Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 3812.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I wish to add a few remarks about this, as we are preparing shortly to consider a number of amendments.

This particular amendment is a bipartisan amendment, which I am pleased to sponsor with my partner from Iowa, stating that wind energy is particularly important. This amendment would restore funding for wind energy research to fiscal year 2016 levels of $95.4 million. Otherwise, research in wind energy would suffer a substantial reduction.

This program is indispensable to the success of wind energy in the United States. The wind energy program works to advance innovations in the grid integration, manufacturing, and deployment that are key to reducing the cost of wind energy. For example, the Wind Program helps to address market barriers through including wind-forecasting tools in power system operations, which helps utilities and regulators better integrate large amounts of wind energy into the grid. The Wind Program provides research, development, and technical support to manufacturers and distributors of wind technologies that are still emerging. This enhances small wind manufacturing, supports offshore demonstration projects, and will improve the economic viability of distributed wind.

Currently, eight National Laboratories across our Nation conduct research or testing related to wind energy. The proposed fiscal year 2017 funding level is only $80 million, which is over $15 million less than last year's funding--thwarting our ability to realize the true potential for wind energy.

During debates, we have sometimes heard that wind is a mature industry and that is why the funding for research should be revoked or lowered. But in fact, as wind is emerging, we are seeing continuous innovations resulting in different designs and different strategies for integrating intermittent wind energy into the grid. As that wind component becomes substantially larger, we need to understand the details of how we accommodate it effectively. If we were to talk about mature industries, then we wouldn't be doing studies for the fossil fuel industry, which is about as mature as an industry can get. Clearly, this is an evolving industry with great potential to assist us with clean energy and, moreover, a program that can affect the economy of rural America.

In 2015 wind energy supplied about 5 percent of the total electricity generated in the United States. So it is no longer just a fraction of a percent; it has grown enormously in the last few years. But the Department of Energy estimates that wind could provide as much as 35 percent--or more than one-third--of the electricity generated in our country by the year 2050.

As my colleague and partner on this bill, the Senator from Iowa, knows, wind energy can be a huge boon to a State's economy. Iowa is already getting over 30 percent of its electricity from wind. And because wind energy is less expensive in the forecast of potential other sources, it could result in billions of dollars of savings to energy consumers in that State.

In my home State of Oregon, we already have over 10 percent of our electricity being generated from wind energy. The savings for our State down the road could be enormous, but we can only reach these goals if we support wind energy research.

With the development of wind energy comes hundreds of thousands of jobs in manufacturing, in installation, in maintenance, and in supporting services. The estimate is around 600,000 jobs--generally good-paying jobs--by the year 2015.

I do a lot of townhalls back home in Oregon, one in every county every year. Much of Oregon is very rural. I hear about the impact property taxes on these wind installations have on our rural counties, enabling them to do things--for example, to build libraries or assist in the development of their local schools. There is no question that this is a boon to the rural economy.

It is our job in Congress to look at what policies will be the most successful and give the most bang for the buck in terms of creating jobs now and in the future. We should be supporting programs that spur economic development and support families in rural areas. That is what this amendment calls for. When we create jobs, local communities benefit, certainly the energy industry benefits, and our environment benefits. All of this depends upon robust research, and we are simply asking that research continue at the same level it did in fiscal year 2016.

Let's back red, white, and blue, American-made wind energy and support this bipartisan amendment. I urge my colleagues to support it.
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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, we will be voting on amendment No. 3812, which my colleague from Iowa and I have put together to restore research on wind development to the level it was last year. When you see these wind turbines, what you should see is economic development in highly deserving rural communities, putting clean electrons onto the grid, putting jobs into the community, and putting money into the property tax coffers in local communities to do good work.

I wish to reserve the rest of my time.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, these subsidies are a tiny dot compared to the $52 billion spent annually on fossil fuel subsidies and the massive subsidies spent on nuclear. Yet these subsidies are creating jobs in rural America, and that matters. These communities need these jobs. These are clean electrons, these are terrific middle-class jobs, and this is an industry that is still on a curve where research is truly beneficial in making it a success.

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