http://craig.senate.gov/press/

For Immediate Release:
October 8, 2004

Warm houses, scorched wallets

by Senator Larry Craig

A few days ago on the news, the anchorman reported that oil prices that day had reached the record price of $52 dollars a barrel. This comes as no surprise to many across Idaho, who have likely filled their gas tanks recently at a price somewhere between $1.80 and $2.05 per gallon. The high prices at the pump have stubbornly refused to decline over a period much longer than anyone had hoped.

As winter approaches and consumption of oil and natural gas increases, and with our nation relying on foreign oil sources for more than 50 percent of our oil consumption, I am reminded that the need for energy diversification in the United States is greater than ever.

That is why I recently cosponsored a concurrent resolution in the Senate that supports the expansion of nuclear power. Although nuclear power generates a substantially greater percentage of the electricity consumed in countries like France (at 70 percent) and Japan (at 30 percent), only 20 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States comes from nuclear power.

Two billion people on Earth currently have no access to electricity. One billion people have no sanitary water - something easily available with the energy to run treatment plants and pumps.

Energy is essential for development. The alternative - apparent in developing nations worldwide - is poverty, disease and death.

The fact is the developing world wants the standard of living we have here, and it is going to take phenomenal amounts of energy to get it. The International Energy Agency projects 65 percent growth in world energy demand by the year 2020. Two thirds of that growth is going to come from developing countries.

And our electricity needs will be growing here at home - at least we would hope so, because that is the only way our economy grows. Over 20 years, America's electricity use is projected to grow more than 50 percent. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency reports that areas of 31 states do not meet health standards for ozone - 474 counties nationwide are in "non-attainment" under the Clean Air Act.

So, on one hand we predict our economy will grow again and we will need large amounts of new electricity generation. On the other hand, these "non-attainment" labels for whole industrialized sections of our country mean there will be no new combustion facilities constructed there for the foreseeable future. How do we reconcile this?

For me, the answer is obvious. Nuclear energy.

The United States has the most powerful economy in the world. We have an opportunity to use our federal research investments to create the technologies of tomorrow. And these break through technologies will have the potential to lift billions of people out of lives of abject poverty. As a policy maker, I feel a moral obligation for the United States to invest wisely and lead the world by example.

If we squander the opportunity of a technology like nuclear energy - and allow naysayers carrying a false banner of "green energy" by which they really mean "no growth" to seize the moral high ground - shame on us for letting that happen. We will be squandering our own future, unless we make the right choices, right now.

Building an advanced Generation IV nuclear reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory will move the United States to the forefront in nuclear power generation. The result will be power plants that produce more electricity and less waste, and may also provide the keys to a viable alternative energy source: hydrogen.

Cellulose ethanol is another exciting alternative fuel with a lot of promise. It looks, smells and acts like the ethanol made from corn, but instead is made from farm residues like straw, cornstalks and husks. Using this otherwise-discarded material, farmers gain a new source of revenue and the United States would have a new fuel source that could replace as much as 10-12 billion gallons of gasoline annually. That represents anywhere from 7 to 10 percent of current U.S. gasoline consumption.

Energy is extremely important to me, as well as Idahoans. The new Generation IV reactor and loan guarantees for cellulosic ethanol plants, both of which will directly benefit Idaho, are provisions contained in the stalled energy bill. That is why I'll continue to push for passage of a comprehensive energy policy in the United States Senate.

We have come very close to achieving this goal several times in the last four years, only to be thwarted by many of my Democrat colleagues who seem to be more interested in election year politics than with solving a clear and present problem.

We must get past the partisanship and pass this important piece of legislation now. The prices at the pump and on our electric bills show that we have already waited too long.

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