Solar Technology Roadmap Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 3585, the Solar Technology Roadmap Act. The solar energy that strikes the earth in a single hour is enough to power the world's energy needs for a year. This bill will help America develop the technology to harness that massive solar energy potential. I commend Representative Giffords for sponsoring this legislation and Chairman Gordon for his leadership in moving it forward.
The market for solar photovoltaics is growing 40 percent annually. This scaling up of production, combined with developments in the technology, has led to a rapid reduction in the cost of solar energy. While the cost of building conventional power plants has, in many cases, doubled over the last decade, the cost of solar has fallen nearly 30 percent. Many people within the industry now believe solar photovoltaics could be competitive with conventionally-generated electricity from the grid by 2015.
Solar photovoltaic technology was born and developed in the United States. Our publicly-funded national laboratories and our universities such as MIT advanced this technology for decades until the private sector more recently adopted it and began manufacturing solar photovoltaics on a large scale. Unfortunately, we've recently watched this All-American technology become commercialized in Japan, Germany, and China. Today, only two of the world's ten largest solar companies are based in the United States. This means most of the new jobs and intellectual property in this rapidly growing field are accumulating overseas as well. The bill before us today would double down on our solar research program and ensure that solar technology can be developed here with an eye toward private-sector adoption and market deployment.
But to fully reestablish American leadership in this and other rapidly growing clean energy industries and allow the United States to lead in the creation of a clean energy economy, we must also enact into law the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which was passed by the House in June. This legislation, which I authored with Chairman Waxman, would put the incentives in place to stimulate demand for solar and other renewable technologies here at home while unleashing American entrepreneurs to transform the entire energy sector into America's next high-tech, innovation industry.
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