[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 17289-17291]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 ENERGY

  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, last Thursday night, very late in the 
evening, this Chamber put its arms around a new energy bill. It is an 
energy bill that deals with making sure we move forward with 
alternative fuels in a robust and real way for the future of America. 
It is an energy bill that says we have had enough as Americans wasting 
60 percent of our energy, and we can do much better on efficiency. It 
is an energy bill that says it is time for us to move forward from the 
point in time where we have tolerated vehicles that have not had the 
kind of efficiency we know is technologically possible in America, so 
we are going to

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adopt new CAFE standards. It is a piece of energy legislation that says 
we recognize the linkage between how we use fossil fuels here in 
America and the global warming that is occurring around our globe. So 
we said we would move forward and take some new steps in the way of 
sequestration of carbon dioxide emissions. This is a good piece of 
legislation. It is a bill which we hope--I hope and I know many Members 
of this Senate, led by Senator Bingaman and Senator Feinstein and 
others, and Senator Reid--makes it to the President's desk.
  I wish to remind my colleagues while I have the floor for a few 
minutes that, in fact, this is one of the things we have been working 
on in the Senate for the last several years.
  In 2005, we passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and we said to the 
world: We are going to start taking the concept of energy independence 
for America in a very real and serious way. Last year, after some 
significant debate on this floor, we also opened up lease sale 181 and 
its extensions on the gulf coast for exploration and development of our 
resources.
  This year, with the passage last week of the 2007 act, we put another 
layer on the cake in terms of trying to move forward to the reality of 
a world that embraces energy independence.
  We still have a long way to go. We have a long way to go with this 
legislation. It is my hope we don't get it caught up in a procedural 
quagmire, either here in the Senate or in the House of Representatives, 
and that ultimately we get legislation that is adopted which President 
Bush ultimately signs into law. It is good legislation and the kind of 
legislation we ought to be working on in this body.
  Even though there has been a lot of focus lately on the President's 
domestic initiative relative to immigration, the fact is that when one 
looks at the state of the Union and what the President said in his 
State of the Union Address, we as Americans are addicted to foreign 
oil. He said it is time for us to move forward in an aggressive and 
ambitious way to get rid of the addiction we have to foreign oil. We 
have been able to do that by embracing the committee's legislation 
which had that bipartisan goal in mind, that we would take some 
significant steps forward in this 110th Congress to deal with our 
overaddiction to foreign oil.
  From my point of view, as I talked about this issue with the people I 
represent, the nearly 5 million people in the State of Colorado, I am 
reminded of the fact that we have come a long way in this debate on 
energy and that we are now facing some inescapable forces which have 
grabbed the attention of the American public in a way they never have 
before.
  The first of those inescapable forces is national security. How can 
we as the United States say we are secure as a nation when we import, 
as we did in March of last year, 66 percent of our oil from foreign 
countries? Many of those countries we are importing our oil from are 
countries that are spawning terrorism around the world. So from a 
national security point of view, it seems to me that embracing the 
concept of getting rid of this addiction to foreign oil is an 
inescapable force of our time.
  That is why on this floor of the Senate you will see Republicans and 
Democrats, conservatives and progressives, coming together to say that 
as a matter of national security, this inescapable reality is something 
we must deal with. It was on that basis that several years ago the 
Energy Futures Coalition, led by the distinguished progressive, my 
colleague and good friend, former Senator Tim Wirth, who now runs the 
United Nations Foundation, together with a friend of his, C. Boyden 
Gray, one of the leading voices of conservative causes, came together 
and founded a piece of legislation that we are trying to get through 
this Senate now that is called the Set America Free legislation. We 
gave it another name as we went through our processes here in the 
Senate, calling it the DRIVE Act, and broke it up into different pieces 
of legislation. But at the end of the day, the Energy Futures Coalition 
and the Set America Free concept, the proposal they pushed forward, 
have been embodied and embraced in the legislation that was adopted by 
this body just this last week.
  So the national security implications of what we are doing here are, 
in fact, an inescapable reality and an inescapable force that will lead 
us to a clean energy future for America in the 21st century.
  Secondly, there is a major issue for us and another inescapable force 
we deal with in our country today, and that is the issue of our own 
environmental security. How will we deal with the issue of global 
warming? We know that is an issue we will have to deal with some more, 
and there will be adequate time to debate the particulars on how we 
might be able to move forward. This legislation, with its efforts on 
efficiency, with its efforts on renewable energies, including what we 
do with biofuels, takes us a step in that direction.
  In addition, the environmental security of our Nation is also 
addressed in that legislation because we deal for the first time in a 
very real way with the issue of carbon sequestration. I see my good 
friend from Kentucky here who often has lauded the importance of coal, 
and I understand why. When you are from Kentucky, you would see the 
importance of coal, as I do as well, being from Colorado, as does my 
good friend Jon Tester from the State of Montana.
  So the issue for us as we look at the coal resources of our Nation, 
where we have enough coal to supply the needs of the United States of 
America for 200 years, is how can we use this abundant energy resource 
in a manner that doesn't compromise our environment? We can do that. We 
can do that with the new technologies we have with respect to IGCC. We 
can do that as we learn how to sequester the carbon emissions from the 
burning of coal. It is not a new technology. It is a technology which 
has been around for a very long time in the oilfields of my State, the 
oilfields of Canada, and the oilfields of many places around Colorado, 
as the past oil efforts we have had in our country have been dependent 
upon us being able to put carbon dioxide into the ground. So this 
sequestering of carbon dioxide is something which has been going on for 
a very long time.
  The inescapable force of global warming and environmental security is 
one that is with us for a long time to come, and it is something that, 
in the energy legislation we passed last week, is very much addressed 
in that legislation.
  Finally, the other inescapable force is the economic reality of our 
Nation with respect to a clean energy economy. I think the clean energy 
future for the United States of America in the 21st century creates 
very significant opportunities. All of us know how difficult the 
challenge of energy is, and all of us also know there is not going to 
be only one answer which is going to lead us to the necessary 
conclusion that we need to deal with these inescapable forces; it is 
going to be a portfolio. It is going to have a number of different 
items on that menu which deal with the energy needs of our Nation and 
of our world. But at the end of the day, the door we have opened here 
with respect to a clean energy future will create millions upon 
millions of jobs in America. It will create millions of jobs in those 
areas where perhaps they have had the most difficult time in their 
communities, they will be creating a viable economic activity.
  For me, when I look at my State of Colorado, 2 years ago out on the 
eastern plains, part of that forgotten America, much like the farmland 
of America, whether it is Oklahoma, Kansas, the Dakotas, or the eastern 
part of my State, we had a population which was declining in huge 
numbers in many of our counties, rural and remote, and withering on the 
vine--part of that forgotten America where most people are not able to 
stay there because there are such limited opportunities. Yet, in a 
matter of 2 years since, in the State of Colorado we adopted a new 
renewable energy program, and we have seen things turn around in a very 
significant way. We have ethanol plants that are now functioning, 
providing jobs,

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and creating hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol in places such 
as Yuma and in places such as Fort Morgan.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. SALAZAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 more 
minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SALAZAR. So as we look at the economic opportunity that has come 
by way of rural America, I think that causes us all to say there is a 
way in which we can revitalize rural America. We do that in the 
legislation we passed here last week with the 36-billion-gallon 
renewable fuels standard and the other programs we have in there that 
will open the door to a new era of biofuels. It goes beyond corn 
because we all understand there are limitations on corn. But the 
Department of Energy 2005 study itself found that somewhere over 125 
billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol could, in fact, be derived once 
we open that new technology door. The experts who have been dealing 
with cellulosic ethanol say we may only be a year, a year and a half 
away from being able to commercially deploy that technology.
  I make these comments only to say that as we deal with the issue 
today of immigration, as we move forward to that later on this 
afternoon, there are other very difficult issues we face in our Nation 
and in our world today. Last week, we took a significant step in moving 
forward with a new energy future for America. I hope it is only the 
beginning and that time will see us develop an even more robust, 
effective, and successful clean energy future for America.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky is 
recognized.
  Mr. BUNNING. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in 
morning business for 12 to 15 minutes.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Is there objection? Without 
objection, it is so ordered.

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