The bill not only fails to increase fuel economy standards, but also rejects the Senate's 1 million-barrel-per-day oil savings target noted ACEEE. "With U.S. oil dependency putting America's security at risk at home and overseas, it is deeply disappointing that Congress is unable to take real action on this problem," stated Bill Prindle, ACEEE's Deputy Director.

The bill also fails to set any efficiency goals for the electricity industry or to provide any public benefits funding, according to ACEEE. Twenty states have created public benefits funds that spend over $1 billion annually for energy efficiency; a federal public benefits fund would multiply such resources by threefold or more. Three months after the largest power system failure in U.S. history, it is astonishing that Congress has ignored the fast and effective relief that energy efficiency offers, ACEEE noted.

On the other hand, ACEEE praised the conferees for accepting and improving upon the Senate appliance and equipment efficiency standards provisions, as well as for improving the tax credits for commercial buildings and combined heat and power systems relative to the provisions in either the House or Senate bill.

ACEEE also found that the vehicle tax credit provision, while falling significantly short of what the Senate proposed, will provide a boost to sales of hybrid-electric and other advanced technology vehicles. "Some highly efficient vehicles will be left out in the cold, and some not-so-efficient vehicles will get more credit than they should," said Therese Langer, Director of ACEEE's Transportation Program. "But the proposed credits will bring into the market efficient hybrids in categories where we haven't seen them yet, both light- and heavy-duty."

ACEEE's analysis of the bill shows expected savings from current provisions, and potential savings from missing provisions. Both are shown in the table below.

"The efficiency provisions of the current energy bill are only a 'band-aid'" stated Nadel. "Given the natural gas, oil, electric reliability, and environmental problems that the current bill does not address, Congress will likely need to return to the energy issue in just a few years," he predicted. "I hope a future Congress will show more vision, and be willing to take much stronger actions to improve energy efficiency," he concluded.

ACEEE Estimate of Energy Savings from Efficiency Provisions in House, Senate, Conference and ACEEE Recommended Bills

Provision	Savings in Quadrillion Btu Over the 2004-2020 Period
	House Bill	Senate Bill	Conference Proposal	ACEEE Recommended
Appliance standards	6.7	7.9	8.9	8.9
Tax incentives	7.6	14.5	19.1	23.1
Transportation	0.0	26.7	- 2.3	52.0
Electricity	0.7	0.7	0.7	35.8
Other efficiency	3.9	2.6	3.9	5.2
Total	19.1	52.4	30.3	125.0
Total as % of cumulative energy use over period	1.0%	2.7%	1.5%	6.3%
Savings in 2020 as % of projected 2020 energy use	Not calculated		3.1%	11.8%

More details on ACEEE's analysis of energy savings in the energy bill can be found at:
http://www.aceee.org/energy/04hscumulsav.pdf.

ACEEE's recommendations for a more complete set of energy efficiency provisions for the federal energy bill are found at:

http://www.aceee.org/energy/03nrgbillconfree.pdf