[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 15 (Friday, February 15, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S881-S882]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              WIND ENERGY

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for 
his leadership on the legislation that has been pending. I want to talk 
about wind energy. I suppose people will think then that I am talking 
about the Senate, but that is not the case.
  We are going to turn to an energy bill very soon. When we complete 
the pending legislation before the Senate, we will turn to the subject 
of energy.
  Our country and its economy are terribly dependent on a substantial 
amount of energy coming from the Middle East. We understand the dilemma 
for the American economy to be that dependent on a part of the world 
that is so unstable. So we ought to find a way to be less dependent on 
that part of the world.
  I was in recent weeks in Central Asia and understand even more, once 
again, how fragile circumstances are there. Our economy and our country 
would be well advised to create an energy policy that extracts the kind 
of ultimate dependence we now have on an oil and energy supply from the 
Middle East.
  How do we do that? We write an energy policy that does a lot of 
things: increases supply at home--oil, natural gas, and coal--and does 
so in an environmentally acceptable way; increases conservation; 
increases efficiency of appliances we use; and also especially promotes 
limitless and renewable sources of energy.
  I am interested in the wide range of resources that belong to the 
last category, renewables: biodiesel, using sunflower and canola oil to 
run engines, taking a drop of alcohol from a kernel of corn and using 
that to extend America's energy supply, and then still having the 
protein feedstock from the kernel of corn.

  Today, I also want to talk briefly about wind energy. The new 
technology in wind turbines is extraordinary. Being able to take energy 
from the air, from the wind, using new, high-technology blades and 
coursing the wind through these turbines, then transmitting that energy 
across the grid to provide electricity where it is needed in this 
country makes good sense. It is limitless energy. We can have it 
forever. We will never deplete the source of energy coming from the 
wind.
  The production tax credit that has been on the books that provides 
the enhancement for wind energy projects expired at the end of last 
year. It is unthinkable that the Congress, poised to take up energy 
policy legislation, has allowed the production tax credit for wind 
energy to expire, and yet it did.
  The production tax credit for wind energy needs to be extended, and 
not for one year and not for 2 years, but for 5 years. We need to do 
that now. We need to do that on an urgent basis.
  We just cut a ribbon on the first commercial wind turbine along 
Interstate 94 in North Dakota. There are three blades on that turbine, 
each weighing 4,200 pounds. The turbine is a remarkable structure, and 
the efficiency and the new technology of these turbines is outstanding.
  When we look at all of the States and the opportunity to take energy 
from the wind, North Dakota is No. 1. We are 50th in native forest 
lands, so we are dead last in trees, but we are No. 1 in the potential 
for wind energy. Any young boy or girl who has grown up in North Dakota 
knows that. We have a lot of breezes that move across the prairies in 
North Dakota. We are No. 1 in wind energy potential. They call us the 
Saudi Arabia of wind energy.
  A week ago, I had a chief executive officer of a company come to my 
office, and he said: we have a project ready to be built in North 
Dakota--ready to be built right now. It will be a 150-megawatt wind 
farm. The plans for it are complete. Regrettably, he said, they are on 
the shelf until Congress extends the production tax credit.
  It does not make any sense to me, at a time when we are trying to 
figure out how we increase our supply of energy, to have companies that 
have the money, the plans and the will to produce 150 megawatts of 
wind-generated electricity in a State such as North Dakota, but to have 
those plans on the shelf because the Congress is dragging its feet.
  I know some will say: the extension of the production tax credit for 
wind energy has been inserted in this bill or that bill. In fact, the 
House of Representatives included it, I believe, just yesterday. They 
wrote another stimulus bill, which is a perfectly terrible piece of 
legislation, a big give-away to a lot of big companies that do not 
deserve it, and then added the extension of the production tax credit 
for wind energy on that vehicle. It is like putting earrings on a hog. 
It just does not mean very much. That is not the way we are going to 
get an extension of the production tax credit for wind energy. The way 
we are going to get it is for Members of the House and Senate to 
understand that we cannot come to the end of the year and have 
important policy issues, such as the production tax credit for wind 
energy, expire so that we have fits and starts and an industry that 
cannot get off the ground.
  A major blade manufacturer in Grand Forks, ND, laid off employees 
because, when the production tax credit expired at the end of last 
year, projects were put on the shelf, including the project I just 
described--a project worth $150 million in North Dakota that would 
produce 150 megawatts of electricity. They have the money, they have 
the plans, and it is not happening, because this Congress has been 
dragging its feet.
  I know the Majority Leader, Senator Daschle, agrees with me that we 
ought to do this. We ought to do it right now. Yet we cannot get it 
done because we have some people who insist on playing games with 
stimulus packages that will go nowhere, because they make no sense and 
will do nothing to stimulate this economy.
  Let us extract the tax credit extensions from the stimulus package. 
Let us pass these on a stand-alone basis. Let us pass that package of 
extenders that should have been enacted by the end of last year. 
Congress should have done that. Everybody knows that. I hope when we 
return following next week's State work period that we will have, both 
on the Democratic and Republican sides, a desire and a will to

[[Page S882]]

say that what we did not do at the end of last year we will commit to 
do now, and we will do it on an urgent basis, because that is what will 
contribute to a good energy policy for this country. Then we will turn 
to the energy bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I associate myself with the remarks of my 
colleague from North Dakota on the subject of wind energy. Clearly, 
this is a circumstance in which the Government needs to act, and act 
quickly, to provide the incentives that have been previously put in 
place but have now lapsed, incentives that can make a difference 
between projects going forward and not.
  I do not know what could be more clear than that the incentives for 
wind energy are absolutely essential if we are going to diversify the 
base of energy supply in this country, move to more renewables, and 
have a greater chance of reducing our dependence on foreign sources of 
energy that leave us vulnerable in a time of conflict in the very areas 
of the world in which much oil production is occurring.

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