Brad Plumer isn’t a fan of Sen. Richard Lugar’s new energy bill. Though he likes the measures promoting energy efficiency, he’s concerned about the lack of an overall cap on carbon; he fears that the bill’s ”diverse energy standard” will actually lead to less renewable energy that we’d see under a business-as-usual scenario; and he sees a serious loophole in the bill’s call for retiring the oldest and dirtiest coal plants in 2018.

I’m sympathetic to Brad’s concern on the “diverse energy standard” and the provision that old and dirty plants can stay open if closing them would create a “regional energy disruption” — this would create a strong incentive not to make expensive capital investment in new plants, which seems senseless. But I do like the bill’s emphasis on construction:

Stricter construction codes and retrofit programs to improve the energy-efficiency of buildings. Given that commercial and residential buildings are responsible for 38 percent of our energy use, this is always a good idea. There’s also money for loan programs so that industrial polluters can adopt new efficiency measures.

I would also include efforts to encourage open source building standards, an idea that seems to have fallen by the wayside, and consolidation in the construction sector through increased use of fixed-price contracts, as proposed by Barry LePatner.

Though I don’t like the idea of establishing a steep carbon price, I do wonder if it is preferable to command-and-control regulations like tougher fuel-economy standards, particularly in fee and dividend form.

Lugar could go further by making more of an effort on the transportation front. Lisa Margonelli, known for her excellent book Oil on the Brain, has crafted a politically attractive package of reforms designed to tackle oil dependence in the transportation sector. I don’t like all of the ideas, but the emphasis her STRONG America 2020 proposal places addressing the mobility needs of working and middle class households is much needed.

Among other things, she calls for more mobility choices for households:

Allocating transit dollars to optimize oil savings, smart traffic management, HOT lanes and congestion pricing, insurance choice rather than “one-size-fits-all,” and liberalizing local land development rules. It also includes measures to expand the transit options for everyone, including: increasing vanpool, car pool, and private commute options, expanding inter-city rail when cost-effective, and providing transit vouchers to low income households.

and reforms that would benefit the trucking and air-travel industries and, more importantly, their customers:

Changing the way we route and schedule air traffic could save the aviation industry between 38 and 100 million barrels of fuel a year, according to a recent DOT report. Furthermore, providing truckers with loans to make their truck engines more efficient and truck bodies more aerodynamic could reduce oil demand by 214-314 million barrels of fuel a year.

I do worry that her call for a $100 billion federal guaranteed loan program for the purchase of energy-efficient U.S.-manufactured vehicles would constitute veiled protectionism, and the bill is very steep. But this proposal does address the fact that less affluent households in auto-dependent regions will be particularly hard hit by rising fuel levies. A focused effort to remove the most polluting vehicles from the road is needed — one hopes that we can do the job at lower cost.