Energy Policy Modernization Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to thank Chairman Murkowski for her leadership on the Energy bill. She and I have been working on this for almost a year now, and today we are at a point where we think we will see the final product of this legislation in the next 24 hours move out of the Senate and over to the House of Representatives. So it is a good day. We are very thankful that all the hard work she and her team and our side on the minority have put in will result in successfully getting a bill to the President's desk.

I acknowledge our colleagues in the Senate have addressed something like 40 different priority pieces of legislation. We have added, as the chairman has said, 60 different amendments during the floor process. We have had important compromises on clean energy technology, energy efficiency, and infrastructure with truly bipartisan support. We need to pass this bill, and that is why we have been persistent.

It has been since 2007 that we passed an energy bill, led by Senator Jeff Bingaman and Senator Pete Domenici, that laid down a lot of fundamental things in the renewable energy markets and clean energy investment, but the landscape has changed greatly since 2007. Since then, because of those efforts, the United States has more than quadrupled the wind power than what we had before. It has more than tripled than what we had. Solar photovoltaic installations are up nearly by 15 times. The number of LED lights has grown more than 90 times.

From 2007 to 2014, our national energy use also fell 2.4 percent while the GDP grew 8 percent. This represents a very significant point in energy productivity; that is, we have continued to produce cleaner sources of energy and helped diversify our own energy portfolio. Yet our economy and GDP still grew. It is important because these policies that are in this bill are continuing to move forward on energy efficiency, clean energy, renewables, and new technology.

I thank everybody who has been cooperative in this process. Clearly, we could have had a my-way-or-the-highway approach that was taken on the Shaheen-Portman legislation. I know my colleague is leaving the floor, but Senator Portman and Senator Shaheen played a large role in past discussions, but the chairwoman didn't take that approach. She said: Let's all work together. In a spirit of compromise, let's pass legislation that our colleagues want to see. And of course, the U.S. Department of Energy published the Quadrennial Energy Review last year, which said that we are at an energy crossroads. And we looked at what our Nation needed to do at this crossroad, to make investments in modernizing our 21st century energy portfolio. Energy is the lifeblood of our economy. If we put good energy policy in place, businesses and consumers get more affordable, cleaner, and more renewable energy.

This bill takes important steps on research and development of clean energy technologies to help us integrate these new, clean energy technologies that are not already in the marketplace, and gaining a foothold on new clean energy technologies in marine, hydrokinetic and geothermal. I thank our colleague Senator Wyden for his leadership on many of these issues.

The bill also takes important steps in advanced grid technology to help us with new integration of our renewable resources. It authorizes $2 billion for technology demonstration grants to make sure that we are continuing the development of a microgrid deployment. I know from the chairman of the committee it is something very important to Alaska and the chairman, as they have a huge territory and lots to cover. So, making sure that microgrid development gets the technical support and assistance is critical.

The bill includes an initiative to accelerate the RD&D of energy storage, a technology that many witnesses before our committee have labeled as the game-changer--and I believe it is the game-changer. As a hydro State that gets more than 70 percent of our electricity from inexpensive renewable sources, like hydro. So making sure we can store some of that energy is a game-changer for the electricity grid.

Just as important, this bill makes a major investment in cyber security. We are talking about technologies that are key to making sure we protect our grid, making it more resilient, basically making it more robust so we can continue to improve it and face less risk in the future.

We have many opportunities in this Energy bill to continue to promote the advanced fuels and energy information that are going to allow us to continue to diversify our energy resources. We also want to make sure we are understanding how the United States can maintains its competitiveness in a clean energy economy. For example, the global smart grid economy is expected to grow by $400 billion in the next 5 years. It is pretty basic. Anytime you can save on the supply you already have, it is a wise investment. Many people want to invest in making their electricity and the use of their current energy supply smarter. I like the smart building provisions of this bill. Smart building will end up using sensors to better direct and maintain the energy flow in buildings. Why is this so important? It is important because about 40 percent of our energy use in the U.S. comes from buildings today. The Department of Energy believes we can reduce the cost of energy in our buildings by about 20 percent. I don't think there is a person in the Senate who hasn't walked into a room and felt like the thermostat just wasn't right. Whatever it said, the room seemed to be the opposite. That is why we want buildings to have smarter technology, more sophisticated technology, so we can save energy and help our businesses be more competitive.

Energy efficiency in the Chinese market is expected to be more than $1.5 trillion by 2035. So continuing our leadership, this bill will help us grow jobs and grow industries in the United States. Energy efficiency and building standards have also lowered costs. A 20-percent cut of energy use in buildings would save $80 billion each year in energy bills. That is something that would give any U.S. manufacturer a competitive advantage. Investing in smart building makes sense. I am pleased that while investing in this we are also helping our manufacturers.

We just had a hearing with the manufacturing industry in the Energy Committee. They told us they were literally bringing overseas jobs home to the United States because we are continuing to invest in the right advanced manufacturing technologies so they will continue to be competitive. I speak now of what is happening with aerospace manufacturing in composite lightweight materials. The research we did allowed us to continue to be proficient in that area and have more jobs brought back to the United States.

This bill invests in smart manufacturing. It would enhance fuel efficiency opportunities for advanced truck fleets. I thank Senators Stabenow, Peters, and Alexander for their work on that provision. Heavy-duty trucks move 70 percent of our freight and use 20 percent of the fuel consumed in the United States. This sector can continue to use the advancements in these technologies to continue their competitive advantage.

This legislation also focuses on workforce training issues. We know we need more jobs as the energy profile continues to change. The good news is these are high-paying jobs. In my State, the average salary for a utility worker is 57 percent higher than the average salary of all other industries in the State. Our bill establishes a competitive workforce grant, a job training program through community colleges, and helps with registered apprentice programs so we can get the workforce of tomorrow that the Secretary of Energy says we need. His report says we need 1.5 million new workers in the energy industry. Let's go about making sure we get that.

Lastly, I want to mention the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that was actually authored by Senator ``Scoop'' Jackson from Washington and he remains the longest-serving chairman of the Senate Energy Committee. The Land and Water Conservation Fund was a fully functional and effective program for 50 years, until Congress allowed its authority to lapse last fall. This bill would make sure that never happens again by making it permanent.

I thank the chairman for her leadership because she helped us craft a compromise on making the Land and Water Conservation Fund permanent, to get the right focus on how the program works and to continue to make sure we are making investments in outdoor recreation.

This Land and Water Conservation Fund helps support more than 200,000 jobs in the State of Washington and a nearly $20 billion economy. When we talk about the various amendments we are going to be talking about today, I want to make sure Members understand that a lot of good work in the committee went into the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

We will also be voting on a lot of public lands amendments later. I want to bring up one, the Yakima River Basin bill, which we passed out of committee on a bipartisan vote. It's a holistic approach to dealing with water management. I hope it becomes a model for the rest of the country.

I also thank Secretary Moniz and his staff and Secretary Jewell and her staff for all the work that was done in the committee on both the lands package and on the energy provisions. I know the chairwoman probably discussed the issue of natural gas exports and Secretary Moniz provided us language for how the agency is working that we put into the bill.

I again thank my two colleagues who are on the floor, Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman. Certainly Senator Shaheen has been dogged in her enthusiastic support for not just energy efficiency policy, working with Senator Portman, but when she left the committee, I don't think she really left the committee. She just pretended, so that she was somehow still connected to our efforts. I thank her for that and also Senator Portman. I think we have taken the good work of these individuals and probably had almost 30 different energy efficiency proposals in this base legislation bill that we have incorporated and now are able to move forward on. I also thank my colleague Senator Heinrich, who has several provisions in this bill and several that will be voted on shortly in the lands package.

These individuals, along with those I just mentioned, members of the committee, provided such great leadership for us in putting this final bill before the Members of the Senate. I hope our colleagues will give it enthusiastic support. It represents a lot of discussion. It is not the perfect bill that the chairwoman would have written nor the exact bill I would have written.

But it is a compromise on the modernization of energy that this country needs to move toward a safer, more secure, cleaner energy force and a skilled workforce to go with delivering it.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, before we go to the votes that have been scheduled on this bill, I wanted to take a few more minutes. I mentioned some of our colleagues from the Energy Committee and some of their contributions, but I wanted to mention a couple of other provisions that are in this underlying bill and to thank our colleagues for their hard work, Senator Wyden particularly for his focus on renewable energy technologies, such as marine and hydrokinetic and geothermal. These are important provisions because they are going to help us gain a foothold in very important areas of this development. I thank him for his contribution.

I mentioned energy storage earlier, and in committee our colleagues dealt with this a lot, but Senators Franken, Heinrich, Hirono, and King all made significant contributions on the modernization of the grid and grid storage, as my colleague from Alaska knows, on how to plan for microgrid activity--and Senator Hirono, because she has a very unique State that she represents, Hawaii. Having an integration of those activities into the grid is very important. I thank them for their contributions on making our electricity grid more distributed and integrating in some of the renewable energies and making sure that our grid has the flexibility to do that.

Senator King has certainly worked hard to ensure that distributed generation gets a fair shake in the marketplace and to make sure that consumers are treated fairly. This is a subject our committee will continue to work on. I am sure we are going to hear about it. For those individual homeowners who are making investments in solar energy, we want to make sure they are not unfairly treated by their own utilities in how that solar development plays out. They don't want to be overcharged for the development of solar, if they want to put solar on their homes. They are willing to be part of the solution; they don't want to be the funder of the whole solution. I think Senator King is rightly concerned about how distributed generation gets a fair shake.

I thank Senator Franken. He was out here on the floor, and he was a key proponent of the Department of Energy science and investment in the areas of energy storage and generation, and he has been a very strong voice on why storage is so important. And as I mentioned, Washington being a hydro State and having a variety of renewable energies, having storage capability is very important for us in the Pacific Northwest.

Senator Franken is also a very strong voice in how energy programs are going to work in the tribal areas of our country. I thank him for that.

I also thank Senator Manchin for working with Senator Heinrich and Senator Murkowski on the bipartisan sportsmen's package that is included in this bill, which is something that the Senate--well, let's just say that we had a lot of discussion about the sportsmen's bill over many Congresses, so the fact that we are actually passing a comprehensive sportsmen's package is a great testament to the work of our committee and the work of the Senate in a bipartisan fashion.

I thank Senator Warren for her focus on transparency in energy commodity markets and ensuring that consumers' interests are there, particularly when it comes to global natural gas markets, and making sure we are well informed about what is happening in the marketplace. These are all important because we want to have enough transparency that the consumers and the government know what is happening and that we never run into the kind of situation we did before with the manipulation of markets because of very tight markets and people taking advantage of that.

I appreciate all of the committee members on our side of the aisle and their contributions, and I certainly appreciate working on these issues with the chair of the committee and many members.

I thank Senator Stabenow and Senator Peters. I know we tried for many weeks to work on a solution to the Flint issue. The chair, Senator Murkowski, was very efficient in trying to marshal the discussions on her side of the aisle about how to get a resolution to this issue. I thank her for that. I know our colleagues, Senators Stabenow and Peters, will continue to work on finding solutions to this, so I thank them for that, and I thank them for their leadership on manufacturing and vehicle technology as well.

Again, I know we are going to start voting, but I can't emphasize enough how much material is in the underlying bill, the amendments we cleared earlier by voice vote, and the amendments we are going to vote on. This is a lot of work, and I want to again thank the staff for continuing to process a lot of ideas about energy policies, land conservation policies, and workforce and energy issues for the future because all of these are vital policies for us--modernizing our energy infrastructure and making sure we continue to protect consumers and businesses and making sure we are going to be competitive in the future.

I again thank the chair for her leadership on this issue and look forward to processing the rest of these amendments.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, if I may add to my colleague's comments, this underlying bill supports the Yakima River Basin bill, which is an integrated approach to addressing water management needs for farmers, families, and fish. It will help restore the ecosystem, ensure that communities have access to water, and conserve and provide water for farmers in times of drought. It is not only important to the future of our State, it is also a model for how water management should be done in the 21st century.

This legislation also includes water provisions for Senators Feinstein, Flake, Merkley, and Wyden, as the chairwoman said, Murkowski herself, and several of our other colleagues--Merkley, Burr, Gillibrand, and Kaine.

Support this legislation.

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Ms. CANTWELL. The original Burr amendment did have a lot of discussion and passion on both sides, but the Senators were able to come together this afternoon to resolve their differences over this issue and craft a reasonable compromise that is acceptable to both sides. I want to thank Senator Burr, Senator Tillis, and Senator Boxer for their willingness to find a solution that we can support. So I urge all my colleagues to support the Burr amendment, as modified.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, speaking in opposition to the Lankford amendment, it would gut the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This is a program in which the Senator's new language would produce obstacles to the Federal government acquiring land that would cost more than $50,000 per acre, and it would simply add more redtape by having to pass another law just for the land acquisition to be purchased.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the Lankford amendment and keep the Land and Water Conservation Fund for the purposes that it was designed.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment and this vision. Senator Paul's amendment takes advantage of economically distressed communities in our country by saying we will take the hedge funds, big banks, rich investors and see their capital gains taxes completely eliminated.

The amendment would allow some of the areas in the country with the biggest environmental challenges, the most vulnerable communities, to ignore environmental laws like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, ignore the requirements of National Heritage Areas, would lift Davis- Bacon, and it would scar school districts in these areas by not allowing public education dollars but allowing them to go to private schools instead.

In short, this amendment would turn these vulnerable communities into an experiment I don't think we need to have.

I raise a point of order that the pending measure violates section 311(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

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