public can fill a role and fill gaps. That is what a better mission would be here, and that would require the sort of inclination that the Cabinet-level would hold.

The benefits to our economy are very large. California is already adding up the tens of thousands of jobs that we expect to pull into the State because of the greenhouse gas requirements. Those are things that the United States could also capture as a peace or a green dividend by taking this on at that very highest Presidential cabinet level.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. You think it is helping the economy in California?

Mr. KAMMEN. It is documented. We have studies from universities, from private sectors

Chairman TOM DAVIS. I would love to see that.

Mr. KAMMEN [continuing]. In and out of State. I would love to send the copies along. The estimates are that to meet the AB32 greenhouse gas standards California will generate about 50,000 new jobs, largely high-tech, in-State jobs.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Because the general rap on California is it is a job killer. I will keep an open mind. I am interested to see it. I come from a District with a 2 percent unemployment rate out here in northern Virginia, but I would be eager to see that.

Mr. Waxman.

Thank you all very much.

Mr. WAXMAN. I also want to thank all of the panelists. One of the things you may not be aware of is that the hearings are carried on the internal television coverage within the House, so I was away but I was able to watch your testimony and to read it, of course, from the statements that you submitted.

Dr. Socolow, the administration's plan is to put off action on global warming for years to come. They continue to fund some research, but they would leave concrete action to address global warming to future administrations. They seem to think there is little meaningful action we can take now.

You have done considerable work examining what technologies are available today. Can you explain more about what you call stabilization wedges and give us some examples of available technologies that could be deployed to fight global warming?

Mr. SocoLow. I don't think there are many people in the administration who would agree with everything I am about to say, and it really infuses the climate change technology plan. I called it One Hand Clapping. The program there makes no sense unless, alongside it, there is a motivation for early action, for trying things out. I will take the example of carbon capture and storage at coal plants. We shouldn't be building any coal plants from here on that don't further the goal of carbon capturing storage in all of them and keep as short as possible the transition from some of them to all of them. The DOE has a program on carbon capture and storage, a wonderful one, one of the best in the world. They, themselves, know that it makes no sense unless there is a carbon policy that goes with it, so we are not even going to get the taxpayers' benefit of the R&D without the associated program. This is widely understood. This is not a Democrat and Republican thing.

Inefficiency technologies, again, the DOE has had a perfectly simple program and substantially pushing the R&D element of efficiency, but we could have tougher appliance standards across so many sectors and move these things out. The R&D goes hand in hand with the policies.

In renewables, again, we have an incoherent renewables program as far as I can tell. If we had stronger signals that were broadly posed in terms of carbon price, for example, you would have better sorting out of the alternatives.

We listed 15 wedges, each of which is a gigantic challenge worldwide to reach a point where you are contributing 15 percent to the whole job 50 years from now. Each of these is a campaign. That is another word I like to use, a campaign or a strategy. It has to be globally coordinated. The United States is emitting one-quarter of the emissions today. We have technological leadership. We are slowing everybody else down by our inaction, which is another dangerous thing.

We will bring the world along if we join, and we will conjoin along renewables, efficiency, and fossil fuel technologies in a very important way.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

Dr. Kammen, we are proud of California for the leadership that our State has shown in this whole area. To me, I strongly believe in States experimenting, but this is an area where we need Federal leadership. Maybe California's actions will spur it.

You have testified that the administration's climate change technology program's strategic plan is seriously flawed. You state that the goal it seeks to attain is too modest. I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on that. And, moreover, if the administration were to achieve its so-called emission intensity target, would we have any confidence that we have meaningfully tackled global warming?

Mr. KAMMEN. Let me start with your second question first. The answer is absolutely not. The emissions intensity target, as I said before, has no basis in the natural world. It doesn't address the fundamental question that we are putting in too much carbon, so we have to have an absolute target here, one that is measurable and quantifiable. California, as you know, has set up a carbon registry so that companies and municipalities track their emissions and look at them not on an intensity basis, which is a sliding scale based on how much you are growing, but based on overall emissions levels.

And the most interesting first conclusion from that is that just by monitoring you discover some of the areas. I liken it to the frequent flyer effect. If you start to collect frequent flyer miles you want to spend them. Companies that tally up their numbers and discover they are saving this much, they could save more, want a market to sell those credits. That is what California's AB32 has in place. It has a market mechanism that extends across the economy and outside, because all electricity sold into California will be subject.

I know of six coal-fired power plant plans that were on the table to be built in the mountain States to sell to California that have now been shelved as a result of what California has done.

So the reach is impressive. You are right, we do need to have this go beyond not just California and the west but it has to extend to all countries.

I do not believe there is a benefit, however, in waiting to act until we get this. Those municipalities, countries that export and have developed the best technologies will have the opportunity to export them for a variety of efficiency gains, and that really is the benefit that we are seeing in Scandinavia. We see parts of Germany_and_Spain doing the same thing, and Japan and California and New England. The Reggie Coalition is also taking an aggressive role in that. That is where the economic benefit lies.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Van Hollen.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank all of the witnesses for your testimony. As Dr. Kammen said in his testimony, what we are measuring here against in terms of reductions is what has to be accomplished for the purpose of reducing the negative impacts of global warming, the human contribution to that to whatever level we feel is sustainable in terms of our own needs. The administration, when they talk about just reducing the rate of increase, that may not be enough if you are not reducing the rate of increase by the amount necessary to achieve the goals that we want.

I also, although I am from the State of Maryland, I want to commend the State of California for its leadership on this issue and moving forward. I think you have already spoken to some of the immediate economic consequences in terms of decisions that are being made by coal-fired plants not just in California but outside of California.

This is really a question for any of the witnesses. Because we have had testimony from various administration officials and you have heard their technology plan there is no dispute about the need to invest in technology and renewable energy and energy efficiency. I mean, on a bipartisan basis people can agree and we should do it on an urgent basis and I think we should increase dramatically our investment in there. Where there seems to be disagreement, which is what Dr. Socolow really called the other hand for clapping, in other words, it is the need to invest in technology, but you really need that market forcing mechanism. You need to bring them both together. That is where there has been no political will. That is why the California legislation is important. That is where the administration has nothing to offer so far.

So I guess my question for any of the panelists here, if you just take the administration's plan with respect to what they want to invest in technology and renewable energy, what kind of reductions, if any, are we going to see? And what is the gap between the reductions we will achieve if we just do everything they say as compared to where we need to be?

Mr. HOFFERT. I just want to make a personal observation. I live on Long Island, on Great Neck Long Island in New York, a suburb of New York City. Our family has signed up for green energy. We get electric power from upstate New York. We don't actually get the electrons. It is basically an offset, but we have to pay extra for

Now, Long Island, where I live has a nuclear power plant called Shoreham that cost $6 billion. There are only 3 million people. That means every man, woman, and child is paying $2,000 for a power plant that is never going to produce any kilowatt hours. Most of the people don't even know that is happening, and that is one of the reasons we have a very high rate base. And then, when wind power becomes available, we have to pay in addition to that. I think there is a really big problem of educating people so that they really understand where their utility bills go and how decisions that are made ultimately impact on them. I think there is also certainly a role for the Federal Government in making it financially desirable to do something like getting your power from green power, even though it means importing it.

There is also a lot that can be done with hybrid cars. I heard Dan talking about that earlier. Probably the most effective nearterm thing that could be done to reduce our imported oil, in conjunction with biofuels like ethanol, which I might have some problems with, but the combination of plug-in hybrids and ethanol is very desirable. You can't buy a car like that.

I mean, I have a hybrid. I am not happy with it. It turns out I bought this Lexus hybrid before it was available on the market and the fuel economy is nowhere near what I was hoping it would be, but there are a lot of issues like that that I believe there is a role for incentives by the Federal Government that could really make a difference to the average person.

Mr. KAMMEN. I'd be happy to. I'd actually like to defend the Department of Energy here. I believe that the language in the mission statements that are in the CCTP were really a product of a little bit of an earlier era, and that the sense of that document is what are a set of individual stovepipe policies that are attractive. Many of the individual things in the report are quite interesting, but what I think we have heard broadly across the board here and what I heard actually from the Members and their comments is that an integrated strategy is needed.

Until you have the integrated strategy, in my opinion, with aggressive R&D, aggressive market policies, and a carbon tax you are not going to get the kind of document out of a tasked agency to do so, so I really think it is, and I would love to see a sense of the committee statement, a memo coming out saying we believe the following is in the national interest and this is what we should push for.

It is those sorts of sentiments coming back to a Department of Energy, a restructured one or not, that will allow us to say what is our goal. In my opinion the goal is the 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases, but over a very manageable period of time—a big challenge, but a manageable period of time, five decades or so. When those political statements come out, I think that the DOE can actually move itself quite far in the direction they want.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. I think that the committee will try to work some bipartisan language on this. One of reasons we are holding the hearings is to establish a pretty solid link. Most Members understand there is a problem and are concerned about the

way it is being addressed. It is not necessarily the goal, but just how you implement it. Where's the priorities?

Dr. Socolow, we have just a second because I have a Cabinet Secretary waiting in the back. Go ahead.

Mr. SOCOLOW. I just wanted to say that there is a time warp, I think, too, in the way in which we are all looking at this problem. The climate scientists have raised the level of the alarm. I live among them in my own office. They can't believe we are going to take the risks of going above doubling the CO2 concentration. There isn't any urgency if we live with three times. So we have to keep reminding ourselves that there is a message coming from the science community, and as far as how much carbon we can put in for a given level, that is a completely agreed-upon area with very small uncertainties.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. Thank you.

Did you want to make one last comment?

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I agree with you, Mr. Chairman. It would be important to get a sense of the Congress in terms of what goal we are trying to achieve, but the other half of that, of course, is how we get to the goal. I think, as I understand the testimony, just investment in R&D, alone, won't accomplish that. Is that fair? Mr. SOCOLOw. Absolutely correct.

Chairman TOM DAVIS. We agree. That is one of the reasons we are doing it.

Thank you all very much. It has been very helpful for us.
The hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:20 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings follows:]