Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I come from an energy State--Oklahoma. We truly do all of the above. We have coal, oil, gas, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and we are just missing nuclear. Quite frankly, we probably would have nuclear if the regulations weren't so incredibly high and so incredibly expensive to do. In my State and in my region, we want diverse, inexpensive, healthy, plentiful, and reliable energy. We don't think that should be such a high goal that it is only limited to Oklahoma. Quite frankly, I think just about every area of the country wants that.

In fact, that used to be a bipartisan goal. It used to be that Democrats also supported ``all of the above'' energy. At some point, they shifted to the ways of Solyndra and determined if you want to be in that party, you have to commit to a certain environmental orthodoxy. It makes it a tougher conversation to have about real energy policy based around facts.

It is another day. It seems to be another day for the EPA to release massive new regulations. People wonder why their paycheck doesn't go as far nowadays, why food costs more, why products cost more, and why energy costs more. I can tell you why. It is this ever-growing regulation on the basic cost of energy. It changes the cost of everything.

The EPA stated they are not responsible for determining the benefits of climate change, just that it would happen. As they put out their new Clean Power Plan, they said they didn't have to actually list or abide by the cost. They did determine the cost anyway--$8.4 billion a year to the American consumer; $8.4 billion on top of the energy regulations that already exist.

They also said they weren't responsible for having to be able to run through the actual effects on climate change, they just said it is happening and so we need to do something. In fact, it has been interesting for me to hear so many of my colleagues in the past 24 hours say: Republicans, put out your plan. We are doing something. You need to put out a plan to show you are doing something as well.

We ran the numbers on it and tried to evaluate it through the EPA models and looked for somewhere where someone who ran the EPA model would note how much change there would be in the environment if this plan is fully implemented. The model came back that it would slow the rise of the sea 0.3 millimeters once this is fully implemented--0.3 millimeters of sea change difference. To give an example, the head of this pen is 0.7 millimeters. So half the head of this pen is what we are going to save in sea level change if we fully implement this plan.

This seems to be about fear--severe weather, imminent danger. If you don't change everything in your life to the way we think you should live your life, the whole Earth is going to fall into chaos and ruin.

We need to have an energy debate on this floor. I completely agree. We even need to have a climate debate on this floor, but it doesn't need to be out of fear. It needs to be about the facts--what really needs to happen.

Let's start with some basic questions about energy policy and about energy future: What will it take to have reliable energy for the United States during a summer heat wave so we don't have rolling blackouts and senior adults suffering from heatstroke during an August afternoon?

What will it take to protect our grid so that doesn't occur? What will it take to have reliable energy for the hardest nights of winter to make sure Americans are protected in those coldest nights so their power doesn't go out because of rolling blackouts? What energy sources are plentiful in the United States and what energy sources leave us vulnerable to international pressures? What energy sources do we have that we should export to gain economic benefits and geopolitical power for the United States? What energy sources are economical so we can attract manufacturing to the United States to create more jobs for America? How can we ensure that the energy we use has the least amount of health risks so we can have a healthy nation and a healthy world? How about this question. What is the best way to keep energy diversity and distribution to protect our economy from rapid price swings or localized acts of terrorism?

That is how you begin to set an energy policy, which is to ask some general questions and then start answering some of those and asking, What is the best way to accomplish that? Instead, our energy policy is being run by environmental policy and fear of what could possibly happen in the future or protecting ourselves from 0.3 millimeters of sea rise.

Over the past 10 years, CO

2 emissions have drastically been reduced. Since 2005, CO

2 emissions from electric generation has been reduced by 364 million metric tons to 2,051 metric tons. The future goal, by the way, in this new Clean Power Plan is to have 788 metric tons of reduction from 2005, but we are already 364 metric tons there because there has already been a pretty dramatic reduction, much of that from a very slow economy--so 424 more metric tons by 2030. That would mean, even with an ever-increasing population, increasing energy needs, and hopefully a recovering economy, we need to cut much more.

Let me try to set this in context. I am going to throw around some numbers for a while, but I think we as a body can handle it. Let me give some perspective on where things are going on this.

The last time the United States emitted this target amount for CO

2 that has now been laid out as the targeted amount was in 1985, with 237 million people. If you want a little bit of throwback time, that is when Duran Duran, Huey Lewis, and the Commodores had all the big hits. That is when there were no personal computers or cell phones or iPads, cloud computing had never even been discussed, and there weren't all the electric devices we have now. We had 237 million people at the time.

The target is to get to that same amount of CO

2 usage, but we will have 363 million people at the time. That is the estimate from the Census Bureau. So the plan is to have 126 million more people emit less carbon and use less electricity. That sounds like an interesting plan. If you want the real number by percentage, let me break that down for you. In 1985, every 1 million people used 6.86 metric tons of CO

2--6.86 metric for every 1 million people. Now, in 2015, every 1 million people use 6.38 metric tons of CO

2.

That means, in the past 30 years, we have reduced for each 1 million people about half a ton of CO

2 because of energy efficiencies, because of the changes in the way we do energy. We do it much cleaner now than we did it in the 1970s and 1980s. Good for us. We achieved a lot in 1985--a lot of changes--but we have half a ton less CO

2 per 1 million people.

What the administration is proposing in their plan is that for every 1 million people in the United States in 2030, we would use 4.48 million tons of CO

2. That means, in the last 30 years, with the energy efficiency movement, with everything that has been done, with the remarkable shift in renewables, we have gained half a ton. The administration wants us now to get 2 tons of additional amount in the next 15 years.

Do you understand why a lot of people say this is just not rational? You can't get to an acceleration that fast with that big a goal. Here is what happens, though. I look at the facts and the requirements and immediately I am called a Neanderthal who just wants dirty air and dirty water. Actually, I have children, too, and I like clean air and clean water, but facts are very stubborn things.

A government mandate doesn't create reality. Remember Jimmy Carter in 1979? He declared his policies would create an energy path so that by the year 2000, 20 percent of America's energy would be produced by solar power--20 percent by the year 2000. How are we doing with that? Less than 2 percent of our energy in 2015 is produced by solar power.

Mandates don't create realities. If we drastically change all our electric generation to wind, solar, nuclear, and some natural gas, we will hit our annual number, but the amount of decrease per year will amount to approximately what China puts out in 1 month. You see, they are talking about reducing per year about 450-or-some metric tons of CO

2 that America would put out. China emits 800 metric tons per month. This is why so many people say this is a very expensive goal for America that will have no effect on the global reality.

Just to add a dose of cold water to the reality, it usually takes more than 10 years for a powerplant to even get a permit and start the construction because the Department of Energy, FERC, and EPA restrictions are so high. So this plan that in the next 15 years we are going to have all this rollout, we can't even get through the permitting time in that time period.

I haven't even touched on the legal issues of the new mandates of the administration. They haven't been in front of the American people or in front of the Congress. The existing law--the Clean Air Act--does not allow EPA to add another layer of regulations on top of the existing regulations. That is clear in the law. You cannot do that. Even the former Sierra Club general counsel, David Bookbinder, found this new proposal is based on what he called a ``legally dubious ground.''

As a nation, we don't need more pie-in-the-sky energy ideas. We need real solutions and a right direction that will benefit the United States and the world.

We lead the world in power and ideas. We should set high goals. But our goals should help us as a nation, not hurt us. Every American pays more at the pump right now because of the increasing regulations in the ethanol mandates. Every American is paying more for gasoline than we should. Every American is paying more for electricity than we should because of the cost of all these mandates. People ask me all the time why their dollars don't go as far; the regulations are the reason.

Many people want to talk about our energy future--great, so do I. But I also want to talk about our energy present. The goal of a quarter of America's electricity produced by renewables is a good goal. It is a huge jump. We are just at around 5 percent right now in renewables. But that will still leave us--even if that goal is accomplished--with 75 percent of our energy coming from coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. That is base power. It is not effective at night or on hot still days in the summer when the wind doesn't blow. It is base power.

Solar is more efficient than ever. Let's keep going. It is a good thing. I am glad we are able to harness some of that. It takes a massive amount of acreage. There is a new solar facility that just came into Oklahoma. Great, we are glad to have it. It has 15 acres of solar--15 acres of panels. It powers two neighborhoods--two neighborhoods--and it takes 15 acres to get that accomplished.

Windmills are much more efficient right now than they have ever been. In fact, they are efficient enough that we should probably stop subsidizing them. They are not a startup anymore. We started subsidizing utility-grade windmills more than 20 years ago, saying someday this thing is going to be efficient enough that it is going to work. I think we are already there. In fact, there are more than 48,000 utility-scale wind turbines in the country right now--48,000 windmills in the country right now. To give some perspective, there are 36,000 McDonald's in the world. We have 48,000 windmills. There are 36,000 McDonald's in the world. I don't exactly think the windmill thing is a startup anymore. I think maybe that is fairly well established. So maybe the need for the subsidy is not there.

Geothermal is a great energy source. We have yet to tap the full potential for heating and cooling our homes and businesses. But we still need natural gas, oil, coal, and nuclear to provide power for the foreseeable future. Even the Obama administration lays out over the next 30 years what they anticipate energy use will be, and they still anticipate we are going to need gas, coal, oil, basic base power.

So let's do it the cleanest way we can, the most efficient way we can so the consumer is not punished for using energy. We should keep innovating for the future, but we should make rational choices on energy.

Let me give an example of an irrational choice. Can I do that? Here is an example of an irrational energy choice: the Keystone XL Pipeline. Now, I know everyone is going to say we are going to talk about Keystone again. This is day 2,510 of a permit request to build a pipeline. Today is day 2,510 of a permit request sitting on the President's desk for a pipeline. Let me give an example.

All of these black lines that we see here are crude oil pipelines in the United States currently there. This is how many thousands of miles? More than 60,000 miles in the United States of crude oil pipeline--60,000. It is another pipeline. Why does it take 2,510 days to be able to make a decision on this? Oh, it is an international pipeline. That is right. Well, let me add something to it. We have 19 international pipelines currently running--19 of them. This would be No. 20. This is not something new and radical. We are already buying a significant amount of Canadian oil. That oil is coming from right up here. Look at all of these pipelines already coming from the same spot. Look at that, they cross the border, and it has been safe and reliable. This has not been a big challenge for us.

That oil is not just being blocked from Canada. Many people think that if we don't put in a pipeline, it won't come. Actually, it is coming by rail already. It is already moving into the country. This is just cleaner and more efficient to be able to move it that way. Canada is discussing taking a pipeline and bringing it all the way over here, dropping it off and bringing it to the coast, and bringing it by ship over to the U.S. gulf coast.

Does someone think that is more efficient than bringing a pipeline in? Now, it is not more efficient by rail. It is not more efficient by this way. If we are going to bring it in and Canada is going to sell it, why don't we have an international pipeline--that No. 20, right there--and be able to bring it in?

Now, I have heard multiple people say it is because of the aquifer in Nebraska. Let me try to discuss this because I have heard this over and over: We can't run pipelines because of the aquifer in Nebraska.

Here is the aquifer that is being discussed all in the purple here. Every line that we see is an existing pipeline running through that aquifer. This tiny blue line is the proposed Keystone that is to go right through there as well.

They make these comments: We can't run it through the aquifer because, oh, my gosh, we can't run a pipeline there. That is how many we already have in that spot. This is not radical. This is not different.

In fact, let me give one more image. This is the number of pipelines that we have in America right now of all types. This is both natural gas and crude and all kinds of petroleum products that move through the United States all the time--every single one of those lines. This is irrational energy policy that is knee-jerk that is happening. To say that we can't add one more pipeline because somehow that would go over the top ignores the reality of what we already have in the United States.

Moving energy by pipeline is clean and efficient. It is also a rational way to do it. We have to move from fear-based energy policy to fact-based energy policy--to look not only at our energy future but what may happen in the decades to come. I hope my car one day runs on a pinwheel on the hood ornament. That would be great. But that doesn't happen right now. My car still runs on gas. So does everyone else's here. And for every single person here that gets on an airplane every week, it doesn't run on water. It still runs on energy that we pull out of the ground.

So for the foreseeable future we need to deal with the facts. Stop hurting consumers for some proposed future hope of what may happen. Let's do it clean. Let's do it innovative. But let's not hurt consumers in the process.

People want to know where their money has gone. It is being spent away on regulations. Let's get to work on an energy plan.

I am glad to have this conversation, but this should not be a conversation in the hallways of the EPA. This should be a conversation in this room to determine where energy policies go.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source