Earlier this week, the United States Senate got itself tangled up in a debate over the structure of amendments to an energy efficiency bill. This hardly qualifies as news. But the inability of the Senate to come to agreement on this second tier bill has broad implications. For one, it makes it easier for the Obama administration to implement rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions. Here’s how:

The Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill is a bipartisan piece of legislation that is intended to spur the use of improved energy efficiency technology in the commercial, residential and industrial sectors.