A New Vision for our Energy Future

A NEW VISION FOR OUR ENERGY FUTURE -- (House of Representatives - December 11, 2007)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee) is recognized for 60 minutes.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening to talk about a great vision for America's clean energy future, and it's very timely that America adopts a new vision for our energy future because we know Americans have some challenges when it comes to energy right now.

We're going to, tonight, talk about a vision for a way to revolutionize how we use and how we generate our energy that will solve some of the problems that Americans are experiencing tonight, and I think there shouldn't be any debate about what those challenges are.

We are paying well over $3 a gallon for gasoline, with no relief in sight. We've seen it go from, I don't know, $30 or $40 a barrel during the start of the Bush administration to now approaching $100, $95, $100 a barrel. Again, fossil fuel costs continue to go up.

We're engaged in a security threat from the Middle East where we are sending about a half a million dollars a minute to the Middle East to the place, to the terrorists who come to attack us, and sending money to the Middle East and have them turn around and attack us as the 22 generals who testified in front of our global warming committee told us is not a very prudent security policy.

We're engaged in a war in the Middle East, the place that there is security concerns because that's where a significant part of the oil is in the world.

So we know we have economic challenges because of rising gas prices. It's hitting us right in the pocketbook every time we go to the pump. We know we have security concerns because of our addiction to the Middle East, and now we know that global warming is an additional threat that we simply have to respond to.

Now that Americans have seen 1 million square miles of the Arctic melt, the size of six Californias simply disappeared, melted in the Arctic this year, together with the melting of the tundra, the changing weather patterns. We've certainly seen it with our rainstorms we had in my State. I represent the State of Washington. We had 10 inches of rain in 24 hours, an unprecedented event. This type of heavy precipitation events are consistent with global warming. We know we have a global warming threat that we've got to deal with.

So we know that we have some challenges when it comes to energy, and we know none of those challenges are going to get better unless we do something about it. This energy problem is not going to get solved by the tooth fairy or simply sort of pleasant wishes for the market to solve the problem. We know we have to act. We know we have to have a plan. We know we have to have a vision. And we know it has to rely on something that we're rich in in America.

And there's one thing I've got some good news tonight we'll talk about at length. We are rich in intellectual talent in America. We are the best innovators, best tinkerers, the best inventors humans have ever seen. And there was a fellow back in May 25, 1961, who really understood that. He came to this Chamber on May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy came and stood right behind me in here and said that America was going to accept the challenge of putting a man on the Moon in 10 years and bringing him back safely. Now, that was a President who understood the innate capability of the American people to invent their way to solve any challenge we set our mind to.

And President Kennedy really, that was a gutsy thing to say again. He was ahead of the curve. He was ahead of the technology. That technology to get to the Moon was hardly even on the back of an envelope at that time. You know, at that moment, our missiles were blowing up on the launch pad. The Russians were way ahead of us in the space race. We'd only put Spam in a can up for 15 minutes. We hadn't even invented Tang yet.

We didn't know how we were going to get to the Moon, but John F. Kennedy knew that we could invent our way to solve this technological challenge and we did it. And we're here tonight to say that Americans have the same level of can-do spirit, the same level of optimism, the same level of technological prowess that we had in the 1960s, and that we can do for clean energy what John F. Kennedy did for space, which is to create a whole new clean energy revolution for the economy of America and grow our economy at the same time.

So I've introduced with some of my colleagues a bill called the New Apollo Energy Act. The New Apollo Energy Act basically uses the word ``Apollo'' because it's the inspiration for what we know we can do, which is to invent our way to a new clean energy future just like Kennedy in the original Apollo project did for the Moon project.

[Time: 22:00]

Well, I have some really good news. The House of Representatives last Thursday, with 235 votes, with some bipartisan support, essentially committed ourselves and accomplished five steps towards this clean energy future, and we are shortly going to take a fifth large leap for mankind in clean energy. So stealing a little bit of the language from the original Apollo 11 project, we now have had five small steps for energy independence and clean energy, and we are now starting to work on one giant leap for America's clean energy revolution.

And I wanted to talk tonight about those five steps that we have taken in the House, and the bill is now over the Senate, and one of the reasons we are here tonight is to encourage the Senate to follow the House's lead to the extent we can and move forward on these clean energy steps. And before I yield to my friend, RON KLEIN, who has been a great leader in the freshmen class on these issues, I want to start with just the first step that we took last Thursday.

Last Thursday the House of Representatives, in a history-making step forward, passed the first improvement in our fuel economy standards in 30 years. For 30 years Americans' efficiency standards have been frozen, locked in stone and haven't made 1-mile-per-gallon improvement since 1983. In fact, and this blows my mind, the cars we drive get less mileage today than they did in 1983. We have mapped the human genome. We have invented the Internet. But the cars we drive get less mileage.

Well, we're doing something about that. After 30 years of Congress being

[Page: H15299]

captured by forces against and in opposition of progress, we have increased by 40 percent the mileage standards by the year 2022 from 25 miles a gallon to 35 miles a gallon. That is a square deal for Americans. It is common sense, and we have done it in a way that protects our domestic manufacturers so that they are not exposed to a flood of new imports from across the seas, and we do that by having what is called the two-fleet rule that has been preserved.

Now, the reason this makes sense and the reason it's going to work is a combination of a couple of factors. First, it is a fact that we have got the best geniuses in the world right here in America when it comes to designing cars, and I know because they are designing some cars that are going to blow this record out of the way. By 2022 we are going to have cars that are way beyond 35 miles a gallon. I want to talk about one of those cars.

One of them is the General Motors Volt. And I have here today a picture of the General Motors Volt, a car that General Motors hopes to have in production 5 years from now. This car exists. I saw it at the Anaheim Electric Car Association Convention last weekend in Anaheim, California. And this car is a miracle because it is what's called a plug-in hybrid car. This car uses new lithium-ion batteries designed by A123 Battery Company in Massachusetts. And this car you plug in. You go home at night and plug it into your garage outlet. You unplug it in the morning. You drive 40 miles with no gasoline at all, free of gasoline from the Mid East or anywhere else, for that matter; 40 miles, zero pollution for 1 to 2 cents a mile. Gasoline costs 9 to 12 cents a mile to run your car for 40 miles. After 40 miles if you want to drive 40 miles, and 40 percent of Americans' average trips are over 40 miles a day, then you use hybrid technology to use a combination of gasoline and someday cellulosic ethanol and electricity like the hybrids now run to run your normal 250-, 300-mile range.

Now, that is a tremendous deal for Americans who get low-priced fuel for 40 miles, zero CO

2. Similar cars that are on the road today get 100 miles a gallon of gasoline today using this combination of electricity. And when we use cellulosic ethanol, we'll get 500 miles a gallon of gasoline using a combination of electricity, a hybrid. Now, this technology is going to blow that CAFE standard away. And after talking to the scientists at this electric car convention, I am very convinced that this is going to happen, and GM has certainly put big money behind this. So I'm very excited about the first step, which is to improve automobile efficiency, to talk about that tonight.

With that I would like to yield to my friend RON KLEIN from Florida, who has been a leader in the freshmen class. Thank goodness this freshmen class has shown up. That's one of the reasons we are making these strides tonight.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. Yes. And I want to dovetail the second step. We've got five steps we're going to talk about tonight. The second step is on the taxes to really level the playing field for new technologies.

I don't think our constituents are very happy about paying $3-plus for gasoline. They are less happy on top of that to then throw in some serious change, about $21 billion, with a ``b,'' of the money they send to Uncle Sam on April 15 that is now shelled out to the largest oil companies that are making more profits than any corporation in the history of this solar system. And there is nothing wrong with profits, but there is something wrong with taxing Americans to add to those profits to, frankly, a very mature industry. This is not like this is a new industry that we are helping to get going. They've been around since 1880 or 1890 from the fields of Pennsylvania. This is a very mature, very profitable industry.

So what we have done in this bill is reel back in the misbegotten largesse that has been shelled out to the oil and gas industry to the tune of $21 billion. And what we are using that for is to help Americans adopt new clean energy technology. And it's going to be taken away from about five major oil companies, and it is going to be given to 300 million Americans that can use tax breaks when they buy a fuel-efficient car like this plug-in

hybrid car or when they weatherize their house and put in more insulation or when they want to buy energy-efficient heating or cooling.

This is like taking from the few, if you will, who never deserved it and giving to the many who need this help

[Page: H15300]

now to adopt their old infrastructure, houses, cars, businesses, to the new clean energy. And it is going to do something for our business community too, and I want to talk about that. And this is Florida-specific. Mr. Klein represents Florida. I want to talk about a technology that is a kind of technology that we should be assisting.

This is a picture of technology called solar thermal technology. This is designed by the Ausra Company, A-u-s-r-a. The Ausra Company has developed a way to concentrate the Sun's radiant energy on a pipe. You can't see this very well, but this is a pipe of water that is essentially heated up by the reflected Sun rays. And they have discovered a way to make these mirrors very inexpensively and then heat this water and develop steam and drive a steam turbine and generate electricity. This company just signed a contract for 300 megawatts for a utility in Florida, enough for somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 homes that they are going to produce electricity for with zero carbon dioxide, zero greenhouse gas emissions in Florida, 177 megawatts in California. And they believe that, within about a decade, once you make enough mirrors so you bring down the cost per unit of mirror, they will be able to compete with coal-based electricity.

Now, what makes sense, and what we have done, with a few Republicans' help, and it's not many but a few, we have reeled back in that $21 billion from the oil and gas companies and we have redirected some of that assistance to a company like the Ausra Company so they can develop this new technology. Now, that is a proactive action, and I am very happy to report that second small step.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. Well, I hope that that occurs.

And I'm really excited about power off our coastline as well. We have a little coastline off the Pacific coast which actually has the potential to generate power from waves. Mr. Klein talked about power from currents, where you can have turbines that turn, like a windmill or rotary moving mechanisms, but we also have huge power from waves that simply go up and down that are generated by the wind. And off our coast right now, we have some buoys going into the water, and as they bob up and down, they compress water, and that generates compression that turns the turbine that generates electricity. And this is a technology that is in its infancy, but there is enormous power in our wave power. In a 10x10 mile stretch off the Pacific coast, there is enough electricity for all the electrical needs of California, for instance. So, here's another technology.

I want to compare this technology to wind power. I've got a picture here of the largest wind farm in the western hemisphere, it's in southeastern Washington, in my State. These are, I think, almost three-quarters to one megawatt. That's enough for 1,000 homes, each one of these turbines. They are somewhere between 250 and 300 feet high. And what that power represents now is absolutely clean power, which today is the least expensive power that we can buy in the Pacific Northwest. If you want to get the cheapest power you can buy right now, this is the cheapest power essentially that you can buy, cheaper compared to even coal fire, or as cheap as a coal fire plant. That's why there is huge demand for these turbines. Actually, the pricing has gone up because there is so much demand for them, people want to buy them.

The reason I mention wind in conjunction with wave power and tidal power is a lot of people think that wave power and tidal power is sort of where the wind industry was about 20 to 25 years ago, in its infancy. When this started, people laughed at it. They thought it was like a big tinker toy with a bunch of folks living in a teepee that were dreaming up. And for a long time it was ahead of its time. Now it is commercially viable, it is supporting thousands of jobs. The Speaker's State of Pennsylvania has a company called Gamesa that is manufacturing these turbines. In Iowa, the Clipper Turbine Company is manufacturing. We want to make these and put them out to the world.

That's why the third step, we've talked about the first two, the auto efficiency standards, the tax fairness provisions, and now the third step we've taken is what we call the renewable electricity standard, which requires 15 percent of our electricity to come from a combination of renewable energy, clean energy sources, wind, solar, wave, enhanced geothermal, and efficiency. And we believe if we simply create those demands for these technologies, if you demand it, they will come. And these technologies will take off once we have these demands.

So, this is an important part of the package. Some of our colleagues across

[Page: H15301]

the Chamber and in the Senate are balking at this. If we don't get this through now, we will next time. We will make some adjustments to it and get it through, because once people find out about these technologies, they're ready to rock and roll.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. And what we have found, the genius of this, like you said, once the demand is created for these renewable energy prices, there is a very, very tried and tested rule that kicks in, which is, they become cheaper over time. And people say, well, gee, some of these things cost more than coal right now or oil and gas. Well, that's true right now, but look at what the experience has been over the last two decades. These are graphs from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the renewable energy cost trends over the last 25, 27 years, and there is remarkable consistency.

Wind energy started out in 1980 about 30 cents, 32 cents a kilowatt hour. It came down dramatically, until

now it's down to in the range of 6 to 8 cents in this graph, that actually might be a little optimistic, in the year 2000. Look at this enormous reduction over the last 20 years because of improvements in technology, and the fact that once you have scales of economy, you manufacture more of these, they cost less.

Same thing with solar thermal technology, that type of technology I showed earlier with the mirrors, heating up the water, started out at 60 cents a kilowatt hour in 1990, gone down to about 8 cents a kilowatt hour now in the year 2000. Again, these are, frankly, a little optimistic. These charts are a little less than the numbers I've heard quoted, but you get the general trend that it's incredibly down.

Photovoltaic solar energy, that's the kind most of us are familiar with, which you have a silicone panel, and it just takes the sun's energy and spins off an electron and creates an electrical current, started at 100 cents a kilowatt hour, now it's down to 22, 24 cents a kilowatt hour.

And what we find in these charts, in almost all these technologies there is almost this kind of law, I don't know if it's got a name yet, when you increase by a factor of 10 the number of units of these renewable sources, the price comes down 20 cents. Now, what does that tell us? We know two things for sure; the cost of fossil fuels is going up, and it isn't coming down. China is coming on like gang busters. They're demanding. They want to start buying the oil for their cars, too. And as their economy grows, that demand is going up. And we know we're not producing, we're not keeping up with the pace of demand for the increase in our oil production, so fossil fuel is going up over time.

We know these renewable sources are coming down over time, including geothermal, which is coming down dramatically again, from 1 dollar in 1980 down to about 26, 28 cents now. So, we know these are coming down. These lines are going to cross. And if we're going to hitch our economic star to some technology, let's hitch our star to the technologies that are getting cheaper, not the ones that are getting more expensive over time. And that's what this bill has done.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. I would now like to turn to the fourth small step that we've taken, and the fourth step that we've taken is to embrace what we call the first fuel of clean energy. And the first fuel of clean energy is not wasting it. What we have found, and I've done a lot of research in this field, almost always the cheapest energy and the most effective energy you can get is the energy you don't waste. The efficient use of energy is the first place we've got to look.

Our bill in many ways demanded more efficiency for Americans. It demands that our lighting industry produce lighting that is 40 to 60 percent more energy efficient. It demands that our air conditioning units become much more efficient, that our buildings become much more efficient. There is a provision in there that we want to create model building codes, that when we build our buildings they won't waste as much energy as they do.

Many people believe that probably 30 to 40 percent of the road we have to travel we will get there simply by not wasting energy. And I want to go to exhibits A and B on that, show you a picture of a couple of folks in Redmond, Washington, Mike and Meg Town. They're standing in their doorway here. Mike is a science teacher at Redmond High School. It's a rainy environment out northeast of Seattle. And a few years ago when he was teaching his kids about clean energy, one of his kids said, Hey, Mr. Town, if you think this is so hot, why don't you build a house like this? And he said, I think I'll do just that.

So he basically set out to build a zero electrical net usage home by using efficiency, conservation, and a little bit of photovoltaic, and he did it. And here is a picture of his home. It didn't cost much of anything more than a normal home of this site. I think you'll agree it's a nice-looking place. It's in a rainy environment, but he managed to make it zero net electrical usage by doing some commonsense things. He used a little additional insulation. He used energy-efficient windows. He designed a home that uses a little bit of what's

[Page: H15302]

called passive solar heating, so the solar rays, when we get them in Seattle, which is twice a year, I think, on August 12th and 13th, heats the inside of the home. And he did some photovoltaic array. He put on himself these darker panels up here on the roof that he actually put on.

And now Mike says one of the great joys is, first off, he uses about half as much energy as a normal home. And when he does use it, he's producing it largely with his PV system. And when he's generating more than he uses, his meter runs backwards. And he says there is nothing more fun than going out and watching your meter run backwards as you're feeding electricity back into the grid.

So, Meg and Mike Town are sort of walking examples of what our bill is going to do, which is to help Americans weatherize their homes, make sure their businesses are using energy-efficient appliances, and when we do that, we're going to use this first fuel. That's kind of a commonsense thing to do.

So, I want to move to the fifth step now. And the fifth step that we took is we adopted what's called a renewable fuel standard. In a renewable fuel standard, we guaranteed that we will have 32 billion gallons of biofuels that will be homegrown in the United States in the next 20 years. And the reason we said that is we think it makes more sense to get our energy from middle western farmers rather than Middle Eastern sheiks. And it doesn't make a lot of sense to take our subsidized agricultural products, export them, take the money from the international buyers, and then just ship it to Saudi Arabia. It's just kind of a shell game with money. Let's cut out the middle man and grow our own.

For those who doubt we can do that, I want to refer them to a little company in Grays Harbor, Washington, and I like to tell a little story about this company.

[Time: 22:30]

This is a picture of the Imperium Biofuels biodiesel plant in Grays Harbor, Washington. It is on the coast of Washington State. Imperium Biofuels is the largest biodiesel plant in the world, and it is in Washington State. It produces 100 million gallons of biodiesel, principally using canola oil, some additional oils that they are using, soybean and a couple of others. This company started from a guy in Seattle, Washington, who was a pilot, who got tired of flying airplanes, he got bored of flying airplanes and decided he would start an energy company. He started brewing up biodiesel in his garage. And the part of this story I like is he went to the Rainier Brewing Company and he got two old brewing vats from the Rainier Brewing Company, and he started brewing up biodiesel. What a great can-do story. He went out and raised some capital and now built the largest biodiesel plant in the world, and plans on building 10 or 20 more of these.

Now, with the capacity of biodiesel and with advanced forms of ethanol, and I am talking about advanced forms of ethanol, we have the capacity to provide 25 to 30 percent of all our transportation fuels from homegrown United States crops without jeopardizing our food chain, without jeopardizing the production of our domestic food supplies. And the reason for this is, and if you talk to John Plaza he will tell you about this, we have the capability of using whole new types of biofuels. We know we use corn ethanol now. But we only use the seed of the corn. We only use the kernel. We are now going to have cellulosic ethanol which uses the whole plant, all of the carbohydrates, from the stalk, the stem, what they call the corn stover, from wheat chaff that is now left on the ground. There is a company called Iogen in Idaho that is planning to bale it up and make that into cellulosic ethanol. When we do this, we will be able to produce a significant part of our transportation fuel.

So this is our fifth step. It is common sense. It is home grown. And for those who have heard a lot of controversy about corn ethanol, I have been talking to the scientists on this. You will be blown away by what is coming. There are crops now in development, one called miscanthus by a company called Mendel Biotechnology in Hayward, California. It is a crop they have developed that is four to five times more productive than corn per acre of ethanol. Now when farmers can start selling four to five times more ethanol per acre than they are today, we will decrease the pressure on our land. This crop uses less fertilizer and less water than corn today. So we look at corn ethanol as sort of the DC-3 of biofuels. It is a start. We are going to move forward to the Boeing 787, which is cellulosic ethanol.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. What is neat about this is a lot of these things are happening in areas that have previously been quite depressed. This is an area that has really been hurt when the timber industry has had some tough times. And now we have got this, and there are two other very green industries that have developed in Grays Harbor, Washington.

You look around the Midwest where the ethanol plants have gone up, these communities have really revitalized. A lot of them have been using co-ops. This is not all money from Wall Street. These are co-ops where people have banded together and built their own industry. It is a very unifying experience when these communities do this.

We see this happening in the inner city where we are developing green collar jobs, where we are improving the efficiency of older buildings. When you have a green collar job to rebuild a building to make it energy efficient, that job doesn't get shipped to China.

[Page: H15303]

It is right here. It is a local green collar job. That is why we are excited about that.

We talked about the five steps we took last Thursday: number one, auto efficiency, which we are calling for; number two, commonsense tax fairness to move some of these things away from oil and gas to these new businesses and consumers to help them; number three, the renewable energy standards so we can have clean energy electricity; number four, the efficiency standards that Mike and Meg Town used to such effect to allow your home to be efficient; and, number five, the renewable fuels standard where we are calling for advanced fuels.

And by the way, our renewable fuels standard

requires these advanced biofuels. It requires about two-thirds of this to be from these advanced forms, not just corn ethanol, but advanced forms of ethanol in the future. So those are five significant steps.

Just to note how significant they are, there has been an independent group that evaluates energy policy that has evaluated a very similar plan to this and concluded that when this plan is implemented, it will save more carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere, the principal global warming gas, than all of our cars and trucks are putting into the atmosphere today. This is a big, big deal. We know we have to reduce our carbon dioxide by probably 80 percent by the year 2050 to prevent carbon dioxide from going over twice preindustrial levels. This is about maybe 35 or more percent of the way we need to go. So it is a very significant first five steps on that path.

For those who are interested in this subject, I want to congratulate Vice President Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I read his acceptance speech, which anyone who is interested in the subject I would recommend it to them. It is available on some Web site somewhere. It is a brilliant statement of the planetary emergency we now have, and I would encourage people to take a look at it because it will give you a sense of urgency that we have.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. Well, this is why this is something that can unify us, because it is an economic growth plan, it is something that can unify us, red State, blue State, urban, rural, all of us can get behind economic development. And we have seen instances of that tonight when we have talked about that. I think the bill that we have promoted ought to be able to promote that economic development in rural and urban areas, red and blue States. I really think it is a unifying message.

We mentioned these five steps, but there is a giant leap for mankind that will be on our plate when we return in January, that is, we have to find a way to limit the amount of carbon dioxide that is going into the atmosphere. And the ultimate way to do that is what we call a cap-and-trade system, which we hope to embrace and pass in this House next year.

A cap-and-trade system does two things. First, it caps the amount of total carbon that goes into the atmosphere, the total amount of pollution, the total amounts of carbon dioxide and methane that contribute to global climate change. And we have done this in a variety of pollutants, particularly sulfur dioxide, which we have a cap on. Previous Congresses have put a cap on sulfur dioxide. But we have a giant loophole in that there is no cap today for carbon dioxide and some of these other global warming gases.

So next year, we will be working on a plan to cap the total amount of these global warming gases that go into the atmosphere and give the Americans the confidence and the security to know that their grandkids aren't going to be exposed to runaway climate change associated with global warming. And then we are going to insist that polluting industries that put that pollution in the air have to pay for that. They can't do it for free any more.

Essentially, they have been using the atmosphere like a private garbage dump, like they back their truck full of junk and dump it into your county park. We don't let them do that, dump their junk in our county park, and we are not going to let them dump their CO

2 in the atmosphere any more with zero cost.

So there will be a charge associated with that and that will be tradable amongst industries to make it efficient. So when we adopt this cap-and-trade system, we will truly have the ultimate incentive for the geniuses of America to create these technologies, and we will be looking for people's input on this. We hope to have a bipartisan bill to do this, because there is no Republican or Democrat, or shouldn't be in this debate. We want to have something that all our kids can have a future on and we hope to do that. So, Mr. Klein, I wonder if you have any final comments.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. INSLEE. Well, we have a ways to go, but we have made five maybe not-

[Page: H15304]

so-small steps for a few people here in Congress and in America. We have one giant leap for mankind to come. But we have got a great start, and this is going to help Americans, both their environment, their security and their economy, and that is three bold steps.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source