Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions

STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today Sen. STABENOW and I are introducing legislation designed to reduce our dependence on imported oil by replacing it with cleaner, domestic sources of energy to power our cars, trucks, buses, tractors, and ships. The only way to reduce our Nation's dependence on foreign oil is to reduce our dependence on oil. When it comes to reducing our use of oil, transportation is where the vast bulk of America's oil use is. Over 70 percent of all of the oil used in the U.S. is used for transportation. Unless we do something about the amount of oil used by our transportation sector, we have no chance of making a significant dent in our dependence on oil. The goal of this bill is to replace a significant portion of that oil with home-grown alternative fuels--electricity, natural gas, propane, biofuels, and hydrogen. We believe this will create jobs and economic growth here in the U.S. and reduce the relentless flow of dollars overseas to buy oil.

Many of our colleagues share our concern and have been strong advocates for individual vehicle technologies. Indeed, both Sen. STABENOW and I voted last year in the Senate Energy Committee to support legislation by Sen. DORGAN, Sen. MERKLEY and Sen. ALEXANDER to promote electric vehicles. With electric vehicles, fuel can come from many sources, and very little of it from oil. With plug-in electric technology now hitting the streets, you can literally use power from a wind turbine to drive to the store. Sen. MENENDEZ and Sen. REID have offered bills to promote natural gas vehicles. Natural gas is a natural fuel for many vehicle applications and it now appears that there are significant new natural gas resources here in North America that could be tapped to replace imported oil.

At the end of the day, however, different fuels are going to work better in different types of vehicles and in different parts of the country. For that reason, our bill does not pick technology winners and losers. It is ``technology neutral,'' ``geography neutral'' and ``market neutral.'' An alternative fuel that is readily available in one part of the country may not be readily available in every part of the country, or it may not work as well in an 18 wheel tractor-trailer as in the family car. Our bill does not chose which fuel is used where, or for what kind of vehicles. We leave that up to the free market so that fuel providers and vehicle manufacturers can compete for what works best for their customers.

While it is true that cars and pick-up trucks use about 63 percent of all transportation fuel, that still means that well over a third is used in other kinds of vehicles. Medium and heavy trucks and buses, for example, use about 20 percent of all motor fuel. Our bill is aimed at making inroads on oil imports all up and down the road, in all kinds of vehicles, and even for off-road vehicles and engines that aren't on the road at all.

Our bottom line goal is to help American businesses, which build vehicles and supply fuel, provide genuine alternatives to conventional fuels and engine technologies so that Americans can reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The bill does this by providing a set of tools to promote the deployment of these technologies while keeping in mind the difficult budget situation the country faces. In several instances, the bill modifies existing programs, rather than create new ones, and it includes a source of funds to pay for the new programs it does create.

First, the bill takes the existing advanced vehicle manufacturing support program at the U.S. Department of Energy, which is now focused on providing financial support to major manufacturers of light duty vehicles, and opens it up to alternative fuel technologies. It also expands the program to component manufacturers further down the supply chain and to the production of medium and heavy trucks, buses, and transit vehicles and lifts the cap on the amount of loans that can be made to American manufacturers and their suppliers.

Alternative fuel vehicles need alternative fuel. So the next major initiative in the bill is to provide financial

support for the production and distribution of those alternative fuels. Again, instead of creating a whole new program to support this alternative fuel infrastructure, the bill modifies the existing clean energy Department of Energy loan guarantee program created section 1703 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This loan program was aimed at financing new, innovative low-carbon electricity generation technologies. That is all well and good, but those investments do not address the very real energy security challenge facing our country from oil imports, especially since so little electricity in the U.S. is actually generated using oil. Our bill would allow this already existing program to be used for alternative fuel infrastructure.

The bill includes additional measures to provide technical assistance to States and local governments, public-private partnerships and utility companies and utility commissions to help overcome barriers to the deployment of these alternative fuel vehicles. The bill provides worker training and technology research programs to make sure there is a skilled workforce and new technologies. Taken altogether, these provisions are designed to provide the tools for manufacturers, parts suppliers, fuel providers, transportation planners, utility regulators, and State and local officials to deploy alternative fuel vehicles, and the fuels to power them, in numbers that make a difference and truly reduce our dependence on imported oil.

Finally, the bill includes a funding offset by capping the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, SPR, at 90 days of non-North American crude oil and petroleum fuel imports. Under current law, the SPR is supposed to grow to 1 billion barrels at a cost of over $5 billion for construction and, at current prices, over $30 billion to fill it with oil. Buying more insurance doesn't make that old car any safer. While I support having a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the plain truth of the matter is that spending billions of additional dollars to put more oil into the SPR will not reduce our dependence on oil imports by a single barrel. This bill would take the money generated by reducing the size of the SPR and reinvest it in alternative energy technologies that will, in fact, genuinely reduce that dependence. Rather than putting more oil in the ground for short-term supply emergencies, we put American innovation to work to reduce our Nation's oil dependence permanently.

I applaud my colleague from Oregon, Senator Merkley, and our other Senate colleagues, for recognizing that new vehicle technologies now entering the market are not just scientific curiosities, but game-changing opportunities to finally get our country off of its addiction to oil. I look forward to working with them to enact programs and policies that ensure these alternative fuel technologies succeed in the marketplace.

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