[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 11752-11759]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Conaway). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 4, 2005, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. 
Schwartz) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your courtesy 
in giving me a few extra minutes to get here.
  What I want to do this evening, and I am a little short on extra 
Members and we are going to see how that evolves over the next few 
minutes, but I want to begin the discussion on an issue that I think is 
really incredibly important to each and every one of us in this 
country. And certainly as Members of Congress representing so many 
people, constituents come to us, I think, every day, and they may not 
say, what are you doing about energy, but they certainly come to us and 
say, What is going on with the high price of gasoline? We go to the 
pump. We see the price going up, sometimes more than one time in a day, 
and we have seen prices well over $3 a gallon.
  And what we know, of course, is that consumers are paying 100 percent 
more than they were paying 5 years ago. The price at the pump was about 
$1.44, $1.50, the average price of gasoline 5 years ago; and now we are 
seeing prices certainly well over $3 a gallon. And this is at the same 
time, of course, that we are seeing record profits from the oil 
industry. And certainly my constituents say to me, What is going on? 
What can we do about this? Why isn't something more happening? And they 
do understand there are some causes of this, but what I would like to 
discuss this evening is what is going on and what we have been doing 
about it and what we have not been doing about it that we should.
  I think that is really what I am most concerned about as I see these 
issues in my district, not only for gasoline. We are not in the right 
season yet, but we certainly know that home heating oil and home 
heating fuel has gone up as well. In fact, I commissioned a study in 
Pennsylvania to see what the price was for home heating oil last 
winter, and we saw increases on the average in Pennsylvania of over 
$700 a year for a family. That is a lot of dollars, particularly for 
somebody on a fixed income, young families struggling to make ends 
meet, and, of course, making some of the choices are really very 
difficult for families. And, in fact, what we are hearing is that 
families are telling us that it matters, that they have seen a real 
effect when they see transportation and home heating costs going up an 
average of 75 percent increase over what they saw even in 2001.
  So what are we seeing? What are we doing about this? What do we 
expect to do? There is certainly discussion on the floor about this 
issue. And I know, as Democrats, we have stood and really made quite a 
few suggestions, some very specific as far as what we can do 
immediately. The one specific one, of course, was what about price 
gouging? Are we seeing the price of gasoline go up because, in fact, 
there was some inappropriate, illegal activity? We have some 
preliminary information about that. Unfortunately, we do not have a 
Federal definition of price gouging; so it has been really difficult to 
be able to say specifically whether, in fact, that is really what has 
been going on.
  And what can we do more immediately to help make sure that the oil 
industry is doing all that it can to get us more affordable gasoline? 
But there is no question that those are short-term solutions. Those are 
not long-term solutions. And what many of us feel is that we should be 
acting on long-term solutions and we should have been doing it already, 
and why are we not doing it today, because what we do today matters 
next year, the year after, and for years in the future.
  So what are we doing to make sure that there is an adequate supply of 
energy in this Nation? Are we smart enough to be doing the kind of 
innovation and research that we know we need to do to be able to do 
this? Of course the answer, Mr. Speaker, is that we are; that the 
answer has to be to diversify our energy sources, to look at the 
different ways, the innovations, that are out there and bringing 
different kinds of fuel to our vehicles and to our homes. And we have 
seen that already. We have had numbers of our Members talk about 
biofuels and the opportunity for ethanol. We have just seen in my 
region of the country, and we have seen it elsewhere in the country, 
the fact that we now have mixed gasoline and ethanol. We have 5 percent 
ethanol coming into our tanks in the Philadelphia area. That switch was 
just made a couple of months ago.
  But we also know that you can have a flexible fuel vehicle, you can 
fuel your vehicle with 85 percent ethanol. Well, that is made out of 
corn in this country. Does that mean we reduce our reliance on foreign 
oil? Absolutely. And should we be doing more of that? How do we 
actually begin to make the kind of investments that really would matter 
where we can actually say we are using the kind of research, the kind 
of smart scientists, the engineers, the innovation that exists in this 
country to bring new fuel options to our vehicles and to all of us so 
that we have a diversity, we have more choices as consumers?
  And then, in fact, there was an article in the Inquirer just this 
morning that the oil executives themselves are saying this is a 
question of supply. It is also a question of demand. If there is less 
demand, that would make a difference in price as well. A report I heard 
said if we could just reduce demand by 3 percent in this country, we 
could, in fact, start to see a reduction in prices.
  So we have some real opportunities here. And of course long term if 
we can start to look at biofuels to be able to get them going, be able 
to get the production up really much faster, then we really have the 
opportunity to bring down the cost of fuel in this country for our 
automobiles.
  Now, of course, tied to that there is something many of us also 
believe, and that is that we ought to be calling on the automobile 
manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles, more hybrids, 
more flexible fuel vehicles, and more gasoline-driven vehicles that are 
more fuel efficient. And they can do it. They know how to do it. We 
need to make them do it more quickly and to be able to create that 
option for us so that we as consumers, all of my constituents, all of 
my fellow Congressmen's constituents, all Americans, have greater 
flexibility and can make choices about what are the right kinds of 
vehicles for them to drive, what is the most fuel-efficient way for us 
to be handling our own transportation needs.
  So I will just say that those are just some of the ideas. In fact, 
there are so many ideas. This is one of the things that when 
constituents ask, what can you do, I say we should be investing in 
serious ways in this country in these new technologies. And then we 
should be insisting that our automobile manufacturers and our 
purchasers, as well, start to participate in this. There are so many 
ideas out there.
  I see a colleague of mine has joined us, and I am excited about that 
because

[[Page 11753]]

he is someone who is very knowledgeable about this whole area and what 
we could be doing. But when we see the city of Philadelphia that I 
represent, that the new city buses they are buying are hybrid buses, 
that can make a really big difference. All of our cities should be 
doing that. All of our communities should be doing that. What about 
school buses? What can we do to make them more fuel efficient? These 
are things that we really need to be working on.
  And I will say two of the things I have only been focusing on, access 
to the energy we need and to price and the concern that consumers have 
on that, but there are two other aspects of this that are very critical 
for us to understand, and that is that of course it has an 
environmental effect if we continue to burn fossil fuels at the rate we 
have been doing that, we actually continue the kind of pollution we 
have. We cannot just have rhetoric about reducing emissions. We need to 
take it really seriously if we plan to protect this Earth we live in 
and protect the environment and the consequences that we have seen of 
some of the changes in the environment, the increasing number of 
storms.
  Hurricane Katrina is, of course, one of the examples that is in all 
of our minds; and we are just approaching, of course, a new hurricane 
season.

                              {time}  1900

  The third point I was going to make in addition to cost and 
availability of fuel and the energy we need as well as the 
environmental effects is, of course, the third area, which is our 
national security. We all understand, I hope we do increasingly 
understand, our reliance on foreign oil. Sixty percent of the oil that 
we use is imported. We need to reduce, if not eliminate, our reliance 
on foreign oil. It changes the relationships that we have with nations 
that are not always friendly to us.
  So we need to have a much different relationship to foreign oil than 
we do, and that is we have to end our reliance on foreign oil. But that 
is not going to be done unless we start to really seriously invest in 
alternative fuels and renewable energy sources, both for our vehicles, 
and, of course for our homes as well.
  So I am going to ask my colleague to join us.
  I did want to also say that I hope we can in our discussion also get 
to a little bit of a discussion about what consumers can do. What can 
individual Americans do that could really change the way we use energy; 
put more pressure on us, on Congress, to create those alternatives?
  Someone asked me, well, where can you buy ethanol-mixed gasoline? 
Where can you buy E85 in Pennsylvania? Well, the answer is there is one 
station in Lancaster, and there is one station in Pittsburgh. If you 
live in Philadelphia, that is a very long to drive to fill up your tank 
and not acceptable.
  So we need to be kick-starting this. We need to not just do a little 
bit; wouldn't that be nice, let's do that little project over there, 
let's see how that goes. We need to make a serious investment that 
changes dramatically the kind of energy options that we have for our 
automobiles, for our homes, for our daily lives. And only by doing that 
will we be able to protect the environment for the future, will we be 
able to end our reliance on foreign oil, will we be able to bring down 
the cost of energy for our cars and for our homes.
  If we don't do it now, we are going to be having this same 
discussion, only more seriously, in the years to come.
  So, as Democrats we have had a number of proposals, but one of the 
leaders in really putting forward a new energy policy for this country, 
and it is a wonderful one, it is called the New Apollo Energy Act, I 
guess we would like to see if it gets to be an act, and I would want to 
really encourage it, and I am delighted that my colleague Congressman 
Jay Inslee has joined us to talk a little bit about what that would do 
and how it would get us started in a very, very serious way in changing 
the way we create the energy for ourselves, for our homes and for our 
businesses.
  Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. I am delighted that Ms. Schwartz is leading 
this energy discussion tonight for two reasons. One, right now outside 
the Capitol there is a giant lightning storm going on, so talking about 
energy in the spirit of Ben Franklin is the right time to do it.
  But, secondly, and more importantly, many of us here on the 
Democratic side of the aisle believe that America is ready for a 
project with the same scope and ambition and vision as we had with John 
F. Kennedy with the original Apollo project.
  I have introduced H.R. 2828, which is called the New Apollo Energy 
bill, that basically is working on the belief that this Nation has the 
same gumption, the same technological prowess, the same vision that we 
had in the 1960s when we decided, as challenged by John F. Kennedy from 
that rostrum on May 9, 1961, to say we were going to put a man on the 
moon in 10 years and bring them back safely.
  We have now introduced this New Apollo Energy Project because we 
believe that the times that we now live in this decade are both as 
challenging and as promising as the 1960s were in space. We believe 
that the challenge we have to deal with energy is of the same scope as 
America had and Kennedy had dealing during the Cold War with the space 
race. We also believe that our ability to invent, to tinker, to 
innovate is as good or better as it was in the 1960s, and we need to 
have that same spirit with the New Apollo Project.
  In fact, I was just reading before I came over here, one of my staff 
handed me the quote from Kennedy's speech, and one of the things that 
he said was, I think it was kind of interesting, he was talking about 
the need for America to be a leader in space. We believe America needs 
to be a leader, it is our destiny to be a leader, and what Kennedy said 
was, ``If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it 
is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and 
cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we 
join in it or not. It is one of the great adventures of all time, and 
no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to 
stay behind in this race for space.''
  We believe, those of us who are propounding the New Apollo Energy 
Project believe, that we cannot be a leader of the world unless we 
decide that we are going to lead the world into a new energy future in 
this country and later in the world. And to do so, we believe that that 
is a challenge that is much more than nibbling on the edges.
  We got to the moon because we had an aspiration of one giant leap for 
mankind, not just one little baby step for man. Frankly, this Congress 
and this administration to date, sadly to say, has been just nibbling 
on the edges. These tiny little inching forward as a baby would take 
their first little steps.
  We both need and deserve more in this country, which is a very bold 
and visionary technological leap in energy. So we have introduced the 
New Apollo Energy Project, which will answer that bugle cry that this 
country has always answered to really leapfrog the existing 
technologies.
  If I can just briefly describe some of the things we want to do. We 
want to achieve three ends in the New Apollo Energy Project. Number 
one, we want to lead the world economically. We want to create good, 
high-paying jobs in the new technologies of new energy that are right 
now, unfortunately, going overseas.
  Unfortunately, we are losing jobs right now to some of the Japanese 
automakers because of auto efficiency. We are losing jobs to some the 
German solar energy industries. We are losing jobs to Denmark. And I 
think Denmark is a great country, but to lose jobs to them to create 
these wind turbines makes no sense. The country that put a man on the 
moon, to allow other countries to lead in energy makes no sense. So one 
of the things we need to do is to bring the job growth right here.
  The second thing we have to do is truly break our addiction to Middle 
Eastern oil. Although we laud the President for the first time 
suggesting after 6 years of urging him, has now

[[Page 11754]]

suggested that he wants to join us to help to break the addiction to 
Middle Eastern oil, and that is great, but, unfortunately, the week the 
President said that, he laid off 150 or 100 researchers in renewable 
energy at the Boulder Energy Laboratory. So we would like to have some 
reality rather than rhetoric.
  Third, we have to break this tendency to put more carbon dioxide in 
the air, to deal with global warming. The debate about global warming 
is over. It was a vigorous and strenuous debate, and it is done. The 
science of global warming is in, and we need now to really have 
technologies that will reduce CO2 emissions.
  I met the President of the Marshall Islands the other day, and he 
told me, he was on Bainbridge Island, I live on an island, Bainbridge 
Island, Washington, he told me that his entire nation may be 
environmental refugees because their entire nation is threatened by the 
rising sea levels together with the collapse of coral reefs.
  We had a meeting with Stanford professors last week in the basement 
of this building, who told us in 100 years there may not be any viable 
healthy coral reefs in the world because the carbon dioxide we are 
putting in the air out of our tailpipes and coal-powered plants goes 
into solution in the ocean, it makes the oceans more acidic, and when 
they become more acidic, coral reefs cannot survive.
  So we got to get these three jobs done. We have got a New Apollo 
Project to do it, and I would like to discuss it in depth.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I just want to ask you a little more 
about that. I think sometimes for those of us who are not scientists 
out there, there is sometimes a feeling when you hear about that, it is 
what can we do about that? We need to use all of this energy. We need 
to use these fossil fuels. How am I going to get to my job? I mean, how 
can we possibly do this? How am I going to worry about the coral reefs? 
Why should I worry about that? What can we possibly do about it?
  I think what you are saying, and I think what we need to really be 
talking about, is believe in ourselves as a country, to believe in how 
smart we are, how capable we are, how innovative we are, and then to 
use those assets, which are really our people and how smart we can be, 
to say in fact we can fix it.
  Just as you point out, we did create this space program. We did send 
to a man to the moon. We have actually even sent some women in space 
now, you know? But the fact is, I was just thinking about this as well, 
we have taken real problems, and we have solved them. We have solved 
some of these environmental problems.
  So I wanted to ask you about that, because I think one of the things 
as I read your proposal I was so taken with is that it also understands 
that there probably isn't one answer. We don't even know exactly what 
all the solution is going to be, which I think would be great for 
Americans, because the fact is we like choices. So it may be that a 
hybrid vehicle works for me, and a more fuel-efficient vehicle that is 
not a hybrid works for you. Maybe a flexible-fuel vehicles works for 
you. Maybe I need a big car, or maybe I don't need a big car, depending 
on where we live, what kind of job we have. But really the question I 
have, too, as I look at your proposal is you really look at a lot of 
different ways to solve this problem and really take the science and 
use it. So talk about that, if you would. I think that is really 
important to hear.
  Mr. INSLEE. I think you have put your finger on a very important 
principle as we go forward on energy debate. The debate in energy 
between those of us who believe in the New Apollo Project and those of 
us who do not is really a debate between the optimists and the 
pessimists.
  The pessimists believe that we are tied to these really now ancient 
technologies. Fossil fuels is really an ancient technology. It is from 
the 1800s. It is old. We have been doing it for a long, long time.
  Now, pessimists believe that we are stuck burning fossil fuels, and 
that is about as good as it gets.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ. In fact, isn't that the President's solution, just more 
oil?
  Mr. INSLEE. Just more oil. You just drill more holes in the ground. 
The problem with that is, unfortunately, for reasons that are past our 
understanding, the dinosaurs went to die under somebody else's sand. 
That seems so unfair to us. We use 25 percent of the world's oil, but 
we only have 3 percent of the world's oil reserves. We could drill in 
Yosemite, we could drill outside on the south lawn of the White House. 
The problem is, the oil is not there.
  We use one-quarter of the world's oil, but we only have 3 percent of 
the reserves. So we can accelerate some exploration, but, 
unfortunately, the oil, frankly, is not there. So for one reason, it is 
just not there. But the pessimists believe that we cannot invent our 
way out of this pickle.
  The optimists believe that we can do the same thing in energy as we 
did in space. Just to harken back in history, when Kennedy said we were 
going to the moon on May 9, 1961, put that in historical perspective. 
Our rockets were blowing up on the launch pad. We had launched a 
softball in suborbital flight. Computers were as big as a room. He 
didn't know how we were going to get to the moon, but he did know a 
fundamental lesson of American psychology, which is we are the best 
inventors in human history, literally. Our culture, our society in 
America is the best inventive society in human history. So he 
recognized our ability to innovate.
  Now, the New Apollo Energy Project that we have propounded delves on 
that. Let me just give you an example of just a couple things in my 
neighborhood.
  It was in my paper this morning, in the Seattle Times, about a young 
man who has built a hybrid vehicle that uses an enhanced battery. It is 
a plug-in hybrid that has a little larger battery that he adds to the 
trunk. That car now gets 100 miles per gallon, 100 miles per gallon, 
and it is driving the streets of Seattle, Washington, today. The reason 
it does, you plug it in, it gets a little larger boost, it uses 
electricity now much greater than the gasoline. Now, it does use 
additional electricity, but it is getting 100 miles per gallon driving 
on the streets today. This technology exists.
  Because of his efforts and some of these other groups that are 
pushing this, they are now pushing the auto industries to move faster 
to get to this plug-in hybrid technology. It is there.
  We have the largest wind farm in North America being built today, 
350-foot-tall towers in southeast Washington, that is generating over 
$1.5 million over a several-year period for one farmer of a stream of 
revenue. This is great for farmers as well. It is going to produce 
enough electricity for 400,000 people.

                              {time}  1915

  We have the largest biodiesel plant in North America now is under 
design in southwestern Washington which will produce environmentally 
sound fuel for our cars and biodiesel. And biodiesel is great because 
it reduces the CO2 emissions, because the CO2 
goes into the plant, we make oil out of it, and we don't put any net 
increase in carbon dioxide.
  I just mentioned these three technologies out of hundreds that are 
now coming on.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. A couple things on what you say. One is 
that I think we also ought to make clear, and I know in your proposal 
and you are talking about it is that this isn't about a new big 
government program, this is about working with the private sector and 
helping innovation, on whether it is actually giving tax credits or 
helping to make some investment or helping to kick-start one of those 
ideas for a private company that wants to do this and wants to explore 
doing it. That is who is doing it. But what they need is for us to help 
make that happen so that it doesn't take them 10 years before they grow 
just enough to be able to prove it to someone, to be able to take a 
risk.
  And I think some of the proposals that as government we could just 
ensure that loan, so that, in fact, it helps

[[Page 11755]]

some private bank be able to make that loan and risk it, because we 
don't know what is going to work. We know some things are working; we 
don't know which one is going to really take off. We know, again, even 
with the biofuels we have been talking about ethanol, but there is some 
suggestion we could use sugar, we could use switchgrass. There is a 
whole variety of other ways we can do this, the whole question about 
electric cars and whether that works and how we can do this. There is 
some other technologies out there, fuel cell technology that we could 
actually potentially use in cars.
  So, again, what we are saying here is that we want to work with the 
private sector; we want to work with those scientists and innovators 
and entrepreneurs who will be able to take their ideas and then be able 
to keep tweaking them, if you will, to see what works, to see what 
takes off; and to work with our own automobile manufacturers to say, 
you want to scale it up not just another few cars, but a lot of cars, 
and how quickly can you do that? How can you make it? How can we keep 
making cars here that we want to buy, that we can afford to buy, that 
will use less fuel?
  But it is working with the private sector with that innovation, 
allowing it to be quite dynamic, because we don't know which ones to 
choose so much. And that is even happening, as I mentioned this about 
the old-time fossil fuels. There are now clean-coal technologies. In 
Pennsylvania we are sort of interested in some of that, could that 
work? Could it help us get through the hump for the foreseeable future?
  But I do think it is so important for us not to be so worried that we 
actually only think in the very narrowest ways about how we can solve 
the problem for next year or for the year after. This is really looking 
at both immediate solutions, but then long term, where are we really 
going with this, and why shouldn't we in America be the ones in the 
forefront of this? And that is what you are talking about, and I think 
that is very exciting.
  Mr. INSLEE. And I want to dovetail on this point about this is good 
old American capitalism as work. We believe in the power of capitalism. 
You look at the space race, and it was not just governmental activity, 
it was a public-private partnership with private contractors operating 
in a profit margin or incentives that did help get us to the moon. And 
we believe the same type of activity can be part of the solution for 
energy.
  And I have to tell you, one of the huge transitions going on in the 
U.S. economy right now is happening without necessarily government 
help, which is a huge influx of investment capital. We just had a 
startup company involving biofuels that was announced last week at one 
of the largest infusions of capital for some period of time this 
decade, and we are seeing that.
  And we are also seeing an infusion of intellectual capital. I come 
from a part of the world that is very active in the Internet and 
software technologies. The Microsoft campus is in my district. And we 
are seeing a lot of intellectual capital now from software and Internet 
move over to the energy side. We have seen investments from some of the 
Microsoft family into biofuels.
  I met an interesting fellow a few months ago who was involved in the 
commercialization of the MRI machine, the magnetic resonance imaging 
machine, and he made a bundle of cash on that commercialized product 
that now they put us in the tubes and diagnose our old knees when you 
get to be 55 and play basketball like I do. So this guy now is involved 
in perfecting a solar cell panel that is nonsilicone-based; it is based 
on an organic molecule that you essentially just spray on, and you can 
reduce the construction cost because silicone-based solar panels are 
fairly expensive to make. This could be just a spray-on application and 
potentially reduces the cost 20 to 30 percent.
  So here is a fellow that has done well in one electronic business now 
making the transition to energy, and we are seeing a lot of that. But 
what we can do is we can help those businesses get a jump start, and 
one of the important things we can do on that is to offer loan 
guarantees to guarantee the loan of some of these new plants. We are 
now trying to hustle along a loan guarantee for a first cellulosic 
ethanol plant in the world, actually in the State of Idaho, and we are 
trying to get that loan guarantee perfected so that company can get up 
and running.
  Those are the kinds of things that are an appropriate public-private 
partnership, along with the tax incentives. I sponsored a bill with 
Senator Barack Obama called Health Care for Hybrids, and what it would 
do is to help the auto industry with some of their legacy health care 
costs in exchange for producing more fuel-efficient cars. So here is a 
two-for.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Absolutely. And I think that that says 
how good this can be for business, both the cost of the new businesses 
that are created as a result of what we are talking about, but I really 
also means jobs. Coming from Pennsylvania, and I was in the State 
senate for 14 years before coming to Congress, and we would often have 
a debate when we discussed some of these changes that we wanted to in 
terms of auto emissions and how we would respond to this, and what if 
we actually put more regulation on businesses, wouldn't we lose jobs? 
And how will we be able to protect the environment and not lose jobs? 
And in Pennsylvania it was a really serious issue. And I remember 
having those debates on the floor of senate, and yet by not moving 
ahead, we, in fact, lost some of those jobs anyway and didn't create 
new ones.
  And I think what we are talking about here is let us create those new 
jobs. If you have an innovative entrepreneur of a company, well, they 
are going to hire people who then get jobs that potentially will grow 
into more jobs and more jobs. And these are often skilled jobs, they 
are decent-paying jobs. And if as a result they end with a product, new 
energies, new ways for us to both fuel our vehicles and also heat our 
home, and at the same time reduce some of these really serious carbon 
emissions and be able to home-grow some of our energy, more of our 
energy, while we are really doing a lot, and we are at the same time 
reducing costs, We are reducing costs to our businesses. And now some 
will say to me, if we could just reduce the cost of our energy, well, 
then maybe I could hire that additional person that I am trying to do. 
You hear that all the time, just bringing down the cost of electricity 
or being able to bring down your home heating or heating for business, 
that action may produce enough residual money for someone to be able to 
create a new job or two or maybe many more jobs.
  So I think we have to see this as just an extraordinarily potential 
win-win for all of us. And, again, creating that diversity of options 
for people and the kind of energy, maybe more choices, meaning that 
there will be a little more competition, means that prices might come 
down. That helps all of us. But I think what we have to say is this 
about creating new businesses, creating new jobs, and at the same time 
creating new sources of energy that could be both safer for the 
environment and also be able to be far more available without our 
having to have those serious kinds of negotiations that might get in 
the way of some of our more international relationships.
  And this isn't about being an isolationist when we talk about other 
countries. The idea is to share some of these innovations. And we have 
seen that, too. Talk about the high-tech industry, well, it is actually 
some of our ideas that are now being produced elsewhere. But it is our 
ideas, and we need to work and bring all those ideas together, create 
those jobs, create those opportunities, and help our businesses be able 
to be competitive, because without reducing energy costs, they simply 
won't be able to.
  Mr. INSLEE. It has been very sad to see technology originally 
developed in the United States, particularly solar cell technology, now 
being perfected and commercialized in Germany and other countries. To 
see that hemorrhaging of jobs is really a pathetic

[[Page 11756]]

statement of our inaction to have a national energy policy. And we 
effectively don't have a national energy policy right now, except to 
just sort of allow the status quo to stumble along.
  There is one thing that is very clear about energy: Somebody is going 
to create millions of jobs and millions of dollars, and we want that to 
be Americans. In the 1960s, they had the missile gap. Remember, during 
the Nixon-Kennedy debate there was a debate about the missile gap. In a 
way, we have an energy technology gap right now that, frankly, other 
countries are getting a leg up on us. And the reason is, is that those 
countries have developed energy policies that have decided to leapfrog 
technologies and develop technologies there. We can't allow that gap to 
continue to widen. And that is why this New Apollo Energy Project, H.R. 
2828, if you want to take a look at it, is going to answer this 
challenge.
  When Kennedy set us forth in the original space race, it really was 
not for economic reasons, it was largely not for a job creation 
program. But if you look at what it did create, can you imagine had he 
not challenged America to start the original Apollo Project? We would 
not have a computer industry in this country, we would not have an 
Internet-based industry, we would not have a satellite-based industry. 
We would likely probably not have a nanotechnology-based industry. That 
has been the mainspring of economic development and job creation in 
this country.
  So I think the important thing to realize about energy is we are not 
just acting to $3 a gallon gas, we are not acting just to save the 
planet we live on from the ravages of global warming. We are doing it 
from a positive economic growth-oriented proposal. And I think you can 
honestly say that this is probably the best thing the U.S. Congress 
could do to really grow the U.S. economy right now, because it is the 
one thing that the world obviously needs. Our market is not just in 
America. When we develop a clean-coal technology, we want to sell that 
technology to the Chinese and to India. And assuming we can do that, 
there is enormous growth potential.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I was going to bring up another aspect 
of all of this discussion. I think also that sometimes when people hear 
these kind of conversations, they think, well, it is not really about 
me. What can I do that would really affect carbon emissions in this 
world? You know, how can I actually help save the planet and create 
more energy sources?
  But the fact is, and if we could just talk about this for a minute, 
there is a lot that people can do. And, again, I am reflecting back. I 
remember when we first started talking about recycling, and I remember 
some of my colleagues would say, well, no one is going to want to 
bother doing that. And now people are doing this all across the 
country, and it actually makes you much more aware. It is something you 
can do. It saves cost at some level.
  But when you think about what some individuals can do related to 
energy, and I thought we could talk about that. Again, if you are a 
business owner, there is so much you can do in your own plant 
potentially to be able to reduce your energy consumption so that you 
could reduce your costs. All of us know about if you can weatherize 
your home.
  Well, I just went to visit a new building in my district that is 
actually on the campus of a university that they just built a green 
building. Well, I think I have seen green buildings, you know. They 
have sort of motion detector electric lights, or they have more 
efficient plumbing appliances and all that. But this building, actually 
the roof looked like it had grass on it. It had green plants on the 
roof. It was new to me. I didn't know that that existed. But they said 
this isn't new. This is something we are experimenting with, but, in 
fact, it is not just grass, it is a little more complicated than that. 
But it is going to reduce their need for heating and cooling that 
building dramatically. Dramatically. So if you could, I don't know what 
the number was, cut it in half, cut it 80 percent. They are trying to 
perfect this, of course.
  My guess is that they are going to be able to come up with something 
as we experiment with these ideas that we can do in our homes, in our 
businesses, in our public spaces. And we should be leaders in that as 
public officials, as elected officials. This is something we should be 
doing because we know how important it is. And we know that we should 
learn from each other. We always talk about best practices. Well, we 
should start to scale up on this, as they say. We should start to say: 
If it is working in this State, why isn't it working somewhere else? 
And the States are innovative to change. We are interested to hear what 
you are talking about in terms of the State of Washington. We are proud 
in Pennsylvania that we have wind farms and they are working, that they 
are working, as I said, on clean coal, that we are creating incentives 
for businesses to be able to reduce their costs of energy.
  Public transportation obviously is something we are not even getting 
into here, but some of the newer technologies on that.
  But just to comment on what we can do. I know there is a Federal 
program, I don't think it is known well enough, called Energy Start, 
where you can buy more efficient appliances. Businesses can get 
credits, tax credits, for being more energy-efficient.
  So as you pointed out, there are little starts here, but if we really 
want to get serious about this, we have to start talking about it, 
making it clear that everyone, every business, every family, and 
certainly our bigger businesses can really start to participate in this 
in a way that will start to really make the kind of difference that 
will see us shifting to these new energy sources and reducing our 
reliance on foreign oil.

                              {time}  1930

  Mr. INSLEE. I would like to compliment you for bringing up the idea 
of efficiency and not wasting energy. Because one of the things when we 
talk about energy, it is very easy to just launch into how we are going 
to generate more energy in an environmentally clean way. Obviously, or 
maybe not so obviously, the best energy you can create is the energy 
you do not waste. That is, clean energy is saving dirty energy and not 
wasting it, and those of us who have studied this believe that 30 or 40 
percent of this solution ultimately is using energy in a much more 
efficient way, as much as inventing new ways to generate it.
  That starts at home, with weatherizing your home, as you have 
indicated, a pretty simple thing, and there are some simple, 
inexpensive things you can do. There are more expensive things one can 
do with insulation, green building; and the green building, we just had 
two young men design the greenest building. They won a national award. 
We are kind of proud of that. It uses passive solar heating.
  They can use solar cell technology now. If you want to build a new 
home, you can buy shingles that have the solar cells incorporated right 
in the shingle. There is a home about 20 miles from where we are 
standing in Virginia that is a net zero user of electricity, and they 
use massive solar heating. It is a two story, looks like a nice little 
home you find in any suburban place around Virginia. They use an in-
ground heat pump, integrated solar panels on the roof, solar sort of 
passive heating through the use of the windows and tiles that collect 
the heat. When they generate more electricity than they use, they feed 
it back into the grid. That home was built for no more money than an 
average home. They are using zero electricity off the grid on a net 
basis. So a family that is committed to this can do it today using even 
existing technology.
  But you said something I thought was very interesting, too, and that 
is about businesses. We are fortunate to have some visionary business 
leaders who are already accomplishing what we need to do.
  British Petroleum, under the leadership of Sir John Brown, they 
decided they were going to change their energy use, and this is an oil 
company. This is an oil company that decided to reduce their carbon 
dioxide emissions to actually meet the treaty goals of the Kyoto

[[Page 11757]]

global warming treaty. They were not pessimists. They were not nay-
sayers. They just decided to do it; and within 3 years, they met their 
Kyoto targets of a reduction in their CO2, and, importantly 
to their shareholders, saved something like $300 million in the process 
because when you do not waste energy you save yourself money.
  General Electric, under the leadership of their CEO, has decided to 
make an enormous investment not only in the use in their CO2 
emissions but in developing these new high-tech, energy-efficient 
appliances that all of us are going to use.
  So we have some business leadership; and regrettably what we do not 
have, we do not have leadership here in Congress, at least in the 
majority, who have not joined us optimists in breaking this addiction 
to oil and gas. The sad fact is that oil and gas still dominate the 
situation here in the House of Representatives; and until something 
changes, we are going to follow the leadership of the business 
community and people around this country who want to respond to this 
energy crisis individually that we are seeing.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. Just to be a little political here for 
a moment, because you brought up, I think, how do we take what we are 
saying and make it happen. I mean, that really is sort of what we are 
talking about; and again, we are starting to sound sort of hopeful, 
optimistic, and it sounds like a lot of new terms for a lot of people, 
but I think we will increasingly get comfortable with some of this 
discussion. You know we can do that, and I think that is one of the 
reasons that I am on the floor tonight. It is one of the reasons that 
Mr. Inslee joined me.
  We want to get more familiar with this terminology. What are the 
alternative fuels? What are the choices they have? What is the flexible 
fuel vehicle? What are the kinds of options that I have out there in 
the future? What should I be asking for? How can I save energy at home? 
How can I save energy for business? How can we encourage businesses to 
do that? And what is the role of government in all of this?
  I think what is exciting here is that there are so many of these 
ideas out there that if, in fact, we can encourage businesses to push 
even harder, to move even faster, push automobile manufacturers to 
higher fuel efficiency, if we went to 33-miles per gallon rather than 
22 or whatever we sit at right now, we would save literally 2.6 million 
barrels of oil per day by 2025. You say, well, that is a long time from 
now. If we start now, we will start to do it. We should start to do it. 
We really have this opportunity to do it, and in fact, we know how to 
make those vehicles. We can make more fuel-efficient SUVs. So if 
Americans want to buy the SUVs, we can make them fuel efficient.
  The fact is we have brought these ideas, brought them up as 
amendments and bills, and we want to work together to make this happen. 
This should not be a fight about do we ever use oil again or do we only 
go to you get to live in a green building or not. It is about moving 
all of us forward so that we can use less energy, use it more 
efficiently, bring down the costs for Americans, be more self-reliant. 
Knowing that we can do this, our role is to recognize the innovation 
out there, to create the incentive, to encourage it to move much, much 
faster so, in fact, we can make this happen.
  Occasionally we have to set some of the rules. I mean, sometimes we 
cannot bring people along. You do have to set rules out there to help 
make it happen, and to help make it happen much, much faster; but the 
fact is that this is very much a part of the Democratic agenda to be 
able to again use our innovation and to use our smarts to make this 
happen.
  I see the pamphlet that you have, and I will maybe yield over, but I 
know one of the things we are talking about that we have not brought up 
today is we do need to encourage our young people to be well-educated 
in science and engineering and technology. We know that that is so 
important to our future for all of us that if we do not start making 
sure that our young people and some of the old people who are maybe 
going back to school or have some new training and education that we 
actually encourage this so that we do have the best and the brightest 
who are putting their minds to this work, and that is what we are 
hoping to make happen as well.
  Mr. INSLEE. As Ms. Schwartz indicated, I just happen to have an 
Innovation Agenda, which is the Democratic suggestion on how we can 
seize the power of innovation for the country and how the Innovation 
Agenda is just part of a larger package that one can read if anyone is 
interested.
  We think energy is a very important part, but it is one part of our 
Innovation Agenda; and page 3 of that basically is our effort to 
develop a new generation of innovators, and that is what we need to do. 
That is why we are committed to placing a highly qualified teacher in 
every math and science classroom, why we are committed to educate 
100,000 new scientists, engineers, and mathematicians in the next 4 
years, why we want to make college tuition tax deductible for the 
students studying math, science and engineering so we can have those 
minds available.
  But if you look at page 8 on our Innovation Agenda, you will see our 
dedication to energy independence in 10 years. I will just mention two 
of the bullet points in the Democrats' larger agenda. We would commit 
to substantially reducing the use of petroleum-based fuels by rapidly 
expanding production and distribution of synthetic and bio-based fuels, 
such as ethanol derived from cellulosic sources, and by deploying new 
engine technologies for fuel-flexible, hybrid, plug-in hybrid and 
biodiesel vehicles. Now, those are different kinds of vehicles.
  Coming back to what Ms. Schwartz said, we want to give consumers 
choices of what kind of vehicles to buy and to use. This is not a 
command-and-control suggestion we are making. We think we want to 
develop an economy so that you can decide what kind of vehicle you want 
to use. That might be a flex-fuel vehicle. That is a vehicle that can 
burn gasoline or biofuels, and Brazil has done this through great 
genius. Now, when you pull up to a pump in Brazil, if you have a flex-
fuel vehicle, you can burn either gasoline or biofuels or ethanol, 
which makes you in the driver's seat literally, not the oil and gas 
companies. So you can compare prices and decide what to burn.
  Now, the reason they have done that is Brazil basically told the auto 
industry to start producing these vehicles, give consumers choice, and 
that is what we stand for is giving consumers choice so that we are not 
victims of the oil and gas oligopolies in our country. We talked about 
fuel-flexible, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, and biodiesel.
  The second bullet point in our plan will create a DARPA-like 
initiative within the Department of Energy to provide seed money for 
fundamental research needed to develop high-risk, high-reward 
technologies and build markets for the next generation of revolutionary 
energy.
  We do realize that there is some basic research that the government 
is good at that is very high-risk. It might be hard to get a bank loan 
on some of these cutting-edge technologies, but we have had very great 
success in the Defense Department with a group called DARPA, the 
Defense Advanced Research labs. They have done great work in the 
Department of Defense. We need to use that same strategy in energy, and 
that is why Democrats are proposing to have a similar energy advanced 
research program in the Department of Energy. We are very optimistic 
about that.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. I think this is something that is so 
exciting I think for all of us. It is something I have been excited 
about, too. We see the National Science Foundation being able to do 
some of this research, and again, some of the funding we give to 
scientific research is done by scientists who work for the government. 
So it is also given out in grants that are then either given out all 
over the country to innovators who are doing this kind of work, but 
then because we are involved in it, we have scientists sort of talking 
to each other, being able to give that information back on a national 
level, being able to

[[Page 11758]]

share that information, being able to again act more quickly on that 
shared information to see what is working and what is most effective 
and cost effective and actually what is fuel effective.
  These are, I think, really exciting, exciting options for all of us. 
It is something we can do, but again, I think we should be clear, we 
are not doing it now. That is detrimental to all of us, not just 
because when we go right today to fill up our tank we are paying $3 or 
more a gallon and because the vehicles we drive are not as fuel 
efficient as they could be and the homes we live in are not as 
efficient either as they could be. It is because we actually have not 
gotten serious about taking this next step and we need to. We need to 
again because of the high cost to our families.
  If you look at families that are paying several hundred dollars more, 
in some cases several thousand dollars more, those are really tough 
decisions for a lot of our families in this country, what do we do and 
how do we make ends meet when we have these concerns. I hope they are 
hearing us. We want you to push us. You should push us. You should push 
this administration to do more.
  Again, you pointed out the oil and gas industry could be a part of 
this. They should be a part of this because they also have scientists. 
They could be more fuel efficient. They should be.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentlewoman would yield for a moment, 
this is a point that is absolutely galling to me, and folks need to 
understand this. This Congress is pathetic, with a capital P, when it 
comes to energy policy. We are doing nothing significant to really 
reduce our dependency on oil and gas. This place is awash in oil. It is 
a slave to oil. It has not broken its addiction even to the political 
ties that bind it to the oil and gas industry. As a result, it has done 
nothing significant to move forward on energy.
  When we have all these new technologies coming on, solar cell 
technology which costs 80 percent less than it did 10 years ago, those 
prices are coming down spectacularly, wind energy that is coming down, 
has come down 20 percent so that it is competitive right now today in 
the State of Washington with other sources, has come down 20 percent. 
Instead of making investment in those technologies, you know what this 
Congress did? It stood up and gave another multimillion dollar tax 
break to the oil and gas industry of your tax money, and that is 
boneheaded.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. They did the same thing they have been 
doing.
  Mr. INSLEE. They did the same thing they have been doing since the 
1800s. The way I described this is this Congress last year passed a 
great energy policy for 1890. It was visionary for 1890. It is 
Neanderthal in the year 2006.
  When you look at when this country has made great advances, we have 
done it in two major challenges that our country had in the last 
several decades, the Manhattan Project which developed nuclear power, 
and it was a major investment by the United States of America because 
of a major challenge. The second was the original project in the space 
race, and we responded and were successful. The third now needs to be 
an energy revolution in this country.
  But the fact of the matter is under this Congress and in this 
management of Congress, we are investing less than 15 percent of the 
equivalent of what we would have done in either one of those projects; 
and as a result, we are getting teeny, tiny little baby steps that we 
are encouraging when we should have these great leaps for mankind.

                              {time}  1945

  You know, if this Congress was running the space race, the quote 
would have been, ``Another little step up the cabin of a DC-3,'' 
because that is about all we would have invented. Kennedy got us to the 
moon; this energy policy won't get us to Cleveland.
  We believe we need a very significant ramp-up both in Federal 
research and development, basic R&D, tax credits to manufacturers, to 
help them manufacture fuel-efficient vehicles; tax credits to consumers 
to allow you to decide how to buy both a fuel-efficient car and build a 
fuel-efficient home; and use of the procurement policy.
  We haven't talked about this tonight at all, but one of the great 
tools we have in our toolbox in energy policy is the Federal Government 
procurement power. The Federal Government is kind of the 800-pound 
gorilla when it comes to buying things in this economy. The Federal 
Government needs to start buying fuel-efficient cars, fuel-efficient 
air-conditioning units, and building green buildings. There is much 
more that we can do.
  We are taking little baby steps there. The Pentagon is looking at a 
fuel-efficient battery. One of the competitors trying to develop this 
is in my district. It is called Neopower. They are building a fuel-
celled battery that will actually power computers and radio devices 
using fuel cells. So as we ramp that up, hopefully we will have much 
more efficient batteries that can last much longer and not burn 
gasoline-generated electricity. But we are just starting.
  I don't know how to categorize it other than to say that we need a 
revolution, and what we are getting is not even an evolution. It is 
almost a devolution, going back the wrong way.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. It is not using our imagination and our 
skills to move forward. And, also, I will just second the point you 
made. I do feel very strongly that the public buildings, for example, 
and our public procurement, that is what we buy, we should be setting 
an example. We should be practicing what we preach. We should be doing 
as best we can.
  Again, it is not so easy for us to change our patterns, you know, 
what we are used to doing. Someone said, when gasoline prices were so 
high, one of the suggestions we were trying to make to people is if you 
are going to run your errands, try to be more efficient in the way you 
drive and do that. You could save yourself a few gallons of gasoline 
every week, several a month. That could make a difference. Think about 
carpooling.
  It is hard to change our own patterns, and I think that is true in 
government, too. We should be setting an example that when we actually 
build a new building, that it is more energy-efficient; when we change 
light bulbs, and I think there were just some changes made in some of 
the hallways and some of the office buildings, but are we encouraged to 
turn the lights off? We keep a lot of lights on every night. What would 
that save if, in fact, we had these all on timers or motion detectors?
  We should be thinking about this in a way, because if each of us 
reduced our energy consumption by 10 percent, maybe some of us could 
even do better, we could have a dramatic impact on the amount of energy 
and fuel we would need.
  So, again, this isn't picking and choosing. This isn't saying, I am 
going to blame individuals for not doing all they can. We are not 
blaming anyone. The idea is for us to really use all of our power, if I 
can use that word, all of our power to make it clear that we want less 
costly, more efficient fuel for all of our needs.
  And we are going to have these needs. We are going to need this 
energy for our needs. They are not going to get fewer. There are more 
of us, more people, more densely populated, and we need to figure this 
out and do so in a way that doesn't just say let us just give a little 
more subsidy to the oil industry. If we just took the subsidies, $8 
billion, $9 billion from the oil industry, maybe collected those 
royalties for offshore drilling from the oil industry, and said let us 
take that money and invest it in these new technologies and invest it 
in renewables, use the incentives so people will build buildings that 
will be more fuel-efficient and energy-efficient, what would that do 
for us?
  In fact, what we know is that that is really significant. The amount 
of reduction in energy needs would be really significant and would have 
an impact. And at the same time, we would be learning better what, in 
fact, works best for us so we would be able to move ahead.
  I just want to say one more thing, and then I want to reflect on some 
of

[[Page 11759]]

this, too. I think we also have to say to people that we have done 
this. I think you are right to use the example of the man on the moon, 
but we have even done smaller things; for instance, when we found out 
that lead in paint was extremely harmful to kids in this country. We 
didn't always know that. There was lead in paint, and we all painted 
with that, used that paint, but, in fact, those paint chips actually 
caused brain damage for our kids. Well, we did something about it. It 
didn't happen immediately. People finally had to get outraged by it. 
Members of Congress finally had to stand up and say, you know what we 
are going to do, we are going to take lead out of paint.
  Now, originally people said, I don't think we can do that. I don't 
think we have the technology to do that; how do we do that? Well, some 
smart people got together and figured out how to do it, and they did. 
We don't allow lead to be put in our paint anymore. We don't have 
chlorofluorocarbons anymore, because we realized it was causing a big 
hole in the ozone layer. It took a while for us to agree to do 
something about that, and some people said, oh, it is not really a 
problem, but it turns out it was a problem, and the fact is we could 
fix it, and we did.
  So I just want to reflect on that because people sometimes think this 
is just too big. I can't do it, you can't do it, how are we going to do 
it? But the fact is we can if we get serious about it. If we understand 
the different roles of the private and public sector, we can actually 
do something really dramatic about creating less expensive, more home-
based energy.
  Mr. INSLEE. I just want to point out the history of our own country 
is that we will succeed on this because we have succeeded.
  In the late 1970s and early 1980s, because of what Congress did, and 
President Carter, we increased our fuel efficiency at least 50 percent. 
And if we had simply continued on that path, we would be free of 
Persian Gulf oil today. We could have solved this problem if we had 
simply continued with that success.
  But I want to close by thanking you for your leadership on this and 
by saying that the Democrats are optimistic on energy, Democrats 
believe in innovation, and Democrats believe in paying for it and not 
having a deficit. And we are going to do that by closing some of these 
giveaways to the oil and gas industry.
  Thank you for your leadership.
  Ms. SCHWARTZ of Pennsylvania. And I'll just also end by saying thank 
you very much, Mr. Inslee, for joining me and for helping, I hope, 
being able to talk about what is such an important issue for every 
American, and that is how to create less expensive, more available, 
more home-grown energy.
  So thank you very much for joining me this evening, and I look 
forward to getting this done with you.

                          ____________________