Earlier this week President Bush signed the Energy Bill sent to him by Congress. Major components to the bill were gutted by the Senate at the last minute, killing long-term production tax credits and renewable portfolio standards, and keeping the expensive and unnecessary oil subsidies. (Really, when a single company in the segment throws off $10 billion in profits a quarter, do they really need subsidies?)

The major achievement of the bill is to the increase in fuel standards to an aggregate of 35 miles per gallon, which means that in the year 2020 we’ll catch up to the rest of the world in fuel efficiency. That is, if the rest of the world stood still over the next 12 years. An nice side benefit is that Congress did agree to fund geothermal R&D to the tune of $95M, which is quite an improvement from $0. So there may be a baby step that this law provides, but on balance, it doesn’t really accomplish much.