Fueled by a rare degree of bipartisan agreement on climate change-driven alternative energy solutions, a National Clean Energy Summit concluded Tuesday in Las Vegas with an extensive wish list directed at the party platform authors at both upcoming major political conventions. Nothing was left out, and one of the conference’s hosts, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), committed to seeking bipartisan support for energy action when Congress returns in September.

Reid said a multi-year tax incentive for renewables for five or six years, as well as a national renewable standard, are needed and will get done. “We need to get it done this year,” he said. Agreement at the two-day summit among both Republican and Democratic officeholders who participated was focused on a “different energy future.”

Speaking for some of the western governors who attended, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said what the state executives are looking for from the next Congress and the next presidential administration is “a coherent energy policy that the states can look to in building our own energy futures.” Ritter urged that any national energy policy be tied to a national climate policy.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg urged Reid to get the other 99 U.S. senators to come together on energy and climate change because the issues are “bigger than bipartisan politics.”

Out of the summit, the list of “to-dos” for the federal government ran to 22; and for state governments a much shorter list of five was submitted.

“Even if nothing comes in resolutions from the respective conventions, I am confident all of us here today are going to take the message and spread it around,” said Reid, noting that both Republican and Democratic governors at the summit have agreed to push the wish list items.

Among the items for the federal government are a need to “price carbon pollution through cap-and-trade,” modernize the nation’s electricity grid, provide more incentives for the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles by consumers and small business, and create a federally funded clean energy research/development fund.

In the conference discussions and speeches, T. Boone Pickens, the oil billionaire-turned-renewable entrepreneur, talked confidently about Congress extending the tax incentives beyond this year and the nation reducing its dependence on foreign oil in five years.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, now chair of Citigroup Inc.’s executive committee, agreed that the tax incentives and increased federal research/development funds are needed, but he warned that they needed to be paid for by either reducing federal spending elsewhere or finding new revenue sources.

“Remember, there is no free lunch in life,” Rubin said. “We need to find processes to debate all of these issues, and then we have to have some process in our political system to bring it to closure, and then we have to move ahead.”

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