The Standing Rules of the Senate are drafted to encourage vigorous public debate on our nation’s most important issues. Indeed, the U.S. Senate is often referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” The Rules allow any Senator to seek recognition from the Chair at any time and, absent a temporary agreement to the contrary, to speak without interruption so long as he or she wishes. Debating important questions before the Senate is one way a Senator can highlight an issue, advocate for a change in policy, or voice his or her opinion on pending legislation.
Senate debate occurs in public, and is televised on CSPAN and transcribed in the Congressional Record. For your convenience, I post transcripts of my Senate floor speeches on this site for your review. I hope you find them informative and useful. My web site also makes available information on my voting record and legislation that I have sponsored in the Senate.
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American Energy Policy
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, the American people are very frustrated with the failure of Congress to act on the great problems facing our country, a lot of problems, but I believe they are especially concerned about surging gasoline and energy prices . They are angry. They do not believe we have done enough in this Congress, and I think when they find out the leadership of this Congress, the Democratic leadership, is proposing legislation that will raise, not lower gas prices , they will not be happy.
Indeed, I received a note today from my staff that an experienced reporter at the Birmingham News, Mr. Tom Gordon, today wrote that my home county in Alabama, Wilcox County, again leads the Nation in the percentage of income that its citizens spend monthly on motor fuel, 16 percent, because the county has low incomes and people drive long distances to work.
It is a big deal. It is absolutely a real matter of importance. I think we need to do something about it. They want us to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, to produce more clean American energy, to show we are taking steps to contain and I think maybe even hopefully reduce the surging prices .
These prices are threatening the family budget. They are threatening American jobs and the American economy. Turn on any news program and read any news magazine. We are on track to spend $500 billion abroad this year to purchase 60 percent of the oil we consume; 60 percent-plus is being imported. This balance-of-trade deficit weakens our dollar, requiring even more dollars to purchase the same amount of oil. With the dollar getting weaker, you need more dollars to buy the same amount of oil. We are creating jobs and wealth in nations around the world with our money when this missing wealth in our country that we send abroad reduces our own jobs.
Families are routinely paying $50, $75, $100 more a month for the same or even less gasoline than they were a few years ago. When this added expense reduces the ability of hard-working middle-class Americans to purchase what they need to get by on, or to take care of their families, and when this reduction in spending on oil reduces spending on things other than oil that the American people need, is it any wonder the economy is struggling, I ask? Is it any wonder millions of American are struggling to get by? Is it any wonder Americans from the suites in New York to the rural roads of Alabama are worried?
What is it our constituents are asking us to do? I think they want us to get busy doing what we know works. What works does not mean this $6.7 trillion cap-and-trade plan that has been introduced here that will burden the American economy by driving up the cost of gasoline by another 50 cents in the next number of years, 20 years; driving up the cost of electricity by 44 percent; driving up the price of gasoline three times that 50 cents in the years to come in the distant future; and drive business away from America.
It will make our manufacturing industry less competitive than the global marketplace at a time when we are already struggling to compete and stay up. As I have noted, it will drive up unemployment, and we unfortunately saw a very large surge in unemployment last week, to 5.5 percent.
First, it is not a horrible rate of unemployment, but a horrible increase in unemployment of five-tenths of 1 percent. As one economist said, I would not have been surprised to see 6 percent unemployment over the next 12 months. I did not expect to see half of that occur in 1 month.
People know we have a problem and they understand it. I guess the question is, is there anything we can do about it or are we hopeless? Is there something we can do to bring down the price of oil and make more sense in our economy to confront the danger that high energy prices , gasoline prices pose to America's well being?
Yes, there is. There is. Fundamentally we need to do what works, and we know a lot of things work. It is past time to get started in taking the long road back to a sound energy policy that can and will bring down or at least contain the price of crude oil and gasoline.
I propose that we work together on common ground, liberals, conservatives, Republicans, and Democrats. It is within our grasp and the people are ready for our leadership. We have an opportunity to address our Nation's crisis. The challenge is truly bipartisan in every way. After all, high energy prices affect Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all in the same way. While conservation and increasing the production of American oil and gas in an environmentally sound way can help contain the surge in prices , we need to do that. We must seek common ground further to develop and deploy technological breakthroughs necessary to solve our Nation's energy crisis.
We must commit ourselves as a nation to the production of clean and affordable energy sources. We must commit to policies that will move us beyond oil in a financially and prudent way. Only by championing national interests over any special interests will we be able to secure the common interests and lower energy prices and have a cleaner environment, both of which I believe are possible.
But we are far behind. Business-as-usual policies crafted to benefit favored constituents are no way to develop sound energy solutions to our Nation's needs. That is why I am proposing legislation to direct the Department of Energy, which I think can do more and should do more, to evaluate the host of national incentives we have now on the books to create alternative sources of energy, some of which have worked well, and to recommend changes based on what is in the national interest.
The national interest is to utilize those incentives to the maximum amount possible to create the most amount of clean American energy. Frankly, there is too much in some areas and not enough in other areas. We need to utilize incentives to jump-start industries that can help build a source of clean American energy. For example, we did succeed in creating an ethanol industry through a very sizable incentive. That has worked. We have drawn it down some now. The Agriculture bill that passed the Senate reduced some of those incentives. Perhaps they should have been reduced more since it has been such a healthy enterprise. That money could have been applied to other areas and other aspects of alternative energy that could jump-start those sources.
Congress also suffers too often from a short-term focus on the pressing issues of the day. Too often, we fail to adequately plan for the future needs of the country. That is why I propose that the Department of Energy develop a comprehensive, long-term energy strategy to anticipate unforeseen needs and to promote continued development of innovative energy sources. In order to achieve these goals, the Department would have to report its recommendations to Congress frequently.
I am not ashamed to say that I have a lot of issues on my plate. I am on the Armed Services Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Energy Committee. The Department of Energy has a huge staff, a large number of personnel. They spend all their time every day working on energy issues. We should have leadership from them. They should tell us what is working and what is not. They should help Congress set good policy. They could do more in that regard. They should not be timid about it. They should help us, step forward, make some proposals, and be more aggressive.
There are many things we can do now to lower the price of gasoline and promote clean American energy. Indeed, progress will be made by a thousand steps, large and small, but they must be smart steps. They don't need to be steps that cost far more than they will ever return in terms of energy per cost. They don't need to be political pork.
In 2005, Congress directed the Department of Interior to study the oil reserves in the Outer Continental Shelf. That is the deep waters off our coast, not right on the beaches. The study found that 8.5 billion barrels of oil are currently known to exist off our Nation's shores. In addition, the study estimated that approximately 86 billion barrels of oil exist in these waters. We spend maybe $5 billion a year on oil. That includes the 60 percent we import. The U.S. Geological Survey and private industry also estimate that approximately 25 billion barrels of oil exist on shore in the lower 48 States and Alaska. This totals approximately 119 billion barrels of oil alone and would be enough to power millions of automobiles for a century--not every automobile in the country for a century, but it would carry us a long way until we continue to work hard to have those breakthroughs that get us off oil maybe completely. The sooner the better for me.
These are not the only reserves known to exist from studies. These are reserves estimated from studies made 30 years ago. Further exploration and modern seismographic work will certainly locate far more reserves.
The question fundamentally is, to the American people and my colleagues, do we import more and more of our oil and gas from places that produce it in the North Sea and the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea off the coast of Africa and South America or do we produce it safely off our own shores, where the money stays at home, where we are not sending $500 billion of American citizens' money to people who build palaces in the desert with nothing more than basically money they have taxed us with? The price of oil today is set in large part because OPEC has reduced production, creating a shortage in the whole world. That is the fundamental problem. There are a lot of others, but that is the fundamental problem. We need to fight back. The way we fight back is to keep more of our money at home and send it less to these countries. How simple is that? But the policies we are having here go the opposite direction. They are not allowing us to produce more oil and gas in America, safely and cleanly.
We have and can move forward a lot of other sources of oil. One could be oil from oil shale. Some estimate those reserves to be approximately 1.8 trillion barrels of oil--a lifetime of oil in oil shale. There are a lot of things that have to happen to make that be produced. We have to be sure it is done in an environmental way. But we have major corporations that are willing to spend billions of dollars to see if they can produce it in that fashion. We blocked them from doing that last year. When I say ``we,'' I didn't agree to it, but the Congress slipped that in in conference committee and basically blocked that in the dead of night without any hearings to discuss the merits.
For example, Saudi Arabia, which has the largest amount of oil known in the world, has only approximately 267 billion barrels of oil, whereas we have 1,800 billion barrels of oil in oil shale. It is primarily located in the West in governmental lands.
What about coal? We are the Saudi Arabia of coal. We have 25 percent of the world's coal reserves, which is enough to last approximately 250 years at the current rate. Surely long before then, we will have developed alternatives to carbon fuels. Converting this tremendous resource into liquid transportation fuel using proven technology can bring down the price of gasoline. It really can.
At this very moment, private companies are prepared to convert coal to liquid fuel and sell it to the Air Force for aircraft, sequestering the
carbon so it is not emitted into the atmosphere, at approximately $85 a barrel. That is $40 less than the world market price of oil today, which is over $130 a barrel. They are prepared to do that. Somebody slipped in language to block that from occurring, so the Air Force now is in limbo as to whether they can enter into a long-term contract necessary to guarantee domestic sources of clean fuel made from American coal, all the money staying in the United States, helping enhance our national security. We need to repeal that provision. We need to let the Air Force go ahead with this. It would mean tremendous opportunity to affirm the Air Force's initiative and to verify as a practical matter whether this large amount of fuel can be converted from coal. The way they do it, they heat the coal, and off comes the gas , and then you can reconvert that back to a liquid. It comes out cleaner, just spotless clean. It cleans the engine instead of making it dirty. It is a fabulous fuel.
Diesel fuel--let me share this with you. These are some things we can do and get busy now, that we should already have done. Diesel fuel is more efficient than other fuels. According to Popular Mechanics magazine--recently they did a comparison; I can't guarantee everything they said because the numbers are pretty astounding, but in a sense it is good news--the next generation already in existence of clean diesel engines runs approximately 38 percent further on a gallon of fuel than a similar size automobile that is a hybrid automobile. The magazine found that a 2007 Volkswagen Polo Bluemotion diesel automobile travels 38 percent farther on a gallon of fuel than a 2007 Toyota Prius hybrid.
We know for a fact that diesel gets 30, 35, 40 percent better mileage than a gasoline engine. In fact, Europe has 50 percent of its automobiles diesel. Why? Because it gets better gas mileage. We have gone the exact opposite direction. We only have 3 percent of our fleet diesel. Why are we not creating policies that will help Americans move to more fuel-efficient diesel engines and do something about this odd circumstance when diesel fuel is now considerably more expensive? It is about 15 percent more expensive, but it gets at least 30 percent better mileage. It is still a buy, even at the prices at the pump today for diesel. In addition to being fuel efficient, diesel-powered vehicles release fewer CO 2 emissions than similar hybrids or gasoline engines; CO 2, the global warming gas , less of that from a diesel engine. It is so much cleaner today than people's memory of smoky diesels in the past. It is an entirely new engine, an entirely new procedure.
According to the Popular Mechanics field test, the Volkswagen model tested by the magazine emitted 5 percent fewer greenhouse gases per mile than a Toyota Prius. I was able to drive a Prius the week before last around Alabama. It was very impressive. Why are we not thinking about diesel as we seek to clean up our air and reduce our importing of foreign oil? Diesel engines today run on ultra-low sulfur diesel that is 97 percent cleaner than older diesel fuel. It is the cleanest fuel in the world. It is cleaner than the European fuel--the Europeans are environmentally conscious--and our own regulations require that.
New diesel technology, the Mercedes BlueTec engine--I visited their Alabama facility last week--reduces carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and particulates.
According to the EPA, if 33 percent of American drivers switched to diesel vehicles, oil consumption would be reduced by approximately 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, which would cut our imports 10 percent. They say if you drill in ANWR in Alaska, an area the size of the State of South Carolina--and they would like to explore for oil and gas in an area the size of Dulles Airport--if it comes in and it is only a little over a million barrels a day, that is about 10 percent of our import amount. So if we had more diesel and production in Alaska, that would reduce our imports 20 percent.
Already Americans are conserving more. They have reduced consumption at least 5 percent this year. So now we are down 25 percent. That is the kind of thing we can do that will make a difference in the price of oil and help make this a stronger country.
Now, ethanol represents a viable alternative energy source, I am convinced. According to the Congressional Research Service, 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol were produced in the United States last year. This amounts to approximately $19.5 billion--let me be sure I get this correct because my mind is probably like some of my colleagues. That is 6.5 billion gallons as opposed to barrels I was talking about earlier. Mr. President, 6.5 billion gallons of ethanol were produced in the United States last year. It amounts to approximately $19.5 billion that stayed in our country to create American jobs and pay good wages here. It did not go to buy oil from some foreign country so that the wealth goes there.
It is estimated that we are on track to produce 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year. So we go from 6.5 billion to 9 billion gallons this year. We are soon reaching the maximum production, I think, for most ethanol that comes from corn, which most of this does. But that has been helpful to us, I submit to you. So this would result in approximately $36 billion that will be invested in America, paying wages to American citizens, who pay taxes to our cities and counties, for schools, and to the Federal Government. We want them to have good jobs with good wages.
According to Renewable Fuels Association, the price of gasoline would rise approximately 31 percent if ethanol was eliminated. Is that right? That is an advocacy group for renewable fuels, but this week Barron's Magazine had an analysis and quoted figures similar to that and noted that consumers were saving several hundred dollars a year as a result of ethanol. Whether it is a great benefit to us in net reduction of CO 2, we do not know.
Originally, the environmentalists certainly believed so and advocated it. Some now question that. Regardless, as an economic matter and as a matter of national security, it has reduced our dependence on foreign oil, kept wealth at home, and helped protect our national security and create jobs.
But there are limits on ethanol, so that is why we need to seek technological breakthroughs that will allow us to produce cellulosic ethanol on a commercial scale. Cellulosic fuel can be produced from sources that do not place strains on other end users.
There is tremendous potential in our country to utilize waste wood from sawmills, paper companies, waste wood that is left in the forest from when the timber is cut and hurricane recovery. I talked to a FEMA hurricane emergency response official today about the potential of utilizing cellulose that is downed and thrown away in landfills after a hurricane, where thousands and millions of trees are blown down, to create energy. I think it is a realistic possibility. Every city and county in the country is constantly hauling out large amounts of wood and trees from their city. It cannot be utilized effectively for lumber or other uses. Instead of going to landfills, this could create energy. I think there is a great potential here.
Auburn University has spent a lot of time on switchgrass, another cellulosic form. They will be bringing up, June 19, to Washington their gasification unit that is portable. It is the size of a tractor-trailer rig. You put wood chips in one end, the wood is heated, a gas comes off, and that gas is converted to a liquid fuel. It is proven it can be done. This is not impossible. What we need to do is accelerate the science to prove whether it can be commercially feasible. I think it can be. I am proud of Auburn. They have won a national award for that. They are No. 1 in the country in that area of research, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The next is the plug-in hybrid technology, which holds exceedingly great potential. By utilizing and improving current battery technology, plug-in hybrids will be able to travel father using less gasoline--perhaps dramatically less gasoline--than conventional hybrids or any other kind of automobile. In addition to greatly displacing imported oil, plug-in hybrids can reduce the amount of pollutants and greenhouse gases in the air by relying on clean nuclear energy to recharge their batteries.
Let's just talk about this briefly. We will talk a little more about nuclear energy. But if you have a commute each day of 10 or 15 miles and you can create a battery that will run 30 miles without any hybrid engine having to be turned on to charge and recharge the battery, a person could commute back and forth to work every day if that car would only run 30 miles. When they come home at night, they can plug it in and recharge the battery from the power socket. And particularly charging it from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m., it will use base load power, often not even being fully utilized. If the power source is nuclear power, it emits no pollutants into the atmosphere whatsoever, and that will completely eliminate the need to utilize any oil or gasoline in the car. Now, that is close to being reality.
Certainly, we will produce more wind and solar power. We support those energy sources. The Congress has provided incentives for that. Few would dispute that large increases in clean American base load electricity in large amounts is essential, and we cannot get there by conservation only because a number of things happen. No. 1 is that our population is going up. By 2050, we will have a substantial increase in the American population. So even if every American used less, the Nation is projected, by every expert I am aware of, to utilize more energy. Another thing that happens: You may well develop new lightbulbs, which I hope every American will utilize and turn off lightbulbs when they are not using them, but we have other things that come up. For example, how many of our people want to give up plasma TVs? They use a lot more electricity than the old kind. And computers. When we projected the increase in the cost of the utilization of electricity in the 1970s and early 1980s, we did not expect the size of the computer
revolution and the amount of energy that would add. So there is always something out there. That is all I am suggesting. It is just not smart for us to project in a way that is contrary to the experts that we are going to utilize less electricity.
So after much study--and I have spent a good bit of study on this--it is clear to me that nuclear-generated electricity is the serious solution for a clean energy future and an alternative to a future filled with ever-increasing regulations and more regulators and more lobbyists and more political fights such as this cap-and-trade bill--all of which produce no energy but drain our American economy.
Nuclear power is American based. It is a proven technology. It helps enhance our national security. It is competitive cost-wise. It is not outrageously expensive like some of the ideas that are being floated. It emits no pollutants into the air, neither NO X nor SOx nor mercury nor particulates. And it 100 percent meets our global warming goals, which is to reduce CO 2, carbon dioxide--zero, zilch.
Twenty percent of our electricity today is nuclear, and we have not built a plant in 30 years. France produces 80 percent of its power from nuclear power, and Japan is over 50 percent. They are heavily committed to nuclear power, and it is paying off for them. Britain just announced five new nuclear plants. So we are running behind.
But the good news is that after the Energy bill Senator Domenici worked so hard on and the legislation he offered, 30 new applications for nuclear powerplants have been submitted. That is 30--up from zero just a couple years ago. But we must strive to ensure this nuclear renaissance continues and completes.
There is this tremendous possibility that base load nuclear power, particularly in the night, offpeak time, could be utilized to charge automobile batteries so we could run our automobiles without any fossil fuel being burned. Nuclear power is the one energy source that could create large amounts of hydrogen, the hydrogen necessary if we are to develop effectively fuel cell hydrogen automobiles that also favor a clean concept. Both of these are postoil, postcarbon energy sources that can power our automobiles, which is where our crisis is today.
Renewable energy sources also have an important role to play. According to the Department of Energy, renewable energy provided approximately 9 percent of the total U.S. electricity generation in 2005. While this is not large, there is significant room for growth. Wind energy has led this growth, increasing from approximately 3,500 megawatts in 2001 to almost 17,000 megawatts today. Solar power has also increased, although cost and storage remain serious issues. Geothermal energy has not expanded as rapidly as wind has, but it has potential. According to MIT, the United States has approximately 100,000 megawatts of enhanced geothermal capacity which can be developed by 2050.
A few weeks ago, this Senate voted on a plan that would have taken the first steps to produce many of these untapped energy resources by allowing more energy exploration off our coasts and in Alaska. But we do need to move beyond petroleum-based transportation fuels. We need to do some other steps, such as enhancing the batteries for electric cars, as this bill would have done, which could have allowed us to move to plug-in hybrids. I think that is within our grasp right now, and it would help clean up our environment.
Mr. President, I see the majority leader on the floor. I will just conclude by noting that with prices at record highs, I think the American people can be excused for wondering what their Congress is doing. They expect us to get busy--to get busy now--to produce more clean American energy. That will be the only thing that is going to help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and our ability to be hijacked by prices driven up by OPEC nations that are restricting supply.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, I extend my appreciation to my friend from Alabama for giving up the floor.
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