Terminating the National Emergency Declared with Respect to Energy
Floor Speech
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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, we are down here telling the Trump administration that their energy emergency, as they call it, is the emergency for our country. Trump, Secretary Chris Wright--this whole administration is using emergency authorities to make up a crisis that is resulting in our electric bills going sky high all across our country, and our clean energy jobs are going up in smoke. This energy emergency is just fossil fuel gaslighting of the American people.
Since Trump took office, electricity prices have gone up more than 10 percent--twice as fast as general inflation, which also remains historically high thanks to the Trump administration running our economy into the ground. Their tariffs and their healthcare policies are leading to higher prices--the price of food, the price of clothing, the price of electricity--because of the Trump policies.
So why is this happening? For starters, Trump and the Republicans are failing Econ 101. On the demand side, Big Tech is demanding big amounts of electricity for its data centers. Data centers are projected to demand up to 130,000 megawatts of electricity load by 2030--as much electricity as is used by more than 100 million American homes. Do you want to hear that again? This is all going to happen in the blink of an eye. They are going to be consuming as much electricity as 100 million homes in our country.
On the supply side, well, Trump is cutting off our cheapest and quickest-to-deploy sources of energy that can meet this demand. Trump's sham energy emergency pushes fossil fuels as the solution, but those fossil fuels are polluting, they are pricey, and they are getting pushed abroad to the highest bidder as exports. These fossil fuel exports actually increase energy costs here for Americans. This is what Senator Kaine has been talking about, trying to raise the profile of these issues.
Last week, the Trump administration announced that they are killing nearly $8 billion in grants for grid development and energy innovation, targeting States that did not vote for Donald Trump in 2024. This week, rumors have been swirling about the impending cancelation of tens of billions of additional energy grant dollars that would be out there trying to create more electricity, more energy here in the United States. These lawless terminations hamstring American competitors, drive up energy costs, and hurt domestic manufacturing.
But this is nothing new for this chaos administration, which has already prevented hundreds of thousands of clean energy megawatts from getting onto the grid. That is more than $42 billion in private sector clean energy projects and 80,000 clean energy jobs already wiped out by Donald Trump in the first 9 months of his administration.
Wright, Vought, Burgum, Trump--it is a fossil fuel cabal. It is not a Cabinet; it is a cartel that is now running the United States of America right out of the Oval Office, killing all of the new energy sources that we need from wind and solar, from batteries, all-electric vehicles--this incredible transformation that was taking place in our country that they are now just trying to completely and totally kill.
Republicans' ``Big Ugly Bill,'' which eliminated programs working to lower household costs and get clean energy built, is expected to cause wholesale electricity prices to rise by 74 percent over the next 10 years--that is just in one bill--while keeping 350,000 megawatts of wind and solar off the grid over the next 10 years.
Just think about that. There are massive amounts of wind and solar all lined up, ready to get on to the wires that go up and down the streets of our country--the grid--and what the Republicans are doing is saying: We are killing it all.
Of course, if you don't have all of that extra electricity and AI consumes all of the remaining electricity, guess who is going to pick up the tab? It is going to be residential homeowners. It is going to be small businesses. They will have to pay much higher rates for the remaining electricity. There will be a bidding war for the remaining electricity in our country. Each individual family cannot compete against these big AI companies. So the ``Big Ugly Bill'' is going to mean a lot of big ugly bills arriving in mailboxes for pretty much every American over the next 10 years for their dramatically skyrocketed electricity.
Their crazed push to produce more fossil fuels, whether by cutting pollution regulation, selling off our public lands, keeping retiring coal plants online, will cost Americans billions more. We will see blackouts and we will see bigger bills because Trump and the Republicans want bigger profits for their fossil fuel buddies--buddies who contributed to Trump's campaign and have gotten paid out big time in return, with more than $4 billion in brandnew handouts from the government this year alone.
Let's call Trump's energy agenda what it really is: oil above all, not all of the above.
Trump's energy agenda is killing American energy, especially the most affordable and the most ready-to-go energy out there because--here are the facts: Last year in the United States, 94 percent of all new electrical generation capacity was wind and solar and batteries. Let me say that again so everyone can hear it. Last year, 94 percent of all new electricity came from wind and solar and batteries.
You wouldn't know that if you listened to the White House. You wouldn't know that if you listened to the Department of Energy or the EPA because they are just lying about it. They are just flat-out lying about the role that wind and solar can play in our system because they are over here just doing the bidding of the natural gas and the coal industry. That is who they are.
They are looking at the future in a rearview mirror while young people are looking to the future. Young people want to have this renewable energy revolution unleashed for their century, for the 21st century.
Solar panels today cost 1 percent of what they cost just 30 years ago--1 percent. That is how much it has dropped. Crazy.
They say it is not working, in the White House. What is happening to them? It is working too well. The oil, gas, and coal industry--they are afraid of the future competition that comes from the technologies of this younger generation in our country. They can smell it coming, that their future is in the rearview mirror. That is what this whole thing is all about.
There is a way of now producing solar energy. Even solar plus storage is cheaper than running any coal-burning plant in the United States of America. But you wouldn't know that from listening to Donald Trump, when he says: I love coal. I love clean coal.
Well, young people love clean solar, clean wind. It is cheaper, and it doesn't lead to asthma, it doesn't lead to lung cancer, and it doesn't lead to genetic damage that can hurt future generations of those families who are nearby those coal-burning plants.
Trump and Republicans have taken aim at renewables because they are just plain scared. Even with all the subsidies that Big Oil and Big Gas get from our government, renewables are winning on the market.
Trump is doing his fossil fuel donors' dirty work and keeping American-made competition off of the grid. These are Trump energy taxes on the American people.
So let's shine a spotlight on this fossil fuel gaslighting. Trump's declaration is the energy emergency. Trump's declaration is the energy emergency. He is stopping the future from arriving. He is stopping this generation from deriving the benefits of a revolution that can be led by the United States and then spread around the world--a solar revolution, a wind revolution, a renewables revolution.
We should be the leaders, so let's end his sham declaration so we can get lower bills, not raise barriers to affordable, American-made, clean energy.
I urge my colleagues to enthusiastically support Senator Kaine and Senator Heinrich's resolution. This is a critical debate. This goes to, yes, the prices for electricity for all American families, all American small businesses, but it also goes to the future of our planet.
Are we going to reduce the greenhouse gases we are sending up? Are we going to recognize that we have a generational responsibility to be the leader? Because the planet is running a fever, and there are no emergency rooms for planets. We have to engage in preventive care. That is what the wind and solar and battery storage technologies all represent. They represent that future--a healthier future, a safer future for all generations of all children in all countries of the world. The United States should be the leader and not the lagger.
I thank you, Senator Kaine, and I thank you, Senator Heinrich, for bringing this resolution onto the floor.
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