[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 106 (Friday, July 29, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1725-E1726]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 6, ENERGY POLICY ACT OF 2005

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, July 28, 2005

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I regret that I cannot support 
this legislation.
  There is nothing I would rather vote for than a balanced energy bill 
that sets us on a forward-looking course--one that acknowledges that 
this country is overly dependent on a single energy source--fossil 
fuels--to the detriment of our environment, our national security, and 
our economy.
  But at a time of sky-rocketing oil prices, this report doesn't do 
what it needs to do--help us balance our energy portfolio and increase 
the contributions of alternative energy sources to our energy mix.
  The process of developing the conference report is much improved from 
last year's contentious debate. Senate and House conferees worked 
together cooperatively and were able to compromise on a number of 
provisions and bridge difficult differences of opinion. I believe 
Chairman Barton and Ranking Member Dingell and on the Senate side, 
Chairman Domenici and Ranking Member Bingaman, have done a good job in 
this respect.
  The conference report itself is also an improvement over the bill 
passed by the House earlier this year.
  It includes an extension of the Renewable Energy Production Tax 
Credit for another 2 years, which will take us through the end of 2007. 
This is very good news. The report also includes clean energy bonds 
provisions from the Senate bill which will enable electric cooperatives 
to invest in renewable generation.
  It also removes the methyl bromide tertiary-butyl ether, MTBE, 
liability waiver that would have let industry off the hook. It's true 
that the conference report does provide a ``backdoor immunity'' that 
could derail many legal claims by denying communities and states the 
right to be heard in state forums. But I believe that the conferees 
took a big step forward by dropping the liability waiver.
  On energy efficiency, the conference report goes beyond the House 
bill in establishing new energy efficiency standards for 15 products. 
It also includes numerous energy efficiency tax provisions for 
alternative fuel vehicles, energy efficient appliances and new and 
existing homes, among others, provisions contained in the Energy 
Efficiency Cornerstone Act that I introduced with my colleague Rep. 
Zach Wamp and others.
  Electricity provisions are strengthened--not only does the conference 
report include new standards for grid reliability, but it also includes 
consumer protections in electric markets, such as new merger review, a 
prohibition on market manipulation, improved market transparency, among 
others. These protections are especially important given that the bill 
repeals the Public Utility Holding Company Act, PUHCA, which restricts 
the ownership and operations of power companies and their ability to 
control energy prices.
  Another way in which the conference report has improved on the House 
bill is its treatment of oil shale.
  This is a subject of particular concern to Coloradans, because 
Colorado has the most significant amounts of oil shale--and also the 
most experience with oil shale fever. In Colorado, we have had several 
bouts of that syndrome. The last one started during the 1970s energy 
crisis and ended abruptly on ``Black Sunday'' in 1982. That was when 
Exxon announced it was pulling out of the Colony shale project, an 
event that left an impact crater from the Western Slope to downtown 
Denver. There followed an exodus of other companies that had been 
working on oil shale--which led to an echoing exodus of jobs and of 
Coloradans who had nowhere else to turn.

  The House bill would have required the Interior Department to set up 
a new leasing program for commercial development of oil shale, with 
final regulations to be in place by the end of next year. In other 
words, it called for a crash program to meet a short, arbitrary 
deadline.

[[Page E1726]]

  In the Resources Committee, I tried to change that. An amendment I 
offered would not have barred oil shale development. Instead, it would 
have said that before we leap again, we should take a look and have a 
clear idea of where we are apt to land. Under my amendment, the 
Department of the Interior would be told to prepare regulations for a 
new oil shale leasing program--and to get them finished ``promptly'' 
after finishing the analysis required by NEPA and the regular process 
for developing new federal regulations.
  Unfortunately, the Republican leadership of the Resources Committee 
opposed my amendment, and so it was not adopted. The result is that 
that part of the House bill was much uglier than it should have been.
  The oil shale part of the conference report, while not necessarily a 
thing of real beauty, is definitely better. It calls for a programmatic 
environmental impact statement as the first step, and requires issuance 
of final regulations for a new commercial leasing program only after 
that statement has been completed. Further, it requires the Interior 
Department to consult with the Governor of Colorado (and the governors 
of other relevant states) and other interested parties in order to 
determine the level of support for development of oil shale (or tar 
sands) resources, and provides that leasing will then occur only if 
there is sufficient interest and support. This is a much better way to 
proceed than through the kind of crash program called for in the House-
passed bill.
  And, while I think the need for a new oil shale task force or a new 
office within DOE is doubtful at best, the conference report's 
provisions related to experimental leases are sensible and worthwhile.
  There were a few good things in the House bill that I am glad are 
retained in the conference report--after all, in a 1,725-page bill, 
there are bound to be some good provisions, but in this case they are 
far outweighed by the bad.
  For example, I support most of the provisions developed by the 
Science Committee, and I commend Chairman Boehlert and Ranking Member 
Gordon for their bipartisan approach.
  In particular, I'm pleased that the Science Committee bill included 
generous authorization levels for renewable energy and energy 
efficiency R&D. As Co-chair of the Renewable Energy and Energy 
Efficiency Caucus, this funding is very important to me.
  I am also pleased that the conference report includes the Clean Green 
School Bus Act, a bill that Chairman Boehlert and I drafted that 
authorizes grants to help school districts replace aging diesel 
vehicles with clean, alternative fuel buses. H.R. 6 also includes 
provisions from legislation I introduced on distributed power, which 
would direct the Secretary of Energy to develop and implement a 
strategy for research, development, and demonstration of distributed 
power energy systems.
  Unfortunately, though, as a whole this conference report--like the 
bills we've debated twice before--basically retains the status quo and 
does little to provide solutions to the real energy problems facing 
this country.
  This conference report provides oil and gas companies massive 
forgiveness of royalty payments. It exempts industry from requirements 
of the Safe Drinking Water Act when they inject harmful chemicals into 
the ground during drilling. It exempts oil and gas construction sites 
from storm water runoff regulations under the Clean Water Act. It 
authorizes up to $1.5 billion in new subsidies to the oil industry for 
ultra-deep oil drilling and exploration. It establishes an exclusion 
under the National Environmental Policy Act for oil and gas development 
activities.

  Of the bill's total $14.6 billion in tax incentives, $9.3 billion (or 
64 percent) is for traditional energy sources such as oil, natural gas, 
and nuclear power. The oil and gas industries are getting these massive 
subsidies from the taxpayer at the same time that their profits have 
never been higher. Meanwhile, renewables and energy efficiency 
technologies are allocated $5.3 billion, or just 26 percent of the 
total incentives in the bill.
  And then there are all the things the bill would not do. It would not 
increase vehicle fuel economy standards, which have been frozen since 
1996. Raising CAFE standards is the single biggest step we can take to 
reduce oil consumption, since about half of the oil used in the U.S. 
goes into the gas tanks of our passenger vehicles.
  This conference report avoids the whole question of mandatory action 
on climate change, excluding even the toothless Senate-passed 
resolution that recognized the need for immediate action by Congress to 
implement mandatory caps on greenhouse gas emissions.
  It also does not include the Renewable Portfolio Standard, RPS, part 
of the Senate-passed bill, which would require utilities to generate 10 
percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020. Colorado is 
uniquely positioned to take advantage of alternative energy 
opportunities, such as wind and sun. Colorado's voters approved 
Amendment 37 last year, a state RPS, which is making a difference in 
our energy supply.
  But a Federal RPS would yield numerous rewards in the long-term for 
the whole country, including increased energy independence and 
security, economic development opportunities in depressed communities, 
maintaining a competitive advantage internationally, protecting our 
environment, and helping our farmers develop long-term income sources. 
The absence of an RPS in this conference report is a serious setback 
for forward-thinking energy policy.
  Most importantly, according to analyses conducted by the Department 
of Energy's Energy Information Administration, this energy bill will 
neither lower gas prices nor reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, 
with foreign imports predicted to increase from 58 percent to 68 
percent in the next 20 years. Coloradans on average are already on 
average $2.25 for a gallon of regular gas. This bill will do nothing to 
bring those prices down.
  I don't always agree with President Bush. But I think he is 
absolutely right about one thing--at $55 a barrel, we don't need 
incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. Instead, we need a 
strategy to wean our Nation from its dependence on fossil fuels, 
especially foreign oil.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, we need a plan in place to increase our 
energy security. Thirteen percent of the twenty million barrels of oil 
we consume each day comes from the Persian Gulf. In fact, fully 30 
percent of the world's oil supply comes from this same volatile and 
politically unstable region of the world. Yet with only 3 percent of 
the world's known oil reserves, we are not in a position to solve our 
energy vulnerability by drilling at home.
  This bill does nothing to tackle this fundamental problem. For every 
step it takes to move us away from our oil/carbon-based economy, it 
takes two in the opposite direction. I only wish my colleagues in the 
House could understand that a vision of a clean energy future is not 
radical science fiction but is instead based on science and technology 
that exists today. Given the magnitude of the crisis ahead, we can 
surely put more public investment behind new energy sources that will 
free us from our dependence on oil.
  Earlier this year, President Bush spoke at the opening of the Abraham 
Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois and attempted to draw parallels 
between his goal of expanding freedom in the world and Lincoln's effort 
to expand freedom in the U.S. I have some questions about that 
comparison, but I do think it is good to consider Lincoln's example 
when we debate public policy.

  In fact, I wish President Bush and the Republicans would draw a few 
more parallels to Lincoln in their approach to energy policy--because, 
as that greatest of Republican Presidents said, ``The dogmas of the 
quiet past are inadequate for the stormy present. Our present is piled 
high with difficulties. We must think anew and act anew--then we will 
save our country.''
  And while we are not engaged in a civil war, our excessive dependence 
on fossil energy is a pressing matter of national security. We have an 
energy security crisis. We need to think anew to devise an energy 
security strategy that will give future generations of Americans an 
economy less dependent on oil and fossil fuels.
  Unfortunately, too much of this bill reflects not just a failure but 
an absolute refusal to think anew. Provision after provision reflects a 
stubborn insistence on old ideas--more tax subsidies, more royalty 
giveaways, more restrictions on public participation, more limits on 
environmental reviews--and a hostility to the search for new 
approaches.
  Maybe we could have afforded such a mistake in the past. But now the 
stakes are too high--because, as I said, energy policy isn't just an 
economic issue, it's a national security issue. America's dependence on 
imported oil poses a risk to our homeland security and economic well-
being.
  Unfortunately, this conference report does not think anew and is not 
adequate to the challenges of this stormy present. For that reason, I 
cannot vote for it.

                          ____________________