Winners of the Global Energy Race Are Being Decided

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, families across America are struggling with ever-increasing energy prices.

In the last year, electricity prices have soared, increasing by 13 percent under the Trump administration. Utility bills overall have increased at double the rate of inflation.

We all know what is driving those increases. We have soaring demand from data centers and other loads, rising prices for natural gas, and much-needed repairs to the grid that have been put off for years.

Those are all tangible, identifiable causes of these price increases, but at the center of it all is one really simple reason: American energy policy has always put producers first and families second.

Mr. Speaker, you might think that, in a democracy, the fact that there are more consumers than producers would cause the reverse. Yet, in fact, for far too long, we have pursued an energy system with a single goal: Make sure that oil and gas and coal companies keep their profits as high as possible. We have pushed the most expensive, dirtiest forms of energy onto Americans because that is what has helped producers.

The Trump administration has done everything they can to curb the rise of more competitive, renewable energy. You hear a lot about how the Trump administration hates clean energy, but that is not true. They don't hate clean energy. They hate affordable energy.

Mr. Speaker, there is some good news. We have a plan to fix it, and I am here today because of the Energy Bills Relief Act, a consumer- focused, family-first approach to American energy policy.

Renewable energy is the fastest, lowest-cost, most-affordable way to meet rising demand. Right now, there are bottlenecks in the system that prevent renewable energy from getting from where it is generated to where it can be used.

Our Energy Bills Relief Act removes the red tape. It makes sure that we can build our domestic energy supply so that we keep your beer cold and your showers hot, and lower your bills at the same time.

Mr. Speaker, to do that, we are also going to have to modernize our electric grid and increase capacity by providing much-needed, overdue upgrades using the latest technology.

We are starting to fall behind other countries, which means that those costs could rise even further if we don't act, but we have time. We have time to catch up, and the Energy Bills Relief Act helps us to do it.

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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Levin.

I am going to take a little bit of a personal privilege here and tell you a little bit about Mike's and my background.

Mike and I both came into Congress in 2018. Prior to that, we were both in the clean energy industry. I think it is safe to say that prior to the election of Donald Trump in 2016, neither of us thought that our paths involved eventually getting to Congress or certainly being in this moment here right now.

I say that because both of us spent our careers, before getting into Congress, building and deploying clean energy, building and deploying low-cost, affordable energy. If you are going to go and build one of those plants, you build the plant, you hook it up, you connect it to the grid. The person who now is controlling the dispatch of that plant never runs it unless it is cheaper than the electric grid. Every minute you own a solar panel, every minute you own a cogeneration plant, a wind turbine, all of these technologies that are out there, you are saying: Is this cheaper or more expensive than the alternative?

There is a saying back in the days when I was going and doing all of that, that asking a utility for permission to interconnect to the grid is like asking a man for permission to date his wife. It doesn't matter whether you are cheaper. It doesn't matter whether that is in the national interest. You are a competitive threat, and capitalism works on competition.

So fast-forward. Mike and I run for Congress. We win. Speaker Pelosi appoints us both to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security and charges us, along with our wonderful leader (Ms. Castor), to figure out how to take this knowledge and make sure that we can deploy cheaper, cleaner energy. That work through the 116th Congress, through the 117th Congress ultimately led to the Inflation Reduction Act.

In 2022, we passed the largest climate bill in the history of this country, in the history of the world. The purpose of that bill was to make sure that your access to cheap energy was not a function of whether you had capital, whether you could hire the lawyers and the engineers to go and fight with the utility. It was to make sure that every American had access to the cheapest energy.

That bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, took a significant step forward in expanding access to cleaner, more affordable energy sources to lower costs for all Americans. I was really proud of the work we did to help write that bill. Then President Trump killed it.

Now, killing it didn't prevent all of those generators that got built from operating, because if you have got a solar panel on your roof, it is still cheaper than whatever anybody else is providing. It blocks new people's ability to bring those forward.

Last summer, he gutted programs that were designed to boost domestic renewable energy. He slashed incentives to help households save money. He arbitrarily blocked the development of affordable energy sources, while forcing more expensive coal plants to keep running, ensuring that the fossil fuel companies can keep raking in profits at taxpayers' expense.

The Energy Bills Relief Act puts an end to that. This is a consumer- focused bill. It is a bill that puts American families first. It restores the tax credits for home energy upgrades that were ended by President Trump. It incentivizes utilities to help consumers save money by funding home weatherization and energy efficiency. Wouldn't you like to spend less on your natural gas bill? Wouldn't you like your utility to be a partner in that?

It provides financial assistance to make sure that families don't have their power shut off. It puts an end to price gouging because utilities shouldn't profit while you are struggling.

It makes sure that places like data centers cover their own costs, and if a data center opens in your area, that doesn't mean that the costs are pushed onto your household. It gives a voice to the American people and makes sure they are consulted when new energy projects are being developed in their community.

This bill was put together in a way that I wish was not so innovative. A lot of bills around here must start by saying what is politically possible. What can we do on a bipartisan basis? Well, if what is scientifically necessary exceeds what is politically possible, then we are failing in any ability to claim to be a leader.

What we did in this bill is, it says: What is the energy policy that is necessary? What is the energy policy that is most helpful to American consumers? That is what we set out to do. I am proud of the legislation that Congressman Levin and I have written to do that.

With that, I yield back to the great gentleman from California (Mr. Levin).
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Mr. CASTEN. Kaptur).
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Mr. CASTEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Levin for his remarks.

As we prepare to close, I want to talk a little bit about how the Energy Bills Relief Act fits into the broader conversation we are having about energy permitting right now.

To do this, I want to ask you to consider that you saw someone on TV who said the reason we don't have a lot of houses in America is because of the permitting barriers to building houses out of straw. You would probably have two thoughts. The first is, who the heck wants to build a house out of straw? The second thought you might have is what little pig is behind this advocacy campaign.

I tell you that because you have to look at what is happening in the energy sector right now, among those in the fossil fuel industry who are telling you that the permitting problem we have is a difficulty deploying fossil fuel assets.

Let's look at some numbers. In the year 2010, the United States consumed 1.1 billion short tons per year of coal. Today, we consume about 500 million. That is a more than 50 percent drop in the amount of coal our country is consuming.

In the year 2000, the United States consumed about 20 million barrels of oil per day. Today, we consume about 20 million barrels of oil per day.

We drive more miles and have more people, yet we are consuming the same amount of oil. Our houses are just as well-lit, just as warm, yet we are consuming half as much coal.

How did we get to that point? The reason we got to that point is because vehicles got more efficient. Given the choice between driving a car that costs you $40 to fill up and one that costs $20, people prefer $20. If the choice is $100 versus $50, people prefer $50. Heck, if you have an electric vehicle, you don't have to pay at all, especially if you have a solar panel on your roof. People like not paying for energy.

The other way that that happened is that the fastest growing source of new energy in this country has been renewable energy. We now generate more power from non-hydro renewables than we do from all the coal plants in the country.

That is not because we got woke. It is because we got greedy. It is because markets said they want to build the cheap stuff, and consumers wanted to benefit from that cheap stuff.

Now, step back and say, okay, what do you do if you are a fossil fuel company that is selling something that is losing market share? There is a new technology coming out that is eating into your customer base. You can't sell as much.

They have done two things. Number one, they have shifted to exports. In 2016, the United States basically didn't export any natural gas at all. By 2021, we were exporting 300,000 million cubic feet per year. Today, we are over 500,000 million cubic feet per year. It is as if we invented cell phones and then decided to double down on exporting rotary phone technology to the rest of the world. We are still producing a lot of oil in the United States, but oil is increasingly also an export play.

If there is a permitting problem that is blocking our ability to produce and distribute oil and gas, how is it that it is so easy to get it down to the Gulf Coast and ship it out to overseas? The truth is, it ain't that hard.

The reason why we are having this conversation about permitting is really, really simple. Half of the businesses in this country, by definition, are below average. A competitive market does not reward below-average businesses. Now, we find ourselves in a position where energy industry participants that historically made sure that we kept our lights on, made sure that our cars could drive, and made sure that our homes were warm built the economy that we have, and we are grateful to them. They are now losing market share, and instead of pivoting to providing people with the technologies they want, they are, number one, shifting to exports to try to go places that are not blessed with the kind of competitive capitalistic markets that we have in the United States; and, number two, they are doing everything they can to ask people in this body to please prevent capitalism from eating my lunch because I cannot compete in a competitive market. That is what is going on.

The reason why we are spending this time talking so much about costs and energy is because we have this amazing opportunity right now that we can have our cake and eat it, too.

When we embrace clean energy, we are embracing affordable energy. When we embrace consumers, we are embracing competition. To turn against those is to turn against capitalism. It is to turn against everything that ever truly made America great. It is to turn against the things that have kept up.

Then you ask how much farther we could go. I will give you some crazy statistics. The United States' total GDP divided by the total amount of energy that the United States uses, we generate about $200 of GDP per million Btu of primary energy.

The United Kingdom generates almost 350 million Btu, almost twice as much as we generate. The Danes generate over 500. Their economies are vastly more efficient at turning energy into wealth than the United States is--vastly more, like twice as efficient.

Imagine if we were so bad at turning labor into wealth as our competitors. We would be having a crisis about why American labor is so uncompetitive. Imagine if you were running a business that did a terrible job at turning capital into wealth, and we were earning terrible returns on investment in the United States economy. We would be having a crisis.

We should be having a crisis about the fact that we have done such a horrible job at turning energy into economic activity. We can be depressed about that, or we can be enormously optimistic at the opportunity we have in front of us.

We don't have a lot of time to prevent massive ecological disaster from climate change, but we do have a way to move forward to avert that crisis and make us stupidly rich. My God, let's move forward.

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing us the time. I thank Congressman Levin, Congresswoman Kaptur, and Congressman Subramanyam. For goodness' sake, let's move forward. I yield back the balance of my time.

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