North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, my amendment focuses on thermal energy and combined heat power, which are essential to a smart energy future for our country, but they are often overlooked components of our national energy supply.

In the United States, up to 36 percent of the total energy produced is lost from power plants, industrial facilities, and buildings in the form of waste heat. My amendment will help industry, universities, hospitals, and others capture that waste heat and use renewables for heating, cooling, and power generation.

Now, I want to read the definition of what is included in renewables so that everyone is aware: biomass, geothermal, hydropower, landfill gas, municipal solid waste, ocean energy, organic waste, photosynthetic processes, photovoltaic energy, solar energy, and wind.

What is happening across America are businesses and nonprofits are getting really smart about this wasted energy and they are putting it back into their facilities to save energy and save money.

The overall resilience and cost savings that can be achieved through combined heat and power and distributed energy systems is proven every day, but it was especially proven during Superstorm Sandy and other natural disasters.

During Superstorm Sandy, businesses and nonprofits, such as hospitals and universities, were able to keep the lights on and actually had heat and water in the aftermath of the storm because they have these self-contained, energy-efficient waste heat projects.

Mr. Chairman, we have also heard testimony in the Energy and Power Subcommittee extensively on the importance in the future of these smaller, distributed, locally based energy systems.

I have also seen it in my hometown in Tampa, where St. Joseph's Hospital burns the medical waste, turns it into waste heat, and they are now saving $200,000 a year on their energy bills where they can keep the lights on. They don't have to pay that out to the power company. That can go back into the care of patients.

Mr. Chairman, what my amendment proposes to do is to help overcome the financing hurdles that will be key in implementing this highly efficient and resilient energy infrastructure.

My amendment would establish an initiative to provide cost-shared funding for technical assistance for feasibility studies and engineering, and it would enable qualifying energy infrastructure projects to access lower interest debt financing through a loan guarantee program.

Industrial competitiveness will be enhanced because these businesses will be able to develop new revenue streams, reduce energy costs, reduce emissions, and enhance energy supply resiliency.

We have got to plan ahead here in America. We have got to be smarter. According to a joint DOE and EPA study, roughly 65 gigawatts of technical potential remain in the Nation's hospitals, universities, wastewater treatment plants, and other critical infrastructure.

My amendment will help to reduce the up-front capital cost of installing these locally based energy-efficient systems. These systems have proven themselves, and we should encourage them.

So I respectfully request that the House act with an eye towards the future. Take this modest but very important step to help unleash American innovation. We know how to do this. We can do this. Let's give our businesses, our universities, and hospitals an incentive to put waste energy to work and at the same time save some money.

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Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for supporting some of the goals contained in the amendment.

This is not an open-ended loan program. This is very modest, only authorized for $250 million. The appropriators will probably scale that back.

But what it does is it allows our hospitals, universities, and other industrial users across the country some upfront technical assistance that will save them a lot of money and a lot of energy on the down side. This modest investment will have a great payoff for taxpayers and for industrial users, our hospitals, and universities.

I have seen it work right in my district. I know it worked during Superstorm Sandy. We have to think with an eye to the future and act that way.

I request an ``aye'' vote on this amendment.

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