By Zach McDonald One month after putting the energy bill onto the back burner due to a lack of bipartisan support, Senate majority leader Harry Reid has told reporters that the bill will be revived after the November elections, during the so-called “lame duck” session.

In a conference call yesterday, Reid said he hoped that the possible addition of a renewable fuels standard—which reportedly could attract the votes of two Republicans, including Sen. Sam Brownback—might be enough to push the bill over the edge. Of course, whenever the margins are slim on a piece of legislation, you can usually expect an orgy of horsetrading—meaning that almost anything could be cut or added to the bill in pursuit of that one final vote needed for passage.

Unclear is the fate of $3.8 billion in additional funding for electric vehicles which was originally part of the more expansive Promoting Electric Vehicles Act of 2010. That bill was cut down and folded into the Energy Bill after cap and trade—and pretty much every other substantial provision—was cut from the now-dead Climate Bill. In its staid, Senate Democrats bundled together funding for Home Star energy retrofits, incentives for natural gas and electric vehicles, and new money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, dropping any pretense that the legislation represented significant progress in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the Energy Bill of 2010 was born.

But even modest levels of new funding for environmental initiatives have proven to be too much for a bitterly divided Congress to stomach. Democrats hope that after the midterm elections, the seas will calm somewhat, with moderate Republicans no longer feeling as much pressure to fight the majority at every turn. Look for new funds for congressional favorites like ethanol and so-called “clean coal” to potentially find their way into the bill. Hopefully that won't mean that the already weakened electric vehicles initiative will be cut any further.

Reprinted with permission from PluginCars.com