Congressional Record, Volume 149 Issue 83 (Monday, June 9, 2003)

[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 83 (Monday, June 9, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7515-S7527]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[Congressional Record: June 9, 2003 (Senate)]
[Page S7515-S7527]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr09jn03-106]

ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2003

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 14, which the clerk will report.

A bill (S. 14) to enhance the energy security of the United
States, and for other purposes.

Pending:

Campbell/Domenici Amendment No. 864, to replace ``tribal
consortia'' with ``tribal energy resource development
organizations''.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Alexander). The Chair, in his capacity as
the Senator from Tennessee, suggests the absence of a quorum.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I note the presence of Senator Dorgan. I
understand he will shortly, at his disposal, offer some amendments with
reference to hydrogen; is that correct?
Mr. DORGAN. Yes.
Mr. DOMENICI. And the occupant of the Chair will be finished at 2
o'clock and will manage the bill for a while for us during the time he
is discussing his, and we will perhaps speak in opposition. In any
event, the Senator from New Mexico will also do that. I may be gone for
just a while. I have a statement with reference to some of the support
that has been forthcoming over the weekend that I want to read into the
record so Senators are aware of where the various groups in our country
are with reference to the amendment to strike the loan guarantees that
are pending under the bill, S. 14. I will do that and then I will yield
the floor. It won't take me very long.
I am grateful that so broad a coalition of interest groups has been
willing to send letters supporting the nuclear loan guarantee
provisions in the Energy bill. I do not intend today to go into detail
analyzing the relevance and significance of these loan guarantees and
what I see as the fallacious nature of the arguments against them but
merely to state the broad support at this point for the proposal.
No one is surprised that provisions in this bill are strongly
supported by the utilities and groups such as the Nuclear Energy
Institute, but today on my desk I found letters from unions, academics,
and broad groups from industry. To some extent, that was a surprise. I
greatly appreciate their support and want to spend a few moments going
over their reasons for supporting this measure, which I consider to be
so important for our country. One is a letter from John Duetch.

I don't think I have to explain to the Senate who John Deutch is. In
terms of physics, energy, and nuclear energy matters, he is a ranking
expert. He is perhaps the James Schlesinger of the Democratic Party.
His letter is accompanied by a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, well known in academic circles, named Ernie Munis. For
those who are not familiar, he served as the head of the nuclear part
of the Department of Energy during the Democratic administrations
preceding the Republicans during the last 12 years.
Munis joins Dr. Deutch and they concurrently chair an MIT-sponsored
study on the future of nuclear power.
I note the presence of the junior Senator from New Mexico and
minority manager. All I have done so far is talk about some support,
and the letter I am alluding to he is aware of.
I met with Drs. Deutch and Munis last week and asked for their views
on the nuclear loan guarantee provisions in the bill. Their letter
reads:

We believe such assistance is important and justified, and
that action taken now will influence future investment
decisions on nuclear power generation.

In fact, they propose what some would consider to be an even more
direct subsidy for new nuclear powerplants. Their letter explains:

The mechanism [they] propose for this assistance is a
production tax credit of 1.7 cents per kilowatt hour up to a
total of $200 million per 1000 megawatt plant.

We did not do that in the bill. We had contemplated it at various
times during the evolution of the legislation and thought for different
reasons that the loan guarantee might be preferable. We now have a
letter that says either of the two would be good, and for the first
time two very powerful people say both would be good for our country.
I received letters today from the AFL-CIO, and I am most grateful for
their support because I know it is not always easy for groups to
support matters that pertain to nuclear power. I believe, as we have
been saying for a number of days, nuclear power has arrived. The
question is, How will it come on the scene so that America and the
world can find out, once again, what it is all about.
I do know without a doubt that if a bill is going to be good for the
American economy by creating jobs at home, the AFL-CIO will back it. I
am grateful they are doing so today.
One of the letters from the Building and Construction Trades
Department of the AFL-CIO says:

The fifteen unions comprising the Building and Construction
Department consider nuclear power an integral, emission-free
component in a broad array of national energy choices. And,
not unlike the current state of Federal transportation and
water systems, our domestic energy infrastructure is in need
of a serious upgrade and American workers are in dire need of
the jobs created.
The construction of these new plants will create
significant employment opportunities for our highly skilled
members. The construction of just one new nuclear power plant
would stimulate the economy by creating between 2,000 and
3,000 family wage construction jobs. And, maintaining and
operating that plant would create an additional 1,000-1,500
permanent, full-time, high paying jobs.

The other letter I received was from the Metal Trades Department. It
reads in part:

On behalf of the AFL-CIO Metal Trade Department, I urge you
to support provisions in the pending energy policy
legislation that would enable the construction of new nuclear
power plants in the U.S.
America's power demands are growing exponentially. A
rational and effective energy policy depends upon a diverse
mix of fuels and technologies, including nuclear fuel. The
health of the nation's economy will require the construction
of new nuclear facilities to ensure adequate power resources.
Loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants are a critical
element of the energy legislation. We urge you to support
them.

Letters will be forthcoming and will be circulated to Senators. I
could not have said it better myself had I been preparing a speech.
Rather than the numerous ad lib comments I made heretofore, I could not
have said better what has been said by those who write in behalf of the
working men and women who need good jobs and who have great skills that
can put together these needed facilities. The Chamber of Commerce sent
one of its key vote alerts about the Wyden-Sununu amendment. The
Chamber is straightforward:

Our Nation's economic vitality and energy security rely
upon the ability to utilize a diverse array of fuels and
technology to generate electricity. Nuclear energy plays a
vital role in assuring this diversity, producing some twenty
percent of the country's electricity. Resources for research
and development of energy sources ranging from clean coal and
geothermal to wind and even fusion are provided by S. 14. To
eliminate support for any of these sources would be near-
sighted and risk energy stability in the years to come,
perhaps leading to devastating economic effects.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges you to vote against the
Wyden-Sununu amendment to S. 14.

Mr. President, the National Electro-Industry Manufacturing
Association issued a press release today that certainly sums up my
position and, hopefully, the position of many in the Senate. In the
press release they say:

The reliability and security of our nation's energy supply
requires us to have a diverse energy portfolio, including
nuclear power.

[[Page S7516]]

Votes against incentives, particularly loan guarantees, are a
vote against reliable, low cost, stable, and environmentally
friendly energy supplies. It is also a vote against jobs and
a stronger economy.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we set the
pending amendment aside so that I might be able to offer an amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 865

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the amendment.
The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan], for himself,
Ms. Cantwell, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. Akaka, Mrs. Clinton, Mr.
Kerry, Mr. Nelson of Florida, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Harkin, Mr.
Dodd, Mr. Reid, Mr. Lautenberg, and Mr. Kennedy, proposes an
amendment numbered 865.

Mr. DORGAN. I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the
amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To require that the hydrogen commercialization plan of the
Department of Energy include a description of activities to support
certain hydrogen technology deployment goals)

On page 296, line 21, before ``Not'' insert ``(a) In
General.--''.
On page 297, between lines 2 and 3, insert the following:
(b) Contents.--The plan shall describe the activities of
the Department of Energy, including a research, development,
demonstration, and commercial application program for
developing technologies, to support--
(1) the production and deployment of--
(A) 100,000 hydrogen-fueled fuel cell vehicles in the
United States by 2010; and
(B) 2,500,000 hydrogen-fueled fuel cell vehicles in the
United States by 2020 and annually thereafter; and
(2) the integration of hydrogen activities with associated
technical targets and timetables for the development of
technologies to provide for the sale of hydrogen at a
sufficient number of fueling stations in the United States by
2010 and 2020.
(c) Progress Review.--The Secretary shall include in each
annual budget submission a review of the progress toward
meeting the targets under subsection (b).

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I offered this amendment on behalf of
myself and Senators Cantwell, Lieberman, Akaka, Clinton, Kerry, Nelson
of Florida, Schumer, Harkin, Dodd, Reid, Lautenberg, and Kennedy.
I am offering a piece of legislation the Senate has previously passed
and endorsed in the consideration of the Energy Bill last year. Let me
spend a few moments talking about the amendment specifically.
Very simply, this amendment is one that tries to establish some
targets and timetables with respect to moving toward a hydrogen
economy, which is something the President talked about doing. Targets
and timetables, what I mean by that is we cannot enforce targets and
timetables that are absolute, but we can as a Senate think big and
decide to see if we can establish some targets and goals for the
movement toward a hydrogen economy with fuel cells for our economics.
I will describe why I think we ought to do this and why this is an
important amendment. I will harken back to the Apollo program. On May
25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced our Nation was
establishing a goal of sending a man to the Moon and having a safe
return from the Moon. He said we will have a man walk on the Moon by
the end of the decade. That was 1961. In 1969, Neil Armstrong and then
Buzz Aldrin stepped on the Moon.
The Apollo project was an enormous undertaking. The NASA annual
budget increased from $500 million in 1960 to $5.2 billion in 1965. It
represented 5.3 percent of the Federal budget in 1965. Think about
that. In today's terms, that would be $115 billion. NASA engaged
private industry, university research, and academia in a massive way.
Contractor employees increased by a factor of 10, to 376,000 people, in
1965. When President Kennedy said in 1961 it was his vision to have a
man walk on the Moon by the end of the decade, there was no
technological capability to do so at that moment, no guarantee it could
be done. The Soviets had an advantage in space flight. They had put up
a satellite called Sputnik. We were eager to see if we could not
overcome that advantage. During the height of the cold war, that Soviet
advantage was of great concern to us. The technological barriers were
very significant. The expense was daunting. Yet, on July 20, 1969, Neil
Armstrong stepped down off of that lunar lander and stood on the
surface of the Moon; Buzz Aldrin followed him. I recall they actually
pantomimed a golf game and jumped around on the surface of the Moon. In
a decade, the President said let's set a goal and reach that goal.
I will talk about another goal, another big idea, one that we ought
to establish now for this country and for its future. That is the goal
of deciding, as President Bush has suggested, that we move toward a
hydrogen economy and fuel cells for our vehicles. I will describe why I
think that is important.
This chart says what the President is telling us:

America's energy security is threatened by our dependence
on foreign oil. America imports 55 percent of the oil it
consumes. That is expected to grow to 68 percent by 2025.

Again quoting the President:

Nearly all of our cars and trucks run on gasoline, and they
are the main reason America imports so much oil. Two-thirds
of the 20 million barrels of oil Americans use each day is
used for transportation; fuel cell vehicles offer the best
hope of dramatically reducing our dependence on foreign
oil.

That is from President Bush, and I fully agree with that statement.
This graph shows what is happening with respect to consumption and
domestic supply of oil. We are importing 55 percent of our oil at the
moment, much of it from very troubled parts of the world, and that is
expected to grow to 68 percent. The American economy is and will be
held hostage by our ability to find oil and import it from outside of
our country's borders. Should that be difficult for this country?
Should it cause all of us great concern? The clear answer to that is
yes. That is a very serious problem.
Here is another chart. This is a list of the countries that are
supplying our oil. Our top supplier is Saudi Arabia. Almost one-third
of our oil, incidentally, comes from the Middle East. Iraq has been our
fifth largest; it is the sixth largest supplier on this chart. Also
listed are Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, and Angola. And when you look at
the amount of energy we are importing from that part of the world, it
is a very serious problem.
Some want this energy debate to be a debate about two issues. If it
is only those two issues, we lose. They are: Should we drill in ANWR?
How about doing something on CAFE standards? Well, if this is only
about ANWR and CAFE standards, then we lose. We need to pole-vault over
those issues. Yes, we can address them, but it seems to me if we don't
pole-vault over to new ground and deal with these issues in a much
different way, every 25 years we will come back and debate energy and
we will be debating exactly the same issues: where next do we drill?
How much more efficient can we make a carburetor, through which we run
gasoline, much of it imported from overseas?
If our strategy for energy for this country's future is simply
digging and drilling, then it is a strategy I call ``yesterday
forever.'' It doesn't really change very much. Every 25 years, we can
redebate the issue of how dependent we are and how dangerous it is for
us to be that dependent on foreign sources of energy. I would like to
see a different debate, one that says let's break out of this cycle.
When I say digging and drilling is yesterday forever, I don't think we
should not dig and drill. We will, we can, and we should. We will
always use fossil fuels. Using our coal resources in an environmentally
acceptable way with clean coal technology makes great sense to me.
Using our domestic sources of energy and natural gas--especially oil
and natural gas--makes sense to me. We will dig and drill.
But if that is our energy strategy, we really have not moved the ball
forward at all. So the question is, what more can we do? The President
suggested in his State of the Union Address that we ought to chart a
different course.
I introduced legislation prior to the President's State of the Union
Address saying let's move to a different kind of technology, a
different kind of energy economy; let's move to a hydrogen economy
using fuel cells.

[[Page S7517]]

First of all, using fuel cells and hydrogen is twice as efficient in
getting power to a wheel as using the internal combustion engine.
Second, when we use hydrogen fuel cells in automobiles or vehicles, we
are sending water vapor out the tailpipe. What a wonderful thing for
our economy. We double the efficiency of the energy source, and then we
eliminate the pollution out the tailpipe. We double the efficiency
using hydrogen, which is a ubiquitous source of energy--it is
everywhere--and then we decrease air pollution by putting water vapor
out the tailpipe of a vehicle. That makes great sense to me.
I introduced legislation. It is called the Hydrogen Fuel Cell Act of
2003. I compliment President Bush for proposing in his State of the
Union Address that we move in this direction. I have said it is not
small or insignificant for a Republican President to say let's do this.
It was a rather small thing in terms of his proposal to fund it. It was
not a bold approach. It was a rather timid approach. But that should
not detract from the fact that this administration put itself on the
line to say: Let's move in this direction.
The President proposed $1.2 billion in 5 years. Only slightly more
than half was new money. It appeared to me some of it came at the
expense of other important areas of conservation and renewable energy.
Having said all that, in the Energy Committee we came very close to
tripling that amount of money. We bring to the floor of the Senate
legislation that substantially improves the initiative dealing with
hydrogen fuel cells. I think that is a significant step forward, one
that I appreciate.
What is missing is, in addition to the legislation I introduced,
which actually calls for $6.5 billion in 10 years--so more money--and
also pilot projects, Federal purchase programs, tax credits, and so
on--what is missing is targets and timetables. If we are going to do
this program, let's set out targets and timetables. I am not suggesting
they can be ironclad. They cannot.
If we are going to make this a big proposal, a bold proposal in the
spirit of an Apollo project saying let's do this, let's make a
difference, let's do this, let's decide that 25 years from now we will
not have a debate about how much gasoline we are running through the
carburetors of America's vehicles because we found a way to take
hydrogen from water, use it as an energy supply, and through fuel cells
use it to power America's vehicle fleet, we can do that.
Many of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, on the Energy
Committee have been supportive of this proposal. There is nothing
partisan about this at all. As I said, it was in President Bush's State
of the Union Address. It comes in legislation I have introduced. It
comes in initiatives my colleagues have talked about and introduced as
well. The question is, How do we make progress by establishing some big
and bold goals?
This legislation I have introduced, taking one piece of the Hydrogen
Fuel Cell Act of 2003, tries to establish some way points. When I
learned to fly airplanes many years ago, they taught me, with modern
instrumentation, that I can create way points for my airplane. When you
get up in the air, you program into the computers on the plane the way
points to which you want to fly. It is a fictitious point 300 or 400
miles away, but once you establish that way point with your
instruments, you fly to the way point. When you reach that way point,
then you take a new course to the next way point.

My point is, we need way points--targets, and timetables--to transfer
to some new hydrogen fuel cell economy. If we do not, we will not get
there. If we do not, as President Kennedy said, put a man on the Moon
by the end of the decade, if we do not today make the equivalent of
that commitment in deciding how and where we are going to head with
this hydrogen fuel cell economy, we are not going to get there. We just
will not.
Let me show some examples of what is happening in hydrogen fuel
cells. General Motors Hy-wire fuel cell concept car unveiled in August
2002. Some say there are no such things as fuel cells. Of course there
are. I have driven a fuel cell car that drove from California to the
east coast, across this country.
Are they commercially available now? No, they are not. Are they
horribly expensive? Yes. But we are in the design stage and the
research and development stage to make hydrogen fuel cell vehicles
affordable.
This is the Nissan Xterra fueled by compressed hydrogen tested on
California public roads in 2001.
This is the Ford Focus fuel cell vehicle. Production is ready for
prototype, autumn 2002.
This is a hydrogen fueling station by Powertech Labs.
This is a picture of a DaimlerChrysler fuel cell bus introduced in
Germany in 1997. I have actually ridden in a fuel cell bus running on
the streets of this country.
The point is, we can do this. Is this easy to do? No, it is not, not
at all. What do you have to do to convert to a hydrogen fuel cell
economy for our vehicle fleet? Notice, I am not talking about
stationary power centers. That also exists as the capability with
respect to hydrogen and fuel cells, stationary engines, and so on.
I am talking about the vehicle fleet because a substantial increase
in the demand for oil comes from our vehicles. I do not have a chart to
show that. It is quite clear that unless we do something, especially
about our vehicle fleet, we will, 25, 50, and 100 years from now, still
be debating on the floor of the Senate how much additional gasoline we
run through America's carburetors.
What do you have to do to switch? A bold plan means we are going to
change our entire infrastructure. We have production. How are we going
to produce hydrogen? There are a lot of ways to produce hydrogen. We
can use electrolysis to separate oxygen and hydrogen in water and store
the hydrogen and use it in fuel cells.
Let me give another example. We can put up a wind charger, the new
highly efficient wind turbine, a 1-megawatt wind turbine, and take the
energy from the air. We can use that energy for electrolysis to
separate the oxygen and hydrogen in water and store the hydrogen for
use in fuel cells.
There are so many ways and different approaches to use hydrogen. We
have production issues: How do we produce hydrogen? From what source?
But it is ubiquitous; it is all over. That is not an insurmountable
problem. How do you produce hydrogen? How do you transport it? How do
you store it? How do you make it available at the infrastructure, at
service stations across the country for a vehicle fleet?

Those are issues we ought to be dealing with and will deal with and
the administration will deal with at the Department of Energy.
What I say very simply in this amendment--and it has taken me a long
time to get to the point, but I wanted to make a presentation on why I
think this is very important for our country--I say let's establish, as
President Kennedy did, a goal. Let's have 100,000 hydrogen fuel cell
vehicles on our roads by 2010, 7 years from now. Let's have 2.5 million
hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on our roads by 2020. Let's set some goals.
Let's set some way points and say: Here is what we strive to do; here
is what we aspire to do as a country.
If we do not set goals, I guarantee we will never reach the potential
that exists for us to convert our vehicle fleet to hydrogen fuel cell
fleets and to relieve ourselves of the danger that exists having so
much of our energy coming from outside our borders.
If we wake up tomorrow morning, God forbid, and terrorists have
interrupted the supply of oil to this country--and, yes, that could
happen--this country's economy will be flat on its back. It will be
flat on its back because we rely, to the tune of 55 percent, on oil
from sources outside this country and much of it from very troubled
parts of the world. That is going to go to 68 percent, and we ought not
let it.
If in this Chamber we spend weeks and wrestle and debate energy
policy and come out with an energy policy that says what we need to do
is just produce more and somehow we will end up just fine, we have done
nothing for America's future.
We have done nothing for America's future. An Energy bill that makes
sense to me has four parts. One is, yes, let's produce more. Let's
incent more production of fossil fuels, absolutely. I do not support,
for example, drilling of the ANWR region, one of our most pristine and
delicate areas. I do not think

[[Page S7518]]

we need to do that. But let's produce more. There are thoughtful ways
to produce more. I happen to believe we ought to be able to produce
much more in the Gulf of Mexico in an environmentally sensitive way.
Let's conserve more. We waste a huge amount of energy. Production and
conservation, that is two parts.
The third is efficiency. Everything we use almost every day, in every
way, with all of our appliances could, should, and will be more
efficient if we pay attention to and provide incentives for
efficiencies.
Finally, and importantly, is the area of a renewable and limitless
source of energy, and that includes ethanol, biodiesel, and many
others, but most importantly it includes this proposal: Hydrogen and
fuel cells can be our future. It can make this country more secure. It
can remove from this country's neck the yoke of having over half of its
oil coming from troubled parts of the world. In a very substantial way
it can do what President Kennedy did in establishing new goals in space
travel for our country. It can inspire our country to be able to
control our own destiny with respect to energy.
I close as I began by saying that President Bush was absolutely
correct in the State of the Union Address, and it is not a small thing
for this President to say let's move in this direction. I am putting my
administration in support of this direction, this movement. That is not
a small thing. It is a big deal.
I have said his proposal is more timid than I thought it should be. I
do not mean substantial criticism by that. What I mean by that is I
think to do this it has to be big and bold. Especially it has to set
timetables and targets.
The Senate committee has nearly tripled the amount of money the
President has proposed. That is a significant start, in my judgment. We
could even do more in the authorization bill with the type that I have
suggested. This amendment I have offered today is not that
authorization bill. It is simple. It says while we have made
significant strides in the Energy Committee on this subject, and now
that we have a Republican President, many Democrats and Republicans in
Congress believe we ought to move in this direction, so let us be bold
enough to set some timetables and targets.
As I indicated, the Senate has already passed this legislation last
year, and I hope the Senate would embrace it once again and pass these
targets and timetables.
One final point: These targets and timetables simply say the
Department of Energy shall report to us on how they establish the
strategies to reach these targets. We cannot impose our will in the
sense that we cannot tell an Energy Department they must reach these
targets. We do not have the capability of doing that. The technology
does not exist to get from here to there. But we can ask the Department
of Energy to provide for us the strategies by which they could meet
these targets, and that is what our amendment asks. My hope is this
will be unanimously supported by the Senate.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gregg). The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I begin by complimenting the Senator
from South Dakota on the work he has done on fuel cell hydrogen over
the years, and also compliment others on the other side of the aisle--I
see the ranking member of the committee, Senator Bingaman from New
Mexico. For at least a dozen years, this Congress, and particularly
this Senate, has been interested in the hydrogen fuel cell technology.
The Senator from North Dakota and the Senator from New Mexico are the
ones who have pushed that the hardest.
What we have now is some consensus, at least in our committee, and I
hope in the Senate at large, on the importance of this bold proposal. I
will take a moment to put in perspective what the committee has done.
Mr. DORGAN. Will the Senator yield for just a moment?
Mr. ALEXANDER. I would be happy to.
Mr. DORGAN. I intended to complete my comments by complimenting
Senator Alexander and others on the committee who have taken a position
I think provides some leadership in this area. I did not mention those
in the committee who, when we marked up these issues, played a
significant role in the hydrogen title. I intended to do that at the
end of my remarks. So I thank the Senator for allowing me to do that.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator for his comments, but the bottom
line is the process by which this committee worked on the hydrogen fuel
cell proposal, which is title 8 of the Energy bill, which was a good
process for those who would like to see how two parties in an evenly
divided Senate can take an issue and come to some consensus and narrow
the differences. It was a pretty good process. What is remaining are
the two issues of which the Senator from North Dakota spoke.
One is more money and two is more mandates, which he now has
suggested are targets, if I understand correctly, rather than mandates.
Am I correct in that?
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, if the Senator would yield further?
Mr. ALEXANDER. Yes.
Mr. DORGAN. There is nothing in here that would be a mandate. These
are establishment of targets by asking the Department of Energy to
provide Congress with their strategies on how to reach them. I have
specifically not imposed mandates. I am simply asking them to develop
strategies and to report those strategies to the Congress.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator. So that narrows the differences
considerably.
Having acknowledged the good work done on the other side, I will also
acknowledge the good work the President did. Only a President of
whatever party can put something on the agenda the way a President can,
and so it was exciting to all of us who cared about this issue and
about the goals, which are to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and
to clean the air, which is what this does, to see President Bush, in
his State of the Union Address, make a bold proposal to direct the
Secretary of Energy to explore the possibility of a hydrogen economy
and to develop the next generation of technology that would include
hydrogen.
What we are really talking about, as the Senator from North Dakota
explained, is a completely new way of thinking and living our lives. I
noticed the other day in our local newspaper in Tennessee there was a
picture of a filling station in Iceland that opened. Iceland has a
hydrogen filling station. The buses that operate in Iceland back up to
that hydrogen filling station and instead of putting gasoline in their
tanks, they put in hydrogen. They drive around on the hydrogen, and
instead of emitting some carbon-based pollutant into the air, they emit
only water, which is the product of that process.

It takes a little while for someone who has not thought about this
much, as I was at one time, to get one's mind around this, but we are
basically taking the internal combustion engine and putting it to the
side and putting in a new process that reduces electricity, runs the
car and, as the Senator said, the only emission is water. So there is
an enormous advantage on two matters that concern us greatly: One is
reduce our dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and we are in the middle
of a process right now where we have been reminded about what a
challenge that is to our national security. Some estimates are that by
the year 2035 or 2040 we would have 11 million barrels per day less of
reliance on our need for oil if we had a hydrogen economy. No one can
know for certain what those numbers are, but all of us know it is a big
change and a big number.
Of course, the second aspect is clean air. This week, and for the
next few weeks, we will be talking about ways to clean the air. The
most interesting, and difficult sometimes, arguments we have that come
before our committee and the country are those that intersect with
energy and the environment. Here is a nice intersection between energy
and the environment because if we are emitting only water, then the
parts of our economy, and especially the transportation parts that use
hydrogen-based cars instead of the internal combustion engine, will
make a remarkable difference in not just our clean air but our standard
of living because our lack of clean air and our difficulty with finding
ways to clean the air is a limit on our ability to grow our economy. So
this is a very important topic and all of us recognize it as such.

[[Page S7519]]

Now let me start with the President's proposal, to put this in
perspective, including the Senator's amendment. The President's
proposal authorizes the Department of Energy, including our National
Laboratories, to spend about $1.3 billion over the next 5 years in
research and development in the following areas: research on hydrogen-
powered engines, and research on the production of hydrogen.

We have to make the stuff. It can come from many places. It can come
from fossil fuels. It can come from renewable resources, a major part
of the discussion in the Energy bill last week. It can come from
nuclear energy, which is a major part of the discussion in the Energy
bill this week. At a nuclear power plant one might be able to produce
some of the hydrogen that would clean the air. And it can come from
natural gas, which is the easiest way, arguably, to get it today. But
with the recent spikes in the price of natural gas, we can see the
difficulty relying on one form of energy too greatly.
The President's proposal would fund additional research on
transportation and delivery of hydrogen via pipelines and fueling
stations. Iceland has a hydrogen fueling station. We do not have any in
the United States. We have a few hundred miles of hydrogen pipeline.
Imagine a different America where, instead of backing your car or truck
up every block--sometimes more often than one block--to a station where
you get gasoline, you back it up or drive into a place where you fill
up with hydrogen. That is a big change in our infrastructure. This
research would help figure out how better to do that.
Also, we need additional fuel cell research. The Senator mentioned
some of the obstacles that exist to this wonderful vision. One of the
difficulties is we need to find new ways to produce hydrogen, which I
mentioned. Another is we need to find a little cheaper way of building
a hydrogen car. The Senator and I drove the same one, I believe a Ford,
around the block. I believe that car costs a couple million per unit to
make right now. In other words, the early models are extremely
expensive.
We need to find safe ways to store hydrogen. We need to meet the
challenge of this infrastructure.
We have great obstacles to overcome. But in this United States of
America, if anything defines our national ethic, it is that anything is
possible. We are ready to leap ahead and go after this. The President
recommended we put $1.3 billion behind it, and that was step 1 in this
session. Then the committee sat down and began to recognize the
suggestions made by those who had gone before. Instead of the $1.3
billion recommendation the President made, we took those
recommendations, reduced some of them to what we thought were a
manageable number, and still more than doubled the amount of money we
recommend to the full Senate that we authorize--nearly $3 billion
total. As the Senator from North Dakota said, nearly triple the amount
of money. So in addition to the President's $1.3 billion proposal, we
have about $1.6 billion more for other ideas brought into the bill by
people other than the President, from the Senate and the other side.
We have a hydrogen vehicle demonstration program for the Government
and nonprofit agencies; a stationery fuel cell demonstration program
for use in residential and commercial buildings; a hydrogen car and
fuel cell demonstration program in three national parks. That is a
terrific idea. I would like to see one in the Great Smoky Mountains,
our most polluted national park today. Many people think of Yellowstone
as receiving the most visitors; but only 3 million people visit
Yellowstone while 10 million go to the Great Smoky Mountains. The Great
Smokies is polluted, particularly because of the cars and coal plants.
An idea for which I commend the Senator is providing for the
establishment of a university education degree curriculum designed to
help our workforce move into a hydrogen economy, with centers of
excellence in our great research universities to help realize this
shared vision. In the United States, we have the world's only great
research universities. They are our secret weapon. We need to fund them
and the research and technology better. That is a sure way to move
toward this goal.
This bill before the Senate today is a combination of ideas from both
parties, from the President and from the Legislature. The amounts we
included, taking ideas from the other side to the bill, actually cost
more than the proposal from the President--nearly $3 billion.
That brings us to the point of the amendment. Is it enough money? Do
we need targets? I will respond to that in this way. The President
mentioned the Apollo. That is vivid in our minds. I remember as
Education Secretary I tried to think, using that Apollo objective,
which sticks in our minds to say, can we have in 10 or 20 years the
best schools in the world? Nothing is quite like that Apollo mission.
It is always hard to make an analogy, but the President has the same
dream that we have here. The dream is that we have an America less
dependent on foreign oil, an America that has cleaner air, something
that increases our national security and our health and well-being.
However, there are other parts to that dream than just the hydrogen
car. There is, if we are talking about energy, the need to revive our
nuclear energy. Japan was decimated by an atomic bomb, and they are
relying primarily on nuclear energy. And France is relying primarily on
nuclear energy. It has been since the 1970s that we started a new
nuclear power reactor in this country. So this bill, in addition to
hydrogen, is to help stimulate our nuclear energy.
We need not just stimulate nuclear and hydrogen; we need to find a
way to burn coal in a cleaner way. We make half our electricity from
coal, but it pollutes the air more than we can tolerate. So we need
coal gasification, as an example. This bill encourages that. The
Senator from North Dakota mentioned wind turbines in North Dakota. They
are part of the dream as well. Natural gas is part of the dream. Its
price went up, so we need to explore more and we need pipelines to get
that gas to the places it needs to go. This bill encourages that. We
need more new oil that is not dependent on some other country. We have
tried--although we do not always agree in this body on where to drill--
to do that.
So the dream of clean air and less dependence on foreign oil has many
parts, including the hydrogen vision the President outlined in his
address, so that a child born today can have a choice in this
generation of driving a car fueled by a fuel cell hydrogen engine.
The Apollo dream is not exactly the same. We have a dream, but this
is only a part of the dream.
As far as the amount of money is concerned, I suppose one could
always argue about the amount of money. We considered that very
carefully in the committee. We nearly tripled the amount of money the
President requested. We took into account virtually all of the
suggestions by the Senator and others on the other side, which is why
this bill came to the floor from the committee, because we had such a
consensus. For a new technology which, while bold, is still unproven,
we believe this is a generous amount of support in a bill that is
balanced across a broad number of sources of new and improved energy.
That brings me to the targets and the timetables. I appreciate the
Senator moving from mandates to targets and timetables. That is a step
forward. However, I prefer we not make, if I may say with respect, wild
guesses about how this unproven technology might work, but that we join
as we have in this bill to find a variety of ways to stimulate and not
fool ourselves into thinking we are going to get to this point or that
point in any particular year.
President Kennedy said let's go to the Moon, and he said by when he
hoped to go, but he didn't say fly this kind of airplane, or use this
kind of rocket, or get a third of the way there by 1963. He said, Let
us go there.
So let us go toward a day when we have cleaner air and when we have
less dependence on foreign oil because of a variety of steps, one of
the most impressive of which is the vision of a hydrogen fuel cell car.
But let us not try to make a wild guess just about when that will come,
in what year. I believe one of the greatest underutilized powers of
this body is the oversight power. Really, the Senate, the Congress, has
two great functions: One is to spend

[[Page S7520]]

money, and one is to oversee how that money is spent. There is nothing
to keep us from that. In fact, as chairman of the Energy Subcommittee,
I would want to make it part of my responsibility to regularly ask the
Secretary of Energy to come forward with his plan, about what progress
he is making, and suggest to him faster progress, and to ask him what
timetables seem reasonable.
There is another aspect to this, too. The Government is not going to
invent the hydrogen car. No one has suggested the Government will. We
are just providing some free commercial researching. But we should
leave it to the market to make the greatest progress in determining
what timetables will work, what targets make sense, what research will
finally work, and what the customers will buy.
I had an opportunity within the last couple of weeks to talk with the
chief executive of Nissan, Mr. Ghosn, who has had a remarkable record.
In 1999, Nissan had a $19 billion debt and was headed down. Today, it
has no debt. It is headed up. I asked him about the hydrogen car
because some of my scientist friends had been throwing a little cold
water on the idea, saying some of us in the Senate were coming up with
a pipedream that might never work. Here is what the head of Nissan
said, and he said this publicly: Nissan is spending $800 million in the
next 7 years on research just on fuel cell hydrogen cars. He wants to
be, and has publicly stated that Nissan intends to be, not just a
leader but the leader in that area. In other words, they are putting
money there, real dollars. They are making that kind of investment of
prestige and dollars.
Toyota and Honda, industry sources tell me, are spending at least
that much of their own money. And the General Motors president has said
to me he takes this seriously as well.
So the President's focus on the hydrogen car has done one good thing.
It has taken the work that has been done in this body in the last 10 or
12 years on hydrogen and put it in this bill in the form of $1.6
billion. It has taken the President's own proposals of research--that
is another $1.3 billion. But the real value is the President's
proposal, and our agreement on this, if we do agree, will put this up
front, create a national commitment, the kind of commitment we had when
we went to the Moon. That is right. It is that kind of national
commitment. But let us realize that when we went to the Moon, we went
in reasonable steps and this plan for cleaner air and for less
dependence on foreign oil has many parts, including other forms of
energies, and the timetables and the targets are best left to the
marketplace.
So I rise to say this represents great progress by the committee. I
commend, again, the Senator for his leadership. I urge that we not
support an amendment creating wild guesses and artificial targets and
timetables, but move forward and let the marketplace help us make
sensible judgments about that, using our oversight role as Senators to
make sure the program stays on course.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Brownback). The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak briefly in favor of the
amendment by the Senator from North Dakota and give the reasons I
believe this is a meritorious amendment that would strengthen the bill.
First, I think everyone needs to understand the amendment is an
amendment that just sets targets. It really says that the plan--this is
the plan the administration is going to come up with to spend this $1.3
billion, I believe it is--

shall describe the activities of the Department of Energy,
including a research, development, demonstration, and
commercial application program for developing technologies to
support--

and then it goes on to set these targets to support:

the production and deployment of . . . 100,000 hydrogen-
fueled fuel cell vehicles by 2010; and . . . 2.5 million
hydrogen-fueled fuel cell vehicles by 2020 . . .

As I say, this is an amendment that sets some targets. They are not
mandates; they are targets. I think they add greatly to the bill.
Unfortunately, the Senator from Tennessee, as chair of the Energy
Subcommittee in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, does have
the primary responsibility for the oversight of a lot of this activity.
I would see this amendment, frankly, by the Senator from North Dakota
as a way to give him more ability to perform that oversight.
Frankly, the only oversight target in the bill right now is you could
call in the various officials from the Department of Energy and ask
them whether in fact they are spending the money we have authorized to
be spent. That is not a very effective kind of oversight. I am sure
they would tell us they are spending the money.
The real question is, Are they achieving something with the
expenditure of those funds? I believe this amendment tries to put in
place some targets for what we would like to see them achieve. Clearly
those are not hard-and-fast targets and they will change over time, but
they do give us some benchmarks against which we can measure progress.
I think that is very useful.
The Senator from Tennessee made the point that, in his view, his
preference would be to leave it to the market as to how quickly these
technologies develop. Clearly the private sector is going to determine
to a very great extent how quickly these technologies become
commercialized and how well they develop. But this legislation is
authorizing the expenditure of Federal funds. It is entirely
appropriate that we specify what we want to see as results coming out
of the expenditure of those funds. To me it is not incumbent upon us to
leave that kind of decision to the market. The market will have a major
role, major voice, major determination as to what actually comes to
market and what actually is commercialized and how quickly. But in the
expenditure of taxpayer dollars it is our job to set out there what we
would like to see achieved. If we determine after a few years that
those targets are not realistic, we can always change them. Congress is
in session every year. But this gives us something to shoot at. I think
it is a major step in the right direction.
The Department, under the legislation we are considering, would
invest $171 million in the current fiscal year, $272 million next
fiscal year, $1.7 billion over the next 5 years--I said earlier $1.3
billion. I gather it is $1.7 billion. In my view, it is entirely
appropriate that we look at trying to achieve some particular targets
so we can then go back to our constituents and say this is what this
money is going for and this is how we are making progress.
I do want to say, just before I yield the floor here, that this has
been a very good, bipartisan effort. The Senator from North Dakota has
been a long-time leader in trying to get more attention to the use of
hydrogen in meeting our future energy needs. The Senator from Tennessee
is certainly a strong proponent of this and has demonstrated that in
our debates this year.
I know there are others on our committee who have taken a very major
role: Senator Akaka, as well, of course, and others before him. So I
think this is a very good part of the bill. I think this amendment by
Senator Dorgan will strengthen it even more.
I hope very much we can see it adopted.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, because the Senate in the last Congress
passed an Energy bill which included targets and timetables, I think it
would be considered a retreat if for some reason or another we this
year objected to targets and timetables that were included in this
Energy bill. In the past Congress, with the President supporting fuel
cells and a hydrogen economy, I don't think we ought to be retreating
on these kinds of issues.
The Senator from Tennessee said there are two parts. There are many
parts of the bill. He is right about that. There is the part of the
legislation that deals with that which we have always done. We have
always been concerned about production of fossil fuels. So we have, of
course, portions of the bill to deal with that. We have conservation
issues and renewable energy issues. Those have always been in the bill.
But this piece is a different part--a part that is different and
unusual. This part deals with something that is new, big and bold. It
is why the President

[[Page S7521]]

put it in his State of the Union Address. That is why he had a special
rollout of his proposal down at the Building Museum with hundreds of
people present. Virtually every industry leader with respect to
hydrogen and fuel cells in the country came to town. Why did the
President emphasize that? Because this is a different part. This is not
some unusual part of the energy debate. It is the big, new, and bold
part of that debate.
I have used the term ``Apollo project.'' That perhaps could have used
or I could have used ``the Manhattan project,'' or something that would
denote a project by which a country aspires to achieve something. A
country aspires to establish goals, and it reaches those goals. A
strategy that says, let us spend this money and, by the way, let us
know if anything comes of it, is, in my judgment, not much of a
strategy.
I am a big believer in understanding that things happen that you make
happen--not that you let happen. If you have a problem and resources,
you have two choices: Let us move this money out and see what we let
happen with it, as opposed to deciding what we are going to make
happen. There is a very big difference.
My colleague from Tennessee used the term ``wild guesses'' several
times. Let me just tell you that Nissan, Toyota, Honda,
DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors are not engaged in wild
guesses. None of them is engaged in wild guesses. They are making
substantial investments in fuel cell vehicles believing that we are
moving toward a hydrogen fuel cell economy--not wild guesses at all.
Incidentally, I think my colleagues would, if they checked with most
of these organizations I have mentioned and others in the industry,
find that they very much support us being bold and establishing these
targets and timetables. Why? Because they know that a country that
establishes targets and timetables in pursuit of a policy is a country
that is going to be fostering new development through research, and
opportunities through research in the private sector as well. I just
think it is really important for us to do this.
All of us come from different kinds of hometowns. I come from a small
one with about 300 people. I am guessing, probably like every hometown,
we had two or three people who every day went down to the bar and
played Pinochle all day long. That was their social life. They just
stayed there all day long and played Pinochle. They most likely in
their conversations opposed almost everything new that was going on in
the community: ``It won't work, can't work; shouldn't do it.'' They
just played Pinochle and criticized anyone who was making things happen
in the community.

The President has said we ought to do this. There are going to be
doubters outside of this Chamber and doubters in the country who don't
want us to move in this direction who say it can't work, it won't
happen, or this is not our future. But they are wrong. President Bush
is right. They are wrong.
This country will best serve its future, in my judgment, if we decide
that we are going to do this with the President and with the Congress;
we are going to do this and make it happen. Should we just say, well,
except that there are other alternatives and no such picking and
choosing?
If President Kennedy had said, let us not pick a goal to go to the
Moon, maybe it ought to be Mars, but if we decided the Moon, let us not
decide it had to be in this decade because the technology doesn't
exist, let us say we are going to one planet and the Moon maybe
someday, we probably would have never gotten past Cape Canaveral. We
probably would have never gotten off the launch pad.
He established for this country a very bold vision. The Manhattan
project was a very different project. It was the same thing: We are
going to do this. We are going to marshal all of the resources and try
to make this happen.
My amendment is much more timid than that. I do not suggest we can
strap a mandate on this country and a burden on the Department of
Energy, or the private sector for that matter, that says we have to
meet these goals, timetables, and targets. That is not what I am
saying. I am saying, in the pursuit of this money, that we are going to
spend several billions of dollars, let us ask the Energy Department in
their plan to describe their activities in pursuit of this goal which
says we aspire to have 100,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the
United States by 2001 and 2.5 million by 2010. Maybe it can't be
reached; I don't know. It is certainly not a wild guess; it is just
deciding that we ought to as a country establish some goals.
Once again, I think there is a big difference between letting things
happen and making things happen. We have the capability, it seems to
me, with this President and this Congress--and with the private sector
very engaged with an aggressive aim, which my colleague from Tennessee
described a while ago--to do some really remarkable things in this
area. I think they will be enhanced by establishing these targets and
timetables.
I really see no downside at all. I sometimes can see in legislation
or amendments that are introduced that there is an upside and a
downside. What if it succeeds or fails? For the life of me, I cannot
see the downside of Congress establishing in this legislation some
targets and timetables that put us on a path to a new, bold, and
aggressive energy policy that will do all of the things my colleague
from Tennessee described and all the things I described which are good
for this country--substantially limiting our dependence on foreign oil,
which provides much greater economic and energy security for this
country, and dramatically improving air quality in America. Instead of
putting pollutants out of the tailpipe, you are putting water vapor out
of the tailpipe.

There are so many things that make sense with respect to this
proposal. Much of the proposal that is in the Energy bill makes great
sense. I support it. I wish it were a bit bolder than it is.
Nonetheless, it is substantially better than what was sent to us in the
President's budget. I compliment my colleague from Tennessee and my
colleague from New Mexico and others on that score. But I still believe
we will do this country a favor and improve this legislation as it
leaves the Senate by including timetables and targets which were in the
legislation in the last Congress.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Senator from North Dakota and I
agree on so much about this subject that I am not going to extend this
discussion very much further for fear of dredging up something that we
might disagree on because we don't have many differences here.
If I may briefly comment, I was listening to the Senator's discussion
of that bar in North Dakota. When I was growing up in the mountains of
Tennessee, Blount County was a dry county, we didn't have bars, but we
had Byrne Drugstore, which is where all that same kind of discussion
must have occurred.
I was just thinking. Talking about the suggested timetables, the
Senator suggested that, for example, we have in here a timetable of
100,000 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in the United States by 2010. I was
wondering what they would say in Byrne Drugstore if I went back to it
and said I just became a Senator, and I drove a new hydrogen fuel cell
car around the block which emits water out the tailpipe and doesn't
burn any gasoline. The car costs $2 million a car to make. I got so
excited about it I went over to the Senate and I voted to say we ought
to have 100,000 of those in the United States by 2010 and 2\1/2\
million of them by 2020.

I think they would say to me: Well, Lamar, I think you got carried
away a little bit. At 2 million times 100,000, how do you know what the
cost of that car is going to be in 2010? I might say: Well, I may not
have really meant that. We meet every year, and we can change that next
year if we want to.
They might say to me: Why did you put it in there in the first place
if you didn't know that much about what you were talking about? The
idea sounds exciting, but why would you guess how you would take a $2
million car and make sure it made any sense at all to target that we
have 100,000 of them in the United States by 2010? What ability does
the U.S. Government have to wave a magic wand and make sure that
happens?
I was then thinking, too, about all the automobile companies both the

[[Page S7522]]

Senator and I talked about. Now, they are hot on this. I mentioned Mr.
Ghosn at Nissan. He wanted to make sure I knew he intended not just to
be a player in the fuel cell hydrogen car, he intends to be ``the''
player, and he is going to spend $800 million of his company's dollars
on research in this far out idea that probably will not be commercially
viable--none of us believe--for 15, 20, or 25 years.
That is a big step. But I really doubt Mr. Ghosn went to his board or
the chairman of General Motors went to his board or the chairman of
Ford went to his board and said: I want you to authorize that we
require that our company make a certain number of these cars by a
certain year. I think they would say: You are not being entirely
realistic. You have gotten a little carried away.
So I want to show great respect for the Senator's goals, his hard
work, and his energy. We agree on 95 percent of this. But I think to
adopt those kinds of targets and timetables--to use a gentler word--
might be misleading at the very least because I don't think that is the
way to go about it.
Let's encourage it in any way we can--and we tried to do that here--
and then let's have oversight on a regular basis. Then, if the
technology is proven enough that it makes sense for us to be a little
more specific, well, maybe we can take it up then. But if I went into
the Byrne Drugstore in Blount County, and said, ``I have just driven a
$2 million car around the block and then went over and voted we ought
to have 100,000 of them by a particular year,'' I think they would
think I had gotten a little carried away with my good idea.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I shall not carry this much further either
because there is much we agree on. But let me just say to the folks at
the Byrne Drugstore, a drugstore I have not had the pleasure of
visiting, my guess is, at Byrne Drugstore, if you told the folks
sitting around the cracker barrel there--if they have a cracker
barrel--in talking about life that we are going to give $2 billion plus
to the Department of Energy, and we would just like them to use it as
best they can, we really have not told them what we aspire to have
happen in terms of goals or timetables and, what do you think of that,
my guess is they would say: They are going to send their great-
grandchildren back to you to say, ``We have not reached any conclusions
yet.''
My guess is, the folks at Byrne Drug, just as the folks playing
pinochle in my hometown's little bar, would probably say: If you are
going to give the folks over there in that big bureaucracy some money,
you might ought to give them a plan in terms of what you might want to
accomplish with that money because they will find a way to spend it if
you don't give them some sort of plan. They will tell you the money is
all gone, but they really don't have a product yet.
There are plenty of examples, of course, of that. But my own view is,
if we are going to give the Department of Energy money--and we must
because, as the Senator from Tennessee knows, we cannot convert to a
hydrogen-based fuel cell economy without public policy support. You
have to, after all, have a complete infrastructure change in this
country, so that in the future, if we are driving mostly hydrogen fuel
cell cars, you are not pulling up to a pump that pumps regular
gasoline, you are pulling up to a pump that pumps hydrogen fuel.
The question is, as I indicated before, where do we produce the
hydrogen? How do we transport the hydrogen? How do we store the
hydrogen? What is the infrastructure for dispensing the hydrogen at
fuel stations across the country? All of that is important. And all of
that is a function of public policy. The private sector cannot by
itself do that. That is why the public sector lays the groundwork for
it. It is like building the roads. We don't have General Motors
building roads in this country. We build roads, and they build cars
which you drive on the roads.
We create the public policy by which we will move toward a hydrogen
fuel cell policy. It is what the President believes we ought to do. It
is what I believe we ought to do. The Senator from Tennessee and the
Senator from New Mexico believe we ought to do that. So as we do that,
the question is: In pursuit of public policy, when we provide the
Department of Energy with $3 billion plus, should we say to them:
``Here is $3 billion plus. You folks--you good men and women at the
Department of Energy--use it as best you can, and try to give us some
idea of what you might accomplish with it'' or should we say to these
people in the large, vast bureaucracy here: ``Here is $3 billion plus,
and what we want you to do is the following. Our goal, our aspiration,
what we strive to achieve for the country is the following''? I think
that is a much better approach because, I guarantee you, we will
provide that $3.3 billion, and at the end that money will be spent.
I have not ever, I guess, seen a Federal agency that has failed to
spend the money. They do pretty well at that. But when they spend the
money, and it is gone, the question is, Will this country have moved
beyond where we are today in energy policy? Will we have achieved the
result we wanted? Will the President have advanced the issues he
portrayed so well in his State of the Union Address? I guess my answer
to that is, I do not think so.

I come back finally to this point--and I will have to leave the floor
but make this my last word--I fail to see any downside at all to
putting in these targets. Again, this is not some wild guess.
I go back to the Nissan example. The chairman of Nissan does not go
to the board of directors aspiring to spend $800 million, and say, ``By
the way, I have a wild guess, and I want you to authorize my spending
$800 million on it.''
This is not a wild guess. The private sector does not believe it is.
I do not believe it is. President Bush does not. I think most of us
understand this is a new, big, bold direction. We can do this the old
way, giving the bureaucracy some money and hoping it turns out or we
can do this a different way, saying: Here is what we aspire to achieve
as a country. Here are the targets. Here are the timetables. Let's get
about the business of doing this.
If we, in fact, want our children and their children to be able to
drive hydrogen fuel cell cars, then that is not going to happen because
we let it happen; it is going to happen because in the private sector
and in the public sector we are taking the steps that can make this
happen.
Having said that, I have enjoyed our discussion. Again, I have great
respect for the Senator from Tennessee. I think the work he has done in
the bill is excellent. I hope in the intervening hours or days before
we vote on this proposal that I will be able to garner his support for
this very minor, very small adjustment to a piece of legislation that
is not a mandate but that, in fact, is a commonsense approach in terms
of how we ought to spend this money and what we ought to expect the
taxpayers to get for this money.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator. I thank him for
his amendment. I know he is leaving, and I will not take advantage of
that by continuing the debate. I have had a chance to say almost all I
want to say.
The president of Nissan is a good example, actually. He has gone
before his board and said he wants to spend $800 million. I do not
think he went before the board and said he wanted to have 100,000
Nissan cars and trucks on the road in 2010 whether they worked and no
matter how much they cost. That is the difference here.
I respectfully suggest there is a blueprint in this legislation, much
of it provided by the Senator from North Dakota himself. The
President's blueprint includes research on hydrogen-powered engines.
That is what the $1.3 billion in research is for--research on the
production of hydrogen fuel cells, et cetera, research on the
transportation and delivery of hydrogen via pipelines and fueling
stations, research on how to store hydrogen better and safer, on
additional research on the fuel cell engine.
Because of the Senator from North Dakota and others, there is a
blueprint for various demonstration programs, which I mentioned
earlier--the vehicle demonstration program for Government and nonprofit
agencies, the stationary fuel cell demonstration program, hydrogen car
and fuel cell demonstration programs in national parks,

[[Page S7523]]

the Centers of Excellence at the university. Those are very specific
proposals.
So I respectfully suggest we have a good bill. We have a broad
bipartisan consensus that we have a bold vision, and yet with unproven
technology it is not wise for us in the Government to try to guess just
how many of those cars there might be but to encourage it and let those
who make the cars do it as rapidly as possible and use their talents to
persuade consumers to buy the cars.

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mr. SUNUNU. Mr. President, I join with my colleague, the Senator from
Tennessee, in the concerns he has expressed regarding this amendment. I
am intrigued and as interested as any Member of the Senate, including
the Senator from North Dakota, in this new technology, the potential to
use hydrogen-based fuel cells for power storage, energy storage, and
the impact that can have on our automotive industry.
There are, and ought to be, concerns with an amendment that attempts
to set a specific target for using such a future technology by a
specific date. I remember some 10 years ago being told that everyone in
America would be watching a high-definition TV by 1995; 1996 at the
absolute latest. That was a technology prediction regarding television,
something with which I think every American is quite familiar. We
couldn't even get that future scenario right. To suggest that we know
the future of fuel cell technology or even the automotive industry 10--
and I think as this amendment goes almost 20--years from today is an
enormous mistake. It is a mistake for a couple of reasons.
First, as the Senator from Tennessee pointed out, the current cost of
these vehicles is $2 million or so, wildly out of the reach of anyone
in the country who would be using these vehicles on a day-to-day basis.
The private sector is putting a lot of money into this area. That is
another reason to try to strike some balance in the bill. But even more
basically, despite the fact that the Senator from North Dakota points
out that this is just a target, what it does is suggest that a target
for this technology is somehow better or more important than a target
for any other technology.
What about solar power? What about photovoltaics? What about hybrid
combustion technology? The highest fuel efficiency cars out there today
often use a combination of electricity and traditional gasoline
combustion engines to try to get their fuel efficiency up to 60, 70, 80
miles per gallon. There is certainly tremendous potential there if it
can be made cost effective for the average consumer to immediately
begin saving energy for our country and for the world sooner rather
than later.
We should not prejudge which technologies will win out in a
competition of ideas, a competition of cost or a competition for
consumer interest in the marketplace. This amendment does just that. It
tries to predict where the future will take us rather than trying to
create a level playing field where different ideas can compete.
Certainly money will be put into a lot of leading edge technologies,
fundamental technologies regarding energy, and the Senator from
Tennessee listed a lot of those. I don't think we should try to predict
which ones will make the greatest impact in the automotive industry or
in any other industry.
While I am as interested as the Senator from North Dakota in this new
technology--I believe it may well prove to be a very important source
of energy storage in our future--I think it would be a mistake to try
to prescribe exactly how it needs to be implemented on behalf of the
automotive industry and the American people.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I have one short reaction to the
comment of the Senator from New Hampshire. I will have nothing further
to say on the amendment.
The Senator from New Hampshire reminds me of an experience I had in
1980, discussing the idea of predicting a new technology. I hope my
friend Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive of Federal Express,
will not mind my using him as an example. All this is public
information. In the early 1980s, although it is hard to recognize this
today, no one knew what to do with the fax. They didn't know what would
be the future of the fax machine. There were those who were saying it
would revolutionize communications as much as the fuel cell might
revolutionize the automobile.
Mr. Smith, since he was in the business of delivering overnight
packages, had to think about what the fax machine might do to Federal
Express. He thought about it, and he came to this conclusion: His
conclusion was that probably by the end of the 1980s, all Americans
would go down to the street corner and find a Fed Ex fax machine and
they would use the Fed Ex fax machine on their street corner to send a
fax to their friends wherever in the world they might want to do that.
That was his vision of what might happen with that new technology.
Well, we have seen what has happened since then. People didn't go
down to the street corner and send a fax to their friend. Everybody has
a fax in his or her office. Many people have them in their homes. They
became personal faxes. Mr. Smith was wrong about that. Fed Ex lost a
few hundred millions dollars. Fortunately for Tennessee, he had other
great ideas, and Fed Ex is our leading employer in Tennessee today
because of his entrepreneurial spirit.
But what if the Congress had gotten excited and said: Fred Smith has
a great idea. The fax is a great invention and has an unlimited future.
Let's pass a law saying that the Senate, having heard about the fax,
hereby decrees that by the year 1990, there shall be a fax on 100,000
street corners in America and by 1992, there will be 300,000 faxes on
street corners. All those faxes would be in the wrong places because
the Senate, with respect, would not have known enough about the future
to know what it was talking about. It was right about its vision of the
fax. It was wrong about how far that might work; Fed Ex was at that
time.
The analogy is pretty good here as well. We have a broad consensus on
our excitement about the hydrogen car fuel cell and what it might do,
not just for the automobile but throughout our economy. It is part of a
balanced approach to toward energy. It could make the air cleaner and
reduce our dependence on foreign oil. We are recommending $3 billion to
stimulate precommercial research on that. But let's not put ourselves,
in the Congress, in the position of making the same kind of mistake we
might have made 20 years ago if we had passed a law suggesting we have
100,000 fax machines on the street corners of America.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sununu). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, we are beginning this week again debating a
national energy policy for our country, an issue whose time clearly has
come, an issue that should have been resolved well over a year ago, but
because of the difficulties and differences of approach, that was an
impossible resolution.
I will never forget the day I met in our majority leader's office
with the then-elect President George Bush. He had not yet taken the
oath of office. He was not yet our President. While he talked about a
lot of his campaign promises and the priorities he would bring with his
leadership in the Presidency, he said at that time--and honored it
immediately when he became President--first and foremost for this
country was the desperate need for a national energy policy.
He, of course, upon becoming President, assigned Vice President Dick
Cheney to build a task force and make recommendations to Congress,
proposals that should be contained within a national energy policy for
our country.
Let's remember, it was not a decade ago. It was not 30 years ago. It
was just a few years ago that our President was reacting to what had
gone on in California with brownouts, blackouts, and a frustrated
population, and a very

[[Page S7524]]

concerned economy that no longer were we the masters of our own energy
fate; that somehow we had become increasingly dependent on foreign
countries for hydrocarbons, or oil, and even within our own structures
of systems of delivery and interconnection of electricity and pipelines
for gas we were no longer as independent, strong, and self-reliant as
we had been; that some while over the course of the nineties, as our
economy grew, we were not replacing or building new infrastructure to
serve that economy, we were simply relying on the surplus and the old
infrastructure that it delivered for that energy. And all of that was
true.
The President made his proposals. We crafted a policy, and when the
majority in the Senate changed, the Energy Committee was shut down and
a new bill was crafted in the office of the then majority leader, Tom
Daschle. The bill came to the floor. We had the debate. It ultimately
got into conference, but we could not produce a final product for our
President. The differences between our parties and our interests were
too great.
This year the Energy Committee, under the leadership of Pete
Domenici, in a bipartisan way, held the hearings, held the markups, and
what we have before us today is that legislation, a bill that is
bipartisan, that has a broad range of interests in it, and really
serves what I call the market-basket approach to energy, not that we
have decided one source of energy is going to be the future of our
country. We have learned differently about all of that in the last
decade or two.
There are multiple sources and there are different markets and
different economies that demand different kinds of energy. Clearly, to
advance electrical production in this country from a coal-fired base,
we have clean coal technology built within this bill so that we can
build future coal plants for electrical production that are less
emitting and cleaner.
Within the bill, there is a hydro relicensing provision that will
allow us to relicense the hundreds of hydro facilities that now serve
impoundments on our river systems, and do so in a much more
environmentally sound way that will become more fish friendly but will
still allow us to maintain that very clean base of electrical energy
known as hydro.
It is very important, where I come from and where the Presiding
Officer comes from, that these facilities remain productive and, at the
same time, as we relicense them, that they can be retrofitted to meet
the demands of a new attitude, a new understanding of the management of
our river systems.
In this bill also are the underpinnings of the hydrogen economy that
could in the future fuel the transportation needs of our country. The
Dorgan amendment that is before us today deals with those goals about
which we talk. We have been investing as a country for some time in
hydrogen fuel cell technology.
About 2\1/2\ or 3 years ago, I was at Dearborn, MI, at the Ford
engineering facilities and test track. While I was there, I drove a new
hydrogen fuel cell car. It was a car about the size of a Ford Taurus.
It had a hydrogen fuel cell within it that powered electric motors on
all four tires. It was a marvelous, quietly running car. I got in, sat
down, turned on the key, and nothing happened except the dashboard lit
up, and pretty soon the dashboard said: Go. I stepped down on the
accelerator, and away I went. There was a small whirring sound as the
hydrogen fuel cell generated fuel that produced electricity that sent
it out to the electrical motors on each one of these four tires.
When I was out on the test track with the engineer, he said: Pick it
up; speed it up a little bit. It had been raining, and as I went around
one corner of the test track, I slipped a little bit, and he suggested
rather sheepishly that we probably ought to slow down. I was willing to
do that in his car, his baby. He pioneered and helped develop this car.
He said there is another reason besides safety to slow this car down.
This car is worth about $6.5 million, and they did not want to lose
that very expensive automobile. I did not realize at that time I was
driving probably one of the most expensive automobiles ever built. It
was a prototype. It was obviously not an assembly-line vehicle.
What I drove that day convinced me that in the future, if we choose
to pursue it, we clearly can have, in part, not in toto, a hydrogen-
based transportation fuel system in our country.
Is, therefore, the Dorgan approach the right approach at this time?
Should we start making it mandatory to set targets that are absolute or
need to be met? I question that, and I do so most sincerely because I
want to move us and our knowledge base and invest in a hydrogen base.
Where do we get the hydrogen and how does it get delivered? Do we
forget that gas station on each corner of every community did not just
happen, that it took years and billions of dollars' worth of investment
to develop the delivery system we have today by a myriad of companies
investing their stockholder money and their profits in a delivery
system? That is exactly what it took. That did not happen by accident.
To automatically suggest we are now going to have a hydrogen-based
transportation system and that all of these new hydrogen refueling
stations will occur overnight is a phenomenal stretch. That is the
delivery system, and that delivery system alone would cost billions of
dollars and, clearly, as we transition, if we do, into a hydrogen-based
transportation system, it will take time and cost a lot of money.
Where do we get the hydrogen? Today we tend to get hydrogen from a
hydrogen-rich supply--natural gas. But natural gas today is
increasingly in less supply and more demand because of the Clean Air
Act and because we decided years ago that if we were going to put
additional electrical production in line, it could be a gas-fired
electric turbine. It met our clean air standards.
All of a sudden, we began to consume a fuel that was once in surplus
and is now becoming scarce. Some 3 months ago, its price spiked to over
260 percent of the average price. Should we be directing ourselves
toward that, and should we be setting targets without an alternative
supply of hydrogen? In other words, that is why, if you are going to
set targets and limitations and goals--and maybe there is a day when we
do--it is my argument and my belief that the Dorgan amendment is
substantially premature with regard to that point. Let me tell my
colleagues why.
In the overall parent bill we are debating, the national energy
policy itself, there is a title that in time will begin to produce for
this country an ample hydrogen fuel base and not use natural gas as its
source. It is to develop, along with the new, safe, what we call
passive generation for a nuclear reactor, an electrolysis system where
water can be effectively converted into hydrogen. It is a technology
that we know is doable. What is most important is that it is doable at
much less cost and no demand on our natural gas base.
Why would it be at less cost, especially if it is allowed to be
facilitated and built within a nuclear reactor?
Nuclear reactors operate best if they are operated at a constant
load, but electricity is not used in a constant pattern, whether it is
morning and one is cooking breakfast or it is a hot day and one is
using air-conditioning or a cold day and using heat. All of that is
variable within a range and within a market. So there are up and down
supplies. There is peak load and there is soft load, or less load. The
beauty of tying to a nuclear reactor a hydrogen electrolysis system as
we believe to be engineeringly and technically very possible today--it
is why within this bill we authorized the development of a prototype--
is the reactor can then be run at a constant load where it performs for
the least amount of money, and when it is peaking for electrical demand
purposes, the power is shifted over there. When those demand loads come
down, the power is shifted over to hydrogen gas production, and it is
alternated back and forth from electrolysis to online transmission,
from electrolysis to online transmission, based on the demand load at
the time, while the reactor is operating constantly.
What I would therefore say about goals and targets within an area of
fuel cell technology today, and supply, is let's get the supply at
least started in place and the technologies to develop that supply
proven effectively before we begin to put targets on governmental
fleets or other fleets as we begin to cause the transportation of our
economy to shift toward hydrogen.

[[Page S7525]]

Having said all of that, the oil industry, oil per se, for the
foreseeable future will continue to fuel a very large part of our
transportation needs in this country. That is a reality. It is
something that we probably ought not force to cause to be different,
but we ought to create and put in place the technologies that allow the
transfer, that allow the movement, and that ultimately allow the
capitalization of a new form of energy that we believe is hydrogen, and
we believe this works.
The chairman of the full authorizing committee, who is the author of
this legislation, is in the Chamber, so I yield to the Senator from New
Mexico, Mr. Domenici.
Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator for yielding.
First, please excuse my voice. I have somewhat of a cold. I say to
the occupant of the chair, it will be in good form tomorrow. Do not
worry. Having said that, I compliment the Senator from Idaho on the
wonderful explanation he has given today on the future of hydrogen in
the American economy. I also thank Senator Dorgan. Not only this year
but before, he has been a strong proponent of moving ahead as rapidly
as we can with the hydrogen alternative, the fuel cell, and ultimately
an automobile in our future.
Today, Senator Dorgan offered an amendment which will now line itself
up with a couple of others and perhaps be the third amendment voted on
tomorrow. For that, I thank him because he brought an amendment to the
floor which means we are moving.

I ask the Senator a question: The hydrogen car which I rode around
in, as did the Senator, does the Senator remember how much they told us
it cost?
Mr. CRAIG. Six point five million dollars.
Mr. DOMENICI. I do not say that to in any way belittle anybody, but
the point of it is, they wanted to show us what it would look like,
what the storage capacity or needs on the rear of this vehicle might
be, which meant somebody would have some idea how to refuel it later
on, and to put all of that together they spent 6 million-plus dollars.
The point of it is, S. 14, which I am very proud of, is an effort to
produce a myriad of energies for America so that there will be a
choice. It also says when it comes to hydrogen, let's pursue it with
vigor. Let's get on with the research. Let's get the fuel cells moving
ahead as rapidly as possible. And, yes, for the first time we had a
President say go ahead and authorize a lot of money, $1.6 billion, to
enter into partnership arrangements with the automobile manufacturers
to see if our science and their technology could get married up with
their money and taxpayers' money to pursue this with some degree of
vigor.
I do not think I am trying to make a mountain out of a molehill in
terms of the issue, but to now say, in the midst of all of this, to
prove we are serious about this let's go ahead and mandate a purchase
of these automobiles by a date certain it seems to me to be a bit
premature. I do not think we need it to prove our worth, to prove our
valor, to prove that we really want to move ahead with vigor. Quite to
the contrary, I think it might indicate that we really are a little bit
ahead of ourselves.
So when the time comes tomorrow, after discussing it with Senators
such as Senator Craig, the Senator from New Mexico will decide whether
we will have just a straight yes or no vote or whether we should ask
the Senate to table what we consider to be a rather inappropriate
amendment because it is too early.
As far as I know, there is no other business today. We are waiting
around for the Dorgan amendment to get itself lined up with two
amendments that are scheduled for tomorrow. There is still some
significant debate on the motion to strike that concerns itself with
nuclear power and on the so-called authority to the Indian tribes for
the development of their energy. There are two amendments. One is
Senator Campbell's amendment, and one is Senator Bingaman's amendment.
One is a first degree, and a second degree. Those will be debated, and
then sometime tomorrow, hopefully, we can prove to the Senate that we
are moving ahead with three votes.
Mr. CRAIG. Good.
Mr. DOMENICI. I am going to say now to other Senators who may have
amendments, whatever they may be, the majority leader has been pretty
fair with us. I am not so sure we have been quite that fair with him in
that we have not produced enough amendments, although we are getting
there now. We are starting to get a few of the hot button items, and
maybe after tomorrow we might be at a point where others will come
forth. I am asking now that Senators and their staffs, who consider
themselves to have amendment potential on this bill, they should start
to get ready. I am aware there are Senators who have amendments. We
know the title of their amendments, but the amendments are not ready
yet. That is 2 weeks now, not solid but more or less we have had 2
weeks.
So we ask now that Senators reconsider getting on with this so they
can be helpful as we move ahead, and then with the minority soon we
will begin to ask for some times. Maybe by tomorrow we can start asking
for a time certain for the production of relevant amendments. That
would be my hope, I say to my friend Senator Craig and the occupant of
the chair, the distinguished Senator, Mr. Sununu.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAIG. I thank the senior Senator from New Mexico for what really
has become a very thoughtful and methodical approach toward resolving a
national energy debate, and bringing us legislation that not all
parties agree on but clearly is that abundant market basket full of
ideas and concepts and realities, we believe, that bring this country
once again toward energy self-sufficiency, and our ability to stand on
our feet and be proud that we are what we are as a country.

Our great strength has always been in our abundance of relatively
inexpensive energy. It has driven our economy. It powers us up as a
great country. Without doubt, it is what lights up the computer screens
of our country and has made us the leading high-tech manufacturer in
the world.
I was in San Jose, CA, this weekend speaking to a group. There were
about 50 CEOs from high-tech companies from the valley, the heart of
the Silicon Valley. We call it Silicon Valley West because right here
at the beltway in northern Virginia is what I call Silicon Valley East,
the heart and home of the Internet systems and internet companies.
While I was talking about technology, they wanted to know about energy.
In that valley they demand a high quality of electrical generation,
constant power loads to feed their manufacturing facilities. They are
very frustrated because of the problems California has had, which has
been in part a policy issue and in part a transmission problem.
All of those problems are embodied in our legislation. That is why it
is important we resolve and get to our President's desk a bill so we
can help the energy segment of our economy get on its feet and get
moving again for the sake of all.
I have said several times, and I think most agree, this legislation,
S. 14, has more new jobs to be created in the next 4 to 5 years than
the stimulus package. While the stimulus package was critically
important, and I voted for it and it already appears to be turning on
the economy across this country, the long-term infrastructure
investment for the energy industries of our country that will fuel our
homes and light up our computer screens in the future is embodied in
this bill. That is why it becomes so important for everyone.
Let me step back to hydrogen for a moment. I have no difficulty with
the Senator from North Dakota proposing legislation that said agencies
ought to submit annual plans and reports that look at transition and
talk about and build a system or a mechanism for transition to a
hydrogen economy as these technologies develop, as these new production
capabilities come on line. That would be a right and appropriate thing
to do in light of where the technology of this industry is.
I have visited with hydrogen fuel cell engineers, scientists who
study this area. They are telling me it would be very hard to measure.
They are suggesting we need to prove the worth of this technology to
the American consumer--``worth'' meaning a sense of safety. A lot of
folks are wondering, Is

[[Page S7526]]

a hydrogen car going to be safe? They fail to recognize that a gas-
powered car that they assume is safe sometimes is not as safe as we
think it is. There have been fires and explosions. Is a hydrogen car
safe? We believe they can be manufactured to be every bit as safe as a
gas-powered car, if not safer.
But how do you prove it? One of the ways is to get hydrogen used in
the economy before it is transitioned to transportation. How does that
happen? The development of hydrogen fuel cells that actually fuel
homes, manufacturing plants, other facilities that are perhaps less
adjacent to or isolated from transmission capability. To have a
hydrogen fuel cell that can actually produce enough power for a factory
is not unreasonable to assume, or a single home in a rural setting.

Once that consumerism begins to develop in this country and there is
a general understanding that hydrogen is a part of our energy economy,
the reality of transition to a transportation base is probably even
greater. Maybe they go equally together. But I know the scientists and
the engineers are thinking one or the other or both; one before the
other. Part of it all comes together at some point. I believe it can.
I, along with Senator Domenici and others who study energy sources
for our country as members of the Energy and Natural Resources
Committee, have spent a long time looking at this as a concept to be
explored. As the Senator from New Mexico mentioned, we are committing a
lot of public resources to this. We ought to. It is clean. What happens
to the exhaust system of a hydrogen-powered fuel cell? No emission,
except a drop of water. So there is no emission of greenhouse gases
into the atmosphere.
Interestingly enough, when you use natural gas to create hydrogen,
the process creates an emissions problem. When you use electrolysis of
water to create hydrogen, you do not. So there is another reason to
examine and build on the technology of electrolysis. We think the
natural blend, the hand in glove, if you will, the synergy that can be
created by new passive nuclear reactors that are safe, cool in
operation, automatic shutdowns, but can do the constant load, that can
create the economies of optimum operation and therefore at great cost
saving to the consumer, is a technology that ought to be developed and
is embodied within S. 14.
I will now, therefore, have to oppose the Dorgan amendment for all of
those reasons. It is not time to require the acquisition in the market.
It is time to push the technology. It is time to ask for the reports.
It is time for this Senate to be able to understand progress and growth
and development in this area and the likelihood of a time down the road
when more and more of our economy will actually be using hydrogen as an
energy base.
It is with that I come to the floor to debate this amendment. I hope
as we get to it tomorrow and a vote in the Senate, as the chairman has
spoken to, that Senators will consider the reality that this is not the
time for targets. This is not the time for hard goals. This is a time
for pushing the technology, building on it, encouraging the private
sector to marry up with the public sector, to advance the technology,
and it may well be time for the Department of Energy to be required to
report and analyze on an annual basis for our sake, for those who make
public policy, the reality of these technologies.
I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending
amendment be temporarily set aside.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.

Amendment No. 867

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Bingaman] proposes an
amendment numbered 867.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of
the amendment be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To ensure continued availability of natural gas)

On page 278, after line 8, insert the following:
``(h) Triennial Report on Effect on Natural Gas Demand.--
Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this
Act, and every three years thereafter, the Secretary shall
submit to Congress an assessment of the effect of increased
use of hydrogen, as a result of the programs in subsections
(a) and (b), on demand for natural gas.''.
On page 291, strike line 22 and all that follows through
page 292, line 8 and insert the following:
``(b) Contents.--At a minimum, each plan shall contain--
``(1) a description of programs under the agency's control
in which the use of hydrogen or fuel cells could benefit the
operation of the agency, assist in the implementation of the
agency's regulatory functions, or enhance the agency's
mission;
``(2) a description of any agency management practices,
procurement policies, regulations, policies, or guidelines
that may inhibit the agency's transitions to the use of fuel
cells and hydrogen as an energy source; and
``(3) an assessment of the effect of increased use of
hydrogen by the agency, including increased use through
programs under section 303(b) of the Energy Policy Act of
1992, as amended by this Act, or section 824 of this Act, on
demand for natural gas.''.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, this amendment addresses the fact that
most hydrogen today is manufactured from natural gas. As far as we can
tell, this is likely to remain the case as we make any transition to a
hydrogen-based economy. This dependence on natural gas may prove to be
a real Achilles' heel for the future development of these promising
technologies we have been discussing on the Senate floor today related
to hydrogen.
The lead story in today's Financial Times has a headline entitled
``U.S. Faces Natural Gas Shortage.'' I believe Chairman Greenspan has
also been testifying about this very important issue today in the House
of Representatives. This is not a new story. There are a number of us
who have been sounding the alarm for a long time on this issue and the
need for effective action to address it. It is a serious situation. It
has been in the making for several years, and it will not be easy for
us to reverse this situation.

As an example of this concern, on May 27 there were 29 other Senators
who joined me in a letter to Secretary Abraham. In that letter we
expressed concern about the current and continued high natural gas
prices and their effects on consumers and industries that rely on
natural gas. We strongly urged the Secretary of Energy to look to
conservation, energy efficiency, and fuel switching as important near-
term steps that can be taken to alleviate what is shaping up as a
critical problem, perhaps this coming winter.
This past Friday, Secretary Abraham wrote back, agreeing with the
analysis of the problem and agreeing that--this is a quote from his
letter--``the natural gas industry has been strongly supportive of this
conservation message. . . .''
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter sent by 30
Senators to the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Energy's
response be printed in the Record following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, it would be ironic if, in the name of
increasing the diffusion of hydrogen-based energy technologies into the
U.S. economy, we wound up exacerbating the long-term problem we have
with the natural gas supply. To make sure we maintain the awareness of
this linkage, and the potential downside that could arise because of
it, this amendment I have sent to the desk would make two changes in
the underlying hydrogen title of the bill.
First, the amendment would require a triennial report from the
Secretary of Energy with an assessment of how the various programs in
the bill to increase the number of hydrogen vehicles and the use of
hydrogen as a fuel were affecting our long-term demands for natural
gas. If other sources for the manufacture of hydrogen were coming

[[Page S7527]]

to the fore, such as renewable sources of electricity, and the
increased dependence on natural gas was not looming as a big problem,
then fine. But we would be looking at this natural gas issue on a
periodic basis at least each 3 years as hydrogen technologies move
forward.
The second change the amendment would make would be to add a similar
analysis to a report from Federal agencies that is already required in
the bill on their own future use of hydrogen. It would require Federal
agencies to assess how their own increased use of hydrogen would affect
natural gas demand.
Obviously, all of us want hydrogen to be better developed as a
technological option. We all, I believe, also want to make sure we do
not have unwanted consequences or unwanted impacts on our strained
natural gas picture going forward. This amendment will help ensure that
we keep our eyes open and we keep focused on this important potential
problem as we move toward a hydrogen-based economy.
Mr. President, I think this amendment would strengthen the bill, and
I hope it is acceptable and can be agreed to.
I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

United States Senate,

Washington, DC, May 27, 2003.
Hon. Spencer Abraham,
Secretary, Department of Energy, Washington, DC.
Dear Secretary Abraham: We are writing to express our
concern about continued high natural gas prices, the impact
on industries that rely on natural gas for manufacturing, and
the possibility of severe price spikes recurring later this
year. In your recent address to the National Petroleum
Council, you correctly pointed out that the amount of natural
gas in storage is unusually low and that injection rates must
increase dramatically in order to fill storage to levels
sufficient to meet anticipated demand this year. With natural
gas prices twice as high as they were last year and the
increased demand for electricity expected this summer, market
fundamentals are not encouraging for robust storage refill
rates.
We commend you for focusing on the near term challenges we
face with respect to natural gas and for calling an emergency
meeting of the National Petroleum Council next month to
identify actions that can be taken immediately to ease short-
term supply constraints. The expertise of the NPC's members
in the production, transmission and distribution of natural
gas should be very helpful. Increased natural gas supplies
are needed of course and, in fact, drilling is up thirty
percent this year. But significant new gas supplies are not
likely to come on line in the near term.
Energy efficiency and conservation, as well as fuel
switching, are more likely to make a difference in natural
gas markets this summer and next winter. Analysis of the
successful efforts of California to reduce electricity
consumption in 2001 demonstrated that efficiency and
conservation were the fastest and least costly solutions
available. We urge you to cast a wider net for
recommendations on natural gas including meeting with
Governors, state and federal regulators, industrial and
commercial gas consumers, electric utilities and independent
generators, and experts in efficiency and conservation.
We look forward to working with you to address this
critical issue.
Sincerely,
Tom Daschle, Tim Johnson, Jay Rockefeller, Russell D.
Feingold, Harry Reid, Joseph Lieberman, Jeff Bingaman,
Tom Carper, Frank R. Lautenberg, Ron Wyden, Debbie
Stabenow, Maria Cantwell, Mary L. Landrieu, Jon S.
Corzine, Jack Reed, Charles Schumer, Evan Bayh, Daniel
K. Inouye, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Dick
Durbin, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Patrick Leahy, John F.
Kerry, Paul Sarbanes, Barbara A. Mikulski, Ted Kennedy,
Carl Levin, Daniel K. Akaka, Patty Murray.
____

The Secretary of Energy,

Washington, DC, June 6, 2003.
Hon. Jeff Bingaman,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senator Bingaman: Thank you for your May 27, 2003,
letter expressing concern about continued high natural gas
prices and their impact on consumers and industries that rely
on natural gas.
The Administration shares your concern--and it is for this
reason that I called for a Natural Gas Summit on June 26,
2003, which your letter referenced. In addition to including
members of our National Petroleum Council, the Summit will
also bring together State and Federal regulators; industrial,
residential, and commercial gas consumers; electric utilities
and independent generators; along with experts in energy
efficiency and conservation to discuss and develop
recommendations relating to the future of the natural gas
markets.
Based on the Department's analysis, we concur with the
conclusion advanced in your letter that over the next 12 to
18 months there are only limited opportunities to increase
supply; and that, therefore, the emphasis must be on
conservation, energy efficiency, and fuel switching. That is
why the speakers and attendees at the Summit will be
substantially consumer focused. I would note, however, that
the feedback we have been getting from the natural gas
industry has been strongly supportive of this conservation
message as they are concerned about the long-term effect on
the market of these high short-term prices.
In addition to sharing the same opinion regarding the role
of conservation, I am pleased that we also are in agreement
concerning the need to increase natural gas supplies. Last
year, I commissioned a National Petroleum Council study
focused on long-term issues that will more directly address
supply. This study, to be released in the fall, will include
a comprehensive evaluation of future natural gas supply and
demand issues. We will, of course, share the results of that
study upon its completion.
I appreciate your interest in the Natural Gas Summit and
look forward to working with you to address these important
issues.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me or
Ms. Kelly S. Lugar, Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, at (202) 586-
5450.
Sincerely,
Spencer Abraham.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we have reviewed the amendment. We have
no objection to the studies provided for in the amendment. We think
they will be worthwhile and helpful, so we have no objection.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment?
If not, the question is on agreeing to the amendment.
The amendment (No. 867) was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. I move to reconsider the vote.
Mr. BINGAMAN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask Senator Bingaman, have you
finished with that issue?
Mr. BINGAMAN. Yes, I have.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be permitted
to proceed as in morning business for no longer than 7 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
permitted to proceed as in morning business starting in 5 minutes and
not to exceed 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. I yield the floor.
Now, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 5 minutes I
asked to transpire before the time started be waived and that I be able
to proceed with my 7 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator is recognized as in morning business.
(The remarks of Mr. Domenici pertaining to the introduction of S.
1211 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to address the
Senate as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. McCain are printed in today's Record under
``Morning Business.'')
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I understand, from my parliamentary
inquiry, that at 5:15 the Senate resumes executive calendar debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ensign). In executive session, that is
correct.

____________________