Jeff Bingaman

I think he is extremely well qualified for this position for which the President has chosen him.

Yesterday, the President spoke at the National Academy of Sciences and recognized our country's proud heritage of scientific discovery and innovation that is embodied in that institution.

The key question that we are here to discuss today is will those technologies see their commercial fruition here in the United States as well.

The purpose of today's hearing is to look at the latest draft of the proposal that Senator Murkowski and I have put together to improve the availability of financing for deployment of clean energy and energy efficiency technologies.

I am writing in strong support of President Obama's nomination of Mr. Michael L. Connor to become the next Commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

I hope the committee agrees. I hope you all join me in supporting her confirmation.

The purpose of this hearing is to discuss proposals for establishing Federal Energy Efficiency Resource Standard for retail electricity and natural gas distributors.

I am told that Senator Murkowski may not be able to be here or if she is, she will have to be late.

We hope to learn more about the current efforts at the State level, where the EERS provisions have been enacted.

Both bills would create a Federal energy efficiency resource standard that would be independent of the Renewable Electricity Standard.

I am glad Washington is now giving it the attention it deserves and is making it a priority.

Those of us representing border states have seen the violence along the border escalate and over the years have pushed for increased funding and resources to help address the problem.

Our country is struggling with some of the toughest economic challenges we've seen, at least in my lifetime.

We're losing the opportunity to grow our economy and the ability to compete on a global scale.

NWFPA thanks Chairman Bingaman, Senator Murkowski and the co-sponsors for introducing this bill and for recognizing the importance of energy efficiency to the competitiveness of U.S. industries.

ACEEE commends Senator Bingaman and his colleagues for introducing the Restoring America's Manufacturing Leadership through Energy Efficiency Act of 2009 (S. 661).

The purpose of the bill is to strengthen American manufacturing through improving industrial energy efficiency.

Financing ideally will be addressed through the steps currently being taken to shore up our banking system.

To achieve a goal of 25% saving in 10 years will require both new and improved technologies with high rates of return for industry adoption.

New technologies in the energy and environmental field are adopted typically because they are required by government mandates.

We feel this bill changes course on support for manufacturing, and complements the industry-specific research and development activities.

This authority would significantly enhance the FERC's ability to protect consumers by providing it with the ability to stop market manipulation and other market abuses in a timely fashion.

This is a critical consumer protection tool that the current and past FERC Chairmen and sitting Commissioners have themselves recognized that FERC is lacking.

Your legislation will bring parity to the manner in which electric customers versus gas customers are treated.

We thank the Committee for considering legislation on this critical need for the forest products industry.