Energy

ENERGY -- (House of Representatives - May 11, 2005)

Mr. Speaker, I have been joined by several colleagues, and next I would like to yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest).

Mr. GILCHREST. I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding to me, Mr. Speaker, and I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan for the fascinating discussion mixed with science, history and a little poetry there, I think. Mr. Speaker, I hope many of our constituents across the country are listening to this most important topic.

My colleague, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers), began to speak about energy as not something that you can see or touch, and very few people think about that or think about where energy comes from. It comes from that fuel tank that you lift to fill your car. It comes from someone delivering it to your house. But I would suspect that many Americans and many of our colleagues here in the house feel that energy is a resource that will last forever.

I would like to pose a question tonight to follow on with what my colleague from Michigan was saying, and that is: Is energy infinite? Is energy a bottomless well? And if we look at the bottom of the bottomless well, what do we see?

If we are to have a cohesive energy policy in this country and in this world, in fact, we need to know what that is at the bottomless well, because I happen to think there is no bottom to the resource of energy. But we have to know what that is. What is that resource? What energy source can we rely upon for the unforeseeable future, for generations to come?

The modern world right now is dependent, the industrialized world and the new industrializing world are enormously dependent on an energy source known as fossil fuel. That is coal, natural gas and oil. We also know that the demand is increasing as the supply is diminishing, dramatically. The U.S. oil reserves peaked in 1970.

What is at the bottom of the bottomless well? I think it is initiative. It is ingenuity. It is intellect, and it is logic. Oil, or natural gas, is not at the bottomless well. Oil or natural gas or fossil fuel are finite, and they will not last forever. So we are in a transition period, because the demand is increasing dramatically, and the supply continues to decrease.

The gentleman from Michigan gave us a history lesson about transitions from one energy source to another over a long period of time and showed how our cultures, our industry, our economy, and our cultures have changed. We know that coal in this country some time ago replaced wood and actually saved the forests. Coal was actually more efficient and better for burning or for heating in those earlier years because we stopped burning our forests. Our forests create habitat for wildlife; it is an environmental issue. So coal replaced wood. Oil supplemented coal and oil is more efficient than coal and it is actually cleaner burning. Natural gas supplemented oil. Natural gas is cleaner than oil.

If we looked at it a little bit closer from a chemist's perspective, we would show that there is more hydrogen in coal than there is in wood. There is more hydrogen in oil than in coal. There is more hydrogen in natural gas than there is in oil. So we are moving up the ladder of a better understanding of what sources of energy are important. But all of them are finite. And as our demand increases, our supply diminishes, and we need to begin to rethink our energy sources.

In 1910 if we look at BTUs, British thermal units, if you buy a heater of almost any sort, it will have the number of BTUs that it puts out, the energy output. If we are to measure BTUs from the perspective of how many BTUs the United States uses, what is our energy output, it is measured in quadrillion. If we looked in the year 1910 as an example of BTUs, the United States burned 7 quadrillion BTUs. That is a 1 with 15 zeros. Seven quadrillion BTUs in 1910. If we looked at 1950, we burned 35 quadrillion BTUs. If we looked in the year 2005, it is up to 100 quadrillion BTUs.

The demand is increasing exponentially. In 1970, the year we peaked in our oil, we produced, the United States, 11 million barrels of oil a day. In 2004, we produced 5 million barrels a day. In 2005, we burn roughly 20 million barrels a day of oil. We import about two-thirds of our oil, and that will continue actually to worsen, and we have about 3 percent of the world's oil reserves, or less, and our demand is increasing while our supply is diminishing.

We are actually beginning to see the end of cheap oil in the United States. And burning this resource, burning oil, is not the best use of that resource. We use it, as the gentleman from Michigan said, for a whole range of things, for heating our homes, for air conditioning, for airplanes, for electric lights, for clothing, much of the clothing that we wear, for plastics, for fertilizers, for modern agriculture, for asphalt to maintain our roads. Can you imagine the interstate highway system if we did not have oil to make the asphalt to maintain those many millions of miles? Surgical devices, hip replacement, national defense, all of these things come from oil. It is an integral part of our economy.

Should we really be burning it as fast as we can, as if oil were at the bottom of the bottomless well? Are there other better uses for burning oil? There are. Can we improve our resources here in the United States with something other than fossil fuel? If we continue to rely on fossil fuel, we will never be energy independent and our security will be reduced because most of the oil we import right now comes from areas of the world that are not very stable.

We should begin to seriously think about three things and think of these three things in the way that we use our initiative, our ingenuity, and our intellect to understand what lies at the bottom of the bottomless well. The first thing is fuel efficiency. That is one of the first things we can actually do, tangible things we can do. We have the technology right now to double fuel efficiency. We should start immediately, because it takes about a decade before you see any results. We could save billions of dollars, reduce our trade deficit, save oil supplies so they last longer. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that we have 25 years of oil left with present demand. That is not with any increase in demand. Is demand going down? Will we burn less than 100 quadrillion BTUs? I do not think so. What will we do about importing the millions of barrels of oil every day? So doubling our efficiency with oil and natural gas will spread these supplies longer and offer us that transition period between a new fuel economy that we desperately need.

The second thing are alternative fuels. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Ehlers) and I know the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) will mention these. There is solar. It is a small piece, but it is a piece. There is wind. It is significant, but it is a small piece of the pie. There are biofuels, a whole range of biofuels from corn to soybeans to poplar trees, to certain grasses, to a range of things that we have already mentioned here tonight; but they are a small piece.

There is hydropower. There is hydrogen which does offer us some hope. It is not a fuel. You can produce it from solar, from wind, from nuclear, from coal. What we have here is a membrane; it excites the molecules and you produce electricity without combustion. But we do not have the technology to mass produce hydrogen to take the place of oil. There is methane from landfills and livestock. There is nuclear power, which is cleaner. The storage of fuel rods is difficult and also, even though it is nuclear, it is a finite source.

We have to start now to make the transition to a new energy source smooth and not disruptive. We must understand the dynamics of this from an economic standpoint, a geopolitical perspective, and cultural life-style.

The third thing is life-style. Our lives, our culture right now, dependent on fossil fuel, our lives are filled with things, things and more things. Look around your home. Where do these things come from? What are they made of? And how do they get delivered to us? The world is dependent on fossil fuel, mainly oil, to make those things, transport those things, and bring them to your home. We import them from all over the world. Oil is related to every aspect of production, distribution, marketing, and consumption of the products you get from megaretailers like Wal-Mart and Sears to McDonald's and Burger King. Our culture.

What will replace oil to keep this kind of economy ever expanding? We talk all the time about a growing economy. How will it expand without oil? We should start talking in terms of a dynamic, sustainable economy without oil. Without oil, our life-styles, in conclusion, our communities, are likely to be smaller and more compact. Our farms are likely to be smaller and more diverse. There will be fewer expanding suburbs wholly dependent upon the automobile. Solar, wind, biofuels can accommodate smaller communities. Nuclear at least for the time will be more significant.

But if we use what is at the bottom of the bottomless well, ingenuity, initiative and intellect, we will have cleaner energy sources, more jobs, drastically reduced trade deficits, more of our own goods will be produced here, a stable economy, more security.

What does the future hold for us? Look deeply at what is or should be at the bottom of the bottomless well. We need the time to transition to this new economy.

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