Douglas Alexander: “I urge our colleagues to reject the Sununu-Wyden bill and support the Domenici-Bingaman bill. The provision the Senator…”

“I urge our colleagues to reject the Sununu-Wyden bill and support the Domenici-Bingaman bill. The provision the Senator seeks to strike is one of the most innovative and one of the crucially important parts of the legislation. As I will explain in a minute, it is not a free ride, and it costs the Government nothing. It scores at 0. It is constructed in conformance with the Federal Credit Reform Act. Let me explain the amendment and, in doing so, I am doing it on behalf of the chairman of the committee, Senator Domenici. This is his idea. It is an idea to help us jump-start legislation which we have probably come to think of as a clean energy bill, as a bill which transforms the way we produce electricity in the United States, puts us on a path toward low-carbon and no-carbon electricity, and involves, in doing so, using a number of new technologies, technologies that are not yet commercially proven. For example, in our legislation, the Domenici-Bingham clean energy legislation, we talk about more efficient coal plants. We talk about carbon sequestration, a technology which has not yet been fully demonstrated. We talk about advanced nuclear plants, plants that are of the next generation of nuclear plants. We talk about new forms of solar. Solar has a very limited use in the United States, but there is some exciting new technology there. We talk about new biomass and hybrid cars, a technology which is just beginning to emerge.…”