[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 78 (Wednesday, May 20, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H5872-H5875]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             GREEN ENERGY AS A SOLUTION TO OUR MANY CRISES

  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 as the designee of the majority leader.


                             General Leave

  Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may 
have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and 
include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New York?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  The crises facing our government and our country are broad in range. 
We are faced with an energy crisis, an economic crisis, an 
environmental crisis and certainly an unemployment crisis. President 
Obama, in his boldness of vision throughout the campaign for President 
and certainly in the infancy stages of his presidency, has made it very 
clear that he wants to deliver to the American public this new vision 
of how to resolve many of these crises in one fell swoop. It is 
important to recognize that we, as an American economy, are heavily 
dependent upon fossil-based fuels. It is important for us to recognize 
that some 60 percent of the oil on which we depend is imported from 
some of the most troubled spots in the world. We move forward here as 
we try to resolve our crises in a way that's creative and innovative 
and inspiring. It will require consumer behavioral change, and it will 
require investments. It will require policy formats that will break 
from traditional dependency on fossil-based fuels and allow us to move 
forward in a way that addresses green jobs for a green economy, 
American-produced power to run our factories, our farms, our homes, the 
institutions that are important to us.
  When we look at the opportunities, there are many. There are 
projections that some 5 million additional clean energy jobs could be 
created if just 25 percent of our electricity and our vehicle fuels are 
produced from renewable resources by the year 2025. That's a staggering 
statistic. Those are dollars that, when invested, will produce these 5 
million jobs that will allow us to grow a cleaner environment, address 
favorably the carbon footprint and respond to the pressures of global 
warming. It allows us also to embrace the intellect of this Nation, 
that intellectual capacity represented through our many academic 
centers and our private sector R&D centers, which are tools that can 
really retrofit this economy, that can allow us to grow in ways that 
are measured in green terms for jobs and green opportunities for energy 
supplies.
  Now we know that the unemployment rate, which was inherited by this 
administration, which has grown and is going to be resolved, we 
believe, with several reforms, is something that can be addressed 
through those sorts of jobs that are not yet on the radar screen. We 
need to also think of international competition. If I could, I would 
take this discussion back decades where many of us as youngsters, 
perhaps in an elementary classroom setting, heard about the race, the 
race for Sputnik. We were certain that math and science was important 
in that classroom and that this competitive race, this international 
race had to be won by the United States because it was going to set in 
the forefront, it was going to make the premier nation that nation that 
won that race.
  Well, we know what history dictated via investments on the space race 
and putting a man on the Moon and creating technology that really 
inspired job growth and really pumped this economy to a high level. 
That same sort of situation decades later now is existing in terms of a 
competitive race to be the energy nation, the nation that will export 
the intellect and the ideas and the innovation in a way that will be a 
masterful response to the several crises that we try to resolve. We can 
do that by emerging the winner in this race.
  When we look at the fact that China is now the number one producer of 
solar panels in the world, that should challenge our thinking and our 
response as a government. When we think of the fact that Germany's 
number two export, after automobiles, is that of wind turbines, that 
should challenge and inspire us. And when we think of the fact that 
only six of the top 30 solar wind and advanced battery manufacturers 
are American-owned, that should inspire us.
  I will now yield to my good friend and colleague, the gentleman from 
New York, Representative Massa, who is a strong and outspoken voice on 
energy reform, on green jobs, on a green economy. He has a message that 
he'll share this evening.
  Mr. MASSA. I thank my colleague from the State of New York, my 
neighbor just slightly to the east, and rise today to discuss from 
several new perspectives why it is, frankly, so critically important 
that we get energy legislation correct as we move boldly into the 21st 
century.
  Just a short election season ago, this Nation was assaulted with a 
message from one side of the aisle that rang like a motto. It repeated 
itself over and over and over again on the floor of this House and, 
frankly, in the living room of every American family, often intrusively 
during dinner hour, where we heard, Drill here, drill now, pay less. 
How empty today those words ring. In fact, after the price of crude oil 
has tumbled from its height of almost $140 a barrel, bottoming to 
somewhere near the low thirties without the new drilling of a single 
well, we ask ourselves the question, how empty that slogan was.
  And so we rise as we build a new national energy policy, one based on 
thoughtfulness, one based on science, one based on economic reality and 
not on sloganeering. So while I ran to become a Member of this House, 
motivated by such things as health care and an economic recovery, I 
have now become a very, very aggressive individual on this issue, 
looking at the absolute need to get this right. The first step I took 
as I approached my job was to go to the only hydrogen fuel cell 
propulsion research and development system and center in the United 
States, located in Upstate New York in Honeoye Falls, where to my 
astonishment as an engineer lifelong and a graduate of an engineering 
school, I saw the application of science. They took us not into science 
fiction but into science reality there in Honeoye Falls, working 
tirelessly for the last several decades, having taken engineering work 
that had been done out west 25 years ago and propelled us from the NASA 
Apollo program into the reality of some 116 reality-based automobiles. 
I had the opportunity to drive one of them, actually two, from Honeoye 
Falls all the way here to report for my first day. This was like 
driving an Apollo spacecraft. My eyes were opened to the fact that we 
were on the verge of a great industrial revolution, and we are at this 
moment leading the world. But if we listen to sloganeering, if we 
listen to the naysayers, if we allow the argument to be shaped by 
narrow special interests, we will never, ever cross the threshold of 
economic and industrial greatness that these and other technologies put 
in front of us. It's not just the fact that we have to get it right 
because we need to rebuild an economy

[[Page H5873]]

based on 21st century jobs, it's not just the fact that we believe as a 
caucus and myself personally that our impact on this world, through the 
burning of fossil fuels, is actually changing our climate, but it is 
also coming from the fact that I am a 24-year military veteran who 
realizes the vast and dramatic expenses that we are committing in our 
military just to secure an ever-increasing and yet rarely obtainable 
source of overseas fossil fuel.

  Imagine, if you will, if we were not held hostage to the noose of 
Middle East oil. Imagine the trillions of dollars of resources that we 
would not be expending in the protection of, the extraction of and the 
transportation of oil sources from the very nations who use the money 
that we pay to feed our enemies and their hostile intent against us. 
This must be broken, and nowhere is that future clearer than right in 
Upstate New York. I know that my colleague, with his career in 
innovative engineering where he took his leadership to the New York 
State Energy Development Agency that has pioneered so much of the 
technology we need to move forward, agrees and understands with what we 
can do together standing as a Nation instead of listening to well-
crafted and, frankly, crafty sloganeering.
  So I rise with my colleague today to put an exclamation point at the 
very end of the reality that we must move ahead to get this right. I 
agree with the President's vision for a future. I agree with our 
caucuses that we need to move boldly into the future with an 
economically viable, science-based, thoughtful energy plan that breaks 
this ridiculous stranglehold that foreign oil has on us. It's not just 
a matter of drill here, drill now, pay less. We have grown beyond that 
sloganeering.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you. I reclaim the time, Mr. Speaker.
  I, with curiosity, listened to Representative Massa from New York. As 
a fellow colleague from New York State, I think of the impacts we can 
make in just New York alone. And when we then extrapolate that over the 
map of the United States, what a powerful statement.

                              {time}  1915

  He's right, that with this grip on our economy that was allowed to 
grow just through the Presidential tenure of President Bush, $1,100 
more per year was demanded of our American families for that dependency 
on oil, gas and electricity. We can go forward and inspire this green 
innovation of an economy. The green thinking that we can embrace can 
allow dollar for dollar to be a much more lucrative outcome. Four times 
as many jobs, would be created.
  Mr. MASSA. Would my colleague yield on that point?
  Mr. TONKO. Sure. Sure.
  Mr. MASSA. I would like to pick up a very critical point my colleague 
just made about jobs. Around Lake Seneca, that great deep and beautiful 
Finger Lake in Upstate New York, every year we run something called the 
Green Grand Prix. I'm sure you would love to be a participant in it. It 
is a road race, or a road rally, where navigation is important. I must 
confess that more than once I made a wrong turn. But I made a wrong 
turn in a vehicle this year, as I did last year, powered not by 
imported, foreign, distilled gasoline but rather by alternative fuels. 
We had ethanol-powered vehicles. We had steam-powered vehicles. We had 
solar-powered vehicles, hydrogen-powered cars. And this year I drove a 
Ford F-150 modified at a dealership in Elmira, New York, once a 
bustling hub of heavy manufacturing, to accept a dealer-approved kit 
that allowed this heavy truck to be powered by propane with some 350 
miles per filling at one-third of the cost of gasoline. This was a 
technology that was unbeknownst to me, one that Ford Motor Company, in 
engineering innovation, has now authorized several dealerships around 
the United States to install without even voiding their basic engine 
warranties.
  We have an abundance of propane in rural New York. This is an 
alternative fuel that helps us break the cycle of dependence on foreign 
oil, and for pennies on the dollar, for a mere tax break, to those who 
invest in this technology, it becomes competitive and real. And not 
only do those automobiles, those trucks, then get sold, but the 
individuals who modify those trucks have jobs. The dealerships that 
sell these vehicles to the public have jobs. The individuals who use 
them have extra money in their back pocket because they are not paying 
these overseas foreign fuel providers.
  It is not just hydrogen or propane. It is the entire menu of 
alternative fuels and alternative electrical capability that we need to 
put on the table. And I will tell you what, if we can spend $700 
billion, a move, by the way, I opposed, bailing out banks who don't put 
a penny of that back in the consumer's pocket through alternative 
credit sources, we can certainly fund the single most important 
national security requirement we have before this Nation today. And 
that is to get an energy policy that is science-based and thoughtful.
  Mr. TONKO. I couldn't agree more. And all while we speak, we need to 
recognize that China is investing $12.6 million in its economy for 
green energy technology every hour. Now, that is a challenge to us. We 
can stand still and watch the emerging powers of energy out there as a 
nation, be it China or Japan or India or you name the country, or we 
can make a plan and implement a plan and move forward accordingly.
  The President understands this is so critical to resolving so many of 
the crises we mentioned earlier. Speaker Pelosi and the leadership of 
this House, Energy and Commerce Chair Waxman, Ways and Means Chair 
Charlie Rangel, and many, many other leaders who are making their 
voices heard and helping construct the right outcome here.
  The jobs of which my colleague and friend, Representative Massa, just 
made mention, offer four times greater job creation than an investment, 
dollar for dollar, in oil and gas. And we certainly in New York State, 
as colleagues from that New York delegation, can attest to the 
projections that are made for the New York economy, over 130,000, 
nearly 132,000 clean energy jobs at a time when our unemployment 
statistics are perhaps beyond 8 percent. We can see flowing into the 
New York State economy as much as $20 billion. And our taxpayers in New 
York State pay some $2.8 billion, it is calculated, to pay subsidies 
for big oil companies, and certainly those gasoline corporations out 
there that are draining our economy. We hear this discussion about, it 
is a tax, it is a tax that is coming, that is befalling. Well, $400 
billion is the savings, that is a tax, call it whatever you want, that 
we are paying now to Venezuela and Middle East countries for every 
annual installment that we make in foreign energy imports. That is a 
huge price tag that could be avoided.
  When we look at the potential out there in R&D investment that could 
be part of this great energy resource, it is limitless in terms of our 
academic institutions and our private sector partnerships out there. We 
can make this happen. We need to be innovative. We need to think 
outside the barrel. And we need to move forward in a progressive 
fashion.
  I yield to my colleague from New York, Eric Massa. I yield to you, 
sir, to continue the discussion.
  Mr. MASSA. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. And I have to tell you, you used two 
turns of a phrase that I thought were particularly appropriate. You 
talked about energy flowing. We come from a part of the world that 
pioneered cheap electricity. And we did it through one of the largest 
and one of the first great hydropower facilities in the world, 
capturing the hydro energy of Niagara Falls. And western New York, the 
great industrial cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse benefited 
thereby. This was 100 years ago. Now we must look 100 years into the 
future. And you are right to say we need to think ``outside the 
barrel'' because unfortunately what we will hear in the coming debate 
is the demonization of the individuals making the argument and not the 
thoughtful discussion of the policy. I fear that we will become, once 
again, held hostage to the economic and energy sloganeering that will 
make it so difficult for the American people to understand that doing 
nothing is moving backwards, that doing nothing is surrendering without 
a new idea to the forces of Big Oil who so clearly ripped off from the 
American public trillions of dollars just this time last year as 
gasoline shot up to over $4 a gallon

[[Page H5874]]

with no real economic excuse other than gross corporate profiteering.
  We cannot continue to be held hostage by the annual cycle of 
unexplained gasoline price increases and gasoline price fluctuations. 
And the only way that we are going to reclaim our own energy future is 
by looking beyond the slogans of the other side in a thoughtful, 
science-based, economically proven capability to explore all the new 
sources of alternative energies, not just for automotive propulsion, 
but also for fundamental electrical generation.
  So thank you to my colleague from New York for allowing me the 
opportunity tonight to raise some key issues that this issue is not 
only about energy. It is about national security. It is not only about 
energy. It is about job creation for the future. It is not only about 
energy. It is about using the resources that we have to ourselves in 
the great American innovative manner that has always persevered in the 
face of challenge instead of surrendering to the foreign economies who, 
like they have been doing so aggressively lately, are taking over 
economic sector after economic sector. This is a battle that we can 
win. This is one that we can put ``Made in America'' on for future 
generations. And we can start right here, right now, tonight, by 
committing ourselves to thoughtful debate that raises issues and not 
sloganeering.

  I yield back and thank my colleague for the opportunity to join him 
in this great discussion.
  Mr. TONKO. Thank you to the Representative from New York, 
Representative Massa.
  Let me reclaim my time, Mr. Speaker. We have heard all of this talk 
about innovation economy. We have heard about the gluttonous dependency 
we have as a Nation on energy, in this case, fossil-based fuels, 60 
percent of that need being met by imports from some of the most 
troubled spots in the world. We cannot continue along this dangerous 
path. It is a rocky road that needs to be addressed.
  The approach, I believe, comes from an investment in American jobs, a 
green jobs agenda, growing a green energy transition that allows us to 
inspire an innovation economy. We do that with investments in R&D. 
While I served as president and CEO at NYSERDA, New York State Energy 
Research and Development Authority, I saw first hand up close and 
personal just how it happened. We invested in R&D. Not every one of 
those investments might be a success story, but the prototypes that are 
developed and funded then need to be addressed through additional 
funding that deploys that investment, that magic in the research lab, 
into deployment into manufacturing and then into the commercial sector, 
utilizing these shelf-ready opportunities that are the emerging 
technologies to respond to the needs of retrofitting energy efficiency 
mechanisms into our businesses, our factories, our industries, our 
farms and our homes. That potential exists today. It is underutilized. 
We need to see energy efficiency as our fuel of choice. We need to 
address it just like we would any other source of fuel, to use it as we 
would mine coal or drill for oil, we need to mine and drill energy 
efficiency as that outcome that will address the demand side of the 
equation. Both supply and demand need to be addressed by this 
innovation economy.
  I believe that through the leadership of the President and certainly 
Speaker Pelosi and others that I have made mention of, we can go 
forward with the soundness of an agenda that will really spark the kind 
of creative genius that speaks to the pioneer spirit that has always 
existed in this country. We need just to formulate the concepts that 
will take us there.
  Just recently at GE's R&D center in Schenectady County, New York, GE 
announced its intentions to now move to an advanced battery technology 
that will create somewhere between 350 and 400 manufacturing jobs that 
will be the key that unlocks the doors to golden opportunity, or 
perhaps green opportunity. The battery situation, whether it is applied 
to transportation, transportation of light vehicles or heavy vehicles, 
energy, energy generation, energy storage for intermittent purposes or 
with transmission improvements that are being addressed by SuperPower 
in Schenectady County again, these are the formula outcomes that we 
need to promote and encourage.
  We can do it. We have this skill set to do it as a Nation. We need to 
invest in green collar job opportunities. We need to invest in R&D 
making certain that research and development is part of that energy 
comeback. And we need to change our behavior in a way that will produce 
this new golden opportunity for New Yorkers, in my case, and for 
Americans across the board. We do have that potential, the immense 
potential.
  I saw also what happened when we applied these retrofits for energy 
purposes, energy efficiency at dairy farms, first in a demonstration 
project and then across the board to some 70 farms where, as dairy 
farms, they are dealing with a perishable product. And where they are 
dealing with ebbs and flows of energy need, they cannot necessarily 
because of mother nature demands and dealing with off-peak situations. 
They can't cleverly quite construct that outcome. But what they can do 
is utilize the resources of energy efficiency which was done through 
these demonstrations. And it was a success because a great deal of 
savings, 35 to 45 percent, was made available for these farms simply by 
addressing their demand through energy retrofits that were done in 
partnership with the local utility, with the staff from Cornell 
University, with the staff from NYSERDA and certainly with groups 
working as ESCOs, the Energy Services Companies, that were helping in 
this effort to change things at these given dairy farms. The result was 
remarkably strong.
  That is the sort of real-life experience that we ought to apply to 
our policy creation and innovation and to our resource dedication that 
comes through the budgets that we will deal with here in Washington. It 
is a great opportunity for us to respond in an innovative way, 
responding to challenges of several crises out there and allowing us to 
emerge very strong in that outcome.
  So it is about green power. It is about green jobs. It is about 
Americans producing for their needs, and it is allowing our industries 
to be all the more prosperous and all the more productive simply 
because we have given them a break in the energy area.
  So with all of that being said, I encourage us to look strongly at 
the opportunities that exist today in this given Chamber that will 
allow us to go forward in progressive fashion. And we will be able to 
look back and say that this was the generation that provided that 
response that ignited this new energy thinking that really turned 
around the American economy and has helped save the environment in a 
way that was immeasurably important to coming generations.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the good 
works of the faith community to protect the integrity of God's 
creation. As a seminarian, I appreciate the advocacy of people of faith 
for protecting this earth.
  The Catholic Climate Covenant has contacted me about the St. Francis 
Pledge to Care for Creation and the Poor. Members of the Covenant 
include Catholic Relief Services, Catholic Charities USA, The 
Franciscan Action Network, and the Association of Catholic Colleges and 
Universities. Religious charities are on the front lines battling 
poverty around the world. Whether it is a church in Fairfax providing 
housing to the homeless to prevent hypothermia or an overseas mission 
to build housing, members of faith-based charities have direct 
knowledge of the realities of poverty around the world.
  The faith community is telling us that climate change poses a dire 
threat to the world's poor, whether they are residents of New Orleans, 
Bangladesh, or coastal communities in the Mid Atlantic. Based on the 
best available scientific data, faith-based charities' concerns are 
well founded. Experts predict that rising sea levels and increased 
incidence of severe storms will create 100 million climate refugees in 
the next hundred years. As former Virginia Senator John Warner noted in 
his testimony to the Energy and Commerce Committee, this volume of 
refugees will strain our capacity to respond to national security 
threats.
  We can see these threats right here in the National Capital Region. 
Neighborhoods in Fairfax County like Huntington and Belleview have 
experienced unprecedented flooding within the last five years. With 
their proximity to tidal reaches of the Potomac River, they are 
threatened by rising sea levels. These older neighborhoods are 
important because they

[[Page H5875]]

have maintained a stock of affordable housing that is increasingly 
scarce in this region. Whether it is in Bangladesh or Belleview, 
climate change poses a threat to the welfare of working families around 
the world.
  I haven't heard any expression of concern from the minority party 
about the millions of families that are endangered by climate change. 
Maybe they assume that these folks are politically powerless, that 
their loss of homes, land, and livelihoods can be ignored with 
impunity. But even if one is comfortable with condemning millions of 
people to refugee status, I would dispute the assumption that such an 
approach has no financial impact on the rest of us. Here in Northern 
Virginia, the Army Corps of Engineers is planning multimillion dollar 
flood prevention systems for low-lying neighborhoods. The cost of these 
systems will only rise with the level of the sea. Senator Warner noted 
that we cannot ignore refugees overseas lest we create conditions in 
which political organizations such as the Taliban will thrive.
  The Catholic Climate Covenant and other faith groups remind us that 
we have a moral responsibility to protect the world's poor. That moral 
imperative coincides with self interest: If we do not arrest the rising 
concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere then we will 
saddle the next generation with ever-rising costs of dealing with 
climate change and its human costs. Whether those costs come from 
floodwalls or humanitarian support for refugees, we will not be able to 
avoid paying the bill. We must act now to reduce greenhouse gas 
pollution--for the sake of millions whose lives are tied up in the 
stability of our climate and because inaction will create an 
insurmountable cost burden for the rest of us.
  Mr. Speaker, every challenge presents an opportunity. Sometimes the 
opportunities are difficult to identify. As we attempt to reduce global 
warming pollution, we are fortunate to have many models from which we 
can learn. I would like to focus on the acid rain reduction program 
that we initiated under the Clean Air Act nearly 20 years ago.
  During the 1960s and 1970s, sulphur dioxide pollution was poisoning 
rivers and streams across America while inflicting damage on 
infrastructure and some of our most famous public art. This pollution 
came from some of the same sources that are emitting global warming 
pollution, including coal-fired power plants. In 1980, polluters 
released over 17 million tons of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere. 
Since implementation of a cap and trade program to reduce acid rain 
pollution, we have eliminated 8.9 million tons of sulphur dioxide 
pollution annually, a 50% cut.
  When Congress was considering capping acid rain pollution in 1990, 
polluters claimed that such a cap would drive up electricity prices and 
cripple the economy. In fact, the acid rain cap and trade program has 
saved $40 in costs for every dollar spent on pollution controls. This 
40-1 cost to benefit ratio saves Americans $119 billion every year. 
Each dollar that we don't have to spend on premature health problems or 
damaged infrastructure is another dollar saved or invested. Nor did the 
acid rain program hurt American energy production. Coal companies 
installed scrubbers that remove sulphur dioxide as well as other 
pollution like mercury. Installation of these scrubbers created high 
paying jobs right here in America, creating new sources of employment 
for electricians and other skilled tradesmen.
  The non-partisan Congressional Research Service has conducted several 
reports on the efficacy of the acid rain cap and trade program. A 
recent CRS memo notes that the acid rain reduction program has nearly 
one hundred percent compliance in pollution reduction and has not 
experienced any problems with market manipulation.
  Today, the minority party claims that we cannot afford to reduce 
greenhouse gas pollution because it will increase costs and hurt the 
economy. We've heard all these arguments before, during the acid rain 
debate in 1990, and they have all been proven false. We have saved 
money by cutting acid rain pollution, created clean energy jobs, 
improved public health, and achieved our goals of reducing pollution. 
Far from being a burden, reduction of acid rain pollution improved our 
quality of life.
  Today we face a different threat: global warming pollution. Unlike in 
1990, however, we have a very successful model that we can follow. The 
American Clean Energy and Security Act emulates many of the successful 
components of the acid rain reduction program, and offers Congress a 
proven model of cost-effective pollution reduction.

                          ____________________