ple in New York and across America have access to reliable and affordable power. I ran into a friend of mine at breakfast yesterday, the recently retired chairman of Mobil Oil Company, Lou Noto, and I was talking with him and he said something which made a big impression on me. He said, "You know, we've got to do more in conservation." He said, "For every gallon of oil that I've brought up from the ground, 75 percent of its energy usage was wasted, 25 percent was what we eventually ended up using." He said, "You know, that's just not something we can keep doing." Well, we have to figure out a way how to avoid that. Much of the concern in New York is divided between our efforts to stimulate economic development in upstate New York and not having access to affordable and reliable power at a cost that many businesses feel they can pay, because you may know that New York has the highest utility cost in the country. We used to be second to Hawaii, but we have surpassed that distinction. Downstate we have the highest of the high, and so that is a real challenge for New York City, about how we are going to be meeting the needs, particularly this summer. Now that New York City's population has topped eight million for the first time in history, more and more people are going to be placing demands, and we have to be ready to meet those demands. I don't think our concern about meeting our demands for energy today should permit us to be short-sighted about our long-term energy and environmental needs over the coming decades. I fully support Senator Lieberman's initiative, both with respect to four pollutants but also with his strong stand against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is not an answer either to our short-term or our long-term energy needs and postpones the moment of reality and reckoning that our country has to come up to face. We have to decide we're going to be more energy efficient. Yes, we have to produce more, but what we produce, as Lou told me yesterday, we have to use more efficiently and cost effectively. So I'm very grateful that we are having this hearing, because we represent people, as all of us in this Body do, who need reliable and affordable power, but I also represent many people who are just as concerned that, you know, we've killed the lakes in the Adirondacks; that the Long Island Sound is, you know, not what it used to be; that if global warming comes to pass over the next 100 years, Long Island will become Short Island. You know, we have a lot of concerns that we have to confront. So I think it is important that we are having this hearing and trying to sort out all of these issues and trying to get a good, solid basis in science and fact on which to build a consensus that cuts across partisan lines. I just want to conclude by really recognizing the chairman's efforts, who I think has played a very important role. I hope, Mr. Chairman, that you will take me up on my offer at an earlier hearing to come to Ohio and visit some of the plants and the people that you represent and that you will come and visit some of my folks in the Adirondacks and elsewhere, because we have to figure out how to really protect the interests of all of our people in a way that brings people together and solves our prob lems, and I really applaud the many efforts you have made over the years to do just that. Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. Senator Crapo? OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL D. CRAPO, Senator CRAPO. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I also applaud your holding this and other hearings that you are going to hold. I didn't come here with a prepared statement, but as I listened to the statements made by you and other Senators something strikes me, and that is that there is a very clear indication here that there is a broad bipartisan support for developing a national energy policy and for a lot of the elements that have to be in that energy policy. I think that your statement, Mr. Chairman, very, very adequately laid out the scope of the issue that we have to address. Senator Lieberman and his focus on technology and making sure that we have a shared interest in problem solving plays right into what you were saying, Mr. Chairman, and I believe that ultimately we have already, as I've listened here, the basis for a good bipartisan approach to the issue. Undoubtedly, as we develop our approach to a national energy policy, we are going to have to focus on conservation and on efficiencies and on renewables and other alternative sources of energy. We're going to have to look at the short-term needs and find out how to address the issues that Mr. Chairman has raised already with regard to our lack of development of supply alternatives, whether it be short-term or long-term alternatives. I strongly agree with the chairman's highlighting of the fact that we have a significant source of power in this country that we have not utilized effectively-nuclear power. Admittedly, we have to address the waste stream issues, but when we can solve those issues and I believe that with all the talk we have about technology and research and the American ingenuity that needs to be brought to effect on these issues that we will be able to resolve the waste stream issues with nuclear power, and when we do we are going to see that there will be a tremendous boon to our ability to generate self-sufficiency in the power arena. So, with those comments I would just say I see that, with the statements that I've already heard here today, a broad area of consensus has already been outlined. I believe that this is a bipartisan issue where we have a strong commitment on all sides to make it work. There will be areas where there is disagreement, but from what I've heard today there's an awful lot more area of agreement, and hopefully we'll be able to work forward quickly to address both the short-and long-term needs. Thank you. Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you, Senator Crapo. It is interesting that you mention nuclear power. I've looked at the source of energy in our respective States, and it is interesting that, Senator Lieberman, 73 percent of the power in your State is from nuclear, and Senator Corzine 70 percent. It looks like your part of the country uses more nuclear power than the midwest and some other places in the country, and it has been-it is expensive. It's clean, and it is not as expensive as some other alternatives. It is an area that I think we also have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under our jurisdiction, and I've met now with three of the commissioners, and they sincerely believe that with some changes we could move forward with more production with the current facilities that are available. There are people in this country today that are giving consideration to building more nuclear-generating plants. The basic problem, of course, that we have is this whole issue that we've had since I was a county commissioner in Cuyahoga County, and that is: what do you do with the nuclear waste? Senator CRAPO. Mr. Chairman? Senator VOINOVICH. Yes? Senator CRAPO. Could I just make one interesting point there. Senator Clinton pointed out how we apparently waste 75 percent of the power that comes from the oil that we take out of the ground in just getting it up and generating it into ultimate usage. I'm going to be a little bit off on these statistics, but I'm in the ball park. My understanding is that, with regard to the spent nuclear fuel, when those fuel rods come out only about 10 percent of the power in those fuel rods has been utilized, and that if they can figure out the technology to refine and reconcentrate those fuel rods, there's about 90 percent of the power left in them. It's a tremendous-it's enough power to run the energy needs of this country for 100s of years in a lot of different areas, and so this focus we're talking about on research and development and technology I think can be utilized very effectively in nuclear power. Senator VOINOVICH. Thank you. We're very fortunate today to have two panelists that have had a lot to do with our energy and environment over the years, Ms. Linda Stuntz, former Deputy Secretary, Department of Energy, and Kate McGinty, former chairman of CEQ. We're pleased that you are both with us this morning. Ms. Stuntz, we'll start with you. I think you are familiar with the rules of the committee that we'd like you to try to limit your testimony to 5 minutes. Your statements will be put into the record, and so if you can do that we'd very, very grateful to you. Ms. Stuntz? STATEMENT OF LINDA STUNTZ, FORMER DEPUTY Ms. STUNTZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to testify before you today on this extremely important and very timely issue of harmonizing the Clean Air Act and the nation's energy policy. Some 12 years ago, before I was Deputy Secretary in the Department of Energy, I was something called Deputy Under Secretary for Policy, which meant I got the things to do that nobody else really wanted to do. One of those things-and it made an effect on me for my life, I will tell you-was to be the Department's point person on the development of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, both within the Administration and in meetings here in the Senate. I re call many days spent around a conference table with then-Majority Leader Mitchell, working out a deal that was going to be done between the Senate and the Administration. Senator Lieberman is laughing because he was a part of that process, as well. I recall his constructive participation in that process. I'm heartened this morning by what I've heard, because I think-not that it was perfect-but those amendments were important. They were a product of a bipartisan approach that included the Administration. It is never easy to deal with the Clean Air Act. I don't think you will be able to reauthorize it as it needs to be done without a similar approach, and so I think you are off to a good start. That experience certainly impressed upon me the importance and the difficulty of reconciling these competing objectives. I will be brief this morning. At the risk of boring some of you who I'm sure know this, I did attach to my testimony some basic facts in hopes that it would be useful to you as you continue your inquiries on this matter. I won't review in detail our current energy consumption. I don't disagree with Senator Lieberman that in the future we all must inevitably evolve from a fossil-fuel-based economy to something else, whether it is hydrogen or nuclear. We are right now very much a fossil-fuel-based economy, and the charts I've showed you make that quite clear. Figure two, I would point out, also talks about the trends. The trends you see are good in the sense that we use less oil now in our economy. We are less oil dependent than we used to be. That's primarily because we've backed it out of electricity, but we remain, of course, extremely dependent on it in transportation. Coal is the single largest source of energy that we produce as a nation. Natural gas-interestingly, those in the room who are energy groupies will recall that in the early 1970's we actually produced more natural gas than we produce now. Even though there has been substantial attention to that, we have yet to obtain the level of production we had back then. There's a long, interesting story about why that occurred, and we can go into that if it is of interest. In terms of the less-emitting energy-and I hesitate to say "emission free," because when the Energy Administration information calculates non-hydro renewables, it includes biomass and municipal solid waste. My friends in the environmental community frequently have issues with those factors, so non-hydro renewables and hydropower and nuclear together don't make up very much of the total. When we talk about Clean Air Act policy I think that has to be kept in mind. Let me move to figure three, because that's where it gets interesting. We talk about where at least the Energy Information Administration thinks we're going in the future. One of the things we know about this for sure is that it will be wrong, because we never do a very good job as a nation in predicting exactly what we will use and how much it will cost. But directionally I think it is important to look at what they see happening. Our production of petroleum is going to continue to decline. Perhaps it will stabilize. Perhaps not. That depends upon price, that depends upon technology. Coal is going to continue to increase to meet our needs, leveling off a little bit, but, nonetheless, remaining extremely important. With respect to nuclear energy-and the Energy Information Administration has some, I believe, fairly pessimistic predictions about relicensing. I think there will be more relicensing of existing plants that could extend their lives and extend the contribution of that source. I think it is an important issue for this subcommittee to look into, because without that what you see is that hydro power continues to be static, could even decline. Non-hydro renewables increases slightly but not a lot, and we remain primarily a fossil fuel based economy. This doesn't exclude, please, the importance of conservation. Republicans always get hit with this-that we don't care about conservation. In fact, the economy has grown substantially more energy efficient as it has adopted new technologies, and it will continue to do so. We need it all, I think, is the bottom line. Let me just close by talking about what I see as the greatest challenge we face right now, and that's on the electric side. We didn't need California and a lot of other things, tightness in New York City this summer to tell this. If you look at figure four, it really shows you where the Government experts think we are headed with respect to the need for new capacity. Right now, as was pointed out in the opening statement, I believe by the chairman, some 89 or 90 percent of that capacity is predicted to be natural gas. As I point out in my statement, I represent companies that drill for natural gas and build pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico. There are credible technological stories going on down there to produce gas from a mile of water and 7,000 feet beneath that. I have great optimism for their ability to do this. Nonetheless, any time this nation in the past has decided that we know the fuel that is going to carry us through, whether it was nuclear too cheap to meter, coal, no more natural gas, synthetic fuels, whenever we have done that we have regretted it. It has been a costly mistake. Therefore, I think this forecast should be troubling in terms of fuel diversity, in terms of security, and in terms of economics. As to the extent to which the Clean Air Act has driven this development, it unquestionably has been a factor. Perhaps we can discuss later the extent to which it has been a factor. I think that is debatable, but it clearly has been an issue in terms of the ability to build new coal plants, uncertainty about the requirements, and the importance of regulatory certainty for the future to make these large, long-life capital investments. So let me close with that. I look forward to your questions and this important discussion. Senator VOINOVICH. I thank you very much, Ms. Stuntz. |