Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today on the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, I am proud to introduce a pair of bills, S. 1057 and S. 1058, to promote clean energy and fight climate change.

The first bill is the Geothermal Energy Opportunities Act, or GEO Act for short. Clean, low-carbon geothermal energy can play a starring role in the fight against climate change, and this legislation encourages the development of the geothermal resource in a number of important ways.

The GEO Act helps prospective geothermal developers explore for and develop geothermal resources through a public-private grant program. As part of the partnership, developers report their findings, contributing to a nationwide map of geothermal potential that will reduce the risk and drive down the cost of geothermal energy for the future.

In many cases, Federal lands already under production for oil and gas also have a geothermal resource, and the GEO Act allows for the oil and gas leaseholders to coproduce such geothermal energy without going through an additional competitive lease process. It also fully incorporates the bipartisan Geothermal Production Expansion Act that I introduced with a number of my colleagues earlier this year. That provision would streamline the Federal geothermal leasing program to prevent speculative bidders from unproductively driving up the price of leases for developers of geothermal ``hot spots'' that extend into lands directly adjacent to their existing geothermal lease.

The Bureau of Land Management, which manages geothermal projects on Federal land under lease agreements, estimates about 250 million acres of Federal land contains geothermal power potential. Geothermal energy projects that are producing geothermal power under the BLM's management make up about half of the total geothermal generating capacity in the United States. The GEO Act takes important steps to speed the development of this tremendous clean energy potential on public lands.

I am also introducing the Marine and Hydrokinetic Renewable Energy Act of 2015, along with my colleagues Senators MERKLEY, SCHATZ, and KING, to spur development of renewable electricity from the water power in oceans, rivers, and lakes. This bill reauthorizes the Department of Energy's marine renewable energy programs, including the national marine renewable energy research, development and demonstration centers around the country, one of which is run by Oregon State University in my home state. The Department of Energy estimates that there is enough potential energy in these nontraditional forms of hydropower to one day power millions of homes.

These two pieces of legislation will each promote the production of clean, domestic energy resources and in doing so help the United States lead the world in the fight against climate change. I strongly urge my colleagues to support both of them.

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