A concurrent resolution expressing the sense of Congress that it is the goal of the United States that, not later than January 1, 2025, the agricultural, forestry, and working land of the United States should provide from renewable resources not less than 25 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States and continue to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed, and fiber.

Mr. President, I am pleased to be here supporting a piece of legislation which I think advances this country's energy interests. I am a member of the Senate Energy Committee. I have worked with Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici not only on the previous Energy bill in 2005 but on this Energy bill, and I think this is a good bill. We are going to improve it some on the floor of the Senate, but it came out of the Energy

Committee as a bipartisan bill and one I think will improve the energy policy in this country.

Energy is a very important policy. We don't think about it much. I know most all of us get up in the morning and we just flick a switch someplace in our house. That switch turns on lights and we turn on the television set, it turns on all the things we use all day. While we are sleeping, the air-conditioner is running. We have all these conveniences, and we do not necessarily understand that all of it comes from somewhere beyond a switch. So energy has been pretty easy for this country. Now we are running into some interesting questions and challenges. We have to develop a more thoughtful, more sensible energy policy for the long-term future.

There is an airplane which is now parked in a museum. I believe it was tail No. 27,000, an old 707 that used to be Air Force One. It was the Air Force One that flew President Reagan around, and others. It was the Air Force One that was in Dallas, TX, in fact, the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. One of its last trips before it was retired to a museum was a trip to Asia. I was a member of that delegation, going to meet with the President of China and others.

In a cabin on that little old airplane flying over the Pacific one night, about 10 or 11 o'clock at night, one of our Senate colleagues, John Glenn, was sitting there with us. I was peppering John Glenn with questions about his circling the Earth as an astronaut back 40 years prior to that time. I was a young kid and I had been listening to the radio that day, and I listened to this account of this astronaut circling the Earth. The whole world was focused on what this astronaut, up alone in Friendship 7, a tiny little capsule, was doing.

I asked him a lot of questions about it that evening. I had the opportunity as a new Member of the Senate with my colleague John Glenn to pepper him with a lot of questions. One of my questions was this. I said: My understanding back then was that the city of Perth, Australia, when you were orbiting the Earth that night, turned on every light in the city as a signal to the astronaut flying alone orbiting the Earth. Do you remember the ability to look down and see the lights from Perth, Australia?

He said: I do, I do. I remember this brilliant light coming up from Perth, Australia, where all the citizens decided to shine up a light to this astronaut flying alone on Friendship 7.

The only evidence of life on Earth as he orbited the dark side of the Earth was energy, light--human beings turning on a light switch and lighting a city to light the way for an astronaut orbiting the Earth.

Energy is a significant part of our lives every single day and virtually in every way. As I said, we take it pretty much for granted.

Let me talk about the challenges, if I might. One of the significant challenges is oil. We have this big old planet of ours. We have roughly 6.5 billion neighbors on this planet. We circle the Sun. We have this prodigious need for oil, so we stick straws in the earth, called drilling rigs, and suck oil out of the earth. We suck about 84 million barrels of oil a day out of this planet of ours--84 million barrels a day we suck out of this earth.

We use 21 million barrels in this country alone. In this little patch of ground called the United States of America, we have built an unbelievable economy, dramatically improved the standard of living over a long period of time, and we have an unending thirst for oil. So one- fourth of all of the oil used on this planet is used in this country, this place on the globe.

Unfortunately, a substantial amount of the oil is under the sands of the Middle East and in unstable parts of the world. Here is what happens. When we import oil, here is what we use the oil for: 67 percent is used for transportation. So nearly 70 percent of the oil we use in this country is used in the vehicle fleet or for transportation. One of the things we are discussing here in the Energy bill is this issue of trying to make these vehicles more efficient. If we use 70 percent of the oil in this country for transportation and we have had very little change in efficiency of vehicles, then the question should be and is, Should not we make vehicles more efficient?

Here is an example. This is a chart you can't see particularly well: Auto Fuel Efficiency Versus Performance. Do you see what has happened on the blue line, performance--zero to 60 in a nanosecond? Increased performance, more power, more speed. What has happened with respect to miles per gallon? Just like that, right flat across.

Part of that is the consumer. The consumer wants to buy big, heavy cars, fast cars. I understand that. In fact, here is a survey. I was very surprised. CNW Research pointed out that overall fuel economy-- this is a couple of years ago--is No. 12 in concern by consumers. I am sure it has changed now. But cupholders and sound systems ranked above the issue of overall fuel economy. I expect that is not the case now when you are driving up to the gas pump and in some vehicles putting in $40, $50, $60 or $70 worth of gasoline into that vehicle. So perhaps that has changed.

But this legislation does a lot of things with respect to energy. It requires an improvement in the efficiency of vehicles. I know automobile companies came here last week. I had a chance to talk to the CEOs of the three big U.S. auto companies. I know they are taking the same position they have always taken--not now, not us, not today.

The fact is, we must, it seems to me, insist that our vehicle fleet be more efficient. Because nearly 70 percent of the oil we use in this country is being used in our vehicles, the only way we are going to try to extract ourselves from being addicted to foreign oil is to begin to make changes in a range of areas, and that includes making cars more efficient. That means a higher mileage per gallon standard.

We have a circumstance, as I indicated, where a substantial part of the oil is put in one place on this planet and the dramatic need for oil is in another place. Much of where we get our oil is in very troubled parts of the world. We could, one day, wake up with terrorists attacking a refinery somewhere and a shutoff of the oil to this country from foreign sources, and this country would be flat on its back. This country would have its economy in tatters. That is why we need to be much less dependent, we need to find a way to be independent of the need for oil from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela--all the places in the world that are unstable, where we have a great reliance on oil. That is at least part of what this bill is about.

I am going to talk about several other things as well, but I, along with my colleague, Senator Larry Craig, a Republican--I am a Democrat-- we joined in introducing something called the SAFE Energy Act, Securing America's Future Energy. The Energy Security Leadership Council is a group of really interesting people including some CEOs of major corporations and flag officers in the U.S. military. They studied these issues for several years and put together a plan.

That plan is recommendations to the Nation on Reducing Oil Dependence; trying to make this economy of ours less oil intensive.

I introduced a piece of legislation with Senator Craig that implements most all of these recommendations. I would commend it to my colleagues because I think it makes a lot of sense. It talks about expanding the supply of energy, especially renewable energy; also talks about finding additional supplies. We believe we ought to be able to explore and drill more in expanded areas, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, because there are substantial reserves of oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico that are attainable without ruining anybody's view or creating other problems.

We believe that in addition to renewable energy and the production of renewable energy, all of the biofuels are necessary. We believe that CAFE standards, or at least automobile efficiency standards, are necessary as well. This piece of legislation brought to the floor of the Senate includes all of them.

Let me continue to talk about oil for a moment and say that when I was a little boy, I remember they drilled one oil well near my hometown in southwestern North Dakota. I lived in a town of 300 people. There wasn't a lot to do, obviously, in a town of 300 people.

So when they brought in a drilling rig and constructed a drilling rig and

started to drill for oil about 3 miles from town, I will never forget as a little boy going out there in the evenings in my parent's car. We saw all these lights on the oil rig at night. We sat there and looked at it. That was entertainment.

We did that night after night. We figured at some point they were going to strike oil. We didn't want to be too close to the rig, because the movies showed that when you strike oil, you get a gusher.

But we watched. We would drive out there and park, the whole town would go out there and park. We would watch that oil well. Nothing was happening, of course, nothing you could see. We saw the lights. That was a whole lot more than was going on in town.

Well, it turns out it was a dry well; never drilled another one. But that was my experience. As a young boy, my father also managed a gasoline station. So I pumped a lot of gas as a young boy. Some say that my occupation hasn't changed so much being in the Senate, but I contest that, of course.

My point is this: Oil is central to our lives and will remain central to our lives, but we need to find a way to reduce our dependence on the sources of oil that come from very troubled parts of the world.

In North Dakota, for example, in western North Dakota, we now have what is called the Bakken Shale, which could, we hope--the U.S. Geological Survey will determine this--but it could contain dramatic amounts of recoverable oil.

Incidentally, I was in western North Dakota visiting with Marathon Oil that is now drilling. It is unbelievable what they are doing. They drill 2 miles down--2 miles down--then take a giant bend and drill 2 miles out. One drilling rig. They go down 2 miles and then bend it and then drill 2 miles out. It is unbelievable technology.

We hope there is additional production here in this country. That is one way to be less dependent on foreign sources of oil. We can take a look at where you can get additional oil. I mentioned the Gulf of Mexico is a substantial opportunity for us as well. But there are a lot of things for us to do and do well, if we are going to be less dependent on foreign sources of oil, also, if we are going to have an energy policy that has much more credibility than our current policy.

Now, the Congress passed what was called the Energy Policy Act of 2005. We did a number of things there. I was one of the Members of the Congress who, at that time and since that time, one of I guess four or five of us in the Senate who tried to open up what is called Lease 181 in the Gulf of Mexico. We succeeded in doing that. It is a smaller tract than we had hoped, but that also will contribute to the production of additional energy here at home.

Some say our energy strategy for the future must be ``digging and drilling.'' I call that yesterday forever, digging and drilling. Yes, we are going to dig and, yes, we are going to drill. But if that is all we do, we lose. Everything we use in this country every day needs to be more efficient. Our refrigerators, our air conditioners, our vacuums, everything needs to be more efficient. That is No. 1.

We have had very big debates on strange-named things such as SEER standards. I mean how many people have heard of SEER 13 standards for air conditioners. But it makes a big difference in the number of powerplants you have to build in this country based on the standards for efficiency for all the things we use with respect to appliances.

In addition to all that, we at the same time have to rely on other sources and other types of energy; wind energy as an example. Well, my colleague from Tennessee apparently does not like wind energy. God bless him. He has a right not to like wind energy.

It seems to me it makes a lot of sense with a turbine, the much more improved turbines and technologically capable turbines, to extract the energy from the wind and turn it into electricity. Yes, it is an intermittent source of electricity because you do not produce it when the wind is not blowing. But in some States, my State in particular, which is ranked by the Department of Energy as having the largest wind energy potential, taking energy from the wind and producing electricity with that energy makes a lot of sense.

We have an exciting experiment going on in North Dakota that I have been involved in: taking energy from the wind through a wind turbine, turning that energy through a turbine into electricity, using electricity through the process of electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water. You use an intermittent energy source to produce hydrogen and store the hydrogen. That is pretty unbelievable. Yet we can do that. We can do that, and it is going make us less dependent on foreign sources of energy.

Now one of the proposals that will be offered by my colleague, Senator Bingaman, which I intend to be here and support, and I believe several have spoken in opposition to it, is what is called a renewable portfolio standard. Not a very sexy name, in fact we should rename it, renewable energy standard of some type.

But it is simply this: With respect to electricity that we are creating in this country, 15 percent of that electricity should come from renewable sources. Establishing a national standard, a goal, what is it we want to meet? Where do we want to go? An old saying: If you don't care where you are, you will never be lost.

Well, I mean, if we do not care where we are, we will never have a standard that we will miss. But how about ascribing a standard for this country that forces us to reach a little bit and says that, for every kilowatt hour of electricity we are going to use, 15 percent of what we produce is going to come from renewable sources of energy.

Once again, it relieves and begins to withdraw our heavy dependence on foreign sources of oil because a substantial amount of our electricity now comes from fossil fuels, from natural gas and coal and so on.

Now, the issue of the renewable portfolio standard, I understand, is going to be controversial because some do not want the Federal Government to be involved in requiring something such as this. But, frankly, I don't think we have much choice. The other issue that will be involved in with this bill, which I support, is a renewable fuels standard. That renewable fuels standard is one that calls for 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. Now, I helped write the last renewable fuel standard. It was the first one we ever established. It was 7\1/2\ billion gallons by 2012.

We are going to be at 10 billion gallons, exceeding that standard in a year or two. We believe we should aspire to achieve much more; a renewable fuels standard, using the biofuels; yes, the production of ethanol; growing energy in our farm fields on a renewable basis, you can do that year after year; the ethanol that can come from cellulose that I believe has great capability in our future. All of that is good for this country.

It is good for our farmers, good for our consumers, it is good for beginning to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of oil. Now, we have a lot of issues we are going to be discussing, some controversial, some perhaps not, but my hope is that in the coming week and a half or so we can finish this Energy bill.

I wish to show a couple of charts again. First of all, the amount of oil we use in this country. Those are million barrels per day. I mentioned we suck 84 million barrels of oil out of this little planet of ours. Look at what we use in the United States. Our population uses one-fourth of all the oil that is taken out of this planet every single day.

I mean, that is an oil intensity for our economy that, in my judgment, needs to be changed. Then, finally, let me say again, if 70 percent of that oil, nearly 70 percent is used in that vehicle fleet. If in that vehicle fleet we have seen all those improvements in acceleration, for example, and no improvement with respect to miles per gallon, then we better figure out how we address this in a different way.

One other item I am going to talk about for a moment is something called SPR. One of the problems with this life is there are so many acronyms and so many shorthand names for things, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We are doing something that makes a lot of sense to me. We are taking oil and sticking it underground and saving it for a time when we might need it, a security reserve of oil. The Strategic Petroleum Reserves makes sense to me. In fact, we increased the

amount of that SPR authorization in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. But with respect to our original goal, we are 97 percent there--97 percent. I do not think it makes any sense at this point to increase it, despite the authorization, I do not think it makes any sense, when the price of oil is where it is, very high--the price of gasoline is extraordinary-- I do not think it makes sense to be taking any oil out of the supply chain and sticking it underground.

Yet our Government continues to do that. I know we have not been purchasing oil at this point. They suspended that through the summer driving season. But we are still taking about 8 or 9 million barrels of oil and putting it in SPR as part of the payment for royalties in kind. I do not support that either.

The President is asking for a near doubling of SPR in the next appropriations cycle. I am not going to support that. I am going to write the bill. I will be writing the bill as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds that. I am not going to increase that because I think at a time when gas prices are going through the roof, the last thing we ought to do is take oil out of the supply, because all that does is put upward pressure on gas prices. So I believe that is another thing we might wish to consider in this discussion.

Finally, the issue of energy is one that I know consumes perhaps less attention from time to time than others, because we take it for granted. We turn the light switch on, we get in our car, we do all these things, all of it powered as a part of our energy need, and we do not think much about it. But if, God forbid, somehow all of it were turned off, and we had an example a few years ago, I think we were out of energy in the capital region for 5 or 6 days, then all of a sudden we understood what energy means to our daily lives.

If ever we would see gas lines around the block again, we would understand what this addiction to oil means for our daily lives. Now, I said earlier that if our entire approach with respect to energy is digging and drilling, that is yesterday forever. I do not mean we will not continue to use fossil fuels, I believe we will. Fossil fuels will be a significant part of our future.

That means oil, coal, and natural gas. I am going to spend a lot of time and money as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee dealing with this issue of clean power and clean coal technology because we have to be able to continue to use that resource. But it is also the case that we have so much more to do. Because for decades we have been told that you cannot do renewables, renewables are a pat-on-the-head sort of thing. If you are talking about renewables, good for you, God bless you, but you ought to go to a library someplace and visit with your two or three friends about these things; it does not matter to America's future. That is total nonsense.

Renewable energy is very important for this country. It is long past the time that we get about the business of dealing with it. Yes, it is hydrogen and fuel cells, which I feel very strongly about. It is wind and solar. It is geothermal. It is a wide range of issues dealing with renewable energy that I believe will contribute to this country's energy security. I believe it will give us a much better and a much stronger energy policy.

I see my colleague from Idaho is here. As I indicated earlier, he and I have introduced a piece of legislation that a fair part is included in the bill that was reported out of the Energy Committee. I am also on the Commerce Committee, which has reported a portion of this bill as well.

I believe we need do a lot of things well in order to make this country less dangerously dependent, as we now are, on foreign sources of energy. That is our goal.

I believe our plan does that. I believe the bill that is brought to us from the Energy, Commerce, EPW, and Foreign Relations Committees advances this country's interest.

My hope is, in the coming week or two, perhaps a week and a half, as this is being considered, we can improve the bill even more.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Colorado for his courtesy in arranging for me to speak next. The Senator from Colorado and I and the Senator from New Mexico, Mr. Bingaman, who is here, the chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator Domenici, the ranking member, and Senator Lieberman, who has already spoken, were at breakfast this morning at our usual Tuesday morning bipartisan breakfast. And Senator Bingaman expressed the hope, as I am sure he will on the Senate floor when he speaks, that we can make the kind of progress this year that we made 2 years ago on the Energy bill. And I hope so too.

He talked about how difficult it was and how impressive it was for four committees, plus the Finance Committee, all to make a contribution and how we might be able to make progress with alternative fuels, with energy efficiency. The more we learn about energy efficiency, such as with appliances and lighting, and the more we can do in accelerating research on how to recapture carbon, the better off we will be.

Earlier this morning, Senator Lieberman of Connecticut said in that spirit of bipartisanship that he hoped one amendment would not be added to this bill, and that would be an amendment calling for the drilling for oil in the Alaska wildlife area. That is a controversial piece of legislation.

I want to make a similar suggestion in the spirit of bipartisanship. I note my friend from New Mexico is on the Senate floor, and I hope the Senate would not agree to and maybe we would not even have to debate, the amendment that Senator Bingaman offered before in the last Congress and which he plans to offer again which would require a 15-percent so- called renewable portfolio standard in every State. I wish to spend a few minutes this morning talking about why I believe it is important that we not adopt that amendment.

I am reminded of a story about a Tennessee mountaineer who was convicted of murder, and the judge sentenced him and told him his choice was to be hanged or be shot.

The defendant thought a minute and said: May I ask a question, judge?

The judge said: Of course.

My question is, Do I have another choice?

Mr. President, we Tennesseans feel the same way about Senator Bingaman's proposed renewable portfolio standard which would require us to make 15 percent of our electricity from renewable fuels, mostly wind power. That would raise our taxes, it would raise our electric rates, it would run away jobs, and it would ruin our mountaintops. That is not the kind of choice we like to have.

Forcing Tennesseans to build 40-story wind turbines on our pristine mountaintops or pay billions of dollars in penalty taxes to the Federal Government amounts to a judge giving a defendant the choice of being hanged or shot.

In Tennessee, the wind simply doesn't blow enough to produce much electric power. Residential homeowners cannot afford these new taxes, industries will take their jobs to States with cheaper power, and tourists will spend their dollars where they can see the mountaintops instead of giant wind turbines.

There is, in this case, a better choice, fortunately, and that choice is for clean, reasonably priced energy in the Tennessee Valley from conservation and efficiency, from nuclear reactors--a new one of which just opened within the last few weeks in our region by TVA--and by clean coal. Because of its nuclear and hydro plants, Tennessee is already on the honor roll, ranking 16th among States in production of carbon-free electricity. But we are one of 27 States that would not meet the standards under Senator Bingaman's amendment, which he expects to offer during this debate.

This is real money. The Tennessee Valley Authority suggests that by the last year that this new standard is in effect, it would cost Tennesseans at least 410 million new dollars a year.

What could we do with that kind of money? If the goal were clean air, we could give away 205 million in $2 fluorescent lightbulbs per year, producing

energy savings equal to the combined output of almost two of the three units of TVA's Browns Ferry nuclear plant. In other words, the $410 million could buy enough fluorescent lightbulbs to equal two nuclear reactors. Or the $410 million would be the equivalent of 3,700 megawatt wind turbines that would span a 550-mile ridge line, more than twice the distance from Bristol in the northeast part of Tennessee to Chattanooga, which is about the only place in Tennessee that wind power could actually go, along those ridgetops. Or with $410 million, we could pay the $100 per month electric bill for Tennessee's 2.5 million residential TVA customers for 1\1/2\ months each year. Or if the goal is simply clean air, it would be better, I respectfully submit, to spend the $410 million purchasing one new scrubber each 9 months to clean emissions from TVA's coal-fired powerplants. I strongly back renewable power wherever it makes sense. In our State, I have worked hard to expand solar energy. The solar energy industry gave me an award last year for that work. I was the principal sponsor of the tax credit for homeowners to put solar panels on their homes. I have worked with the Tennessee Farm Bureau to encourage the use of biomass as a renewable energy. But this--and I will try to be a little bit more specific in the next 10 or 12 minutes--this proposal amounts to a wind portfolio standard which simply does not fit the Tennessee Valley nor, I submit, any other part of our region. It simply does not work in the Southeast.

Why is there a wind portfolio standard? There are other forms of renewable energy, of course, but they don't all fit in the definition, nor do all types of clean, carbon-free energy fit within the definition. Seventy percent of our carbon-free electricity in America comes from nuclear power. About 33 percent of TVA's power is carbon- free nuclear power. That doesn't count within the Bingaman definition. Neither does the existing 7 percent of clean, completely clean power that comes from hydro, from dams.

That makes about 40 percent of TVA's electricity carbon, sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen free, ranking it 16th among all the States in terms of producing carbon-free energy. As I said, Tennessee is on the honor roll. Yet we Tennesseans would still be subjected either to these taxes or putting these wind turbines along our scenic mountains, which I will discuss.

According to the Energy Information Agency assessment of the Bingaman proposal, 4 years ago, wind and, to a lesser extent, biomass are projected to be the most important renewable resources stimulated by the renewable portfolio standard.

There is some other evidence that biomass will be stimulated, but I think it is a fair comment to say that this is mostly a wind portfolio standard. And my argument is, that may be fine in North Dakota--which the Senator from North Dakota says is the Saudi Arabia of wind--maybe it works there, and maybe North Dakotans want to see the wind turbines there, but it doesn't work in Tennessee and in most of the Southeast because the wind simply doesn't blow enough to produce much electricity.

The National Academy of Sciences says 93 percent of potential wind energy capacity occurs west of the Mississippi River. We can see on this chart that in this white area, that is where there is the least amount of wind. There may be plenty of it somewhere else but not in Tennessee and not in the South. There is only one wind farm in this entire southeastern part of the United States. That is a TVA wind farm on Buffalo Mountain, which I will show in just a moment.

TVA had hoped that the wind on Buffalo Mountain would blow to produce electricity about 35 to 38 percent of the time. They have been disappointed that it only blows about 19 to 24 percent of the time. And in August, when we are sitting on the porches sweating, perspiring, and wanting our fans on and air-conditioning on, the winds on the only wind farm in the southeast--Buffalo Mountain--blew just 7 percent of the time. That is not an estimate. That is an actual count from TVA and the wind farm.

So the only places in the southeast region, if we can go to the next chart, that have wind resources are the ridges and the crests. Maybe unlike Iowa and North Dakota where they can have large wind farms, maybe even in Colorado they can have large wind farms, but in Tennessee, the only places that wind possibly works are on the ridges and the crests. In addition to being the places with the most wind, the ridges and the crests are also in the most visited national park in the United States, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Those are the highest mountains in the Eastern United States. They run up through Pennsylvania as well. They are the Great Smoky Mountains and the mountains around them. They are the reason most of us live in those areas.

It is quite a sight to see when you put wind turbines on top of those mountains. It is a sight that I would rather not see. Here is West Virginia, which is north of the southeastern part of the United States. Basically it cuts off the whole tops of those mountains. In my opinion, it makes strip mining look like a decorative art. These are 400- or 300-feet turbines. These are not your grandmother's windmills. They are white and large and have flashing red lights on top of them. You can see them for 10, 12, 14 miles away.

Then, since they are on remote ridgetops, they have to dig large power lines down through whomever's backyard to get there. It is quite a dislocation in the scenery. So one would think there would have to be a big payoff before we would take some of the most beautiful parts of the United States and basically ruin the mountaintops.

Here is what it looks like in Tennessee. You can get a little sense of how big these turbines are. In Tennessee, we like football and we can put things in perspective, sometimes putting things in football terms. Each of these wind turbines is twice as tall as the skyboxes at Neyland Stadium, which is the second largest football stadium in the United States. Penn State has one, I guess, about the same size. These rotor blades, which go round and round, stretch from the 10-yard line to the 10-yard line. I can see these turbines from the Pellissippi Parkway in Tennessee from about 14 miles away. This is at about 3,500 feet. These are some of our most beautiful vistas in Tennessee.

The problem is, even here, which ought to be a prime spot--this is the reason TVA put the turbines here--it didn't work very well. It was a disappointment. As I mentioned, in August, the wind turbines only operated 7 percent of the time. Wind tends to be strongest during the winter months and at dawn and dusk, but demand for electricity is highest during the summer and during the day. Basically, when we need the wind, it doesn't blow. And a point that many people often miss is that you can't store it. Unlike more conventional forms of power, you use it or you lose it. So it is of minimal help.

Also, it is more expensive. I have a chart showing the expense. Let's take nuclear power which produces 70 percent of the carbon-free electricity in the United States today, and wind, which is also carbon free. Actually, both are completely free of carbon, sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen, which are the problems for clean air in the Tennessee region. Let's compare a 1,000-watt nuclear plant reactor and a 1,000- megawatt capacity wind farm. The 1,000-megawatts is about the size of a new nuclear reactor. The new Browns Ferry plant in Tennessee that opened the other day is 1,280 megawatts. This column is the number of hours per year for both nuclear and wind. And this second column is the capacity factor.

In plain English, this is how much they operate. For TVA, its nuclear powerplants, which produce about one-third of our electricity and most of our carbon-free electricity, the nuclear powerplants operate 92 percent of the time. The wind turbines operate, at best, 24 percent of the time in the Southeast, in the area we know about. Remember, there is only one wind farm in the Southeast. We have it, and that is what it does.

The cost of electricity is up to twice as much for wind over nuclear. That is what people in the utility industry call the all-in cost--that is, including the cost of building the facility and the cost of operating the facility.

So the brief analysis is that wind is more expensive, on a per unit energy generated basis, and produces much less energy than nuclear power, for example. In addition to that, if we build

the wind turbines, we still have to build and operate the nuclear powerplant because, as we pointed out, the wind turbines only operate about 22 percent of the time.

My hope would be that we would not have a one-size-fits-all national mandate on States that are seeking to create clean energy. Tennessee wants to do its part. As I said, nuclear power creates 70 percent of the carbon-free energy in the United States. It produces 33 percent of the carbon-free energy in the Tennessee Valley through TVA, and TVA just opened a new reactor and they are planning more. Why would we impose on a State which is already leading the country in terms of helping to produce clean energy, carbon-free energy--why would we impose a mandate on that State that would raise its rates or impose new taxes and drive away jobs from industries that cannot afford to pay the higher rates and at the same time put on our mountain tops, from Bristol to Chattanooga, these huge wind machines that destroy the view?

We have 10 million people every year who come to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, nearly three times as many as come to Yellowstone. They come to see the mountains; they don't come to see the wind turbines. I guarantee, if we continue to provide incentives and mandates to put up these 300-, 400-, 500-foot-tall wind turbines with red flashing lights, that is all the visitors will see when they come to Tennessee. They will not be able to see anything else.

I am eager to work with Senators Bingaman and Domenici on the Energy bill. I had the pleasure, the last 4 years, of serving with them on that committee. I admire the way they work together. They made a point 2 years ago of saying that when we go too far in either direction, we will pull back a little bit so we can make sure we have a good, strong bill. I believe the bill in 2005 was underestimated. I believe the bill produced in 2005, produced by Senators Domenici and Bingaman and the Senate working with the House, literally set America on a different course in terms of producing large amounts of reliable, affordable, clean energy. It helped us do that in a way that would keep the costs of natural gas down, which was very important to us at that time and still is today.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Southeastern Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners expressing the same views I have just expressed, that such a mandate would cause us to end up paying higher electric prices with nothing to show for it. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record following my remarks.

Finally, I would like to reiterate what we could better do with the money. I see the Senator from North Dakota here. I mentioned a little earlier that he has said North Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind, and I admire North Dakota for that, I admire him for his outspoken advocacy of that, and I hope all the giant wind machines go to North Dakota. That is where I would like them to be, just not in Tennessee--not just because of how they look but because in our neck of the woods they do not work. They raise our taxes, or they raise our rates, or they destroy our mountains, or they run away jobs from industries and tourists who do not want to be part of that. I would rather see us look for better ways to spend those dollars.

As I suggested earlier, we could take the same amount of money we would be taxed, if we choose not to build these, by providing 205 million $2 light bulbs, which would be the equivalent energy savings of almost 2 nuclear reactors, or it would be the equivalent of 3,700 of these wind turbines, which would run along the ridge tops from Bristo to Chattanooga, or it would pay the monthly electric bill for Tennessee's 2.5 million TVA residential customers, every Tennessee residential customer, for a month and a half, or it would put a new scrubber on TVA's coal-fired powerplants every 9 month period.

I am afraid this is an idea looking for a problem to solve. It may solve it in North Dakota, it might solve it in New Mexico and perhaps it does in Colorado, but it does not in Tennessee. It raises our taxes, raises our rates, ruins our mountains, and it sends jobs away, runs them away.

I hope, in a spirit of bipartisanship, perhaps the Senator from New Mexico, one of our most thoughtful Senators, the leader of this debate, will decide there are other things we can focus on rather than a one- size-fits-all mandate which may work in some States but does not in my State.

I yield the floor.

Exhibit 1

Southeastern Association of

Regulatory Utility Commissioners,

Little Rock, AR, May 31, 2007.

Dear Senators Bingaman and Domenici, and Congressmen

Dingell and Barton: The undersigned state utility

commissioners are writing to express our concerns about the

nationwide, mandatory federal renewable portfolio standard

(RPS) being discussed/introduced by Senator Bingaman. As

state regulators, we are responsible for ensuring that retail

electricity consumers receive affordable, reliable electric

service. We are concerned that a uniform, federal RPS mandate

fails to recognize adequately that there are significant

differences among the states in terms of available and cost-

effective renewable energy resources and that having such a

standard in energy legislation will ultimately increase

consumers' electricity bills.

The reality is that not all states are fortunate enough to

have abundant traditional renewable energy resources, such as

wind, or have them located close enough to the load to render

them cost-effective. This is especially true in the Southeast

and large parts of the Midwest. Even in regions of the

country that do have access to wind energy, there is

frequently stiff local opposition to building huge wind

turbines, significant costs for the additional transmission

needed, and reliability concerns. As a result, some wind

renewable energy projects do not get built, while others take

years to build. The availability of other renewable energy

resources, such as geothermal, is even more limited.

Because of the limited availability and cost-effectiveness

of traditional renewable energy resources, we are deeply

concerned that our utilities will be forced to buy renewable

energy credits from the federal government or from renewable

energy generators in other regions of the country.

Correspondingly, our retail electricity consumers will end up

paying higher electricity prices, with nothing to show for

it.

Renewable energy resources may be able to make a

significant contribution to energy production in those

regions of the country that have abundant renewable

resources. In fact, over 20 states and the District of

Columbia have already seen fit to approve their own RPS

programs based on the resources available to them. Moreover,

those states have included a wider array of energy resources

in their definitions of eligible renewable resources than the

proposed federal RPS mandate, Some states consider power

produced from municipal solid waste, small hydroelectric

facilities or coal waste to be renewable energy. Other states

count expenditures on demand-side management or alternative

compliance payments toward meeting the state RPS

requirements. None of these alternative renewable energy

resources, however, would receive credit under the Senate

version of a federal RPS program.

While state public service commissions and energy service

providers should certainly consider available and cost-

effective renewable energy resource options as they make

long-term decisions for incremental energy needs, the

imposition of a strict federal RPS mandate, as contrasted

with a state-driven cost-effectiveness determination, will

only result in higher electricity prices for our consumers.

Because the availability and cost-effectiveness of

traditional renewable energy resources varies so widely among

states and regions, we believe that decisions regarding

renewable energy portfolios should be left to the states. If,

however, the Congress desires to address renewable energy

objectives in the upcoming Energy Bill, we urge you to

expressly allow each individual state to determine the extent

to which renewable energy can be reliably and cost

effectively utilized within that state.

Sincerely,

(Signed by Members of the Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia,

Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and

Tennessee commissioners.)

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for a period of up to 20 minutes on the legislation and that following my remarks, Senator Alexander speak for a period of up to 30 minutes.

Mr. President, I rise today to praise the progress this body is making toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil. In 5 short months, we have assembled and advanced a package of energy proposals that will strengthen the foundation of a new, clean energy economy for our Nation.

Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici have led us to where we are today, as have the chairman and ranking member of the Finance Committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, and the Commerce Committee. The bill before us today, H.R. 6, is a product of many minds and many good ideas.

The extraordinary progress the Senate has made in the last 5 months responds to a seismic shift in how Americans are thinking about energy and about our world. At no time in our history--at no time in our history--has energy been so clearly a matter of national security, of economic security, and of environmental security. The issue before us is fundamentally about the security of the United States of America.

Think back to 2000. At that time, it seemed that the threat of Islamic radicalism was confined to foreign soil. Few understood the urgency of combating climate change at that time. Gas prices at that time were $1.20 per gallon. That price cloaked the real costs and the real danger of our dependence and our addiction to foreign oil.

Today, this is all different, and fortunately, today, the people of America and this Senate are recognizing it is all different. In every corner of American society, the conventional wisdom about our energy policy has changed. The fact is, our dependence on foreign oil affects the lives of Americans each and every day. It touches our security, our pocketbooks, and our conscience.

Most strikingly, oil has become a major factor in global security. Our dependence--our dependence--our overdependence makes us vulnerable and weakens our standing in the world. Since 2001, China and Russia have partnered to lock up oil in central Asia, rolling us out of that region. Venezuela has wielded its resources to buy off its neighbors and to divide our hemisphere. Iran has used its oil resources to court Russia and China, convincing them to oppose our diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from building nuclear weapons.

Countries that wish us harm know about our addiction. They know any disruption in supply sends gas prices through the roof and slows our economy. They are happy--they are happy--our enemies are happy to profit from our addiction. Oil money lines the pockets of terrorists, extremists, and unfriendly governments. It funds the Hezbollah rockets and militias in Lebanon today. It reaches bin Laden, it reaches al- Qaida, and it finances the militants in Nigeria who kidnap and terrorize westerners.

The sad truth is that today we are funding both sides of the war on terror. We spent over $100 billion last year to fight the extremists in Iraq and Afghanistan, extremists who are funded indirectly through the oil revenues we finance out of this country and around the world. This situation is absolutely crazy.

To make matters worse, our oil dependence is causing economic pain for Americans. With gasoline over $3 a gallon and holding, $50 and $80 visits to the gas stations for family members to fill their cars are straining family budgets and frustrating small business owners. Across my State, the farmers and ranchers whom I fight for every day here are budgeting for the harvest, and they are having to budget for numbers that are astronomical that they never saw before. The question they ask themselves as they go to bed every night is whether they are going to be able to make enough money to pay off their operating line at the end of the harvest season.

Americans want affordable alternatives at the filling station.

So far they have few. We must move forward in providing those alternatives.

The third reason we are on the floor today with this legislation is our bill will help jumpstart a new energy economy. That new energy economy is

based on the environmental security threats we see from global warming. Climate change now stands as one of the greatest moral challenges of our time. It is an issue we are obligated to confront.

The desperation and disaster brought by Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Rita, and a series of prolonged droughts, floods, and fire storms over the past several years have driven climate change to the center of American consciousness. We cannot afford to leave our children a legacy of an environmental disaster. We need to begin to work on that problem now, and this legislation begins to do that with respect to carbon sequestration.

This is not the beginning of our efforts here. In 2005, this Chamber, with most of the Members who are still here today, worked in a bipartisan fashion to pass the 2005 Energy Policy Act. The bill before us today is a significant step forward toward tackling the national security, economic security, and environmental security implications of our oil addiction. The 2005 Energy Policy Act was a first step in moving us in that direction.

We approached the 2005 Energy Policy Act much as we have this proposal today. It was a work Senators Domenici and Bingaman did-- Senator Domenici was chairman and Senator Bingaman as ranking member, and now their roles are reversed. They said we have an energy problem and we can craft a better energy policy, and that received nearly 80 votes in the Senate. It is that same bipartisan approach that they have taken to this legislation. Other committees also contributed to the legislation before us today and have also taken that kind of approach. That is why, at the end of the day, we will succeed in moving forward with energy legislation in the Senate.

The bill in the 109th Congress, the 2005 Energy Policy Act, was perhaps the most important energy legislation passed in 20 or 30 years in this country. During that time, I traveled to all 64 counties in Colorado and spoke to the people of my State about that bill. By and large, they appreciated the balanced approach we took to the 2005 act. The bill kick started a renewable energy economy, made big investments in technologies, took a cut at consumption with smart efficiency measures, and it made sensible additions to our domestic oil and gas supply.

There remains much to be done, and that is why we are here today. We should not forget our bipartisan work of 2 years ago, which planted the seeds for our new energy economy; and today, in the week ahead, and in the following week, we will have an opportunity to build on the success of 2 years ago.

The new energy economy is in fact taking root. I don't think you will find a better example of how quickly Americans can change their approach to energy than in my State of Colorado. We have sparked a renewable energy revolution in Colorado in just 2 years, and the benefits have already touched every corner of my State. Our farmers and ranchers are leading the charge. In Weld County, Logan County, and Yuma County, which are remote and far away from Denver, we are seeing biofuel plants spring to life, creating new markets and new opportunities for our rural communities. So the ``forgotten America,'' in fact, is having new opportunities created for them because of the fact that we are embracing the clean energy revolution. Today, we have three ethanol plants that are already in production, where there were none 2 years ago. We have several others that are under construction and are being planned.

But it is not just biofuels. In the San Luis Valley, where my family has lived, ranched, and farmed for five generations, Xcel Energy just broke ground on the largest solar plant in North America. More and more wind turbines are turning on the plains of southeastern Colorado, powering front range homes, while providing incomes for the ranchers who own the land. Indeed, the current program with respect to the construction of wind energy farms in Colorado will mean that very soon we will be producing the same amount of electricity that is produced from three coal-fired powerplants in Colorado. That is enormous progress in a very short time.

How did we spark that renewable energy revolution in Colorado? The Energy Policy Act of 2005 helped, but it is not the only force of change. The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden is the crown jewel of our labs, and it is a hub for innovation for our clean energy future. The President of the United States has visited NREL. Many colleagues in this Chamber have visited NREL. We do all we can here to support the work that the researchers are doing there today. We have created the Colorado Renewable Energy Collaboratory, which binds the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden with the Colorado School of Mines, Colorado State University, and the University of Colorado. The collaboratory is an engine for ideas, technologies, and talent, and making sure those technologies are being deployed out into the private sector.

I have held a renewable energy summit in Colorado in each of the last 2 years. We have tried to connect the business community and those people with the ideas to make sure that deployment occurs. These summits have been a huge success and were attended by the business community, environmental interests, farmers, and ranchers. This last year, we had over a thousand people who attended that summit, which was sponsored by the Governor of Colorado, Governor Ritter, as well as mayors and other leaders throughout the State.

In Colorado last year, 2007, we actually moved forward in enhancing our renewable energy standard, our renewable portfolio standard for our State. The renewable energy revolution underway in Colorado makes me all the more excited about the bill we are considering today. Its provisions are sensible and, by and large, they are bipartisan and should be noncontroversial.

The bill includes 3 key components. First, it dramatically increases production and the use of biofuels. The bill will quintuple the existing renewable fuels standard to 36 billion gallons by 2022, 21 billion of which must be advanced biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol. That is more than enough to offset imports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Libya combined. I will say that again. The 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels, combined with what we produce from corn ethanol, will get us to 36 billion gallons. That amount of production from alternative biofuels is enough to offset our imports from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Libya combined. I make that point to underscore the importance of the biofuels and alternative fuels title in this legislation.

Second, H.R. 6 also helps us reduce our dependence by making better use of what we have. The transportation sector accounts for a full two- thirds of our oil consumption. It offers the cheapest and best opportunities for saving fuel. The bill helps automakers retool their vehicles by providing items such as loan guarantees for hybrids and advanced diesels. The bill will also make a reasonable increase in CAFE standards. The bill increases and incentivizes the engineering capabilities of our automakers.

Finally, the bill before us also begins to address the environmental consequences of our energy policy. The debate about how to tackle the threat of global warming will have few easy answers. It will be a difficult challenge for us when we get to specifically addressing the issue of global warming later in this Congress. But one thing we can do today is to determine how we can store the carbon we are currently putting into the atmosphere. Carbon sequestration technology is neither new nor complicated. It has been around in the oil fields in America for 50 years. We need to take that technology and refine our techniques for storing it and determine where we can store the carbon that is currently being emitted from powerplants and other sources around our country. This bill will help start us in that direction.

Mr. President, how much time do I have left?

Mr. President, I want to say I am very proud of this bill. I know a lot of work has gone into this bill. It is an impressive and thoughtful next step toward reducing our dependence upon foreign oil. In the coming days, I hope we can find ways to strengthen this legislation in some specific ways.

I want to speak very briefly about four amendments that several of my

colleagues and I will be offering in the several days ahead.

The first amendment I intend to offer is the 25x'25 resolution, which establishes a national goal of producing 25 percent of America's energy from renewable sources, like solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass, by 2025. That resolution is a vision for where we want to get as Americans. It is sponsored by a great group of bipartisan Senators, including Senators Grassley, Hagel, Harkin, Lugar, Obama, and the Presiding Officer, Senator Tester. That legislation was introduced earlier this year as S. Con. Res. 3, and it has received widespread backing. It is endorsed by 22 current and former Governors and many general assemblies from across the country. Nearly 400 organizations, from the Farm Bureau and the Union of Concerned Scientists, to John Deere, to the Natural Resources Defense Council, have embraced 25x'25 and the vision incorporated in that amendment. I hope we can include that in this legislation.

The second amendment, which I will mention briefly, incorporates provisions from S. 339, the DRIVE Act. That is legislation which Senators Bayh, Lieberman, Brownback, Sessions, and 23 other Senators have been working on for a long time. It has a robust mandatory oil savings plan. The DRIVE Act aims to increase our Nation's energy security by cutting 2.5 million barrels per day from our Nation's oil use by 2016, and 10 million barrels per day from its oil use by 2031. I am hopeful these provisions will also be added to the bill.

Third, Senator Bingaman and I and others will be introducing an amendment to create a national renewable energy standard. Many States, such as Colorado, already have a renewable energy standard and are reaping the benefits. I know there will be debate and discussion about how exactly we move forward with the renewable energy standard. But I believe the time has come for our Nation to adopt a renewable energy standard in the same way many States have done, including my State of Colorado.

For example, a renewable energy standard of 20 percent by 2020 will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by an estimated 400 million tons per year. That is equal to taking 71 million cars off of America's roads, or planting 104 million acres of trees. While we look at this renewable energy standard, I know we will have a debate about whether we can improve upon what we have done here. I look forward to that debate.

Finally, the Presiding Officer, Senator Tester, from Montana, and I will be introducing an amendment to make better use of America's vast coal resources. Coal is to the United States what oil is to Saudi Arabia. The vast resource of coal from the great States of Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, West Virginia, and throughout our country, is something we need to use. But as we use our coal resources, we need to make sure we are using them in a smart way so it doesn't damage our environment.

The amendment we will introduce will provide loan guarantees to build coal gasification facilities. We also will have standards in there with respect to life cycle greenhouse gas emissions from those facilities to make sure they are 20 percent lower than emissions from petroleum fuels. I appreciate the great work of my colleagues who have worked on that amendment.

How we improve our energy security and reduce our dependence upon foreign oil is the central national security, economic security, and environmental security challenge of the 21st century. It will determine whether we will continue to be entrenched in conflicts over resources in every corner of the world. It will determine whether we will triumph in our fight against oil-funded extremists and terrorists. It will determine whether our economic fortunes will hinge on the price of oil that OPEC sets, or whether the United States will stand proudly and independently as the world's innovator for clean energy technologies; and it will determine whether we will succeed in leaving our children and grandchildren a world wrought with environmental dangers, or whether we can correct our path in time.

I thank my colleagues for their great work on this bill, and I look forward to a productive and thoughtful debate and a successful conclusion to energy legislation in the days and 2 weeks ahead.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I see my colleague from North Dakota wishes to speak.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I wish to comment on a couple of issues dealing with the Energy bill this morning. We will be back on the Energy bill starting on Monday. Before I do, I wish to mention as well the Washington Post column by Robert Novak yesterday entitled ``Dorgan's Poison Pill.'' Mr. Novak once again stops just about a page or two short of good research. He has the opportunity on the op-ed page of a major paper to make his case, and we are so seldom offered that same opportunity by the Washington Post that I thought I would at least use the floor of the Senate to describe accurately what Mr. Novak was trying to write about.

He talks about an amendment I offered to the immigration bill. He calls it a ``poison pill'' in the title, and then he says: Dorgan pushed his ``killer amendment'' by voicing the Great Plains populism of his own State. That is sort of sniffing down your nose at the Great Plains populism that exists in some parts of this country.

Let me describe what this amendment was. The immigration bill is a bill that is complicated, it is controversial, it is a very large bill, and it has a lot of moving parts to it. One part of the bill deals with the issue of bringing in guest workers--people who aren't now here, who are living elsewhere in other parts of the world--bringing them in to take American jobs.

Now, I have great difficulty with the immigration bill as it is written. My feeling about immigration is we have a problem with illegal immigration. That is true, we certainly do, and we ought to try to address that problem. I think the first way and the thoughtful way to address that problem is to decide we are going to provide border security and border enforcement--just do first things first. First of all, provide border enforcement, and then we can do the other things.

That is not what this bill does. This bill brings in about six or eight moving parts, and in order to sign up support for it--for example, in order to get the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to support it, they also include a temporary or guest worker program that says we have people who are not now in this country whom we want to bring into this country to take American jobs because we don't have enough American workers, they claim.

In fact, they put together this Byzantine approach that says guest workers will come in, they will be able to bring their family with them and stay for 2 years. They have to go home for 1 year, take their family home, and then they can come back for 2 more years, then go home for 1 year and come back for 2 more years. So they can be here a total of 6 years, with 2 years gone, and their family with them their first or second tour. And by the way, no one knows whether they are going to go home once they get here. Who is going to keep track of people coming in three times in 6 years for 2-year periods each of the three occasions?

I offered an amendment on that particular issue of guest and temporary workers who would come in to take these jobs. My amendment was very simple. It said: Let's sunset that provision after 5 years and try to understand what has happened as a result of it, what has happened to American workers as a result of bringing in all these temporary workers. Is there downward pressure on American wages? Has this hurt American workers? My guess is it will. What if 80 percent of the people who come in under the temporary worker program never leave? Then they are here as illegal immigrants. Maybe that ought to matter. Maybe we should sunset this in 5 years and take a look at it.

That was my amendment. It passed by one vote on the floor of the Senate and is described by Mr. Novak as the ``poison pill,'' the ``killer amendment.'' That is unbelievable. I know where he got the language. He got the language from my colleagues here who were part of the ``grand bargain''--a group of 14, I think it was, who went into a room, reached a grand bargain putting together this Byzantine immigration bill, brought it to the floor, and behaved as if they were the only people out of 100 Senators who had any ideas. There are 14 of us who have this idea, they believed, and anybody who offers amendments would not have an idea that would be worthy of improving it; therefore, we must resist and oppose all amendments.

That is the way this immigration bill went on the floor of the Senate. But it was not a poison pill or a killer amendment or anything of the sort. It was a kind of commonsense approach to try to say: Why don't we do this the right way?

Mr. Novak points to my colleague, Senator Kyl from Arizona, in his column. It is interesting. Mr. Kyl was part of the grand compromise and, of course, described my amendment, I think, as a ``poison pill.'' Mr. Kyl voted for the identical amendment 1 year ago. I offered the identical amendment 1 year ago, and Senator Kyl voted for it then.

But those are just facts that Mr. Novak missed because, as I said, when you stop one page short of good research, you are not going to have the entire story.

Energy

Mr. President, let me now talk just a bit about the Energy bill. This is important.

We live on this little old planet, we circle the Sun, and we have about 6.4 billion neighbors. We live in this little portion of the planet called the United States, and we have built an economy that is extraordinary. We have expanded the middle class, created an economic engine that is almost unparalleled on this Earth.

In this planet we stick little straws and suck out oil. We suck out about 84 to 85 million barrels of oil every single day. One-fourth of that oil must come to the United States and be used here because we need it. We use one-fourth of all the oil every day that is pulled out of this earth, and 60 percent of the oil we use in this country comes from outside of our country. So we use one-fourth of the oil on the Earth every day, and over 60 percent of it comes from elsewhere. It comes from the Saudis--Saudi Arabia--Kuwait, Iraq, and Venezuela. Some troubled parts of the world--very troubled parts of the world--produce a substantial portion of the oil we need for our economy to work. If, God forbid, one morning we woke up and terrorists had interrupted the pipeline of oil to our country from troubled parts of the world, our economy would be flat on its back, and that is reason we have an energy bill on the floor of the Senate.

I think this is the first time we have debated the Energy bill in which we have come to an intersection in understanding that energy and climate change are intertwined, energy and climate change meet at the same intersection.

So we discuss all of these things. We discuss renewable electricity standards. Should we require that 15 percent of all electricity produced in this country be produced with renewable energy--wind energy, biomass, geothermal, solar energy? I believe the answer is yes. I feel very strongly about that. We will have a vote on that next week, and I think it will be very close.

Standards that would increase the efficiency of automobiles, we will have a vote on that, and it will be very close. We haven't had a change in the CAFE standards for automobiles for 25 years--25 years. Everything else about an automobile has changed. There is more computing power in a new automobile than there was on the lunar landing that put Neil Armstrong on the surface of the Moon. There is more computing power in one new car than was in the lunar landing. Everything has changed--cup holders, music systems, keyless entry-- everything has changed about these vehicles except efficiency.

My wife purchased an automobile some years ago. She purchased an automobile that had a certain mileage standard on the window sticker. After 10 years, she was going to buy another car, and she looked at the new version,

the new car version of exactly what she purchased 10 years earlier. The mileage standard on the new car, 10 years later, was identical to the mileage standard of the car she had purchased, identical. Everything about the car had changed--the color, the look, I am sure the springs, the suspension--almost everything was changed, and it has cup holders and a better music system and keyless entry.

By the way, all those car companies opposed seatbelts and airbags and have always opposed CAFE standards.

But the point is, regarding efficiency, nothing is changing. So the question is this: If we are consuming all of this oil--much of it from troubled parts of the world--because we have such an oil-intensive economy and we want to be less dependent on the Saudis, Kuwaitis, and others, and 70 percent of our oil is used in vehicles, then don't we have to insist that this change and that vehicles become more efficient?

The automobile industry is doing full-page newspaper ads in my State--and I assume other States as well--telling people things about the proposal on the floor of the Senate that just aren't true--just not so. I think it was Will Rogers who said:

It is not what he knows that bothers me so much, it's what

he says he knows for sure that just ain't so.

Well, some of the advertising that is going on around the country is just wrong. They have these screaming ads saying somebody is going to take your pickup truck away. It is not true. The new CAFE standards--or any efficiency standards--aren't like the old ones where if you produce too many pickup trucks, you have to cut back on pickup trucks and produce far more subcompacts. That is not the case.

These new approaches say that for every class of vehicle--and there are eight, including the big, heavy trucks--every class of vehicle must have efficiency. You must have increased efficiency for each class, not measured against another class. You must have increased efficiency in that class, and, yes, that includes pickup trucks. But those who are buying pickup trucks--and a lot of people are--ought to expect more efficiency. It is not a case where someone is going to say that you are not going to be able to find a pickup because we have to produce more subcompacts.

In my part of the country, it does occasionally--only on rare occasions--get cold. In North Dakota, when a rancher is going out in late March, and there is a blizzard and the wind is blowing 40 miles an hour and the temperature is 30 below, and he or she is out checking on the calves because it is calving season and they are trying to figure out what is going on--they don't want to go out in 40-mile-an-hour winds, with temperatures 30 below; that rarely happens, but occasionally--they do not want to go out driving in a Chevette or some subcompact car trying to figure out where they are going to move in the pasture to find those cattle. They want a substantial vehicle. So they want four-wheel drives and pickup trucks, and I understand that. That is why this CAFE or this automobile efficiency standard has been changed and changed in the right way, requiring all classes of vehicles to be more efficient. We don't measure them against other classes. Every class is required to meet greater efficiency standards.

So that will be debated next week. I know there are people who will come and oppose it because the automobile industry is taking a position of: Yesterday forever; let's just keep doing what we have been doing, and that will be just fine. It is not just fine as a matter of public policy for this country. This country needs a changed agenda with respect to energy, and part of that changed agenda is increased efficiency for automobiles and for vehicles.

With respect to the renewable energy standard, the renewable electricity standard, I regret and I have said from time to time that my political party--we are not as good at developing titles and labels as the other party. No matter what they come up with, they are good. They come up with something that is probably going to even cause more pollution, and they call it Clear Skies. They come up with something that will cut down trees, and they call it Healthy Forests. They are good at labeling.

We come up with something called renewable portfolio standard. We talk like twits. So we need to improve that. I call it homegrown energy or renewable electricity standards.

Let me describe what that means. It means we produce a lot of electricity, and we use it. We get up in the morning and the first thing we do is turn on a switch and that switch makes all things possible for us. It allows you to get hot water from a hot water heater, it allows you to plug in an electric razor, allows you to have the lights in your bathroom as you get ready for work. All of these things happen, but it is not automatic. Somebody is out there producing electricity in a coal-fired generating plant perhaps, or a generating plant that is fueled by natural gas.

What we are saying is, we want to set a standard of 15 percent of our electric energy to be produced with renewable energy. We now have unbelievable turbines that can take energy from the wind and turn it into electricity. Yes, you can advance your electricity issue with that or, an experiment I have in North Dakota that I am very excited about, you can take the energy from the wind, produce electricity, and with that electricity in the process of electrolysis, separate hydrogen from water and store hydrogen as a vehicle fuel; the wind to hydrogen, all renewable.

You can do the same with respect to the renewable electricity standard by requiring that 15 percent of the electricity we produce comes from biomass, solar energy, wind energy, geothermal, and more. We should do that. I know it is a close vote. I know some oppose that. We should do that because it will advance this country's interests.

I want to make one additional point. There are some who say: You are out here talking about increased efficiency standards, you talk about renewable electricity and so on--what about more production? In fact, I just had a person call me a few minutes ago who said the same thing. What about more production? I believe we ought to have more production of energy. I have supported, along with my colleague, Senator Craig from Idaho--bipartisan--the two of us have supported something called the SAFE Act, which proposes and calls for more production from that area offshore that has the greatest potential. No, it is not Alaska, not California; it is the gulf, the Gulf of Mexico that has the greatest potential.

I was one who helped open lease 181, which was just opened. But I believe much more can be done to increase the potential on the Outer Continental Shelf on the Gulf of Mexico. I support that. I filed an amendment--we have not called it up because I don't believe we have the votes for that--but Senator Craig and I are discussing that issue. I support increased production because I believe it is a necessary part of a balanced energy strategy.

I think all of these issues are important. I know there are some who probably do not think the Energy bill is as important as it really is, but it is at the root of this country's future economic opportunity. This engine of ours, this economic engine of ours cannot and does not work without energy, and our energy policy has not been a particularly thoughtful policy. We waste a prodigious amount of energy in every way, every day. We can make buildings more efficient, we can make automobiles more efficient, we can make appliances more efficient. We should produce more. We should conserve more. There is so much we should do in energy policy.

Senator Bingaman and Senator Domenici, who are the chair and ranking member of the Energy Committee--I am a senior member of that committee--but with their leadership they have put together a bill that is now on the Senate floor, and I think it will advance our interests. But we need to do a couple of things.

No. 1, we need to support the CAFE standards. By the way, that comes from the Commerce Committee on which I serve. Senator Inouye and Senator Stevens are to be complimented for what we were able to do in the Commerce Committee with respect to CAFE standards. Senator Boxer and the leadership of the EPW committee has also contributed to this bill. But we need to have a 15-percent standard of renewable fuels coming with respect to the production of electricity, and we need to support the CAFE standards that have come from the Commerce Committee.

I do not believe there are others who wish to speak. Let me do a couple of unanimous consents.

Mr. President, let me congratulate my friend from Florida for his passionate statement on this imperative. As Abraham Lincoln might say, we are trying to give our Nation a new birth of freedom from the oil addiction that is very much compromising the national security of our Nation. Certainly how we deal with transportation fuels and move forward with higher standards and more efficient vehicles is something I hope this body has the political will to do through the underlying bill, which will move us to 35 miles per gallon within a reasonable time period. I very much appreciate his leadership on this effort and I look forward to joining him on this battle next week as we try to move forward.

Amendment No. 1524 to Amendment No. 1502

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and I call up amendment No. 1524.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I rise today to offer the 25x'25 resolution as an amendment to H.R. 6, the Energy bill. I am proud to be joined in this endeavor by a broad bipartisan group of Senators. They include Senators Grassley, Harkin, Lugar, Obama, Hagel, Clinton, Feingold, Casey, Nelson of Nebraska, Brownback, Kohl, Kerry, Johnson, Tester, Cantwell, Thune, and Cochran, all of whom are sponsors of S. Con. Res. 3, which we introduced earlier this year.

Mr. President, 25x'25 is a critical vision for our energy future that will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil by building a new energy economy here at home. Our amendment establishes a national goal of producing 25 percent of America's energy from renewable sources, such as solar, wind, and biofuels, by 2025.

The 25x'25 vision is widely endorsed, it is bold, and it is fully attainable. If implemented, it will dramatically improve our energy security, our economy, and our ability to protect the environment and combat global warming. 25x'25 complements the steps we are taking on the bill before us today which reflects the good work of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the other committees that have contributed so greatly to this bill.

I am pleased that 17 of my colleagues in the Senate from both sides of the aisle are cosponsoring this resolution. In addition, the 25x'25 vision has been endorsed by 22 current and former Governors and many State legislatures around the country.

The Big Three auto manufacturers--Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors--are all behind 25x'25. So are many agricultural organizations, environmental groups, scientists, and businesses, ranging from the Farmers' Union and the Farm Bureau to the Natural Resources Defense Council, and companies such as John Deere.

The breadth of support for the 25x'25 vision speaks to the extraordinary economic, environmental, and national security benefits that its achievement will yield. In all, nearly 400 organizations have embraced this vision and are working together on a plan to implement it.

The amendment I am introducing makes the 25x'25 vision a policy goal for our Nation. It sets a challenging but realistic target for our legislative and budgetary work on energy. Our amendment says the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of the American people should be the engine for a new, clean energy economy for the 21st century.

I urge every American to join with me and roughly 400 partner organizations that are part of 25x'25 to make this goal a reality. Results from a recent study conducted by the University of Tennessee show that reaching the 25x'25 goal is, indeed, achievable. The study also shows that 25x'25 would do the following: First, it would increase net farm income in America by $180 billion and, including multiplier effects, could result in $700 billion in economic activity annually for America. Secondly, it would create 5 million new jobs here at home by 2025; and third, it would save as much as $15 billion in Government payments across America.

America's working people can and should be at the center of our energy revolution. Farmers and ranchers in my native San Luis Valley, in Sterling, CO, and elsewhere, are already leading the way. They are building biodiesel plants and ethanol refineries that help power cars, tractors, and trucks. They are building wind turbines in Prowers County and biomass generators in Jackson County, and they are searching for new technologies that will allow them to make even greater contributions to our energy supply. These Americans understand we cannot continue to import 60 percent of our oil

from foreign countries, many of which are hostile to the United States. If we aim to be strong and secure in this world, we must have this kind of bold vision. They know we will have to build a clean energy economy for America if we are to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

A clean energy economy will take root in our farms and in our fields. It will help revitalize a rural America that has been forgotten for far too long. It will spur our engineers to new developments and designs, and it will help establish the United States as a world leader in clean energy technologies. It is time for Congress to take a more active role in our clean energy future. Establishing a national goal of 25x'25 is an important first step.

Americans understand we cannot continue to import 60 percent of our oil from foreign countries, many of which are hostile to the United States, if we aim to be strong and secure in the world. We must rid ourselves of this dependency and this addiction. They know we will have to build a clean energy economy if we are to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Today, with this amendment, we are articulating a common vision for our energy policy. It is a target that Governors, Senators, Representatives, State legislators, farmers, ranchers, business people, scientists, and automakers all wish to achieve. It is a target we can hit, particularly with the policies that are built into this bill.

I ask my Democratic and Republican colleagues to support this amendment and to join the millions of Americans who are already working toward the 25x'25 goal.

I want to make a comment about the imperative of the energy issue that is before the Senate today. When I look at the 21st century, I ask myself: What is it the people of my State, and what is it the people of America want me to do as their Senator, not only for our generation but for the next generation and generations to come? It seems to me the challenges of the 21st century are daunting challenges, major challenges, that face us. We can essentially put them into three, and they are all under an umbrella of security for this Nation and ultimately security for civilization.

The first of those challenges is foreign policy: How can we in America move forward and try to put Humpty Dumpty together again when we see so much violence in the Middle East and other places around the world? How can we make sure the dream and vision of the generation of World War II is something we preserve? How can we say to our children and to our grandchildren that the world we are leaving to them is a safer and more secure world? Certainly that generation of World War II believed they had accomplished that, that they were leaving a world which was a much safer and a much more secure world for the generations that would come after them. Indeed, we have been the beneficiaries of their sacrifices. Over half a million Americans gave their lives to preserve freedom around the world in World War II, including members of my family who gave their lives on the soils of Europe. They had a vision of a more secure world.

We have some major challenges in Iraq, as we witness the violence there, and when we see what is happening today in Lebanon where we are on the precipice of another civil war there, and when we see what is happening in Gaza and Israel where Hamas has now apparently taken over the Gaza Strip and the emergency that we see President Abbas has declared in the Gaza Strip.

We have to somehow figure out this very challenging task of how we put the world back together again. How do we secure the vision the people of America want us to have, which is that we create a safer and more secure world for ourselves and for those generations who will come behind us?

The second issue which, in my view, confronts America today and which is interrelated with some of the violence we see in the Middle East is energy. For far too long we have neglected this issue. I am proud of the fact that in 2005, this body came together in a bipartisan way and we opened a new chapter for energy in America. I am very proud of this bill today because it builds on that chapter that gets us to energy independence. We have to look at the failings of America under both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past. Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon--Richard Nixon first--coined the term ``energy independence'' when OPEC was formed. President Jimmy Carter spoke to the Nation late one night back in the 1970s and said: We need to deal with energy with the same kind of moral imperative of war.

Yet what happened in the 1980s and the 1990s? The low cost of fuel essentially allowed America to go to sleep at the switch. The consequence has been that instead of importing 30 percent of our oil as we were in 1970, today we import 60 percent of our oil. The consequence is we have compromised the national security of the United States.

I have been on the border of Israel and Lebanon and looked down at the camps of Hamas and the daunting signs of Hezbollah where Hezbollah had captured at that time Israeli soldiers, and they were at that time daring Prime Minister Sharon to go into southern Lebanon.

What is it that creates that kind of condition? What is it that allows Hezbollah to have over 37,000 rockets in their armory? What is it that allows the funding and the creation of a militia of more than 10,000 militant soldiers within the Hezbollah organization? It is the oil. It is the oil revenue that is going into some countries in the Middle East, including Iran, that is directly funding those interests who are fighting the interests of America across the world.

In fact, we have gotten to the position where those interests have become so powerful economically that now with the potential of Iran arming itself with nuclear capabilities, we should all be very concerned about the security not only of Israel but also of the Middle East and of our entire world.

What does Iran with nuclear armaments mean to the national security of our world? It is a fact that it is our energy dependence, the glutton nature of our energy dependence on oil from those countries that has compromised our national security.

So when we work on the energy issue of our country, we need to know we are working on an imperative of the 21st century. It is an imperative of the 21st century that we get ourselves rid of this addiction to foreign oil. That is why we see progressives and conservatives coming together, Democrats and Republicans coming together, to try to tackle this issue.

Much of what we have in this legislation before the Senate comes from the efforts of the energy futures coalition that coined the term ``set America free.'' ``Set America free.'' Our passage of this legislation, hopefully this next week, will be part of that achievement where we as Senators will stand and we will say we have taken another bold step in this agenda of setting America free.

A second issue that obviously confronts the people of America is health care. That is an issue for another day. That is an issue we will be dealing with as we look at health insurance for children and a whole host of other issues. But today and next week, we have an opportunity to deliver on one of the imperatives of the 21st century for the United States of America, and that imperative is that we move forward with courage and with boldness on the vision of energy independence.

Our amendment today on 20x'25 is a critical part of that agenda because it sets forth a vision that is an achievable one that will get us to make sure we are producing 25 percent of our energy from renewable resources by the year 2025.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I understand the amendment I spoke about is acceptable to both sides. Therefore, I ask for a voice vote on the amendment.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.