The removal of a liability waiver for the makers of the gasoline additive MTBE improves the energy bill currently being considered in Congress. But that is not enough to overcome the bill’s major weakness of continuing America’s reliance on coal, gas and oil – most of it imported. The bill also does not address gas prices or climate change. Even modest requirements to boost renewable energy production and to cut consumption were stripped from the bill, leaving it not worth passing.

Rather than promote conservation by raising automobile fuel efficiency standards, for example, the bill seeks to produce more energy. It includes large subsidies, spread over 10 years, for nuclear power and for oil, gas and coal exploration and production, even though the country’s largest oil and gas companies are expected soon to announce record profits.

The Senate passed an amendment requiring that 10 percent of the nation’s electricity come from renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, by 2020. This provision, a modest move to encourage development of cleaner, renewable energy sources, was stripped from the bill by negotiators from both chambers. Without the renewable requirement, the United States is committing itself to dwindling, dirtier sources of energy, a position that should not be tenable to Maine’s congressional delegation.

Also missing from the final bill is a recommendation that the president find a way to reduce American oil consumption by 1 million barrels a day within 10 years. This small, but important, step would have begun to reduce the country’s dependence on foreign oil. The United States imports 20.2 million barrels a day.

Although opposed by most coastal states, a moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration would also be lifted under the bill, while some exploration would be exempted from environmental laws. The bill even contains a measure to extend daylight-saving time by a month to save energy. It would also delay by months consideration of the proposed Chinese takeover of Unocal, a U.S. oil company.

There are some positives in the bill. A tax credit for wind power, important to the building of a wind farm in Mars Hill, is part of the $3 billion in subsidies for renewable power. The more than $1 billion in subsidies for clean vehicles and fuels will help get highly polluting diesel trucks and buses off the roads in urban areas. Another $1 billion would encourage developers to incorporate energy efficient appliances and materials in building projects.

These breaks – which are dwarfed by the money for oil, gas, coal and nuclear power – are not enough to make up for the bill’s lack of even small conservation measures.

Shielding from liability the manufacturers of methyl-tertiary butyl ether, the gasoline additive that has contaminated groundwater, doomed the last energy bill to failure. Removing it from this year’s version should send the message that the MTBE liability waiver is wrong given the vastly differing estimates of the cost of cleaning up the contamination.

Other than that, there isn’t much to recommend the bill’s passage.