Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, before he leaves the floor, let me thank the leader for making sure we could have this opportunity to deal with one of the crucial issues of our time. Leader Reid has a long history in energy efficiency, in renewable energy. I thank him for his leadership and particularly the opportunity to be on the floor this afternoon.

Mr. President and colleagues, today the Senate has the chance to put more points on the board for the creation of good-paying jobs, a more productive economy, and greater energy security.

Before the August recess, the Congress put some initial points up by passing hydropower legislation. This legislation was called, by the New York Times: The first significant energy legislation to become law since 2009. Those hydropower bills might have been called small by some, but experts say they can generate a large amount of power.

Hydropower is 60 percent of the renewable, clean power in America. And hydropower has the potential to add 60,000 more megawatts of capacity by 2025, according to the National Hydropower Association. That is enough energy to power more than 46 million homes. Hydro helps to make our economy less dependent on fossil fuels, and it does it in a way Democrats and Republicans can come together on.

Today, as we look at another critical part of modernizing energy policy, I want to start by saying it has almost become obligatory for Members of Congress to say they are for an ``all of the above'' energy policy. It is almost as though a U.S. Senator has to say that on energy they are for ``all of the above'' three or four times every 15, 20 minutes or else it is not a real discussion about energy policy.

But here is what is important and I think critical as we start the debate--where I see my friend from New Hampshire and my friend from Ohio--the reality is, you cannot have an ``all of the above'' energy policy in this country without energy efficiency. It is that simple. If you are serious about an ``all of the above'' energy policy--and we have essentially several Democrats and several Republicans on the floor now to demonstrate the seriousness of this issue--you cannot have an ``all of the above'' energy policy without energy efficiency.

So this legislation is on the floor today thanks to the tireless bipartisan efforts of Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman.

I am also very pleased the ranking minority member of the committee is here, Senator Murkowski of Alaska. She consistently meets me halfway in terms of trying to deal with these kinds of issues. As we begin this debate--which I would also mention to colleagues is essentially the first stand-alone energy bill to be debated on the floor of the Senate since 2007--it would not be possible without the cooperation and the good counsel of the ranking minority member, Senator Murkowski. I want her to know how much I appreciate our partnership. We just got through our weekly session this morning as we look at various kinds of businesses. We hope to be able to bring to the Senate helium legislation, which we know a lot of Senators care about, very quickly as well. But there is a reason we are back to energy policy in the Senate, and that is, to a great extent, because of the cooperation Senator Murkowski has shown.

This bill--and one of the reasons it is bipartisan--gives us a chance to cut waste in our energy system and create jobs. This bill would take the biggest step in years toward tapping the potential for energy policy.

The legislation saves about 2.9 billion megawatt hours of electricity by 2030, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. I say to my colleagues, I thought I would start by translating that into something that becomes a little easier to put your arms around.

To generate those kinds of savings in electricity--2.9 billion megawatt hours--the United States would have to build 10 new nuclear powerplants at a cost of billions of dollars each and run them for more than 20 years.

The heart of this bill is updating voluntary building codes to make homes and businesses more efficient, and it is about installing new wires and pipes and machines and insulation. Here is what I want colleagues to know as we start this discussion: There is money to be made in those pipes and that installation. Businesses know that. That is why more than 250 companies and associations have endorsed this bill, including the Chamber of Commerce.

When you look at those who have endorsed this piece of legislation, it is not a who's who of sort of bleeding-heart environmental folks. I was particularly struck by the headline in a Forbes article last month. They say: ``The Shaheen-Portman Energy Savings Act: It's The Economy, Stupid.'' They sure got that right.

If the Congress passes this bill, it is going to immediately become a significant job creator, generating an estimated 136,000 new jobs by 2025.

It will also make a significant difference in our country's energy productivity, and that means savings for families, building fewer powerplants, reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

If we continue business as usual--people say: Oh, gee, we are not really going to pursue this now--the U.S. Energy Information Administration--that is really our statistical arm of the Energy Department--predicts that our country would use 30 percent more electricity by 2040.

But there is an alternative, and that is harnessing the potential of efficiency technologies that actually reduce electricity from today's demand and reduce the use of energy even as our economy and population grows.

The amount of new energy productivity we gain would be like doubling the number of houses in America and then powering all of them without ever adding a new powerplant to the grid.

Choosing the more efficient path we are going to advocate for on the floor of the Senate would mean adding 1.3 million jobs by the middle of the century. Families could shave off one-third of their electricity bills, an average savings of about $600 per year, according to experts in the field, a big increase in productivity.

So already we have talked about job creation, we have talked about productivity, two areas where I do not see some kind of artificial line between Democrats and Republicans here in the Senate. I see areas we all feel strongly about.

On the other hand, meeting our country's projected electricity demand with today's energy mix and 40 percent coal requires building at least 100 new coal-fired powerplants over 25 years.

We are also going to make the case during this debate that the Federal Government ought to be a leader in this. It is one thing to talk about how everybody in America ought to do something, and then say, oh, the Federal Government might get around to it someday. So we are saying, this is a chance for the Federal Government to save taxpayers money and to play a strong role, a strong leadership role, particularly by improving efficiency at the Federal data centers.

As more and more businesses move to the cloud, reducing energy use there is extremely important. Again, the experts estimate these steps on data center efficiency would save about 35 million megawatt hours of electricity by 2030. We would save the same amount of energy by powering down 60 of the NSA's newest data centers for a year, but I am going to save that one for another day.

There is obviously room for Federal agencies to do more. The government owns nearly 500,000 buildings. The Federal Government is the largest landlord in America. Agencies are directed to buy and use highly efficient equipment under two different executive orders. But according to staff at the Energy Department, less than half of commercial building equipment that agencies buy actually even complies with the government's own rules. So I am going to be offering an amendment to the bill that at least will provide some incentive to ensure that agencies actually follow the rules of the government.

This bill, as I have indicated, is bipartisan. We have been able to pass 62 bills out of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, each one with bipartisan support. This is what Senators have said they care about, this is what the other body has said they care about.

Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the third ranking House Republican, said earlier this year, ``All American energy independence means taking a hard look at energy production, distribution, reliability and efficiency.'' In the House there is a bipartisan companion to this. In other words, we have the good fortune of having Senator Shaheen and Senator Portman working in a bipartisan way.

In the other body--and Senator Murkowski and I have met with the House Members interested in this issue--you have Congressman Peter Welch and Congressman Cory Gardner actually creating a bipartisan caucus to promote new financing tools that aid energy efficiency projects. Congressman Welch and Congressman McKinley have introduced companion legislation to the one we debate today.

If anything, one of our challenges is there is a pent-up demand to debate energy issues in this Congress. If we voted for all of the amendments I hear people say they want to do, we would probably be here until New Year's Eve being fed intravenously trying to figure out how to process all of them. We may not have time to address each and every amendment, but I know of at least a dozen bipartisan amendments that colleagues plan to offer that will produce even more energy savings for businesses and consumers, produce more jobs for the U.S. economy.

Nobody is going to be able to say this is part of a dumb Federal mandate or some kind of ``run from Washington, one size fits all'' approach. These are approaches that look to productivity, the private sector for leadership and fresh ideas. For example, Senator Bennet and Senator Ayotte have a better building amendment. It strikes me as a very sensible one.

Senator Inhofe and Senator Carper have an amendment on thermal efficiency. Senator Klobuchar and Senator Hoeven have an amendment to help our nonprofits save energy. How can you make a logical case that we should not try to work that out? Our nonprofits are being stretched to the limit. I saw that when I was in Alaska with Senator Murkowski. We talked to some of the nonprofits. We see it in Oregon as well.

We have a bipartisan amendment from Senators Hoeven and Klobuchar to try to help these nonprofits save energy. These are just a few of the good amendments, in my view, that build on the outstanding work done by Senators Shaheen and Portman lo these several years. These amendments and the bill are going to help homes and businesses use less energy, save money, create jobs, without mandates, without spending new Federal money.

It got out of our committee by a 19-to-3 vote. I believe the reason it did is because people said this is a commonsense approach to cutting energy waste and showing folks across the land that there are things you can agree on in the Senate and come together.

I am pleased to be here with Senator Murkowski. We have talked about this a long time, to get the Senate back in the business of a modern energy policy that creates jobs, that promotes energy security and productivity. We started that with the hydropower legislation that was signed into law right after we broke for the August recess. This is the next logical step.

I will say to colleagues, I do not see how a Senator can say they are for an ``all of the above'' energy policy in America without supporting energy efficiency. This is the time. This is the bill.

I look forward to working with our colleagues. I hope they bring us their various and sundry amendments.

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