Renewable Mandate Dead?

This past August, Mark Udall tried to stuff a 20% renewable mandate down the throats of every state in the union with an amendment to the "no new energy" bill. His amendment was modified to 15%, but even that appears to be too much:

Last Thursday, Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid said that they would jettison the renewable energy provisions in both the House and Senate versions of the 2007 energy bill in the interest of passing a bill before the Thanksgiving recess begins on November 17.

The Democrats have a problem. They are already being tagged as a do-nothing congress, and the energy bill is being tagged as the "no new energy" bill. They have to get something through the congress, and a bill without the controversial renewable mandate would be much easier to swallow.

Mark Udall and his environmentalist allies are using the global warming scare / scam to force taxpayers and utilities rate payers to invest in uneconomic power sources that can't be sustained without mandates:

While the Renewable Electricity Standard would be a new federal program (31 states already have some kind of renewable mandate), the tax incentives for solar and wind would continue programs already in place. Losing these tax breaks would be devastating to the renewable energy industry, said solar lobbyist Scott Sklar of the Stella Group: "It will cause sales and investment to implode."