Phase II of Renewable Energy in America

National Policy Conference

November 28-29

Cannon Caucus Room, Washington, DC

American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE)

It's my pleasure on behalf of the ACORE Board of Directors to welcome you here today.  On behalf of my colleagues, the California Energy Commission, I say take heart the progress of renewable energy has always come first at the state and local level.  On behalf of Arnold Schwarzenegger I say keep lifting.  Lift your hopes.  Lift your expectations of what a competent and rational and government should be expected to deliver.  In California our lawyers have been busy.  Most of you probably know that the lawyer is the official state mammal in California.  Last spring we and 11 other states persuaded the United States Supreme Court that the Clean Air Act includes C02 as a regulated pollutant.  Two weeks ago we and ten other states persuaded the Court of Appeals to overturn the limp-wristed Light Truck Mileage Standard. The judge said, "You can't put your thumb on the scale, overestimate the costs, and underestimate the benefits and justify this weak standard."  Earlier this month we and 14 other states sued the Environmental Protection Agency to grant us the waiver to proceed with our tailpipe standards to regulate C02.  We're saying very simply that if the federal government will not lead it should get out of the way and allow the states to do so.  David McCurdy from the Automobile Manufacturers objected to the waiver.  EPA has granted California more than 40 waivers in the last 30 years.  We've never failed to receive one.  Mr. McCurdy, lobbyist for the Manufacturers, felt that granting a waiver would create a patchwork quilt of regulation in this country.  In my state the appropriate response to that is, "Dude, you're seeing colors."  The Clean Air Act is a lot more simple than that.  Since 1970 states have had an option.  You adopt the California standard or you adopt the federal standard.  Black or white?  Black or white?  Fifteen states currently in the process of adopting the California standard.  They represent more than 45 percent of the automobiles in this country.  Black or white?  It ought not to be too difficult for the geniuses in Detroit to figure.  Door number one?  Door number two?  The theme of this year's ACORE conference is a global perspective, and we welcome a distinguished group of international panelists.  In California we scratch our head.  In this country we are finally starting to recognize the military entanglements that come along with our legacy energy policy, but it's been 30 years and 7 months and 11 days since an American president declared the moral equivalent of war regarding our energy challenges.  Who among us is prepared to defend the valor with which we have approached that war?  Thirty years of bipartisan policies, Republican presidents, Democratic presidents, Democratic Congresses, Republican Congresses, 30 years of policies that can only be described as the moral equivalent of desertion.  In this country in the name of fiscal probity we adopt pay as you go budgetary rules.  Rules that radically limit the ability to extend long term renewable tax credits, and yet we invent a completely separate set of books to pay for the war Iraq.  In this country we lecture others on the perils of ethnic or religious parochialism, but we allow an ugly regionalism to impede our expansion of the renewable fuel standard.  It makes no sense that American tax dollars would create one of the most stunning technological achievements of human history, the propulsion of a vehicle through space powered by the rays of the sun.  Yet decades later for terrestrial applications we are dependent upon the Germans and the Japanese for the use of that technology.  It makes no sense that we treat our automotive industry with the fragility ordinarily reserved for an old family heirloom.  Thirty years of bipartisan assisted suicide policy.  At least Dr. Kevorkian and his patients acknowledged what they were doing.  It makes no sense that we have referred to the southern states for the last 30 years as the Sunbelt, but now we are told that they lack sufficient renewable resources to participate in even a fig leaf renewable portfolio standard.  Makes no sense that we would turn our backs on the business opportunity to invent, and manufacture, and service, and install, and market and finance the technologies that will bring China, India and the United States into closer harmony with world climate policy.  And so, my international friends help us make sense of this.  Share with us your insights.  Grant us the wisdom of your perspective, but look beyond, look beyond the tortured political debate in this Capital City.  Look to what is going on elsewhere in America.  There is a new resolve alive in our land.  You hear it in the voices of state legislators in the 26 states that have adopted renewable portfolio standards.  You see it in the faces of city council members of the towns and councils, 750 of them which have committed their jurisdictions to carbon reductions consistent with the Kyoto Accords.  You feel it in the brave hearts at ACROE and like minded people all around this country.  And please know this. We will prevail.  Thank you very much.  Let's have a great conference.