March 30, 2009
Chairman Gordon's remarks at the National Academy of Sciences summit on America’s Climate Choices
as prepared for delivery
Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this Summit, and I want you to know that the Academy provides essential support to the Congress through its good work.
Our new President has already changed the climate for science in Washington. President Obama called me a few weeks ago and he told me: “I am a science guy.” As you can see by the appointments he is making to key positions, he wants advice and guidance from scientists.
Speaker Pelosi is also a strong ally. The Speaker has made science and technology a priority area for funding and policy. I have been at many meetings and events with her where she has emphasized again and again to audiences that science is the key to our future.
So, the opportunity for action on climate change is now. The science community must seize this opportunity to participate and move quickly to provide the input we need to address this serious problem.
Since Congress is the customer for your product, let me describe the path that Congress is on to address climate change as I see it today.
The schedule for action is aggressive. Both Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have indicated their intention to move climate and energy legislation by this summer. That means a bill is targeted to be produced by each chamber by the end of July, and a conference on the bills hopefully, will proceed in the fall.
The Energy and Commerce Committee in the House will release draft climate and energy legislation next week.
The Administration must also keep pace with another aggressive schedule – the international negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Preliminary negotiations begin next week in Bonn. And over 190 countries will meet in Copenhagen in December to set terms of an international response to climate change. So the time is short and the tasks are challenging.
Congress is relying upon the scientific community to define the overall target for reducing emissions that our policy must achieve. This is the most crucial role for science in the short term. You need to move quickly to meet the schedule that has been outlined.
Congress will then have to do its part to select the mix of specific policies needed to achieve the targets required to prevent catastrophic climate change.
I’m sure you are all interested to know what the chances are for these deadlines to be met and a bill to be passed. Given the unknowns, I cannot handicap that for you now. But, there are two things I firmly believe: At some point there will be a mandate to reduce carbon emissions, and we can not get from here to there without new technology.
And, the job does not end when the policies are put in place. Congress and the Administration will need the science community to help us implement these policies.
Once policies are in place, we need to know if they are working. Reductions in imported oil or increased energy efficiency are relatively easy to see. But greenhouse gas emissions are not. We need robust, reliable monitoring systems to track our progress in reducing emissions. The science community has an important role to play here also.
The Energy and Commerce Committee will develop the emissions control program. The Science Committee’s contribution to the effort will be in the areas of monitoring and climate services as well as encouraging new technology development.
We want to build upon existing monitoring systems where possible and authorize new systems if we need them. But we must ensure that we are accurately accounting for greenhouse gas emissions and achieving our reduction goals.
Additionally, we cannot address climate change without new energy technologies. I’ll mention a few of the new things we are working on and what we are doing to ensure the energy legislation we developed in the last Congress is implemented as intended.
Energy efficiency and conservation will have the greatest near-term impact of any approach to the energy problem. We’ll never find cheaper, cleaner energy than that we don’t use.
While there were a number of provisions included in the last two energy bills, the fragmented nature of these energy efficiency programs at DOE makes prioritization of the research agenda a challenge, but necessary.
Additionally, the interest in all flavors of advanced vehicles suggests it is time to take a close look at DOE’s vehicle research programs.
This includes heavy duty trucks. The Academy’s comprehensive reviews of these programs provide useful recommendations for improvement of these R&D efforts.
As the Committee continues to work on these new initiatives, we are also working to advance programs enacted in the last Congress.
In response to a recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences, I passed legislation establishing an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy or ARPA-E. This is a new research organization with in DOE modeled on DARPA.
In order to make the kind of technological leaps we need to transform the ways in which we produce and use energy, we must rethink how we approach technology R&D.
ARPA-E will enable us to forge new partnerships between the government, our national labs, academia and industry to draw upon the talents and resources of each of these sectors.
Secretary Chu has $400 million dollars to establish ARPA-E and hopefully a billion dollars or more each year there after.
Additionally, I believe an expanded focus on carbon capture and sequestration is also vitally important for our future. Coal is the most widely used fuel in our utility sector.
If we are going to reduce emissions and continue to have a robust supply of electricity, CCS is an essential part of the answer to this question and my Committee will be working closely with Secretary Chu to ensure we devote sufficient resources to move this technology forward
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included $10 million to develop the framework for information management that will help us to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems. This work is currently managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. We will continue to monitor their progress.
I know I am preaching to the choir when I point out the importance of energy storage devices as a means to achieve cleaner, more efficient energy production.
Deploying energy storage technologies has two great benefits: it is the great equalizer for renewables, and it helps to avoid the need to upgrade transmission and distribution facilities
I also want to touch quickly on nuclear power. I believe it would be difficult, if not impossible to meet our targeted reductions in emissions without it. This calls for a fair and reasonable discussion about the future of nuclear power, most specifically about storage and reprocessing. I will make the Committee on Science and Technology a venue for that conversation.
There is one final thing I want to mention. The information supplied to Congress must be readily transferable and comprehensible to the general public – our constituents.
Until the general public truly grasps the nature of this problem and is invited into the process of developing the solutions to it, it will be difficult to reach agreement on a policy path.
Why do I say that? Our economy is in bad shape and our constituents are worried about their jobs, their homes, and their futures. Members of Congress cannot and will not ignore these realities. Especially in this poor economic climate, many people are not worried about climate change.
The phrase, climate change, is vague and does not convey the urgency or scope of the impacts that we face if we do not tackle this problem. Climate, for the public, is synonymous with weather and something you just live with by adjusting your clothing or your thermostat.
Change is something we accept as part of life or is seen as a positive thing, not something to hold back. In fact, I believe someone just won an election on this theme.
Members of Congress will be unable to act without the support of their constituents. So, your audience cannot be Congress alone. It must also be the people we serve. This is the time to act.
We have a great deal of work to do and it is critical that we succeed. Any path we take will involve the development and deployment of new technologies. It is going to require information to guide policy development by the Congress and the Administration. And, it is going to require the support and commitment of the business community and the broader public.
Thank you, again for inviting me to speak with you this morning. And thank you for your hard work and dedication to this important issue.
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