As I mentioned yesterday, Scott Brown’s election is making the Democrats do all kinds of things that they wouldn’t have considered even last week. Bloomberg reports that cap-and-trade is dead (citing California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for one) for this year, so the Dems’ thinking is to try and move some of the alt-energy initiatives into a jobs bill:

Chief executives officers of Exelon Corp., Nike Inc., and 81 other companies [yesterday] urged Obama and lawmakers to enact climate legislation. In a letter, the group called for “strong policies and clear market signals that support the transition to a low-carbon economy and reward companies that innovate.”

The new Senate version of the jobs bill may include funding for a “cash for caulkers” program providing grants to make homes more energy efficient, said Lowell Ungar, policy director for the Washington-based Alliance to Save Energy.

“The money will run out from the recovery act and if there’s not further legislation to push these retrofits, there’s a real risk that the infrastructure we’re creating right now will wither,” Ungar said in an interview. “The people who are being trained right now to do these retrofits will no longer have jobs.”

Translation: “Rewarding companies that innovate” means giving them taxpayer dollars or else they’ll go out of business. Mr. Ungar could not have said it more plainly.