Research and innovation

New Mexico Business Journal, Nov, 2001 by Jeff Bingaman

FOR SEVERAL MONTHS, THE SENATE ENERGY AND NATURAL Resources Committee has been working to develop a balanced and comprehensive energy policy- one that will contribute to our nation's economic prosperity and give Americans a wide range of affordable, abundant, and clean energy choices.

I am convinced that the deliberative approach we are taking will stimulate new clean energy markets that create opportunities to take advantage of 21st Century technologies. Additionally, the legislation, when complete, will propose a new model for regional coordination between states and the federal government to ensure that energy infrastructure needs, from power plants to pipelines, are planned and constructed to meet the need for reliable, affordable energy in ways that minimize the impact on communities and the environment.

The Energy Committee spent the summer months examining a variety of energy concerns, from the need to promote new technology to solve energy problems to the need to increase the efficiency of energy use. We also looked at ways to give renewables a larger role in the energy picture and to give global climate change concerns a place in the energy debate. At the same time, we looked at ways to increase our supplies of energy

I am pleased that many of my colleagues have come to agree that traditional sources of energy, renewable power and energy efficiency all must be part of a comprehensive and balanced national energy policy. I am also pleased that we are finding broad bipartisan agreement on most issues. That is because America's energy problems concern all of us--Democrats and Republicans alike.

Our committee began shaping energy policy by focusing on our need to revitalize our national capabilities for energy research and development. This was not an accident. Throughout July we heard again and again in our hearings that new science and new technology are at the core of any solution to our national energy challenges that we hope to find.

Whether the question is how to produce more energy while maintaining environmental quality how to use energy more efficiently how to maintain reliability in our electricity system or how to respond to the challenges of global climate change, the answers always come back to the need for new technologies and new science that enables new approaches to long-standing problems.

If we are to fashion a balanced and effective energy policy for the 21st Century research and innovation is key: It is the key to holding down prices as various traditional sources of energy become more difficult to produce domestically; it is the key to new technologies for producing energy from a wider array of non-traditional sources; it is the key to providing consumers with more choice and control over how they get and use their energy

Despite the importance of energy research and development, our national commitment to it leaves a lot to be desired. Federal energy technology research and development today is equivalent, in constant dollars, to what it was in 1996. Yet, our economy is much larger today than it was in 1996. Clearly there is a need to ramp up our investment in research and development.

Some very important parts of our energy research and development system have suffered from nearly a decade of stagnant budget levels. This is particularly true in fundamental energy science, which provides the seed-corn of new ideas on which energy innovations is built, and which also provides the training for the next generation of energy scientists and engineers.

A focus on energy research and development, therefore, was the appropriate place to start. I was pleased that the committee was able to agree to build a research and development program for the next five years that increases research for energy efficiency by 57 percent and renewables by 62 percent, accelerates the search for ways of burning coal without harmful emissions to the atmosphere, and starts toward developing a new generation of ultra-safe nuclear reactors.

Our national laboratories, Sandia and Los Alamos, will play a key role in carrying out much of the research and development that we need. There is no doubt that we need to be working on all possible sources of energy supply in this country. I believe the Senate's legislation will give us that balanced portfolio of energy supply options to choose from.

We completed our research and development piece of the energy bill just before the August recess, and I was prepared to turn the committee's attention back to the energy bill when tragedy struck our country. The attacks of September 11, 2001 have since required us to focus the energy of Congress on ways to defeat terrorism.

Not surprisingly, the attacks have also caused Americans to stand back and take stock of our economy's vulnerabilities to other disrupting events. We must acknowledge that one of those vulnerabilities is energy. Energy is vital to our modern society, our economy, and our national defense. Without energy, most of the other major pillars of our national economic infrastructure-our financial system, telecommunications, and transportation systems--cannot function.