North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015h

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, there is strong--certainly bipartisan--consensus that we need to update and modernize our energy infrastructure. Unfortunately, this bill fails to make meaningful advances in this arena.

It does not advance clean energy. The ``energy efficiency'' title would actually be a setback in reducing consumption and carbon emissions, and climate change is not addressed at all. Whenever possible, this legislation favors suppliers over consumers, consumption over efficiency, and the fossil fuels over renewable energy.

Most disappointingly, this bill could have been bipartisan. The Senate's energy bill, while far from perfect, at least acknowledges that we need to invest real dollars into upgrading our Nation's energy systems.

This bill has no shortage of flaws. I have offered two amendments to address some of these shortcomings. The first would reauthorize the Weatherization Assistance Program and the State Energy Program. These are two existing programs that have operated successfully for years.

The Weatherization Assistance Program supports State-based programs to improve the energy efficiency of the homes of low-income families. The Department of Energy provides grants to the States to deliver these services through local weatherization agencies.

The Weatherization Assistance Program helps those in our communities who do not have the financial resources to make energy efficiency investments on their own: the elderly, the disabled, and other low-income families amongst them who are struggling to make ends meet.

The second amendment would strike section 1101, an unnecessary change to FERC's natural gas pipeline approval process. Nothing has been done to cast FERC's role as the lead agency for siting gas pipelines in doubt, but the majority has used this pretense to make it easier for pipeline companies to have projects approved without extensive public consultation, requiring FERC to make a decision within 90 days regardless of the complexity of the application.

It would also allow for remote surveying instead of on-site inspections. This would allow companies to circumvent property owners' rights when surveying land. My amendment would strike this section to ensure Federal and State regulators have the time necessary to review any and all applications, but these issues are far from my only concerns with this bill.

Energy efficiency has a long history of bipartisanship, but, sadly, this has not continued in this bill.

According to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, this bill would actually net cost consumers and cause additional emissions.

Furthermore, the DOE is prevented from providing assistance if it finds that a proposed code does not meet a payback period of 10 years or less. That is a return on investment that does not jibe with reality where 30-year mortgages are often the norm.

The bill repeals a section of the Energy Independence and Security Act which has been used to improve the efficiency of new Federal buildings.

There was an extensive hydropower section included during the full committee markup that was not subject to a hearing despite significantly changing the FERC licensing process.

It does nothing to address the public health and safety hazards created by old, leaky natural gas pipelines.

It does nothing to assist States' efforts to upgrade and modernize their electric grids.

It is silent on the infrastructure maintenance issues associated with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve that the administration identified in the Quadrennial Energy Review.

It has totally failed to recognize the growth in distributed renewable energy, such as wind and solar, and it should come as no surprise that this bill ignores the impact of climate change, which remains a major threat to our energy security, our economy, and human health.

These are just a handful of the serious issues with this bill.

I believe all of us started with the intention of continuing the Energy and Commerce Committee's long tradition of working on comprehensive energy legislation in a bipartisan fashion, but this bill is a far cry from the discussion drafts we actually held hearings on earlier this year. I understand we may not agree on everything, but this legislation fails to capitalize on those areas of agreement in any meaningful way.

This bill's focus is on the past, not on the future. It fails to make the necessary investments in our energy infrastructure to improve safety, public health, and reliability.

It rolls back efforts to improve energy efficiency, does nothing to encourage the expansion of renewable energy, and ignores climate change, as I indicated, altogether. It promotes a future that is economically and environmentally unsustainable.

I then urge my colleagues to reject this bill. We need to go back to the drawing board and craft a bill that actually makes investments and looks forward to America's energy future.

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