Opening Statement By Subcommittee Chairman Nick Lampson

Today we will consider two bills that represent another step in this Committee’s efforts to push the envelope of technological possibility, and provide the American people a future with cheaper, cleaner, better energy options.

For decades my district has been synonymous with oil and gas (or Energy, generally). To a large extent it has been the economic foundation for this area, for the great State of Texas, and even for the Nation.

And the truth is that we should expect that oil, gas and other more traditional sources of energy, such as coal and nuclear, will provide much of our nation’s energy for decades to come.

But the winds of change are blowing, and the folks in my district know as well as anyone the predicament we face in sky-high energy prices, the environmental impacts of our energy use, and the critical need for maintaining jobs in the energy sector.

In this respect, the nation faces a challenge like none we have encountered before. Unlike the Apollo and Manhattan projects, which galvanized our nation’s scientist to win a global race to put a man on the moon, or create a “weapon to end all wars”, there is no finish line in this race.

We are attempting to transform a national, and to some extent global, economy which is based on only a handful of unsustainable energy resources. Resources that we know will simply not last.

Despite their remarkable technological advances, we can’t expect the energy industry, and the current programs at the Department of Energy to tackle these problems on their own.

Only through ground-breaking research, and the development of truly transformational technologies, can we begin to match up to the scale and complexity of these challenges.

This requires from us a rock-solid commitment to innovative energy R&D, and a leap of faith that somewhere on the shelves of our national labs, in the garages of our nation’s inventors, and in the halls of our research universities, there are discoveries and technologies waiting to be exploited by a new energy industry.

The two bills that we are here to markup today represent the kind of bold efforts that are needed in advancing energy research, and ensuring the U.S. maintains a lead in these emerging technology fields.

Therefore I urge their passage, and look forward to getting them to the House floor.