Paul Tonko: “I appreciate the gentleman from California, our distinguished ranker on the committee and former chair, for yielding.…”

“I appreciate the gentleman from California, our distinguished ranker on the committee and former chair, for yielding. Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that the energy bills before us this week do not lay out a roadmap for where we truly need to go; that is, to a future in which we have reduced our reliance on fossil fuels, greatly increased our focus on energy efficiency, and expanded our use of renewable energy. H.R. 3301 and H.R. 6 are all about keeping us dependent upon fossil fuels, especially oil and gas. H.R. 3301 establishes a new process for considering and approving cross-border energy projects--pipelines and certainly transmission lines. In fact, it would be good to have a defined and predictable process for evaluating these projects and either approving or rejecting them within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, this bill is all about approving these projects quickly, with minimal consideration of their value to all sectors of our economy, the value to our consumers, and certainly the value to our environment. The advocates for this bill and this infrastructure approval process sound as if we have never approved cross-border projects. But, in fact, we have many cross-border pipelines and transmission lines. This infrastructure, once in place, operates for decades. And all projects are not all equal in their impacts and are certainly not all equal in their size. This bill does not require a sufficient analysis of the overall benefits of proposed projects.…”