When I was named ranking member on the Water and Power Sub-Committee in July, I noted that up until the last generation, the purpose of federal water and power policy was to create an abundance of both.  And I noted that in recent years, abundance has been replaced with the rationing of shortages as the principal objective of federal policy. 

 I warned that: “The result is increasingly expensive water and power that is now affecting our prosperity as a nation.  We’re no longer looking at cost-benefit analyses of which projects make economic sense and which do not.  Instead, practicality has been replaced by an entirely new ideological filter: those projects that ration or manage shortage are considered worthy regardless of feasibility or cost – and projects that produce abundance are to be discouraged regardless of their economic benefits or simple common sense.”

Today’s hearing illustrates this difference of policy dramatically. 

Although the stated goal of this hearing is to relieve gridlock, the underlying agenda is to promote a so-called “green transmission system” – meaning facilities that limit transmission to sources that the majority finds ideologically pleasing – principally wind and solar – and that exclude electricity the majority finds ideologically displeasing – principally hydroelectric, coal, and nuclear. 

Never mind that wind and solar are the two most expensive ways we have yet invented to generate electricity.  Never mind that hydroelectric, coal and nuclear are the least expensive – and two of those (hydroelectric and nuclear) produce exactly ZERO air emissions.

Thus, the sub-committees charged with the responsibility of producing abundant power for the United States will spend much of this hearing seriously discussing setting up an entirely duplicative transmission system solely for ideologically preferred sources of electricity and to the exclusion of all others.

But even this discussion becomes academic in the face of obstruction and opposition by the environmental left – both in Congress and in the Courts – to federally designated transmission corridors that will help bring more energy to our electricity grid.   

At a time when our nation needs to build 32,000 miles of lines over the next five years, we cannot afford to block energy generation and transmission projects because they aren’t socially acceptable in San Francisco or the West Coast. 

If you want to see where all this leads, look to California, whose consumers now pay the highest electricity prices in the continental United States. 

In 1970, California produced 62% of its energy.  By 2006, it imported 62% of its energy.

Three years ago, the city of Truckee was about to sign a long-term contract for electricity purchased from a new, state-of-the-art, EPA-approved coal-fired power plant in Utah.  It was forced to abandon this contract because the power was not ideologically acceptable -- even to be imported.  The replacement power now costs Truckee consumers nearly twice as much.

If this folly is imposed nationally, it will have disastrous consequences to the economy and to the quality of life of the people of our nation for generations to come.

Finally, I need to note that the environmental left has not only devastated California’s once-abundant energy capacity, it has produced an unprecedented water crisis by the deliberate diversion of 200 billion gallons of water from Central Valley agriculture for the enjoyment and prosperity of the Delta Smelt.  

I have been told that this is the last Water and Power Subcommittee hearing for this year.  That’s bad news for  40,000 unemployed San Joaquin Valley workers who have urgently asked Congress to turn the Delta pumps back on.   It is also bad news for families across America who will see their grocery prices rise as a result of the destruction of a half-million acres of the most fertile and productive agricultural land in the nation.

I asked last week if we could hear directly in the field from all those impacted by the policy of this government,   I have yet to receive a reply.  Nevertheless, we appear to have plenty of time today to talk about  “greening” our grid.  

There’s certainly no need to wonder why many people believe this Congress is disconnected from realty.

 

Opening Statement, The Honorable Tom McClintock, Ranking Republican, House Water and Power Subcommittee.  Oversight Hearing on “Water Management and Climate Variability: Information Support at the USGS and Bureau of Reclamation."

October 27, 2009

Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.

Today’s hearing is described as an oversight hearing on “water management and climate variability.”  That’s an interesting concept, insofar as the only constant in earth’s climatology is change.  Just within the brief period of recorded human history, we know of periods when the earth’s climate has been much warmer than it is today and others when it has been much cooler.  We know, for example, during the Medieval Warm Period from 900 to 1300 AD, that wine grapes were grown in Northern Britain and Newfoundland and that the temperature in Greenland was warm enough to support a prosperous agricultural economy for nearly five hundred years.  We also know that during the Roman Warm Period from 200 to 600 AD, North Africa was wet enough to support bountiful grain production.  In the second century AD, Ptolemy recorded year-round precipitation throughout the Mediterranean.

We also know that there were other periods when the earth’s climate was much cooler than it is today.  During the Little Ice Age, from 1300 through 1850, the Thames River and New York Harbor regularly froze over.  Indeed, during the Little Ice Age, a wave of religious zealotry swept Europe blaming witchcraft for the dramatic climate changes of the era.

Given the constant variability of the earth’s climate, proper water management requires accurate and abundant data, and I certainly applaud any effort to assure that in planning for our future needs we do so with the scientific data necessary to make informed decisions.

I just want to be sure that it is science and not ideology that is driving the effort.

That’s why I get a little nervous watching, for example, how the Secure Water Act was rushed through this house.  Without any debate or dialogue or hearings on this side, it was dropped into a 1,216 page omnibus bill that could not even be amended.

  Under the guise of the Secure Water Act, the Bureau of Reclamation recently announced a new “River Basin Study Program”  that will – quote – “better define options for future water management of Western river basins…” 

The use of the term, “future water management” has raised concerns by many western water users that this is a program whose purpose is not to produce reliable data but rather to search for ways to justify increasingly Draconian restrictions on water usage.  What we need is an open assessment of the most viable, economical and certain options of assuring an abundance of water for the people of these regions from the natural resources that we enjoy.

If the warming trend that began in 1850 and peaked in 1998 resumes, then the need for more dams and aqueducts will become acute.  I submitted a series of questions to the Bureau of Reclamation to clarify the intent of these studies and I have yet to receive answers.  The Bureau’s silence heightens concerns that this is a solution in search of data to support it rather than a search for data that will illuminate a solution. 

Madam Chairwoman, I have mentioned before that the minority party believes that it should be the principal object of the federal government’s water policy to assure abundance.  The purpose of data collection and management should serve this objective – and not to justify cutting off water to users, rationing water shortages, or imposing wildly expensive recycling or desalination projects at a time when a renewed commitment to public works would produce a new abundance of clean cheap and abundant water.

And that brings me to the fine point of it.  The House Sub-committee on Water and Power can make time for a hearing on water data management, while 40,000 families remain unemployed in the Central Valley of California due to the deliberate diversion of some 200 billion gallons of water by this government. 
I must tell the Subcommittee that I’m disappointed that we are not focusing on the plight of these families, or that 250,000 of the most fertile agricultural acres in the entire hemisphere have been fallowed.  I know there are some who believe that government can control the weather.  There is some skepticism over that point.  But no one can question that we can control the pumps in the Sacramento Delta.
As you know, Madam Chairman, I sent a letter to you on Monday asking for a hearing to resolve these matters and hope that the Subcommittee will act on my request.  There’s no time to waste on reversing the plight of the San Joaquin Valley because what is happening there can happen anywhere else in the West and is entirely within our power to solve.  To ignore their pleas continues to give the impression that this Subcommittee lets the San Joaquin Valley burn while the committee fiddles with lower priority matters like water data management.
 

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.  October 22, 2009.  M. Speaker:  I rise in opposition to the rule and in opposition to the underlying bill.  And to explain why, I’d like to walk through a little history and a little math. 

Let’s begin with history and two important years: 1978 and 1839. 

 In 1978, the Wall Street Journal carried this headline: “Solar Power Seen Meeting 20 percent of Needs by 2000; Carter May Seek Outlay Boost.”

 Oddly, the same paper carried a headline in 2006 making the same promise this time for all renewable fuels – only this time by 2025 – but I digress.  (view newspaper headlines)

Billions of dollars were poured into research and development for solar technology, and an entire solar industry solely supported by massive subsidies arose to grab those dollars. 

And what was the result of all of this plunder of taxpayers and ratepayers?  More than 30 years after that promise was made in 1978, solar power accounts for just one percent of electricity generation.  That’s not for lack of subsidies – it’s because despite billions of dollars of subsidies, the technology remains immensely inefficient and expensive.

And that brings me to the second year: 1839.   This is not a new technology.  Photovoltaic electricity was first discovered by French physicist Alexandre Edmond Becquerel in the year 1839. 

This technology has existed for 170 years.  And in those 170 years of scientific discovery and progress, and despite billions of dollars of subsidies to the solar industry, we have yet to discover a more expensive way of generating electricity!

When the state of California was squandering its wealth on subsidizing this industry a few years ago, I asked the California Energy Commission what is the price range of various forms of electricity generation. 

And here is what they reported:

The cheapest form of electricity generation is hydroelectric.  It ranges from a quarter cent to 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour – average around 1.5 cents.

Then comes nuclear power, with a midrange around 1.7 cents.

After that, coal, about 1.9 cents. 

Then wind at 4.6 cents and then natural gas at 10.6 cents.   And finally, we get to the most expensive way to produce electricity, solar, between 13.5 cents and 42.7 cents per kilowatt hour, with a mid-range of 28.1 cents.

It gets worse.

In a day, a solid acre of state-of-the-art solar panels can produce 2.2 megawatt hours of electricity, assuming an average of 5 hours of peak sunlight.  2.2 megawatt hours per day. Compare that to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant that produces 49,000 megawatt hours of electricity each day. 

In order to duplicate that single nuclear power plant, it would require 22,000 acres of solid solar panels – or 34 square miles.  By comparison, the Diablo Canyon Power Plant sits on one square mile. 

So this technology, after 170 years and countless billions of dollars of research and development, is roughly 17 times more expensive than nuclear power and consumes 32 times the land area of a comparable nuclear facility. 

But don’t worry, say the proponents of this bill.  It just needs a few billion dollars more to become competitive.  I’m sorry, but we’ve heard that song before. 

I suppose hope springs eternal.  For decades the federal government and gullible states like California have kept the solar industry afloat, pumping billions of dollars into subsidized loans, credits to consumers who buy solar panels and, of course, Research and Development ($166 million last year and $175 million this year by the Department of Energy alone). 

This is an industry that exists solely of the dole, by the dole and for the dole.  It is now clambering for billions of dollars more.  And if this rule is passed and the bill is taken up, they’re going to get it – directly out of the shrinking savings accounts of American taxpayers.

The Solar Technology Roadmap Act of 2009.  You’ve heard of the bridge to nowhere.  This is the roadmap that will get us there.