The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“CLIMATE CHANGE” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the Senate section on pages S6102-S6103 on July 31, 2013.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CLIMATE CHANGE
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I rise again for the 41st time to ask my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. Today I come to discuss the serious risks that climate change poses to our energy sector.
It is no controversial idea that our climate affects our energy infrastructure. In the Northeast, when we think about what causes power outages, we naturally think of bad weather. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reports that between 2007 and 2012, weather-
related events were the main cause of electrical outages in the United States.
That same report said: ``The average cost of a one-hour power outage is just over $1000 for a commercial business,'' just for 1 hour. This takes a serious toll on our economy.
A recent Department of Energy report has highlighted how sensitive our energy sector is to climate change and to extreme weather.
In September 2011, the Department of Energy reports:
High temperatures and high electricity demand-related loading tripped a transformer and transmission line near Yuma, Arizona, starting a chain of events that led to shutting down the San Onofre nuclear power plant with power lost to the entire San Diego County distribution system, totaling approximately 2.7 million power customers, with outages as long as 12 hours.
Earlier that summer:
Consecutive days of triple-digit heat and record drought in Texas resulted in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas declaring power emergencies due to a large number of unplanned power plant outages and at least one power plant reducing its output.
The report says the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, AL, ``had to reduce power output because the temperature of the Tennessee River, the body of water into which the plant discharges, was too high to discharge heated cooling water from the reactor without risking ecological harm to the river.''
This happened in 2007, 2010, in 2011, and, in some cases, the power production was reduced for nearly 2 months. The Department of Energy reports that ``the cost of replacement power was estimated at $50 million.''
It is not just power generation, energy exploration has been affected too. The DOE report explains that last July: ``In the midst of one of the worst droughts in American history, certain companies that extract natural gas and oil via hydraulic fracturing faced higher water costs or were denied access to water for six weeks or more in several States, including Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, and North Dakota.''
It was a similar story in the fall of 2011:
Due to extreme drought conditions, the city of Grand Prairie, Texas, became the first municipality to ban the use of city water for hydraulic fracturing. Other local water districts in Texas followed suit by implementing similar restrictions limiting city water use during drought conditions.
In July of 2011, the report recounts that:
ExxonMobil's Silvertip pipeline, buried beneath the Yellowstone River in Montana, was torn apart by flood-caused debris, spilling oil into the river and disrupting crude oil transport in the region. The property damage cost was $135 million.
Senator Vitter, our ranking member on the Environment and Public Works Committee, has told us that 18 percent of the Nation's oil supply passes through his home State of Louisiana at Port Fourchon. A recent Government Accountability Office report found that the only access road to that port is closed 3\1/2\ days a year on average because of flooding, effectively shutting down that port. With sea level rise climbing due to climate change, NOAA is now projecting that within 15 years portions of that highway will flood an average of 30 times each year--again shutting down access to that port 30 times a year.
Vital infrastructure such as powerplants, power lines, roads, and pipelines are all designed to stand up to historical weather patterns. What happens when the weather stops following historical patterns?
According to the draft National Climate Assessment:
U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1895; more than 80% of this increase has occurred since 1980. The most recent decade was the nation's hottest on record.
Oceans and other bodies of water are warming right along with the atmosphere.
The seasons are shifting. Research shows that in the last two decades the frost-free season has increased in every region of the contiguous United States compared to the average between 1901 and 1960.
In the Southwest, the record shows the frost-free season has increased 3 weeks and the western wildfire season has expanded by more than 2 months since the 1970s. Precipitation patterns and the availability of water are changing throughout the Nation. One study concluded that snow in the western mountains is melting, on average, 1 to 4 weeks earlier now compared to the 1950s.
The draft National Climate Assessment shows that the amount of rain falling in what we call heavy precipitation events or, more colloquially, downpours is up in every region of the Nation. It is up 45 percent in the Midwest and 74 percent in the Northeast.
Sea level is rising about 8 inches, on average, globally, but in some parts of the country it is much higher. NOAA reports that mean waters off the Galveston, TX, coast are rising more than 2 feet per century. At Grand Isle, LA, the rate is nearly 3 feet per century.
These aren't just projections of what is to come, these are actual measurements of changes that have already happened or are happening around us. The result is that we have an energy infrastructure built for a different climate than the one which now exists and the one which is to come. Conditions are only predicted to get worse.
The threat to our energy sector from changes in the climate should be neither controversial nor partisan. There are a lot of commonsense solutions here. Adapting our infrastructure for climate change is smart, and it will save us from costly repairs.
Investing in energy efficiency by reducing the demand for power will relieve pressure on the burdened systems. Investing in a diverse energy sector will protect against the unique vulnerabilities of specific types of power sources.
Rhode Island is part of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, nicknamed Reggie, along with eight other Northern States. Our region caps carbon emissions and sells permits to powerplants to emit greenhouse gases, which creates economic incentives for both States and utilities to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy development. These efforts also reduce load demand on the region's electrical grid.
We are proud of the effort we are making in New England. I know a lot of States are working just as hard. I say to my colleagues, our home States are hampered by the inaction in Congress.
We have received credible and convincing warnings. We have received compelling calls to act. The overwhelming majority of the scientific community recognizes climate change is real and we are causing it.
Our national security and intelligence community, our faith leaders, major American corporations, including the insurance and reinsurance industry and most Americans all agree we need to act. It is time for Congress to wake up, do its work to slow the onslaught of climate change, and to prepare for what are now unavoidable, inevitable effects. Yet here in Congress we sleepwalk on.
This is an issue I know hits home in your home State in very different ways than it hits home in my State. But In each of our own ways, our States are already experiencing the hit from climate change. It is caused by carbon pollution that we are putting into the air, that our companies, our smokestacks are launching into the atmosphere. It changes our weather, changes our temperature, changes our seasons, changes our oceans, changes our waterways, changes our weather, and changes our lives.
The tragedy is that we sleepwalk on because we are unwilling to address the special interests that are preventing us from taking the action that all Americans need. This is the archetypical fight between the public good, between an important public security issue and a private special interest that is defending itself, that is defending its right to pollute, that is defending its ability to compromise our atmosphere, compromise our health, and compromise our great oceans and waters. This should be an easy struggle. This should be an easy struggle, but it is not. And it will be a mark of shame on this generation, and it will be a mark of shame on this building that given the choice between the clear information from the scientists, the clear experience of what is happening in all of our States and the power of the special interests, we ignored the first and yielded to the power of those special interests.
I yield the floor.
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