The Upcoming Energy Legislation

Floor Speech

Mr. KLEIN of Florida. Madam Speaker, by the end of this year, we hope to pass a comprehensive energy bill which will help this country move forward on clean, renewable, American energy, and certainly, will help fuel our economic recovery.

As co-Chair of the New Democratic Coalition on Energy, I believe now is the time for a robust, market-based approach to approach our Nation's energy needs. We have to pass legislation that will make smart investments in alternative energy, and I think every American understands the common sense behind that. These are the kinds of things that will make us more viable and competitive, not only here in the United States but abroad, for our American companies.

It's also clear, as we know as we get into this energy debate, this is about our national security; the fact that we continue to import 60-plus percent of our oil from countries outside the United States, many of which, particularly in the Middle East, are not our friends and are funding our enemies.

We also know it's about, as I said, job creation, and it's also about good environmental policy.

Now, you've heard a lot about this energy bill so far. You may continue to hear a lot about it, and you hear studies on one side that say we're going to lose jobs; the other side saying we're going to create jobs. But I think there's quite a remarkable thing that's going on right now as I've worked on this with many other Members, on both the Democrat and Republican side.

There's a coalition of people out there, interested groups, that have come together and said we support the energy bill that is currently being presented by Congress. And I just want to name some of the companies and some of the groups because it just doesn't sound like the normal groups that would come together: BP, big oil company; Dow Chemical; ConocoPhillips, General Electric. You've got the entire labor union movement supporting this. You've got the League of Conservation Voters and the Sierra Club.

Now, I know not everyone's familiar with every one of these organizations, but suffice it to say, you have got some very large corporate businesses that have their view of the world and certainly the necessity to having an efficient energy policy. You've got some environmental groups that have come together and said, you know, we like this, this makes some sense to us. And you've got labor which doesn't always necessarily but sometimes agrees with the other two groups.

So what I like to think when I hear a study from this organization, sometimes I've heard of that organization, sometimes I haven't, and you have got another group that comes and says the opposite, I like to think of common sense when it comes to coming together and putting together logical and efficient legislation.

The fact that these three sort of disparate groups have come together and said, yeah, we support this, I think something is going on here that we should take a close look at and certainly consider in supporting.

I want to talk specifically about the jobs that will be created by this because I had a very unique conversation with the president of the largest utility company from Florida where I'm from. He was telling me they're building the largest solar plant in the world in Florida. Now, we like to call ourselves The Sunshine State, so we think that's a good place for it, but there are already a lot of solar plants in other parts of the world.

But they're building this in Florida, and what he told me was they were very unhappy about the fact that when they're building this huge plant, hundreds of millions of dollars, they're going to have to import the mirrors--that's the components to build the solar plant--from Germany. I said, Why is that? And he said, Well, we don't build them in the United States. There aren't the kind of incentives for businesses to do that here; but if you did build them in Florida or Georgia or California or Ohio, we would buy them here because they would be far less expensive. Just the shipping costs overseas of this very fragile equipment adds such an expensive piece to the equation.

That, to me, strikes at the heart of this whole point. Why aren't we doing everything we can to create these kinds of jobs in the United States and creating the incentives? Well, the good news is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which we passed--that's the recovery bill--a few months ago has the kind of tax incentives and many of the components to begin to encourage this type of industry for creating jobs in the United States. I want these jobs to be in Florida or other parts of the United States because they're good quality jobs and will support a good industry.

Another area which I think we talked about, you know, nationally is wind power. A big part of what's going on around the world right now, a lot of that is built overseas, but here's another good example. A typical wind turbine has 8,000 parts and is made of 250 tons of steel. Americans make steel. We fabricate. We assemble. We can deliver that to a wind farm in the United States at far less of a cost than if it was done overseas. And guess what, you can't outsource the labor or the people that put these things together and install them. You can't do it from overseas. So, again, an idea whose time has come.

The great thing about this energy bill is this is the kind of forward-thinking that will create the next generation of jobs, whether it's wind or wave
or solar or any combination of things that will make this country more energy secure, smarter, more efficient, and will advance us into the next generation of not only energy but make this country very strong from a national security point of view and a jobs point of view.

So I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this bill, move this country forward, and make us more secure.

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