[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 68 (Thursday, May 17, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H2328-H2329]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      ENERGY CRISIS IN CALIFORNIA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mrs. Biggert). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from California (Mr. Calvert) 
is recognized for the remainder of the leadership hour, 21 minutes.
  Mr. CALVERT. Madam Speaker, I am obviously from California, and I 
would like to talk about some of the problems that we have in 
California. They are obviously well publicized. Some of the things 
people talk about are true, and certainly some things are not true.
  First, I would like to congratulate my home State of California. No 
State uses less electricity per capita than the people in the State of 
California. I think many people may find that as a surprise, but that 
is the truth. No State uses less electricity per capita than the State 
of California.
  No State uses more renewable energy than any State other than 
California. California has been a leader on wind. Right in my own 
county, Riverside County, in the Banning Pass, if any of my colleagues 
have been to Palm Springs, they can drive down the I-10 freeway and see 
row upon row upon row of wind machines that supply needed peaking 
electricity to Southern California.
  No State uses more solar power than the State of California. We have 
really invested a significant amount of money in California into solar 
research and the utilization of solar power.
  No State uses more geothermal than the State of California. Really, 
the geothermal industry started in Imperial County, California. If my 
colleagues go down into Imperial County near the Salton Sea in the 
beautiful State of California, they can see these huge geothermal 
plants that were developed to produce electricity.
  All of that in California. People in California doing the best they 
can to conserve electricity, to use renewable energy in California. But 
today we know that that is still not enough.
  Now, there have been reports that California has not built a power 
plant in 10 years. That is not true. I do not want to correct some of 
my friends, but we have built power plants in California in the last 10 
years. Not large power plants. Certainly there have been power plants 
built outside of California that import power into California.
  I congratulate Los Angeles, the Department of Water and Power, who 
gets a significant amount of their electricity, the City of Los 
Angeles, a significant amount of their electricity from the State of 
Utah using coal, the clean coal that the gentleman from Utah (Mr. 
Hansen) talked about. And I congratulate Mayor Riordan who now is in 
negotiation with the people in Utah to develop additional plants, one 
plant that was discussed as large as 3,500 megawatts in the State of 
Utah, to transmit power into Los Angeles for future demand. That is 
necessary along with plants being built in California.
  Certainly natural gas has been talked about. It is the preferred fuel 
source in California. But we have a problem in California, in not being 
able to get enough gas into the State of California because of all of 
these gas turbine plants that are being built. There have

[[Page H2329]]

been a lot built of late and a lot more coming online. And we are happy 
to have them, but we do not have enough natural gas distribution coming 
into the State of California, which is adding to the increased price of 
natural gas within our State. So we have an infrastructure problem, not 
just with gas pipelines coming into California, but with the 
infrastructure around refineries. Refineries have been talked about. We 
have far less refining capability in California than we used to have.
  California is well known because we have a lot of people, 35 million 
people. We certainly have a significant number of them living in the 
L.A. Basin and we have air quality issues. We have done a great job of 
cleaning up the air in Los Angeles. Doing that we have come up with our 
own fuel standards in California. We have lower sulfur than any other 
State in the Union, 15 parts per million or less in gasoline. 
California was the first State to do that. The U.S. EPA has now 
required the rest of the States to meet that standard, but California 
did it first.
  Now, one of the unintended consequences of that is many of the 
refineries did not have enough capital so they went out of business 
rather than spending the money to upgrade that refinery to meet the new 
environmental standard. That was an unintended consequence. We do not 
have enough refineries, so even if we have additional oil, or the price 
of oil goes down, we cannot get enough petroleum products through a 
limited number of refineries. So we need to get incentives to build 
additional refineries to build the clean type of gasoline we need in 
California and throughout the country.
  By the way, one of the problems my people in California, the people 
that drive every day have in California, is we have a stranded market 
in essence on gasoline because we have a different kind of gas standard 
than any other State in the Union. So we cannot import gasoline from 
anywhere. We have to produce all the gasoline that we make in our State 
for our drivers.
  With respect to the Speaker, I will not get into the issue of 
oxidates today, but nevertheless to say that we in California will 
always produce clean gasoline; but we want to make sure we produce it 
economically and at the best cost available to the people of the State 
of California.
  We do have a crisis in California. We have a crisis throughout this 
country on energy, and I am so pleased that we now have a President who 
will address it and a Vice President who took upon himself the time, 
and certainly in this last 100 days there have been a lot of pressures 
on this new administration, to recognize this problem that has been 
neglected for too long.

                              {time}  1645

  Now as we proceed with a long-term solution, and we did not get here 
overnight, certainly in California's case it took many years to get to 
the point that we are at today, but we finally will see a solution to 
the problem. I say to my friends and constituents, be patient. I know 
it is difficult. I filled up my car last week and it cost $35. No one 
should tolerate blackouts and these kinds of cost increases, but we 
have done it to ourselves. But we can get out of it because we have a 
policy that in the next number of years will bring us down the road to 
better energy independence, both with electricity and fuel.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time for my colleagues.

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