A bill to establish a research, development, and technology demonstration program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in combined cycle and simple cycle power generation systems.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3029) to establish a research, development, and technology demonstration program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in combined cycle power generation systems, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 3029, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

My bill establishes a research, development, and demonstration program through the Department of Energy to improve the efficiency of natural gas turbines used in electric power generation systems. The Department had a similar public-private partnership research program in the 1990s that led to technologies used in turbines today. Resurrecting this capability is essential if our country is going to be the energy technology leader of the world.

Currently, the United States uses natural gas for nearly 20 percent of our power generation, and with the recent discovery of natural gas in different regions of our country, that percentage is most likely to grow.

Efficiency is paramount in turbines. The most advanced combined-cycle gas turbine systems today are capable of reaching somewhere near 60 percent efficiency. The goal of this bill is to develop systems that achieve up to 65 percent efficiency.

The energy and fuel savings created by more efficient turbines will help ratepayers save more than a billion dollars per year in fuel costs alone. Deployment of 65 percent efficient gas turbines throughout the country would result in significant reductions in fuel use, leading to savings in electricity costs of some $180 billion through the year 2040.

Energy efficiency should be our fuel of choice, a fuel we need to drill and mine like we currently drill for oil and mine coal. That's exactly what this bill does, Mr. Speaker. It makes energy efficiency our fuel of choice.

Just 1 percentage point improvement in efficiency would result in CO2 emissions reductions of 4.4 million tons per year, as well as palpable reductions in NOX, SOx, and other harmful emissions.

In addition to the environmental benefits and energy and fuel savings, this bill promotes United States technology leadership, putting our country in a position to assume a greater share of the worldwide energy market by creating and retaining high-value domestic jobs in turbine manufacturing. Furthermore, many technologies developed under this program can be retrofitted onto the existing fleet of turbines.

This program will create thousands of domestic jobs in a variety of technology sectors. There are potential jobs in our labs, jobs in our factories, and jobs in our construction sector. This bill is a positive step toward restoring our energy, economy, creating clean-energy jobs, and enhancing our energy security.

Getting this legislation to the floor today would not have been possible without the help of my colleagues on the House Science and Technology Committee. After the full committee markup of this bill, we continued to work to address the concerns of my colleagues, Mr. Hall, Mr. Bilbray, and Ms. Kosmas. With their help and leadership, we were able to expand the scope of this bill to include simple-cycle turbine systems, in addition to combined-cycle.

I want to thank them for their suggestions and working with me to create an even stronger bill. In so doing, we also modestly expanded the authorization levels for the bill to reflect the inclusion of simple-cycle turbine systems.

I want to thank Ranking Member Hall, his staff, and all of my Science and Technology Committee colleagues for continuing to work with me to improve this bill. Our chairman has been most helpful.

Finally, I also want to thank Mr. Inglis for understanding the importance of this legislation and joining me as a cosponsor of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Let me again thank those of the committee and subcommittee respectively, Chairman Gordon and Chairman Baird, for their tremendous help in this measure, along with the ranking members on the committee.

Before we close this debate, I think it's important to acknowledge the numerous letters of support that we have received dealing with this legislation. We have letters of support from the Gas Turbine Association, from General Electric, from Solar Turbines, Strategic Power Systems, Inc., and Florida Turbine Technologies, Inc.

Having strong industry support is vital if we're going to be successful, Mr. Speaker, in moving forward with an innovation economy. We all must work together to move our country and our economy forward to a greener and brighter future. The bill before the House is a measure that will obviously underscore the value of energy efficiency and will allow us to make use of natural gas turbines in a way that promotes that added 5 percent of efficiency that will translate to billions of dollars of savings and economic and environmental savings that will come from the efforts of this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of H.R. 3598, the Energy and Water Research Integration Act, and I agree with Mr. Tonko, the gentleman from New York. As with H.R. 3029, the bill we are considering on the floor today has been amended since it was passed out of the Committee on Science and Technology on October 7 of this year.

I supported the intent of the bill, as introduced, which is to ensure consideration of water intensity in the Department of Energy's research, development, and demonstration programs, and through the process of regular order, H.R. 3598 improved. For example, two amendments which were agreed to during the full committee markup clarified that the language of the bill should not be the basis for any new Federal regulations regarding State, local, or tribal water use and should not trigger any increased financial burden on State, local, or tribal governments. However, a few fundamental concerns remained, and during the markup, Chairman Gordon graciously offered to work with our side of the aisle to make changes and improvements to the committee- passed version. What we're considering today is a result of negotiations to draft a good bill acceptable to all.

This amended version of H.R. 3598 requires the Secretary of Energy to assess the energy research, development, and demonstration programs and projects of the Department of Energy and identify those where it's appropriate to integrate water considerations. The Secretary shall then develop a strategic plan outlining the RD&D needs for the programs and projects identified under the assessment. After this plan is developed, the Secretary would have the authority to apply the strategic plan to those appropriate projects identified as the most energy and water intensive and with the most potential to minimize freshwater withdrawal and consumption, increase water use efficiency, and utilize nontraditional water sources, among other considerations.

The amended bill also requires interagency nonduplication and coordination. In addition, the amended bill establishes, in coordination with other relevant Federal agencies, an energy-water architecture council that will promote and enable improved energy and water resource data collection, reporting, and technological innovation.

Ensuring adequate water supply for municipal and agricultural use and also energy production should be a primary area of focus for our country. Almost all of our energy sources, including renewable energy, require water to be productive, and, conversely, most water processes require energy to be useful. This bill is timely and needed in order to ensure that we use both resources efficiently and responsibly.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself about 2 minutes to close.

Before we end debate today, I want to take a moment to say thank you to a policy adviser of mine that will be going on maternity leave shortly after and likely will not be returning to the Hill for a while.

Elizabeth Kowal Chapel has been on my staff since September 1994 helping me to serve the people of the Fourth Congressional District of Texas. She is originally from my hometown of Rockwall, Texas, and I was happy to hire her way back then as an intern from the University of Texas.

I told her back then that she could be my intern for 3 months, and then we would see where we went from there. At the end of those 3 months, she came to me and asked if she had to leave. I told her, ``Baby Doll, you can stay as long as you like.'' She must have liked it, because over 15 years later, she is leaving me not for another job on the Hill but for the only job better than helping the folks in Texas--that's motherhood. Elizabeth and her husband, Christopher, are expecting a baby boy at the end of January, and I look forward to meeting him, and I hope that he'll be my intern during the year 2020.

Elizabeth has served in my personal office and as my senior energy policy adviser on the Committee on Science and Technology and the Committee on Energy and Commerce, two committees with some very complex issues. She has done a stellar job with a very heavy workload that she has carried with style and grace. Elizabeth has been a real asset to my staff. She has been a real friend, and she is going to be missed. Her cheerful disposition and commitment to her work have added a great deal to my work on both committees.

I want to take the opportunity to say thank you and wish her the best of luck as a mother. I'm sure she will be just as successful at that job.

I thank the Chair, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3598) to ensure consideration of water intensity in the Department of Energy's energy research, development, and demonstration programs to help guarantee efficient, reliable, and sustainable delivery of energy and water resources, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on H.R. 3598, the bill now under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Demand for energy and water resources is stressing our environment and our economy. Innovation and technologies which address the nexus between these two resources is critical to the future of our country. H.R. 3598 requires the Secretary of Energy to consider water-related issues in the Department's energy efficiency and energy technology research programs. Additionally, H.R. 3598 creates an energy-water architecture council that will facilitate the collaboration of industry, of academia, and of the Federal Government in improving energy and water resources data collection, reporting, and technological innovation.

Chairman Gordon and Ranking Member Hall of the Science and Technology Committee have worked hard to improve this bill on its way to the floor. To ensure appropriate use of taxpayer dollars, the bill now includes direction to the Secretary of Energy to develop a strategic plan which will focus the Department's efforts on the most energy- and water-intensive programs and projects with the most potential to achieve the purposes of this bill.

This legislation is the product of recommendations heard in five Science and Technology Committee hearings on water and several reports from the National Academies, the Government Accountability Office, the National Science Technology Council, and the Department of Energy. With letters of support from the Water Innovations Alliance, NanoH2O, Inc., and the Alliance for Water Efficiency, this legislation takes important steps to deal with our country's water and energy resource challenges.

I encourage all of my colleagues to join me in support of H.R. 3598.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, let me, on behalf of the Democratic members of our Science and Tech Committee, wish Elizabeth Kowal Chapel the very best in the steps to come. May I also share the sentiment that the child be gifted with a sense of humor that so obviously prevails at the Science and Tech Committee meetings. We wish you the best.

We have no further speakers from our side on behalf of the bill, Mr. Speaker.

However, I would like to make this final point of encouraging our colleagues to support H.R. 3598, which would put a primary focus, rightfully so, on water-related issues as the Department of Energy deals with the innovation economy that is sparked by energy efficiency and energy technology research. To do that optimizes the outcome, and I think it's a very strong bill.

I congratulate the Chair and the ranking member on behalf of the work they've done on H.R. 3598.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3029, ``to establish a research, development, and technology demonstration program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in combined cycle power generation systems.'' I support this bill because energy efficiency is of the utmost concern to our security, our economy and our future.

H.R. 3029 would direct the Secretary of Energy to carry out a research, development, and technology demonstration program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in combined cycle power generation systems and identify the technologies that will lead to gas turbine combined cycle efficiency of 65 percent. A combined cycle is an attribute of a power producing engine (or plant) that employs more than one thermodynamic cycle. Heat engines, which are still only able to use a portion of the energy their fuel generates (usually less than 50 percent) are a burden on the American consumer who helps support this inefficient system of energy production. The remaining heat (e.g., hot exhaust fumes) from combustion is generally wasted; combining two or more thermodynamic cycles results in improved overall efficiency.

The bill requires that the program support engineering and gas turbine design for utility-scale and megawatt-scale electric power generation. Under the bill, this includes high temperature materials, improved heat transfer capability, manufacturing technology, combustion technology, advanced controls and systems integration, advanced high performance compressor technology, and validation facilities for the testing of components and subsystems. It also requires that the program include technology and field demonstrations, and assess overall combined cycle system performance.

H.R. 3029 sets out specific program goals. In Phase I, the goal is to develop the conceptual design of and demonstrate the technology required for advanced high efficiency gas turbines that can achieve at least 62 percent combined cycle efficiency on a lower heating value basis. In Phase II, the goal is to develop the conceptual design for advanced high efficiency gas turbines that can achieve at least 65 percent combined cycle efficiency.

The bill requires that the Secretary solicit proposals from industry, universities, and other appropriate parties for activities under the program within 180 days of enactment. The bill requires the Secretary, in selecting proposals, to emphasize the extent to which the proposal will stimulate the creation or increased retention of jobs in the United States and the extent to which the proposal will promote and enhance United States technology leadership. Awards shall be made on a competitive basis with emphasis on technical merit. H.R. 3029 authorizes $65 million for each of fiscal years 2011 through 2014 for carrying out the program.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in support of H.R. 3029, to establish a research, development, and technology demonstration program to improve the efficiency of gas turbines used in combined-cycle power generation systems. The bill we're considering on the floor today is a slightly different version than the bill that was passed out of the Committee on Science and Technology on July 29 of this year.

Two changes were made between committee and floor consideration. The first is the addition of simple-cycle gas turbine efficiency to the combined-cycle gas turbine efficiency already called for in the bill. This addition allows for increased competition as well as beneficial efficiencies across the spectrum of gas turbines. The second change increases the annual authorization level from $65 million to $85 million for fiscal years 2011 through 2014. That will expand eligible participants in the R&D program.

Prior to committee consideration of H.R. 3029, the text as introduced on June 24, 2009, was included in H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which passed the House 2 days later. In the event that this version before us here today passes the House, we would prefer that this language be substituted in place of the language that was included in H.R. 2454, should that bill go to conference with the Senate.

Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel and is a highly efficient form of energy. It has fewer impurities and its combustion generally results in less pollution and has therefore become a very popular choice for electricity generation. While we currently have an abundant supply of natural gas in our country, we should always strive to use our resources in the most efficient way. This bill will help us do that with this precious domestic resource.

Mr. Speaker, we have no more speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.