[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[Senate]
[Pages 23493-23497]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             ENERGY REFORM

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I would like to change the subject. I 
wish to talk a little bit on the perils of energy sprawl. Right behind 
the health bill may come an energy or climate change bill. There has 
been a lot of discussion about that. I would like to talk about it in a 
new and different way.
  I just went over to an organization called Resources for the Future 
that is run by former Congressman Phil Sharp, a group that has done a 
lot of good work in the conservation area, most recently in 
coordinating the Outdoors Resource Review Group's recommendations that 
included permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  There were about 200 conservationists there. I wish to talk to my 
colleagues a little bit about the message I shared with them. I began 
with them in this way: As many Americans did last week, I spent a 
number of hours watching Ken Burns' film on our national parks. I am 
also reading Douglas

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Brinkley's book about Theodore Roosevelt, called ``The Wilderness 
Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.'' I had a few 
minutes to visit Douglas Brinkley, who was in Washington, DC. Doing 
this reminded me that the men and women we honor most in the 
conservation movement, and who founded many of our most important 
organizations, were not always so honored when they spoke up. Many who 
spent the last century protecting our landscapes, our air and our water 
and our habitats were regarded as trivial, eccentric or even went 
unnoticed.
  John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, was an obscure hermit when he 
began to preach nature like an apostle. To some, President Teddy 
Roosevelt must have seemed a little daffy when he declared he would 
protect pelicans and warned a country, enamored with Manifest Destiny, 
that we should keep nature unmarred. President Lyndon Johnson used to 
make jokes about Lady Bird Johnson running around the White House with 
Laurance Rockefeller protecting flowers, as he would say. Today, we 
honor those men and women for having had the wisdom and courage to 
recognize that preserving our natural heritage is essential to the 
American character. Italy may have its art, India may have its Taj 
Mahal, but we have the Great American Outdoors.
  That is why a recent paper by the Nature Conservancy, a scientific 
paper, titled ``Energy Sprawl or Energy Efficiency: Climate Policy 
Impacts on Natural Habitat for the United States of America,'' will one 
day, I believe, occupy a place among the pioneering actions we honor in 
the conservation movement. The paper warns, in the next 20 years, new 
energy production, especially biofuels and wind power, will consume a 
landmass larger than the State of Nebraska. This so-called ``energy 
sprawl,'' as the authors termed it, will be the result of government 
cap and trade and renewable mandate proposals designed to deal with 
climate change. The paper should serve as a ``Paul Revere ride'' for 
the coming renewable energy sprawl. There are negative consequences 
from producing energy from the Sun, the wind, and the Earth, just as 
there are positive effects. Unless we are as wise in our response to 
this as the authors were in their analysis, our Nation runs the risk of 
damaging the environment in the name of saving the environment.
  The first insight of the Nature Conservancy paper is in describing 
the sheer size of the sprawl. The second insight is in carefully 
estimating the widely varying amounts of land consumed by different 
kinds of energy production. Finally, the paper suggests four ways to 
reduce carbon emissions, while minimizing the side effects of energy 
sprawl on the landscape and wildlife habitat. The first recommendation 
is energy conservation. Second is generating electricity on already-
developed sites, such as when solar panels are put on rooftops or when 
a chemical company uses byproducts from its production processes to 
make heat and power. The third recommendation is to make carbon 
regulation flexible enough to allow for coal plants that recapture 
carbon or nuclear power plants that produce no carbon or for 
international offsets. Fourth, the paper suggests careful site 
selection.
  This makes me think of my own experience as Governor of Tennessee 25 
years ago. The Presiding Officer was a very successful Governor of our 
neighboring Commonwealth of Virginia. Twenty-five years ago, our State 
banned new billboards and junkyards on a highway over which 2 million 
visitors travel each year to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. 
Then, that decision attracted very little attention. Today, that 
decision helps to preserve one of the most attractive gateways to any 
national park. It is hard to imagine what that road would be like today 
if we hadn't made that decision 25 years ago. We know that if the 
billboards had gone up then, they would be impossible to take down 
today. It would be the same with wind turbines in the foothills of the 
Smokies or along the Blue Ridge Parkway, with wind turbines, solar 
thermal plants, and other new forms of energy production--once they go 
up, it would be hard to take them down.
  My purpose today, with Resources for the Future and with the 
conservation groups, was to challenge those organizations who have 
traditionally protected our landscapes, air and water and wildlife 
habitat to do the same for the threat of energy sprawl. I asked for 
them to suggest to us in the Senate, Members of the House, and others 
in government what are the most appropriate sites for low-carbon or 
carbon-free energy production. Second, I asked the conservationists to 
do something that gives many of them a stomachache whenever it is 
mentioned--to rethink nuclear power. Because, as the Nature 
Conservancy's paper details--while not endorsing nuclear--in several 
ways nuclear power produces the largest amounts of carbon-free 
electricity with the least impact.
  I learned a long time ago it helps an audience to know where its 
speaker is coming from so I reminded them that I grew up hiking and 
camping in the great Smoky Mountains National Park, and I still live 2 
miles from the park boundary today. I reminded them that, as a Senator, 
I have fought and still fight for strict emission standards for sulfur, 
nitrogen, and mercury, because too many of us still breathe polluted 
air. I have introduced legislation to cap carbon from coal plants 
because I believe human production of carbon contributes to global 
warming. I have helped to create 10,000 acres of conservation easements 
adjacent to the Smokies because it preserves the views and the wildlife 
needs the space. I drive one of the first hybrid plug-in electric cars 
because I believe electrifying our cars and trucks is the quickest way 
to clean the air, keep fuel prices down, reduce foreign oil use, and 
help deal with climate change. I object to 50-story wind turbines along 
the Appalachian Trail for the same reason I am the cosponsor of 
legislation to end the coal mining practice called mountaintop removal, 
not because I am opposed to coal plants or wind power in appropriate 
places but because I want to save our mountaintops.
  Let me offer a few examples to give a clearer picture of what this 
coming energy sprawl may look like. As the Nature Conservancy paper 
notes, most new renewable electricity production will come from wind 
power, which provides about 1.5 percent of our country's electricity 
today. Hydroelectric dams produce about 7 percent, and some of them are 
being dismantled. Solar and all other forms of renewable electricity 
produce about another 1 percent. President Bush first suggested that 
wind power could grow from 1.5 percent today to 20 percent by 2030, and 
President Obama has set out enthusiastically to get this done. In fact, 
the combination of Presidential rhetoric, taxpayer subsidies and 
mandates have very nearly turned our national electricity policy into a 
national windmill policy.
  To produce 20 percent of America's electricity from wind turbines 
would require erecting 186,000 1.5 megawatt wind turbines, covering an 
area the size of West Virginia. According to the American Wind Energy 
Association, 1 megawatt of wind requires 60 acres of land; in other 
words, that is a 1.5-megawatt wind turbine every 90 acres. These are 
not your grandmother's windmills. They are 50 stories high. If you are 
a sports fan, they are three times as tall as the skyboxes at the 
University of Tennessee football stadium. The turbines themselves are 
the length of a football field. They are noisy, and you can see their 
flashing lights for up to 20 miles. In the Eastern United States, such 
as in Tennessee and Virginia, where the wind blows less, turbines work 
best along scenic ridge tops and coastlines.
  The National Academy of Sciences says that up to 19,000 miles of new 
high-voltage transmission lines would be needed to carry electricity 
from 186,000 wind turbines in remote areas to and through population 
centers.
  So many wind turbines can create real threats to wildlife. The 
Governor of Wyoming has expressed concern about protecting the sage 
grouse's diminishing population in his State as a result of possible 
habitat destruction from wind farms. The American Bird Conservancy 
estimates that each wind

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turbine in this country may kill as many as seven or eight birds each 
year. Multiply that by 186,000, and you can predict the annual death of 
close to 1.4 million birds each year. Then there are the solar thermal 
plants, which use big mirrors to heat a fluid and which could spread 
over many square miles. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar recently 
announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of federally owned land in 
Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah with such 
solar collectors to generate electricity. Dianne Feinstein, the senior 
Senator from California, who has spent most of her career trying to 
make the Mojave Desert a national monument, strongly objected to a 
solar thermal plant in the desert on Federal land just outside the 
Mojave National Preserve that would have covered an area 3 miles by 3 
miles. Plans for the plant were recently canceled.
  The only wind farm in the Southeastern United States is on the 3,300-
foot-tall Buffalo Mountain in eastern Tennessee, not far from my 
hometown. The wind there blows less than 20 percent of the time, making 
the project a commercial failure. Because of the unavailability of wind 
power, renewable energy advocates suggest that we southeasterners use 
biomass, a sort of controlled bonfire that burns wood products to make 
electricity. Biomass has promise, to a point. Paper mills can burn wood 
byproducts to make energy. Clearing forests of dead wood and then 
burning it not only produces energy but can help to avoid forest fires. 
According to the Conservancy's paper, biofuels and biomass burning of 
energy crops for electricity take the most space per unit of energy 
produced. For example, the Southern Company is building a new 100-
megawatt biomass plant in Georgia. Southern estimates it will keep 180 
trucks a day busy hauling about 1 million tons of wood a year to the 
plants. One hundred megawatts, the size of that plant, is less than 
one-tenth the production of a nuclear plant, which will fit on 1 square 
mile. To produce the same amount of energy as one nuclear plant would 
require continuously foresting an area one-third larger than the 
550,000-acre great Smoky Mountain National Park. You can make your own 
estimate of the number of trucks it would take to haul that much wood.
  That is the second important insight of the Nature Conservancy 
report: a careful estimate of the widely different amounts of land each 
energy-producing technique requires. The gold standard for land usage 
is nuclear power. You can get a million megawatt hours of electricity a 
year--that is the standard unit the authors chose--per square mile, 
using nuclear power. The second most compact form of energy is 
geothermal energy. To generate the same amount of power, coal requires 
4 square miles, taking into account all the land required for mining, 
extraction, and waste disposal. Solar thermal takes 6. Natural gas 
takes 7. Petroleum takes 17. Photovoltaic cells that turn sunlight into 
electricity requires 14 square miles for the same unit of power. Wind 
is even more, taking 28 square miles to produce the same unit of 
electricity. That doesn't include lands consumed by the up to 19,000 
miles of new transmission lines.
  These differences in land use are pronounced, even though the Nature 
Conservancy paper's analysis is conservative. The authors include 
upstream inputs and waste disposal as part of their estimate of an 
energy producer's footprint. They add uranium mining and Yucca 
Mountain's 220 square miles to the area our 104 nuclear reactors 
actually occupy. If one were to consider only each energy plant's 
footprint, to produce 20 percent of U.S. electricity would take 100 
nuclear reactors on 100 square miles; or, to visualize it a different 
way, 186,000 wind turbines on 25,000 square miles.
  Visualize the difference this way. Thru hikers regularly travel the 
2,178 miles from Springer Mountain, GA, up through Tennessee and 
Virginia to Mount Katahdin, ME. A row of 50-story wind turbines along 
the 2,178-mile Appalachian Trail would produce the same amount of 
electricity produced by four nuclear reactors on 4 square miles.
  Because of all these wide differences, policymakers have the 
opportunity to choose carefully among the various forms of producing 
carbon-free electricity, as well as to think about where such energy 
production should go and should not go.
  There are four ways that The Nature Conservancy suggests we approach 
these decisions:
  First, focus on energy conservation. That is hard to argue with, and 
that is their preferred alternative to energy sprawl. It is hard to see 
how anyone could disagree. To cite one example, my home State of 
Tennessee leads the Nation in residential per-person electricity use. 
If Tennesseans simply used electricity at the national average, the 
amount of electricity we would save each year would equal two nuclear 
plants. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have said that fuel 
efficiency standards have been the single most important step our 
country has taken to reduce carbon emissions.
  The second recommendation for energy sprawl is, in scientific terms, 
end-use generation of electricity which already occurs on already-
developed sites. The example is cogeneration that occurs at a paper 
factory, for example, that uses waste product to produce electricity 
and heat to run its facility. A more familiar and promising example is 
solar power on rooftops. In other words, since rooftops already exist, 
covering them with hundreds of square miles of solar panels would 
create no additional sprawl. There are still obstacles to the 
widespread use of solar panels. In the Southeast, solar still costs 
four to five times what the Tennessee Valley Authority pays on average 
for other electricity. There is the obstacle of aesthetics. But 
companies are now producing solar film embedded with attractive roofing 
materials, although that costs more. And there is still the problem 
that solar power is only available when the Sun shines. Like wind, it 
cannot be stored in large quantities. But unlike wind, which often 
blows at night when we have plenty of spare electricity, the Sun shines 
when most people are at their peak power use. As former Energy 
Secretary James Schlesinger wrote recently in the Washington Post, 
because of their intermittence, wind and solar systems have to be 
backed up by other forms of electricity generation, which adds to their 
cost and land usage.
  The third recommendation is to make carbon regulation flexible, 
allowing for carbon recapture at coal plants, for nuclear power, and 
for international offsets. So far, the sponsors of climate and energy 
bills in the Congress have not heeded this advice, I am sorry to say. 
In fact, both the Waxman-Markey bill in the House and the Bingaman 
Energy bill in the Senate contain very narrowly defined renewable 
electricity mandates. Instead of allowing States to choose their 
methods of producing the required amount of carbon-free electricity, 
the legislation tilts heavily toward requiring wind power. For example, 
the legislation allows existing and new wind turbines within the 
renewable mandate, but only new hydroelectric power. It does not count 
nuclear power, which is carbon free, or municipal solid waste or 
landfill gas as renewable.
  In the same way, 75 percent of the so-called renewable electricity 
subsidies enacted since 1978 have gone to wind developers. A study by 
the Energy Information Administration shows that wind gets a subsidy of 
31 times that of all other renewables combined. These policies have 
created a heavy bias toward the form of renewable electricity--wind 
power--that could consume our treasured mountaintops and be very 
destructive to wildlife. A national policy that encourages wind power 
in the Southeast, such as Tennessee or Virginia, where the wind barely 
blows, makes about as much sense as mandating new hydroelectric dams in 
the Western desert where there is no water.
  It is my opinion that if we are truly seeking to reduce our carbon 
output, the policy that would create the least energy sprawl would be a 
carbon-free electricity standard allowing for the

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maximum flexibility for those renewable electricity techniques that 
consume less land and require fewer transmission lines.
  Finally, to deal with energy sprawl, The Nature Conservancy suggests 
paying attention to site selection. This is where the conservationists 
can be a big help to the Senators. Those who have spent their time 
protecting treasured landscapes and protecting wildlife could help us 
ask the right questions and know the right answers. For example, should 
energy projects be placed in national parks or national forests? If so, 
which forests and which energy projects? Should there be generous 
taxpayer subsidies for renewable electricity projects within 20 miles 
of the Grand Tetons or along the Appalachian Trail? What about the 
large amounts of water needed for solar thermal plants or for nuclear 
plants? Should turbines be concentrated in shallow waters 20 miles or 
more offshore where they cannot be seen from the coast? And should 
transmission lines run under water? Couldn't wind turbines be located 
in the center of Lake Michigan where the wind blows more strongly 
instead of along its shoreline where people can see them? Should there 
be renewable energy zones, such as the solar zones Secretary Salazar is 
planning where most new projects could be placed and where the most 
appropriate locations for those zones and those transmission lines 
could be picked?
  In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, the Massachusetts secretary 
of energy and environmental affairs asked this question: Wouldn't it 
make a lot more sense to place wind turbines offshore in the Atlantic 
and run transmission lines underwater than to build new transmissions 
lines to carry wind power from the Great Plains to Boston? Should the 
subsidies for cellulosic ethanol be larger than those for corn ethanol? 
Or should there be no subsidies at all? And should there be a special 
effort to encourage conservation easements on private lands that 
protect treasured viewscapes and habitats?
  These are the questions that the American people and the conservation 
groups that have traditionally protected our landscapes and our 
habitats could help us answer properly.
  According to the Wall Street Journal, on August 13, ExxonMobil 
pleaded guilty in Federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into 
contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks of 
wastewater facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by 
the Migratory Bird Treaty Act which dates back to 1918. The company 
paid $600,000 in fines and fees for killing those 85 birds.
  Should the migratory bird law be enforced against developers of other 
energy projects--for example, renewable electricity and transmission 
lines? One wind farm near Oakland, CA, estimates that its turbines kill 
80 golden eagles a year. The American Bird Conservancy estimates the 
25,000 wind turbines in the United States kill somewhere between 75,000 
and 275,000 birds a year. ``Somebody is getting a get-out-of-jail card 
free,'' Michael Fry of the Bird Conservancy told the Journal. And what 
would be the fine for the almost 1.4 million birds that 186,000 
turbines might kill? For those who think birds may not be as important 
as some other subjects, read Douglas Brinkley's book about Teddy 
Roosevelt. Almost all of his wilderness activities started with his 
interest in birds. According to Mr. Brinkley, the largest spectator 
sport in America, even ahead of NASCAR, is bird watching.
  These statistics raise the question of whether there ought to be some 
kind of parity among all energy companies in the application of laws 
and policies. For example, oil and gas companies receive taxpayer 
subsidies, but they bid to lease and drill on Federal land and waters 
and then they pay a royalty for the privilege. Should taxpayer-
subsidized developers of renewable electricity projects also be 
required to pay a royalty for the privilege of producing electricity on 
Federal lands and waters? And if so, could this be a source of 
permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund or other 
conservation projects on the theory that if the law allows an 
environmental burden, it ought to require an environmental benefit?
  Based on estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the 
Congressional Budget Office, taxpayers will pay wind developers a total 
of $29 billion in Federal subsidies over the next 10 years to increase 
wind power production from 1.5 to 4 percent of our total electricity.
  There are an estimated 500,000 abandoned mines in our Nation--47,000 
in California alone. To date, Congress has allocated a total of about 
$4 billion for their cleanup, and the end of the cleanup is nowhere in 
sight. Would it not be wise before the energy sprawl occurs to require 
bonds on Federal lands for the removal of energy equipment that is 
abandoned or not used anymore? Wind turbines wear out in 20 or 25 
years. Solar thermal farms can cover hundreds of acres. Policy 
subsidies and prices can change.
  In Germany, for example, a prominent maker of solar equipment 
suggested cutting the government subsidy for solar equipment because it 
is permanently raising the prices of German-made products, and Germans 
are buying cheaper panels made in China. In other words, the Germans 
are subsidizing Chinese manufacturing.
  So if the large U.S. subsidies for wind power were to disappear, as 
was promised when they were created, and this led to the abandoning of 
some renewable projects, it might be a good idea if someone were 
required to take away any abandoned equipment.
  Which brought me to my last point: asking conservationists, 
especially in this country, to rethink nuclear power.
  In our country, fears about proliferation and waste and disposal have 
stymied the ``atoms for peace'' dream for large amounts of low-cost, 
clean, reliable energy from nuclear power. Twelve States even have 
moratoria against building new nuclear plants. Still, the 104 U.S. 
reactors built between 1970 and 1990 produce 19 percent of America's 
electricity and, as I have said, 70 percent of our carbon-free 
electricity.
  I believe that what Americans should fear most about nuclear power is 
this: The rest of the world will use it to create low-cost, carbon-free 
electricity while we who invented it will not. That would send our jobs 
overseas looking for cheap energy, and it would deprive us of the 
technology most likely to produce large amounts of carbon-free 
electricity to deal with climate change and to do it in a way least 
likely to harm the landscape and wildlife habitat.
  Look at what the rest of the world is doing. Of the top five 
greenhouse gas emitters, who together produce 55 percent of all the 
carbon in the world, only the United States has no new nuclear plants 
under construction. China, the world's largest carbon emitter, recently 
upped its goal for new nuclear reactors to 132. Russia, the No. 3 
emitter, plans two new reactors every year until 2030. Of the next two 
emitters, India has six reactors under construction and 10 more 
planned. Japan already has 55 reactors and gets 35 percent of its 
electricity from nuclear. It has two under construction and plans for 
10 more by 2018.
  According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, there are 53 
reactors worldwide under construction in 11 countries, mostly in Asia 
and not one in the United States. South Korea gets nearly 40 percent of 
its electricity from nuclear and plans another eight reactors by 2015. 
Taiwan gets 18 percent of its power from nuclear and is building two 
new reactors.
  In the West, France--we never like to give France credit for outdoing 
us in anything--but France gets 80 percent of its electricity from 
nuclear and, as a result, has among the lowest electricity rates and 
carbon emissions in Western Europe, behind Sweden and Switzerland, both 
of which are half nuclear. Great Britain has hired the French electric 
company EDF to help build reactors. Italy has announced it will go back 
to nuclear.
  Where does that leave the United States? We still know how to run 
reactors better than anyone else, we just don't build them anymore. Our 
fleet of plants is up and running 90 percent of

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the time. No one does that well except us. We have 17 applications for 
new reactors pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but we 
have not started construction on any new nuclear plant in 30 years in 
the United States.
  The 104 we currently have in operation will begin to grow too old to 
operate in 20 years. That is why I believe the United States should 
build 100 new nuclear plants in 20 years. All 40 Republican Senators 
support that goal, and a number of Democratic Senators also are strong 
supporters of nuclear power.
  Building 100 plants in 20 years would bring our nuclear-produced 
electricity to more than 40 percent of our total generation and it 
would all be carbon free. Add another 10 percent for hydroelectric 
dams--that is carbon free; 7 or 8 percent for wind and solar, now about 
2.5 percent--that is carbon free; 25 percent for natural gas--that is 
low carbon; and you begin to get a very clean and low-cost electricity 
policy.
  According to the National Academy of Sciences, construction costs for 
100 nuclear plants are about the same as they would be for 186,000 wind 
turbines. New reactors could be located mostly on sites with existing 
reactors. There would be little need for new transmission lines. 
Taxpayer subsidies for nuclear would be one-tenth what taxpayers would 
pay wind developers over 10 years. And for so-called green jobs, 
building 100 nuclear plants would provide 4 times as many construction 
jobs as building 186,000 wind turbines. And, of course, nuclear is a 
base load source of power operating 90 percent of the time--the kind of 
reliable power a country like the United States, which uses 25 percent 
of the energy in the world, must have. Wind and solar are useful 
supplements, but they are only available, on average, about one-third 
of the time, and they can't be stored in large amounts.
  What about the lingering fears of nuclear? Well, the Obama 
administration Energy Secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-
winning physicist, says nuclear plants are safe and he wouldn't mind 
living near one. That view is echoed by thousands of U.S. Navy 
personnel who have lived literally on top of nuclear reactors in 
submarines and Navy ships for more than 50 years without incident. The 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees, and its painstaking supervision 
and application process is intended to do everything humanly possible 
to keep our commercial fleet of reactors safe.
  On the issue of waste, Dr. Chu says there is a two-step solution. 
Step 1 is, store the spent nuclear fuel on site for 40 to 60 years. The 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission agrees this can be done safely, maybe for 
100 years. Step 2 is research and development, to find the best way to 
recycle fuel so that its mass is reduced by 97 percent, pure plutonium 
is never created, and the waste is only radioactive for 300 years 
instead of 1 million years. That kind of recycling would take care of 
both the waste and the third fear of nuclear power--the threat that 
other countries might somehow use plutonium to build a bomb.
  One could argue that because the United States failed to lead in 
developing the safe use of nuclear technology for the last 30 years, we 
may have made it easier for North Korea and Pakistan to steal or buy 
nuclear secrets from rogue countries.
  I concluded with this prediction: Taking into account these energy 
sprawl concerns, I believe the best way to reach the necessary carbon 
reduction goals for climate change, with the least damage to our 
environment and to our economy, will prove to be, No. 1, building 100 
new nuclear plants in 20 years; No. 2, electrifying half the cars and 
trucks in 20 years--we probably have enough unused electricity to plug 
these vehicles in at night without building one new power plant--and 
No. 3, putting solar panels on rooftops. To make this happen, the 
government should launch mini-Manhattan Projects, like the one we had 
in World War II, for recycling used nuclear fuel, for better batteries, 
for electric vehicles, to make solar panels cost competitive, and, in 
addition, to recapture carbon from coal plants. This plan I have just 
described should produce the largest amount of electricity with the 
smallest amount of carbon at the lowest possible cost, thereby avoiding 
the pain and suffering that comes when high-cost energy pushes jobs 
overseas and makes it hard for low-income Americans to afford their 
heating and cooling bills.
  My fellow Tennessean Al Gore won a Nobel Prize for arguing that 
global warming is the inconvenient problem. For those who believe he is 
right--and if you are also concerned about energy sprawl--then I would 
suggest nuclear power is the inconvenient solution.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. 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.

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