[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 83 (Tuesday, May 20, 2008)]
[House]
[Pages H4298-H4304]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               INVEST IN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE ACT OF 2008

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hare). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Lampson) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight in strong support of a piece 
of legislation that I recently introduced, H.R. 6067. It's called the 
Invest in Energy Independence Act.
  Our Nation is at a crossroads, as we have been hearing tonight and on 
other of these Special Orders over the last several days and weeks. We 
know that we have a serious problem when it comes to our energy 
security. We rely too heavily, obviously, on foreign sources of energy, 
and we haven't done enough to promote the clean domestic energy sources 
that we have available right here in our backyards.
  It's going to take every effort for us to find a whole multitude of 
sources of energy in order to address this energy crisis that we're 
facing as a Nation. I am hoping that we will not be shortsighted and 
think that only one particular area is the only solution to our 
problem; it's not.
  The Invest in Energy Independence Act of 2008 takes a giant step 
forward in remedying this problem through responsible investment of 
over $1 billion in our energy future. This legislation before us today 
is vital in helping us become more secure in the world because it helps 
us develop our own energy resources in an environmentally responsible 
manner.
  The Invest in Energy Independence Act invests heavily in domestic 
renewable energy resources such as wind, solar and geothermal, and it 
also helps us use the energy that we have more efficiently through key 
energy efficiency and weatherization measures.
  Additionally, the Energy Security Fund established in the legislation 
will also fund carbon capture and storage technologies, which will help 
us significantly reduce future greenhouse gas emissions.
  This legislation funds these vital projects through two main sources. 
First, it directs into the Energy Security Fund revenue from the prior 
sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that is currently 
unused in a Department of Energy account. And secondly, it modernizes 
the strategic oil reserve by exchanging 70 million barrels, 10 percent, 
of more expensive light crude oil from the SPR, Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve, for 70 million barrels of cheaper, heavy crude oil in a step 
that will allow our stockpile of crude to more accurately reflect the 
capabilities of our domestic crude refineries.
  Because the crude oil exchange will raise funds that will be set 
aside, about $84 million or so, for acquiring additional oil in the 
future, this legislation will actually increase the total inventory 
level of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without the need for 
additional appropriations, further strengthening our energy supply 
against potential disruptions.
  Now, this is a responsible and thoughtful manner in which to fund the 
most important energy projects throughout our country. By using funds 
from the past sale and future exchange of oil from the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve to invest in clean, domestic energy projects, oil 
from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve will do exactly what it is 
intended: increase domestic energy supplies for the United States and 
secure the country from potential supply disruptions.
  And so I hope I have many Members who will join me. There are already 
more than 30 who have agreed to cosponsor this legislation with me. I 
believe that it will strengthen our Nation's energy security by 
increasing domestic supplies and by modernizing our Strategic Petroleum 
Reserve.
  One of the things that I know that has happened over the last several 
years is that there has been a dramatic decline in the amount of 
resources specifically budgeted for research for the Department of 
Energy. Their budget has declined by 85 percent in the last 30 years. 
Well, here is the time when we are in greatest need to be looking for 
every opportunity we can to learn of new ways that we can expand our 
sources of energy; yet we seem to be pulling in those opportunities to 
create those resources.
  Those are the kinds of things that I think that it's critically 
important for our Science Committee, for all of us in Congress, to be 
looking at. It's what I have worked on as the chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment and I look forward to continuing 
to work on this legislation.
  Well, we have an honorable gentleman, John Hall, who is also one of 
the cosponsors of this legislation, and I welcome him in joining us 
tonight to come and talk about this legislation, and I would yield to 
Mr. Hall.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Lampson, and Mr. 
Speaker, it's an honor again to be here on the floor of the House of 
Representatives, but it's kind of another sad moment to think that the 
price of oil went to an unthinkable level again today, cresting over 
$129 per barrel.
  Gas prices have more than doubled since 2001, and today, the average 
gas price in my State of New York is over $4. Oil dependence has become 
an untenable burden on our economy and a threat to our national 
security.
  Skyrocketing gas prices we see climbing each day threaten to break 
family budgets that are already being devoured by the price of food, 
health care, higher education and consumer goods.
  Breaking the grip of OPEC and Big Oil is something that our country 
must do to thrive and to survive in the 21st century. It's a big job 
that will take some time, and I'm proud to be here tonight to discuss 
one of the innovative solutions that the majority and this Congress is 
working on, the Invest in Energy Independence Act, which I'm proud to 
be a cosponsor of, and I thank my friend for cosponsoring and offering 
that bill.
  I was talking to another Member at the back of the body when we were 
taking votes I think a few days ago and talking about this very thing. 
And you came up and said I happen to have a bill that addresses this 
problem of the Strategic Reserve absorbing 70,000 barrels a day 
over and over, day after day, taking them off the market, and creating 
that much more demand which is helping to drive up the price of oil.

  This bill creates a win-win scenario for the American taxpayer. By 
redirecting through the release of oil from the SPR and restructuring 
its stockpile, the bill would help to put oil supply on the market to 
quell prices at the pump in the short-term, and this would also result 
in revenue to the Federal Government that does not come from increased 
taxes, which could be used to capitalize a fiscally responsible result 
and make sure that we take a more permanent action to end our oil 
addiction. We can't, as many of us have said, drill our way out of our 
problems.
  The bill would invest that revenue in innovative research to develop 
clean, domestic sources of energy to power our economy. Ending our 
dependence on foreign oil has to be a top national priority, and to do 
so, we have to use every tool at our disposal.
  Until recently, this administration has been violating the 
fundamental principle of buy low and sell high by taking oil off the 
market to fill the SPR at a time when prices were breaking new records 
and supplies were tight. Smart management of the SPR along the lines 
called for in Mr. Lampson's bill can make the reserve a powerful weapon 
in our battle against foreign oil dependence, and I strongly support 
you in this measure.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Before you leave, let me just ask a question.
  Surely, you heard some of the presentations made by our colleagues 
earlier talking about the need to increase drilling. What are your 
feelings about what these needs for our Nation are? Clearly, we must 
produce everything that we can produce, but isn't there more to the 
picture than just drilling as a solution?
  Mr. HALL of New York. If the gentleman would yield?
  Mr. LAMPSON. I would yield.
  Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you for asking that question.
  If you read the comments by T. Boone Pickens on the front page of the

[[Page H4299]]

New York Times and other newspapers and magazines recently, he, one of 
the original oil tycoons and more successful ones, has said that he's 
more excited now about wind power than he is about any oil field he 
ever discovered.
  Now, all people might not share his excitement. I talked to Ted 
Turner, who's been a media mogul and then head of record companies, 
broadcasting companies, Time Warner/AOL, I believe. I remember him back 
when he was sailing America's Cup yachts. He's certainly been around 
the world for a while. But today he said the thing he's most excited 
about as an investor and as a businessman is solar power.
  And I see these men and women who have experience and have been 
observing commodities and observing economies and observing the way the 
world works and the direction it's going looking not just at drilling. 
I mean, obviously we're not going to get out of our dependence or our 
use of oil or liquid fuels anytime soon, especially for aviation.
  As a member of the Aviation Subcommittee, I'm keenly aware of the 
fact that we might be able to move to electric vehicles, to hybrid, 
gas-electric or ethanol-electric or biodiesel hybrid, plug-in hybrid 
vehicles, et cetera, and combine these other technologies on the 
ground. But when we're talking about aircraft, especially I would say 
our Air Force, our military aircraft, we need to be able to develop and 
conserve liquid fuels and liquid petroleum fuels for those purposes and 
not burn them unnecessarily on the ground that we could use other 
technologies for.
  So I would say that I agree to a point and I disagree to another 
point. The other problem with petroleum-based, carbon-based, fossil 
fuel technologies is that they're also emitting carbon dioxide in the 
atmosphere and accentuating the kind of climate change that we've seen.
  I would say climate change resonates more with people than global 
warming, especially on a day like today in Washington where it's cool 
for late May. But we've seen the cyclone in Myanmar. We've seen the 
almost biblical flooding in Arkansas and Missouri and parts of our 
Midwest. My district in upstate New York has seen three 50-year floods 
in the last 5 years. We've seen Hurricane Katrina. We have seen 
droughts in the South and wildfires in Florida right now. We've seen 
the last couple of summers devastating fire seasons in the Western 
States and the Rocky States.
  So, it's not just that the climate will be getting warmer and the 
glaciers or sea ice in the Arctic are disappearing but that the 
extremes of all kinds of weather, be they rain events or drought 
events, be they hot spells or cold spells, be they low pressure systems 
that turn into bigger tornados or bigger hurricanes or cyclones, that's 
what the computer models project. And the more we burn oil, the more we 
push ourselves down that road.
  So, it helps us in a number of ways to look at these alternatives. 
First of all, for domestic, they are not sending our money overseas by 
the billions, especially borrowed money that we are getting from 
countries like China or Japan or other countries we're already hugely 
in debt to. They don't cause asthma and emphysema and acid rain and oil 
spills. They don't cause us to possibly be drawn into wars in unstable 
countries in unstable parts of the world that just happen to have oil.
  So it's a win-win-win-win situation. Whether or not you believe that 
the climate is changing, the fact of the matter is if you can create 
jobs and create new technologies and new industries here in the United 
States, get us out of our balance of trade deficit and make the 
atmosphere cleaner at the same time, I'm happy.

                              {time}  2000

  And I think a lot of Americans would be happy, too. I think it solves 
so many problems that it's clearly the direction our policy should be 
moving in. And I yield back.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Reclaiming my time, so your point is very well made. You 
can't ignore the fact that we need to continue to rely on fossil fuels 
as we transition. And we must actually do what the United States Army 
told us to do in 1945, in a book they published on May 1, 1945, when 
they told us that it was necessary for this Nation to diversify away 
from our use of fossil fuels. And they told us how. And much of what 
they said then and much of what I believe our committees have said and 
what I believe this country is doing, and even the businesses, 
certainly like the smart people like T. Boone Pickens, who are looking 
at these diverse activities that we should be involved with that will 
give us new sources of energy.
  We include in the legislation that we're talking about tonight 
significant funding for ARPA-E, which is advance research projects. And 
we talk about wind, solar, weatherization efficiencies, marine/
hydrokinetic energy research, industrial energy efficiency. We have 
already passed many of these pieces of legislation as authorizing, and 
now we're looking for funding for it. Building energy efficiency, 
energy storage, batteries. We must find new ways to hold much of the 
energy that we are creating regardless of the manner in which we are 
creating the electricity to do it. Geothermal, carbon capture and 
storage, clearly it's a must if we're going to use some of the coal 
resources in this country. Natural gas, clean burning fuel, all of 
these are included in this legislation to be funded with the kinds of 
projects that will give us a much greater, diverse energy background. 
More energy storage, Smart Grid, and advanced vehicles research.
  So I'm proud of the fact that we have so many people come together to 
bring us these kinds of projects that have already gone through, passed 
by this Congress. And I would like to know about the things that you 
have been specifically involved with, perhaps things that have been 
done in the State of New York, where you represent, very ably, the 
people in your congressional district.
  I know that, for example, Texas has spent a great deal of time on 
wind energy. Arizona has spent a great deal of time on solar energy. 
Are there things that the State of New York is contributing to this mix 
of how we diversify our energy sources?
  Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  In New York, in my district, as you suggest, there are a number of 
very exciting developments going on. We have a private business in 
Orange County, New York, which is currently taking all the solid waste 
on a pilot program, municipal solid waste--garbage, trash--not burning 
it, as the old incineration model would have us do, but separating it, 
pulling out the recyclables, pulling out the batteries and the cans of 
insecticide and the toxic substances that might be considered to be 
household hazardous waste, which, if you were to burn them, they would 
cause dioxin and heavy metals to go up the stack, and basically 
pollutants that can harm us and our children. Those things get pulled 
out and recycled. And what's left after the magnetic field pulls up the 
ferrous metals and magnetic metals and the shaker grate drops out the 
dirt and the stones, and so on, you're left with a combination of paper 
waste, wood waste, food waste, agriculture waste, all of which is 
gasified with hot sand as a catalyst under a patented process. And then 
that gas is used to spin a turbine and send, I believe, a couple of 
megawatts it is that they're generating out into the grid.
  But the interesting thing about it is that the global warming gas 
emissions, the greenhouse gas emissions from this process are 75 
percent less than if they put the same material in a landfill, which is 
what the town of Montgomery was doing before and what cities like New 
York City are doing. They're trucking municipal solid wastes, since the 
Fresh Kills landfill closed on Staten Island, to other States and 
buying space in landfills that are willing to accept it. And it's not 
cheap, especially with diesel and the price that it costs now, it's not 
cheap to send a roll-off truck with trash in it--or thousands of them a 
day--from a city like New York out to Ohio or Pennsylvania or wherever 
the latest landfill is, and then coming back empty, burning diesel fuel 
the whole way and sending those emissions into the air, too.
  And when that material in the landfill decomposes, when the plant and 
vegetable matter decomposes, it creates methane, which is released 
through those J-shaped vents. If you drive past a landfill in your 
travels and you see those vents like upside-down

[[Page H4300]]

Js, what they're releasing into the atmosphere is methane. Methane is 
20 times worse than carbon dioxide in terms of its greenhouse gas 
global warming impact.
  So here's one idea, one project that can produce electricity, that 
can produce ethanol by the thousands of gallons, that can strip 
hydrogen, which is 48 percent of the gas that they produce out to 
charge hydrogen fuel cells, and it gets rid of municipal solid waste at 
75 percent reduction in the greenhouse gas emission. So, very inventive 
project.
  And I would say, at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of not 
just the size of the operation, but the funding that came to play, 
Newburgh High School in Newburgh, New York, Orange County, on the west 
bank of the Hudson, has a solar racing team which built a solar-powered 
car. They came to one of our workshops we did in the district on solar 
energy, it was packed--as all of our alternative energy forums are 
packed by people wanting to know what they can do. But the kids on the 
solar racing team included kids from the BOCES program, who are on the 
vocational track. And they knew how to weld and how to put together a 
car that would not fall apart on the road. And they included the 
advanced placement math students, who knew how to calculate how many 
square inches of photovoltaic cells they needed in order to generate 
the watts necessary so that they could power this vehicle, and the 
battery capacity.

  And it looked about the size of this table here. It's actually an 
oval shape, maybe a little bit bigger than this, like a soapbox derby 
racer. And the student who drove it crouched down inside and had a 
little windshield in front of him to keep the bugs out of his face. And 
they won, or actually tied for first place, in a race from Houston, 
Texas to Newburgh, New York. Two thousand miles of this country they 
traveled with a top speed of 55 miles per hour. And when they showed up 
at our forum wearing ``Solar Racing Team'' hats and ``Solar Racing 
Team'' t-shirts and showing a video and the slide show of their car 
rolling across the highways from Texas to New York, the adults in the 
audience were so excited I think it woke up the little kid in them. 
They could hear about all the well-funded, high-science, high-
technology things, but to see that these kids, with virtually no 
resources--the teacher adviser from the school was not allowed to touch 
the vehicle, it was entirely built by the kids. And the fact that they 
were high school students and were able to do this, even on a test, a 
display pilot project kind of scale, to build a vehicle that would do 
2,000 miles, that would reach speeds of 55 miles per hour powered 
entirely on solar power and storing that power in batteries, the 
adults, as they were leaving, were asking me, why can't Detroit do 
this? And I answered, well, I think they can, but they're not.
  And what we're trying to do through this bill, among other things, is 
to provide the incentives--and tomorrow, by the way, the House will 
pass sweeping tax incentives to provide not just corporations, but 
consumers, as well as businesses, with extended incentives for hybrid 
plug-ins for wind, solar, biofuels and marine energy.
  And I know that there has been great concern around the country, and 
I've heard it from people in my district, about these renewable energy 
tax credits being extended. And what we're trying to do by doing that 
is to make it possible, not just for students in a high school, but for 
those who run our automobile manufacturing companies to be able to 
build cars that use these new technologies.
  And with that, I yield back to the gentleman.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Well, you're so very right. And the ideas are not 
necessarily Democratic and they're not necessarily Republican ideas, 
they are American ideas.
  We've got the knowledge. We've got the wherewithal. It's a matter of 
making sure that they have the opportunity to put that together. Too 
often, of late, we seem to have been pushing too many of our solutions 
to the political extremes, and we've got to find our way back toward 
the middle. And we think that this is a piece of legislation that does 
that. It recognizes that fossil fuels, much of what our colleagues 
earlier this evening were talking about as far as drilling activities, 
is not something that needs to be taken off the table. But at the same 
time, they can't tell us that the ideas that we're coming forward with 
are ideas that need to be taken off the table. We must look for 
diversity. We must look for balance.
  We must look to encourage those kids who built that solar car and had 
the great success no differently than the college student that I spent 
some time with today, and I drove his hybrid vehicle. It was a group of 
universities who competed against each other to see if they could take 
regular vehicles and convert them into significantly greater, increased 
energy-efficient vehicles. The one that I saw today happened to have 
been a hybrid diesel engine that was placed into a General Motors SUV. 
I drove the car. It gets in the mid-30 range of miles per gallon of 
fuel. It meets all of the standards for emissions in our country.
  So clearly, again, if college students can do it, if high school 
students can do it, the minds that have made the United States of 
America great are clearly here; they need the assistance to make sure 
that their ideas come to fruition and that we get to put them into the 
market.
  There is a company that I'm working with in my congressional district 
in Texas who had the idea that they could make an external combustion 
engine. They're capturing it by creating a fire box that they attach to 
the outside of this engine. They are capturing the energy that is 
released in the combustion process and piping it into an engine, 
causing the compression activity to continue to the point where it 
causes the engine to move. There is great interest in this because it 
is twice as efficient as an internal combustion engine. Again, a good 
idea, one that was not a partisan idea, it was one that was developed 
by some guys that I have no idea what their political affiliations or 
interests are, but they're concerned about the United States of America 
and concerned about what we're going to be able to do to solve the 
energy crisis that we face.
  This bill is intended to try to give them the encouragement, to give 
them the resources to make sure that we are doing everything that we 
possibly can to expand our opportunities to give greater sources of 
energy to all of us for our coming decades because we're clearly going 
to need them.
  If we choose to spend all of our time--and I am certainly not the 
least bit concerned about drilling, I think that we must be continuing 
to produce fossil fuels and to use them as we have been, hopefully much 
cleaner than what we have been doing, but clearly that is only one part 
of this big picture that we have to address.
  I want to talk for a minute about the renewable energy funding and 
just to make a point or two about the important strides in funding 
clean, renewable and, most importantly, domestic energy sources without 
impacting the Federal budget.
  The Invest in Energy Independence Act, which is what we are talking 
about here tonight, provides $110 million for renewable energy research 
and development projects that include wind, solar, wave, geothermal, 
and hydrogen projects. The legislation pays for these projects. 
Clearly, this is something we're concerned about. We have PAYGO rules, 
pay-as-you-go. If we're going to put something new into our budget, 
then we must come up with the money to do it. This is a good way to do 
it.
  So this legislation pays for these projects--and many other domestic 
research and development projects as well--through the modernization of 
the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and use of available funds from prior 
sales of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The legislation 
modernizes the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by exchanging about 70 
million barrels of more expensive light crude oil from the Strategic 
Petroleum Reserve for an equivalent amount of less expensive heavy 
crude oil, a cost differential that ranges from about $12 a barrel up 
to about $18; most recently it's been about $15 per barrel. This 
exchange of light crude for heavy crude is necessary to have our 
petroleum reserve more accurately reflect the capabilities of our 
domestic refineries.
  The Invest in Energy Independence Act is crucial to help move us away 
from our dependence on petroleum and

[[Page H4301]]

shift our use to affordable and reliable renewable energy sources that 
are available right here in the United States.
  For instance, the legislation will invest an additional $15 million 
in wind energy, helping us to develop the next generation of wind 
turbines that can generate clean energy in virtually every corner of 
the country, even in those areas where there is relatively low wind 
speeds.
  The bill also provides an additional $30 million through the 
Department of Energy for solar energy programs to conduct research, 
development, demonstration, and deployment of solar energy 
technologies. Funding these will also be available for our public 
education campaign on the virtues of clean domestic solar energy.
  Well, for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in coastal 
areas, the bill invests $30 million in marine and hydrokinetic energy. 
The majority of Americans live in close proximity to oceans, and this 
legislation will help fund the next generation of clean wave energy to 
power our homes and our businesses.

                              {time}  2015

  The Invest in Energy Independence Act also provides funding for 
geothermal energy projects. The legislation funds $30 million in 
geothermal research and development activities at the National 
Renewable Energy Laboratory.
  And, finally, the bill advances hydrogen research and development by 
funding the Department of Energy's H-Prize program to reward 
researchers who are working to make our hydrogen economy a reality. The 
H-Prize program was authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, but 
Congress hasn't funded it yet. Through this bill the program will 
receive $5 million that can be used to administer the program and 
reward successful researchers.
  So, again, we're looking for our colleagues to come join us in the 
Invest in Energy Independence Act. It's these kinds of things that I 
believe will provide us with the funds necessary for clean, domestic, 
and renewable energy sources. That's what's going to give us the 
balance, the diversity, clearly broadening our whole range of sources 
of energy that we have available to us. And that's what's going to be 
the real solution to the energy crisis in the United States, making 
sure that we do the kinds of things that have always made this Nation 
great, developing the technology, encouraging our people to dream big 
dreams, and then make those dreams become reality.
  But we're not going to do it if we continue to cut the research 
budgets of the Department of Energy or to discourage companies from 
putting money into research on their own. We need to find ways that we 
can extend the incentives that we are giving to many of these companies 
and have for a long time to try to jump-start new industries. I hope 
that we can find the wherewithal to make sure that we can look for all 
of these aspects. At the same time, we're going to give consumers a 
short-term benefit because we believe it will change the price of oil 
and consequently the price of gasoline at the pump who are feeling that 
pain. And, secondly, it gives us the longer-term benefit of increasing 
our access to alternative sources of energy.
  Mr. HALL of New York. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. LAMPSON. I yield.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I thank you for your comments. And I would add 
to what you say, as I look at $100 million for ARPA-E, including $50 
million for university research, $15 million for wind--and 
congratulations to you and the State of Texas on passing California in 
becoming the number one wind energy State in the country with more 
installed wind capacity than any of the other 49 States. By the way, I 
have to thank our President, George W. Bush, who signed a renewable 
energy standard when he was Governor of Texas, and that's partly why 
the wind is being exploited in Texas to the extent it is. I only wish 
that he would change his mind and sign the same renewable energy 
standard for the entire country now that he is President of the entire 
country.
  But I look at this and the $30 million for solar and the $100 million 
for weatherization, et cetera, et cetera, and you know what I think of? 
Jobs. I think of jobs because when you put $100 million into 
weatherization of low-income housing, and I'm speaking as one who used 
to live in New York City, although I now live in Dutchess County in the 
Hudson Valley, there are so many old buildings in every city in this 
country that are poorly insulated, that have no storm windows or storm 
doors, that are leaky, that are leaking cool air in the summer when 
they're being air conditioned and leaking heat during the winter when 
there's actually a heating unit running, and what are you hiring? 
You're hiring trade people. You're hiring sheet metal workers. You're 
hiring carpenters. You're hiring installers. And in the process, you're 
saving barrels of oil or kilowatts, and a barrel of oil saved or a 
kilowatt saved has less environmental impact than any way you can 
generate a new barrel or a new kilowatt. So it's the cheapest way of 
getting a barrel or a kilowatt, and it also has the least environmental 
impact. So I'm very happy about the weatherization component of this.
  Marine/hydrokinetic, we in New York are aware of the work that's been 
done recently by Verdant, Inc., a company that has been doing a test on 
six hydroturbines that are running below water in the East River, east 
of Roosevelt Island. As Long Island Sound, the western half, drains out 
through East River, under the Throgs Neck and the Whitestone and the 
Triborough Bridge, alongside the UN down the East River past Manhattan 
Island and through New York and out under the Verrazano-Narrows, half 
of Long Island Sound, millions of tons of water every day twice going 
out into the ocean and then back in through the harbor again. And 
that's what's being done by the action of the moon's gravitational 
effect on the ocean. And the fact that we are not harnessing that is 
just absurd. And their biggest problem, Verdant, Inc., in terms of 
putting in a hydrokinetic-generating station that use these turbines, 
there's so much force at work in the East River that it kept breaking 
the blades off the turbines, and they had to use titanium instead of 
steel and lessen the pitch so that there wasn't quite so much force on 
them to keep the turbines intact. Now, they're going back in, I 
believe, this year with a second round of more highly refined 
generators to test it again, but it's obvious that the power is there, 
whether it be wave action or whether it be tidal action or any of the 
other renewables that we are talking about. And if we can transition 
ourselves to these with whatever liquid fuels like, for instance, 
ethanol, I know that there are some problems with ethanol, but there's 
a surplus right now of ethanol in this country. I checked on the 
Internet last week. I just did a little Internet search and found that 
it's selling, as of the middle of last week, for $1.97 a gallon. That's 
half the cost of gasoline.
  We had somebody call our office in Upstate New York, in Carmel, 
Putnam County, a woman constituent, who said, ``I'm so excited. I just 
bought a flex-fuel vehicle. Where can I get some flex-fuel?'' And my 
staff had to tell her there are two pumps in all of New York where you 
can buy flex-fuel. Well, West Point which is in my district, the United 
States Military Academy at West Point, where, I'm proud to say, my 
nephew is a cadet, just announced at our Board of Visitors meeting last 
week that they are planning to put in a 5,000 gallon underground tank 
for ethanol so that they can carry flex-fuel E-85 in the motor pool and 
at the commissary and start with a big quantity that's going to be used 
by that community of faculty and graduates and West Pointers who still 
live around the academy.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Reclaiming my time, on that point, I know there is other 
research that is presently going on specifically to facilitate our 
military activities that would involve a number of alternative fuels. I 
know of a specific project that is being tested right now with the use 
of Air Force turbine generators to use biofuels, specifically animal 
fats as well as some of the oils that come from some of the nonedible 
plants that are growing. These are the kinds of things that are going 
to make our country continue to be great. We need to encourage those 
activities as much as we possibly can.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. HALL of New York. I don't know how much time we have left, my 
friend, but I just wanted to say once again

[[Page H4302]]

that I support the Invest in Energy Independence Act and am doing my 
best to convince more Members of this body on both sides of the aisle 
to support it. I believe that it will help to ease market tensions. It 
will help to keep the price of gasoline from rising too much higher and 
hopefully eventually to bring it back to more affordable levels by 
providing competition with other kinds of fuels and other kinds of 
energy.
  And when that day arrives, Mr. Lampson, when that day arrives that we 
can tell the Saudis or the Russians or whichever country it is that's 
shipping imported oil into this country ``No thank you, you can turn 
your tanker around and send it somewhere else,'' that day a big weight 
will lift off the shoulders of America, off the American public. And I 
believe it will be a moment similar to the day when we first landed on 
moon.
  Because I was a kid when Sputnik was launched, and I remember the 
feeling of this thing. It was beeping overhead, that the Russians had 
gotten to it first. And it didn't really do anything other than beep. 
But the fact it was there above us was symbolic of, we thought and we 
probably were right, a technological breakthrough that another country 
had made that put them for the time being ahead of us in that field. 
And I believe that we can't afford to let Japan or China or any other 
country get more of a lead in energy than the one that exists now. And 
the day that we are once again able to throw our shoulders back, hold 
our heads high, and say that we can fuel our own economy and our own 
industry and our own recreation and our own family's trips to and from 
work and from school and so on without depending on some other country 
that might have policies and human rights or other things that we don't 
like but we have to sort of bow to them and ignore that aspect of 
foreign policy because we need something that they have, that will be 
not just energy independence, it will be independence.

  We're talking about sovereignty here, and I think that will be a day 
that Americans together, regardless of party or no party at all, if 
they're paying attention, all Americans on that day will be proud to be 
Americans. Not that we aren't proud now, but we will be proud of an 
accomplishment that will be uniquely American and something that I 
believe we will accomplish and that we have to look forward to.
  Mr. LAMPSON. Beautifully stated and I totally agree.
  You made the comment that you would hope that the President would 
sign into law the work that we would do whether it's wind or some of 
the other alternative energies, and I truly believe that he will when 
he sees that this Congress is choosing to work together. When we start 
putting aside the blame from one to the other and that we know that we 
are all in one boat in this country right now and our boat has a hole 
in it, if we don't all start bailing water together, we are going to 
sink and we will sink together. But we clearly have the knowledge. We 
have the intellect. We have the future with our children who are doing 
excellent things in their educational programs. We have to present them 
with the dreams and the wherewithal to make those dreams come true. 
It's exactly what we did following Sputnik in 1957. We responded with a 
resounding response to the challenge of President John Kennedy at the 
time.
  And I have to agree with you. Our technological leadership will be 
there. If we will but make these things available to our young people, 
they'll solve our problems for us, and this bill certainly does that.
  China and India are examples as well as Japan and a number of other 
places are, in my opinion, the beeps of Sputnik of today. Japan put a 
satellite not too long ago in orbit around the moon. China has set its 
goals to have a colony on the moon before the United States even 
returns to the moon. And we are going into a period soon where we won't 
even have the ability to launch a human into space because we're going 
to have a gap of 5 years from the time that we end the use of space 
shuttle in 2010 to the time that we have the constellation project up 
and running in 2015. That is a question of national security, in my 
estimation, no different than the question of energy security for our 
country. So we have got to maintain our technological advantage. That's 
what's going to help us maintain the standard of living. It's what's 
going to help us continue to encourage young people to stay in school 
to learn the math and the science and the engineering kinds of courses 
that will maintain the path that America traveled to its greatness and 
will make sure that we have that same greatness well into our future.
  And I see that the gentlewoman from Houston, Texas, has joined us, 
Sheila Jackson-Lee, and I yield to her.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I thank the distinguished gentleman from 
Houston, the distinguished chairman. And I am delighted to be here with 
the distinguished congressman from New York (Mr. Hall).
  I really appreciated listening to the diversity of the debate on 
energy, from the far northern parts of New York to the gulf States of 
Texas and, I might add, Louisiana because we have a number of Louisiana 
residents, of course, now making their home in Texas, and many of them 
happen to have worked in the energy industry, of course, and came to 
Houston because of the difficulty and the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina 
and then ultimately Hurricane Rita.
  We know, interestingly enough, Mr. Hall, and I am sort of 
sidestepping here for a moment, that a number of rigs in the gulf 
suffered the consequences of Hurricane Katrina. And I think we should 
go on record to note, because I happen to believe in a diverse energy 
policy, that I am going to say all of them, and I have not heard a 
counter to this, managed to withstand Hurricane Katrina without an oil 
leak. And I only say that to say that those of us in the gulf have 
experienced off of our shores, and again we speak specifically to 
offshore work off of the gulf, environmentally safe drilling. And I say 
that because as we listen to those of us who come from different parts 
of the country, I think we can get an energy policy that fits us all.
  I have listened to your discussion. I don't think that we necessarily 
need to intrude on the Outer Continental Shelf. Off the East Coast 
there is opposition. Maybe in time. I know there is opposition off the 
coast of Florida. There is opposition off the coast of California. I 
heard you talk about hydropower that works or would work very well. I 
guess I'm reminded of Niagara Falls. I got a chance to see that to see 
the power of water and energy that could be utilized and as well the 
energy that maybe I'm more familiar with.

                              {time}  2030

  That is why I think the thoughtful legislation of my good friend from 
Texas, the Invest in Energy Independence Act, H.R. 6067, which I am 
going to encourage all of my colleagues to join, and let me tell you 
why, Mr. Lampson. I think you really hit the nail on the head. I think 
we did this together when I was on the Science Committee and you were 
on the Science Committee when we tried to advocate for NASA. We tried 
to sell it not so much as it's a program to send people into space, but 
how it helps our daily lives.
  Many people don't know what the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is all 
about. What is that foreign entity, SPR? Is it some kind of unfortunate 
disease? But it is an existing entity that sits amongst us. Really, I 
don't think this administration has taken advantage of it because I 
don't think it would offend our environmentalists, our colleagues from 
California, our colleagues from Arizona, our colleagues from New York, 
because it is existing petroleum.
  Of course, our Speaker has been more eloquent or most eloquent about 
releasing the resources from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help 
us, and that is barrels of oil that are sitting there in case of 
danger, in case of terrorist acts, in case of an attack against the 
United States, we would have it.
  But what Mr. Lampson has determined is that this is filled up with 
light and medium crude, and our refineries, I think some 36 of our 
refineries out of 74, deal with heavy crude. And so part of your bill 
suggests that we put heavy crude in.
  Let me tell you why this is important. That is really the bottom line 
of why our immediate problems of dealing

[[Page H4303]]

with gasoline prices. It's all about supply and demand, it's all about 
refineries being old and antiquated and can't get their product out. 
That is one of the pieces of it. I don't want to suggest that I don't 
believe in conservation or diversity, because I'm going to get to that 
point. But having been an oil and gas lawyer for a period of time, I 
realize that we have got to look through a broad lens. And part of the 
problem is the opposition that we have given to building refineries.
  But it's not only the problem of the United States Congress. Frankly, 
Mr. Lampson, it is the problem of tunnel vision energy industry that 
gives the industry a bad name, the oil and gas industry, that really 
has not sat down with this Congress or opened up options. Whenever we 
talk about the price per barrel of oil or talk about high gasoline 
prices, our good friends in the energy industry, particularly oil and 
gas, do tunnel vision. They say, I've got mine; you get yours. I've got 
my high profits, I've got my shareholders happy with me, and I am not 
going to look at any idea.
  I think the Energy Independence Act causes them to look at other 
ideas but also may draw them out because I don't know how long 
Americans are going to continue to accept these accelerating prices. I 
saw a scenario on CNN that really said that we might be paying $8 or $9 
or $10.
  This, I hope, is a legislative initiative that really calls our 
energy barons to sit down and say, Let me listen to Mr. Hall from New 
York about hydro. Maybe my company is named energy for the very fact 
that it should be diverse. That the energy industry should be investing 
in hydro. You are giving the opportunity through utilizing the $574 
million or $584 million that is now in the Department of Energy's 
account. I don't know how many people know we have got $584 million 
sitting around and moms and pops who are trying to go back and forth to 
schools or trying to get to work or trying to get on vacation for the 
free days that they can, drive to grandma's house, because that's about 
all the vacation people will be getting this summer, probably, are 
sitting around in an account.
  And so this bill, I believe, is important because it throws the onus 
back on thinking people about how we can be creative in energy. What it 
does, of course, is ARPA, which deals with R&D, but Texas is the near 
capital of wind energy. We don't even get touted for that. No one 
celebrates the fact that we have got wind energy. I sat down with an 
energy company, a wind energy company, and let me not speak too 
quickly, but I was saying how can I get in the middle of this. It was 
fascinating that these guys are building windmills and creating energy 
right in the United States, in Texas. We don't know that. Oil and gas 
State.
  Solar energy. What kind of jobs can be created by solar. First of 
all, you can get everybody to get a panel in their house. That is 
putting people to work. I mean the solar panels. Get your roof redone 
and that is putting people to work. Weatherization for my seniors. If 
we can ever get people to understand the importance of weatherizing 
houses, older houses, East Coast houses. My daughter worked in Albany 
so, my friend, it can get pretty cold in the upper parts of New York. 
Weatherization of your oldest stock of houses because it's a State that 
was one of the 13 colonies. It has older products. So the 
weatherization part of it is so important.
  And then, of course, working with hydrokinetic and marine, you add 
that $30 million. But what I think this should do most of all, 
Congressmen, is wake up this industry. If I might, let me cite some 
numbers here so that I can speak to what we are afraid to speak to, and 
I just think we have to get to.
  The U.S. Minerals Management Service indicates that America's deep 
seas on the Outer Continental Shelf, the OCS, contain 420 trillion 
cubic feet of natural gas. The U.S. consumes only 23 TCF per year. So 
this is 420 trillion already sitting there, already on the U.S. side of 
the world, already ours, in essence, and 86 billion barrels of oil. The 
U.S. imports 4.5 billion a year. So, in essence, it would keep us going 
for a couple of years. Even with all these energy resources, the United 
States sends more than $300 billion and countless American jobs 
overseas. That's $300 billion and countless American jobs overseas.
  We do that, unfortunately, because we don't know how to frame our 
domestic energy policy. This frames it. But I want to speak vocally for 
the fact that I am not in opposition and the Members of Congress and 
the constituents of the region are not in opposition to the exploration 
of the Gulf. We have done it quietly. We haven't bothered anybody about 
it. We are not interested in disrupting the Outer Continental Shelf off 
of New York, off of Florida, or California.
  But we have not promoted domestic production in that area by giving 
incentives, by doing more R&D so that we can be more environmentally 
safe so I can give comfort to my colleagues who, rightly so, speak to 
the environment. We keep focused on ANWR. We know how divisive that is 
rather than getting our attention as Republicans and Democrats and 
Independents about where it is welcomed. At the same time, to take the 
R&D and use it for hydro and to be able to use it for wind and solar, 
which I have gotten enormously excited about because I think it is a 
place for small businesses, minority-owned businesses, women-owned 
businesses. What a way to put people to work, by getting this vast 
amount of diversity into the energy business so it's not just the 
conglomerates to refuse to sit down with us.
  I want to take just a moment to pay tribute to John Hofmeister of 
Shell because if there has ever been a face for energy, it has been 
John Hofmeister. He has been unafraid; he has gone to places where he 
has been booed and applauded. But he has taken his ship on the road, or 
his bus on the road, his whole tour on the road, talking about the idea 
of how we can sit down and develop an energy plan.
  Let me conclude by suggesting that, first of all, the United States 
imports nearly 60 percent of the oil it consumes. The world's greatest 
petroleum reserves reside in the regions of high geopolitical risk, 
including 57 percent in the Persian Gulf. So we import from a high-risk 
area. And yet, we have 86 billion barrels of oil here in the United 
States, or in reserves in the United States, or in places that have not 
yet been explored. And we have 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. 
Why then can we not construct an energy policy that embraces the 
concept of energy independence.
  With all due respect, why can't we get cellulosic ethanol off of the 
bean, if you will, with your research dollars to kick it into a full 
press to make it work. We recognize and respect our friends who are 
using ethanol. But just think if we can get cellulosic from just being 
a ``pie in the sky,'' we could also do the right kind of thing.
  So, Mr. Lampson, and to Mr. Hall, let me thank you for inviting me 
and allowing me to join you. I couldn't help but hear such thoughtful 
discussion about why we can't move forward on legislation like this 
that would embrace all of our constituencies and regions under one 
umbrella. We would make everyone happy, from solar, to wind, to the 
environmentalists, and to people like me, who, frankly, are in the 
environmentalist skin, who support the concepts of what we are doing as 
Democrats, what our leadership is trying to do, letting us become 
independent. Yet, this brings the balance. Because I believe that we 
should not throw away the value of natural gas that exists here or the 
oil that exists here in the United States in safe waters in areas where 
the constituency believe that it is acceptable to do. It creates jobs, 
it creates safety, and I think the Energy Independence Act, H.R. 6067, 
let's all of us get a piece of the pie.
  It is an important step forward. I look forward to supporting it, but 
I also hope that my energy leaders of the various companies, who 
someone may be looking at this, realize that I think that they are 
having tunnel vision, I think they are wrong for not engaging us, I 
think they are wrong for not engaging the Members of Congress who 
happen to be Democrats, who happen to be in their areas, and they know 
who I'm speaking of, and they know they have not done it, they know 
they are wrong, and they know they are wrong on behalf of the American 
people because they know the American people are going every day to 
their gas stations, their brand and buying it and being upset and not 
getting relief.

[[Page H4304]]

  I think the energy companies who have been blessed by the safety and 
security of this Nation owe to the United States and to its people a 
consensus discussion and a friendly discussion on how we can move this 
country forward.
  With that, I yield to the distinguished gentleman.
  Mr. LAMPSON. I thank the gentlelady for joining us and for her 
thoughtful comments. A couple of the things that you said, one 
particularly comes to mind, on weatherization. Mayor Bill White in 
Houston Texas tried a pilot project that was an overwhelming success by 
helping those people who could make small change, couldn't afford to 
make them but the city chose to make them on their own, and got back 
several times the value that was invested in those homes to bring them 
up to currency. Those are the kinds of things that we need and want to 
do with this legislation.
  The wind energy about which you spoke, we need also not just to have 
the better technology with the stronger, lighter materials to have the 
blades of the windmills, but we also need the materials that will give 
us the batteries to store the energy that is created when those 
turbines are turned.
  Dow Chemical. Unfortunately, we could have seen a significant 
increase in the facility of Dow Chemical right there in our backyard in 
southeast Texas. Yet, they chose to go to another country because it 
was access to alternative sources of materials that they could use. In 
that case, they were trying to continue to make plastics, and they are 
making plastics from biomass.
  Those are the kind of things that are addressed in this legislation. 
It's a matter of using, strategically using, the strategic petroleum 
reserve effectively, and strategically, if I can repeat that word yet 
again, to include our overall energy supply. We truly are. We are 
reaching an emergency situation. Leaving the strategic petroleum 
reserve alone exactly the way it is now, if we had to turn to it if we 
lost our sources of oil coming into the country and going into those 
refineries, we would see an 11 percent decline of gasoline production 
immediately and we would see a 35 decline in diesel fuel immediately 
just because of a lack of modernization.
  So if we act and allow some part of this reserve to contain heavy 
crude, as opposed to light, we would see a lesser change in conversion 
of being able to rely on those strategically placed oil reserves. This 
is a good piece of legislation. It's one that has been thoughtful to 
draw in Members from different places in the country, to pull in 
Members from both parties, Democrat and Republican.
  We think that there are significant opportunities for us to do a 
couple of things. One, as I said earlier, we would have a short-term 
benefit because we would very likely see a decline in the price of oil, 
the price of gasoline because of dumping significant quantities of oil 
into the market in a strategic way. Once we have the resources 
generated from the differential in light crude and heavy crude, we will 
be able to invest those very sources very effectively in already 
authorized research projects that have passed this Congress already.

                              {time}  2045

  So Members, Democrat and Republican, want these projects to be funded 
and to be put into place. This is the way to make that happen.
  I am proud of this legislation. I am proud of Mr. Hall from New York 
for joining us and Ms. Jackson-Lee from Houston, Texas, for joining us 
tonight to talk about it. I look forward to working with our colleagues 
to make it yet stronger and achieve the real balance that we want to 
achieve for energy for the security of the United States of America. I 
thank you for joining me.

                          ____________________