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December 01, 2009

Energy and Environment Subcommittee Vice Chair Paul Tonko's Floor Speech on HR 3029

as prepared for delivery

My bill establishes a research, development, and technology 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 1990’s that lead 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% of our power generation, and with the recent discovery of natural gas in different regions of the country, that percentage is likely to grow.
 
Efficiency is paramount in turbines.  The most advanced combined-cycle gas turbine systems today are capable of reaching 60% efficiency. The goal of this bill is to develop systems that achieve up to 65% 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. Deployment of 65% efficient gas turbines throughout the country would result in significant reductions in fuel use, leading to savings in electricity costs of $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, it makes energy efficiency our fuel of choice.
 
Just one 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 U.S. technology leadership, putting the U.S. 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 towards restoring our 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 the bill to include simple-cycle turbine systems, in addition to combined-cycle. I want to thank them for their suggestions and for 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 my Science and Technology Committee colleagues for continuing to work with me to improve this bill. Finally, I also want to thank Mr. Inglis for understanding the importance of this legislation and joining me as a co-sponsor of this bill.