[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4950-4951]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    ENERGY POLICY MODERNIZATION BILL

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to applaud Senators Murkowski and 
Cantwell, the chair and ranking member of the Energy Committee, for 
their leadership and tenacity in passing yesterday's bipartisan Energy 
bill on the floor. This kind of bipartisanship has always been the 
political fuel that has driven some of our most important energy 
legislation. I thank them for their commitment to working together in a 
bipartisan fashion to pass this bill, and I look forward to working 
with them and all of my colleagues going forward to capture all of the 
potential for America's clean energy future.
  There are many good provisions in this bill. The bill promotes energy 
efficiency in our buildings and appliances. It will help to modernize 
our electrical grid and support energy storage technologies. It 
permanently reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  The bill includes a number of provisions and amendments that I 
authored that were accepted on the floor.
  I was pleased that my bipartisan legislation with Senators Inhofe, 
Rounds, and Booker to reauthorize EPA's brownfields program through 
2018 was included in the Energy bill. This legislation will help clean 
up the decades of abuse our lands have experienced at the hands of 
corporate polluters. It will help to create jobs and spur economic 
activity in Massachusetts and around the country, while revitalizing 
underutilized and polluted lands.
  In December, Congress voted to lift the 40-year old restrictions on 
exporting U.S. oil overseas. During that debate, I and other Senators 
raised concerns regarding the impacts that exporting American oil 
abroad could have on U.S. consumers and refined fuel prices, 
independent refineries, and other sectors of the U.S. economy such as 
shipbuilding. However, the final legislation did not even include any 
requirement for analyzing and reporting on any potential impacts that 
exports could have on these industries or on U.S. consumers. Therefore, 
I offered an amendment, which the Senate adopted, that would require 
the Government Accountability Office, GAO to review and report back 
annually for 3 years on the impacts of crude oil exports on U.S. 
consumers, independent refineries, shipbuilders, and energy production.
  Exporting American crude oil could be a disaster for independent 
refineries in regions such as the east coast. Upwards of 55 percent of 
our refining capacity on the east coast could potentially close as a 
result of oil exports. The Energy Department has said that exports 
could lead to as much as $9 billion less investment and 1.6 million 
barrels less refining capacity in 10 years. It could lead to up to $200 
billion less revenue for the U.S. refining sector

[[Page 4951]]

over the next decade. It could raise prices for consumers who are 
currently saving $700 a year at the pump and $500 on heating oil this 
winter because of low oil prices. And it could harm U.S. shipbuilders. 
We have been having a shipbuilding renaissance in this country. We are 
currently seeing the biggest shipbuilding boom in 20 years. But exports 
could stop all of this in its tracks.
  We should know how exporting American oil is affecting American 
consumers. We should know how it is affecting key sectors of our 
economy such as refining and shipbuilding. And we should know how it is 
affecting energy production in the United States. That is what my 
amendment would help us do, and I am pleased that it was adopted into 
the bill.
  The bill also includes a bipartisan amendment that I authored with 
Senator Cassidy to improve the way that we are going to be selling oil 
under a law passed last year to better protect taxpayers.
  Our Nation's oil stockpile is supposed to be there to protect 
American consumers and our security in the event of an emergency. We 
shouldn't use it as a piggybank to fund other priorities. But that is 
precisely what we did in two bills passed last year.
  But if we are going to sell oil from our strategic stockpile, we 
should do so strategically to get the best deal for taxpayers and drive 
down prices for consumers. That is what the Cassidy-Markey amendment 
would help us do.
  For the sales of SPR oil required by the Budget Act that became law 
last year, the Cassidy-Markey amendment would give the Secretary of 
Energy more flexibility to sell oil when prices are high. This fix 
should allow us to sell fewer overall barrels from the SPR and get a 
better return on these sales for American taxpayers. I am pleased that 
the Senate voted to adopt this commonsense amendment.
  However, there are a number of provisions in the bill with which I 
have concerns. The bill would apply a 45-day shot-clock to the 
Department of Energy's review of liquefied natural gas export 
applications. There is no problem with the Energy Department delaying 
its review of LNG export applications. If there is any problem, it is 
that the Energy Department is moving too fast to approve these exports 
of American natural gas overseas.
  Exporting less than half of the volumes of natural gas that the 
Department has already approved for export could drive prices up by 
more than 50 percent for American consumers and businesses. This would 
be a disaster for consumers in many regions of the country, such as the 
Northeast. It would be a disaster for domestic manufacturing, where low 
U.S. prices give us a competitive advantage with the rest of the world. 
I have urged the Department to take a time-out from approving new LNG 
exports until we more fully understand how the volumes we have already 
approved will affect various regions of our country and our energy 
security. That is what we should be doing, not artificially truncating 
the review process.
  I am similarly concerned that a provision about forest bioenergy 
would interfere with the EPA's scientific review process of the carbon 
pollution implications of biomass electricity and potentially 
interfere--with EPA's statutory responsibilities. The provision directs 
Federal policies to ``reflect the carbon neutrality of forest 
bioenergy.'' But not all biomass energy is created equal. The timeframe 
for any climate benefits from biomass energy can vary. In many 
instances that timeframe can be very long--on the order of 50 to 100 
years. Some practices, like clearcutting forests and burning whole 
trees for energy should never be considered carbon neutral. That is why 
it is critical to incorporate what science tells us about forests and 
their interaction with the global carbon cycle into policies governing 
biomass energy. Biomass energy is already contributing to the U.S. 
energy mix in ways that help reduce carbon pollution that causes global 
warming. I look forward to working with my colleagues as this bill 
moves through conference to ensure that the United States has a smart, 
sustainable, and scientifically-backed policy for biomass energy.
  The bill also contains provisions regarding hydropower relicensing. I 
appreciate the willingness of Senators Murkowski and Cantwell to engage 
with stakeholders on hydropower relicensing and that they have crafted 
language that is a vast improvement compared to the House version.
  It took me much of 1985 and 1986 to reach consensus on the bipartisan 
Electric Consumers Protection Act of 1986 that for the first time 
required FERC to give equal consideration to the environment, fish and 
wildlife, and other nonpower values as it gives to power and 
development objectives in making licensing decisions. I know how 
challenging it can be to find solutions that all stakeholders can 
support. But these hydropower licenses are good for decades, and we 
need to make sure that FERC's decisions are informed by the best, most 
up-to-date information, especially in the face of changing rainfall 
patterns driven by global warming. So I am concerned that this 
provision in the Energy bill could limit the ability of Federal 
agencies to require companies to undertake new analyses on the impacts 
of their dams by emphasizing the use of existing studies and data.
  I am also concerned that the provision could require agencies to 
evaluate the impact of their recommendations on issues beyond their 
core abilities. Rather than speeding up the relicensing process, this 
could slow it down. Rather than saving taxpayers money, it could 
require more financial resources for Federal agencies.
  Finally, I am concerned about what is not in this bill. The tax 
breaks for the oil, gas, and coal industries are permanent pieces of 
the TAX CODE that never expire. Meanwhile, tax breaks for wind power 
will begin phasing down in 8 months and be gone by the end of 2019. The 
tax breaks for solar will expire in 2021. That schedule would be a 
disaster for offshore wind in particular, which has the potential to 
create tens of thousands of jobs in Massachusetts and up and down the 
east coast. In fact, the Department of Energy has found that that there 
would be no offshore wind projects that would be able to qualify for 
these tax credits before they expire. That is just wrong. We need to 
put clean energy technologies on equal footing with mature fossil fuel 
industries, whose tax breaks date as far back as 100 years.
  Senators Cantwell and Wyden put forward a Democratic energy bill 
which I was pleased to be an original cosponsor of, which would repeal 
these fossil fuel tax breaks and invest in clean energy. It would 
create a goal for reducing our emission of carbon pollution. And it 
would create an energy efficiency standard such as I have proposed. 
These are some of the measures that we should be considering to truly 
allow us to be a leader in developing clean energy technologies and 
jobs here in the United States.
  As we work with the House on this Energy bill, we need to build on 
the bipartisan efforts that have been done in this bill and ensure that 
the Senate continues to reject the damaging and highly partisan 
provisions that the House has included in its bill. I look forward to 
working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure a final 
Energy bill that improves America's economy and environment.

                          ____________________