National Sea Grant College Program Amendments Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we just celebrated Independence Day and rightfully so. It was a big break with the past, a big break with the whole history of the United States, up until July 4, 1776. Well, we have good news. There is another new dawn of independence which has arrived in the United States, and that independence is growing by the day.

By ``independence,'' I am talking about how we generate electricity in the United States. For 100 years, we were dependent upon oil, upon natural gas, upon coal as our principal source of electricity in our country, combined with nuclear generation, plus some hydropower. But now, over the last 10 years, we have seen a true American revolution which has broken out.

In 2015, in terms of new electrical generation in the United States, 8,600 new megawatts of wind--again, people ask: What is a megawatt? Well, when we think of a big coal-burning or natural gas-burning or electrical-generating facility, that 8,600 of new wind megawatts would be about 8 or 10 new electrical generating plants using coal in our country.

Last year: 7,500 new megawatts of solar in the United States. Seven to ten new coal-burning plants never had to be built because, instead, solar was used as the means of generating electricity in our country. And the importance of that is that all of those greenhouse gases that otherwise would have been emitted into the atmosphere from these new coal-burning facilities and these new gas-burning facilities in the United States will never happen because those plants never had to be built.

Let's go back to 2015. In 2015, there was 6,000 new megawatts of natural gas electrical generation capacity in the United States that was installed, and all other electrical-generating new capacity in 2015, including coal, was almost nonexistent, although there was some but a very small amount.

Now, let's go to this little bit of history that I think is important for Senators and for the American people to hear about. Let me give my colleagues an idea as to what the profile of electrical generation in America looked like in 2005. In 2005, 50 percent of all electrical generation in America came from coal, 20 percent came from nuclear, which is about the same as it is today; natural gas was 19 percent; hydropower, 5 percent, and that is about the same as today; oil, 3 percent, and that is pretty much down to zero in the United States today, but wind and solar combined were less than one-half of 1 percent of all electrical generation in the United States in 2005. We had gone through the entire energy history of the United States, and that was the best we could do--one-half of 1 percent wind and solar.

Again, the tax breaks weren't there for wind and solar. They were there for natural gas and coal and oil and nuclear, but they were not there for wind and solar. Then policies in America began to level the playing field so wind and solar could compete. So, now, by the time we reach 2015, coal is now down to only 33 percent of all electricity generated in the United States, natural gas is up from 19 percent, up to 33 percent from 2005. Again, natural gas emits half of the greenhouse gases that coal does when it is generating electricity in our country. Nuclear stays the same at about 20 percent, hydropower is still 5 or 6 percent, but here is the interesting thing. All of a sudden, solar plus wind is up to 6 percent of all electrical generation over the last 10 years. But the interesting story is how fast wind and solar are now being added to the total mix of electricity in our country.

Now let's go to 2016, this year. What is on the books for this year is 14,500 megawatts of solar, 9,000 new megawatts of wind, natural gas at about 8,800 megawatts, and nothing else coming in. There is no coal on the books planned for this year in the United States of America. You can see that solar and wind are on track to produce two to three times as much new electricity as natural gas, and there is no other competition.

This revolution is taking place at a very rapid rate in our country. In the year 2016, we now have 310,000 jobs in the solar industry, and we have 88,000 jobs in the wind industry. In other words, we have 400,000 people working in the wind and solar industry in the United States of America. It is on pace to have 600,000 people working in those two industries by the year 2020. We are down to 65,000 coal miners in America as this new set of technologies continues to expand, continues to lower in price, and we are seeing a dramatic change in this energy mix.

Let me add that the United States is not alone in this. Last year in 2015, across the whole planet, one-half of all new electrical generating capacity came from renewable energy--one-half for the whole planet in new electrical generation capacity.

Something else that is important for people to understand is that even as we make these incredible investments in the new energy technologies across the planet, for the last 2 years global energy- related carbon emissions actually stayed flat while the global economy grew. That defies conventional economic wisdom that there is a direct correlation between how much you pollute and how much you can generate in new gross domestic product. That has now been broken. It is an anomaly. Gross domestic product continues to go up, and emissions are flat. That means we are now on a pathway where, as more and more renewables, more hybrid automobiles, electric automobiles, and more new technologies come on line, we are going to see a decline in greenhouse gases even as the global economy continues to grow. How are we going to accomplish it? Well, we have to have tax policies on the books that give incentives to these new technologies.

You don't have to worry about the oil industry. They have been taken care of for 100 years. What we do have to look at, however, is the Koch brothers and others who have a business stake in oil, gas, and coal and continue to argue against giving the same kinds of tax breaks to the renewable energy industry that have always been given to the fossil fuel industry.

In fact, when we were debating last year whether or not we were going to have extensions of tax breaks for wind and solar, the Koch brothers wrote a letter to every Member of the House and Senate saying that would be destructive to the free market system. They forgot to write this letter with regard to subsidies for the oil industry, the coal industry, the natural gas industry, and the nuclear industry. All of a sudden, when there is a new technology that does not pollute and which they are not heavily invested in, they decide that the purity of this system requires that we not have tax breaks for the new energy technology. How do they handle that? They just make sure that they have all kinds of interests out there that try to then make the argument, an economic or climate argument, that those same kinds of tax breaks the other industries have always received are not justifiable, aren't needed for the solar and wind industry.

So this is an incredible revolution. Whereas in 2005 only 79 total new solar megawatts were installed in the country, this year 14,500 megawatts are going to be installed.

This is a delayed revolution. The regulatory policy, the tax policy did not in fact give a break to the new energy technology, but the truth is that we are now on a pathway to having a revolution where, by the year 2030, we could easily have 400,000 megawatts of wind and solar and other renewables installed in the United States. By the end of next year, we will have 150,000 megawatts. After 70 years, the nuclear industry has 100,000 megawatts.

Every time I use that term ``megawatts,'' I know that it can get confusing, but just understand the bottom line is that wind and solar are coming as new additions to the grid at an average of 1 to 1.5 percent to the total every single year. So by the year 2030, it could be between 25 percent and 30 percent of all electrical generation at the current peak at which it is being deployed in our country.

So that level playing field that we have been working hard to create and which we have to continue to work hard to create is making a huge difference. The Clean Power Plan which President Obama has propounded will drive it more. The 30 States that have renewable electricity standards as a goal in their States make a difference, but also the policies we create here for tax breaks for these new industries will make a huge difference toward meeting our goals.

From my perspective, we have a chance to have America with 100 percent renewable electricity by the year 2050 in our country. We have a chance to change the whole path of the planet in terms of how they look at these energy technologies.

No one had these small cell phones in their pockets in 1993--no one. They were big bricks that cost 50 cents a minute, but we began to have a revolution, and 7 or 8 years ago everyone decided to have one in their pocket. It was unimaginable to a preceding generation of Americans.

How about this: 800 million Africans who did not have wireless devices in the year 2000 now have them in their pockets. We can deploy wind and solar to Africa, Asia, South America, and all around the planet if we make the same kind of investment in developing these new technologies.

Recently, in Germany, for 1 day the whole country was renewable. In Portugal, for 4 days the entire country was generating renewable electricity. I believe that we can and should do 100 percent generation by the year 2050, and that is why I will be introducing a resolution in the Senate, expressing the sense of this body that the United States should commit to generating 100 percent of all of our electricity from renewables by the year 2050, and I urge my colleagues to support me in this effort. This will provide massive job creation, reduction in greenhouse gases, world leadership, and an ability to avoid the worst, most catastrophic consequences of climate change to our planet.

Last year was the warmest year ever recorded. This year is the warmest year ever recorded. It keeps getting more and more dangerous, but the answer, the solution, is within our grasp.

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