[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 69 (Friday, May 9, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5987-S5991]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2003--Continued
Mr. DORGAN. Well, Mr. President, now that I have that off my chest,
let me go on to talk about energy.
I am proud to be on the floor of the Senate in support of the ethanol
amendment, which is bipartisan. It is interesting to me that this
legislation dealing with ethanol is an amendment that comes to the
floor by virtue of Senator Frist, Senator Daschle, myself, Senator
Talent, Senator Johnson, and so many others, with strong bipartisan
support. It is saying: At least one part of this country's energy
strategy that makes sense is to take the starch and sugars from a
kernel of corn, ferment that, and get a drop of alcohol and extend
America's energy supply. You do a couple things with that: You expand
the opportunity for markets for agricultural products and help family
farmers, and you actually grow your energy supply in America's farm
fields by producing corn that can be then used to produce ethanol. What
a remarkable thing to do. It makes good sense to extend our energy
supply by producing ethanol.
Now, let me talk a bit about what sets us up to do this. First, we
have to have a serious discussion about America's energy future. I have
spoken of this before, but I wish to do it very briefly again.
We need to use fossil fuels in this country's future. There is no
question about that: coal, oil, natural gas. We use them, and we will
use them. But if our energy strategy is only that--if America's future
energy strategy is only a dig and drill strategy--then it is a
``yesterday forever'' strategy. Every 25 years we can come to the floor
of the Senate, we can have another debate about how much we are going
to dig, how much we are going to drill, and probably satisfy our urge
to speak. But we will not have satisfied this country's need for a
different kind of energy strategy.
So an energy bill that makes sense for this country's future is one
that
[[Page S5988]]
does dig and drill, with environmental safeguards, but it must do more
than that. It should, first, include incentivized production, but,
second, it should provide conservation measures, because a barrel of
oil saved is a barrel of oil produced in our economy. Then, in addition
to production and conservation, an energy bill that makes sense is an
energy bill that has a title that deals with the efficiency of all of
the appliances that we use in our daily lives. And, fourth, it should
include a provision that deals with limitless and renewable sources of
energy. That is what this amendment is about.
So production, conservation, efficiency, and limitless and renewable
sources of energy--that is what an energy bill is about, if it is
balanced. Add in the limitless and renewable sources of energy, for my
money, it means we should pole vault over all of these 25-year debates
and say, we want to move to a new energy future.
One hundred years ago, when you wanted to gas up an old Ford, a Model
T Ford, you pulled up to the gas pumps, you stuck that hose in the gas
tank and began pumping. One hundred years later, we do exactly the same
thing. If you happened to have driven a Ford this morning, and stopped
at a gas pump, you did exactly the same thing they did a century ago:
You run gas through the car's carburetor. And God bless us, we have
great cars, and we have fuel at every gas pump, and no waiting lines.
That is the way we fuel our automobile, our transportation fleet.
Let me describe what is happening with respect to energy in this
country. If you look at the total demand for oil, and then look at
transportation, you will see that the fastest rising demand for energy
in this country, for oil particularly, is in transportation; it is in
our vehicle fleet. That is where our demand for energy is rising.
What I believe we should do is heed the words of President Bush, who
said: Let's move to a hydrogen fuel cell future. When President Bush
called for that in the State of the Union Address, I said: This makes
great sense. I had previously introduced a piece of legislation
suggesting the same. I suppose that is why I thought it made great
sense.
But the fact is, for this President to put his administration on the
line in support of a hydrogen future with fuel cells is a very
important step. To be sure, his plan is not very bold. I suggest that
his plan is rather timid: in fact, it is $1.2 billion, half of which is
new money, and part of which comes out of other important energy
initiatives, particularly in renewables. But I don't want that to
diminish the fact it is very important that this President--a
Republican President, who comes from an oil State--says: Let's move to
a different kind of energy future, especially with respect to
transportation and the vehicle fleet.
Let's see if your children, and our grandchildren, might not be able
to turn the key on an automobile that uses hydrogen in fuel cells.
Hydrogen is ubiquitous. It is everywhere. Hydrogen is in water. You can
put up a windmill, with more efficient turbines, and take energy from
the wind, produce electricity, and use that electricity--through the
process of electrolysis--to separate hydrogen and oxygen from water,
and then store the hydrogen, and use that to power our vehicle fleet.
That is one application: using wind energy to produce electricity to
produce hydrogen. But there are so many ways to produce hydrogen, and
it is everywhere.
So what we have to do is begin to solve this problem of moving to a
hydrogen future--the problem of production, the problem of
transportation, storage, and infrastructure. But the fact is, although
these are problems, they are not insurmountable.
I drove a hydrogen car yesterday that was here on Capitol Hill. It is
the second one I have driven. This was a General Motors car. One was
United Technologies. Hydrogen vehicles are twice as efficient in
getting power to the wheel as the internal combustion engine. Do you
know what they put out of the tailpipe? Water vapor. What a wonderful
thing: You find an engine that is twice as efficient, using a fuel
cell, and you clean up the environment by putting water vapor out of
the tailpipe of a vehicle. What a wonderful thing to do.
Now, I can't tell you how important it is to have the President's
support on this. I nearly tripled what the President wanted by pushing,
along with Senator Domenici, and others in the Energy Committee, to
say: Let's substantially increase the amount of resources we are going
to put towards moving in this direction of a hydrogen future. This
requires bold, big initiatives. So the bill on the floor is slightly
over $3 billion. I would like it to be $6.5 billion. I would like
targets and timetables. I would like to see 100,000 vehicles using fuel
cells on America's roads by 2010.
I would like to see 2.5 million vehicles on America's roads by 2020.
Targets and timetables is the way we drive this issue. With research
and development in a whole range of areas, and development of
infrastructure, we can do this. We won't do it if we just revert back
to what we have always done.
When I was a little boy growing up in a town of 350-400 people, they
decided to try to dig an oil well 5 miles from my little town. It was
the biggest thing in the world. We were so excited when somebody said
they would try to dig an oil well on Bon Woodruff's farm. We thought it
was the biggest thing. I remember driving out there. We used to drive
out there all the time, the whole town. We would all drive out to see
where the oil well was. We would watch the rig being put up. When it
got up, it had lights all over it. They were drilling day and night.
People were driving out and parking, watching. There was nothing going
on, just lights and a rig. In my town that was a big deal. It was a dry
hole. They never got oil. But it was a pretty interesting several
months.
As a little boy, I thought about the drilling for oil, where we find
oil abroad, and how we use oil to power our vehicle fleet. Fifty-five
percent of that which we use comes from outside of our country. That
doesn't make sense. Much of it comes from troubled parts of the world,
a third from the Middle East. We could wake up some day and discover
the supply of oil is cut off because of terrorists. Then America's
economy would be flat on its back. The 55 percent foreign oil we are
now dependent on is going to rise to 68 percent if we don't do
something.
What is the greatest demand? Transportation. We have to do something
big and bold. We have to have an energy policy that says to the people:
We will get out of this. We may never be completely independent, but we
will sure be a whole lot less dependent on foreign sources of energy.
That brings me to the amendment. The amendment dealing with ethanol.
I am a big fan of growing part of our fuel in the farm fields. You grow
that corn, take that ear of corn, take the kernels off, and with those
kernels of corn you produce alcohol. It is important to farmers. It is
a new market for their crop. It is important to our country's energy
needs because it extends America's energy supply.
MTBE, a fuel additive, will be phased out in this legislation. We are
discovering when MTBE shows up in America's groundwater, it is harmful
to health. We will get rid of it. When we do, it will dramatically
increase the demand for ethanol across America. That demand will
increase to nearly 5 billion gallons. That means we will see more and
more plants built around the country that will use the agriculture
feedstock, take the alcohol from it. You still have the protein
feedstock left to feed to the cattle, and you have grown some energy in
America's fields. It is, therefore, renewable. We are not using it up.
It is renewable year after year.
I am pleased that now for the first time we see a robust bipartisan
group. It is not that it has not always been bipartisan; it has always
been a bipartisan debate. But when you have the majority leader and
minority leader leading an amendment, that is a big deal. Those of us
who care about ethanol understand this is a moment in time in which we
register strong support for moving in a different direction, for being
bold. I talked about hydrogen and fuel cells. That is one part of being
bold. The other part of renewable and limitless sources of energy is
ethanol. There is more, including biodiesel, among others. So there is
much to do.
The legislation we have brought to the floor from the Energy
Committee
[[Page S5989]]
is imperfect. But it has some good features. We will add some
additional features. Senator Domenici should be commended. He is a
pleasure to work with. Senator Bingaman on our side of the aisle,
ranking Democrat, is the same, a terrific Senator who has done a great
job. The energy bill needs some strengthening. We need a Renewable
Portfolio Standard to improve the future for renewable energy for
electricity. We need a Renewable Fuels Standard, which includes the
ethanol amendment.
We need protections on the electricity title that do not now exist. I
chaired hearings in the last year and a half with respect to what Enron
Corporation did in the State of California and on the West Coast. When
I said during that time that it looked to me like it was massive
manipulation of electricity markets, and grand theft going on to the
tune of billions of dollars for consumers in California and the West
Coast, that was pooh-poohed by everybody. All the conservative
columnists and others, Mr. Krauthammer and others, would write: Who are
you kidding? There is no manipulation. Every time something likes this
goes on, the Democrats claim there is manipulation.
We now know there was grand theft going on. Massive criminal
investigations are occurring. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
which for a long while did its best imitation of a potted plant and
decided it would not do anything while the people were victimized, has
now said it was not just Enron, but there were a number of companies on
the West Coast that decided to take the opportunity to shut down the
electricity plants, short the load, drive up prices, and profiteer as a
result of it.
Strategies like Death Star, Get Shorty, Fat Boy. You don't know what
Fat Boy is? Fat Boy was a strategy by which energy traders working for
the Enron Corporation colluded to try to see if they could steal from
consumers. Death Star, same thing; Get Shorty, there were a dozen of
them and more. Even more than the strategies, which were written in
memos that we now have, we also have the transcripts of telephone
conversations in which they talk about how they will shut down the
plant in order to short the load and drive up price. They moved
electricity in and out of a couple of States in order to increase the
price, in some cases tenfold in 24 hours. What is that called, except
stealing?
There are going to be people who go to jail for it. The electricity
title in this bill must address these issues, wash trades, and others.
It addresses a couple of them, but not nearly enough. We need to put
consumer protections in here so what happened to the people in
California does not ever happen again. We have a lot of people running
around the country saying: We need to restructure the electricity
title. We need to restructure electricity issues so there is massive
competition.
We have a bit of experience with that which tells us that when you
have very big players who have the ability to control and monopolize
markets, and you also have a consumer, if you don't have a referee in
between making sure the big interests are not cheating, the little
interests get trampled. That is what happened on the West Coast. It is
not just petty theft. It is billions of dollars.
My colleague who will speak following me, Senator Nelson of Florida,
was a member of the subcommittee where we investigated these issues.
Frankly, it made you sick to see what was going on.
Finally FERC stepped in and imposed a price cap. Finally an
investigation was undertaken. The Justice Department is involved. The
fact is, we should not and will not pass an energy bill through the
Congress without an electricity title that provides protections to make
sure this never happens again.
There will be other amendments. I am proud today to support this
amendment, a bipartisan strong amendment on ethanol. We will also need
to include a Renewable Portfolio Standard in the bill. We need to put
in provisions that deal with consumer protections with respect to
electricity. There is much yet to do. It is a pretty good start. This
bill will advance America's energy interests, if we can add the
amendments and add some protections.
Following the war in Iraq, what we know exists in the Middle East, as
well as all of the uncertainties around the world, if anybody still
wonders whether we need an energy policy, they have been asleep. This
country needs to make sure its economy, its way of life, the future for
the American people is not held hostage by the whims, confrontations,
tragedies and conflicts in other parts of the world. That is what a
good energy strategy, a balanced energy strategy, will do for our
future.
I yield the floor.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a
question?
Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield for a question.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. The Senator from North Dakota and I are joined
at the hip on so many of these issues he has just raised regarding
energy. This Senator was particularly intrigued by the compelling
argument the Senator from North Dakota made about a hydrogen engine
being developed.
Does the Senator know, will there be an attempt to increase the
amount of funding for research and development for a new hydrogen
engine that will be in this particular bill?
Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Florida should know that I offered an
amendment in the Energy Committee that failed, I believe, by one or two
votes. I intend to offer it again on the floor. It is similar to
legislation introduced in the Senate that creates an Apollo-like
program on hydrogen and fuel cells. My belief is we ought to do for
this as we did with respect to going to the moon. President Kennedy
said let's put a person on the moon by the end of the decade. Sure
enough, Neil Armstrong stepped off that ladder running and planted his
foot on the surface of the moon by the end of the decade.
It seems to me if this country really wants to effect substantial
change, then you have to set goals and timetables. My proposal, which I
introduced with a number of colleagues in the Senate--actually prior to
the State of the Union Address in which the President announced his
support for this initiative--is a $6.5 billion authorization over 10
years that sets targets and timetables and puts this country squarely
behind an aggressive Apollo-type program, saying let's get there and,
as a nation, let's aspire to reach a goal. Yes, I intend to offer it as
an amendment to the energy bill.
Mr. NELSON of Florida. This Senator will be one of the Senator's
cosponsors on the amendment. It is interesting that you have described
it in terms of an Apollo-type program, which is exactly what this
Nation needs. If we put our minds to something, as we did in the
1960s--announced by the President that we were going to the Moon by the
end of the decade, and then return safely, and the Nation marshals its
will and resources to do a technological feed as we did in going to the
Moon, if we apply that same kind of will to addressing the energy
crisis by the development of a hydrogen cell, a hydrogen engine that
can propel most of our vehicles in this transportation sector--and the
Senator's chart shows that transportation is the largest consumer of
energy in the United States--if we did that, then clearly, as the
Senator from North Dakota says--and I second it--we are going to wean
ourselves from the foreign oil that we find ourselves so dependent upon
today.
I will just offer as support for the Senator's statements that
onboard the space shuttle we produced electricity from a hydrogen fuel
cell. It is the mixture of hydrogen and oxygen that then produces
electricity. What does it have as a byproduct? Water. As a matter of
fact, onboard a mission of the space shuttle, so much excess water is
produced that it needs to be released into space; a water dump is done,
usually after each flight day.
It is there, it is technology we understand, and we are using it
today in space aboard spacecraft. There is no reason we cannot bring
down the per unit cost of a hydrogen engine if we put our minds and our
technology and resources into it. What it would do for us is lessen our
dependence upon foreign oil, which would lessen some of the kinds of
things that we have to do in that region of the world that gets us
inextricably involved in our military and foreign affairs.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I know the Senator wants to take the floor
in
[[Page S5990]]
his own right. I think it is important for people to know he is the
only Member of the Senate who has actually flown on the space shuttle.
Many people know that. Many years ago, he was part of the crew of a
space shuttle. He knows of what he speaks.
I was originally going to call the bill I introduced--trying to move
us in a bold, aggressive way toward a hydrogen future and fuel cell--
the Manhattan Project, which was another successful project that dealt
with something different. The Manhattan and Apollo Projects were both
projects that had this country saying let's do this with targets and
timetables. I think that is what we should do with respect to the
President's call for a hydrogen economy and fuel cell, especially
having this President's administration behind this initiative.
It is no small thing to have a President from an oil State say to the
country: Let's see if we can move toward a future with hydrogen and
fuel cells.
Good for him. That support is going to be very important. I will
indeed offer my amendment to the energy bill at some point in the
coming days, and I am happy to have the support of the Senator from
Florida.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. President, this week we began debate on the energy
bill, a vast and complex piece of legislation, arguably an important
piece of legislation, that deals with an issue that touches every
American in some way, shape, or form. Access to stable, reliable
sources of energy is central to the strength of our economy.
I have real concern, as we take up this bill, that it not simply be a
piece of legislation where we look to include every element, every
fragment, every idea ever considered that might, in fact, alter energy
markets around the country or around the world. I am concerned that in
our effort to craft an energy policy, we simply look for ways to aid or
to assist particular businesses, industries, or areas of research.
This bill currently includes very substantial loan guarantees to
successful private corporations around the country; it includes
research subsidies for investment in fossil fuel research, oil and gas
development; and it includes a very complex and sizable tax package,
some of which I think is questionable as to whether it will achieve the
kind of fairness, equity, and efficiency in the energy markets we would
like to see.
This morning, however, I wish to speak about one particular provision
that is before us in the form of an amendment, an amendment that has
been offered to dramatically increase the size and the scope of the
Federal ethanol program. It not only expands the size of the ethanol
program in America, but it effectively makes it mandatory, taking us
from a 2-billion-gallon-a-year ethanol program to some 5 billion
gallons a year over the next 8 years.
I can understand there are a lot of supporters of the ethanol program
in this Chamber. A lot of the Members of the Senate have farm economies
back home and see income or productivity that comes from this Federal
program. But I do not think it is right to provide a subsidy at the
taxpayers' expense for a program that cannot stand on its own feet.
Among the concerns I have with the current program, first and
foremost is the supposed environmental benefits of ethanol. It is true,
as an oxygenate, ethanol reduces the volatile compounds that are
emitted into the atmosphere from fuel, from gasoline, but it does not
do anything substantively to reduce the level of NOx in the atmosphere
that contributes to the ozone problem, to the smog problems. I think as
this debate goes forward, we will hear a lot of discussions from some
of those Senators who represent urban parts of the country that have
tough, real problems with ozone and smog. They have grave concerns
about this program that provides a huge taxpayer subsidy without
dealing with those important environmental issues.
From an energy perspective, we will hear a lot of discussion about
the amount of energy that will be produced from this renewable resource
because it is corn based, but from most proponents we will not hear a
lot of discussion about the energy it takes to produce this ethanol in
the first place. It takes nearly a gallon of fuel to produce a gallon
of fuel. So at the end of the day, you may have ethanol that you can
blend in gasoline and put in your car, but you have used quite a bit of
energy to get there in the process.
From an energy perspective, energy efficiency, energy independence,
even then, in the best case, the benefits are marginal, if they exist
at all.
Finally, of real concern is the subsidy itself. There is an enormous
taxpayer subsidy that is used to provide viability to this industry. As
everyone goes to the pump, they pay 18.3 cents in tax for every gallon
of gas they put in their car. If that gallon is blended with 10-percent
ethanol, it is exempt from 5.3 cents of that gas tax. That represents a
53-cent-a-gallon subsidy for the ethanol itself--53 cents. At the end
of the day, that means a billion dollars less going into our highway
trust fund.
We are going to deal with the highway reauthorization bill later this
year, and there are a lot of supporters of highways who are pushing for
more money. I think we need to take a long, hard look at what the right
amount to spend on infrastructure is in this country. But we certainly
do not need to be subsidizing a questionable effort such as this
ethanol program in a way that takes money out of our highway trust
fund, a billion dollars a year today, and with this expansion that will
go to $2 billion a year by 2012. That means $2 billion a year lost from
the highway trust fund.
Now, for years the argument that was made by House Members, Senators
or legislators all across the country to support this subsidy, was that
we need the subsidy in order to encourage people to use the ethanol
fuel. That is why we have the subsidy. We need it if we are going to
get people to use this fuel.
That subsidy has not been very successful in getting people to use
that much of the fuel. So now they are going to go to a mandate.
Well, I can understand why one would want to force a mandate on the
American people if they are determined to force them to purchase the
fuel. But if it is going to be mandated, why is the subsidy still
needed?
That is one of the central issues we are going to have to deal with
in this debate, and we need to at least put people on the record as to
why they think we still need to subsidize this industry, in many ways a
very concentrated industry.
There are about half a dozen very large, successful businesses, that
are responsible for about 70 percent of the ethanol produced in this
country. Why do we ask taxpayers to continue to subsidize this industry
when we have a mandate in place that forces them to buy the product?
That makes no sense. I do not think it is fair in the first place to
force them to buy the product, but I certainly do not think it is fair
to force them to subsidize the product at the same time. It has got to
be one or the other. If a subsidy is to be provided because it is the
only way to get people to purchase the product, at least that is a
rational argument--not one I support but it is a rational argument. If
the only way to get them to buy the product is to mandate it, to force
them to buy it, that is also a rational argument, although not one that
I support. But it cannot be both ways. A subsidy cannot be forced on
the American people, the money cannot be diverted from the trust fund
and have the mandate at the same time.
If the mandate is going to be that 5 billion gallons of this fuel has
to be purchased every year, the least we can do is then treat it the
same way we treat any other fuel in this country with an appropriate,
fair, and well-thought-out excise tax. The American people deserve
consistency and fairness in this matter.
I think it is a shame that we have a program such as this ethanol
program that really has not proven its worth, that unfortunately
channels huge taxpayer subsidy to a small number of very successful,
profitable companies around the country. I would rather see a bill that
did not have this taxpayer subsidy in it in the first place, but if we
are going to take up this issue, let us at least be fair and equitable
in the way we deal with it.
We need a good, thoughtful energy policy in the United States. This
kind of subsidy ought not to be part of that program and that policy.
I have a number of other concerns with the legislation before us, but
I
[[Page S5991]]
hope when the time comes we can work to craft an amendment that would
right this wrong, that would ensure that ethanol is treated the same as
any other fuel that we have in the country, and that would improve the
quality of this legislation before it passes the Senate, if it is able
to do so.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Dole). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. FRIST. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________