[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7754-7756]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       CLEAN ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, 5 years ago I spoke at the Oak Ridge 
National Laboratory. I began with a story from our past about our 
future. It is a familiar story to those of us in Tennessee.
  President Franklin Roosevelt called the chairman of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee into his office in 1942

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and said: Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask you to hide a couple 
billion dollars in the budget for a secret project to win the war.
  Senator McKellar replied: Mr. President. I just have one question: 
Where in Tennessee would you like me to hide it?
  That place turned out to be Oak Ridge. That was how Tennessee became 
one of the sites where scientists worked to build the atomic bomb 
before the Germans.
  I suggested 5 years ago that we have a new Manhattan Project--really 
mini-Manhattan Projects for clean energy independence.
  Last week at Oak Ridge, 5 years after that first speech, I suggested 
four grand principles to help us chart a competitive energy future for 
the next 5 years to end our obsession with taxpayer subsidies and 
strategies for expensive energy and instead focus on doubling 
government-sponsored research and allowing marketplace solutions to 
create an abundance of cheap, clean, reliable energy. I would like to 
renew those comments today on the floor of the Senate. The four grand 
principles I mentioned were, No. 1, cheaper, not more expensive, 
energy; No. 2, clean, not just renewable, energy; No. 3, research and 
development, not government mandates; and No. 4, the free market, not 
the government, picking winners and losers.
  The seven grand challenges I suggested 5 years ago were grounded in 
challenges from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. My challenges 
included making plug-in electric vehicles more commonplace, finding 
ways to capture and use carbon, helping solar become cost-competitive, 
safely managing nuclear waste, encouraging cellulosic biofuels, making 
new buildings green buildings, and creating energy from fusion.
  My goal in laying out those seven challenges was clean energy 
independence. At the time, some took issue with the idea of a grand 
goal underlying these challenges, but I thought independence was a good 
goal then, and it is a good goal now because the United States should 
not be held hostage by any other country because of our energy needs.
  Since I spoke 5 years ago, the Department of Energy has established 
the energy innovation hubs that are producing fuels from sunlight and 
advancing nuclear reactor and battery technologies. That, paired with 
the work of the new energy research agency--which we call ARPA-E--and 
others, has moved us forward on my seven grand challenges in a number 
of ways. Let me summarize that briefly.
  Electric vehicles sales are approaching 100,000 in the United States, 
and ARPA-E has helped a company that has doubled the energy density of 
lithium-ion batteries.
  Carbon capture. We are developing commercial uses for carbon dioxide, 
such as liquid fuels produced from microbes.
  Solar power. Though the goal is around $1 per watt installed by 2020, 
the cost has fallen from $8 to $4 per watt in the past five years. It 
still has a long way to go, but it is promising.
  Nuclear waste. Four of us in the Senate have drafted comprehensive 
nuclear waste legislation. For the first time in 30 years, we are 
building new large reactors, and we are moving forward on small modular 
nuclear reactors.
  Advanced biofuels. There are three new bioenergy research centers 
that are developing next-generation bioenergy crops for industrial-
scale production.
  Green buildings. Research and development has meant 20 new commercial 
products in energy efficiency.
  Fusion. We have already demonstrated human-engineered fusion on a 
small scale, and now we are trying to scale it up for commercial energy 
production.
  The United States has made gains, but we still have challenges. Even 
as other parts of the world grow rapidly, the U.S. still uses about 20 
percent of the world's energy, and the Energy Information 
Administration estimates that our country's energy demand will increase 
more than 10 percent by 2040.
  Second, we have record oil and gas production at home, but we need to 
be as independent as possible from those who might want to use our 
demand for oil to hold us hostage. Former Secretary Condoleezza Rice 
once said she had ``never seen anything warp diplomacy like high oil 
prices.'' And affording a tank of gasoline remains a struggle for many 
families.
  Another challenge is failing to keep up with energy research and 
development, which is one of the major points I want to make today--
failing to keep up with energy R&D. That energy research has given us 
abundant, reliable, clean, cheap energy from unconventional gas to 
nuclear power. The amount we spend on energy research and development--
nearly $5 billion a year at the Department of Energy in nondefense and 
noncleanup research; or nearly $9 billion if you count other agencies 
and their energy-related research, such as the National Science 
Foundation, the Department of the Interior, and the National Institute 
of Standards and Technology--still, those dollars are lower as a 
percentage of our gross product than major competitors such as France 
or Japan or Korea or China.
  Another challenge is that while the United States has made more gains 
in reducing the use of carbon than any other industrial country, the 
National Academies of the United States and 12 other countries have 
warned that human activity has contributed significantly to climate 
change and global warming.
  So thinking about the progress we have made from 5 years ago and 
taking into account the challenges we still have, let me suggest four 
grand principles that could guide our energy future. First, cheaper, 
not more expensive energy. Five years ago all the talk was about a cap-
and-trade program for the United States and deliberately raising the 
price of energy as a way of achieving clean energy independence.
  Last year I was in Germany, a country that adopted exactly that 
policy. In addition, Germany is closing its nuclear powerplants and 
becoming more dependent on natural gas but buying both forms of energy 
from other countries rather than producing it on its own. The Germans 
are subsidizing wind and solar but are building new coal plants in 
order to have enough reliable electricity.
  In short, what I found in Germany was an energy policy mess that 
discourages job growth. The end result is that Germany has the second 
highest household electricity prices in the European Union. When I 
asked an Economic Minister what he would say to a manufacturer about 
energy costs in Germany, he said: I would suggest he go somewhere else. 
Well, that somewhere else is turning out to be the United States: 
Virginia, Tennessee, other States.
  In the United States, we pursued a different track, the most 
conspicuous example of which is finding unconventional gas and oil. 
This has created for our country a remarkable phenomenon, a large 
amount of cheap, clean energy with our own domestic price for natural 
gas.
  This has been the result of a peculiar combination of factors that, 
in my opinion, amount to a better energy policy than most people give 
us credit for. The first element is the entrepreneurial spirit of 
America and the large amount of private property ownership and our huge 
private market. Another is access to capital. A third and indispensable 
element is government-sponsored research.
  Take our Nation's natural gas boom as an example. In the past it was 
uneconomical to develop so-called unconventional gas. Government-
sponsored research enabled it and demonstrated how it could be done. A 
temporary Federal tax credit that expired for new shale projects at the 
end of 1992 encouraged new sources of private capital. Natural gas will 
be a big part of where we get our clean energy, which leads me to my 
second principle: clean, not just renewable, energy. Too often we 
define our energy goals in terms of renewable energy when we should 
mean clean energy. There are a number of States that have renewable 
energy mandates defined mainly to include

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wind and solar power. The Congress is regularly asked to pass a 
narrowly defined renewable energy mandate for the same purpose.
  It is true these energy sources emit no air pollution. These mandates 
say a certain amount of electricity generated within a State must come 
from these specific sources. But focusing on this narrow definition for 
clean energy misses the point, and at a high cost to our electric 
bills.
  Such narrow definitions also discount hydropower and nuclear power, 
some of our country's cheapest and most available sources of air 
pollution-free electricity. In the Tennessee Valley Authority region 
where I live, for example, more than 95 percent of our pollution-free 
electricity comes from TVA's dams and three nuclear plants, which 
include six reactors.
  Second, mandating renewable energy runs the risk of creating too much 
reliance on sources that generate power only intermittently. There is 
certainly a place for these renewable technologies, and solar power 
especially seems to me to have great promise. But renewable energy 
consumes great amounts of space, whether it is solar or wind or 
biomass.
  For example, it would take a row of giant wind turbines all the way 
from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail to generate the same 
amount of electricity that we would get from four nuclear power plants. 
You would still need the nuclear plants because the wind only blows 
when it wants to.
  Fortunately, we have plenty of rooftops on which to put solar panels. 
When they become cheap enough and aesthetically pleasing enough, they 
will probably become an increasingly important supplement to our 
country's huge appetite for electricity, especially because the Sun 
shines during the peak-use hours.
  Battery technology will help make all forms of renewable energy more 
useful, which brings me to my next principle: research and development, 
not government mandates. It is hard to think of an important 
technological advance in our country that has not involved at least 
some government-sponsored research, especially in the area of energy.
  The most recent example is the development of unconventional gas that 
was enabled by 3D mapping invented at Sandia National Laboratory in New 
Mexico and the Department of Energy's large-scale demonstration 
project.
  There is an argument that by imposing government mandates, just as by 
imposing higher prices, government could force some innovation that 
could move us toward clean energy independence. But I believe the surer 
path would be to double the federal funding we spend annually on non-
defense and non-cleanup energy research and development and trust the 
marketplace to produce better results.
  In 2005 the ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm'' report, written by a 
commission led by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine, 
recommended doubling energy research and development. In 2007 Congress 
responded by passing the America COMPETES Act with overwhelming 
bipartisan support. Senator Coons and I are working together to 
reintroduce the America COMPETES Act for a second reauthorization after 
its original passage.
  One small agency that is the result of the America COMPETES Act is 
what we call ARPA-E. It is already showing signs of the wisdom of this 
approach. ARPA-E has helped improve battery technology and worked to 
produce liquid fuel from microbes, among other accomplishments. Seeing 
how our free enterprise can capitalize on this brings me to my fourth 
and last principle: free market, not government picking winners and 
losers.
  We are more likely to have abundant supplies of cheap, clean, 
reliable energy in the United States if we trust the marketplace. The 
most appropriate role for government is in research. I believe a second 
role is limited jump-starting of new technologies; for example, 
unconventional gas, about which I just spoke, involves government 
research and a limited tax credit.
  The full tax credit for electric cars is capped at 200,000 vehicles 
per manufacturer. To encourage innovation in nuclear energy, the 
government provided research and licensing support for small modular 
reactors, but that is limited to 5 years.
  Even for nuclear power plants there is a production tax credit, but 
it is limited to 6,000 megawatts. On the other hand, President Reagan 
used to say the nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this 
Earth is a government program. That is too often the case with energy 
subsidies. The most glaring example of that is the more than 20-year-
old subsidy for wind power, a technology that former Energy Secretary 
Chu said was a technology that had ``matured.''
  This was supposed to help jump-start wind. But we have already lost 
$16 billion in Federal revenue from 2009 through the end of 2012 alone. 
Congress just added a 1-year extension of the wind production tax 
credit, costing $12 billion. Remember, the Department of Energy spends 
just $5 billion on energy research.
  We are spending $12 billion in a 1-year extension of the wind tax 
credit. The wind industry's idea of a phaseout would cost tens of 
billions more. People talk about Big Oil, but the big, unnecessary 
subsidy is big wind, and a much better place to spend our money would 
be energy research.
  I have been fascinated with the progress we have made on the seven 
grand challenges I suggested 5 years ago. Perhaps by focusing on these 
four grand principles, the ones I have suggested in this speech, we can 
capitalize on the last 5 years of progress and move toward cheap, 
clean, reliable energy.
  Oak Ridge's evolution since the Manhattan Project days provides a 
good model. About 70 years ago the astonishing collection of physicists 
that produced the two atomic bombs also enabled nuclear power, nuclear 
medicine, and other technological advances.
  What can we expect 5 years from now? To get a glimpse of the future 
we might look at what fits within the guiding principles I have 
suggested today. For example, small modular reactors and virtual 
reactors that scientists are developing will revolutionize the safety 
and effectiveness of our nuclear technology.
  Game-changing manufacturing is also on the horizon with 3D printing. 
ARPA-E, a small agency of the Department of Energy that came from 
America COMPETES, and other groups are increasing the reliability of 
our electricity supply.
  This United States of America is a remarkable place. With the 
potential I have described and the principles I have suggested, a 
competitive energy future is well within our grasp.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MORAN. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. MORAN. I thank the Chair for the recognition.

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