Forbes Reintroduces the New Manhattan Project

Contact: Jessica Mancari (202)225-6365

Forbes Reintroduces the New Manhattan Project

Washington, D.C., Feb 6 - Congressman J. Randy Forbes (VA-04) announced today that he has reintroduced the New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence in the 111th Congress. The legislation, which would challenge the United States to reach 50% energy independence in ten years and 100% energy independence in 20 years, has been hailed as one of the most bold and innovative energy solutions before Congress.

“The economic challenges we face today are far greater than one simple solution can fix. Now more than ever there must be a collective resolve to answer some of the significant challenges we face as a nation. While gas prices have remained low over the past several months, we would be unwise to forget the need to solve America’s energy crisis and find solutions for energy independence. Additionally, the likelihood of gas prices skyrocketing again in the coming months will create even greater financial distress for American families,” said Forbes. “Solving our nation’s energy crisis is a critical step to creating lasting economic security for our nation and its families. The New Manhattan Project creates a bold initiative to move us in this direction of energy independence. I encourage the current Majority leadership to move quickly on this legislation to bring it to the House floor for consideration.”

The New Manhattan Project, http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:hr513:">H.R. 513, calls for the United States to achieve 50% energy independence in ten years and 100% energy independence in 20 years. To achieve these goals, the New Manhattan Project will bring together the scientists and researchers in the U.S. in a competitive format to reach one of seven energy goals. The project will award significant prizes to the first group, school, team, or company that reaches each goal as determined by a New Manhattan Project commission of scientists. Cash prizes to be awarded to the first person or entity to achieve each of the following goals:

* Double CAFE standards to 70 MPG while keeping vehicles affordable
* Cut home and business energy usage in half
* Make solar power work at the same cost as coal
* Make the production of biofuels cost-competitive with gasoline
* Safely and cheaply store carbon emissions from coal-powered plants
* Safely store or neutralize nuclear waste
* Produce usable electricity from a nuclear fusion reaction

In addition, the bill sets aside funding for grants to individual researchers, groups, educational institutions or businesses to help share the cost of work toward achieving the goals.

The New Manhattan Project was originally introduced by Congressman Forbes in the 110th Congress as http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:hr6260:">H.R. 6260. For more information on the New Manhattan Project, visit http://forbes.house.gov/issues/energy.htm.

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Our program will emphasize conservation. The amount of energy being wasted which could be saved is greater than the total energy that we are importing from foreign countries. We will also stress development of our rich coal reserves in an environmentally sound way; we will emphasize research on solar energy and other renewable energy sources; and we will maintain strict safeguards on necessary atomic energy production.

The responsibility for setting energy policy is now split among more than 50 different agencies, departments, and bureaus in the Federal Government. Later this month, I will ask the Congress for its help in combining many of these agencies in a new energy department to bring order out of chaos. Congressional leaders have already been working on this for quite a while.

We must face the fact that the energy shortage is permanent. There is no way we can solve it quickly. But if we all cooperate and make modest sacrifices, if we learn to live thriftily and remember the importance of helping our neighbors, then we can find ways to adjust and to make our society more efficient and our own lives more enjoyable and productive. Utility companies must promote conservation and not consumption. Oil and natural gas companies must be honest with all of us about their reserves and profits. We will find out the difference between real shortages and artificial ones. We will ask private companies to sacrifice, just as private citizens must do.

All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.

There is no way that I, or anyone else in the Government, can solve our energy problems if you are not willing to help. I know that we can meet this energy challenge if the burden is borne fairly among all our people—and if we realize that in order to solve our energy problems we need not sacrifice the quality of our lives.

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Good evening.

Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem that is unprecedented in our history. With the exception of preventing war, this is the greatest challenge that our country will face during our lifetime.

The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly. It's a problem that we will not be able to solve in the next few years, and it's likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century.

We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and our grandchildren. We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us.

Two days from now, I will present to the Congress my energy proposals.. Its Members will be my partners, and they have already given me a great deal of valuable advice.

Many of these proposals will be unpopular. Some will cause you to put up with inconveniences and to make sacrifices. The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation.

Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the "moral equivalent of war," except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.

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Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change—to strict conservation and to the renewed use of coal and to permanent renewable energy sources like solar power.

The world has not prepared for the future. During the 1950's, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940's. During the 1960's, we used twice as much as during the 1950's. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of man's previous history combined.

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The congressional conference committees are now considering changes in how electric power rates are set in order to discourage waste, to reward those who use less energy, and to encourage a change in the use of electricity to hours of the day when demand is low.

Another very important question before Congress is how to let the market price for domestic oil go up to reflect the cost of replacing it while, at the same time, protecting the American consumers and our own economy.

We must face an unpleasant fact about energy prices. They are going up, whether we pass an energy program or not, as fuel becomes more scarce and more expensive to produce. The question is, who should benefit from those rising prices for oil already discovered? Our energy plan captures and returns them to the public, where they can stimulate the economy, save more energy, and create new jobs.

We will use research and development projects, tax incentives and penalties, and regulatory authority to hasten the shift from oil and gas to coal, to wind and solar power, to geothermal, methane, and other energy sources.

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• U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation Act
• Biomass Energy and Alcohol Fuels Act
• Renewable Energy Resources Act
• Solar Energy and Energy Conservation Act
• Solar Energy and Energy Conservation Bank Act
• Geothermal Energy Act
• Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Act

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This new Energy Security Act will help the American people to conserve more energy than I've already outlined and will help industry of all kinds in the energy field to produce more energy than they are today.

This legislation will also help to create more than 70,000 new jobs a year, to design, to build, to operate, and to supply resources for synthetic fuels plants and for production of alcohol and other biomass fuels. Thousands of other jobs will be created in the conservation field and in the production of solar energy, and indirect employment, not included in these figures, will be generated by all these efforts.

This bill establishes a corporation to encourage production of 2 million barrels a day of synthetic fuels by the year 1992, by converting coal to synthetic oil and gas and by extracting oil from shale and from tar sands and by other means. The Solar Energy and the Energy Conservation Bank will provide over $3 billion in direct subsidies to homes and to industries to conserve energy and to use renewable supplies of energy, helping us to reach our goal of deriving 20 percent of all the energy we use by the end of this century directly from the Sun. This act will also provide over $I billion to help produce biomass energy, such as gasohol. This year alone, in 1980, we will quadruple our capacity to produce gasohol.

The act also recognizes that energy and environmental problems are closely interrelated, both very serious problems. Under the provisions of this act, we will complete a comprehensive study of the problem of acid rain and the other impacts of fossil fuel consumption on our environment, our economy, and on our society.

In sum, the Energy Security Act will launch this decade with the greatest outpouring of capital investment, technology, manpower, and resources since the space program. Its scope, in fact, is so great that it will dwarf the combined efforts expended to put Americans on the Moon and to build the entire Interstate Highway System of our country. This tremendous commitment will make the 1980's a time of national resolve and also a brave and exciting achievement.

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