Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. What is neat about this is a lot of these things are happening in areas that have previously been quite depressed. This is an area that has really been hurt when the timber industry has had some tough times. And now we have got this, and there are two other very green industries that have developed in Grays Harbor, Washington. You look around the Midwest where the ethanol plants have gone up, these communities have really revitalized. A lot of them have been using co-ops. This is not all money from Wall Street. These are co-ops where people have banded together and built their own industry. It is a very unifying experience when these communities do this. We see this happening in the inner city where we are developing green collar jobs, where we are improving the efficiency of older buildings. When you have a green collar job to rebuild a building to make it energy efficient, that job doesn't get shipped to China. It is right here. It is a local green collar job. That is why we are excited about that. We talked about the five steps we took last Thursday: number one, auto efficiency, which we are calling for; number two, commonsense tax fairness to move some of these things away from oil and gas to these new businesses and consumers to help them; number three, the renewable energy standards so we can have clean energy electricity; number four, the efficiency standards that Mike and Meg Town used to such effect to allow your home to be efficient; and, number five, the renewable fuels standard where we are calling for advanced fuels. And by the way, our renewable fuels standard requires these advanced biofuels. It requires about two-thirds of this to be from these advanced forms, not just corn ethanol, but advanced forms of ethanol in the future. So those are five significant steps. Just to note how significant they are, there has been an independent group that evaluates energy policy that has evaluated a very similar plan to this and concluded that when this plan is implemented, it will save more carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere, the principal global warming gas, than all of our cars and trucks are putting into the atmosphere today. This is a big, big deal. We know we have to reduce our carbon dioxide by probably 80 percent by the year 2050 to prevent carbon dioxide from going over twice preindustrial levels. This is about maybe 35 or more percent of the way we need to go. So it is a very significant first five steps on that path. For those who are interested in this subject, I want to congratulate Vice President Al Gore for winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I read his acceptance speech, which anyone who is interested in the subject I would recommend it to them. It is available on some Web site somewhere. It is a brilliant statement of the planetary emergency we now have, and I would encourage people to take a look at it because it will give you a sense of urgency that we have.

Mr. INSLEE. Well, I hope that that occurs. And I'm really excited about power off our coastline as well. We have a little coastline off the Pacific coast which actually has the potential to generate power from waves. Mr. Klein talked about power from currents, where you can have turbines that turn, like a windmill or rotary moving mechanisms, but we also have huge power from waves that simply go up and down that are generated by the wind. And off our coast right now, we have some buoys going into the water, and as they bob up and down, they compress water, and that generates compression that turns the turbine that generates electricity. And this is a technology that is in its infancy, but there is enormous power in our wave power. In a 10x10 mile stretch off the Pacific coast, there is enough electricity for all the electrical needs of California, for instance. So, here's another technology. I want to compare this technology to wind power. I've got a picture here of the largest wind farm in the western hemisphere, it's in southeastern Washington, in my State. These are, I think, almost three- quarters to one megawatt. That's enough for 1,000 homes, each one of these turbines. They are somewhere between 250 and 300 feet high. And what that power represents now is absolutely clean power, which today is the least expensive power that we can buy in the Pacific Northwest. If you want to get the cheapest power you can buy right now, this is the cheapest power essentially that you can buy, cheaper compared to even coal fire, or as cheap as a coal fire plant. That's why there is huge demand for these turbines. Actually, the pricing has gone up because there is so much demand for them, people want to buy them. The reason I mention wind in conjunction with wave power and tidal power is a lot of people think that wave power and tidal power is sort of where the wind industry was about 20 to 25 years ago, in its infancy. When this started, people laughed at it. They thought it was like a big tinker toy with a bunch of folks living in a teepee that were dreaming up. And for a long time it was ahead of its time. Now it is commercially viable, it is supporting thousands of jobs. The Speaker's State of Pennsylvania has a company called Gamesa that is manufacturing these turbines. In Iowa, the Clipper Turbine Company is manufacturing. We want to make these and put them out to the world. That's why the third step, we've talked about the first two, the auto efficiency standards, the tax fairness provisions, and now the third step we've taken is what we call the renewable electricity standard, which requires 15 percent of our electricity to come from a combination of renewable energy, clean energy sources, wind, solar, wave, enhanced geothermal, and efficiency. And we believe if we simply create those demands for these technologies, if you demand it, they will come. And these technologies will take off once we have these demands. So, this is an important part of the package. Some of our colleagues across the Chamber and in the Senate are balking at this. If we don't get this through now, we will next time. We will make some adjustments to it and get it through, because once people find out about these technologies, they're ready to rock and roll. I yield to Mr. Klein.

Mr. INSLEE. And what we have found, the genius of this, like you said, once the demand is created for these renewable energy prices, there is a very, very tried and tested rule that kicks in, which is, they become cheaper over time. And people say, well, gee, some of these things cost more than coal right now or oil and gas. Well, that's true right now, but look at what the experience has been over the last two decades. These are graphs from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the renewable energy cost trends over the last 25, 27 years, and there is remarkable consistency. Wind energy started out in 1980 about 30 cents, 32 cents a kilowatt hour. It came down dramatically, until now it's down to in the range of 6 to 8 cents in this graph, that actually might be a little optimistic, in the year 2000. Look at this enormous reduction over the last 20 years because of improvements in technology, and the fact that once you have scales of economy, you manufacture more of these, they cost less. Same thing with solar thermal technology, that type of technology I showed earlier with the mirrors, heating up the water, started out at 60 cents a kilowatt hour in 1990, gone down to about 8 cents a kilowatt hour now in the year 2000. Again, these are, frankly, a little optimistic. These charts are a little less than the numbers I've heard quoted, but you get the general trend that it's incredibly down. Photovoltaic solar energy, that's the kind most of us are familiar with, which you have a silicone panel, and it just takes the sun's energy and spins off an electron and creates an electrical current, started at 100 cents a kilowatt hour, now it's down to 22, 24 cents a kilowatt hour. And what we find in these charts, in almost all these technologies there is almost this kind of law, I don't know if it's got a name yet, when you increase by a factor of 10 the number of units of these renewable sources, the price comes down 20 cents. Now, what does that tell us? We know two things for sure; the cost of fossil fuels is going up, and it isn't coming down. China is coming on like gang busters. They're demanding. They want to start buying the oil for their cars, too. And as their economy grows, that demand is going up. And we know we're not producing, we're not keeping up with the pace of demand for the increase in our oil production, so fossil fuel is going up over time. We know these renewable sources are coming down over time, including geothermal, which is coming down dramatically again, from 1 dollar in 1980 down to about 26, 28 cents now. So, we know these are coming down. These lines are going to cross. And if we're going to hitch our economic star to some technology, let's hitch our star to the technologies that are getting cheaper, not the ones that are getting more expensive over time. And that's what this bill has done. I yield to Mr. Klein.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, every revolution has a start. May 25, 1961, John F. Kennedy, with full confidence in Americans' ability to innovate, said we are going to go to the Moon in 10 years. Skip ahead a few years, December 6, 2007, the day we are starting a clean energy revolution to give America economic growth through technological progress, and that progress is happening all across America. In every State, that progress is going to take place, because this bill is going to help innovators. Let's take a quick run-through where: In Michigan, where General Motors plans on building the plug-in hybrid that you can drive 40 miles with zero gasoline and get 100 miles per gallon with batteries designed in Massachusetts. In Florida, California, Arizona, Mississippi, a whole host of States, where the Ausra Technology Company has designed a solar thermal process to make C02-free solar energy within 10 years to be competitive with coal-based electricity. For those who say we can't do energy everywhere, where the sun shines, solar thermal energy will work, including in my State, the State of Washington. We move forward, virtually every State in the country has the potential for biofuels, and here is a picture of the Imperium Biofuels Company. It is located in a former dying timber town of Grays Harbor, Washington. It is the largest biodiesel plant in the world, something America can be proud about, that we will expand. And lastly, emerging technologies, some of which people have not heard about. This is a picture of a wave power buoy on the coast of Oregon. We have enough energy in the Pacific coast in a 10-by-10 mile stretch to power all of the electrical needs of the State of California. And this doesn't even start to talk about gains from efficiency. This bill will help Americans insulate their homes, make sure they are using fairly efficient lighting, and make sure that their furnaces and air conditioning are efficient. And a new report just out this week says that we can cut by 50 percent our growth. Pass this bill and start this clean energy revolution.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I have come to the House floor tonight to really share some great news, and that doesn't always happen in this Chamber, and the great news is that this week we hope to take a major step forward in our effort to revolutionize the energy economy of America to bring it to a place where we can use the genius of Americans to break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil, to stop global warming, and to grow millions of good-paying green collar jobs in this country. And tomorrow or the next day we hope to have on the floor a bill that will take major strides in that direction to start facing these challenges and really recognizing the economic potential of a clean energy revolution for this country. We have challenges associated with energy, but we who will bring this bill to the floor believe that we also have opportunities involving energy. And those of us who will be supporting this energy bill believe that we need to look at this from an optimistic, visionary, progressive can-do spirit. And if we hearken to the can-do spirit of Americans, we are going to revolutionize the way we create and use energy in this country. And when we do that, we are going to grow millions of jobs in the process. If I can briefly just talk about the challenges that we face, and perhaps they are obvious, but I think it is important at least to note them, about why we need a new energy policy in this country. And let me start with the one that perhaps is most obvious to us, and that is that our addiction to Middle Eastern oil threatens our security. It's not a very wise policy. And we were just being briefed by a vice admiral of the United States Navy retired just about 15 minutes ago on this subject. He pointed out that it's not a very good strategic decision to be sending just under $1 million a minute of our money to people who are attacking us in the Middle East. Funding your enemies is not known as a particularly brilliant strategic move. And Americans know that our national security is at risk as long as we are on the addiction train for the oil coming out of the Mid East. So we know there is a security reason for our trying to move to a more energy independent position where we are less dependent on oil to run our economy. Second, we know that global warming is a challenge. I'm certainly aware of this. I represent a district just north of Seattle. My county got 9 inches of rain in 24 hours the day before yesterday. And you will turn on your TV tonight, and you will see these floods. These floods and precipitation events are consistent with the models of what we will see more frequently in the Pacific Northwest with global warming. We don't want to see that happen. We're seeing it, the last 2 years, we've had these things happen. Mount Rainier National Park was shut down for the first time in 100 years last year because of one of these horrendous rainstorms. We know that we've seen one million miles of the Arctic melt, just disappear this year, the size of six Californias disappear. We know we have a problem with global warming; we've got to face up to it. And third, we know that we have a loss of jobs in this country. We've seen a shrinking of our manufacturing base. We've seen outsourcing of our jobs across the world. We're seeing enormous imports coming in from China and exports not going back. So we need to reorient our economy so that we can develop products for export to the rest of the world. And guess what? We have the perfect opportunity to do that in developing clean energy technologies so we can rebuild our economy, and there is a great way to do it. I want to start by talking about the tremendous strides that Americans are making today in building a new clean energy transportation system for the United States. Now, I get really excited about this. For one reason, two days ago I was in Anaheim, California, at the electric car convention, the 23rd convention of the Electric Car Association in Anaheim, California; and I was blown away by the progress that's being made in the electrification of the automobile. Now, we have, frankly, not made much progress in increasing the efficiency of our cars since the early 1980s. We did a tremendous thing in the seventies and eighties: we increased our fuel efficiency by over 60 percent in about 5 to 6 years, but then we stopped. Congress stopped, the President stopped, we stopped dead in our tracks from making any progress on fuel efficiency. Well, for 30 years now we haven't made one mile a gallon improvement. Think about how pathetic that is. Since 1983, we've started the Internet, mapped the human genome, we've even invented the cup holder for our cars; but we haven't improved the mileage they're getting by even 1 mile a gallon. Well, this week, tomorrow or the next day, we hope to pass on this floor a provision that will make the first improvements in 30 years in our automobile efficiency standards that were so incredibly successful in the early years. We need to simply start getting back up on that improvement train because that's what America is about, which is constant improvement. And we intend to raise it to 35 miles a gallon, which is certainly obtainable, and I'll talk about why we know it's obtainable in a few minutes. We know that's a very obtainable goal, and we hope to pass that. And this is why this is important. I did a little research on this; I've done a lot of research on this. I actually just recently wrote a book about this, so this is where I got a lot of this information. When you write a book about things, you tend to go out and ask a lot of people questions. And what I learned was that if we had simply continued making the same improvements in mileage that we made from 1976 to 1983, if we had simply continued on that rate of improvement, we would be free of Saudi Arabian oil today. Think of what that would have meant to our national security if we were free of that oil influence in our foreign policy. Well, we have to get back in that good habit of expecting more fuel efficient cars. Now, we know this is capable of happening because we know essentially the technology has become better in our cars; it has simply gone to power and some other things rather than fuel efficiency. But this 35- mile-a-gallon standard I know is achievable because today I am driving a car that gets 45 miles a gallon. This car, it's convenient, it's safe, it carries five people comfortably. I'm 6 foot-2 inches, 200 pounds. It carries me and a big cherry tree in the back very conveniently. So we don't even have to wait until 2020 or 2022 to do this; we have cars that can do this today. But we know that we're going to make transitions, both in cars and trucks of all sizes, to move to more efficiency. But I'll tell you what's coming. What's coming very shortly is not just these little incremental half-mile, one-mile, two-mile-a-gallon improvements. What is coming is wholesale giant leaps forward in automobile efficiency. And I want to show you why I know that's going to happen, or believe it's going to happen. This is a picture of a car, the GM Volt. The GM Volt is a car that General Motors hopes to put into mass production in 5 years or so. It would be the first American mass production plug-in hybrid car. The GM Volt is a plug-in hybrid car. And the way a plug-in hybrid car works is ingenious. It has a hybrid system which runs, essentially, the wheels with electric motors. And a hybrid system works partly on an electrical battery system and part on an internal combustion engine that right now is burning gasoline, and some day will burn cellulosic ethanol or biodiesel. But what a plug-in hybrid does is it allows you to charge your batteries at night, and then for about 40 miles all you use is electricity. So when the GM Volt comes out, you will be able to plug in your car in your garage, unplug it tonight, go about your business. For the first 40 miles, it's all electric; no carbon dioxide coming out of your tailpipe, no gasoline being burned whatsoever. And the daily usage of a car for 60 percent of Americans is less than 40 miles in one day. So when these cars become available in widespread availability, 60 percent of the trips of Americans could be all electric, without using a drop of gasoline. Now, what happens after 40 miles is you essentially then burn either gasoline, or at some point ethanol or biodiesel, with a combination of the remaining juice in the battery to go the rest of your mileage, with just as much total range as you originally would experience with our normal cars. And when you do this, the combination of that juice in your battery you're plugged in with, and if you run the whole tank dry, you're going to get over 100 miles a gallon of gasoline. And there are cars today doing this. There are several hundred cars already doing this on the road across the country, running these plug-ins. There is quite a number of them that are Toyota Prius conversions that have been converted into these plug-in hybrids. Now, this is not just some pipe dream. I asked GM to bring this car to Capitol Hill and they showed it to my colleagues a couple of months ago. It was at the car convention yesterday, and people were looking at it like it was the hottest thing on wheels at this convention, because it is. It gives us the opportunity to make a serious break of our addiction to Middle Eastern oil. And it gives Americans the ability to drive a car for 1 to 2 cents a mile for energy from electricity. Gasoline is costing anywhere from 9 to 12 cents a mile to operate a car right now. So this is a tremendous break for Americans, when these cars get on the road. And we'll be talking about 100 miles a gallon of gasoline, not just 35 in our CAFE standard. GM has hundreds of millions of dollars in investment in this vehicle, and we know that this is a very serious effort in this regard. Now, there are a couple of virtues I would like to talk about. This car gets better with age, and I'll tell you how. When you use electricity off the grid, you know, some of the electricity is produced with coal that is putting in carbon dioxide in the air and is adding to global warming gases. But as the grid becomes greener, which it will as we use more solar thermal power and as we use more wind power, the energy, the electrical juice we use, will become greener and your car will become greener. It will become a better car, a more efficient car. Now, there are only two things I know of in life that gets better over time, wine, and plug-in hybrid cars. So we're very excited about the progress of this. I'll give you another little bonus. When you have a car like this, you can rent your batteries to the utility companies. And the utility companies are very excited about being able to ignite, when you're charging your batteries, essentially store their energy in your battery and then draw it back out, if you're not driving your car. They call it a load-leveling service. And they will pay you money for the right to use your battery. And some economists have suggested it could be a value of $2,000 to $3,000 a year. So that's a pretty sweet deal, potentially being paid by your utility company to really move forward. So this thing is knocking them dead at the convention, and for good reason. And it shows why this 35-mile-a-gallon potential is very, very achievable. And I'm going to be very excited when we get this bill up on the floor. With that, I would like to yield to my good friend, George Miller, who has been leading this visionary effort for years here in the U.S. Congress.

Mr. INSLEE. I appreciate Mr. Rohrabacher's comments. I won't make any cracks about the need to improve the imitation. Your Governor is doing great work on this. I appreciate your sentiments. I want to mention a point. There is a technology I had not heard of. You have mentioned this inventor who's working on this in California. One of the things that is so much fun is you learn about people doing this great work around the country. That particular invention, who knows, it may not go anywhere. Some of the things we have talked about tonight may not pan out to be commercially available. But if we have a strategy that spreads our bets and looks at multiple sources like any good investor does, you spread your investments around, some are going to work out really well, some are going to be just kind of okay, and some of them are going to be duds. And we are going to experience that in this. But because of the genius around the country, we are going to have a lot of successes. So I appreciate your comments Mr. Rohrabacher. I just want to point out a couple of other new cutting-edge technologies people may not have heard about that can help fulfill our need for a 15 percent renewable electric standard. This is a picture of wave-power buoys that are now going off the coast of Oregon, the first ones in the country to harness the power in waves. There's enormous energy in waves. If you have ever seen a big freighter go up and down, you understand how powerful the sea is just going up and down. There's enough energy in a stretch off the coast of the Pacific in just a 10- by 10-mile square. If you just took a 10- by 10-mile square and captured the energy from those waves, it would produce all the electricity for California. Now we are not talking about doing that, but what is under investigation right now is the ability to use this type, and there are two or three types of these buoys, and as they bob up and down, they pressurize a column of water or hydraulic fluid or air and turn an electrical generator that runs in a wire to the shore, and you have got electricity. One of these buoys could power potentially a thousand homes. They are quite powerful. Ultimately, they are being tested right now and we're finding there's actually more energy than we even thought. That means more stresses. We are learning a lot about the stresses, on how you deal with those stresses. But the Department of Energy has testified to us that they believe that wave power could produce 10 percent of our entire electrical needs in this country in the next couple decades. Now that is very significant. It's just this new idea. Tidal power is a similar effort. I have a picture of that. We have tidal power that also uses a turbine that looks like a wind turbine and also can produce electricity. One more comment I want to make about the best source of energy, and that is energy that we don't waste. Energy conservation and energy efficiency is what we need to call the first fuel. Energy that we don't waste is always the cheapest energy to buy. Finding a way not to let energy escape from our house is almost always the cheapest way to save money on energy. I just want to point out a couple, Mike and Meg Town. Mike is a teacher at Redmond High School near the Seattle area. Mike and Meg a couple years ago decided to build a home that was essentially a net zero user of electricity, in part because Mike, who was a science teacher, was always talking about this, and one day his kids said, Why don't you go build a house that does this? So he did. Mike and Meg built a house in very wet, soggy Redmond, Washington. It is one of the wetter areas around. And what they did was they incorporated some sort of commonsense measures into their home to make it very energy efficient, with extra insulation, good windows, just sort of commonsense things, not to let air leak out from your doors, a decently insulated hot-water heater, some planting to allow solar energy to come in to heat up the home. They then put on some panels. You see these black panels on the roof, Mike actually put these on himself. Now this is a home in wet, rainy near Seattle, Washington, that is a zero net electricity user, saving money, because his meter runs backwards. When these photovoltaic cells are producing electricity, his electric meter runs backwards. That means he is getting a credit against his electricity bill. Now he has essentially, taking into consideration some of the credits he is receiving, a zero electrical bill. His heat, he has a very small little heater that one of these days he is going to burn wood chips, and wood chips are a biosustainable fuel, because when you burn a biological product, all you do is return CO2 to the atmosphere that the tree or the grass took out. I point this out because here is people doing real things in a rainy climate, saving energy the old-fashioned way, just doing kind of commonsense things, and our bill calls for provisions that will increase the standards in our homes and our appliances so that we will not waste energy. It is the first fuel, and we are going to use it in a very commonsense American way, and it is going to be a major, major part of our effort to revolutionize our energy system. So I look forward this week to making a major step forward in the field of energy. We are going to unleash the forces of market and the entrepreneurs around the country, and the homeowners who want to save on energy bills, and the people who are getting tired of paying $3-plus for a gallon of gasoline, and the people who do not want to be addicted to Middle Eastern oil so we don't have to be exposed to security threats from that region, and the people who don't want to fund the terrorists who are attacking us, and the people who see the future of global warming as being a threat to our grandchildren. This is something that you can unite the Nation, red and blue States, rural and urban. This helps inner-cities, it helps rural communities. It is something I hope we get broad support for. It is going to be a great day for America when we start this clean energy revolution. It is truly something in the American can-do spirit.

Mr. INSLEE. I really appreciate Mr. Blumenauer's observation because it is so true. What we have seen, where we do have military product development then spins off into the civilian sector to all of our benefit. We are going to see that now. Right now the Pentagon is helping to develop a biofuels-based airplane fuel. They are very excited about not being dependent on Middle Eastern oil for the security operations of our own military, and they want to develop a biofuels-based airlines fuel. Boeing is doing the same thing on a civilian basis. They have entered into a consortium with Sir Richard Branson to develop a homegrown biofuel so you can run a jet engine. And the reason it is right to be optimistic about these things is the phenomena that Mr. Blumenauer talked about, and that is that things get cheaper as we build more of them and we learn more about technology. Solar power, every time we have increased the number of units we have sold of solar power, the prices come down 20 percent. There is a curve. You can watch the price come down. It has come down over 80 percent in the last 2 decades. Over 80 percent. And the reason is, besides the fact you discover new techniques, you simply have scales of economy; the more you make of this stuff, the less it is per unit. And that is going to be true predictably for solar thermal as well as the continuation of the photovoltaic world. When we do that, the thing I want to focus on is we want to sell this technology to China. We want to start putting stuff in boats and shipping it to China and India. We want to take the GM Volt and ship it to Japan. Let's start exporting these things that we grow here with homegrown technology. We know we can do that. We have done it in the past because of good old American know-how. I want to tell one story about good old American know-how. This is a guy I got to know. We talked about electricity as a source of fuel for transportation. But there are others. There's a guy named John Plaza I met in the course of working on this. John Plaza was an airline pilot 4 or 5 years ago. Mr. Blumenauer, any closing comments before you go?

Mr. INSLEE. Would the gentleman yield for a minute on that point?

Mr. INSLEE. We know you're going to produce a great bill for us tomorrow or the next day. Thank you for joining us. The story of John Plaza is, to me, just a perfect example of what America is about and why this is such a great economy and a great Nation. John was an airline pilot several years ago and he said he got a little tired of flying across the country and reading a book in the cockpit, to the extent that is allowed. He decided to look around for a new opportunity to sort of do something creative. He started to think about the ability to use biofuels to run our transportation system. John was one of the first people to make biodiesel. He started to essentially brew up biodiesel almost in his garage just a few years ago. Then he decided to make a commercial operation. So he went out and raised some money from a fellow named Matthew Tobias, who did well at Microsoft. They went out, and this is one of the part of the stories I like, they bought two big vats that were used at the Rainier Brewing Company to brew beer. They took those vats and they started to brew biodiesel in a little warehouse on the shores of the Duwamish River in Seattle. That went so well that they went out to the capital markets and raised tens of millions of dollars to build a real first-class biodiesel facility. Now, in Grays Harbor, Washington, and this is a picture of the Imperium Energy Biodiesel plant, you will see these large tanks used for storage. The Imperium Biodiesel Company now has the capability of producing 100 million gallons a year of biodiesel. It is the largest biodiesel refinery in the world, and it started because one fellow, John Plaza, had this idea and a can-do spirit and optimism and courage enough to go out and start a business to do this. Now, this is what America is all about. When we pass an energy bill, the kind of things we are going to do are going to help these small business people to start businesses and grow them in the field of clean energy. Now, this company has plans to build perhaps 20 refineries around the country. It is a realistic, a realistic goal to believe that we can produce 25 percent of our transportation fuels in the next 20 years or so by having homegrown biodiesel-advanced forms of ethanol and really make a dent in our oil addiction. Now I want to, if I can, address for a minute the prospects for these biofuels because I know people have heard about corn ethanol and people have raised concerns that it's not the last word in ethanol. And it is true. Twenty-three percent of our corn now goes to the production of ethanol. It's producing high quality, effective fuel and it's working very, very well. It has some limitations in that we only use the kernel of the corn now. We only use a small percentage of the total fiber that the plants produces. But on the horizon is an advanced form of ethanol called cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is an ethanol where you take the entire plant, kernel, leaves, shoots, roots, stems, stalk, corn stover, wheat straw, everything you can get your hands on, you mash it up, you mix it with an enzyme that helps break down the fibrous structure of the plants, freeze the carbohydrates. You then use the carbohydrates to distill it into alcohol or ethanol, and ethanol is an alcohol, and basically make high-quality fuel. Now, cellulosic ethanol, the first plant in America for commercially produced cellulosic ethanol, ground was broken for it the week before last. The Range Company in Georgia is the first one that has the capability of building this advanced form of ethanol. When we do that, we will improve the amount of fuel we produce per acre by a factor of four to five times, potentially, over what we are producing in corn today, using advanced enzymes and using potentially some additional crops besides corn. A company called Mendel Biotechnology in Hayward, I visited a few weeks ago, they have developed a plant called miscanthus. Miscanthus is a relative of sugar cane, which can grow through wide, wide areas of the Midwest. It's 10 to 12 feet tall. It uses less fertilizer than corn, it uses less water than corn, and it can produce three to four times as much fuel per acre using the cellulosic ethanol technique. They are now growing test plots of that to see how far north basically this can be grown and in what conditions. That is not the only plant. There are several other plants. In Idaho, the first loan guarantee has been given to the Iogen Company, among six counties across the country to use essentially wheat straw left in the field as waste. They are going to bundle that up, bale it up, expose it to an enzyme, and do cellulosic ethanol using what was previously a waste product. By the way, I misspoke. The Range Company in Georgia does not use an enzyme; they use a reactive process. It's a little different than that use of an enzyme to break down the cell structure. Both of them use basically the entire fibrous part of the plant. The point is that corn ethanol can perhaps be considered as the first generation of biofuels. It is successful, doing a great job, with certain limits that we need to get past, and we can and will get past them if we simply use our know-how. That is what we are doing across the country in these companies, which reminds me of kind of a basic principle. The idea of our energy bill, in part, that we will be passing we hope this week, takes a position that we need to make a fundamental shift on how we think about energy. In the past, all we did was look below our feet for energy. Now we need to start looking above our shoulders and between our ears because ultimately it's intellectual capability and intellectual capacity that is the only infinite power of energy in the universe. That is what we are starting to use. And that is why America is going to do so well in the clean energy revolution, because when there is a transition technologically, America wins. When there is a transition to aeronautics, we win, as we have done with Boeing. When there is a transition to software, we win, as we have done with all our software businesses in this country. We are going to win in this clean energy transition because we do well in developing these technologies, some of which we have talked about tonight. Now, besides biofuels, there's additional fuels under consideration. We know fuel cells have the potential to use hydrogen, which is under active consideration. At least one company will be bringing a commercial hydrogen fuel cell car to the roads in the next 2 years. There are fleets now using hydrogen fuel cells. This is a bus transit system in the East Bay area of San Francisco. This is one of the first hydrogen fuel cell buses. They run it over a catalytic bed and they produce electricity and water. That is it. The only thing coming out of the tail pipe of this bus is water. I got the honor of the first Congressman to ever drive a bus, and I didn't hit anything. So it was a success. And I can warrant these are clean, wonderfully quiet, and people are enjoying them today down in the East Bay area. These fuel cells, because there is an issue about the distribution of hydrogen; it's going to cost money to build a distribution system for hydrogen. They are probably going to happen first in large fleets like buses and transportation systems. But I think there is good reason to believe that we are going to see a lot more use of this in the next decade or so, particularly in these fleets, further application. So we have lots of alternatives.

Mr. INSLEE. Yes.

Mr. INSLEE. I think that's a really important point, that when you embark on a technological effort like this, like the original Apollo Project, we called our bill the New Apollo Energy Project because we understood when we embark on a technological journey like this, we develop all these new subordinate incidental technologies, and we've seen all the benefits from the Apollo Project. The secret of this car is the battery technology, really. Now, there is some really cool stuff. This glass weighs probably 70 percent less than normal glass. These tires are superefficient because of the way they are designed. There is a lot of weight-saving devices. But the real genius is in the battery. There is a company called A123 Battery. A bunch of folks started it from MIT in Massachusetts. Now they are manufacturing a lithium ion battery that you use right now in your drill. You are using your big drill. Those are lithium, the new hot ones. ``Hot,'' meaning they work, not meaning that they are physically hot. They've taken those batteries and now designed one to work in a car. And I point this out because I talked to a young man named Luke, and I am embarrassed I can't remember his last name, yesterday in Anaheim, and he was with this A123 Battery company. And I said what is the status of this? He said that it is going gangbusters. I am working in a way that all we have to do is put them in a rectangular situation rather than a cylindrical. But the look in this kid's eyes. He is in his upper twenties, and he is managing this project in his upper twenties. The look in his eyes were just glowing with this development of this brand new stuff. And he was jumping up and down being so excited. And that is the kind of spirit that we have the capability of igniting again.

Mr. INSLEE. Well, actually, the bill, as I understand, will not be writing off nuclear energy. It has been difficult to grow largely in cost. The utilities simply have not purchased it because of its cost even though it has been very heavily subsidized by the taxpayer to the tune of billions of dollars; it still has remained so expensive, the utilities have simply not ordered new plants. It was really not Jane Fonda that ended the growth of the industry; it was simply the cost and economics of it. And this bill does not eliminate that that will be on the floor in the next week. I want to address, I know, the gentleman from California, and a lot of these good ideas have come from California. Certainly Governor Schwarzenegger has been active in supporting this effort to move to more fuel-efficient standards, and many of them are in California. I want to address something electricity quick, and then I want to yield to Mr. Blumenauer if I can. The gentleman has pointed out that if you are going to have plug-in hybrids, then you have to have electricity to run the plug-in hybrids. But tonight we are going to have some discussion about the multiple systems of clean ways to generate electricity. I want to point to one of them, a company that I have learned about, a company called AUSRA Energy, and their name came up when we were debating the renewable electrical standard. In this bill, we have a provision that calls for 15 percent of our energy to come from clean, renewable sources by the year 2020, 15 percent clean renewable sources, and a quarter of that can also come from efficiency standards. So I was talking some time ago to some of my colleagues about this from the State of Florida in August when we had the first version of this bill, and my colleagues were expressing the concern that we couldn't do solar energy, for instance, in Florida. Now, that surprised me, because I thought on the license plates it says ``The Sunshine State.'' Nonetheless, Florida does not have as perfect solar energy as does Arizona. There are a few more clouds in Florida. It is maybe 10 percent not as productive as Arizona. But a week after that conversation, I found a company called AUSRA Energy had signed a contract with a Florida public utility for I believe it is in the nature of a couple hundred megawatts, enough for thousands of homes, both in Florida and in California. And what this company does, this AUSRA company, it uses flat panel mirrors which are in these long rows oriented toward the sun. They are inclined toward a pipe. There is a pipe that is elevated towards these mirrors. It focuses the rays of the sun on that pipe. It heats the water. The water develops steam, the steam turns the turbine, and presto, you have electricity with zero CO2 emissions, zero CO2 emissions, and zero gasoline imports from the Middle East. And I have looked very carefully at their projections of cost. They have a very realistic path to get to a position to produce electricity as cheaply as coal within the next decade or so. Now, this company is real. It is not a bunch of people in teepees just thinking about this. They have signed commercial contracts for the production of this electricity using this technology. Now the reason this is so exciting to me is that previously, we have talked for years about photovoltaic energy. And most people who think about solar energy think of photovoltaic, which are basically panels that directly produce electricity from the silicone-based panels, and those are making strides that are very significant with what is called thin-celled photovoltaics. But here is an entirely new way of producing electricity using essentially radiant power, thermal power from the sun, heat to heat energy, and these work really well in tandem with natural gas producers. So we have multiple ways. We will talk about some of these others. And these new technologies just keep popping up. I want to yield to Mr. Blumenauer, a leader from Portland, Oregon, which has been a great city to demonstrate how to use energy efficiently. It is the first city in America to develop a transportation system that gives people choices about how to move around the city, and as a result, it is the first city in America where people have driven less in 1 year ever in American history, and that is because of, in part, Mr. Blumenauer's leadership helping develop some of the land use planning and public transportation systems, besides being a great advocate for bicycle riding.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, we're here today to pass the Charlie W. Norwood Living Kidney Donation Clarification Act. And like many of my colleagues, I was pleased when this bill finally first passed the House in March, and I'm happy to report now that we have an agreement with both Chambers of a provision that can pass and be signed by the President into law. We all suffered a great loss with Dr. Norwood's loss, and we know he was the recipient of a lung transplant himself and was a committed champion of these causes while serving in Congress. So in addition to helping thousands of Americans today in a way to enhance the prospects of living donations, this bill will be a fitting tribute to Dr. Norwood and his efforts. I also want to thank the Energy and Commerce Committee staff who've worked diligently on this for months, Jessica McNiece, Pete Goodloe, Katherine Martin and Ryan Long, getting this bill in a condition where it can be signed into law. As many of my colleagues know, this legislation will clarify the procedure commonly known as paired organ donation to make clear that it is legal and, in doing so, will provide hope to thousands of Americans who now are waiting for transplants, particularly kidney transplants, across the United States. Paired organ donation will make it possible for thousands of people who wish to donate a kidney to a spouse, a family member or a friend but find that they're not medically compatible, still allowing them to become living kidney donors. As of this afternoon, there are fully 97,000 candidates for organ donations waiting on the national waiting list. But there are only 28,931 transplants performed in total of 2006, and only 6,730 were from living donors. Clearly, we've got work to do. This resolution will take a significant step towards reducing the number of patients on the waiting list and give much more hope for others to hope that, and know that their wait will not be endless. It's imperative we make absolutely clear that there's no intent by Congress to bar this procedure. Simply put, we want this legislation to save lives immediately, and it will do so when enacted. I also want to take a moment to salute and thank Dr. Connie Davis, who's a constituent and a friend and a very knowledgeable transplant physician from the University of Washington in Seattle. In addition to her years of caring for local transplant donors and recipients, she's advised me and others on transplant issues as chairwoman of the American Society of Transplantation, the largest organization in the world representing professionals engaged in the field of solid organ transplantation. And her help has been invaluable in putting this legislation together and making sure that those 90,000 patients get access. So for those thousands of patients waiting today who spend costly and often arduous time on dialysis treatment, their time on the waiting list can be significantly shortened with passage of this bill. And I want to thank my colleagues across the aisle who worked on this, Nathan Deal and others. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. INSLEE. I yield back the balance of my time, Madam Speaker.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 837) providing for the concurrence by the House in the Senate amendment to H.R. 710, with amendments.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, this week, I was honored in my D.C. office by a visit from hard-working faculty and teachers from the Northshore School District. The U.S. Department of Education has awarded Inglemoor High School with the prestigious Blue Ribbon Award. Principal Vicki Sherwood led the school to this merit by ensuring that students had a high, consistent performance in reading and math. Inglemoor has been successful in providing a range of educational programs to fit a variety of students' needs. From offering rigorous international curriculum to delivering educational services for students with special needs, the staff is willing to provide creative educational support. I grew up in a family of educators where my father and four members of my immediate family were teachers. My son followed their footsteps and earned his teaching degree. As a parent, I know what it is like to seek for your kids the best education possible and this passion inspired my public service. It takes a great deal of commitment to provide a quality education. Let us today honor the staff and faculty of the Northshore School District and applaud them because reaching the Blue Ribbon-level of achievement is no easy task.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. We know we can do this. We know, because we have had success. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we improved our mileage of our cars by 60 percent. Then in 1994 those efforts stopped and we stopped making any progress. Our cars are getting actually less mileage than they did in 1984. If we had simply continued on that rate of improvement, we would be free of Saudi Arabian oil today. Now we have got to get back on this bandwagon of using our brains to get better mileage. We know we can do this. Just as a closing comment, I want to express my appreciation to the Americans doing this. We are not the only ones doing this in the Capitol. I know a woman on Bainbridge Island that greened up her home. I would like to say we're meeting that bar here in the House. Again, thank you, Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. INSLEE. Yes.

Mr. INSLEE. And the importance of this waste disposal from a global warming position is that every time you reduce the amount of waste you throw away by a ton, you reduce the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by two tons by not wasting all that production and energy associated with it. So what we're doing in this House is doing what a picture I have here of Mike and Meg Town of their home in Redmond, Washington, one the rainiest places in the United States, who built a home that's essentially carbon neutral. By doing the same kinds of things they're doing in their house, we're now going to do in the people's House, which is to use some commonsense waste disposal systems, decent insulation, energy-efficient lighting, energy-efficient heating and cooling system. They use solar photovoltaics to get to a carbon neutral house. People are doing this across the country. I'm proud to say we're starting to do it in this House. And I know I'd like to yield to Mr. Farr who can help us on that.

Mr. INSLEE. I want to just express an experience that we have had and these companies that have gone down this route have had. Two things they've learned: Number one, hardly anybody gripes about it. I mean it's amazing. We have done all these things we have been talking about here tonight, changing the coal plant, changing the cafeteria, changing paper usage, changing lighting usage, changing some of our transportation usage, and, frankly, nobody is griping about it. We have got 435 people here griping about everything from the weather to the price of bananas, but none of our Members are griping about this because we are finding out that we can accommodate our businesses and our lifestyles just fine if we do this. And businesses have learned this as well. That's the first rule of greening an organization. The second rule is that people find out that virtue is cumulative. When people take one little step forward, they get into it, and then they take another step, and then they take another step. And companies continue. That's why Dow Chemical, even though they have been spectacularly successful in reducing their energy use by 20, 30 percent, they are going to get another 20, 30 percent because people get excited about it, and we're seeing that. I wanted to just touch on transportation that Mr. Blumenauer was talking about. Mr. Boehner was criticizing this effort to give our employees flexibility to use cars. I want to mention two technologies that I think can help reinvent our transportation system in America. One is we are now testing a software system in Seattle which will give you instantaneous ride-sharing so that on your text message or your BlackBerry, you can say I want to go to this theater, get my ride, and this software system will patch you through to whoever is going in that direction. In 5 minutes, boom, you've got a ride. And that system has incredible promise to reduce congestion and reduce your cost of transportation if we can all start sharing rides in that regard. And I'm very excited about this. It has just gone in the first stage of trials. The second technology I want to mention, this is well beyond the House, but I want Members to know about this. We are having this discussion about improving average fuel economy standards. In the next 2 weeks, hopefully, we will have it on this floor for debating on. But I think the capability exists to blow way beyond anything that we have even thought about in fuel mileage. We're arguing about whether we can get 35 miles a gallon. I drive a car today that gets 45 miles a gallon. I'm six-two, 200 pounds. It's a five-passenger car. It's very convenient and it's safe. We have a technology coming on in 5 or 6 years in cars that are on the road today called plug-in hybrid cars, and I learned about them when I was writing this book that Mr. Blumenauer talked about. It is plug-in hybrid technology. And here is a car that General Motors has. It is in reality. Here is a picture of it. It is the GM Volt. They want to have it on the road, mass production in 5 or 6 years. And the way it works is using an incredible battery technology. You plug it in at night; it has a little port. You plug it in, charge it for 6 to 8 hours. You unplug it in the morning, go about your driving. You can drive 40 miles with just electricity, no gasoline, no ethanol, just pure juice out of your plug. And it costs two-thirds less per mile than gasoline. Now, if you want to drive more than 40 miles, then you have a hybrid engine like the one in the car I am driving, in the Ford Escape or Toyota Prius. It will take you wherever you want to go for 200, 300 miles. Someday it will burn cellulosic ethanol as well as gasoline. Right now these cars are on the road today. I've driven one on the Capitol grounds. They get 100 miles per gallon of gasoline today. When you drive it with ethanol, you will get 500 miles of gasoline. And the electricity you use will get cleaner over time. This car will get better over time as the electric grid becomes cleaner. You start using more solar power, more wind power, you actually put out less carbon. Nothing gets better in life as it gets older except wine and a plug-in electric car. I point this out because when we have this debate on the House floor in a few weeks, some people are going to say, Gee, I don't know if we can get to 35. Baloney. Hogwash. We have scads of cars that get 10 or 15 over that today, and you have a car that is going to get 100 miles per gallon in 5 or 6 years. This is something we can do in this new spirit in the House led by Nancy Pelosi, to head down this route to the future, is one people are going to be happy with, and they have.

Mr. INSLEE. I want to note as far as cycling, as a biker myself, the things we are talking about in a lot of communities that are improving their bike options, we are just giving people options. This is not the storm troopers coming down making everybody ride a bike. We are talking about giving Americans more options in how to get to work and back. This is one that in my town of Seattle, every year there are scads more people riding bikes.

Mr. INSLEE. Almost, to compliment Mr. Blumenauer's hometown, Portland, Oregon, is the first city in the United States to reduce the number of miles that people drive per capita. And that is a fundamental achievement, and I know how they have done it because they have visionary leadership, Mr. Blumenauer included; they have more public transportation options with light rail and buses, more bike options, better land use, planning that allows people to live close to public transportation options, and they are well on their way to meeting the CO2 targets that they have set. And it has happened because they have simply given people options. They haven't told people what to do. They just gave people a smorgasbord, and people did what was comfortable for them. A lot of it is bicycling, if they can catch Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. INSLEE. Just one general one, and that is that the reason our approach to greening the Capitol works is that we are the optimists in this debate. We are the people who believe that options exist, that technologies will continue to grow, and as a result of that, Americans will have more choices of how they use energy and how they produce energy. We have mentioned some of those new technologies tonight. I will just give you an example of a couple I've learned about in the last year about how to produce green electricity. We have made a commitment to buy green electricity for the U.S. House of Representatives. I just want to mention a couple of new ways to produce it. One is wave power. If you have ever watched a big ship bob up and down on the waves, you understand how much power there is on the ocean. We have people capturing that energy and able to create electricity. This is a picture of a buoy. A similar one is going off the coast of Oregon this fall. The first wave power buoys in the world to be deployed were in Hawaii and are now powering some naval stations. These are designed to essentially capture energy. As these buoys bob up and down, they compress water or air, creating pressure, which drives a generator, creates electricity, goes to the shore on a wire. Each have the capability to power close to 1,000 homes. There is enough energy in the waves in a 10-by-10-mile stretch off the Pacific Coast to produce all of the electricity for the State of California. We are not guaranteed these are going to work because we have to make sure they can survive the terrible stresses at sea. But according to the Department of Energy, they have the capacity to produce 10 percent of all the electrical usage in the United States. I point this out because this technology wasn't even dreamed of 10 years ago. Now, we have another option that could be available to Americans that right now, big investment, there's a lot of private investment in these companies. A company Finavera in Washington, a company called Ocean Power Technologies, there is a company associated with Oregon State University in Mr. Blumenauer's State. All work different approaches to this. A second one that is intended to capture the power of the oceans are tidal-powered turbines that work sort of like a wind turbine, but they work on the currents that are driven by the tides. This is a picture of one. This is one by Verdant Power that works just like a wind turbine, but uses water through the blades instead of wind. Verdant actually has these in the East River in New York City. They are actually powering a grocery store right now with electricity. We found out when the first six went in the water, there's actually more power than they knew, which actually disabled some of these so they have got to rebuild them to make them stronger, which is good news because there is more power than they thought. We have someone in the State of Washington looking at potentially powering 50,000 homes with these tidal turbines now in the estuaries of Puget Sound. I just point this out that we believe there are numerous options; we believe there are technologies that are going to free us from the constraints of the past. We are proving it in the U.S. Capitol. You can look at the dome and see the citadel of democracy and the citadel of new ways to save energy and produce it. I think Americans can be proud of that. I think we have a right to be a little bit, too. Mr. Blumenauer, I thank you for your leadership on this and in leading in discussion.