[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 152 (Wednesday, November 16, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12956-S12958]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BAYH (for himself, Mr. Brownback, Mr. Lieberman, Mr. 
        Coleman, Mr. Graham, Mr. Salazar, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Nelson of 
        Florida, Mr. Lugar, and Mr. Obama):
  S. 2025. A bill to promote the national security and stability of the 
United States economy by reducing the dependence of the United States 
on oil through the use of alternative fuels and new technology, and for 
other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, our dependence on foreign oil is 
sapping America's power and independence as a nation. It is urgent we 
begin now to diversify the fuels we use to power our vehicles or risk 
ceding our national power to the rulers of faraway deserts, distant 
tundras, steaming rain forests or off-shore, drilling platforms half a 
world away.
  I rise today as part of a bipartisan group of 10 Senators who 
represent the American Northeast, South, Midwest and West to introduce 
the Vehicle and Fuel Choices for America Security Act.

[[Page S12957]]

  We chose this title because nothing less than our national security 
is at stake.
  Besides myself, the rest of the ``Gang of Ten,'' or the ``Energy 
Security Ten,'' as some call us are Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas, 
Evan Bayh of Indiana, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Lindsey Graham of 
South Carolina, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Bill 
Nelson of Florida, Richard Lugar of Indiana and Barack Obama of 
Illinois. And we expect even more of our colleagues from both sides of 
the aisle will be joining us soon.
  I hope that in the future we all look back on the day this bill was 
introduced as the beginning of a major shift in our national security 
strategy. I hope that history will say we saw a challenge to our 
national security and prosperity and then met it and mastered it.
  A recent report by the International Energy Agency, IEA, sums up the 
urgent need for our legislation.
  According to the IEA, global demand for oil--now about 85 million 
barrels a day--will increase by more than 50 percent to 130 million 
barrels a day between now and 2030 if nothing is done.
  The industrialized world's dependence on oil heightens global 
instability. The authors of the IEA report note that the way things are 
going ``we are ending up with 95 percent of the world relying for its 
economic well-being on decisions made by five or six countries in the 
Middle East.''
  Besides the Mideast, I would add that Nigeria is roiled by 
instability, Venezuela's current leadership is hostile to us and 
Russia's resurgent state power has ominous overtones.
  In fact, we are just one well-orchestrated terrorist attack or 
political upheaval away from a $100-a-barrel overnight price spike that 
would that would send the global economy tumbling and the 
industrialized world, including China and India, scrambling to secure 
supplies from the remaining and limited number of oil supply sites.
  History tells us that wars have started over such competition.
  Left unchecked, I fear that we are literally watching the slow but 
steady erosion of America's power and independence as a nation--our 
economic and military power and our political independence.
  We are burning it up in our automobile engines and spewing it from 
our tailpipes because of our absolute dependence on oil to fuel our 
cars and trucks.
  That dependence on oil--and that means foreign oil because our own 
reserves are less than 1 percent of the world's oil reserves--puts us 
in jeopardy in three key ways--a convergence forming a perfect storm 
that is extremely dangerous to America's national security and economy.
  First, the structure of the global oil market deeply affects--and 
distorts--our foreign policy. Our broader interests and aspirations 
must compete with our own need for oil and the growing thirst for it in 
the rest of the world--especially by China and India.
  As a study in the journal Foreign Affairs makes clear, China is 
moving aggressively to compete for the world's limited supplies of oil 
not just with its growing economic power, but with its growing military 
and diplomatic power as well.
  Second, today we must depend for our oil on a global gallery of 
nations that are politically unstable, unreliable, or just plain 
hostile to us.
  All that and much more should make us worry because if we don't 
change--it is within their borders and under their earth and waters 
that our economic and national security lies.
  Doing nothing about our oil dependency will make us a pitiful giant--
like Gulliver in Lilliput--tied down by smaller nations and subject to 
their whims. And we will have given them the ropes and helped them tie 
the knots.
  We can take on this problem now and stand tall as the free and 
independent giant we are by moving our nation--and the world--on to 
energy independence, by setting America free from its dependence on 
oil.
  There is only one way to do this. We need to transform our total 
transportation infrastructure from the refinery to the tailpipe and 
each step in between because transportation is the key to energy 
independence.
  Barely 2 percent of our electricity comes from oil.
  Ninety six percent of the energy used to power our cars comes from 
oil--literally millions of barrels of oil per day. This is 
unsustainable and dangerous.
  The Vehicle and Fuel Choices for America Security Act aims to 
strengthen America's security by transforming transportation from the 
refinery to the tailpipe and each step in between, thus breaking our 
dependence on foreign oil.
  We start by making it our national policy to cut consumption by 10 
million barrels a day over the next 25 years.
  First, we need to rethink and then remake our fuel supplies. Gasoline 
is not the only portable source of stored energy. Tons of agricultural 
waste and millions of acres of idle grassland can be used to create 
billions of barrels of new fuels.
  Our farmers could soon be measuring production in barrels of energy 
as well as bushels of food.
  Then we must remake our automobile engines as well. Vehicles that get 
500 miles per gallon--or that use no refined crude oil--are within our 
grasp. I know that sounds unbelievable. I am going to tell you how we 
can do it.
  To help us get there, our bill also requires that by 2012, 10 percent 
of all vehicles sold in the U.S. be hybrid, hybrid-electric plug-in or 
alternative fuel vehicles. That number will rise by 10 percent a year 
until it reaches 50 percent in 2016.
  To help spur this market along, our bill amends our current energy 
policy to require that one quarter of federal vehicles purchased must 
be hybrids or plug-in hybrids.
  My bill will detail how we can get there with available technology 
and previously unavailable Federal Government leadership. Coupling 
these new programs with the explicit oil-savings goals for the Federal 
Government is the key to the effectiveness of this proposal.
  I can almost hear colleagues murmur, So, Senator Lieberman, what else 
is new? We've been hearing this for years and nothing has happened.
  I can't blame you if you are skeptical. The struggle for oil 
independence has been going on at least since Jimmy Carter was 
President.
  But things have changed since the days of Jimmy Carter and even since 
last summer. There is a new understanding of the depth of the crisis 
that our oil dependence is creating.
  This summer's doubling of gasoline and crude oil prices hit tens of 
millions of Americans with the global reality of oil demand and 
pricing. And Hurricane Katrina reminded us how vulnerable our supplies 
can become.
  This reality is bipartisan. And, along with my colleagues 
cosponsoring this bill, I think Americans are ready to set the serious 
goals that eluded us in the past and take the bold steps necessary to 
reach those goals.
  Now let me give you more details.
  The bill I will propose puts our Nation's transportation system on a 
new road--a road where the tanks are filled with more home-grown fuel--
and I do mean grown--not just American corn, but from American sugar, 
prairie grass, and agricultural waste.
  We will push harder for more and quicker production and 
commercialization of biomass-based fuels.
  The Energy bill signed into law last summer created a new set of 
incentives for these fuel alternatives, including their commercial 
production.
  What my bill would do--again, by including a mass-production mandate 
for alternative fuel vehicles--is ensure that the investments would be 
made in the facilities to produce and market these new fuels by 
providing big demand for them.
  The bill would also create a program to guarantee that filling 
stations had the pumps to provide the fuel to keep pace with the 
growing alternative-fuel fleet produced by the mandate.
  Is there a model to give us confidence we can achieve this 
transformation? Yes.
  Brazil is now enjoying substantial immunity from current high world 
oil prices, thanks to a long-term strategy, launched during the oil 
shocks of the 1970s, to integrate sugar cane ethanol into its fuel 
supply. They started initially with a mandate that all fuel sold in the 
country contain 25 percent alcohol. They are now up to 40 percent 
biofuels.

[[Page S12958]]

  In addition to the fuel mandate, Brazil offered low-interest loans 
and tax breaks for the building of distilleries and subsidized a fuel 
distribution network.
  Brazil has the advantage of a substantial sugar cane industry already 
in place. But we have our own vast potential to develop our own biofuel 
supply, using feedstock like corn, crop waste, switch grass, sugarcane 
and fast-growing trees and shrubs such as hybrid poplars and willows.
  According to the Department of Energy, if two-thirds of the Nation's 
idled cropland were used to grow these kinds of energy crops, the 
result could be dramatic. Those 35 million acres could produce between 
15 and 35 billion gallons of ethanol each year to fuel cars, trucks, 
and buses.
  That is about 2.2 million barrels of fuel a day from right here in 
the U.S.A.
  What Brazil offers us, more importantly, is a case study of 
government leadership to combine technology mandates and subsidies to 
wean its transportation sector from foreign oil to a domestic 
alternative.
  From this January through this July--before this summer's fuel 
spike--we have sent almost $100 billion out of the country to purchase 
oil, while the Brazilians are now relying on home-grown fuel.
  The key to their success is that they responded 30 years ago to the 
first storm warnings. We did not, and now the storm is at our shores, 
slapping against the levees of our economic strength and national 
security. We have to mobilize and lead a similar response as Brazil 
did.
  If we do this right, our farmers could soon be measuring production 
in barrels of energy as well as bushels of food. Our energy would be 
guaranteed ``Made in America'' and the profits would be guaranteed 
``Kept in America.''
  For all these new fuels to be effective, we need the flexible fuel 
vehicles that can take advantage of them.
  As I said earlier, our bill also requires that 50 percent of all 
vehicles sold in the U.S. be hybrid, hybrid-electric plug-in, or 
alternative fuel vehicles by 2016.
  Sound ambitious? It is not. It has already happened in Brazil. 
Several automakers selling cars in Brazil, including our own General 
Motors and Ford, already manufacture a fleet that is more than 50-
percent flexible fuel cars that can run on any combination of gasoline 
and biofuels.
  The technology exists now and adds a negligible cost--about $150--to 
the price of each vehicle. For this we get the flexibility to power a 
car with fuel made from corn, prairie grass, or agricultural waste from 
our own heartland that will cost a lot less than gasoline does today.
  Maximizing fuel efficiency and promoting energy independence even 
further would be a new generation of flexible-fuel hybrid cars known as 
plug-ins because you can plug them in at night to recharge the battery.
  Hybrids that use a use both a gasoline engine and electric motor for 
power are already getting 50 miles per gallon. Making them flexible 
fuel cars, as I've already said, can save us more than 2 million 
barrels of gasoline a day.
  But we can do even better--dramatically better--with the plug-in 
hybrid that is just now on the threshold of commercialization. Like the 
present hybrids, it would use both a gasoline and electric motor. But 
the plug-in hybrid would be able to use the battery exclusively for the 
first 30 miles of a trip.
  Think of that for a minute. Although Americans drive about 2.2 
trillion miles a year, according the Census, the vast majority of those 
trips are less than 15 miles.
  That means a plug-in hybrid would use zero--zero--gallons of gas or 
any combustible fuel for the vast majority of its trips. And experts 
tell me it could effectively get the 500 miles per gallon on longer 
trips.
  Plugging in your car during off peak hours--when power is in surplus 
and cheaper--would soon just become part of the modem daily routine, 
like plugging in your cell phone or PDA before you go to bed.
  And off-peak electricity can be the equivalent of 50 cent a gallon 
gasoline, I repeat--the equivalent of 50 cent a gallon fuel is 
feasible.
  Of course, electricity does not come magically through the wires to 
our homes. That power would come from coal, natural gas, nuclear, 
solar, wind or other sources--sources that we have in abundance here at 
home--and a little--very little--would come from oil.
  This isn't pie in the sky. These vehicles could be in your garage 
within a couple of years. Some of the incentives for achieving this 
were included in the Energy bill signed into law in August. But they 
did not go nearly far enough.
  We need to couple these incentives with real performance standards 
and sales requirements to ensure that as soon as possible new cars are 
running not just on gasoline but on biofuels and electricity.
  As always, there is a do-nothing crowd that says the ever-rising 
price of gasoline and crude oil are the cure--that with higher prices 
people will reduce consumption and the market will respond with greater 
investments in the supply of oil to bring prices down.
  But all that would do is perpetuate the problem. Market-driven oil-
dependency is still dependency on foreign oil, driving us further down 
the current path toward national insecurity and economic and 
environmental troubles.
  Some say that we can ease the crisis through greater domestic 
drilling--in places like the Arctic Refuge and other public lands or 
off our shores.
  But that won't make a dent in the problem. In the world of oil, 
geology is destiny and the U.S. today has only 1 percent of the world's 
oil reserves. And that small new supply wouldn't matter much in the 
global market, since the price of oil produced within the United States 
rises and falls with the global market, regardless of where it is 
produced.
  We just don't have enough oil in the U.S. anymore. And no matter how 
much more we drill, we will still be paying the world price of oil--not 
an American price.
  Our present energy and transportation systems were born at the end of 
the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries with the twin 
discoveries of oil extraction and the internal combustion engine. Those 
systems have served us well bringing growth to our Nation and the 
world.
  But it is now the 21st century, and it is time to move on. The era of 
big oil is over. It is time to revolutionize our entire energy 
infrastructure, from the refinery to the tailpipe, and begin a new era 
of energy independence.
  It is time to set America free by cutting our dependence on foreign 
oil and by doing so strengthen our security, preserve our independence 
and energize our economy.
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