Expanding Access to Sustainable Energy Act of 2019
Floor Speech
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Mr. TONKO. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for yielding.
Madam Speaker, I begin by thanking Chairs Pallone, Johnson, and Grijalva for all of their hard work on this package.
I have no delusions that this bill will solve climate change, but it can play a meaningful role in deploying clean energy and energy efficiency while supporting improvements and cost reductions in technologies that we are going to need to achieve our decarbonization goals.
This package does not have everything in it that I would have wanted. However, my threshold for support is not whether it is perfect. The questions are: Would it be a net positive? Would it hasten our transition to clean energy? Would it play a role, even a modest one, in reducing climate and traditional pollution? And would it create new American jobs?
I think the answer to each of these questions is an obvious yes.
This package is going to allow us to weatherize more low-income Americans' homes, build more EV charging infrastructure, and codify important environmental justice requirements, which have been ignored for the past 4 years.
It includes bills I have authored to support the Department of Energy's Office of Wind, to streamline the permitting process for distributed energy resources, and to ensure that the research dollars we authorize are protected by strong, scientific integrity policies.
It also includes the American Innovation and Manufacturing Leadership Act, bipartisan legislation that directs EPA to phase down hydrofluorocarbons, highly potent greenhouse gasses, by some 85 percent over 15 years.
It will position the United States to lead the world in the transition to next-generation refrigerants, create 33,000 manufacturing jobs, and ensure we do our part to avoid up to one-half degree Celsius in global warming before the end of this century.
While I am encouraged that the Senate has reached agreement on HFCs, we are still reviewing the details. But I want to make certain that this provision is in those future negotiations. I look forward to continuing the discussions with our Senate counterparts and getting the goals of this language enacted.
This bill isn't perfect, but with all the political uncertainty, this is a package we can take to the Senate and fight for important clean energy wins to be enacted this year. The clean energy transition cannot wait, and neither should we.
I am eager to work with any Member of this Chamber on future legislation that is bold, ambitious, and rises to the scale of the climate crisis.
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