Date: 2007-12-05
Speaker: TIM MURPHY (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Pennsylvania

I thank the gentleman for yielding to me on this critically important issue about energy. As American fanilies lookinto the._.ext few month- about how they are going to be paying their gas bills as the cold winter sets upon us. as natural gas prices go up. of how they will be paying their automobile costs as gasoline prices go up. as we look at such things as jobs such as chemical industry as was just outlined by my friend from New Mexico. it is extremely important that as Congress looks at facing an energy bill this week that we note not only what is in there but what we expect is not in the bill. And unless we take on a comprehensive energy policy in America. America will be facing more brownouts. more times when the power is not there. And in a world where other countries. such as China. are opening up a new coalfired power plant every couple of weeks without the scrubbers and environmental controls we have on. they will be able to undercut us even further with our costs of manufacturing. Unless Congress takes sizable action to back up energy legislation that looks to the big picture of diversifying our energy production and help to lower costs for consumers. our problems will only multiply. Now. I represent a district in Pennsylvania coal country.. directly above the Pittsburgh coal seam. It extends throughout western Pennsylvania. Ohio. and West Virginia. Some geologists tell me that the Pittsburgh coal seam has been the most valuable mineral deposit in the world. It was responsible for the growth of the American steel industry. glass. chemical industry. it has some 50.000 jobs in southwestern Pennsylvania dependent on the coal industry. railroads. barges. trucking. so many other industries involved. It allowed for the development of modern railroads. river navigation networks. It remains a valuable resource that will be able to serve us for many years to come. perhaps 250 more years. long after the Mideast is dry in its oil wells. Closing the mines in Pennsylvania would be like closing the beaches in Florida or closing the harbors in New Orleans. The country cant afford to stop using coal. either. It is a valuable economic resource for our region as other resources available in other parts of the country. So we have to take advantage of every possible resource to meet our energy demands. The messages today are quite simple. We cannot achieve energy independence without coal. We cannot achieve energy security without coal. And our coal must be clean coal. not the other option of no coal at all. Now. listen to these numbers. They are quite compelling. Over the next 40 years or so. the electricity demand in the United States will double. - These are the demands of people in their homes. They are also the demands of increasing jobs in this country. We will conserve. and we will have make great strides in efficiency. But with the growth in the population and improv.ing quality of life.. it all dictates that electrigity demands will still increase substafatially. Coal accounts for about 50 percent of our electricity. and nonhydro renewables like solar and wind account for about 2 percent. We have already built as much hydroelectric as possible. and it is d6ubtful that people will want to see more large super dams built around the country. But even if we triple the share of renewable electricity. we will still need coal for close to half of our electricity in 2050. This means we will still have approximately to double the available coal capacity by 2050 just to meet demand. Right now there are about 400 coal plants in the United States. Many of them are old and inefficient. outdated. Most or all of them will need to be replaced over the next 40 years. So just to maintain our current level. we are going to need to build about 400 plants to replace those. And then to meet the new electrical demands over the next 40 years. we are going to have to build an additional 400. That is 800 new coalfired power plants between now and 2050. This is twice as many plants as have been built since the start of the Industrial Revolution. This translatesto about one coal plant every 2 to 3 weeks. even if we start in 2010. just to maintain the current capacity. It is a huge demand. And we can do that in a way that has clean coal technology. zero emissions. if we will choose to make the investments. MIT said about $8 billion or so will be needed to meet those investments in real dollars. That seems a lot cheaper than it took us back in the 1960s to put someone on the Moon. In the meantime. China is adding about one or two coal plants a week and they are going to continue. They put cheap power in the plants without scrubbers. In the U.S.. renewable technologies such as solar and wind are expanding rapidly and will continue to do so. But they simply cannot match coal in terms of delivered power. Here are some examples. This past August. power from West Virginias largest wind farm was available only about 10 percent of the time that it was actually needed. That is. the wind doesnt blow consistently every day. At 10 percent availability and 3 m egawatts capacity. about 3.000 windmills would be needed to equal the useful output of just one coal plant. To completely replace coal with wind. we would need to build 1.2 million windmills by 2050. This assumes the utilities will actually be allowed to build all the new miles of transmission lines they will need. And will people want all those wind towers up? Another area. the largest solar panel array in the United States is under construction at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. It is going to cover 140 acres of desert with 70.000 solar panels. but will produce only about 2 percent of the output of a modern coalfired power plant. At that rate. we would have to destroy 11 square miles of beautiful southwestern Pennsylvania forest or consume this much valuable land from our farmers just to avoid building one coal plant. The truth is. we need to increase the supply of all energy. coal. natural gas. nuclear and renewables. We cant afford to ignore any of them unless we are willing to put up with a series of brownouts and blackouts during times when the sun doesnt shine and the wind doesnt blow. So the key to solving this problem includes developing clean coal technologies with zero emissions and zero greenhouse gases. Another option is to switch to natural gas. and what we are hearing in the energy bill is there will be more push for doing that. as was outlined by my friend from New Mexico. As natural gas prices continue to soar. that is more jobs out of America that use chemical plants and more families gas bills going up. Natural gas provides about 19 percent of our current electricity demand. and its use will also have to double by 2050 to maintain its current market share. About 90 percent of the electric generating capacity installed since the year 2000 has been natural gasbased. and natural gas is about three times more expensive than coal per kilowatt of electricity generated. This has increased the demand for natural gas and raised the price of both gas and electricity. The increased use of natural gas for electricity combined with our policies that place offlimits much of our domestic gas resources has caused us to be become a gasimporting nation when we could be a gasexporting nation. Congress has repeatedly made vast areas of our coastlines offlimits. thus embargoing our own resources from ourselves. boycotting our own resources. and all the while countries like Cuba drill closer to our shore than we are allowed to. We used to be selfsufficient in natural gas. but not anymore. Most of our imported gas still comes from Canada. but this is declining. Imports of liquid natural gas. or LNG. are increasing rapidly. Not only does this move us farther away from independence. but it is unsustainable because demand for liquefied natural gas throughout the world. especially in Europe. is also increasing rapidly. Chemical companies which use natural gas as their primary feedstock to make such chemicals and fertilizers and other products and other industries that depend heavily on natural gas are going to move their operations overseas where gas is cheaper. When natural gas costs in Middle East or Russia are $1 per unit or less compared to $6 to $12 at a fluctuating cost line in the United States. it is easy to see wly the decisions are being made. Already we have lost 3.2 million manufacturing jobs. almost 20 percent of the total since the year 2000. Chemical companies consistently say that natural gas costs are far more important than labor costs when making their decision to move overseas. Worse yet. if greenhouse gas legislation becomes reality in its current form. natural gas will become by default the fuel of choice for electric utilities. The trends we have already seen will only become worse. Prices will soar. In the mix of which energy source is the cheapest. hydro is probably the cheapest. but as we said. before. we doubt if people will want to build several more dams and dam up beautiful valleys across America. Next cheapest is nuclear power followed by coal. wind. natural gas and solar. But let me briefly talk about nuclear. We need to decide whether nuclear power can pick up the required electricity supply. Nuclear plants currently provide about 19 percent of our electricity. about 30 pertent in Pennsylvania. There are about 100 nuclear power plants in operation in the United States today. but we cant just keep relicensing them forever. They are also getting old and worn and will need to be replaced. By 2050. we will have to replace just about all of the existing nuclear fleet. They are long past their prime and will need to close. This means that by 2050. we will have to build about 200 new nuclear power plants. That is 100 replacements and 100 new to meet the expected demands of 2050. The trouble is we havent built a single nuclear power plant ini the last 30 years. given all the delays and costs associated with nuclear construction. It is going to be difficult. if not impossible. to build.plants in the U.S. at the rate needed. That is about five per year. about one every 2 months starting in 2010. Although the operating costs for nuclear plants are about the same or slightly cheaper than coal. the capital costs are much higher and the lead times for construction and permitting are much longer. The nuclear operating costs also do not include the longterm costs of nuclear waste disposal or storage. As with natural gas. the enactment of greenhouse gas legislation in what we are understanding is the current form. without working to help the nuclear is going to increase the demand for nuclear power and place further strain on resources and increase costs. So there we are. two of our biggest resources for producing electricity. coal and nuclear. are areas that Congress has got to deal with seriously. We have 250. perhaps 300 years worth of coal in the ground. Scientists are working on ways of making sure we have zero emissions coal. zero greenhouse gases. massively reduce. that. Right now I know in Pennsylvania about 40 percent of our coalfired power plants have no scrubbers. or inadequate scrubbers. Unfortunately. the way new source review works is if a company says lets work to improve efficiency. lets put in new turbines or other things that improve efficiency by a few percent. at that point. the government comes in and says. no. we now have to review everything you do. and if you dont take care of everything with all the scrubbers. you cant do it at all. The companies say. well. we* were thinking. of spending 20. or 50 or $150 million on some upgrades but we dont have four or $500 million to take care of this one plant. So they hold off. That is not cleaning the air. That is not taking care of our needs. What we have to do is look at ways of promoting the new technology. helping private business make those investments in new technology. but above all. meet our current and our future needs by addressing the issues of Americas abundant supplies of coal and expanding the use of nuclear power which is clean. It is one of those areas we have to deal with seriously. I thank the gentleman from New Mexico for yielding me this time and his leadership on working in these areas which is so important for Americas energy security.