Lisa Murkowski

We must not forget that even if we were able to provide Rural Alaska with the 25% renewable energy for free their bill would still be unsustainably expensive.

Alaska is uniquely positioned to help transition America to a new energy future.

Together we must begin the journey that will complete our mission.

The president's goal is 25 percent energy generated from renewable sources by 2025.

No other State has such a wide diversity of renewable, sustainable fuel sources at such a tremendous--at such an enormous abundance than Alaska.

Thank you, Bernie. I appreciate your vision and your passion.

Senator Murkowski, thank you for the opportunity to address both you and the committee on what I believe is probably the most important issue facing the world today: energy.

This is an initiative that, again, should consume all of us.

We've got an obligation as a State to figure it out, how we're going to do it here.

I think when you remember and you appreciate that we are the No. 1 consumer, and you also appreciate the extent to which energy costs impact us in this State.

Our challenge is to do what we can to really help facilitate a greater level of collaboration.

Those Federal dollars, unfortunately, are limited, and they're limited at all other levels as well.

Your point about kind of the silos that we have within the energy world I think is very apt.

We need more Alaskans like Bernie. I'm saying that with a little hesitation. We need more Alaskans with passion like Bernie.

We tell everybody, but they don't believe it, so they come up here.

I think Alaska's always different, right?

When we talk about the technologies that are out there, whether it's for wind or solar panels or anything else that we might be doing, we recognize that our climate up here, our environment adds some difficulties or some challenges.

Authorization is good. It's absolutely important, it's necessary, but we'd sure like to make sure that there is support within the president's budget.

I will, I guess, ask for your encouragement within the administration.

So much of what happens from a policy perspective back in Washington, DC, is we've got a tendency, through our policies, inadvertent or not, to pick winners and losers when it comes to energy and how we advance it.

We're looking at exporting this natural gas that we have that for Alaskans could last 1,000 years.

This is about Alaskans owning the plan and wanting to go down the path.

Alaska has the resources to do it, if we have the courage to go down that path.

That simply put is to be 100 percent renewable for all of our electric and all of our heat and all of our transportation.

We need to have an immediate plan, a short-term plan, a mid-term plan, and a long-term plan.