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REP. JAY INSLEE (D-WA): Thank you.
Just as I was walking in this room, I had a fellow from Virginia -- told him where I was headed into, and he said, "Congressman, I own stock in one of those companies, but give them hell anyway." And I thought it was kind of indicative of what you know is the public sentiment out across the country. But I think that public sentiment is not because Americans don't understand the laws of supply and demand, and we know that demand is going up with China and India and supply is somewhat limited. It's because of these two great abuses that they feel are going on that create this great anger besides just the price rise.
And that is, first, they cannot understand when they're paying ($)3.28 or ($)3.44 out in my state of Washington at the pump, why then you then reach into their pockets and take out another $18 billion on April 15th out of their tax bill. They can't understand that. And when they ask you to give them -- to give you "h," I think that's one of the reasons, because Americans believe, and I think rightfully so, that if you were going to give awards for taxpayer abuses, this would win the Heisman and the Oscar and the Nobel Prize, to reach into Americans' pockets at tax time to take this when these prices are going up like this.
And secondly, Americans are concerned that even though we know -- we know we have to wean ourselves off of oil and gas, that global warming demands this -- even though Americans know that we're the most innovative people on the face of the Earth, we're still seeing a very, very small -- as a percentage of your revenues -- investment in the clean energy technologies that Americans know that we can perfect to really create a clean energy revolution in this country.
So I hope that we'll produce some thoughts about that. I'll give you one saving grace. I know this can be a difficult hearing for you. I'm not going to ask for your home phone numbers, and that could be the most effective regulatory system we have. But that's the one break you'll get today. Thank you.
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REP. INSLEE: Thank you.
First off, we need to say something good about the industry here, one point of this hearing. I want to congratulate BP for meeting their Kyoto CO2 reduction targets of their internal operations within, I think, three or four years, showing that this can be done. It's a good example for the rest of us.
I want to ask -- this is a question to all of you. Did you or any of your associates participate in the secret Vice President Dick Cheney Energy Task Force in 2001?
MR. ROBERTSON: We did not.
MR. HOFMEISTER: I testified previously the answer is no.
MR. LOWE: No.
MR. MALONE: Yes.
REP. INSLEE: And would you, Mr. Malone, could you make your documents related to that secret meetings available to the committee?
MR. MALONE: Yes, sir.
REP. INSLEE: Thank you. We would make that request.
Mr. Simon, listening to your testimony makes me even more convinced that we need to act to create an incentive for decision makers and industry to really make real investments in the clean energy revolution rather than relatively small ones. And the reason I say that is that listening to you, as far as I can tell, you're spending less than half a percent of your gross revenues on clean energy research. Is that right?
MR. SIMON: It would be a very modest amount; I would acknowledge that. But I would not acknowledge that we're not doing a lot to address greenhouse gas emissions.
REP. INSLEE: Well, considering that we have to cut our greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent in this country below our levels by 2050, would you agree that if your company continues on its present course, it will fall several hundred orders of magnitude short of what we have to do to prevent cataclysmic global climate change?
MR. SIMON: Well, the assumption there is that that's required in order to do that.
REP. INSLEE: Well, how else is this going to happen? I mean, oil isn't going to all of a sudden become clean. We need to do the research to figure out these technologies.
MR. SIMON: No, but the fact is that we are going to have oil and gas and coal, and it's going to constitute about 80 percent of the energy equation. With that as a given, how do we then address and do what we can to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions with that being the case?
REP. INSLEE: Would you agree with me, sir, that if Exxon continues on its present course of having less than one half of 1 percent of its revenues associated with clean energy sources other than oil and gas that the world is going to suffer significantly unless Exxon and its like changes its behavior?
MR. SIMON: No, I don't agree with that, and I think we can do a lot mitigating greenhouse gas emissions by focusing on the areas that we are --
REP. INSLEE: So where are these --
MR. SIMON: -- transportation efficiency improvements being one.
REP. INSLEE: So where are these new -- if you don't put research dollars into it, is it going to come from the -- you know -- the oil fairy? Somehow these new technologies are going to show up?
MR. SIMON: No.
REP. INSLEE: We've got to put some real money in this, don't we?
MR. SIMON: Given the fact that, again, we've got oil, and it is in our equation, it is going to be a significant factor, we are focusing on how do we make the use of that oil much more efficient.
REP. INSLEE: Well, let me suggest. I hope that you'll go take from this hearing a much more optimistic viewpoint of our capability. You mention the money that you're putting into Stanford. I was at Stanford last weekend talking to their scientists, and I was very excited by going over a report called "A Renewable Energy Solution to Global Warming," presented by Mark Jacobson, Atmospheric Energy Program, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University. And what they concluded -- and I'll just read you a couple of sentences in the summary: "The US could replace all on-road vehicles with battery electric vehicles powered by 71,000 to 122,000 five-megawatt wind turbines, less than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II. Wind battery electric vehicles could reduce U.S. carbon dioxide by 25.5 percent. Solar battery electric vehicles can reduce it by 23.4 percent."
Now, would you agree to me that this is a vision from Stanford, the folks that you are giving some money to -- is one that the United States really needs, and that with your pathetically small research budget, we're not going to meet unless something changes?
MR. SIMON: No, I don't agree with that, Congressman, and I would invite you to go look for yourself at what we're doing in the global climate and energy project. I think you would find it to be quite significant. It has long-term very significant impacts, in terms of what it can do on the energy equation and greenhouse gas mitigation.
REP. INSLEE: We actually did ask your company to give us the investments they were making in this and you refused to give it to us. But you've helped us by telling it is less than one half percent. Now, I can tell you that there's a lot of constituents that think that that is an inadequate contribution to the future of the planet Earth, and I just hope things change, and obviously we got to change them by changing this tax policy. Thank you.
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