Paul Tonko: “Absolutely. I served as president and CEO before this work in Congress at NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research…”

“Absolutely. I served as president and CEO before this work in Congress at NYSERDA, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and some of the partnerships that we inspired, public-private matches, where NYSERDA would have a piece of the action working with our innovator community and our entrepreneurial community and come up with these innovative designs that would allow for us to meet energy demands or to foster energy efficiency concepts which are very important to the outcome of energy policy and performance in this country. So, absolutely, I was involved in that. I know that that is a growing edge. It is a meteoric rise within our manufacturing sector with all of this challenge as energy consumers to not only provide for alternatives and more efficient and effective outcomes and perhaps, in many cases, reduce costs, which are important, but also embracing an environmental agenda that deals with carbon emission and methane emission through the concepts of climate change and global warming. So it is an across-the-board win, Representative Garamendi. I applaud you for H.R. 1524 and am supportive of H.R. 194, just recently spoken about by Representative Kaptur, where we have the opportunity, again, to govern the decisions to either sell American-made products in gift shops or not.…”