Craig Thomas Rural Hospital and Provider Equity Act

Floor Speech

CRAIG THOMAS RURAL HOSPITAL AND PROVIDER EQUITY ACT -- (Senate - June 14, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of what is the Bingaman amendment, to make sure we diversify our national energy supply by investing in 15 percent renewables, and against the Domenici amendment, which the chairman of the Energy Committee, the Senator from New Mexico, just mentioned he is going to make a motion to table pretty soon. I agree to tabling that amendment.

Let me say that I have listened to a lot of the debate on renewables and what we need to do, and I have heard a lot of people talk about wind out here and a lot of people talk about solar. I look at this a little differently. I really think this debate is all about natural gas.

I say it is about natural gas because I listen to the farmers in Washington State and throughout America about the high price of natural gas. I hear how much the price of natural gas is going up. The issue is that natural gas is used both for our electricity grid and it is used as a product to make a solid for fertilizer that farmers need, and the price is going up. It has gone anywhere from what historically used to be $2, to $7 or $8, and in some cases we have seen it go as high as $14 or $15.

What I am saying is that we are having competition for natural gas between our electricity grids and our farmers. The future of natural gas is only going to increase. It is only going to increase.

That leaves us with one choice; that is, to diversify off of natural gas for our electricity grid. How do we diversify off natural gas for our electricity grid? We start planning for renewables.

I know there are many utilities wandering the Halls of Congress trying to lobby against this particular provision of the United States setting a goal of focusing on renewable energy. I would say to them: Go look at how the U.S. economy is being impacted because we are already dependent on coal, already dependent on nuclear power, and already dependent on this natural gas that is continuing to rise at steady levels and is going to impact our agricultural economy.

In fact, 15 years ago, only 10 percent of our U.S. nitrogen, a fertilizer product, was imported. Today about half of it is imported. We have seen many of these businesses, over 21 of them in the United States, shut down because of these high costs. What we need to do is push to give alternative fuel; that is, alternative sources of electricity generation, an opportunity to be used in America. The best way for us to do that is to set this mandate in Federal policy so we can protect consumers from the high cost of natural gas in the future.

To do nothing is to say that farmers are going to have to pay more or maybe go out of business or their products are going to be too expensive for international markets or say to consumers: You are going to pay more for your electricity because natural gas prices are going to rise or we can say to consumers instead: We took active measures to diversify our electricity supply and to start using other renewables that will help in getting off the high cost of natural gas.

To my colleagues who come to the floor and say alternative fuels are going to cost more, doing nothing is going to cost more, and depending on the current infrastructure is going to cost more because we already know those supplies are going to go up. Let's take the use of natural gas down by creating other alternatives.

I happen to believe that creating those other alternatives actually will save consumers. I know people have mentioned how the Union of Concerned Scientists say it will basically generate $16.7 billion because of what it will generate in new economic activity, by using alternative fuels. I do applaud the former chairman of the Energy Committee, the other Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Domenici, because he did get the ball rolling with the last Energy bill, getting us focused on incentives for renewable energy. My State probably has taken more advantage of that than just about any other State in the variety of products that we are producing. We now have, in some of the communities of our State, the alternative generation community--whether it is wind or solar or alternative fuels. They are actually out there producing large quantities of cheaper electricity for the grid, and they are also becoming some of the largest employers in some of our rural communities. From an economic development perspective, it is working. In fact, one analysis on a national level says the clean energy strategy could generate as much as $700 billion in economic activity and create 5 million new jobs.

That is not just on this particular Bingaman amendment proposal but the whole package, of which this is a symbol of the kinds of activities that could be done with our electricity grid.

Let me say something about other sources because we keep hearing, again, about wind and solar. This is a lot about biomass. I am a big believer that we are going to see a lot of biomass generation across this country--whether you are talking about switch grass or whether you are talking about using waste to supply new electricity.

Two major industries just came by my office--one a big timber interest and another a big existing oil company--talking about how they are going to diversify in Southern States on biomass. I know of many investments in the southern parts of our country in biomass, so I expect to see a lot of jobs created in the southern region of the United States from biomass. We have to push forward in saying we as a nation want to see a percentage of our electricity grid from that biomass--not just solar, not just wind, but from that biomass. To me, this is a great opportunity to do that.

One cost that no one is talking about, because no one has put a price on it, is the future cost of continuing to rely, with our electricity grid, on CO

2 emittance and the cost to our environment of relying on coal and some of our other generation sources in this issue. I know my colleagues are working on what we think the cost of that will be to future generations. But what is clear when you look at this debate is that part of our clean energy policy, when the electricity grid diversifies off of the more expensive products that we know are going to go up, like natural gas, it creates more jobs in the short term and diversifies our portfolio, driving down the demand for natural gas and helping us on supply. It also helps us with that hidden cost that we all are actually paying in the pollution of our current electricity grid. It is helping individual regional economies grow.

I think the chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator Bingaman, has put forth a great proposal on 15 percent. Let's make sure we take this stance so we let Americans know we don't think the existing energy stream is what we are going to saddle them with for the future. The American people believe alternative fuel can help us off of this dependence we have right now on fossil fuel, and they believe its development will be cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient for us in the future. But we have to show them the Senate gets it and understands and is willing to set that goal into Federal statute.

I hope the President will also join in this effort because the President, as Governor of Texas, implemented a similar mandate in Texas. I think it worked very well for them so I hope he will lend his support; come up to the Hill and encourage people that the high cost of natural gas on our farmers, on our businesses, is something we are not going to tolerate, its continuing to rise is something we are not going to tolerate. We are going to diversify off of that, protect consumers, and give them alternative fuel sources to supply our electricity grid.

I yield the floor.

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