With families across Washington state facing inflated gas prices, rising electricity rates and the ongoing fallout from Enron's market-manipulation schemes, the enactment of a new national energy policy signifies the potential for a powerful trend in the right direction.

Last week, the president signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005, initiating several consumer-protection and energy-efficiency measures vital to the Pacific Northwest.

Through my work on the Senate Energy Committee, I was able to secure language in the legislation to prevent Enron from using bankruptcy litigation to continue raiding the wallets of Washington consumers, and to prohibit the kind of price-gouging schemes Enron used to manipulate Western power markets and send our utility rates skyrocketing.

Moreover, this legislation contains important safeguards to protect the Northwest's historic system of cost-based, public power, despite a Bush administration proposal earlier this year to raise regional power rates by an estimated $1.7 billion annually, or more than $400 a year for families in some of Washington's rural communities.

Through a number of provisions promoting the development of new, clean energy resources, as well as continued research and development efforts at state universities throughout Washington, the bill will spur investment in the economy of a region dependent on reliable sources of affordable energy.

In the short term, the bill's efficiency measures will save energy equivalent to the output of 85 new power plants. Over the long term, the potential savings are far greater, and give us some of the tools needed to travel down a path of sustainability and self-sufficiency.

In particular, I am pleased by the inclusion of measures I authored to boost research, development and demonstration of advanced biofuels-production technologies. As we look toward the future, I believe we must couple greater fuel efficiency with a national biofuels strategy to help curb our dependence on foreign oil.

To make this approach cost-effective, the biofuels industry must make certain advances to allow for the production of fuel from a more-diverse range of sources. Today, 90 percent of the ethanol produced in the U.S. is made from corn, and 90 percent of the biodiesel is derived from soy — crops primarily grown in the Midwest. Making production possible from a broader array of sources will foster a regionally diverse, cost-competitive biofuels industry, while providing greater economic security to our farming communities.

At the same time, despite the legislation's benefits, this is not the bill I would have written. I remain concerned with a number of provisions contained in the 1,724-page energy bill — including special breaks for oil, gas and nuclear energy producers at a time of sky-high fossil fuel prices and record-breaking profits for many sectors of the energy industry.

Still, despite these setbacks, it's important to note that we were successful in preventing the inclusion of a number of the worst environmental provisions contained in the House-passed version of the energy bill.

Specifically, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 does not allow for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; it does not contain a broad-based liability waiver for producers of the groundwater-polluting chemical methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), which would have foisted more than $20 billion onto state and local communities trying to clean up their water supplies; and it omits far-reaching erosions of the Clean Air Act.

While the energy bill contains vital building blocks for a better national energy strategy, I believe it's time to get back to work to build support for a more-visionary approach to our national energy policy.

We must continue working to boost clean energy, implement a mandatory program to address the threat of global climate change, and take a more aggressive approach to curbing our nation's dangerous overdependence on foreign oil.

During Senate consideration of the energy bill, I offered an amendment that would have set an ambitious national goal to reduce our projected oil imports by 40 percent over the next 20 years — more than 7 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. Unfortunately, this amendment was narrowly defeated in the Senate, as was an amendment to raise fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles on American roads. These omissions underscore the need to get back to work.

Put simply, American consumers deserve a complete energy policy that equips us with the tools needed to lead the way toward a better energy future. This bill isn't the answer, but it is a good start. We have the resources, the potential, and an acute understanding of what needs to be done. Now we need to finish the job.