The hopes of passing a massive climate and energy bill through Congress this year appear to be dimming, as the bill takes a back seat to health care and financial reform.

Or perhaps the "climate" and the "energy" portions of the bill will be separated, since boosting clean energy and energy efficiency is a far less controversial prospect than the carbon cap-and-trade regulations that are now part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act.

That's the word from Democrats in the Senate, including high-ranking Sen. Dick Durbin, Reuters reported Thursday. The Illinois Senator told Reuters that health care reform and financial regulation could supersede action on the climate and energy bill, which passed the House in June but faces an uphill battle in the Senate (see Energy-Climate Bill Could Boost Electricity Costs 20% by 2030).

And Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska told Reuters that passing the energy-related provisions of the bill, such as a national renewable portfolio standard and energy efficiency goals, could be much easier than pushing the cap-and-trade provisions, which are opposed by Republicans and many industries.

Andy Karsner, a former assistant secretary of energy under the Bush Administration and currently a board member of Applied Materials, said Thursday that the current climate-energy bill is likely 15 to 20 votes shy of passage in the Senate.

"My prognosis is highly unfavorable" for the bill to pass this year, he said at a sustainability conference hosted by Wesco in San Jose, Calif.

But that could give the nation's politicians and business leaders more time to coordinate policy and economic objectives to push the development of energy efficiency, electric transportation and renewable energy, he said.

The Obama Administration has said that including some form of climate legislation will be important to cement U.S. policy on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in advance of the December meeting in Copenhagen to craft an international agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol (see White House Planning Climate Strategy for Third Week of September).

But Karsner said he feels that this deadline is less important than crafting legislation that both tackled climate change and doesn't harm the nation's economy.

Projections of the costs versus the benefits of the bill's carbon cap-and-trade provisions have varied widely, though scientists say that the global disruptions of climate change will dwarf the economic hit that will come from limiting emissions (see Green Light post).