Advanced Geothermal Innovation Leadership Act of 2019--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, as I mentioned yesterday as we were preparing to vote on the motion to proceed to the American Energy Innovation Act, there is much to like and much to support in this energy reform legislation we have proposed.

We are in the early stages here of legislating, and I think it is probably fair to say that perhaps we are a little rusty. As we have told Members, we hope to have a process that allows for amendments from both sides, that gives us an opportunity to debate these important and timely issues.

As we legislate and as we move through each step, it does require a level of cooperation. Again, as I mentioned, we haven't been legislating on a weekly basis, so when it comes to just the process and the procedure of how this all comes together, maybe we are still in a little bit of a learning curve.

I have had an opportunity in previous Congresses to be that first legislative vehicle that we have really taken on in a period of time. We have worked through some of them successfully before--one, famously unsuccessful. I don't want this to fall into the ``famously unsuccessful'' category, so I am encouraging Members to look critically at the bill we have introduced, the American Energy Innovation Act, and work with us through this amendment process. We have received a number of what I would put in the ``noncontroversial bucket'' category that I am hoping we will be able to accept, and I am hoping we can work together to incorporate those into our underlying measure.

I wanted to take just a few minutes this afternoon to highlight why the innovation title within the American Energy Innovation Act is so important and what this bill will do to help support and increase innovation in America.

When you think about who we are as Americans, what we are built on, we are built on a foundation of ingenuity and innovation. We pioneered the electric grid system. We pioneered nuclear energy. We pioneered horizontal drilling. These are many of the life-, economy-, and world- changing technologies that you think of in this energy space, and the United States has led in these areas. But the policies underlying Federal energy R&D have not been updated now in more than 12 years--a dozen years since we have last updated, refreshed, modernized. So the question is whether they fully reflect the range of opportunities and challenges that we have, and I would submit to you that they do not. We haven't kept pace with everything that is happening around us. It is important--it is incumbent upon us to look to our policies.

Modernizing our energy laws will support the scientific work undertaken by the Department of Energy, by our National Laboratories, and by our universities. It will also support the men and the women who dedicate their careers to scientific pursuits, individuals who truly form the backbone of American R&D and are a tremendous asset to our country.

As I mentioned yesterday, those of us on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee have spent the last year putting together this innovation package. Throughout that process, what we heard in committee from the experts was that three of the most promising technologies for clean energy are energy storage; advanced nuclear; and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. These three areas, we are told, are where the promise really is if you want to focus on clean energy solutions. Our composite bill prioritizes all three technologies, as well as renewable energy and industrial and vehicle technologies.

CCUS--carbon capture, utilization, and storage--technologies will allow coal and natural gas plants to avoid greenhouse gas emissions and even allow us to make useful products from carbon dioxide. I have had an opportunity and I know some other colleagues have had an opportunity to go to some of these laboratories--not only in this country but overseas--where we are taking that carbon, that waste product, and we are turning it into value--in other words, building materials, whether it is a sheetrock type of a process or whether it is the equivalent of cinder blocks made out of carbon, that waste. When we can change this so we are taking a waste product and converting it to value--talk about technologies that can really change how we operate.

Again, the carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies will allow us to advance in that direction. The bill also includes demonstration and deployment programs that focus on industrial emissions and direct air capture, which will similarly reduce emissions.

When you think about the prospects and the possibilities for us with direct air capture, it was not too many years ago that it was a dream concept. Now it is no longer a dream concept. We are truly in the process of evaluating and piloting some of these technologies.

I mentioned nuclear energy as one of the three. Nuclear energy is our Nation's largest and most reliable source of zero-emission electricity. Within this subtitle of this bill, we have included the legislation I have been working on, the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act, which would demonstrate advanced reactors to help restore our national leadership and keep our domestic industry competitive with the likes of Russia and China.

You have the CCUS and nuclear energy. The third area--the third really transformative area--is storage. This is, without a doubt, probably the most popular topic within our bill. We have included the BEST Act from Senator Collins, which creates a crosscutting energy storage R&D program at the Department of Energy. Its focus is on long- duration energy storage that can smooth out variable renewable energy generation. This is a very significant part of our bill.

With regard to industrial energy, our innovation package includes language that Senator Whitehouse authored to create a crosscutting R&D program to reduce emissions in seven areas, including chemical production, steel and aluminum, high temperature process heat generation, and industrial carbon capture.

I think you will see from that provision that, again, it is making inroads into those areas where we see the highest emissions within our industrial energy sector. As we see consumers demanding cleaner products, know that our bill helps ensure that American industries are going to be prepared to deliver on that.

Another area where we are pushing forward, of course, is renewable energy, which we look at and say has the opportunity to provide nearly limitless power across America. The costs of many of these technologies we have already seen come down significantly. We take reasonable steps within this bill to move wind, solar, geothermal, marine, hydrokinetic, and other renewables to full commercialization.

To give some specifics in this space, in geothermal energy, we provide opportunities to responsibly develop more of the resource with new techniques and to coproduce critical minerals along with it.

In my State of Alaska, we have enormous potential within the geothermal space. Knowing that within this title, we have an opportunity to really help move out some of the new techniques that are out there is significant.

For solar energy, we are working on new applications like solar paint, addressing grid integration challenges, and improving recycling. For marine energy--marine hydrokinetic--we are developing offshore testing centers to scale up new concepts.

I remind colleagues, I come from a State where we have more coastline than the entire United States put together of all the coastal States there. This is an area that I have long looked to and said: Why are we not doing more when it comes to tapping into our marine energy sources?

Our wind energy provisions include offshore and floating wind development and demonstration activities. We are working to push out in the renewable sector some of these areas where we are still pioneering in many of these ways. We have demonstrated wind on land with great efficiency. How are we doing with offshore? What more can we be doing there?

By providing the Department of Energy with new tools and direction, we are helping to ensure the United States remains the world leader in innovative technologies.

One of the challenges we hear about as we discuss these cool things in the Energy Committee is how you get these great cutting-edge ideas from the lab to the market. To address that, our bill reauthorizes the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. This is ARPA-E. This is the entity that helps these nascent technologies bridge the so-called valley of death and reach commercialization. ARPA-E has already delivered significant results with nearly $3 billion in follow-on private financing for its projects.

We had the Secretary for the Department of Energy, Secretary Brouillette, before the committee just today on a budget hearing. He heard repeatedly from members on both sides of the aisle the value that comes from ARPA-E. Of course, developing new and cleaner and more affordable technologies doesn't benefit us just here at home; it can also make a meaningful impact around the world.

We shouldn't just develop and deploy new technologies at home. We should also sell them to other countries around the world. This is an incredible opportunity for economic growth. We know that we will simultaneously lower global greenhouse gas emissions and help to cement geopolitical relationships that can span generations.

We will be discussing more of the component pieces within the American Energy Innovation Act. You are going to continue to hear me say that this is good legislation, this is important legislation, this is timely legislation--after 12 years. But you don't necessarily have to take my word for it. Consider the work of the American Energy Innovation Council, which is led by noted individuals, luminaries, like Norm Augustine and Bill Gates. They have found that at least 50 percent of the U.S. annual GDP growth can be traced to increases in innovation and that innovation has been the predominant driver of U.S. economic growth over the last century.

When we say that this Energy bill focuses on that innovation, recognize the value that innovation brings to us in the energy sector. The council's members have also observed that advances in energy technology deserve particular attention since energy underlies virtually every facet of modern life. Without a sufficient, reliable, and affordable source of energy, the U.S. economy would grind to a halt.

They are exactly right in their words. Yet the United States continues to allocate less than 0.1 percent of its annual Federal outlays to energy R&D. Put that into context. This is an afterthought in our budget and, unfortunately, in real life for too many Americans. We take for granted that when you pull up to the gas station, they are going to have fuel there. We take for granted that when you flip the light switch, the lights are going to come on. The reality is, it takes a tremendous amount of work to make that happen. It is innovation that brings this all to us.

Innovation is worth it. The proof is literally around us with everything we do. Given our history, given our people, given our institutions, I know this country can continue to lead the way on new technologies. What we need to do is make sure we have policies that help further incent them, that do not drag down that opportunity to meet those challenges.

I am confident that we have a good bill in front of us, a strong bill in front of us. I appreciate the support that the Senate has shown for our bill thus far. I look forward to working on amendments as the week continues. I urge colleagues to provide us with those matters that you have been working on. We want to try to accommodate, but we also recognize that we haven't been in this process before where we have had the opportunity for open amendments. We want to try do it right. We want to try to be efficient, as we do in the Energy Committee, and we want to be fair to our colleagues.

With that, I look forward to the input and the cooperation from fellow Senators as we proceed with the discussion about the American Energy Innovation Act.

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