Energy Independence

Floor Speech

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE -- (Senate - May 09, 2007)

Ms. CANTWELL. Madam President, I come to the floor this morning with a lot of enthusiasm for the progress we are making in various committees toward an energy policy we can discuss on the Senate floor which will eventually lead us to greater energy independence. I am very excited about this prospect; especially since I participated in the 2005 energy legislation, which was passed with great bipartisan support. We worked together to enact this groundbreaking energy bill in 2005, which greatly benefitted my State by giving tax credits to alternative energy technologies--wind and solar--and aided in the further development and broadened use of biodiesel and including the construction of a 100 million-gallon biodiesel facility in Washington State.

There were many great things about the 2005 Energy bill but the fact that stood out to me the most was that it was a bipartisan effort. I do wish that there had been a much more aggressive effort on energy independence then, but I think today we are on the cusp of achieving this important goal.

Senator Reid has been very specific since the beginning of this legislative year that he wants energy independence to be a key priority. In fact, there are six different committees that are working on energy legislation today: the Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee, the Finance Committee, the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. All of these committees are working hard on legislation, and more importantly, they are working on legislation in a bipartisan fashion. In fact, two of these committees have reported out significant energy legislation, working across the aisle ensure that we are getting the best ideas onto the Senate floor and continuing to discuss those ideas on which we have not yet been able to reach consensus.

Yesterday was undoubtedly a historic day because it marked the first time in 20 years, that we have been able to, in a very bipartisan way, put a CAFE bill on the Senate floor--which I hope we will be discussing soon--that actually increases the fuel efficiency standards of automobiles and hopefully lowers our consumption of foreign oil. If we can move from the current miles-per-gallon standard of 25 miles today to 35 miles in a 10-year period, this would unquestionably be a great accomplishment.

Attached to this legislation is also very important consumer protection legislation that provides the Federal Trade Commission the tools it needs to protect consumers against price gouging. With our current statutes, the FTC has the ability to investigate certain cases on the basis of antitrust laws, which are based on whether we think oil companies are colluding to set prices. What we really have to question is whether the companies may be conducting activities that actually take supply offline and thereby decrease the supply, leading to shortages at the pump. Therefore we need to give the FTC the authority it needs through this legislation and make sure consumers are protected.

This legislation, as part of a package, was passed unanimously out of the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee yesterday. It was the result of a bipartisan effort, led by the work of the chairman, Senator Inouye, and the ranking member, Senator Stevens. Unfortunately certain provision did not make it into the final version of this bill, however I firmly believe that it is a historic and important piece of bipartisan legislation that will come to the Senate floor for all of us to discuss.

Just recently, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed another very positive landmark legislation which relates to setting a higher mandate on biofuels. In the last Energy bill we were able to pass, we stipulated that we should have a goal of producing 7 1/2 billion gallons of biofuel a year by 2012. Both the President and the Congress are trying to achieve a higher goal. In this legislation, that sets the goal that by 2022, we would actually have a mandate of having 36 billion gallons of alternative fuel produced in this country. I firmly believe that this is a realistic goal and an achievable mandate for us, and that it will aid in starting mass-production of alternative fuels in this country.

In addition, that legislation had money for what we call a biofuels infrastructure--how we do actually get this product out to the consumer and to the corridors of transportation so the public does not have to worry about where they can fill up their cars. Thanks in part to this legislation we will have the infrastructure to do that.

In the Commerce Committee, we also produced legislation focusing on flex-fuel cars so that, by 2015, 80 percent of the cars being driven on our roads will be flex-fueled. These are vehicles that could either use gasoline or an alternative fuel.

We have also passed legislation now for studying plug-in hybrids and making sure the plug-in hybrid research continues to move ahead.

In the Energy bill, we also included language about carbon sequestration, making sure we move ahead so carbon sequestration becomes a reality. Again, this is an important issue and it is a very important bill to my colleagues in various parts of the country in which we have an ample supply of coal. I commend Senators DOMENICI and BINGAMAN for working so closely together. That legislation also was passed in a bipartisan effort. It is a great compliment to those two distinguished Senators who worked so closely on the last Energy bill to yet produce another Energy bill.

We are in a position to make a very positive impact on what I think is one of the biggest challenges we face, getting off our overdependence on foreign oil and providing sources of cleaner energy. We are well poised to take up that debate here on the Senate floor with this landmark bipartisan legislation out of two different committees.

We will have a lot of work to do across the aisle. We still have great opportunities to see legislation out of those other four committees I mentioned that will contribute to this energy package. But we should embrace the opportunity the President laid out in his State of the Union Address when he said that he wanted to make sure we had a higher fuel efficiency standard and that we also set a higher renewable fuel standard, and that is exactly what we are doing now.

I personally think we should also set a renewable standard for the amount of electricity we use from our electricity grid to further reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. These are topics that will be debated. I am sure later in the year we will have an important debate about climate change. But for now we are making great progress. I hope my colleagues will focus on the fact that this energy bill gives us another opportunity to work together here on the Senate floor and put real energy solutions before the American public.

Right now, with gas prices reaching $4, Americans want to know we are going to have an aggressive policy, not only giving them consumer protections but better planning for the future so our economy can benefit from alternative sources of fuel.

I yield the floor.

Source