[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 16 (Tuesday, February 15, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1426-S1430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. HAGEL (for himself, Mr. Alexander, Mr. Craig, and Mrs. 
        Dole):
  S. 388. A bill to amend the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to direct the 
Secretary of Energy to carry out activities that promote the adoption 
of technologies that reduce greenhouse gas intensity and to provide 
credit-based financial assistance and investment protection for 
projects that employ advanced climate technologies or systems, to 
provide for the establishment of a national greenhouse gas registry, 
and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural 
Resources.
  Mr. HAGEL. Mr. President, on Wednesday, the U.N. Global Climate 
Treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol will enter into force, requiring 
more than 30 industrialized nations to significantly cut manmade 
greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.
  I rise today to introduce three pieces of legislation which I believe 
can help contribute to a new domestic and international consensus on 
climate change. This legislation builds upon three principles: the need 
for shared responsibilities between developed and developing countries; 
the linkages between environmental, economic, and energy policies; and 
the employment of greenhouse gas intensity as the best measurement upon 
which to build an effective climate policy.
  I thank Senators Alexander, Craig, and Dole for their support and for 
agreeing to cosponsor these bills, which are titled: The Climate Change 
Technology Deployment in Developing Countries Act; The Climate Change 
Technology Deployment Act; and, The Climate Change Technology Tax 
Incentives Act.
  Global climate policy affects the world's economic, energy, and 
environmental policies. These circles of interest in policy are 
interconnected. Climate change does not recognize national borders. It 
is a shared responsibility for all nations. Dealing with global climate 
policy requires a level of diplomatic intensity and coordination worthy 
of the magnitude of the challenge.
  We all agree on the need for a clean environment and stable climate. 
The debate is about solutions. The question we face is not whether we 
should take action, but what kind of action we should take.
  Climate change initiatives should include commitments to research and 
development, technology, and a more efficient and productive use of 
energy and resources.
  My climate change legislation authorizes new programs, policies, and 
incentives to address the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
  It focuses on the role of technology, private and public 
partnerships, and developing countries.
  Any climate policy initiative must include clear metrics that 
recognize the links between energy, the economy, and the environment. 
Too often these policies are considered in vacuums. It is a global 
issue.
  Bringing in the private sector and creating incentives for 
technological innovation will be critical to real progress on global 
climate policy. I believe that greenhouse gas intensity, or the amount 
of carbon emitted relative to economic output, is the best measurement 
for dealing with climate change.
  Greenhouse gas emission intensity is the measurement of how 
efficiently a nation uses carbon emitting fuels and technology in 
producing goods and services. It captures the links between energy 
efficiency, economic development, and the environment.
  The first bill, the Climate Change Technology Deployment in 
Developing Countries Act, provides the Secretary of State with new 
authority for coordinating assistance to developing countries for 
projects and technologies that reduce greenhouse gas intensity.
  It supports the development of a U.S. global climate strategy to 
expand the role of the private sector, develop public-private 
partnerships, and encourage the deployment of greenhouse gas reducing 
technologies in developing countries. This bill directs the Secretary 
of State to engage global climate change as a foreign policy issue.
  It directs the U.S. Trade Representative to negotiate the removal of 
trade-related barriers to the export of greenhouse gas intensity 
reducing technologies, and establishes an inter-agency working group to 
promote the export of greenhouse gas intensity reducing technologies 
and practices from the United States.
  The legislation authorizes fellowship and exchange programs for 
foreign officials to visit the United States and acquire the expertise 
and knowledge to reduce greenhouse gas intensity in their countries. 
Current international approaches to global climate change overlook the 
role of developing countries as part of either the problem or the 
solution.
  In July 1997, months before the Protocol was signed, the Senate 
unanimously passed. S. Res. 98, the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which called 
on the President not to sign any treaty or agreement in Kyoto unless 
two conditions were met.
  First, the United States should not be party to any legally binding 
obligations on greenhouse gas emission reductions unless developing 
country, parties are required to meet the same standards. Second, the 
President should not sign any treaty that ``would result in serious 
harm to the economy of the United States.''
  Kyoto does not meet either of these conditions. As it stands, 
developing countries are exempt from the Kyoto obligations, leaving 
more than 30 developed countries to address greenhouse gas emissions. 
Developing nations are becoming the major emitters of greenhouse gases, 
but they are exempted from the Kyoto Protocol.
  A recent Congressional Budget Office--CB0--report explains that 
developing countries are projected within the next 20 years to account 
for two-thirds of the growth in carbon dioxide emissions as their 
populations and economies expand. There are reasons for this.
  Developing nations cannot achieve. greenhouse gas reductions until 
they achieve higher standards of living. They lack clean energy 
technology and they cannot absorb the economic impact of the changes 
necessary for emissions reductions. New policies will require 
recognition of the limitations of developing nations to meet these 
standards, and the necessity of including them in any successful future 
initiative.
  Because Kyoto does not include developing countries, its approach is 
unrealistic. Any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by the United 
States and other developed countries will soon be eclipsed by emissions 
from developing nations, such as China, which will soon be the world's 
largest emitter of manmade greenhouse gases.
  It is in the shared interests of the United States and industrialized 
nations to help developing countries by sharing cleaner technology. 
Developing countries can then ``leapfrog'' over the highly polluting 
stages of development that countries like the U.S. have already been 
through.
  My legislation includes tax incentives for American businesses to 
work with foreign countries to help develop clean energy projects and 
fuel-efficient technologies.
  Our second bill, the Climate Change Technology Deployment Act, 
supports establishing domestic public-private partnerships for 
demonstration projects that employ greenhouse gas intensity reduction 
technologies. Our plan provides credit-based financial assistance and 
investment protection for American businesses and projects that deploy 
advanced climate technologies or systems. Federal financial assistance 
includes direct loans, loan guarantees, standby interest coverage, and 
power production incentive payments.
  We are most successful in confronting the most difficult issues when 
we draw on the strength of the private sector. Public-private 
partnerships meld together the institutional leverage of the government 
with the innovation of industry.
  This bill directs the Secretary of Energy to lead an inter-agency 
process to develop and implement a national climate strategy provided 
by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. It establishes a 
Climate Coordinating Committee and Climate Credit Board to assess, 
approve, and fund these projects.

[[Page S1428]]

  Our third bill, the Climate Change Technology Tax Incentives Act, 
amends the tax code to provide incentives for investment in climate 
change technology. It also expresses our support for making permanent 
the current research and development tax credit, which otherwise 
expires on December 31, 2005. An article in the Wall Street Journal on 
February 4, 2005, reported on the potential for ``geologic storage'' of 
carbon dioxide as a means to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide 
emissions.
  Geologic storage involves pumping carbon dioxide into the ground, 
rather than dumping it into the atmosphere. BP has been using geologic 
storage in Algeria's Sahara Desert and Statoil has been working on this 
in Norway's North Sea. Chevron Texaco is planning a project off the 
coast of Australia.
  The article reports that:

       the concept is drawing growing interest because it could 
     curb global warming more quickly than switching to 
     alternative energy sources or cutting energy use.

  There is still much work to be done. But this kind of technology that 
was described in the Wall Street Journal article is the kind of 
technology that must be employed around the world to achieve results in 
reducing greenhouse gas emissions. My legislation would support more of 
this type of activity.
  The American people and all global citizens need to better understand 
global climate change, its connections to our economic and energy 
policies, and what the realistic options are for addressing this 
challenge. Any recommendations regarding climate policy must meet the 
demands of economic growth and development, especially in the 
developing world. This will require a market-driven, technology-based 
approach that complements the world's environmental interests, and 
connects the public and private sectors.
  Achieving reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is one of the 
important challenges of our time. America has an opportunity and a 
responsibility for global climate policy leadership. But it is a 
responsibility to be shared by all nations. I look forward to working 
with my colleagues in the Congress, the Bush administration, the 
private sector, public interest groups, and America's allies on 
achievable climate change policy.
  By harnessing our many strengths, we can help shape a worthy future 
for all people, and build a better world.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor at this 
moment to join my colleague Chuck Hagel in the introduction of 
legislation that he has put together out of a variety of avenues of 
interest and importance to deal with the issue of climate change, a 
issue in which he and I have been engaged for a good long while. I am 
not quite sure how many years ago it was that I, as the freshman 
chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, turned to Chuck to see if 
he could bring Senators together in a bipartisan way on what we 
believed at the moment--and we still believe today--was a critically 
important issue to be addressed.
  Out of that effort grew the Hagel-Byrd resolution which passed this 
body by an overwhelming vote, and was a very clear message to America--
and to the world--on what we believed was necessary and important if we 
were to responsibly and effectively engage in the debate of climate 
change outside and well beyond the Kyoto protocol.
  The legislation Senator Hagel brings to the floor today, of which I 
am proud to be a cosponsor, is what I believe is a needed and necessary 
next step to work cooperatively with this administration and with 
countries around the world to begin to recognize all that is the makeup 
of this issue.
  Our policy must recognize the legitimate needs of our bilateral 
trading partners to use their resources to meet the needs of their 
people. Yet, at the same time, the initial debate basically suggested 
that if in fact human involvement in the climate of the world was 
changing the climate of the world, the only way you could save the 
climate was to turn the lights out. It did not address the human need. 
It did not address the economic growth that was critically necessary at 
that time. That is why our country pushed back and said no, we would 
not ratify Kyoto; that we would go much further than that in bringing 
about the changes that were necessary and that this administration 
engaged in.

  This legislation does a great deal more toward recognizing the need 
for bringing resources together.
  Senator Hagel has made clear the other important things this 
legislation will do. Above all, this legislation is a true 
acknowledgment that climate variability and change is a top priority as 
an issue for the United States--and for all nations--to be involved in.
  There can be an honest debate about whether the United States should 
do more or whether too much reliance is being placed on voluntary 
initiatives, but to claim that the United States is not acting 
seriously reflects, at best, a lack of knowledge or, at worst, 
political posturing.
  An objective review of Government and private sector programs to 
reduce increases in greenhouse gas now and in the future would have to 
conclude that the United States is doing at least as much, if not more, 
than countries that are part of the Kyoto Protocol which will go into 
effect tomorrow. The best evidence of this is our domestic rate of 
improvement in greenhouse gas intensity relative to the improvements 
other countries are making.
  The term I just used, ``greenhouse gas intensity,'' is defined in 
legislation as the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic 
output. This is a far wiser measure of progress because it complements, 
rather than conflicts with, a nation's goal of growing its economy and 
meeting the needs and aspirations of its people.
  Too much attention is being paid to the mandatory nature of Kyoto. 
Too little results are being achieved. It is very interesting to note 
that most of the countries that ratified Kyoto will not meet the 
greenhouse gas reduction targets by the deadlines required by Kyoto. 
Indeed, when I and Senator Craig Thomas and Congressman Joe Barton were 
in Buenos Aires at the COP-10 conference in December, many nations were 
quietly acknowledging that they could not get to where they promised 
they would get, and, in fact, some have even suggested that by 2012 
they would find it incumbent upon themselves and their nations to back 
out of Kyoto. However, all still recognize the importance of this 
issue, understanding it, and clearly defining it.

  What Senator Hagel's legislation does is shape for us a variety of 
things that are already underway, while still allowing us clearly to 
define them and to say, both here at home with our domestic policy as 
well as internationally, that we mean what we say and we mean what we 
do.
  The United States is currently spending in excess of $5 billion 
annually in scientific and technological initiatives. When we were in 
Buenos Aires, I was very proud to stand before my colleagues from 
around the world and before nongovernmental organizational groups and 
state that the United States is spending more on this issue, in both 
advances in science and technological change, than the rest of the 
world combined times two. Then I reminded them that all that we do, 
they could have also: that our technology would be in the world, that 
our science would be available to them, and that to work our way out of 
or to change the character of our economies without damaging those 
economies would in large part be the responsibility of new 
technologies.
  This legislation does not pick one technology over another or one 
energy source over another. That has always been the debate. Somehow we 
had to go around and selectively turn out the lights if we were going 
to change the climate around us. We knew that was not acceptable to the 
developing world and in large part that is why the developing world 
would not come along. How can you deny a country the right to use its 
resources for the economic, humanitarian, and health benefits of its 
people? You cannot do that. Nor should we be engaged in trying to do 
that.
  What we can do as a developed and advanced Nation is offer up exactly 
what we are doing; offer up what the Hagel legislation brings together. 
That is all we are doing now, and advancing and incentivizing, through 
this legislation, countries to do more in the area of technology.

[[Page S1429]]

  These programs are designed to advance our state of knowledge, 
accelerate the development and the deployment of energy technologies, 
aid developing countries in using energy more efficiently, and achieve 
an 18-percent reduction in energy intensity by 2012--a phenomenally 
responsive goal and something we clearly can take to the world 
community.
  Our administration today in a series of bilateral agreements is 
working with other countries to help them get to where we want and 
where they want to get, and for the sake of the environment, where we 
all want us all to go.
  I was extremely proud sitting in different forums in Buenos Aires to 
see the United States talk about the leadership role it has taken and 
the bilateral partnerships it has agreed to, and all the things that we 
can help with in the world of change today. It is clearly to our 
advantage and to the advantage of the world at large.
  What Senator Hagel has effectively done today is to get our arms 
around this issue to try to more directly define it, and to show that 
we are sensitive to it; that we are responding to the issue as clearly 
as our administration has and continues to do.
  Domestically, the United States has and continues to make world 
leading investments in climate change science technology. The United 
States has also implemented a wide range of national greenhouse control 
initiatives, cash sequestration programs, and international 
collaborative programs. All of those are bound up within the bilaterals 
I have talked about that we are engaged in.

  The legislation we have introduced today furthers all of these goals.
  President Bush has consistently acknowledged how human activity can 
affect our climate, and that the climate variability does not recognize 
national borders. The key issue is not whether there is any human-
influenced effect. Instead, the issues are how large any human 
influence may be as compared to natural variability; how costly and how 
effective human intervention may be in reversing climate variability; 
and how and what technology may be required over the near and the long 
term as determined by developments in climate science.
  As I said, there can be a legitimate debate about whether more can be 
done while meeting our Nation's economic objectives. I, for one, 
support doing more in the areas of technological development to help 
lift developing countries from the depths of their plights and to 
advance their cause as we advance ours. That is why I am proud to be 
working with my colleagues in the Senate. I thank Senator Hagel, 
Senator Alexander, Senator Dole, and others for the hard work they have 
put in and the cooperative effort reflected in the bill introduced this 
afternoon.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I salute Senator Hagel for his 
leadership and his contribution on this issue. I am glad to be here 
with my colleague, Senator Craig, who is one of the Senate's real 
authorities on energy.
  We have had some trouble passing an energy bill in the Senate. We are 
having some trouble passing a clean air bill in the Senate. If we are 
being logical--which is hard for a Senate to be--we would set clean air 
objectives and pass a clean energy bill to help reach that objective, 
do it at once, and give ourselves a low cost, reliable supply of 
energy, less dependent on the rest of the world, and do it in a way 
that is environmentally sound.
  That is our objective. We have different approaches on this, but 
Senator Hagel has put his emphasis today exactly where it needs to be. 
The United States of America is a country that has about a third of all 
the GDP in the world. We have 5 to 6 percent of the people and a third 
of all the money is one way to put it.
  How did we get that money? How did we get our position? The National 
Academy of Sciences says that since World War II, half our new jobs 
have come from advances in science and technology. There are other 
countries in the world--a growing number of countries--that have great 
capacity for science and technology. Some of the greatest scientists 
and engineers who have worked in this country have come from other 
countries in the world. But if any country in the world ought to be 
putting a focus on science and technology as a way of helping not just 
their country but the rest of the world deal with the issue of 
greenhouse gases, it ought to be the United States of America. Senator 
Hagel is exactly right to put the spotlight there. He does it in a 
three-part bill. In the first part, he talks about international 
cooperation. That also makes a lot of sense.
  Three weeks ago, I was visiting with the chairman of one of the 
largest energy companies in Germany. If there is a country in the world 
that has a more irrational energy policy than we do, it would be 
Germany. They have just decided to close 19 nuclear powerplants at the 
same time, across the Rhine river, France is 85 percent nuclear power. 
Of course, Germany will never do that because they will not be able to 
meet the Kyoto carbon standards if they close the plants. But the point 
that my friend from Germany was making is that we are headed, in his 
words, toward an energy catastrophe.
  It is a catastrophe of two kinds. One is energy supply, and one is 
clean air. Now, why is that? It is because other countries in the world 
are growing. In China, the average Chinese person uses about one-sixth 
the amount of energy that the average person in the European Union 
uses, in the 15 original countries. Now, in China, when the average 
Chinese person, with all the people there, gets up to three-sixths or 
four-sixths or five-sixths or six-sixths, as they will, there will be 
an unbelievable demand for energy in this country. We are already 
seeing it in the prices for natural gas, in the prices for oil.
  The figures we heard in our Energy Committee were that over the next 
25 years--and my numbers are approximate--China might build 650 new 
coal plants to begin to supply its energy, and India might build 800. 
That does not count the rest of Southeast Asia or what Brazil might do. 
So we cannot just look at this issue in terms of what is happening in 
the United States.
  If there is not a supply of energy, and the other countries are 
demanding so much, our prices will be so high that our million chemical 
jobs in the country will move overseas looking for cheap natural gas. 
And it will not make much difference how we clean the air in the United 
States of America if China and India and Brazil build so many old coal 
plants and throw stuff up in the air because it will blow around the 
world and come over here.
  So we have, on two counts, a major, major challenge: energy supply 
and clean air. It would make enormous sense for the scientists and 
engineers in the United States to work with the scientists and 
engineers in Germany who have exactly the same challenge and the 
scientists and engineers in China who have even more of a challenge. 
They have just stopped 26 of their coal plants because of environmental 
concerns, but they will not be able to stop them for long because of 
their need for an energy supply.
  What the Senator from Nebraska has done is to say to us, hey, we are 
talking about mandates and rules and regulations, but what we ought to 
be trying to do is to create a solution to the problem using the thing 
that we in the United States do better than anybody, or historically 
have, and that is our science and technology. This is the country with 
the 50 great research universities. This is the country with the 20 
National Laboratories. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in my home 
State, is already doing important work on how we recapture carbon.

  One of the things we can do in the Senate, without arguing about 
Kyoto, without arguing about mandates, is to say, let's see if we can--
through technology, working with people in other parts of the world, 
and encouraging our own businesses and laboratories--find better ways 
to deal with greenhouse gases. I salute the Senator for that. I am glad 
to have a chance to be associated with this bill.
  Now, the second thing I would like to say is that is not all there is 
to do. We have different opinions in this body about so-called global 
warming. I believe, of course, there is global warming. Our 
grandparents can tell us that. The question, as Senator Craig said, is, 
What is causing it? And do we know enough about it to take steps? We 
have different opinions about that issue. That does not mean we are all 
unconcerned about it; we just have different

[[Page S1430]]

degrees of understanding of it and different opinions about the 
evidence we see.
  I have a little different opinion than the Senator from Idaho. I 
support legislation that Senator Carper and Senator Chafee and Senator 
Gregg and I supported in the last session of Congress that put modest 
caps on the utilities section for the production of carbon. I was not 
willing to go further than that because of the science I read and I'm 
not sure we know exactly how to solve this problem. My reading of it 
did not persuade me, one, that we know all that we need to know about 
global warming; and, two, maybe more importantly, I was not sure we 
knew what we were doing by just saying, OK, we will do this, and 
without having the solution.
  Again, Senator Hagel has suggested, well, let's come up with some 
technology. Let's come up with some science. And then we can make a 
better assessment about what we would be able to do if we were to put a 
cap on it.
  I would suggest that in addition to Senator Hagel's technology that 
he encourages in his legislation--that is one way to do it--a second 
way to do it is with some kind of caps, and there are a variety of 
proposals in this body to do that. That also encourages, in my opinion, 
technology. But then there is also a third point to make, and that 
takes us out of the debate as to whether it is a good idea or a bad 
idea to put on mandatory caps.
  If China is going to build hundreds of coal-fired powerplants and 
India is going to build hundreds of coal-fired powerplants because that 
is the only technology available to them and the only source of fuel 
they have readily available, then we had better get busy trying to 
figure out a way to recapture carbon--not to comply with the Kyoto 
Treaty, but because we are going to have to have it in this world. Any 
realistic look at the sources of energy in the world says that for the 
next 20 or 25 years, nuclear power, natural gas, oil, and coal will be 
almost all of it.
  There is a lot of support for renewable energy. Some people want to 
put up wind turbines taller than football fields covering square miles. 
I do not. I think that destroys the American landscape, and it does not 
produce much energy.
  But one of the most thoughtful presentations I have heard on the 
solution to our common issues of clean energy and clean air has come 
from the National Resources Defense Council, one of the leading 
environmental organizations in this country. They are in favor of a 
coal solution--I hope I am attributing this correctly to them--of a 
coal solution for our clean air, clean energy policy. A big part of 
their reasoning is, they see what is happening in the rest of the 
world. If the United States, they reason, can figure out a way to 
gasify coal and then recapture the carbon, that gets rid of most of the 
noxious pollutants--sulfur, nitrogen, mercury. It recaptures the 
carbon, which we have not really figured out how to do yet, but it does 
not just do that for the United States, it shows the rest of the world 
how to do it. And then China, instead of building 800 new coal plants 
with the old technology, will build 800 coal gasification plants and 
recapture the carbon. India will do the same, and maybe Germany will do 
the same. There will be more energy, and we will all be able to 
breathe. And that is quite irrespective of mandatory caps.
  One of the things I like about Senator Hagel's proposal is there is 
not any way to study the technology of how we deal with greenhouse 
gases without getting into questions of coal gasification and the 
recapturing of carbon. There is not any way to do that. He is leading 
us to the tantalizing possibility that in the United States we might 
one day be able to say: We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have 500 
years' worth of it. We can turn it into gas. We can recapture the 
carbon. We can use that to create the hydrogen for the hydrogen economy 
that we think might one day be down the road, and that, plus our 
supplies of natural gas and nuclear power, will give us clean energy 
and will give us clean air and will show the world how to do the same.

  The Senator from Nebraska has put the spotlight where the spotlight 
ought to be. The United States of America, of all countries, should 
start with technology and science and say: Greenhouse gases is a 
problem. We are still researching how much of a problem it is. But we 
should, working with other countries, use our science and technology to 
deal with it and, in the process, see if it can lead us toward that 
brilliant intersection of clean energy and clean air that will one day 
give us a steady supply of energy and clean air that we can breathe.
  I salute the Senator for his leadership and am glad to be a 
cosponsor. I look forward to working with him. As chairman of the 
Senate subcommittee on energy, we have some jurisdiction over global 
warming as well as energy technology commercialization. Senator 
Domenici, chairman of our full committee, had a full roundtable the 
other day on natural gas. We have one coming up on coal and coal 
gasification. I can assure my colleagues that the Hagel legislation 
will be an important part of that roundtable. I will do my best to make 
it an important part of energy hearings.
                                 ______