[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 22 (Tuesday, March 5, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1549-S1552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ENERGY
Mr. VOINOVICH. Madam President, we are facing a problem that every
other nation that we share the planet with hopes it will have some day.
That is, our country's economic growth will soon outpace our supply of
available energy.
The growth of both the high tech and advanced manufacturing sectors
in America has created jobs and has created enormous opportunity for
our people, and they have created a new demand for energy. One reason
these industries have flourished in America is because we have the fuel
they need to succeed. We have the ``people'' fuel, the skilled workers
with committed hearts and hands; we have the ``idea'' fuel, the smart
minds that dream big and can take ideas from the drawing board on to
the street; and we have ``good old-fashioned'' fuel, inexpensive,
reliable sources of energy that literally make everything move and
connect and work.
Other nations have some of these pieces, but they rarely have all of
them. That won't always be the case. The world is shrinking, and our
competitors, strategic and otherwise, are in hot pursuit. What will we
do to stay ahead? What will we do to fuel America's continued success?
Our future success will require us to produce more energy to keep up
with the growing demand for it. How big will that demand be? Big. You
can see from this chart that there is a large gap currently in terms of
the domestic production of energy and consumption. In other words, this
open space on this chart is a gap between what we produce domestically
and what we consume.
[[Page S1550]]
According to the Department of Energy, we are going to have to
increase by 30 percent the amount of energy produced by 2015 in order
to meet the demand of this great Nation.
In 2000, America used more than 3.8 billion megawatt hours of
electricity. The Department of Energy estimates that by 2020, the
demand will rise to 5.43 billion megawatts a year, an increase of 1.63
billion. To meet that new demand, the DOE says it will take 1,300 new
power plants or, quite simply, the lights will begin to dim on the
American dream for a lot of people.
Let's remember, needing more energy is a great problem to have. It
means we are creating jobs and we are creating opportunity. The
American dream is our country's economic success. It is a gift
bequeathed to this generation by generations of men and women who
toiled before us.
We are the stewards of this gift. History will judge us based on what
this generation of Americans does right now with this gift. Will we
keep America's light of opportunity shining, or will we sleep through
our watch and let the light flicker out?
I am thankful to the Majority Leader for keeping his word and
bringing this issue to the floor of the Senate. However, I disagree
with the way it came to the Senate, since the bill should have been
considered and voted out of the Energy Committee, instead of being
written on the floor of the Senate.
Still, the bill presented before us at least starts the process by
laying the foundation and beginning the debate. It has many things
worthy about it and many things that we can build upon.
This bill is a good start because, among other things, it encourages
greater use of renewable sources of energy, sources which have little
or no impact on the environment.
The bill also encourages the use of ethanol, a renewable gasoline
additive that helps reduce auto emissions and makes the air cleaner for
us and our children to breathe.
It starts the needed debate on reauthorizing the Price-Anderson Act,
which is so vital to the future expansion of our nuclear energy
industry. But there is much more that we need to do. I have introduced
legislation to expand the Price-Anderson reauthorization to include
commercial nuclear reactors, as it must, and I hope that we will be
able to include it in this bill.
What concerns me about this bill, however, is it raises false hopes.
It creates the expectation that it will solve our future energy crises,
protect our energy security, and sustain American opportunities. In
reality, it doesn't do this. The bill does start in several good
directions, but then falls short and is silent on several other key
issues, such as energy infrastructure and the need to reduce our
dependency on foreign oil.
The majority's bill doesn't fully deliver what America needs, and I
would have to oppose it in its current form. I hope that, as we amend
it, it is something that I can support and a majority of the Senate can
support.
Our energy challenge demands from us the enactment of a comprehensive
energy policy, the likes of which we have never seen before in this
country. I think the Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, did a very good
job in talking about the need for an energy policy. I have wanted one
ever since I was mayor of the city of Cleveland in 1979, but in
administration after administration, we never got one. Today, we have
this golden opportunity to have an energy policy for the United States
of America. It has to be a policy that harmonizes energy and
environmental policies, acknowledging that the economy and the
environment are vitally intertwined, a policy that broadens our base of
energy resources to create stability, guarantee reasonable prices, and
protect our national security--a policy that won't cause prices to
spike, hurting particularly the elderly, disabled, and low-income
families, and which won't cripple the engines of commerce that fund the
research that will yield future environmental protection technologies--
technologies that can be shared with developing nations who currently
face severe environmental crises.
In terms of energy security, we need to reduce our reliance on
foreign sources of energy. As I pointed out, the gap between what we
consume and what we produce is being met by imports--imported oil,
imported gas, and other energy sources that we bring into the United
States.
As we have all learned in ways too horrific for words, the enemies of
freedom will go to extreme lengths to attack our country. As we seek to
protect our Nation's freedom of opportunity, we should not do it in
ways that make America more vulnerable to these enemies of freedom. We
must do everything we can to provide for our energy need from within
our Nation's borders.
We are already far too dependent on foreign energy sources. Oil
imports have risen from 1973, when we imported 35 percent of our oil,
to 58 percent last year. Today, we even import oil from Iraq--750,000
barrels a day. Seven percent of our oil comes from Iraq--the same
country over which we fly regular combat missions. Think about that: 7
percent of our oil comes from a country that the President has
described as one of the three countries in the Axis of Evil.
The political climate in the Middle East region today is more
volatile than at any other time in my memory. For the United States to
be so dependent on this part of the world to meet such a large portion
of our energy needs makes us extremely vulnerable to being held hostage
for oil. If the enemies of our country were willing to take out the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon, does anyone doubt that if they had
a chance to cut off, or even just disrupt, our energy supply, they
would do it? There is no doubt. They would do it and we know it.
As we rely on our own strengths for the answers to the coming energy
crisis, we see that no single source of domestic energy is sufficient
to meet all of our Nation's needs. Though we are blessed with large
reserves of coal, oil, natural gas, renewables, and nuclear fuel, no
single energy source can single-handedly solve our problem. That means
we have to broaden our base of energy sources. We simply cannot put all
of our eggs in one basket. If we were some other nation, diversifying
our energy supply might be a great challenge. But we have been blessed.
God has blessed us with the resources to solve this problem.
One of our great untapped resources is nuclear energy. Over the past
40 years, we have seen how safe and reliable nuclear energy can be. We
currently get 20 percent of our electricity from nuclear energy plants.
But this is far below what some countries do. France derives 70 percent
of its electricity from nuclear power; Sweden gets 39 percent; South
Korea gets 41 percent; and Japan gets 34 percent.
What nuclear energy brings to the table, which is so positive is that
it produces zero harmful air emissions. In fact, 40 years of solid
waste from all of our Nation's 103 nuclear facilities would fit on a
football field to a height of only 10 feet.
Since 1973, the use of nuclear energy has prevented 62 million tons
of sulfur dioxide, a key component of acid rain, and 32 million tons of
nitrogen oxide, a precursor to ozone, from being released in the
atmosphere.
Reauthorizing the Price-Anderson program, which provides needed
liability protection for the public's benefit, updating an outdated,
duplicative licensing process and creating a permanent repository for
nuclear waste, will make it possible for us to take full advantage of
the incredible potential this clean energy source provides us. I am
going to offer an amendment to help improve the licensing process to
facilitate the construction of new nuclear facilities and also address
the human capital crisis that is impacting the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission. I will be joined by the Senator from Louisiana, Senator
Landrieu, in this effort.
The other energy source we should turn to more is coal. It is by far
our most abundant and cheapest energy resource. Right now, we have
enough coal to meet our country's energy needs for the next 250 years.
Because coal is so inexpensive, we can provide our vital manufacturing
sector with the electricity it needs at prices low enough so that after
businesses pay their energy bills, they will still have something left
over for other important needs like innovation and research. Just as
nuclear energy's challenge is waste storage--and I am glad
[[Page S1551]]
we are going to debate the issue of nuclear waste storage at Yucca
Mountain--coal's challenge is air emissions. Coal today is cleaner than
ever before, but we need to make it even cleaner. We have the
technologies available to do so. Coal's low cost makes research and
installation of clean coal technology a viable investment. In addition,
these technologies can be shared with emerging nations that are largely
dependent on coal for electricity. We can help them learn from our
experience and spare them future environmental challenges. With clean
coal technology, and the incentives to guarantee it will be used, we
can ensure that the more than two centuries worth of coal that we have
available today can be used as an energy source.
Let's talk about natural gas. It is a key component in meeting our
current and future energy needs as some 60 million American homes now
use natural gas for heat. Natural gas also provides 15 percent of this
Nation's electric power and nearly one-quarter of our total energy
supply. These percentages are increasing because natural gas burns
cleanly and because it is easier to achieve permits from the EPA for
natural gas-powered electric generation facilities. In fact, it is
estimated that nearly 95 percent of all new power plants are going to
be using natural gas.
Even with this increased usage, production of natural gas has
remained fairly stable, and to accommodate the growing demand, imports
of natural gas have risen from 4.3 percent of consumption in 1981, to
around 16 percent today.
To reduce our reliance on imports, we need to tap the estimated 40
percent of undiscovered natural gas that is located on lands owned by
the Federal and State governments. Without this, we face steep price
increases in natural gas at a time when we are becoming increasingly
dependent upon it.
We saw what can happen with natural gas during last winter's
especially cold temperatures. A sudden high demand caught us unprepared
when supplies were low and prices shot through the roof, devastating
the poor and the elderly. I will never forget holding a meeting in
Cleveland with Catholic Charities, Lutheran Housing, and the Salvation
Army where they presented the dramatic impact that high natural gas
prices were having on the poor, the elderly, and the disabled.
We also need to be mindful that changes we make on energy policy that
affect demand for natural gas directly impact on our competitive
position in the world marketplace for plastics and fertilizer. In fact,
the Ohio Corn Growers Association told me that the high cost of natural
gas was impacting the cost of their fertilizer. They said that many of
their farmers did not plant as much corn last year because of the high
cost of fertilizer.
Right now in America, oil remains the primary source of energy. From
heating people's homes to firing energy plants to running our
automobiles, it makes up the largest portion of our energy portfolio
which keeps our economy humming.
Demand for oil is expected to grow at a constant rate of 1.5 percent
per year through the year 2020. To meet that demand, we need to
maximize the use of the more than 22 billion barrels of proven oil
reserves the United States possesses. We also need to make oil
extraction from mature oilfields more economical. The Senator from
Oklahoma spoke very eloquently a few minutes ago about the oil that is
available if we could only find an economical way to get at it.
Of course, during the consideration of this bill, we will debate an
amendment to allow oil exploration in ANWR. We have the technology
today to both use our Alaskan oil and protect the region's environment.
The potential for new job creation is great, up to 735,000 jobs in a
variety of fields, and the added production will help strengthen our
energy self-reliance.
Let's turn to conservation. Conservation has proven very successful
in reducing energy demand. By incorporating technological breakthroughs
into the production of energy-efficient automobiles, high-efficiency
homes, and more efficient appliances and machinery, conservation has
succeeded in saving us tremendous amounts of money.
I get a little concerned when I hear people say we have not done
enough in the area of conservation.
This chart shows that through energy conservation, we have had
enormous savings of some $2.5 trillion from 1972 to 1991. This is
according to a 1995 Department of Energy report, which is the most up-
to-date data we have available. One can see that we have committed this
country to conservation, and it is making a big difference.
Legislation that I am working on with Senator Levin would encourage
continued fuel conservation efforts in automobiles without the
devastating blow to our automobile manufacturing jobs that a competing
bill would cause. Our proposal would let the technical work of
establishing new fuel conservation standards be completed by
researchers at the National Highway Transportation and Safety
Administration. These new standards would be established only after
scientific analysis of the safety, environmental, economic, and
efficiency factors involved, which is a more responsible approach than
picking an arbitrary number out of thin air.
In the end, we can expect to see greater fuel efficiency without
sacrificing safety or a devastating loss of auto worker jobs upon which
the economies of many States depend. I can tell my colleagues that the
economy in my State depends on it given the amount of auto
manufacturing that goes on in Ohio.
I have heard from the United Auto Workers and from the major
automobile manufacturers that the language in the majority's bill could
actually cause disruption in the economy of that industry. There is
another way to put in place standards that will still get the job done
in terms of conservation.
Another avenue to focus on is renewable energy sources. We currently
rely very little on renewable sources of energy. In fact, wind and
solar together make up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of our current
energy production, but they are expensive and they are heavily
subsidized.
Nevertheless, we need to continue to invest in these forms of energy
because they are so environmentally friendly and they contribute to
meeting the requirement of national self-reliance.
On the other hand, we must also be realistic about our challenge.
While a savings through conservation has reached more than $2.5
trillion over 30 years, the inherent problems of renewable sources make
it impossible for them to realize similar savings or fill the growing
gap between demand and supply.
In addition, because renewables make up such a small piece of our
overall energy picture today, we do not have the capacity to meet our
needs in the timeframe we are facing. Right now, as this chart shows,
they will not get the job done. However, their growth will come, and
should continue to be supported with research funding.
The point I am making is renewables currently make up only about 8
percent of our consumption. Even if we protect them for 20 years, they
by themselves will not get the job done in meeting our energy needs.
When I am talking about renewables, I am talking about solar, wind,
hydropower, biomass, waste, and wood.
In a recent meeting I had with General Motors in Detroit, I was told
the company sees fuel cell technology becoming a viable source in the
next 10 to 15 years. It is not science fiction to think that our
children and grandchildren--it will probably be our grandchildren--will
see a time when the roads are traveled by cars run on hydrogen and give
off only water.
The majority's bill mandates minimum consumption requirements for
renewables and civil penalties if those minimums are not met. We should
not be clubbing people for noncompliance. We should be doing everything
we can to encourage the adoption of new energy technologies.
Renewables and conservation need to be a bigger part of our new
energy policy, but we must also be realistic about our challenge. These
two strategies do not have the capacity to meet our growing energy
needs in the timeframe we are facing. Anyone who says otherwise either
does not know what they are talking about or they are being
intellectually dishonest.
Too often I hear people say: All we need to do is use more solar and
wind power and it will take care of the problem. Here are the facts.
Here is solar
[[Page S1552]]
and wind--less than one-tenth of one percent currently. If we project
it, solar and wind alone will not get the job done. We are going to
need coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear and other sources of energy to
meet the demands of the United States of America.
Another important issue we must address is infrastructure. As we
develop these new energy sources, we must make sure we can get them to
where the people need them. We saw this firsthand 2 years ago when
prices for gasoline in the Midwest spiked. The freak combination of a
shuttered refinery and a temporarily downed pipeline created a
bottleneck that midwesterners paid for all summer long. Low-income
Americans were hit especially hard at the pump, and trucking companies
and airlines took a big beating.
That is why I introduced legislation last year to help streamline the
permitting process for new energy facilities. I hope my legislation, S.
1590, can be added to this bill because I think it would enhance it and
make it better.
The problem of distribution is especially critical to the
northeastern States as they try to get additional natural gas supplies
into their homes and businesses to meet a growing demand.
I encourage my colleagues from that part of the country to take a
close look at my provision because I think it is something they should
get behind.
The same technology which is helping to drive the demand for more
energy has also equipped us with tools to provide that energy. Advanced
slant drilling, super-efficient power plants, hyper-accurate seismic
research, we have all of these because of our innovative high-tech
research.
Technology has also given us new tools to protect our environment and
public health, and we must take full advantage of these opportunities
because we must be good stewards of what we have been given. I reject
the arguments from those on either side of the debate who say we have
to choose between the environment and the economy. We now know the
success of each is linked. As I have said before, we have to harmonize
our energy needs and our environmental needs if we are going to have an
energy policy. Only with a thriving economy can we fund the research
that will find new ways to protect the environment--the cradle for
every living thing on this planet--and the world's ecosystems cannot
sustain us if we do not have clean air and clean water.
A growing American economic capability is the only way we can do such
things as fight our war on terrorism, provide a prescription drug
benefit for seniors, save Social Security from bankruptcy, eliminate
our national debt, and meet other financial challenges facing our
country. We need to have a growing economy. We know the challenge. We
must provide more energy to keep America going. We know we cannot keep
relying on unstable foreign sources to do this. We know we have the
resources domestically to meet our needs. We also know that doing this
in an environmentally responsible way is critical. We know we have the
technological know-how to meet these challenges.
The question that remains is whether or not Congress is going to
stand in the way of this country's future success or whether we are we
going to be part of the solution. As we seek to provide our country the
power to succeed, does this body have the power to resist the
temptation of partisanship and prove wrong those who say this debate
will not end in the successful passage of a good bill? Do we have the
courage to work together and do something good for our country and
leave the partisan jabs and the hollow victories on the table?
I do not think it is going to be easy, but I think we can do that. I
ask my colleagues to join in the constructive work of this body. Let us
make it happen. I pray that the Holy Spirit inspires us to do it, for
ourselves, for our children, our grandchildren and, yes, the world.
I yield the floor.
____________________