[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 156 (Thursday, December 2, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8367-S8369]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. BOND. Madam President, as America's energy needs continue to 
grow, so does our need for commonsense approaches to meeting these 
needs. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's announcement yesterday 
dealt a death blow to one of our most important ways to expand our 
domestic energy supplies. My message to the Obama administration is 
that we need to drill it, not kill it. Yesterday, the administration 
announced the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast to be off-
limits to any new offshore drilling for the next 5 years. In

[[Page S8368]]

other words, the Obama administration decided to deny Americans new 
domestic energy supplies, deny Americans new jobs, and make America's 
energy prices rise.

  In the wake of the BP oilspill, there is no question we are reminded 
of the need to preserve our environment as we seek to expand our energy 
growth by drilling for more oil. As we continue opening up new sources 
of traditional energy in an environmentally friendly manner, preventing 
spills must be a top priority. However, arbitrarily--arbitrarily--
closing off our own domestic supplies is not the answer.
  First, this deathblow to offshore drilling will only make us more 
dependent on OPEC and Middle Eastern countries and hostile regimes that 
mean us harm. Also, this moratorium will cost us jobs at a time when 
America needs job creation more than ever.
  The American Petroleum Institute estimates that we will not get 
75,000 jobs as a result of the Obama administration's offshore drilling 
moratorium. Domestic production of energy will be integral for our 
economic growth. Production of domestic energy sources not only helps 
us meet growing demand and keeps us secure, but if the Obama 
administration removes their moratorium it will create jobs, and we 
need jobs.
  Strict and arbitrary environmental regulations in place on coal 
mining, hydraulic fracturing of natural gas, and of offshore oil 
drilling just create a de facto moratorium on more production and on 
more jobs. Limiting production will make the sources we have available 
only more expensive. It is simply a matter of supply and demand.
  As I have already mentioned, since energy demand will go up in the 
near future, these regulations--by hampering production--will serve as 
an indirect energy tax on consumers. Guess what. Remember, the $4-a-
gallon gasoline we had a couple years ago? Well, we may see that, and 
even more, as a result of shutting off our domestic supply.
  We should not be jumping to constrain domestic energy production 
without first giving any new regulations a very strict look to make 
sure we do not punish consumers just trying to power their households, 
fuel their vehicles, get jobs, and live their lives. We all know we 
need a new energy policy, one that enables us to find, create, and use 
domestically produced clean energy.
  This is not the first time we have sought to do this, but the 
difference now is that we have a recession to contend with at the same 
time. People are struggling with high unemployment. In the Midwest, our 
manufacturing sector has lost thousands of jobs. In an economy with a 
stubborn, nearly 10-percent unemployment rate, the million-dollar 
question--or bigger than that--we all have these days is, How can we 
create jobs?
  So as we approach changing our energy policy, while we all want to 
protect the environment--and we must--we have to ensure that the 
policies we choose will not have adverse consequences to economic 
growth. Unfortunately, too many of my colleagues, and some in the 
administration, are focusing on jamming through Energy bills that would 
impose job-killing tax increases on farmers, small businesses, and 
families. Their ideas have ranged from a cap-and-trade tax bill to 
others that pick winners by awarding massive taxpayer-funded incentives 
to some and, in the process, harming others.
  I think there is a better way to move our Nation to energy 
independence. The commonsense approach we have to take would make use 
of the clean, reliable sources we have here without picking sources and 
technology winners. We need to develop affordable, homegrown, and clean 
energy solutions to help push our Nation toward an independent and more 
environmentally friendly future.
  I am by no means an expert on this subject, but I have been around 
the block a time or two, so I support many strategies to reduce our 
dependence on fossil fuels and cut pollution. I have to stress that, in 
fact, we will continue to rely on fossil fuels to meet a large portion 
of our energy demand. Coal accounts, for example, for 50 percent of our 
Nation's electricity generation and over 80 percent of Missouri's 
electricity. So we have to harness our abundant supply of coal in a 
clean way by helping to advance carbon capture and sequestration, or 
CCS.
  City Utilities of Springfield, MO, and others are conducting a 
project to assess the feasibility of carbon sequestration in smaller, 
shallower saline aquifers and individual powerplants. Much of the CCS 
research to date has focused on deep saline aquifers in large 
geological basins often far removed from most powerplant sites.
  When complete, however, this pilot demonstration being conducted in 
Springfield may yield new lessons about CCS technologies that can be 
applied to powerplant sites in specific locations across the Nation.
  Nuclear power, such as coal, is also an important source of base-load 
power, and it must also play a role in our energy future. Nuclear 
energy generates more than seven times as much zero-carbon electricity 
as all renewable sources combined.
  In 2007, for example, nuclear energy prevented the emission of 693 
million metric tons of carbon dioxide--roughly the equivalent of taking 
all U.S. passenger cars off the road. Of course, generating nuclear 
power results in waste that must be stored or otherwise dealt with, and 
we have spent billions of dollars on an improved site to store that 
waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Unfortunately, political opposition 
has stalled, perhaps permanently, the operation of that site.
  A real solution can be found in nuclear reprocessing, which reuses 
spent nuclear fuel and can produce the same amount of energy and leaves 
only 5 percent of the waste. France does it. Why should not we?
  We must have policies in place that spur the development of more 
zero-emission nuclear power so we can harness all of its promise. And 
we must eliminate the layers and layers of bureaucracy and regulations 
which do not add to the safety of that power produced.
  I agree we need to develop other zero-carbon sources, such as 
renewable energy sources. Missouri power providers are currently 
expanding their wind generation, and we have a number of wind turbines. 
Also, a few families and businesses receive a portion of their power 
from wind farms in Kansas.
  Every day we are making advances in solar power, but this and wind 
power currently require huge taxpayer subsidies just to set up the 
operations, and it is followed by a $20-per-megawatt taxpayer subsidy 
when and if they produce power.
  Our State of Missouri, however, is blessed with hydropower sources 
which could be expanded by installing hydropower generation on existing 
Mississippi River locks and dams. But it is unlikely these renewable 
sources can provide more than a fraction of the energy we use, even in 
Missouri.
  So we must avoid national renewable energy standards that arbitrarily 
set requirements without ensuring that families and workers continue to 
receive the affordable power they need. Intermittent wind and sunlight 
mean we must always ensure that a reliable base source of power remains 
in place to back them up.
  Another way to make these sources more viable is through new battery 
technology that will help stabilize these sources' power flow. As a 
longtime leader in the battery industry, Missouri is also leading the 
way in advanced lithium-ion batter development and energy storage.
  For example, Dow-Kokam in Kansas City is using lithium-polymer 
technology to make batteries lighter, longer lasting, smaller, and 
quicker to charge. Not only would batteries make renewable sources more 
viable, they would help with peak shaving by storing large amounts of 
energy produced at offpeak times.
  When talking about batteries, of course, we cannot help but think 
about the promise that electric cars have to transform our 
transportation system and get us off our dependence of foreign oil.
  I am a strong supporter of the increased use of hybrid and electric 
vehicle technology. Smith Electric Vehicles in Kansas City is building 
delivery trucks, which are the world's largest electric vehicles with a 
top speed of 50 miles an hour and a range in excess of 100 miles on a 
single overnight charge of the truck's battery at a time when there is 
available electricity on the grid between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. not 
otherwise being used.

[[Page S8369]]

  But even with the promise of electric vehicles, American families, 
drivers, and workers still will need a plentiful supply of 
transportation fuels to power their cars. I do agree we eventually need 
to lessen our dependence on fossil fuels, and that is why I have been a 
longtime supporter of using renewable biomass for fuel and for energy.
  The biofuels industry has created good, often high-paying jobs which 
are critical to the Midwest where we have lost so many manufacturing 
jobs to the recession. I have been a longtime supporter of keeping tax 
incentives in place for the ethanol and biodiesel industry. These tax 
incentives, plus increased support for infrastructure to deliver these 
fuels, will be imperative as the industry becomes more competitive with 
traditional fuels. We must extend the volumetric excise tax credit, 
which we promised in the Congress to the farmers who set up the 
cooperatives to develop ethanol and biodiesel sources. In my opinion, 
one of the most exciting things about this industry is that it drives 
the development of low-carbon feedstocks.
  So I will close by talking about the potential that my home State of 
Missouri has to be a leader in a large part of our clean energy future 
by providing some of this homegrown energy, or biomass.
  We have made great progress in Missouri in the use of algae and 
carbon dioxide from fuel. Missouri also has abundant farmlands and 
forests that can provide diverse biomass feedstocks to generate 
electricity or produce renewable fuels. For example, a University of 
Missouri study found that Missouri's 2.5 million acres of corn and 5 
million acres of soybeans produce a combined 13 million tons of dry 
crop residue each year which can be converted into electric energy or, 
through cellulosic operation, into fuels.
  Now, our forests alone can potentially provide 150 million tons of 
wood residues from scrub timber annually on a renewable basis. 
Together, that is a lot of biomass feedstock that is homegrown and that 
is carbon neutral because it takes in energy as it grows, releases that 
energy when it is burned, and takes it in again as replacements are 
grown. If we do not harness it, that energy is released when the wood 
or the biomass degrades.
  Missouri entrepreneurs are developing new technology to convert 
municipal solid waste into clean burning biochar, which can supplement 
our biomass producers. In addition, Missouri is home to some of the 
foremost researchers in clean-burning biomass at the University of 
Missouri-Columbia.
  Last but not least, the State of Missouri Department of Agriculture 
is on the cutting edge in supporting burgeoning biomass technology.
  By creating a thriving biomass industry, we would not only help 
create our clean energy future, we would also create much needed new 
jobs in Missouri and Midwestern States by providing income to 
struggling farmers and agroforesters.
  We must promote these clean energy strategies in a market-friendly 
way, and taxing our suffering families' and workers' use of energy is 
not the way. Produce more, do not tax more. Taxing it does not increase 
the production of it. Promoting these clean energy strategies is a 
bipartisan win-win-win, and I hope all of my colleagues will join me in 
helping this become a reality.
  Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON of Florida. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

                          ____________________