Americans deal with home heating prices increasing, nothing to deal with increasing domestic energy production. . . . And my goodness, why won't we talk about nuclear energy on the floor of the House of the United States when we know it is the cleanest form of energy?"
Several Democrats, however, said the legislation would mark a historic shift in the way the nation secures its energy supply.
Holding up a poster-size photograph of Bush and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat, said the picture served as a metaphor for the United States being "hand in hand with OPEC producers, pursuing an energy policy of drill and drill, consume and consume, spend and spend . . . all with reckless denial to the environmental damage we are doing to this earth."
John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.
