Political Quotes

“I would like to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Kentucky, for bringing this important bill to the floor to empower States to protect consumers from higher electric rates and to ensure grid reliability. In fact, when I was in the State legislature back in Michigan, I served as the vice chair of our Energy and Technology Committee and spent a lot of time and work on grid reliability and cost issues. Under the clean power plan, the EPA would set mandatory carbon dioxide emission levels for each State and require that they submit State plans to meet their EPA-established ``goals.'' While I have many concerns about the proposed rule, I am offering this amendment to highlight how the EPA's approach to calculating emissions actually discourages the kind of emission reductions that it is intended to promote. Here is how. The EPA's compliance formula does not include a way to calculate the benefits of clean energy storage. Michigan is a prime example of the importance of energy storage via the Ludington Pumped Storage reservoir in west Michigan, in the Second District. Ludington Pumped Storage was the largest pumped storage hydroelectric facility in the world when it was constructed. I remember as a young man, my dad was in construction, and we would do Sunday drives an hour and a half north just to see progress on this. It is an 842-acre reservoir that is 2\1/2\ miles long and holds 27 billion gallons of water.…”