Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Floor Speech
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, never in our Nation's history has the American military relied more on National Guard and Reserve servicemembers than it has in the last 10 years.
More than 800,000 members of the National Guard and Reserves have been called to active duty service since 9/11, many of them serving two, three, and four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan
Our military does an exceptional job of preparing these guardsmen and reservists for combat, but we do far too little to prepare them for transition back to civilian life.
Our guardsmen need a transition from the trauma of combat to the serenity of home in Oregon and throughout our Nation. But instead our guardsmen and reservists are sent back to their community with little or no time to readjust. In a matter of a few days these guardsmen go from holding a gun in the chaos of a combat zone to holding their children in the serenity of their own home. That has to be a difficult transition.
Unlike most active-duty troops who receive a soft landing through a number of carefully monitored reintegration programs and other support services provided on an active-duty base, returning guardsmen lack the support system of a large base.
While active-duty soldiers come home to military bases and the jobs and support systems that they provide, returning Guard members are in many instances left to face the increasingly stark reality of transitioning to civilian life on their own.
The amount of personal and professional requirements placed on guardsmen and reservists pre- and post-deployment are mind boggling. What they need more than anything is time to wind down and tend to their lives.
Even under the best of circumstances, the road back from war is difficult and extremely stressful. Men and women who have served in harm's way experience higher rates of divorce and suicide.
Many battle the debilitating effects and stigma associated with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In the current struggling economy, nearly half of the guard members and reservists have no job to return to. Some find that the jobs and careers they put on hold to serve their country simply no longer exist.
To compound an unacceptable unemployment problem, Guard members and reservists are immediately taken off the military payroll once they get home.
Imagine that reality for a second. You left your home, your family and your job to serve your country in harm's way for 10 months, only to be welcomed back with no job and no source of income to pay for your home or support your family.
If they do have a job waiting for them, to keep a steady income, Guardsmen must jump right back into the high stress of relearning their civilian job without a chance to decompress or readjust from the stress of combat.
That is what my bill would help fix.
The National Guard and Reserve Soft Landing Reintegration Act would allow returning guardsmen and reservists to take up to 45 days to decompress, reintegrate, and get their lives in order, while still being paid.
I started this program because I think that citizen-soldiers are one of the strengths of this nation. They and their families should be acknowledged for the level of sacrifices that they are making.
Addressing the post deployment-related needs of returning guardsmen is not only the moral thing to do; it is also strategically wise for our nation.
This is part of the promise our nation made to take care of our troops. They did their best of us. We should do our best for them.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the RECORD.
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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, today I am being joined by my colleagues Senator Bingaman and Senator Collins on the introduction of the Storage Technology for Renewable and Green Energy Act of 2011 or the STORAGE 2011 Act. The purpose of the bill is to promote the deployment of energy storage technologies to make the electric grid operate more efficiently and help manage intermittent renewable energy generation from wind, solar, and other sources that vary with the time of day and the weather.
Traditionally, peak demand has been met by building more generation and transmission facilities, many of which sit idle much of the time. The Electric Power Research Institute's White Paper on storage technology observed that 25 percent of the equipment and capacity of the U.S. electric distribution system and 10 percent of the generation and transmission system is needed less than 400 hours a year. Peak generation is also often met with the least efficient, most costly power plants. Energy storage systems offer an alternative to simply building more generation and transmission to meet peak demand because they allow the current system to meet peak demands by storing less expensive off-peak power, from the most cost-efficient plants, for use during peak demand.
The growth of renewable energy from wind and solar and other intermittent renewable sources, like wave and tidal energy, raises yet another challenge for the electric grid that storage can help address. These renewable sources deliver power at times of the day or night when they might not be needed or fluctuate with the weather. Energy storage technology allows these intermittent sources to store power as it is generated and allow it to be dispatched when it is most needed and in a predictable, steady of stream of electricity no longer at the vagaries of weather conditions. And equally important, it allows this intermittent generation to more closely match demand. Instead of trying to find a place to sell power at 3:00 am in the morning when demand is down, wind farms for example would be able to sell their power at 3:00 pm in the afternoon when demand is up.
The STORAGE 2011 Act offers investment tax credits for three categories of energy storage facilities that temporarily store energy for delivery or use at a later time. The bill is technology neutral and does not pick storage technology ``winners'' and ``losers'' either in terms of the storage technology that is used or in terms of the source of the energy that is stored. The electricity can come from a wind farm or it can come for a coal or nuclear plant. Pumped hydro, compressed air, batteries, flywheels, and thermal storage are all eligible technologies as are smart-grid enabled plug-in electric vehicles.
First, the STORAGE 2011 Act provides a 20 percent investment tax credit of up to $40 million per project for storage systems connected to the electric grid and distribution system. A total of $1.5 billion in these investment credits are available for these grid connected systems. Developers would have to apply to the Treasury Department and DOE for the credits, similar to the process used for the green energy manufacturing credits the ``48C'' program. This is a 20 percent credit so that means the actual cost of the project that would be eligible for the full credit would be $200 million.
The Act also provides a 30 percent investment tax credit of up to $1 million per project to businesses for on-site storage, such as an ice-storage facility in on office building, where ice is made at night using low-cost, off-peak power and then used to help air-condition the building during the day while reducing peak demand. This is a 30 percent credit so the cost of the actual projects that would get the full credit amount would be around $3.3 million.
The Act also provides for 30 percent tax credit for homeowners for on-site storage projects to store off-peak electricity from solar panels or from the grid for later use during peak hours.
As the EPRI white paper noted ``(d)espite the large anticipated need for energy storage solutions within the electric enterprise, very few grid-integrated storage installations are in actual operation in the United States today.'' The purpose of the STORAGE 2011 Act is help jump start the deployment of these storage solutions so that renewable energy technologies can increase their economic value to the electric grid while reducing their power integration costs as well as to improve the overall efficiency of the electrical system.
I urge my colleagues to take a closer look at what storage technologies can do to help reduce the cost of electricity and improve the performance of the electric grid and renewable energy technologies. If they do, I am confident my colleagues will join Senators Bingaman and Collins in supporting this bipartisan legislation.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
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