[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 17, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H661-H668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              CLEAN ENERGY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) 
is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we come here to the well tonight to continue 
this discussion about energy. I have enjoyed listening to my colleagues 
Mr. Bartlett and Mr. Gilchrest, who have been talking about the need 
for changes in our energy policy to effectuate an energy efficiency 
policy for this country, to use our innovative talents to come up with 
new technologies to deal with our energy challenges, and to really 
bring our energy policy from the 19st century into the 21st century. 
And the good news is tomorrow, Thursday of this week, in just the third 
week of the 110th Congress, this new Congress is going to start with a 
big step out of the 19th century, which has been represented by the 
last Congress, and into the 21st century, which is represented by this 
Congress, and I am pleased to report to the House tonight and to the 
country, tomorrow the Democratic majority with some help from some of 
our friends across the aisle will pass a bill which will cause a major 
shift in the energy policy of this country.
  In the last Congress there was a clear direction of the energy policy 
of this country, and under the last management of the U.S. Congress the 
basic operative rule was to give billions of dollars of taxpayer money 
to the oil and gas industry, the most profitable industry in the 
history of the solar system, over $10 billion in tax breaks to the oil 
and gas industry. Tomorrow, that money will be returned to the citizens 
of the United States for the use in developing a truly 21st century 
energy plan.
  Tomorrow, the Democratic majority held Congress or House of 
Representatives will pass a bill which will reel back in $14 billion of 
taxpayer money that was sent to the silk-lined pockets of the oil and 
gas industry, and that is a good thing for Republicans and Democrats 
and Independents and for our grandchildren for reasons we will talk 
about tonight. It is a good reason because when we reel that $14 
billion in giveaways to the oil and gas industry that happened in the 
last Congress, what we will do tomorrow is take that $14 billion and 
create a fund of money belonging to the American people that will be 
used for the development of new technologies, creative new sources of 
energy, energy efficiencies, more efficient vehicles, more efficient 
appliances, and a way to beat global warming.
  So we are going to convert the giveaways from the oil and gas 
industry that happened in the last Congress to an investment in the 
future of our country to have a new energy technology, technologically 
based future for the energy source of this country. We are going to do 
it for three reasons. And perhaps those three reasons are obvious, but 
I want to state them.
  Tomorrow when we pass this bill, we will create a fund called the 
Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve. Not really much of an acronym; I 
didn't get to name it. But the Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve will 
be a fund with $14 billion that will be taken back from the oil and gas 
industry and be used for our inventors, our businessmen, our 
academicians, our people who are doing great work to develop new 
sources of energy, and we will do this for three reasons. I will go 
through them quickly.
  Number one, we will use this fund to develop a domestic source of 
energy for this country. We will use this money to develop the new 
advanced biofuels, the second generation ethanol, the cellulosic 
ethanol, the advanced biodiesel systems so that we can start buying our 
fuel from Midwestern farmers rather than Middle Eastern sheiks. We know 
the trouble we are in in the Middle East due to our dependence on 
Middle Eastern oil, and we are going to break that oil addiction, not 
rhetorically, but in reality.
  Second, we are going to use these funds to develop new clean energy 
sources that can stop global warming. We are going to have energy 
efficiency which can have efficient appliances rather than dirty 
appliances that waste energy. We are going to have energy efficient 
cars, plug-in hybrids, flex fuel vehicles that can use biofuels 
developed in the Midwest; energy created by wind turbine, solar energy 
and perhaps clean coal, wave power. You name it.

[[Page H662]]

We have a thousand flowers that are going to bloom in energy if we use 
this money in a smart way to stop global warming.
  And, third, we will use this money to create a new energy source of 
jobs in this country. It is about time to start building fuel efficient 
cars in this country, new technologies here. It is time to reel those 
jobs back in.
  So I am very excited what will happen tomorrow. It is the first step 
in a long road of what we will talk about tonight, the new Apollo 
Energy Project. And we have a new Member of the U.S. House who has 
brought a new vision of energy, Mr. John Hall of New York. And I will 
yield to Mr. Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I am 
excited to be here at this time, at this point in history when our 
country will finally, beginning in this House of Representatives, begin 
to act on renewable energy and conservation in a meaningful way. And I 
also want to say that I hope Northeast farmers will also be able to 
contribute to the biofuels that will be developing.
  I have a friend in New York State who is driving around in a stock 
diesel Jeep Liberty 4-by-4 that he is running on biodiesel made from 
wood waste at a renewable tree farm that makes furniture in New York, 
just north of my district in Representative Gillibrand's district, but 
it is minutes from where I live in Dover Plains, New York. There is no 
modification needed to the vehicle. The company that is making this 
fuel runs all their farm vehicles on it, they run their road vehicles 
on it. Every scrap of leaves and sawdust and little twigs and things 
that are parts of the tree that are too small to go into the furniture 
they make goes into making biodiesel fuel, and it is very successful.
  The only thing that is lacking is the knowledge on the public's part 
that they can ask for it, and the law of supply and demand will work 
for renewables the same way it does for any other form of energy or any 
other commodity.
  I called up my own local oil company in my hometown of Dover and 
asked if they had biodiesel to sell for me to burn in my home heating 
oil system, my furnace that heats our home, and they said yes. And I 
said, ``What is it?'' And they said, ``20 percent soybean derivative.'' 
And I said, ``Sign me up.'' And I asked the gentleman on the phone, 
``How is it?'' And he said, ``I am the owner of the company and I burn 
it in our house, and it burns cleaner than regular home heating oil.''
  So it is similar to the situation I ran into when I served in county 
government and we were dealing with markets constantly fluctuating in 
recyclables, for instance, where one month you might make money on 
recycling paper and the next month you might lose it. It depends on how 
many plants are built to recycle it and how many new communities start 
to do so in earnest.
  If our country and our citizens know to ask for wind power, which we 
get in my home the first 1,500 kilowatt hours per month from a wind 
farm in Atlantic City. And that is only one of many wind installations 
that are being put up around the northeast. There is a big wind farm in 
the Tug Hill Plateau in the Adirondacks that is going to figure majorly 
in New York's energy supply, and in the Finger Lakes region also. 
Farmers are finding out that they can lease space on their property for 
wind turbines, make royalties on it or lease payments from the 
utilities on it that will pay their property taxes and enable them to 
stay in farming. The cows don't care. They graze under the wind 
turbines, and meanwhile they are turning overhead and cranking out the 
energy.
  The Jersey Atlantic Wind Farm in Atlantic City that my wife and I are 
buying power from will be amortized in 5 years. It consists of five 
380-foot-tall wind turbines. Each turbine is a greater surface area 
than a football field and taller than the Statue of Liberty and 
generates 7\1/2\ million watts of power when it is running at peak 
operation.
  So if it is free in 5 years, the investment is paid off. After that, 
you have free energy, you have no pollution, zero emissions, and as you 
were saying it helps our balance of trade deficit, it cuts back on the 
money that we are sending to the Middle East oil potentates that are 
funding the madrasas that are training people that we then have to send 
our military to go fight. It cuts back on oil spills. It cuts back on 
asthma and emphysema in the inner cities, the particulate emissions. So 
it is a win-win-win situation with jobs being created here, with the 
dollars that we are spending on energy being kept here.
  And I would just like to say once again that I am proud to be a part 
of this action of repealing and closing loopholes. It is not a raise of 
taxes as our colleagues on the other side of the aisle were saying 
before, but it is actually closing tax loopholes, subsidies, and 
giveaways that they created in the last Congress and transferring those 
funds to these renewable energies.
  Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield. Very much so, it is claiming 
what should be rightfully ours. We essentially gave away oil that 
belongs to the citizens of the United States, and gave it away with no 
royalties. It was a giant, giant giveaway program. And subsidies in 
certain circumstances are appropriate for nascent growing industries, 
but this is a mature industry. There was no reason to give a company 
that made $20 billion profit last year more of our taxpayers. You are 
paying twice when that happens. You are paying at the pump, and then 
you are paying on April 15 when you are paying taxes that are given to 
these oil and gas companies.
  I want to just touch on your wind sample. Today I had the Director of 
the Bonneville Power Administration that runs the electrical grid in 
the Northwest today, and he was telling me that wind power today is 
cheaper, cheaper than essentially any other system that we have to 
generate electricity, at least in the Pacific Northwest, cheaper than 
coal even.

                              {time}  2200

  For those that say wind cannot be an integral part of the system, a 
study came down from a Minnesota group last week which evaluated how 
one can integrate wind because the wind does not always blow. It is not 
a totally reliable system, so you have to integrate it into your 
system.
  They concluded it is so cheap you can integrate it by having backup 
gas turbines sometimes to kick in if the wind doesn't blow with minimal 
to no increases in prices.
  This revolution that is happening in energy that we will start 
tomorrow, sort of the Concord Bridge moment for the energy revolution 
here, is all over the country. You mentioned in your neck of the woods, 
it is not just the Midwest, in Washington State we are going to have 
the biggest biodiesel plant in the Western hemisphere. It is going to 
be up and running next year.
  Minnesota has huge growth in wind power. Wisconsin has a company that 
is building wind turbines so fast they cannot fulfill the orders. 
Missouri has just started three huge wind farms. This is something all 
over the country.
  When I talk to businesses, what I find is there is not a State in the 
country that does not have some business that is going to benefit from 
what we will start tomorrow, which is new energy revolution. California 
in Silicon Valley is developing these new solar cells that could be 30-
40 percent less expensive. A company called Fiber Forge in Colorado is 
starting to make composite bodies for cars that could be 40 percent 
stronger and half the weight. This is a national effort. All of us will 
get to brag about it some day.
  I would like to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Klein), a 
new Member of Congress. Thanks for joining us.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a pleasure to be 
here with Mr. Hall, my good freshman friend from New York, and my good 
friend from the State of Washington. I know you have been leading the 
fight for a number of years and trying to get our focus, not only in 
your State, but throughout the country on the idea of renewable energy 
sources.
  Many of us in the freshman class came to this year's campaign and 
this Congress with a view that this is an opportunity of historic 
proportion. This is an opportunity for us to recognize that this is a 
once-in-a-generation calling, no different than our predecessors had 
with the Manhattan Project. I know that many seniors in my district in 
south Florida have talked about that, the calling of their generation 
to make sure that World War II would end

[[Page H663]]

with an atomic weapon. Of course we all know that when Sputnik went up 
in the early 1960s, a little before my time, but at a time when this 
country saw this little tin can up in space and thought this could be a 
threat of possibly bombs coming from outer space into our country, and 
John F. Kennedy saw this as a time and place for us to engage our 
private sector, our universities, our public, to create a new 
generation of scientists and mathematicians who would put a man on the 
Moon by the end of the 1960s. By 1969, they did that. And now the 
science and technology that came out of the space program has broad 
applications to our daily lives.
  I view this, as do many Democrats and Republicans, as a time in our 
country's history when we need to make ourselves energy independent. I 
believe it. There is nobody in this room or in this country who doesn't 
believe that Americans, when they put their nose to the grindstone, 
can't accomplish anything. We can. We can and we will.
  This has the unbelievable capacity of recognizing three great 
elements in this day. One is national security. We should never, ever 
have to make another foreign policy decision based on where the next 
drop of oil is coming from. That is a strategic mistake of unbelievable 
proportions. To have to import 60 percent of our oil from unstable 
countries around the world that in many cases are taking some of the 
dollars that we send over, the millions and billions of dollars, and 
financing both sides of the war on terror is wrong.
  Recognizing that is something we need to do for our own national 
security, inside the United States, is crucial.
  Secondly, we all understand the environmental impacts. I know my 
colleagues that are speaking tonight have led the fight on this, and 
many others. And recognizing whether it is global warming or any of the 
other environmental impacts of some of the technologies that are used 
today with oil and other things, these are issues that we need to take 
up.
  I live in Florida. We have had a battle in Congress, and I was not in 
Congress last year, but many of us fought the fight back home: We don't 
want drilling off the coast of Florida, or in Alaska in the refuge. 
Those are false choices made by the administration.
  The right choice is we don't have to have more oil drilling. Oil 
drilling will be a part of our energy solution, but we don't need 
drilling in places which will have a potential of having a tremendous 
long-term environmental impact. Off the coast of Florida, we have a 
very large tourist industry. We have wonderful reefs. We have a 
beautiful environment in our oceans and bays and the Gulf Coast. We 
can't afford to do that. It is not good for anybody in this country. 
There are choices that allow us to have alternative energy.
  And of course the last thing is the new economy. Many have talked 
about the fact that in this economy today we have lost jobs overseas. 
We don't have steel manufacturing like we used to. We don't produce a 
lot of the products. The science of alternative energy sources and the 
commercialization of that technology and those products can once again 
be our big technology boom like we had in the 1990s in this decade, and 
for decades to come. It will make us energy independent, and it will be 
exportable science to the rest of the world.
  Mr. INSLEE. I was talking to a businessman the other day who wants to 
develop the Chinese market to sell China thin solar film technology to 
become the distributor in China of a technology developed in America. 
Talk about a great thing for our balance of payments.
  You talked about the original Apollo project. We have named our bill, 
the first step we will talk about tomorrow, the New Apollo Energy 
Project because we believe, as John F. Kennedy did, that we have 
unlimited innovative capacity. But what we don't have at the moment are 
policies to put that innovative genius to work.
  For instance, we are spending less than 16 percent on energy research 
in total in this country. We are only spending 16 percent of what we 
spent on the Apollo project. That is just abysmal. We had at least as 
much of a challenge as trying to get to the Moon.
  I had a utility executive in my office today. He told me this 
factoid: We spend more on research about dog food than the utility 
industry does on new energy in this country. I don't want to belittle 
dog food, it is important, but we need to boost our research. Tomorrow 
we will put $14 billion back into the pockets of Americans to use in 
part for research, the tremendous things that are going on. Every time 
I pick up the phone, I learn about a new technology being developed.
  I yield to Mr. Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I am just looking at the uses of the Strategic 
Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve, and I will get that out in 
one sentence, to accelerate the use of clean domestic renewable energy 
resources and alternative fuels, to promote the utilization of energy 
efficient products and practices and conservation, and to increase 
research development and deployment of clean, renewable energy and 
energy efficiencies and technologies.

  The word ``conservation'' is in there, and it is one that has been 
sadly neglected. In fact, it was unfortunate a few years ago when our 
Vice President said conservation may be a personal virtue, but it is no 
way to build a national energy policy. I completely disagree. I think 
it is one of the most important ways to start building a national 
energy policy, and I was happy Mr. Bartlett earlier was talking about 
energy efficiency. It is time all of us on both sides of the aisle did 
that and put our money where those words are.
  I see these pet peeves of mine as I go through every day life. For 
instance, walking down the aisle of the supermarket, in the Northeast, 
I can walk through Hanford's A&P or Stop & Shop, and there are aisle 
after aisle of cold cases with yogurt or beer or cheese that is being 
kept cold by a refrigerator and a compressor running all of the time, 
and an open top so it is convenient. I can just reach in. But there is 
no door or plastic sheet to keep the cold air in and the warm air out. 
Meanwhile, because we live in the northern part of the country, half of 
the year there is a furnace going to keep the shoppers warm and the 
furnace and the compressor are working at cross purposes. That is the 
kind of blindness we have gotten used to, that energy is something we 
can throw away.
  Mr. INSLEE. There is so much good work going in to stop those things 
that you are talking about. To mention two instances of success on 
energy efficiency, I was talking to the Vice President of Dow Chemical 
yesterday. Dow Chemical historically has not been looked at as a 
company on the forefront on environmental issues, but they got a star 
last year for their energy efficiency program.
  They have saved 42 percent of their energy since 1990. They have 
reduced their energy since 2000 by 22 percent by just adopting 
commonsense measures, some of which you might have talked about, by 
having energy efficient appliances and lighting, by looking at how they 
monitor the energy in their building. So a 42 percent reduction of 
their energy usage, and they did that because it is good business, not 
because it is some granola-crunching idea. They did it because it is 
good business. And we will create a fund tomorrow to help businesses 
and individuals go down that road.
  Second accomplishment, California. California has essentially, while 
the average American uses 50 percent more electricity than they did 10 
years ago, 50 percent, California has been stable for the last 10 
years. They have not gone up one kilowatt hour. And the way they did 
that was to help people invest in energy efficient light bulbs, energy 
efficient windows and appliances. As a result, they use 8,000 kilowatt 
hours per person per year, and the average person uses 14,000 
kilowatts.
  Does that mean people in California are living in the stone age? They 
are still taking hot tubs in Marin County and still putting out movies 
in Hollywood. They are living a good life there, and their economy is 
booming. But they are doing some commonsense things with energy. That 
is what we are going to start tomorrow.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I wanted to mention something that should be 
another part of our energy mix and that is low head hydroelectric 
power. There are dams and waterfalls throughout this country where in 
some instances they used to generate power and no

[[Page H664]]

longer do. But our own Idaho National Laboratory from the Department of 
Energy did a study a couple of years ago that showed, and it is on 
their Website, it shows how much State By State latent hydroelectric 
power is waiting to be harvested.
  In New York State, there are some 4,000 dams and waterfalls that 
could, just by having turbines placed where the water is already 
falling, yield greater than 1,200 megawatts of power, which is about 60 
percent of the peak output of the Indian Point Nuclear Plant in my 
district.
  It is that kind of using everything. We have to leave no stone 
unturned and to try every opportunity for clean, renewable domestic 
sources of power for national security purposes, as Mr. Klein 
mentioned, for environmental purposes, as we all know, and for global 
warming. Anybody in my part of the country knows that the weather is 
not normal this year. And, indeed, the records for last year showed 
that it is the warmest year on record and there has been a string of 
years getting warmer.
  We had a seminar at one of our freshman orientation sessions on 
global warming that shows as the carbon dioxide levels in the 
atmosphere are rising, the temperature average is rising with it. It 
has risen out of what they call the background noise, where it is no 
longer something that can be written off to the normal ups and downs of 
climate. We are experiencing a change, a man-made change in our climate 
here on earth, and it is our duty to our children and grandchildren not 
to leave them that problem or to leave them mountains of debt because 
we refused to deal with this problem and keep borrowing money from one 
country so we can import oil from another country and lose our own 
sovereignty in the process.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. One of the beauties of what we are talking 
about, and what Americans are talking about, is there is a lot of 
technology and a lot of science and businesses that are already out 
there doing these things. That is a very exciting thing. If you listen 
to the national picture that 60 percent of our oil is imported, and 
that is a major source. And we obviously have lots of other fossil 
fuels being burned at this point, but there is solar power.
  I am from Florida, and we call ourselves the Sunshine State. And we 
constantly hear in Florida you can't use solar effectively because the 
panels are too big and they can't store the energy.
  My personal feeling, and I think you believe this, if we put our mind 
and science to this, we could probably have a solar panel the size of 
this 8\1/2\ by 11 piece of paper on every house that powers that house. 
Individual power plants, and it will happen. It is going to happen. 
There is wave power. There is wind power and corn-based ethanol and 
sugar-based ethanol like they use in Brazil.
  Again, they may not be perfect in their present form. That is the 
point. Let's further them and use our innovation agenda that we are 
pushing in this Congress to get all of the economic incentives in place 
to encourage the businesses, to encourage our science and university 
academics as well as business leaders to come together.

                              {time}  2215

  Mr. INSLEE. We had a meeting with Hank Paulson today, Secretary of 
the Treasury in the Bush administration, and he had made an interesting 
comment. I am very impressed with him, though I have been pretty 
critical of the Bush administration, because he has been a pretty 
outspoken advocate that we need to do something about global warning.
  He said everything he has learned since taking the job as Secretary 
of the Treasury, he comes from a very successful Wall Street career, 
has been worse than he thought. The deficit, the situation in Iraq, 
everything he has learned has been worse than he thought, except 
energy, because he has learned about the new innovations going on 
around the country.
  What we want to do is help businesses, like the Iogen Corporation, 
which is ready to build the first commercial cellulosic plant in 
America in Idaho. They are ready to go, as long as they can get their 
loan guaranty. They have 300 farmers that are going to give them their 
straw left over after wheat. They are going to chop it up, put an 
enzyme in it, and then free the carbohydrates and distill that into 
ethanol, and, boom, you have a product that is three to four times more 
productive per acre than the current type of ethanol we get from our 
farms.
  Ocean Wave Technologies has the first permit for wave power in the 
United States off the coast of Oregon, a 50 megawatt plant. They are 
using a technology now that is in the water in Hawaii, generating 
technology with this buoy that is anchored below the water. It goes up 
and down and creates a force thoromatically that runs a generator. They 
are generating electricity today for the Navy. They are ready to make 
this a commercial operation. They need a little help to get started.
  The Nanosolar Company, a company that was started, and the fellows 
who wrote the first two checks were the two guys who started Google. 
They have done pretty well for themselves, and they wrote a check to a 
couple of entrepreneurs in California, and now they are ready to do 450 
megawatts of thin cell solar, where you use a solar panel that has one-
fiftieth the width, using a selenium, iridium, gallium and caesium type 
of technology that they think can be 30 or 40 percent cheaper.
  Another company trying something like this is called Miasole.
  These are the companies that need help, not the big oil companies. 
And what we are doing tomorrow is shifting the subsidies that have been 
given away to the oil industry, an 18th century technology, and helping 
these new-generation technologies come on.
  By the way, in this debate we are the optimists. We should identify 
who is on what side of this. We are the optimists who believe global 
warming can be dealt with. The pessimists say we can't.
  Now, they are giving up. The debate about global warming is over. And 
I know it is over because yesterday the Exxon Corporation, which has 
fought tooth and nail the science on global warming, basically withdrew 
their support from the political organization that has tried to create 
doubt about global warming.
  So when the Exxon Corporation agrees it is time to start getting 
serious about global warming, I think the debate is over. And now the 
question is, how can we join on a bipartisan basis to find solutions, 
and we are starting this tomorrow. I hope we draw some votes from some 
of our colleagues across the aisle.
  I yield to Mr. Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, Mr. Inslee. I am pretty confident 
there will be votes from both sides of the aisle tomorrow. And it is 
interesting thinking about the history of ExxonMobil in terms of their 
corporate advertising, going back to the days of Herbert Schmertz and 
the op-ed in The New York Times, and how they have spent probably more 
money, and other oil companies as well have spent more money. Or I 
should say they have spent good money on advertising to try to stop 
people from changing the approach that they could have spent instead on 
research and development on these new forms of energy.
  I wanted to mention one you had not mentioned yet, and that is tidal 
power. Wave power, of course, is obvious. My dad taught me to sail when 
I was a kid, and many is the time I have sailed by a buoy that had one 
of those wave-driven generators in it and keeping the light powered, 
and/or a solar panel on it keeping the light powered and a battery 
storing the energy.
  But tidal power in my neck of the woods, in the Hudson River, which 
splits my district in half, is tidal all the way to Troy, all the way 
past Albany, and navigable all the way that far north. The current runs 
a couple knots and a half south on the ebb and about two knots north on 
the flood in New York Harbor. And in the East River and in Hellgate, 
what they call the juncture of the East River and the Harlem River, 
where it opens into Long Island Sound to the east, the tidal current 
there runs five to six knots, depending on the phase of the moon.
  We have inlets, rivers, harbors, coastline all throughout this 
country where tide comes and goes, millions of tons, millions of tons 
of pressure of water moving in and out of these bodies of water twice a 
day every day. And that is, well, it is solar and lunar, because it is 
driven by, I guess primarily by the

[[Page H665]]

moon, but nonetheless it is natural, free energy that can be harvested 
and should be explored. And, indeed, there have been experiments going 
on in the East River with tidal generators within the last year that I 
am looking forward to seeing the results of. But that is one more 
available source.
  Mr. INSLEE. I want to comment that some people have argued this is 
sort of peripheral or tangential sources of energy, niche types of 
energy. I think it is important to realize the scale of energy that we 
have available domestically. It is enormous.
  When you talk to the scientists about this, the wave power in a 10-
mile-by-10-mile stretch of the California coastline, that is 100 square 
miles, if you can imagine 10-by-10, there is enough wave power using 
this existing technology to generate all of the electricity used in the 
State of California. That is not hypothetical. That is actual wave 
power that is available. That is not a niche technology.
  In Montana, if we can a find way to burn coal cleanly, and I say if 
because we are a long ways from being able to do that, to segregate and 
store the carbon dioxide below ground, but there is enough coal in 
Montana, just Montana, if we can find a way to do that, to power the 
electricity needs of the entire Nation for decades.
  Just to give people a sense of the scale of this, with solar energy, 
in a few hundred square miles, there is enough to light the entire 
Nation, if we get solar power down to a market-based price. It is more 
expensive than electricity right now from a coal plant or a gas-powered 
plant.
  But what we are learning is that for all the technologies we have 
talked about today, solar, wind, wave, efficiencies, where some day 
plug-in hybrids, plug our cars in and run on clean electricity, every 
single one of those technologies has come down in price dramatically as 
the technologies have improved and as we have scales of economy.
  Wind power has come down in price 80 percent in the last decade. 
Solar is coming down. There is a factor basically every time, if I get 
this right, every time it goes up, and I am going to have to check to 
make sure. In fact, I will not use it because I can't remember what it 
was, but there is a ratio that has been clear with solar power that has 
come down. Every time you ramp up production by a factor of X, you get 
a Y percentage decrease in price, and that has been a constant.

  What we have learned is that we know there are two curves. Fossil 
fuels are going up because China is coming on gangbusters and demand is 
going to go up. We might reach peak oil. We don't know. But we know 
fossil fuels are going up long term, and these are coming down, and we 
want to be on the downward sloping path.
  So one of the things we want to do eventually, in our new Apollo 
project, is to have a renewable portfolio standard to say that a 
percentage of our electricity will be generated by clean energy sources 
by the year 2020. We just did this in Washington by popular vote.
  I yield to Mr. Kline.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. I thank the gentleman, and I think that is 
exactly the point. The point is, there is not necessarily one source of 
energy alternative that is going to be for everyone. We have a big 
country, with lots of existing resources that have been mentioned by 
the gentlemen on the floor this evening, and the choices and the 
competitive ways that we as a country can competitively grant resources 
to companies, to scientists to come together and say, listen, we think 
there is enough coal in this country to power the country for 300 
years, but we have a high sulfur and carbon dioxide problem. Is there a 
solution? If there is a solution, that can be a wonderful thing. So 
there is coal in certain parts of the country and maybe that works 
there.
  Wave power, wind power, all the things we are talking about, it is 
this competitive way of approaching this. Not one solution necessarily 
to fit all. There is still going to be oil out there to some extent, 
but the point of all this is, it is there. And the most exciting part 
about this is that there is a solution, and Americans need to engage 
this.
  The Congress is way behind the American public, and the 
administration is even further behind. And the part where we, I think, 
are coming together tonight and tomorrow, as you and many others are 
going to be leading this fight for energy independence in the first 
step we are taking now, which will continue with additional steps, is, 
we want to ask the American public to come forward to their Members of 
Congress, to their business leaders, and to their Chambers of Commerce 
and start talking about the technologies that they have. What can we do 
to collaborate with each other to take some of these ideas and make 
them commercially viable? The more competition out there, the more 
resources in, the lower the price will be.
  It is almost like the discussion we have had for so many years, 
public transportation versus road building. People have said, well, you 
have to subsidize public transportation. Well, absolutely you do. But 
guess what road building is? Who pays for the roads? It is your gas 
taxes in every State of the country and the Federal Government that 
pays for that. So it is a question of reordering our priorities.
  In this case, it is the reordering of priorities from more oil 
drilling and giving those types of resources and support to putting 
that into places and with people that can create the new generation of 
energy alternatives, and it is very exciting.
  Mr. INSLEE. I want to comment on two really exciting transportation 
alternatives. One is public transportation.
  The city of Portland, Oregon, has demonstrated the ability of America 
to reduce our CO2 emissions to deal with global warming. 
They are the first city in the Nation to reduce their carbon dioxide 
emissions to 1990 levels, which would be consistent with the Kyoto 
Treaty, which may be a treaty we do or do not eventually adopt, but 
they have been the first city in the Nation to reach these 1990 levels, 
to roll back their carbon dioxide emissions.
  One of the principal ways they did it was they embraced an incredibly 
popular light rail system to move people. Rather than sitting on 
freeways for hours at a time, you go down to Portland on a convenient, 
much-loved system that has now been voted on five times successfully in 
Portland because people love this system. It is convenient, it is safe, 
it is cheap, and it saves us from global warming.
  So if we have a transportation policy in this country that helps 
communities work in that regard, we will make some strides.
  The second thing I want to bring up is a technology called plug-in 
hybrids, which I think could be maybe the ultimate vision for us in the 
next decade, and that is to develop our cars so we go home at night and 
we plug them in. You take power off the grid, electricity generated by 
clean wind, clean solar, clean wave, clean coal, or a variety of 
technologies. These are cars that today are running, that can run 20 or 
30 miles just on electricity. And then when you run out of juice, you 
start running on your motor.
  If we have a flex-fuel hybrid plug-in car, we are going to be in 
really great shape in this country, because we can plug it in and get 
clean electricity. We have the pipes to deliver it, which is the 
electricity grid. You plug it in at night, you run your first 20 or 30 
miles, then you use ethanol that you bought from our local farmer in 
the Northeast, or in Iowa, or eastern Washington. And if you don't like 
that, you can burn gasoline as well.
  General Motors just announced their first sort of proposed car, 
called the Volt. They ran it out at their show just 2 weeks ago in 
Detroit at the auto show. Now, we have to improve the batteries to 
really make them commercialized, but that is where our money should be 
going, to improving the batteries so we can have plug-in vehicles, 
rather than going to the oil and gas industry.
  So tomorrow we are going to make a decision to take money we gave to 
the oil and gas industry and give it to these companies, to the extent 
we can, to help develop these new technologies for batteries and a 
whole host of other things. These are lithium iod batteries, and they 
are close to being commercialized. There are a few security issues they 
have to work with to make sure they are stable and workable, but that 
is a good shift for the country.

[[Page H666]]

  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. If the gentleman will yield for a second, the 
next level of this, just like any start-up business in this country and 
the success of the capitalistic system that we have is, business 
entrepreneurs realize value. What we are talking about here is start-up 
capital for many of these businesses. We are not talking necessarily 
the United States taxpayer funding these things indefinitely.
  The great part about this is that many of them are already in place. 
They just need a little additional push or a little additional 
resource, and then you will see venture capital and lots of business 
entrepreneurs, and probably even oil companies who will see a good 
opportunity, who will even invest. But whoever it is, we want to see 
the direction of this jump-started, and that is what the gentleman is 
talking about.
  Mr. INSLEE. Sure. And we can do things essentially at no cost to the 
Federal Government. For instance, loan guarantees. If we guarantee a 
company that wants to start a plant, like this Iogen cellulosic ethanol 
plant, if we do a loan guarantee for them, there is a high level of 
confidence it is going to work, and it never costs us a dime, assuming 
that it works. But it helps them get the capital to give security for 
the investors to do that.
  That is a good investment for the country, if we choose wisely. But 
these companies will tell you they have to cross the valley of death, 
to get from development, where they have their prototype, until they 
can really commercialize it. And that is where Uncle Sam can happen.
  And we will get a lot more bang for our buck helping a battery 
company that will help us drive plug-in hybrids a few years from now 
than we will just giving it to a company that made $22 billion last 
year in the oil and gas markets.

                              {time}  2230

  That is a better deal for America. Mr. Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. Yes, if the gentleman would yield for another 
minute. I wanted to mention a couple of other ways we can help, that 
the government can help jump start these industries. One of them is 
indemnification of risk. We have unbeknownst to most Americans been the 
underwriters for the nuclear industry since its beginning via the 
Price-Anderson Act. In fact, there would never have been a nuclear 
plant, electrical generating plant built in this country if the 
taxpayer didn't underwrite the possible cost of a catastrophic 
accident.
  Now, if we took that same approach where we were willing to subsidize 
or underwrite alternative fuels or low head hydro plants, many of which 
are being held up, by the way, because of liability issues, that would 
be one way that we could help.
  Another way would be preferential purchasing, because the government, 
at all levels, buys a lot of vehicles. And if we put out a request for 
proposals saying that we want American companies to build vehicles that 
will either be plug-in hybrids or plug-in biodiesel hybrids, or just 
high efficiency vehicles that can be used in our fleets that the 
different departments of our government used, that would start the 
economy of scale working. The same way the wrist watches, digital wrist 
watches that used to cost $200 when they first came out came down to 
the point where they are $2 now, and computer chips that were bought in 
quantity by the Defense Department, or by the aerospace industry and 
NASA, drove down the cost to the point where now anybody can afford a 
laptop. It is that economy of scale that we can help get started.
  And as you said, it is not going to be something that we will have to 
underwrite or subsidize forever. But when you look at the number of 
years that we have been subsidizing the old technologies that may be 
19th or 20th century technology, we certainly now, in the 21st century 
can look at these renewables, domestic clean safe renewables and think 
about the same helping hand to get them off the ground.
  Mr. INSLEE. And I think it is important to point out the tremendous 
payback to our economy of relatively small Federal investments. Look at 
the computer industry. It grew by leaps and bounds because of the 
Apollo project. There is more computing power now on a wrist watch than 
there was in the original Apollo space vehicle because we developed 
computer based software systems as part of the Apollo project.
  Our medical device industry with these exotic materials largely came 
from the American space program, and these were relatively small 
investments.
  By the way, we spend less today on research and energy than we do in 
a month in Iraq by a factor of about 10, just to put this in 
perspective. We are talking about for a family's budget a lot of money, 
but for the Federal budget fairly small amounts of money that can have 
absolutely tremendous payoffs.
  I want to talk about one other thing that we think we need to help 
these companies too, though. If you want to start a company that will 
generate clean electricity with no carbon dioxide emissions today, you 
don't have a huge advantage because of a loophole in the law that a 
coal company has right now that is putting their carbon dioxide up the 
stack. That coal company that has what we call dirty coal, where you 
just burn it and you put your carbon dioxide, you dump it into the 
atmosphere, they have a huge loophole in the law because they can put 
as much CO2 into the air as they want the tape. They can't 
put as much sulfur dioxide, they can't put as much nitrogen oxide, they 
can't put as much particulate matter, but they can put as much 
CO2 into our atmosphere that you and I own jointly, with no 
charge. And the company that is going to make a clean industry, they 
don't get any benefit like that. We have to close that loophole. There 
has to be a way that there is some charge imposed on polluters who use 
our atmosphere to dump their carbon dioxide. And that is a loophole 
that needs to be closed to help these innovators as well to level the 
playing field.
  Now it is really interesting. We are getting some support for this 
idea from some unusual sources. Duke Energy, I think, the third or 
fourth largest electrical utility in the United States, they burn 
massive amounts of coal, I think 40 or 50 percent or more of their 
electricity is produced by coal. But they recognize the need to have 
what they call a cap and trade system that caps the amount of carbon 
dioxide going into the atmosphere. And in part they realize that, I 
think, because when you impose some cost on this pollution it inspires 
these new companies to be able to create new technologies that are 
clean. So we hope ultimately the U.S. Congress will adopt a measure 
that will level the playing field and not allow these dirty plants to 
continue to pollute our atmosphere for nothing. You know, when you and 
I go to the dump it costs us 25 bucks to dump our pickup load of junk 
at the dump. But a company that burns coal can put their carbon dioxide 
and just dump it into our atmosphere, gigatons for nothing. That needs 
to change
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Well, exactly. And the incentive that is being 
used to encourage a company to make the investment in some type of 
scrubber or some type of way of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide 
should be just that. It should be an incentive to do that and make that 
capital investment in that technology, versus not having to pay for it. 
There is no economic incentive to change. Obviously there is a huge 
environmental impact for all of us who are breathing the air and the 
entire impact on the climate and the environment. But those companies 
that continue to burn coal don't have an incentive. So if we flip it 
around and say, all right, there is going to be a charge, in order for 
you to do this there is going to be an expense associated with it, 
whereas if you invest, if you are going to have to pay something in, if 
you are going to invest in something that is good, good for the 
environment, good for you. You get some type of benefit out of it then 
it is a good swap for the company, and it is a particularly, it is 
exactly what we need in terms of our encouraging private investment in 
technology that will clean our air.
  Mr. INSLEE. And what we are finding is that more and more companies 
are actually accepting this idea, thinking it is a good idea because 
one, it will drive innovation. It will help us invent new technologies. 
But second, they realize this works. What we are talking about is a 
thing called a cap and trade

[[Page H667]]

system. We cap the amount of carbon dioxide that can go into the air 
and we allow polluting companies to bid and trade for the right to put 
that pollution in. It is the most economically efficient way to do it. 
And what the companies have discovered is that when we do this, it 
works. When we did with sulfur dioxide in the 1980s it cleaned up the 
air and it actually ended up helping the economy.
  Mr. HALL of New York. It created jobs.
  Mr. INSLEE. It created jobs in creating these scrubbers. It helped 
our health and it actually, if anything, increased the gross domestic 
product. So what we are seeing is that some of these visionary 
companies are embracing this idea and it makes sense.
  Today when I was talking to the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Paulson, I 
said, you know if we don't do this we are going to be wasting a lot of 
money. The Bush administration has supported a program, basically, it 
is a combined cycle way of using coal that you can make into hydrogen 
and sequester the carbon dioxide. It is called ``future gen.'' We are 
going to have a future way of generating coal based electricity. And I 
think it is a good idea to invest in that type of research to see if we 
can burn coal, take the carbon dioxide, stick it in the ground forever 
and we will have clean electricity. But the Bush administration is 
spending $750 million of taxpayer money to do that. But the plant will 
never, ever, ever be used or built if the Bush administration's 
policies succeed because they don't want to have any charge for carbon 
dioxide, any regulation on the amount of carbon dioxide going into the 
air. Well, if you are a coal company and you have got to invest money 
in this future gen program but you can put your carbon dioxide in the 
air for free, are you ever going to build this kind of machine that 
President Bush wants to build? It doesn't make any sense. So if we are 
going to do research in this new technology, it only makes sense also 
to have some regulation in the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into 
the atmosphere. Otherwise these technologies will be developed and 
never used. And that is not our goal, Mr. Hall.

  Mr. HALL of New York. I wanted to say that you prompted this thought. 
I am not against big corporations. I am not against corporations making 
a profit. In fact, a couple of the companies that are making the most 
innovation and putting the most investment into wind energy in our 
country right now are GE and Siemens. General Electric built the wind 
turbines that are in the Atlantic City wind farm that I mentioned 
earlier. Whether it is small start up companies working on alternative 
energy or whether it is existing oil companies or other utilities or 
big energy companies, the important thing to say, and this is the 
important thing, I think, to say to individuals also, and it is what I 
believe leadership should be doing, whether it is our President, 
whether it is Senators or whether it is us here on the floor of the 
House of Representatives, we need to tell our corporations and our 
citizens that it is patriotic to save energy, that it is patriotic, 
when you have a choice, to use the most domestic, clean, renewable form 
of energy that you can. It is patriotic to try to support, if you have 
a choice on the back of your utility bill, as I do in New York State, 
to check off that I want wind power, or to check off that I want hydro 
electric. You could choose the source of where your power comes from if 
you can afford to do it. And not everybody can, but those of us who are 
able to spend a couple of cents more per gallon for home heating fuel 
can get biodiesel. Well, right now it is no difference where I live. It 
is the same price for bio as it is for oil. But we need to think of 
this in terms of patriotism and national security and our national 
interest, and that you can't separate it from our foreign policy. You 
can't separate it from our economic well-being. You certainly can't 
separate it from our health. And I don't think you can separate it from 
our job future either. We need to have these industries start up and be 
developed here so we can compete. We can't afford to be in a situation 
we are in right now with hybrids, where I, who want to support, I got 
elected with union support, I am proud to say. Now I want to buy an 
American hybrid car that gets top mileage, and right now, the best 
mileage cars being sold in the United States are made in Japan. I don't 
believe, for a minute, that we can't compete and make a car that will 
get as good mileage or better as any other country in the world as 
their companies can. I think it is the choices that have been made, and 
the incentives that have been offered or the direction that has been 
given by government has been lacking. And I am proud to be a part of 
this 110th Congress, when we, tomorrow, will start down that road where 
we transfer the emphasis from the old to the new in terms of energy.
  Mr. INSLEE. I really appreciate your comment. A couple of comments, 
first off, about the value of business, big, little, medium, small, all 
sizes. There are so many companies today that are leading this 
revolution that we want to assist them. DuPont has done tremendous work 
on energy efficiency. 3M has done tremendous work on energy efficiency. 
British Petroleum, an oil and gas company, internally, because of their 
great leadership, reduced their own carbon dioxide emissions down to 
1990 levels. They thought it was going to take them 5 years. It took 
them 3 years. And they saved $300 million in energy because of doing 
just exactly what Mr. Hall is talking about of energy conservation. 
This is a green policy in two ways. Green environmentally and green for 
profit, and red, white and blue for America. So we have a lot of colors 
working for this policy.
  I want to mention one other thing about our auto industry. We need 
our auto industry to give consumers cars that we can drive to use 
multiple fuels. Right now we are all kind of slaves to gasoline. We 
don't really have a choice. We need cars that will burn gasoline or 
ethanol, like they have in Brazil. The cars in Brazil drive, almost all 
of them burn either gasoline or ethanol. And because of that Brazil is 
energy independent today because they are growing their own ethanol, 
which we can do in this country. But we need the auto industry to give 
us this choice, to give us cars that can burn gasoline or ethanol. Now 
you can make a car for about $85 that does that. That is all it costs. 
Almost nothing. That is what is costs to put tint in your glass. But we 
need the industry to do that. And you know, Congress may need to act, 
and I think it does need to act to get the industry to agree to do that 
rapidly. The second thing we need is these oil and gas companies to 
agree to put pumps in that will be ethanol pumps or biodiesel pumps.

                              {time}  2245

  That is not happening, because, unfortunately, those companies kind 
of only are selling gas right now, not biofuels. So we need to act to 
give consumers that ability to have at least a small percentage in the 
number of service stations that are going to give us that choice.
  Mr. KLEIN of Florida. To follow up, if, the whole idea of gas, miles 
per gallon, which people have a tendency to look at cars today and look 
at the miles per gallon, there have been a lot of games that have been 
played with that over the years, sport utility vehicles being viewed as 
trucks, therefore, not having the same limitations that most 
automobiles in the United States have.
  As the gentleman from New York mentioned, there are many cars made in 
other places around the world that have figured out how to make 40, 50 
miles per gallon, base car and some hybrids as well. I don't believe 
there is any inhibiting factor in the United States for our car 
companies to do the same.
  Now, do we need to give a little incentive? Maybe. I think we have 
all seen the statistics. For every couple of miles per gallon you 
increase in efficiency, we are dropping some amount of oils per barrel, 
gas that has to be imported from the Middle East or wherever every day. 
So there is a trade-off here.
  There is also this issue of importing, which is a current issue which 
we need to reduce. The technology is going to take a little bit of 
time. We need to do exactly what we are doing tomorrow and over the 
next number of weeks and months. But there are some immediate things we 
can do.
  I certainly would suggest to Americans on a patriotism basis, on a 
smart basis on the thinking of your children

[[Page H668]]

and your grandchildren and what's right, we will sacrifice. We are all 
in this together here. Let's make the right decisions, do what you can. 
It's not the right thing for everybody. But to the extent that you can 
buy a car that gets better gas mileage and focus on that cars that 
maybe use regular instead of premium. Those are all choices that people 
make. Everybody is in this together. Let us make some smart decisions.
  Mr. INSLEE. We know this can be done because in the 1970s and early 
1980s we increased our gas mileage by 60 percent in 8 years. If we had 
simply continued on that path with the same rate of improvement, we 
would be free of Saudi Arabian oil today. We need to get back on that 
path of energy efficiency. We can do that. We can start tomorrow. It 
will be a good day for energy revolution tomorrow. I am looking forward 
to it.
  Mr. Hall do you have any closing comments here? We are about ready to 
wrap it up.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I think you have said it all, Congressman. I am 
happy to be here and proud to be here as part of this 110th. This is 
part of our taking our own future back, we as a country, I am talking 
about all the citizens of this country.
  I think the same way Congressman Klein mentioned the moon shot, I do 
remember that, I am a couple years older than you are, and there was a 
huge lift in the psyche of this country, because even though President 
Kennedy didn't live to see the day that we landed a man on the moon, it 
was done in 9 years when he said we could do it in 10.
  So our ingenuity and our industry and our creativity took hold, and 
we accomplished the goal. You could just sense this palpable lifting of 
the weight off the shoulders of Americans on the street. I mean, people 
you knew, that we had done this.
  The day that we harness all these alternatives, and harness the power 
of conservation and efficiency so that we can say no thanks, turn that 
tanker around, send it back to the Middle East, we don't need that oil, 
that day, when that day arrives, you will see the same feeling of 
weight lifting off the shoulders of the American people and a feeling 
of self-sufficiency and of pride and of being in control of our own 
destiny again. That is really something to look forward to.
  Mr. INSLEE. When that day arrives they will write a sequel to Tom 
Wolfe's book about the Mercury 7 program, and he called it ``The Right 
Stuff.'' Tomorrow Congress is going to have the right stuff. We are 
going to do a good energy policy.

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