Energy
Energy
Read the press release on Heather's legislation
Dear Friends,
I believe we need a balanced long term energy policy that makes America more energy independent. The bill we passed last summer that the President signed on a trip to New Mexico's Sandia National Lab had some good things in it. But the rising price of gasoline puts a crimp in everyone's wallet. We need to think bigger and bolder.
Most of our imported oil is used for transportation - and most of that in our cars. I'd like America to be able to run our cars without importing oil from volatile regions of the world.
A few interesting facts.
Brazil is almost energy independent. Their cars run on a fuel called E85. It's 85 percent ethanol and only 15 percent gasoline. Ethanol is made from plants, like corn, and it burns clean. Now, there are some problems getting ethanol through pipelines; it evaporates easily and gums up the pipes as I understand it. But we can work the distribution problem.
Bob Turner & Don Chalmers (right) joined Heather to talk about hybrids.
In the energy bill we passed last August we set a goal to displace 7.5 billion barrels of oil per year with ethanol by 2012 and, in the eight months since the bill passed, over twenty companies have started getting permits to build ethanol production facilities. E85 is a little cheaper than regular gas. But reducing the demand for oil will make the price of oil go down too.
John Shimkus from Illinois, a friend of mine in the Congress, has a "flexible fuel" vehicle. He can use E85 or regular gas. Either works in his tank. And the only thing different about his car is that some of the hoses and gaskets are a made of a different material. Unlike hybrid cars, the up front cost of an E85 vehicle isn't different from a regular car. Two years ago, John Shimkus had only one E85 gas station in his district. Now he has 29. John is from the corn belt, but you can see the trend.
Hydrogen also holds the promise of helping to make us more energy independent, and we are investing in research to take us toward reliable hydrogen powered cars.
We had a hearing in the Energy and Commerce Committee this week about a different approach to setting fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks that might improve fuel economy for all kinds of vehicles, not just on average for the whole fleet.
Reducing demand for oil is a part of the solution, but so is increasing access to supplies. I expect the Congress will take up measures over the summer to allow for more exploration in the United States and in our coastal waters. But it is not just raw material that is the problem. Our refining capacity is stretched so tight that we are importing 4 million barrels per day of refined gasoline because we do not have the refining capacity.
Charlie Bass of New Hampshire is working on a refinery permitting bill that would require all of the permits that are currently required, but make the process shorter by doing a lot of things simultaneously. There has been only one new refinery in America in the last twenty years. It took ten years to get the permit to build it and then five more years for construction. It's no wonder companies are building refineries overseas if it takes 15 years to get a new one on line in America.
Depending on the time of year, those refineries have to produce several different types of fuel for local markets to meet clean air requirements. We should be able to simplify the "boutique" fuel standards so that we can meet more of the gas demand at home with fewer disruptions.
And, this week we passed my gas price gouging bill with an overwhelming bipartisan majority. Twenty three states have gas price gouging laws, but the Federal Trade Commission has no authority to investigate unfair trade practices for gas and oil. The bill we passed this week would give them that authority without pre-empting state laws. (New Mexico does not have a price gouging law.)
There are other things in the works. America is sitting on the biggest coal reserves in the world and coal-to-liquid plants to fuel our cars are on the drawing board.
None of these ideas on its own is a magic answer. But, taken collectively, they will reduce demand for imported oil and increase domestic supplies of energy. That makes America more energy independent and keeps prices down over the long term.
Someday, when the President of an unfriendly oil-rich nation suggests they might slow their oil production intending to send shockwaves to the gas pumps around America, it would be nice to be able to say we really don't care. It doesn't matter because America is energy independent. Instead of liquid gold or Texas tea, they have sludge that's a pollution problem. That's a day worth working toward.
http://wilson.house.gov/NewsAction.asp?FormMode=Releases