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Some highlights! :-)
Remarks of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Cleantech Venture Forum VIII
<snip>And, if all that weren’t enough, our dependence on oil is hastening the threat posed by global climate change. Energy production and use in transportation and electricity generation account for more than three quarters of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. <snip>
Quite a few of us in Congress have worked to bridge the gap and put forward proposals for a better energy future. We passed, albeit not as much as we would have wanted, a 10 percent renewable energy standard in the Senate, but the White House rejected it. We’ve expanded research on hydrogen fuel cells, one of the positive things to come out of the last energy bill. I pushed to provide access to funding to retrofit old diesel equipment with filters that reduce harmful emissions – filters whose guts are made at a state-of-the-art Corning plant in upstate New York.
Senate Democrats have put forward a comprehensive plan to build real energy security for America and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Senate Democrats have a plan to protect consumers from price gouging, to provide them relief, and to make us more energy dependent.
But our Senate Democratic plans to implement a federal renewable portfolio standard, or to set a national oil savings target, have consistently been thwarted by the White House and Republicans in Congress. <snip>
From our strained refinery capacity to the months-long waiting lists for new hybrid cars, and solar panels, the core problem is clear: Our nation has suffered from a failure of investment and imagination– in both the public and private sectors – for a strategic energy future. <snip>
I believe that we need to assess the oil companies an alternative energy development fee to be put into the new Strategic Energy Fund. We should design the fee so it is taken solely out of unanticipated profits from the sky high oil prices and ensure that it is not passed on to consumers. It could generate as much as $20 billion a year to help retool our economy and deploy new energy strategies.We used to make polluters pay for their clean-up through Superfund. And now we need for the oil companies to share the burden of lifting America up and out of the looming energy crisis.
How would this work? We need to devise a bipartisan mechanism to make sure that energy companies are contributing their share to America's energy future. I suggest the following fundamental principles:
Reform our energy taxes so that large oil companies who reap huge benefits over the next two years will pay a portion of their profits to fund new tax incentives for those consumers and companies who do want to invest in America's energy future. Companies that choose to invest these profits in refining capacity, efficiency and alternative energy would not be required to pay into the fund.
It's not about new energy taxes on consumers - it's about redirecting the "tax" that middle class Americans are already paying to OPEC and the oil companies in the form of higher prices and harnessing it to secure our energy future. Such a measure should be temporary, lasting just long enough to kick-start the alternative energy market that we all know is out there.<snip>
Unbelievably, at a time when we should be doing everything we can to promote and conserve energy efficiency, the Administration is trying to shut down the DOE offices that implement our efficiency programs. We need to do the exact opposite. Our DOE efficiency programs can’t do it all, but they can do a lot more than we have asked them to.
<snip>
We all want to keep our automakers and good-paying auto industry jobs. We all want hybrids, clean diesels and the next generation of fuel-efficient cars to be built here in the U.S. And we know that our domestic manufacturers are saddled with enormous legacy health care and pension costs that make it difficult for them to invest in retooling their plants.
It’s time for the Bush Administration to show some leadership. The Clinton Administration pulled the auto makers together in the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles to work out a coordinated strategy for both near term and long term increases in fuel economy. We made some progress, but much of that work remains undone. That’s why I have called on the President to invite auto industry manufacturers, suppliers and unions to a summit at the White House. He ought to find out what they need to make real progress on energy-efficient vehicles and pledge to provide it. The ideas are out there, such as offering automakers relief on legacy health care and pension costs in exchange for a commitment to produce more efficient cars, boosting research, and providing training for workers. <snip>
Washington can also show leadership through its own purchasing. Let’s set the goal that, by 2010, the government is out of the business of buying old-fashioned vehicles¸ and is replacing its fleet from the Army to the GSA with fuel efficient cars and trucks.<snip>
Near Fulton, NY, entrepreneurs are planning to convert an idle brewery into an integrated biofuels facility that will produce both ethanol and biodiesel. When it comes on line, it will be the biggest ethanol plant in the NE, producing 100 million gallons a year of ethanol, and 5 million gallons a year of biodiesel. The plant will begin by making ethanol from corn, but plans to switch to make cellulosic ethanol from nearby sources of fast-growing hardwood trees. This is exactly the kind of project that we need to support, and the President should provide funding for biofuels programs in the energy bill he signed into law.
As we expand our biofuel production capacity, we also need more “flexible fuel” vehicles that can burn 85% ethanol blends. We have about 5 million of these cars on the road now, but we could easily have more. The cost of the technology per vehicle is low--$100 or less. The potential benefits are enormous, particularly when combined with hybrid technology. A 50 mile-per-gallon hybrid that burns E85 is effectively getting more than 300 miles for every gallon of petroleum-derived gasoline in the tank. So I’m challenging the auto industry to accelerate deployment of flexible fuel technology in new cars so that within 5 years all new cars are “flexible fuel vehicles.” <snip>
We can do much more to use wind and solar energy. In New York, we’re building the biggest wind farm in the northeast, a 300 megawatt project. Germany generates 12,000 megawatts of electricity with wind, about twice the US total. Denmark already gets 18% of its electricity from wind. Because of engineering advances, some recent long term wind contracts were signed at 3 cents per kilowatt hour, cheaper than nuclear, coal, and even natural gas at today’s high prices. If we doubled our capacity for wind each year for 7 years, wind would produce 650,000 megawatts of power making it the dominant leading source of electricity. The investment required would be roughly $90 billion dollars a year, less than half what Americans spend a year on gasoline. We can do this; keep in mind wind generating capacity is already growing 30% a year.
Solar cells installed in buildings also have tremendous potential for growth. Today we generate 32 megawatts of electricity with solar installations, less than half of Japan’s total. My husband’s library installed over 300 solar cells, cutting its utility requirements by one third. Today there is a 2-3 months back log on orders for solar cells in the US. Currently, solar power is more costly than wind or coal but the price drops 20% each time capacity is doubled. Sales are already growing at 30% per year. We could easily double that, making solar as cheap as wind in no time. Moreover, once a home or business pays off its investment in the cells, the power is essentially free for the remaining life of the structures. And in sunny areas where solar cells can produce more power than the homes or businesses require in certain months, most local utilities will take the access and credit it against the consumer’s utility bills.<snip>
The National Academy of Sciences has recommended that Congress establish within the U.S. Department of Energy an organization called the Advanced Research Project Agency -- Energy (ARPA-E) that reports to the undersecretary for science and sponsors "out-of-the-box" energy research to meet the nation's long-term energy challenges. The Academy has outlined a sensible plan to create this agency, ramp up its funding up over five years, and then evaluate its effectiveness. Congress ought to take this idea and implement it immediately. <snip>
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