[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.
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