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Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, as I speak here today, Russian President Vladimir Putin has amassed 130,000 to 150,000 soldiers on Ukraine's doorstep in a show of force that could be a dress rehearsal for an invasion of Ukraine. But Putin's inventory of tanks, infantry, and missiles is enabled by another dangerous weapon: Russia's export of dirty energy, oil and gas.

Our global addiction to fossil fuels, an addiction which Russia is only too happy to exploit, is kindling this potential conflict. Without a worldwide clean energy revolution, we will never be able to quit this cycle of fossil fuel corruption and conflict. We will never be able to experience true independence from foreign interference. And we will never be able to protect our friends and our allies or ourselves from wars spurred by dirty energy profits.

As long as Vladimir Putin can wield natural gas and oil as a threat against our country and our European allies and partners, we will always be on the defense. As long as Putin can wield gas prices and oil prices as a cudgel to remake borders, these crises will become a repeating drumbeat on the battlefield of history. As long as Putin can rely on global economic systems that are dominated by dirty fossil fuels instead of clean renewable energy, we will all remain vulnerable.

The most effective way to reduce the long-term security threat to Ukraine and to Europe and to sovereign nations everywhere is to stop the spigot that puts billions of Euros and dollars into the hands of Vladimir Putin and his oligarch cronies in return for dirty fuels.

In 2021, more than 36 percent of Russia's Federal budget revenues came from oil and gas sales. This could fund annual Russian military activities more than twice over.

The United States itself participates in these dirty profits. Seven percent of our oil imports come from Russia. We send billions of dollars a year to Putin, to those oil giants in Russia. We do it ourselves.

Since 2015, Russia has used these oil and gas revenues to expand its currency reserves to $631 billion, the fourth largest reserve in the world.

Why does this matter? Because the massive revenue chest dilutes the impact of nonmilitary options to respond to Russia's aggression.

President Joe Biden is right to seek a diplomatic off-ramp to the current crisis over Ukraine. This crisis has no military solution, but a long-term solution has to include a comprehensive strategy that ends the globe's deadly addiction to Russian fossil fuels. That strategy will only happen through an American-led clean energy revolution that frees the West from dependence on Putin's pipelines.

Many of my Republican colleagues think that the only way to address energy security is by building more pipelines or drilling for more oil and gas. That is just plain wrong. Instead of doubling down on investments that align with Russia's dirty energy business model, we must lean into the innovation of clean energy technologies to fight against Russia. That is our competitive and strategic edge. Their vulnerability is that we are the technological giant of the planet, but we have to act like that and implement policies that reflect the fact that we are the technological giant.

My Republican colleagues often come to the floor and attribute their fealty to oil and gas as a quest for energy security and independence when we know their calls for more domestic drilling are nothing more than a ploy for profits by the Big Oil companies. While families and workers are getting tipped upside down at the gasoline pump every single day, oil companies are stuffing billions into their pockets. Exxon, Conoco, and Chevron made more than $45 billion in profits last year as gas prices increased by more than 40 percent.

Republicans call these price increases ``supply constraints'' and incorrectly blame President Biden's energy policies. But here are the actual facts: Daily domestic oil production remained constant between 2020 and 2021, at 12 million barrels of oil a day. We are producing as much today in the Biden administration as we were producing during the Trump administration. So I just don't want to continue to hear this from the Republican side. What they are saying is not true.

Here are some more facts that the American Petroleum Institute, or the ``American Prevarication Institute,'' and my Republican colleagues seem to omit: In 2021, 3 million of those 12 million barrels were exported to foreign countries.

Let me say that again. Of the 12 million barrels of oil that we actually drilled for here in the United States, 3 million of those barrels were exported around the world.

Who wanted to export those barrels of oil? The American Petroleum Institute. And we are exporting them abroad because, in 2015, Republicans voted to end the decades-long export ban on sending oil overseas. It was their votes that paved the way to send American oil overseas. It was their votes that aligned with the American Petroleum Institute that results today in 3 million barrels of oil a day leaving the United States, as we see these crocodile tears about oil imports and exports from the American Petroleum Institute, from the Republican Party.

So you can't say, out of one side of your mouth, ``energy independence'' but, out of the other side, ``export, baby, export.'' That is what the Republican Party has stood for; that is what the American Petroleum Institute advocated for and got as a new American policy after four decades, in 2015. And the more oil we drill for here at home, the more likely Big Oil will sell American consumers out to the highest bidder abroad for our oil.

Republicans owe Americans at the pump an apology for putting us in this situation. We cannot support a business model where Big Oil drills for energy in the United States, only to sell that product to China at the expense of the American consumer.

In November of 2020, I requested a Federal report that revealed that the repeal of the 2015 crude oil export ban increased U.S. crude exports--while imports remained largely unchanged--and resulted in higher oil costs.

The first step to true energy independence is to reinstate the ban on exporting American crude oil and natural gas abroad. The other step must be equally aggressive: aggressive investments in clean energy, in wind, in solar, in all-electric vehicles, in battery storage technologies, in new metals, new inventions, so that we don't have to import that oil from Russia or from any other place in the world, so that we can break our addiction to the Russian oil that comes into our country right now, even as we speak on the floor of the U.S. Senate, because that hurts American working families. It hurts vulnerable communities in our country.

Our fossil fuel addiction is a catalyst for conflict. A clean energy Green New Deal would be a pathway for peace. The position of my Republican colleagues represents the kind of short-term thinking that will harm our long-term national security, the security of our European partners and allies, and the health of our planet.

If we export more American natural gas to our allies in Europe, fuel prices would increase for American consumers and the Russian Government would continue to profit by simply redirecting its fossil fuel supply to Asia. Putin would still be able to use his oil and natural gas revenue to threaten the sovereignty of free and democratic countries. And as a top three oil and natural gas producer, Russia will continue to have significant influence on energy supply and pricing as long as there continues to be global demand for its oil and gas exports, whether that demand is Eastern Asia or Eastern Europe.

This is not theoretical. Just last week, Russia and China inked a 30- year deal through which Russia will send natural gas worth $80 billion a year to China. In addition to whom Russia sells its oil and gas, we must start focusing on why Russia has a market for its oil and gas in the first place.

This is a demand-side problem. Let's demand some answers. If we are serious about addressing fossil fuel demand, let's switch to clean energy and make smart investments in electric transportation. We don't need more gas pumps; we need more heat pumps for heating and cooling. We don't need more pipelines; we need more transmission lines to deliver safe, secure, and reliable clean energy. And we don't need more mass destruction; we need mass construction of clean, industrial facilities, clean manufacturing, clean cars here in the United States and worldwide.

If we are serious about ending Russia's oil and natural gas blackmail, we should invest in energy-efficient technologies that get us off the fossil fuel that threatens our planet and threatens the security of Europe. We need to build electric cars and trucks so Americans and Europeans will never again be at the mercy of global energy markets led by Russia and OPEC.

We need to build electric heat pumps so our European allies no longer have to rely on Putin's natural gas to heat their homes in the winter.

And we need to build clean energy manufacturing facilities here in the United States so that we can export clean energy technologies to Europe and create jobs here at home. We need to make the wind turbines here in the United States. We need to make the solar panels here in the United States. We need to make the battery technologies here in the United States. We need to make the all-electric vehicles here in the United States. That has to be our plan.

That will frighten Putin. That will frighten all of the rest of his petrol buddies right now having a little confab in Sochi. That will frighten him. But we cannot preach temperance from a barstool. So the United States must lead our European allies in the clean energy revolution to protect us all from Russia, yes, but also from the existential threat of climate change caused by dirty fuels.

If the United States leads with government investment in clean energy, we will drive down the cost curve for these clean energy technologies and spread this widespread adoption in the United States and Europe and across the planet.

Just look at the power that clean energy already has in our country. The clean energy sector was one of the Nation's fastest growing job sectors.

Solar jobs: In 2010, we had 93,000 workers. By now, we have 345,000.

Wind jobs: In 2010, 75,000 employees. By 2020, up to 114,000.

Energy efficiency jobs: 830,000 in 2010. Now, it is up to 2.1 million people working in energy efficiency in our country.

That worker power is matched by actual power. Just listen to these generation achievements. We have gone from 1,200 megawatts of solar in 2008 to 120,000 megawatts today.

For wind, it has gone from 25,000 to 143,000 megawatts. All-electric vehicles--there were only 2,500 all-electric vehicles in the United States in 2008. That was a crime, that we had fallen so far behind, that the auto industry in the United States just sat down on the job, but by 2030, we are now expecting 18 million new jobs--18 million new electric vehicles on the streets of our country.

This is America's strength. This is where we can dominate the world-- the clean energy economy. We will not free ourselves from Putin's energy clutches by staring down the dark barrel of a gun but by harnessing the clean energy of the Sun.

If Vladimir Putin's market for fossil fuel shrinks, so does his ability to finance threats and sow division around the world. In order to defuse tensions around Europe, we need a revolution--a clean energy revolution.

Our wind turbines are weapons against Russia's pipelines. Our solar panels are shields against Siberian oil. Together with the EU's European Green Deal, that is how we will fight and win the clean energy revolution that will finally disarm Putin's dirty regime.

Our first step is to pass the climate justice and clean energy provisions from the Build Back Better bill. That $555 billion investment includes tax credits and rebates in clean energy, heat pumps, all-electric vehicles, advanced domestic manufacturing, wind and solar, which will be made in America. A clean economy will be created.

Those credits are coupled with a technology-neutral climate and clean energy bank that will help finance the clean economy and a Civilian Climate Corps, which will train the next generation of young people and workers to bring jobs and justice to our local communities.

We need to deploy one of our greatest assets against Putin: American ingenuity and the American workers, a well-trained, well-paid battalion of American workers who will build our clean energy revolution with jobs that cannot be outsourced. This clean energy revolution is worth fighting for, and I know we can do it.

Now we need to build on the past 12 years of domestic clean energy success and help build European economies that no longer have to rely on Vladimir Putin to heat their homes and power their cars.

The United States imports Russian oil. Europe imports Russian gas. What if, instead, we exported climate innovation and leadership to the world? That is the clean energy revolution that could stem the possibility of war and climate catastrophe.

We don't need Russia's oil any more than we need Russia's caviar if we are serious in our country. We need a new NATO that comes together and forges an alliance to deploy all-electric vehicles, to deploy wind and solar, so we back out the oil and gas--not only in Europe, not only in the United States, but all around the world--that we use.

This is our moment. We have a chance here in the U.S. Senate to respond. But I don't want to hear anything more from the American Petroleum Institute--the ``American Prevarication Institute.'' Their policies are the ones that we are living with today. Those are the policies that must change. That is the only way in which we can meet this healthcare, environmental, national security, and moral issue of all time. If we do it, generations in the future will look back and say that we responded to that challenge.

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