[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 168 (Wednesday, October 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6758-S6761]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Climate Change
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, it is a real pleasure to be joined
here today on the Senate floor by Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New
Hampshire. Senator Shaheen has been a tireless advocate for clean
energy and is the Senate's bipartisan champion on energy efficiency,
alongside Senator Portman.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a major
warning last week. Ninety-one authors and editors from 40 countries
reviewed more than 6,000 scientific papers to assess what it would take
to hold global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial
levels. The report says that we will need to invest roughly five times
what we do now in low-
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carbon energy and energy efficiency by 2050. The Shaheen-Portman energy
efficiency legislation would help move us toward that target.
The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy says that the
bill would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 650 million metric
tons over a 15-year period. The cumulative net savings from the bill
would reach nearly $100 billion.
My State of Rhode Island is a national leader in promoting energy
efficiency, so we know how good programs like the Shaheen-Portman
reforms are for consumers, for businesses, and for the environment.
Rhode Island has consistently ranked among the top States for energy
efficiency. This year, we are in the top three on the State Energy
Efficiency Scorecard.
To keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the IPCC tells us we
need renewables to grow to about half of the world's energy mix by 2030
and to perhaps 80 percent of the world's energy mix by midcentury. Coal
in the global electricity mix needs to be mostly phased out by 2050.
The fossil fuel industry's front groups, of which there is a
considerable legion, tell us that this will raise costs on consumers,
but renewables are now beating fossil fuel power on cost, and renewable
costs are still falling.
In a recent report on global energy trends, Deloitte notes:
Solar and wind power recently crossed a new threshold. . .
. Already among the cheapest energy sources globally, solar
and wind have much further to go.
The Deloitte report shows the top solar States here in yellow, the
top wind States here in blue, and these two--Texas and California--are
in green because they are leaders in both wind and solar.
If you look at the top 20 U.S. solar and wind States, three-quarters
of those States have electricity prices below the national average, so
clearly renewables don't hurt energy costs. By the way, these States
include some of the reddest politically, including Oklahoma, Kansas,
Nebraska, North Dakota, Iowa, and Texas.
The cost transition with renewables coming down through the price of
fossil fuel is showing up in U.S. solar projects' purchased-power
agreements. You can see in this chart from Greentech Media that over
time, solar generation costs have come down in line with new-built
natural gas generation. That is what this band is. This is the price
for new-built natural gas generation.
This dot here represents a new project by NextEra Energy to sell
power to the southern Arizona utility, Tucson Electric Power, from a
100-megawatt solar array with an accompanying 30-megawatt energy
storage system for $45 per megawatt hour, right in line with new
natural gas plants. One industry analyst suggested that this facility
effectively took the place of a peak-demand gas plant.
Defenders of old, dirty energy sources paint renewables as
unreliable, as intermittent, but Deloitte's report finds that
renewables have actually proven ``to strengthen grid resilience and
reliability.'' Integrating renewable capacity into the grid has gone
well in practice, and FERC analyses predict increased renewable uses to
improve grid security and resiliency.
The grid operator in Iowa, the most heavily wind-powered State,
figured out a while ago the algorithms to treat wind across its grid as
baseload. When you pair wind or solar projects with battery storage,
like that NextEra project, then individual renewable projects become
baseload power sources. You don't have to aggregate and run algorithms;
that is a new baseload source.
The transition involves batteries, and batteries are booming. Wood
Mackenzie Power & Renewables projects worldwide storage capacity
currently around 6 gigawatt hours to grow tenfold, to at least 65
gigawatt hours by 2022; 2022 is right around the corner--a tenfold
growth.
Costs are falling fast. Lithium-ion batteries are down in price 80
percent since 2010, just in these 7 years. That is an 80-percent drop
in price.
Regulators are adapting. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
just finalized a new rule--a unanimous and bipartisan new rule--for
energy storage on America's electric grids.
One study has predicted the rule could spur 50 gigawatts of
additional energy storage across the United States, enough to power
roughly 35 million homes.
Energy storage is actually coming to market already. The Colorado
State Public Utility Commission just unanimously approved an Xcel
Energy Program to build $2.5 billion in renewable energy and battery
storage, to retire 660 megawatts of coal-fired power, shutting down
ongoing plants for cheaper, new renewable battery combinations. The
request for bids didn't just smoke out this one bid; it brought out a
flood of renewable energy proposals at costs that beat out existing
coal and natural gas facilities.
The IPCC warning was particularly serious and specific about the
urgent choices before us, and we, too, need to be serious about a new
direction to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency are our pathways in that
direction, along with a new technology--trapping carbon emissions to
use or store them, even pulling carbon dioxide straight from the air.
These carbon-captured technologies have been starved without revenue
because of a failure in energy market economics, which is that there is
no revenue proposition for capturing carbon pollution. Which brings me
to the Nobel Prize in economics just won by William D. Nordhaus of Yale
University.
Nordhaus aligns with the well-established market economics that
polluters should pay for damage to the environment and to public
health. That is econ 101. Without that, the price signal, which is at
the heart of market economics, is off, and subsidies result. The market
fails. And when the International Monetary Fund estimates the fossil
fuel subsidy at $700 billion per year just in the United States, that
is a massive market failure.
Nordhaus recommends that we correct the enormous market failure which
the fossil fuel industry now so busily protects politically. ``There is
basically no alternative to a market solution,'' Nordhaus said in
response to the Nobel Prize award. ``The incentives,'' he said, ``are
market prices--to raise the price of goods and services that are carbon
intensive and lower the ones that are less carbon intensive.''
The science on this, as I think most of us understand, is firmly
established, and the economics are widely understood. It is the
politics that keep getting in the way--the fossil fuel industry dark
money politics.
``This is the last frontier of climate change,'' said Nordhaus. ``I
think we understand the science,'' he said. ``I think we understand the
economics of abatement,'' he said. He said: ``We understand pretty much
the damages. But we don't understand how to bring countries together.
That is where the real frontier work is going on today.''
America should be leading at this frontier, not lagging. Lost in our
fossil fuel politics, we are failing in leadership. History will not be
kind with our failure.
It is well past time for Congress to wake up.
Mr. President, I yield the floor to my distinguished colleague from
New Hampshire, saluting her once again for the leadership that I
remarked on at the beginning of my remarks in working with Senator
Portman to be the Senate's bipartisan leader on energy efficiency.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Hampshire.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Whitehouse,
not just for those kind words but for all of the work he has done and
continues to do. For the last 6 years, Senator Whitehouse has come to
the floor of this Senate week after week, every week, to talk about
climate change and to talk about its effects throughout the United
States and around the globe and our need to take action to address this
crisis.
Thank you very much, Senator Whitehouse, for your leadership.
Climate change is real, and it is a present threat to our planet.
Senator Whitehouse talked about some of the science involved with that.
It is very clear to anybody who has looked at the science who doesn't
have a political agenda that this is real. It is a threat, and we need
to address it.
In New Hampshire, we are already seeing the impacts of climate change
in so many ways. Rising temperatures
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are shortening our fall foliage season, they are disrupting our maple
syrup production, and they are shortening our ski seasons and our
snowmobiling. Ice-out occurs earlier each year on our lakes. They are
causing sea level rise that can imperil businesses and homes along our
seacoast.
The strains on our fisheries and the increases of insect-borne
diseases that endanger our wildlife can all be tied to the effects of
climate change.
I have here a photo that I think it is important for people to see.
Moose have been one of New Hampshire's iconic wildlife representatives,
to put it, I guess, the easiest way. The moose are something that we
are very proud of in New Hampshire. We have seen them in the wildest
parts of our State, some even as far south as where I live in southern
New Hampshire. What we are seeing as the result of climate change is a
40-percent reduction in the moose in New Hampshire. As I said, that is
happening because of increases in insect-borne diseases.
If we look very closely at this picture, it looks like there are
little round balls on this moose. Those are ticks. Those are ticks that
have been able to attach to the moose and, in so many cases, kill the
moose. They are there because it is not getting cold enough in our
winters to kill off those ticks, so they multiply in such numbers that
they attach to the moose and they kill them. You can see this is a
distressed moose that has been affected by those ticks. She shouldn't
look like this, but it is the ticks. Those insect-borne diseases are
also responsible for something called brain worm that affects moose as
well.
So for our hunters and the people who enjoy the outdoors and wildlife
viewing, that is being threatened now because of climate change.
The beautiful maples that produce maple syrup and that produce such
beautiful colors in our fall foliage are being threatened because of
climate change. The estimate is that in several decades, we will no
longer see either moose or maple trees in New Hampshire because they
will have been forced out because the warming temperatures will mean
they can no longer survive.
Climate change is also affecting the public health of New Hampshire
citizens. Rising temperatures increase smog levels. They heighten the
effects of allergy season. They increase the number of children with
asthma. New Hampshire has one of the highest childhood asthma rates in
the country, and that has gotten worse because of climate change.
Scientists have proven without a doubt that CO2 and other
greenhouse gases are the primary culprits for the climate changes that
we are seeing and that human activity has increased the concentration
of these greenhouse gases.
If we are going to stop global warming, the United States must reduce
its greenhouse gas emissions in every sector, starting with how we
produce and consume energy.
One of the things that I have learned since my days as Governor is
that the easiest, fastest way to reduce our energy use is through
energy efficiency. It is without a doubt America's largest energy
resource. It has contributed more to our Nation's energy needs over the
last 40 years than any other fuel source. Without the economy-wide
improvements in energy efficiency that have occurred since 1973, it is
estimated that today's economy would require 60 percent more energy
than we are now consuming. In fact, savings from energy efficiency
improvements over the last 40 years have reduced our national energy
bill by an estimated $800 billion--with a ``b''--all while growing and
expanding our economy. Put another way, in the last 40 years, we have
saved more energy through energy efficiency than we have
produced through fossil fuels and nuclear power combined. So think
about that. Think about the potential of energy efficiency in
addressing our energy needs.
Energy efficiency is also the largest sector within the U.S. clean
energy economy. It employs nearly 2.25 million Americans nationwide,
and the majority of those people work in our small businesses. We know
that small businesses create about two-thirds of the new jobs in this
country. They are overwhelmingly responsible for innovation. Sixteen
times more patents are produced by small businesses. So this is where
innovation is going on, and it is going on in energy efficiency.
Just to reiterate, energy efficiency measures have proven time and
time again to be the easiest and most cost-effective way to address
climate change, while reducing energy costs and creating private sector
jobs.
The thing that I like about energy efficiency is that you don't have
to live in a certain part of the country and you don't have to be a
proponent of other types of fuel sources to appreciate and to support
energy efficiency. Everyone benefits from energy efficiency.
Unfortunately, since he took office, President Trump and his
administration have proposed policies that seek to undermine America's
clean energy economy and delay our progress toward addressing climate
change. The administration has proposed rollbacks to clean car
standards that will force Americans to pay more at the gas pump and
harm our environment.
Here is a chart that shows very clearly what rolling back CAFE
standards--the vehicle emissions requirements--would do. By 2035, the
rollback would add at least 158 million metric tons of carbon dioxide
annually. It would increase U.S. fuel consumption by 13.9 billion
gallons per year. This is according to the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy. If we think about that in terms of fossil
fuels--this fuel consumption--that is more fuel than we import from
Iraq or Venezuela each year. Think about what that will mean for
increased consumption.
The administration has also proposed to replace the Clean Power Plan
with regulations that would relax standards for powerplants at the
expense and well-being of current and future generations. Appliance
efficiency standards have been frozen in place. After four decades with
energy efficiency as a bipartisan cornerstone of Federal energy policy,
the President has once again proposed profound cuts to energy
efficiency and to renewable energy programs at the Department of
Energy.
For those of us who support energy efficiency, there can be only one
response to these rollbacks: We must address them head-on, and we must
redouble our efforts to keep America on the right track.
As a result of bipartisan efforts in the House and Senate--as I said,
energy efficiency is one thing that we can get behind, Republicans and
Democrats--last month the President signed into law a spending bill
that includes increased investments for clean energy programs at the
Department of Energy--something that has enjoyed strong bipartisan
support.
In addition to increasing those investments, this appropriations bill
marks the first time since 2009--so the first time since I have been in
the Senate--that the Department of Energy will secure its funding
before the start of a fiscal year. This financial certainty will
strengthen these programs and the industries they support.
The passage of the Energy and Water appropriations bill that we did
today demonstrates that Congress remains committed to advancing
commonsense, bipartisan policies that will strengthen our Nation's
energy efficiency.
Just last week, this Senate adopted a bipartisan resolution that was
sponsored by Senator Portman of Ohio and me, along with 19 of our
colleagues, that recognizes the economic and environmental benefits
that energy efficiency has contributed to this country. Senator Portman
and I are also committed to advancing our legislation to spur energy
efficiency innovation and other initiatives across the most energy-
intensive sectors of our economy. Senator Whitehouse talked about the
efforts that we have engaged in over the last 7 years. We have
introduced our bill into Congress in each Congress over the past 7
years. Each time, we are getting a little more momentum in getting this
through. We have gotten certain provisions of the bill through in the
last two Congresses.
It has been far too long since Congress passed a comprehensive energy
bill, so it is time for us to work together to pass an energy bill that
includes energy efficiency. This is bipartisan legislation. If it were
brought to the floor today, I guarantee you it would pass
overwhelmingly, and it would improve our Nation's energy policies and
help to grow the economy.
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We have some great examples of what is being done, and Senator
Whitehouse talked about some of what is being done around the country
to address energy efficiency and reduce our energy use.
New Hampshire, like Rhode Island, is one of the States that are part
of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. At the State, local, and
grassroots levels, individuals, businesses, and governments are rising
to the challenge by intensifying their efforts to advance energy
efficiency and clean energy.
This chart shows what has happened in the States that have been part
of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Carbon pollution has gone
down 51 percent, and electricity prices are down 6.4 percent. For us in
New England, where we have very high energy costs, that is very
positive. So if you don't support energy efficiency for any other
reason, you should support it because it reduces costs. Look at how
much in energy savings to consumers: $773 million.
Since 2009, the nine States in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
have outperformed the national average in terms of all of these
measures. Because the majority of proceeds are invested in energy
efficiency, they have allowed electricity prices to fall, and they have
saved consumers millions on their energy bills. As we look in the
outyears, billions more are expected in savings, thanks to those
investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy under the
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
In August of 2017, RGGI's nine States agreed to strengthen their
program by reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least 30 percent more
by 2030. New Hampshire and other RGGI States have shown the Nation that
States can make smart clean energy choices that benefit the environment
while strengthening the economy. For those who say we need a market-
driven approach to addressing climate change, this is a perfect example
of that.
Climate change represents an enormous challenge, but solutions are
within reach if we put into place policies that will allow for swift
action. We have a responsibility to help protect our children and
grandchildren from the severe consequences of global warming. We have
to start now, and we have to start with energy efficiency.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note that my allergies are a
result of that climate change.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.