OVERSIGHT NATIONAL SOLAR ENERGY POLICY THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1979 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND Washington, D.C. The subcommittees met at 9:30 a.m., pursuant to call, in room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Richard L. Ottinger (chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy Development and Applications) presiding. Mr. OTTINGER. We have this morning a joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Energy Development and Applications of the Science and Technology Committee, which I chair, and the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, chaired by the gentleman from Michigan, John Dingell. Unfortunately Mr. Dingell said he could not be with us to start the hearings this morning. The purpose of our joint hearing is to investigate the President's domestic policy review of solar energy. Just over a year ago President Carter called for an interagency domestic policy review of solar energy when he spoke on Sun Day in Golden, Colo. In that speech the President, as did many of us who participated in Sun Day events in California, from California to Maine, greeted the dawn of what we hoped would be a solar age. The domestic policy review, which involved a total of 29 Federal agencies and a good deal of public participation, was completed 7 months ago and submitted to the President for a policy decision. It is my serious hope that the policy decisions will be reached in the next few days so that in our second set of hearings, to start next Thursday, we will be able to discuss it. I hope at this time the use of the word "imminent" by the administration in terms of issuing the domestic policy review is really meant. The administration has not completed its decisionmaking and it will be incumbent upon us in Congress to move ahead on our own, acting on those portions of the domestic policy review which make sense. Too much time has already slipped away. The country cannot afford more waiting for a solar policy. I would like to express my own concern and, I think, that of our colleagues that, while the President has often expressed his interest in solar energy and his feeling that renewable resources ought to be the No. 1 priority of the administration, the actions of the administration simply have not met those words. In point of fact, the Congress and the two subcommittees in particular that are represented here have consistently been ahead of the administration in putting the development of alternative energy options. I would like to particularly express my concern that the administration has chosen not to send witnesses who would testify with respect to the basis of the figures contained in the response memorandum to the domestic policy review. We had invited here this morning Dr. Melvin Simmons, the assistant director for analysis and assessment, Solar Research Institute, in Golden, Colo., to testify not with respect to Presidential decisions that have not yet been announced but with respect to the domestic policy review response document itself, which at this point every Congressman has and which has been written up in the national press. We think that it is important, in our analysis of the domestic policy review and what can actually be accomplished in solar, that the basis of the assumptions and the projections that are made in the domestic policy review be subject to examination. Dr. Simmons was ordered by the top people in the Department not to appear but, if he did appear, he could not testify with respect to any of the figures contained in that response memorandum. I think that is a bad indication of the administration's desire to cooperate with the Congress in advancing solar energy. We intend to do what we can to rectify that situation, subpoenaing if necessary the members of the Department of Energy to appear and to produce this document and testify with respect to it; because, without the Department of Energy's input and without an indication of the basis on which they are making their decisions, the Congress is severely handicapped in its ability to be able to legislate soundly. Neither Mr. Dingell nor I intend to put up with that kind of obstructionism. We will take whatever action is necessary to see to it that that decision is reversed. One of the best things that has happened in this Nation since Sun Day, last May 3, is an incredible increase in the public awareness of, and desire for, solar energy. We can now regard it as almost an apple pie issue. Regardless of what the administration does and regardless of what Congress does, the enthusiasm and the interest both in the commercial sector and among the public is going to demand that we have this clean and infinitely renewable resource available to us. I must say I take a considerable amount of satisfaction with this public enthusiasm. I think I and my colleagues, on both of the committees and I have the privilege of being the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Power Subcommittee as well as the chairman of the Energy Development and Applications Subcommitteeat least have contributed somewhat in advancing the realization of the potential of solar energy to solve our country's energy needs. For our hearings this morning we do have a very well qualified series of panels representing experts in the field who will talk about the specific potential of our solar energy future, another panel that will present the utility point of view and the possibility of our public utilities' participating in advancing the actual application of solar technologies, and the homes and businesses through out the country. This afternoon we will have a panel on solar research and development, priorities, and strategies. I hope that we can help, despite the Department of Energy, to shed some light and increase the momentum with respect to bringing on this very promising technology. As I talk to scientists throughout the country, I find that they are now coming to view the solar option as being the most promising one for the future. Maybe eventually we will get the administration to catch up with us. Mr. Dingell expresses his regrets at not being able to be with us at the start. I understand he does have a statement. My good friend and colleague who also sits on both subcommittees, Mr. Gore of Tennessee, has a statement for Mr. Dingell. Mr. GORE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to put the text of the statement in the record at this point. Mr. OTTINGER. Without objection, it is so ordered. [The statement referred to follows:] OPENING STATement—NationAL SOLAR ENERGY POLICY, JUNE 14, 1979 Today the Subcommittee on Energy and Power, in concert with the Subcommittee on Energy Development and Applications, opens the first day of joint hearings on the National Solar Energy Policy. Our common interest lies in finding and developing a clear path for using this country's abundant renewable energy resources to reduce our dependence on fixed and diminishing fossil resources. As those fossil resources become scarcer, more expensive and less secure, we will be forced to turn in ever greater measure to the renewable resources of the sun, falling water, and the wind. It would seem wise to develop and employ these resources at an early date. The advantages of early action are twofold. First, it will reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, not only extending their availability to us, but also providing downward pressure on future price increases. Second, (and this is related to the first), it provides a cushion or flexibility in making the transition to renewable resources with the least amount of social and economic disruption. To continue to defer the development and execution of a deliberate plan of orderly conversion is to court disaster. And such deferral is, I believe, unacceptable to the American people. Today we will hear three panels. First, a panel on solar Energy Futures, to be followed by panels on Utility and User Impacts and on Research, Development and Demonstration. Next week, on the 21st, we will continue with panels on private sector impacts, the question of subsidies to conventional fuels and the definition of a proper Federal role towards solar, and the Department of Energy. Mr. OTTINGER. We will call on our first panel. We have Mr. Denis Hayes of the Worldwatch Institute, one of the prime citizen advocates of solar energy, who helped put together the Sun Day efforts, including the first one several years ago. He also put together the solar lobby which presently exists, and is continuing his good work with the Worldwatch Institute. We also have Dr. Paul Craig, professor, Department of Applied Science at the University of California-Davis, also a personal friend of mine and codirector of the Environmental Defense Fund. He has done a great deal of the pioneering work in solar energy. Here also is Dr. Gerald Bennington, associate department head, Advanced Energy and Resource Analysis, Mitre Corp., who has done a good deal of analysis with respect to the prospects for solar energy to meet our country's energy needs. We welcome all of you. I think there is still, perhaps more in the Department of Energy than anywhere else, a considerable amount of skepticism as to whether solar energy can really do the job that many of us have felt that it could and that it could make the kind of contributions, 25 percent or more, of our energy demands that studies have shown. You gentlemen have done a great deal of the work in this field. I would hope that the principal contribution you could make to us is to show how solar can actually come in and meet these needs, that it is a reality and not a case of wishful thinking. Let us hear first from Mr. Denis Hayes. [The biographical sketch and prepared statement of Mr. Hayes follow:] BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DENIS HAYES Denis Hayes, originator of Sun Day, is the author of "Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World." As a senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute, he analyzed alternative global energy strategies, energy conservation, nuclear proliferation and, most recently, policies that will create a sustainable society. Formerly director of the Illinois State Energy Office, Denis is Chairman of the Šolar Lobby board and the Center for Renewable Resources board. SOLAR ENERGY IN THE AMERICAN FUTURE By Denis Hayes For most of human history, it was possible to speak of the future with a high degree of confidence. A person who went off one day on a flying saucer and returned to the planet a few hundred years later would not have been dazzled by a host of fundamental changes. Such is no longer the case. Today we cannot speak with certainty about even a 20year interval. Efforts to forecast population trends, economic growth rates, and energy usage levels have all grown increasingly sophisticated. Yet the range of opinion among recognized experts is probably broader than the range of opinion among the lay public. Nowhere is this more true than with regard to energy. Energy forecasts are judgments made today about tomorrow using data gathered yesterday. If the smooth flow from yesterday to tomorrow is disrupted, the projections will likely prove erroneous. The Arab embargo, the Iranian shutdown, and Three Mile Island were painful disruptions. And like labor pains, such crises are likely to grow more intense and more frequent before the birth of a post-petroleum era. Economist Thomas Shelling has identified another forecasting problem as "a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable." Shelling says that "the contingency we have not considered looks strange; what looks strange is thought improbable; what is improbable need not be considered seriously." Until quite recently, solar energy was unfamiliar to most energy policy analysts, and its near-term widespread use was thought improbable. However, the last few years have seen dramatic changes. A few years ago, the world price of oil was $3.00 a barrel; today, it ranges between $16 and $35. A few years ago, world reserves of coal and oil shale were believed to be bountiful. Today, mainstream scientific thought holds that much of this fuel probably cannot be burned because the resulting carbon dioxide could cause catastrophic changes in the world's climate. A few years ago, problems of nuclear reactor safety, radioactive waste disposal, and the proliferation of weapons-grade materials were thought to have solutions. Today, those solutions remain elusive, and worldwide nuclear opposition has acquired a formidable momentum. A few years ago, solar energy was generally considered to be an "exotic" option. Today it is widely acknowledged that renewable energy resources can be tapped using a variety of existing, reliable, cost-effective technologies. To be sure, as with all other energy sources, there remains vast scope for improvement in solar hardware through continuing research and development. Nonetheless, existing solar technologies-along with strenuous efforts to increase the efficiency of energy useconstitute the most attractive energy choices we can make. These new realities have emerged in a number of recent studies by private and public agencies. Among official reports, the Domestic Policy Review of Solar Energy is the latest and most optimistic. The highest of its scenarios-assuming high-priced |