Carbon Pollution

Floor Speech

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Mr. INSLEE. Well, I come to the floor with some good news tonight, and that is that the Energy and Commerce Committee will be working to produce a bill starting either late this week or early next week to really jump-start President Obama's vision for a transition to a clean energy future for the country.

And we reached today some very important milestones to reach consensus in our committee to move this vision forward. And I'm very optimistic about that, contentious as this is, for a couple of reasons. One, I just was being briefed by some findings about what Americans' beliefs are about this issue from a fellow named Mark Mellman, who basically looks and asks questions of people and what they think of America. And it was amazing how optimistic Americans are and how much they embrace this idea that we can innovate and create millions of new, clean energy jobs. In fact, the research showed that by two-to-one margins, over two-to-one margins, Americans believe that if we act in Congress to promote the creation of clean energy technology, to do the research and development to create these high-tech, energy-efficient sources of energy, if we create limits on the amount of pollution that polluters can put in the air, by two-to-one margins, Americans believe this will create jobs, clean energy jobs. And that fundamental belief is the thing that will allow the U.S. Congress this year to pass a bill to move us down the clean energy future.

And I would suggest there's a reason Americans believe by two-to-one margins that action on clean energy will create jobs, and that is that we're the most innovative, creative, dynamic, entrepreneurial society ever. And with all due respect to the Egyptians and the Romans, we are the most innovative society, and I think that this optimistic view by two to one that we can create jobs by moving forward in clean energy, it's really consistent with the American character. That's the first reason.

The second reason I feel excited tonight about the Commerce Committee's now advancing President Obama's clean energy vision is the same things that I've seen happen. I went home to Seattle, the Seattle region where I represent, and I just met such exciting people in the State of Washington who are creating these new jobs today.

Yesterday, I went to a company called MacDonald-Miller, a company in Seattle, and they install heating and cooling equipment and energy efficiency equipment. And a few years ago, they started to try to figure out how can they boost their sales. They were having some tough times. They actually went through a restructuring, and they asked themselves, how can we boost our sales and build our company? And they decided to really pursue energy efficiency. And they decided to build a model, a business model, around selling efficiency services, and they showed me one thing they're doing. It's pretty amazing.

It seems so simple, but they are employing hundreds of people at this company by selling a product that will simply adjust your thermostat. If you've got an office building, it will adjust the thermostat dependent on the outside air temperature. And what they found is, and I know this sounds simple, but what they found is that people's comfort level varies on the outside temperature. So they might want it at 73 on a hot day, but they're comfortable at maybe 69 or 70 on a cold day. So they found out people's comfort level varies; so they basically are selling a product that will adjust the temperature of the office building to be consistent with that comfort level depending on the outside temperature. And they had an average reduction of energy of, I think, about 12 percent when they did that. And that's astronomic.

I mean, if you reduced everybody's energy 12 percent in your buildings, it would be incredible in your heating and cooling expenses. But most importantly, by doing that, they're creating jobs and wealth, and their sales have gone up dramatically in the last 4 or 5 years because they are adopting that strategy.

So what we are doing here in Congress in this bill, we will be adopting a provision that will call for Americans to have a higher level of renewable energy, 15 percent, and an additional 5 percent of efficiency gains that will help boost these companies that are now hiring so many people around the country.

Another company in my area called McKinstry, President Obama mentioned them when we were at the White House last week. They have similarly sold efficiency services.

So everywhere you look, you can find opportunities for this job creation. But what these companies need are policies that will level the playing field, because right now our policies just favor some of the older industries, and now we need some policies that will really level the playing field and allow this transition to take place.

Now, in this bill where we're going to be doing it, there are some costs associated, of course, as there always are. We don't usually expect something for nothing. But in our bill it's the polluters and the polluters' industries that will pay. They will be the ones that will be required to purchase and pay for permits associated with this pollution. And, generally, I think it's fairly well understood that in a society that favors responsibility, it ought to be the polluters who are responsible for costs, not citizens. In fact, there will be some assistance to citizens with their utility bills associated with this project.

So the good news that I'm hearing from across the country is Americans believe that we will create jobs if we act on clean energy, number one. And, number two, I'm seeing with my own eyes my constituents getting hired in these new emerging industries.

I went to the 3 Tier Corporation the other day. They essentially manage electricity in large corporations, manage server farms and manage the like, and they're hiring people. The AltaRock Company is doing engineered geothermal in the North Seattle area. That's where you poke a hole down, you pump water down it, it comes up hot, you make steam and generate electricity.

I went to a company called Ausra Engineering. It's a marine architecture firm in Seattle. You don't normally associate marine architectural firms with job creation and clean energy, but they are potentially working on platforms to build floating platforms for offshore wind turbines, and they are in the preliminary

work of looking at particular designs to do that because we have enormous capacity for wind off of our shorelines.

So the basic American belief in the innovative spirit of the country is now being matched by these real businesses in real time, hiring real people with real paychecks, and that's what this bill is going to do that we are going to pass here out of the committee hopefully late next week to really jump-start, kick-start this job creation.

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Mr. INSLEE. I think that's a very important point is that the portfolio of these new renewable energy sources that are going to provide the electricity for both our toasters and for these train systems that Mr. Blumenauer talked about, when you generate this electricity using renewable sources, it's, by necessity, a domestic product. If you are using renewable energy to generate your electricity, you know you're using an all-American energy source, because that means the wind is right in eastern Washington or eastern Oregon.

By the way, Washington just had the biggest wind farm in America, became the largest producer of wind power in the world last year. There are actually as many people working in the wind power industry today as the coal mining industry. We're rapidly increasing the number of jobs, but we are using domestic energy when we use wind power.

I went to a company in Tri-Cities, Washington, a couple of months ago. The Infinia Company has developed a sterling engine. It's a solar energy system using a sterling engine, and that's a system where you have these concave dishes that look like large satellite dishes and they concentrate the sun's energy on a little engine about the size of a couple of pop cans, and that turns out pressure differences into mechanical energy and generates electricity. Now, when you use the Infinia system, you are getting a job creation in the Northwest, in Washington State, and you are using a domestic supply of energy, namely the sunshine that's falling on us right now.

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Mr. INSLEE. I think it's really important you have brought up the issue of coal. I think it's very important to note that when this bill comes out of our committee, it comes to the floor of the House. It is not going to ignore the potential of coal to remain part of our energy future.

We have huge amounts of coal reserves in this country that could power us for hundreds of years. But we need to find a way to burn it more cleanly, to take the carbon dioxide, which is now going into the atmosphere and making our oceans more acidic and contributing to global warming, to take that carbon dioxide and bury it in the Earth for 10,000 years so it's not going to be a problem. Now, in our bill we are not ignoring that issue. We are, in fact, contributing about a billion dollars a year in an effort to find a way to bury that carbon dioxide so we can continue to use coal.

Now, this is an important point, because we feel that we all need to move together, including the regions of the country that are very heavily coal dependent, and we intend to have a very well-balanced research program where we don't favor any one energy source. We are going to be doing work on solar, we are going to be doing work on wind, we are going to be doing work on geothermal, and we are going to be doing work to find a way, hopefully, to sequester carbon dioxide when it comes out of the coal-fired plants.

So I think that's an important point that all areas of the country you are going to have some benefit to find ways to use their energy sources.

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Mr. INSLEE. You mentioned China, or meant to, one of the two. I wanted to comment on this too.

We are also, in this bill, dealing with, when we are advancing clean energy, we want to make sure we don't lose jobs in competition for some of these other countries, even if they don't move as rapidly as we do and try to move away from this pollution of CO2.

And one of the things we are going to have in our bill is a provision that will protect our jobs and protect our industries against job leakage going overseas to countries that may not have some CO

2 regime to reduce pollution. We have now reached agreement, essentially, that we will essentially have a cushion for industry-intensive industries--steel, aluminum, cement--a cushion so they will be insulated from increases in energy costs associated with this so that we won't lose jobs, having these plants move to China or India or some other country that may not have a regulation on CO2 as we do. This is a very important resolution.

I worked with Mike Doyle, a Representative from Pittsburgh, on this, and we can now legitimately tell folks in these industries that we have this protection against job leakage. And it is a message, an important message, to countries around the world that all countries are going to have to enter into some action plan to reduce carbon dioxide.

We know we can't solve this problem without China's participation, and that's why in this bill we will also have a provision that in the event there is not progress made, that there could be trade adjustment at the border for imports from China if, in fact, China is unable to move forward with this. Now, we hope it will succeed on that and that won't be necessary.

But the point is we are designing a bill that will capture the innovation, allow us to make the electric car here rather than China, and not lose jobs in the steel industry. And I think we have designed a bill that's going to accomplish that.

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Mr. INSLEE. I think, too, when we think about this clean energy future, it has to be in relationship with what other countries are doing as well. And when we pass this bill next year, it is going to be because we believe we are not going to cede these markets to countries who could steal these markets from us.

You know, we are in a race right now to see who is going to be dominant making electric cars and electric batteries. China has an interest in doing that, and they are making enormous investments to do that.

We are in a race today to decide who is going to dominate the solar-power industry. China is making enormous investments in their solar cells. In fact, I met a fellow from, I believe it was from, Indiana who had a solar cell manufacturing plant. And he had a guy walk in from China and plunk down $300 million and try to get him to move his plant to China, lock, stock and barrel.

And the fellow said, I am a red, white, and blue American, and I am not leaving. But that's what we are up against, and that's one of the reasons we intend to take an aggressive position here with research and development dollars, with limits on CO2 that will spur investment and kick start the businesses here that we need so we can regain these markets.

You know, we invented solar energy in this country, but the Germans sort of commercialized it because they saw this a little before we did. We need to get in that game today and see to it that the companies like Infinia Companies and Nanosolar that's doing thin-cell photovoltaics and Bright Source.

By the way, I want to mention this one source of solar energy that people may not have heard about, the Bright Source Company and the Ausra Energy Company, two companies doing what's called concentrated solar power. What they do is they use mirrors in various fashions to concentrate radiant energy, heat up a liquid, make steam and then create electricity from it with zero pollution associated with it.

Bright Source has now signed contracts for thousands of megawatts of crystal pure solar energy in various places in the United States, and it would surprise you, it's not just Nevada. They have places in the Southeast where they can do this as well.

And it is this type of technological breakthrough that if we put our minds to it and pass this bill, we are going to jump-start jobs in this country.

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Mr. INSLEE. The gentleman has mentioned wind. Some people think of wind as kind of a toy you get under a Christmas tree or something. In fact, wind energy, according to the Department of Energy, and this was under the previous President's Department of Energy, concluded that we could have 20 percent of all of our electricity generated by wind in the next couple of decades, just using existing technology.

Now, we believe there are going to be some advances in technology. We think there is a good shot at having good storage. One of the issues of wind, of course, is the wind doesn't blow all the time. It's an intermittent source. So there is two ways to get around that problem: one, have multiple wind sites that are tied together in an advanced transmission grid so if the wind is not blowing in one place, it will be blowing in another; or to have a storage system.

And I have talked to these companies now that are developing batteries that are as large as a semi-trailer, and these now have the potential of actually being grid connected to store wind and solar when we have excess power generation. So we think there is a reasonable chance to get to 20 percent, which is very significant, just on one technology alone. Then we have so many options, of course, including efficiency, which can be done everywhere, day or night.

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