Energy Development

ENERGY DEVELOPMENT -- (House of Representatives - June 11, 2008)

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Mr. WAMP. I thank the gentleman, and I'll try not to be long. But I do want to start by saying that I seek not to blame anyone, because one of the things that I'm the most turned off by in the modern era of American politics is that everybody wants to blame everybody. And Democrats always say Republicans are wrong. Republicans always say Democrats are wrong. The truth is, neither party has a whole lot to brag about, and more and more people are being frustrated or becoming frustrated with the two parties.

But I will say, on this particular issue of energy, it's important to realize that talk is cheap. Words are not worth much. And votes really do matter. And the positions you take really do have consequences, and we have to actually discuss that as we look at solutions, because what I want to talk about is solutions; not blame, but solutions to these major problems.

In my 14 years of service here, this issue now stings and hurts more than any issue that I've seen. And I've served through impeachment, through the Iraq war, through the awful response to Katrina, and I would say that more people are angry and upset and concerned about $4.05 gasoline than anything.

And it's easy to say, I told you so. The gentleman from Pennsylvania can definitely say I told you so because I've served with him for 12 years, and he's been talking about supply of oil and gas and the consequences of us not going after it and becoming more independent ourselves for the whole 12 years; a very powerful and effective voice.

I too have a long history of talking about the problems that are going to be associated with the energy

crunch and was very concerned following September the 11th that we would end up here tonight. I do think that the nexus between national security, energy and the environment is the most important challenge of our generation because they're all connected now inseparably.

It's ironic that the left wants to promote legislation and conversation about global warming and climate change because actually that will further restrict our access to energy, and everybody knows that. And it will raise prices. It will increase regulation. It will actually compound this problem. Yet they're promoting that agenda at the same time that they're retreating from energy capacity. And these votes really matter.

Now I come at this with 10 years of service on the Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, 8 years of service as the cochairman of the Renewable Energy Caucus here in the House, which is a bipartisan thing; the Representative that represents the premier energy research facility in this country, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. And I want to start by saying that conservation is a very important piece of these solutions.

As a matter of fact, conservation is not for wimps, as some people would have you believe. Conservation is for warriors, in my opinion. Not everyone is going to put on the uniform of our Armed Forces. We should be grateful to everyone who does. But not everyone's going to do that.

But every person in this country can contribute to our national security by becoming more energy efficient, by conserving, by trying to be more efficient in their daily life, and there are a lot of ways to do that.

And I rolled out at the National Press Club, with some outside groups, some very effective outside groups, the Drive Smarter Challenge. You can go to drivesmarterchallenge.org, and you can save yourself hundreds of dollars by following simple instructions of how to conserve gasoline without cutting back on your travel. Obviously the speed limit and how much you travel would be a good step. But there a lot of other things you can do with your automobile, depending on how much gas it uses, to save and conserve, because even in small ways, if we reduce the demand, and the supply stays the same, the price will come down. Demand and supply are connected to each other.

I'm also very, very much about new technologies. As I talk about these solutions, understand that I'm here tonight, not because these solutions are all technology-driven or conservation-driven, but I'm here tonight because we have to go forward with an all-of-the-above strategy. We can't afford to leave anything off the table. We can't afford to pick winners and losers.

As a matter of fact, I can give you a good example of picking winners and losers in the energy sector because in California, they said, we're not going to use all of the resources for electricity production. We're going to mandate that a certain amount of our electricity has to be produced by these sources. They picked winners and losers. And guess what happened? The lights went out. They didn't have any electricity.

That's the problem with picking winners and losers. We have to have an all-of-the-above strategy.

I'm here tonight, as the gentleman from Pennsylvania laid out earlier, because we have to increase capacity. We have to go after these resources from the Outer Continental Shelf, from ANWR.

I've been in Congress 14 years. I've cast 24 votes to increase capacity for oil and gas in this country. Twenty-four votes. As has been said ad infinitum now, and I'm not a partisan guy--I don't want to blame anybody--but these votes matter. And almost every time the Republicans vote for new capacity, and almost every time the Democrats vote against it. Even today, it happened again. And 2 weeks ago it happened in the Senate again.

This is one of those issues that I don't want to be too partisan, but you can't deny there is a huge difference between increasing capacity. Frankly, even the wild-eyed environmentalist has to recognize that this is painful to regular people. And you've got to get off of your crusade to save every tree, you know, to save every form of wildlife at the expense of our human beings who can't pay their bills and they can't buy gas.

Be reasonable, people. That's not happening today.

But there's a tremendous amount of new technologies. I would argue that we can literally grow our economy, a manufacturing-driven, export robust U.S. economy, by being aggressive in this energy sector, because we have the innovation.

What does everyone around the world still emulate about our country? We would like to say it's our privilege to vote. That's important. But they don't all emulate that. We'd like to think that they all would freely worship as we do, and I cherish that. But they don't all emulate that. We would like to think we all have freedom of the press.

The one thing they emulate is our private sector, our capitalistic, free enterprise, innovative sector. We have that.

How did we balance the budget in the late nineties? I was here. Four straight years. People think, oh, you cut spending. No we didn't. We slowed the growth of spending, yes we did. We didn't cut spending. But revenues surpassed expenses principally because of one sector of our economy that roared, information technology. We led the world. Microsoft is an example. There are many others. We led the world. Revenues surpassed expenses.

That can happen again in this sector if we will lead and not be in retreat and not regulate, not limit, but expand, go after it, create new technologies, increase capacity. Be competitive.

As the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, it's important.

Now, I have had the editor of Automotive News say that we're going to be driving electric cars. That might be true. Ion lithium batteries have some potential. GM and Toyota say that next summer they're going to have plug-in hybrids. But I will also tell you that Volkswagon, which is a premier automotive interest in the world, can make a three-cylinder diesel engine, lightweight, gets 50 to 60 miles a gallon so biodiesel, biofuels, as long as they're cellulosic in nature and not corn based, are very important developments as well.

I will tell you what I don't think the Congress ought to do is pick winners and losers. I think we ought to have an all-of-the-above strategy. Let the market determine which one gets their best and first. Let consumers choose and promote them all. Let the marketplace decide. Let me say that if we do end up plugging our cars in, though, we don't have the electricity capacity to keep them running. We have to have nuclear energy.

The numbers--81 percent of France's electricity is generated by nuclear power. They have 53 reactors; we have roughly twice that many. They don't bury their waste, which we propose at Yucca Mountain. They reprocess their spent full turning most of the spent waste back into energy. Why don't we do that? Because we're still stuck in a Three Mile Island time warp mindset that it's somehow not safe, and it is. And there is no evidence that it is not. And we've not had any nuclear incidences. We have 53 nuclear reactors. It is emissionless.

You want to reduce the carbon footprint? Promote nuclear. If you want to reduce the carbon footprint in a meaningful way and you're against nuclear, you're disingenuous. I don't care what your name is. You're not living in the real world, or you're playing politics. We need nuclear.

Now, another new technology is the stationary solid oxide fuel cell. What is that? Well, it's developed out of Silicon Valley. Partnerships around the country. We have a 100-kilowatt system now being demonstrated in the Tennessee Valley. It looks like the HVAC system in your home, but here is the special element of a solid oxide fuel cell: It makes electricity, but it's not on a transmission grid. That's pretty cool in the world we live in today because without a transmission grid, you can't shut down the electricity through a terrorist incident because not everyone is connected to the grid.

And in this stationary solid oxide fuel cell, which is also emissionless, reducing the carbon footprint, it does have to be fueled in one feedstock. It's an HVAC system with fuel cells that creates 100 kilowatts of power which is roughly a 30,000 square foot building. Office building, commercial center, several houses. But you have to have a feedstock, but it will run on anything, just about. It will run on natural gas, it will run on solar in some places, ethanol, different feedstocks.

But that's an important development. It has got tremendous electricity potential especially if we start plugging in our cars and we need this new electricity capacity.

I believe we ought to look at a follow-up stimulus bill that directs resources to people that are stuck. And I'll tell you in the south, if you're on the lower income, you probably have a very inefficient vehicle and you probably drive a long way to work and you're stuck; and those are the people that our next economic stimulus ought to help. We ought to figure out a way in a bipartisan way to get them some resources to move to more efficient transportation, one way or another. Because people right now, they can't trade that big car. They can't get for it what it's worth, and then they don't have the money to go to a more efficient car. We should help them.

In closing, let me just say words are cheap and votes really do make a difference, and the votes for energy capacity have been really important in the past, and they're even more important today; and they're going to be even more important tomorrow. And this is where we have to bring this Congress together.

And the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate is way out of touch with reality unless they get serious immediately about increasing capacity because if we made moves that were published around the world that we're going back in the energy-production business, prices would come down overnight, not because the energy is there overnight, but because they know we're going in the right direction because right now we're going in the wrong direction.

We need help.

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