[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 64 (Wednesday, April 29, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H4993-H4995]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2200
         ENERGY, ECONOMIC AND CLIMATE CRISES FACING OUR NATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  The opportunity for us to address several crises facing our Nation 
allows us to respond, I think, in very bold measure to opportunities 
that speak to an energy crisis, to an economic crisis and to a climate 
crisis in our Nation.
  There is no mistaking that, as we work through this very tough 
economy under the leadership of the new President and his 
administration and Speaker Pelosi in this House and in Congress in 
general, the leadership is advised by several that we need to think in 
terms of an innovation economy--one that allows us to grow boldly into 
the future by addressing the basic core needs of not only our economy 
but of our climate, of our environment and certainly of our energy 
solutions.
  As we look at the potential that exists out there for growing clean 
energy jobs--American jobs--that can generate American-produced power, 
we have the awesome opportunity to go forward in an innovative and 
creative way to provide for a response that reduces our energy 
dependency on fossil-based fuels that are oftentimes imported from some 
of the most troubled spots in the world.
  We're given the opportunity to embrace our intellectual capacity as a 
Nation as we go forward with research and development investments--
dollars that can invest in prototypes of design and that speak to the 
energy independence of this Nation--and to do it in a way that takes 
that prototype and further develops that technology into the 
manufacturing sector, deploying it into the commercial sector.
  We see that today as work came forward to me in NYSERDA--the New York 
State Energy Research and Development Authority. I was able to witness 
firsthand the soundness of the investment in R&D, making certain that 
we could take these projects that were coming through R&D investments 
and could grow them in a way that created American jobs, that embraced 
intellectual capacity--the brain trust of this Nation. It was greening 
up our economy and our thinking in terms of energy generation and 
energy emerging technologies.
  That's what the measure about energy reform here in our House is all 
about. It's about making certain that we grow our energy independence 
and our energy security and, in so doing,

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grow our national security. This strikes as a win across the board for 
us as consumers, for us as job seekers, for those of us striking to 
plan a comeback with this economy, and certainly for generations to 
follow in terms of a better environment that will be shared and passed 
on for other generations, coming generations, to steward.
  So we are at that cutting edge, at the opportunity of ushering in a 
new era of thinking where we're able to invest not only in generation 
opportunities for energy's sake but to invest in those transmission 
opportunities.
  I saw what happened just in my district, in the 21st Congressional 
District of New York, when we invested in groups like Superpower. 
Superpower is breaking its own records in producing a superconductive 
cable that allows us in the future to think of transmitting electrons 
in a way that provides far more opportunity and much greater efficiency 
as we wheel those electrons over a cable that can transmit far more 
electricity than can traditional cable of the same size. That's just 
one example.
  We look at the opportunity with kinetic hydropower, that power that 
is produced by the turbulence of water flow. Just in the area of New 
York State, along the island of Manhattan, in the East River, we have 
seen the successful demonstration of kinetic hydropower. It is thought 
that some 1,100-megawatts' worth of power could be the solution just in 
one State by dealing with this innovation, by taking this cleverness of 
the intellect of energy reform and transitioning our economy into one 
that is based on far greater potential by investing in those sorts of 
designs.
  So, as we move forward, we talk about clean-energy jobs, clean-energy 
jobs that cannot be shipped overseas. We talk about saving money for 
our families and for our businesses through efficiency. I saw what the 
investment of efficiency meant for many businesses, for many farms, for 
agriculture in the State of New York through NYSERDA. The New York 
State Energy Research and Development Authority was there as a partner, 
working with the business.
  That's what this is about. It's investing in our future. It's 
investing in new technology. It's investing in the opportunities to 
grow a better climate, to grow and to address the environmental needs, 
not only of this country but of the world, to make certain that we 
address climate change, that we address that carbon footprint that 
needs to be reduced. As stewards of the environment, we all have that 
responsibility, and it does a great deal to reduce that glutinous 
addiction that we have to foreign oil that is imported from some of the 
most unstable governments around the globe.
  So here is a golden opportunity for us to turn green, to turn green 
in our energy outcomes and to grow a stronger American economy that 
finds us controlling our destiny in much more bold expression.
  You know, as we look at some of the opportunities here, we're looking 
at investments that could be made in not only the grid but with smart 
metering, making certain that we embrace new technology, cutting 
through some of the traditional patterns of the past and making certain 
that new choices, new cleverness, is incorporated into our energy 
thinking. Clean-energy jobs--it's calculated through the renewable 
electricity standard--can create some 300,000 new jobs, and in the area 
of efficiency, the talk is some 222,000 projected jobs. This is just in 
those two areas alone. That then equates to billions that are saved--
$100 billion with the opportunities for renewable electric standards 
and certainly some $170 billion in efficiency savings.
  We need to see efficiency measures as our fuel of choice. It is 
shelf-ready today. There are emerging technologies invested into 
through R&D today. There is the potential of growing countless other 
options, but the fact remains that we need to address the per capita 
consumption of electricity in this country in a way that enables us to 
see efficiency as something that is mined and drilled routinely. You 
know, as we mine for coal, as we drill for oil, we need to see that 
mining and drilling, for efficiency's sake, can produce great savings. 
It means the avoided cost of having to build additional plants. It 
means a clean outcome. It means less of a carbon footprint as we go 
forward with an investment in energy efficiency.
  So all of this is at our fingertips. All of this great potential is 
here to allow us to create clean jobs. In so doing, we will strengthen 
our economy; we will provide certainty for our businesses in this 
country, and we will be able to address the pollution that is part and 
parcel to the residential, business and housing sections of this 
country--those sectors that all can be benefiting from energy thinking, 
that is of a nuance of sorts, that breaks from these traditional 
patterns and from the glutinous dependency.
  So this evening, as we move forward in this hour of discussion, it is 
great to have colleagues here who will be talking about some of the 
opportunities that we have as energy consumers.

  The fact remains that, for far too long, I believe we have invested 
in prototypes. We have invested in those new orders of thinking, but we 
have not done enough to stretch that budgeting to enable that prototype 
to be developed more fully and then to be entered into in the 
manufacturing sector.
  When we think of the great potential, there are super opportunities 
for us to think in magnanimous terms, to think with a sense of vision 
that expresses our boldness for creating jobs not yet on the radar 
screen. When we develop green-collar workforces out there, when we 
develop that array of workers that will join the traditional 
assignments through white- and blue-collar job opportunities, we will 
now be able to advance a new order of job creation of a green-collar 
variety. That new addition to the workforce out there will save those 
traditional white- and blue-collar jobs through the nuances that the 
green-collar job opportunities will bring.
  I saw again, through the work done at NYSERDA, where we were able to 
implement programs for training construction majors, for instance, in 
the new, cutting-edge technologies for solar and PV installation, 
making certain that those arrays are incorporated into the 
certification programs and matriculation programs at a local community 
college in the State of New York.
  Hudson Valley Community College would train these green-collar 
workers and then would also reach out to other campuses and would 
enable them to develop that workforce that we will need as a society as 
we retrofit with this new order of thinking of efficiency, of 
conservation, of new technologies--emerging technologies--and of 
efficiency standards that will be enhanced so that we can go forward 
with new opportunities that this country can prosper by.

                              {time}  2210

  When we deal with the green collar job development, we're going to 
look at situations within the framework of this new thinking that will 
allow us to reach into the earlier grades, to allow students to think 
of the potential of a career path enabling us to develop with centers 
like BOCES and with trades, occupational efforts with apprenticeship 
programs, with the opportunities to go forward with community colleges, 
again developing their course work to comply with the growing needs of 
a green collar workforce and to offer those innovative opportunities 
into the college setting, into graduate studies. All of this, the array 
from trades on over to engineers, inventors and innovators, will all be 
required to be part of that process that provides that new thinking 
that will enable us to go forward in a way that will strengthen our 
economy and clean our environment and create opportunity.
  The opportunities that befall us as a country are many, and knowing 
that in this process, it will draw down that dependency on fossil-based 
fuels knowing that we have precious little time to go forward, to clean 
up an environment that is impacted by some of the severe measurements 
that we see out there today.
  That reminds us of a plan that we had in cleaning up acid rain that 
was part of the 1990s era, where through the efforts of the then-
President, President Bush, we moved forward and fought acid rain 
successfully by having a focus and a plan and cutting back on 
situations that made polluters pay. But we're talking today of having 
polluters pay for their consequential damage to

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the environment, we want to make certain that we benefit Americans, 
middle-class Americans with tax credits that will come from those who 
are polluting.
  So it's encouraging clean companies, it's encouraging American-
produced power, and it's providing tax credits to families, and it's 
investing resources from a clean-energy jobs programming that will 
invest in the new ideas that are being developed as we speak. But it's 
the sort of impetus that can be provided, the sort of incentive that is 
created that will really spur this sort of economic recovery that will 
make for a strong response.
  I am reminded of a project that we had conducted while I was at the 
State Assembly in the State of New York as energy chair. We had reached 
out to energy service companies, we had reached out to academia, we had 
reached out to the farm bureau and worked with demonstration projects 
through local dairy farms and working through the auspices of NYSERDA, 
the State energy research and development authority, we were able to 
put together a review, an audit of those dairy farms, and take a 
situation where they were dealing with a perishable product and making 
certain that a highly regulated arena, as it should be, producing a 
basic nutritional need for this country that had to deal with the ebbs 
and flows of not only how they conducted business but dealing with 
energy cycles that they couldn't escape simply because of the forces of 
mother nature. With all of that being the dynamics of their day-to-day 
operation, we were able to work within that context to create energy 
efficiency opportunities that came through the guidance of groups at 
Cornell and Farm Bureau and the local utility and NYSERDA where we 
retrofitted to those dairy farms the sorts of demands for energy that 
dealt with pumping and cooling processes and put together a plan, a 
strategy, that really developed a very sound outcome--a pleasant 
surprise to those who participated in the demonstration project. In 
fact, it became so successful as a demonstration project that we 
advanced this notion to some 70 farms in the State of New York that 
prospered from this sort of activity, of auditing the farms and putting 
efficiency into play.
  We also saw successful programs that came about with business 
incorporated into the energy-efficiency opportunities. And it reminds 
us that if we are going to compete, if we're going to ask our American 
businesses to compete in a global marketplace, then we need to advance 
every bit of opportunity of doing it in smart fashion, doing it in a 
way that is clever, that is causing a stronger outcome, a more 
progressive outcome simply by the incorporation of a highly 
intellectual energy plan, a comprehensive energy plan that looks at 
cutting demand.
  For too often we have reached to a supply situation as we were 
looking at energy solutions. We were developing more supply. We were 
content with using, consuming a lot of energy resources when, in fact, 
we should have moved forward with opportunities that allowed us to 
address the demand side of the equation.
  Looking at that consumption factor, looking at the efficiency, 
looking at conservation were the clever strategies that were dictated 
simply by the dynamics of the given solution today.
  So as we go forward, we see these opportunities to advance a plan 
that is encouraged by our President as he wants us to grow smart with 
our energy usage. He wants us to reach to innovation and a clever 
strategy using our creative genius to put together a source of 
investment in research and development, to grow those prototypes of the 
future, to further develop them and then move to the manufacturing of 
these commodities here in this country--domestic production of all 
sorts of nuances--making certain that we move forward not only in the 
energy generation world but in the energy transmission and distribution 
area giving commercial consumers the opportunity to work within the 
context of smart metering, making certain that they can have these 
smart meters to control their destiny so that they can see firsthand 
the amount that's being consumed and when to be on-peak and off-peak in 
given situations; to be able to have a transmission system that 
responds to weaknesses that were so highly visible in August of 2003 
where we witnessed a huge collapse in the system, the delivery system, 
that started as far west as Ohio and moved into New York and New 
England and the mid-Atlantic States and into southeast Canada. That was 
a huge bit of blackout for consumers in that given bit of geography 
that stood as a glaring example of vulnerability, of a weakness in our 
system.
  We need to go forward and advance the investments in a very wise and 
clever way that will enable us to strengthen that generation aspect of 
electricity, strengthen the transmission and distribution components, 
and to go forward with a commitment to efficiency and conservation. And 
looking at renewable opportunities. Taking advantage of so many 
opportunities that mother nature provides and where the President has 
called for an investment where we embrace our wind, our sun, our Earth 
to be able to make certain that we use that in a benign way to grow the 
energy response that we require that will be clean, that will be 
innovative, and that will draw down our energy dependence in a way that 
allows us to prosper with bolder outcomes.
  As we move forward, I would encourage us to cleverly look at the 
plans that have been advanced by the leadership of this House, the 
discussion that is made of growing a green energy economy, the ideals 
embraced by the President and his administration for this innovation 
economy that reaches to the American brain trust, that sees us with our 
science and tech potential to be ready and willing to go forward and 
provide for the nuances that will usher in a new era of energy 
thinking. That is what the opportunity for clean energy jobs is all 
about.
  It's a clean energy jobs agenda that finds us producing jobs, 
developing jobs, retaining jobs, growing jobs in this country, avoiding 
the opportunities to ship overseas these jobs that have far too often 
escaped our American economy. And then for saving money for our 
families, our businesses, individuals in this country through 
efficiency opportunities, and ending that addiction, that gluttonous 
addiction to foreign oil, fossil fuels, that really do not enable us to 
think in the kind of boldness and the sense of vision that is required 
today.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time to be here this evening and 
share these opportunities with you, to share the thinking that I 
believe can help us grow as a Nation and respond to the crisis that we 
see, the crisis with the energy situation, the crisis with our 
environment, the crisis with our economy. It can address a multitude of 
needs out there by embracing this sort of cleverness of thinking and 
advancing policies that are progressive and investing resources that 
will really strengthen us as a people, as a Nation, and certainly as a 
world.

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