Want Politico to Cover Your Energy Bill? Check Out Darren Goode's Call on the Odds it Passes

By Tigercomm President Mike Casey

Everyone working energy policy aims to have Politico (among other leading media outlets) cover their initiatives. We suspect that’s what John Harris and Jim VandeHei had in mind when they started the place in January 2007.

Want to know what a member of Politico’s energy and environment team thinks about your initiative’s chances? Recently, we had Politico senior energy & environment reporter Darren Goode join us for a Scaling Green Communicating Energy talk, and he called the odds:

• Energy efficiency: "one of the few legislative trains that's actually moving right now...you've got a bill from Jeanne Shaheen and Rob Portman that has moved through the committee. There is a real effort I think from both sides to get that on the floor...I'm going to give it 40% odds right now. "
• Carbon tax: "Right now? Zero."
• Master Limited Partnerships (MLPs): "I'd say about a 75% chance...only because I think we've got a good coalition of people that are pushing for it. But that's going to have to be a part of a bigger deal."

Goode added that both a carbon tax and MLPs "depend on the overall tax reform talks."However, Goode noted, "we're a long way away from that."

Bottom line: a reporter who covers federal energy legislation more closely than almost anyone else believes there's a good chance for MLP legislation, a decent chance for energy efficiency legislation, and essentially no chance for carbon tax legislation (unless it's part of a much broader tax reform deal). Sure, the odds could be better, but all the more reason for the clean energy industry to redouble our efforts at demonstrating why it's so important to get legislation like this passed by Congress.