Nick Lampson: “Mr. Chairman, energy is on everyone's mind these days. The price of fuel has been rising and awareness of the extent to…”

“Mr. Chairman, energy is on everyone's mind these days. The price of fuel has been rising and awareness of the extent to which we are dependent upon foreign sources of oil has grown. At the same time, in an effort to reduce emissions of air pollution, we are also transitioning to cleaner fuels. The good news is that we have developed and are continuing to develop alternative fuels and cleaner-burning versions of our current petroleum-based fuels. But we must ensure the availability of infrastructure and equipment for transporting, distributing and utilizing these new fuels at a reasonable cost. For a number of reasons, biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are often incompatible with many components of the present-day infrastructure, forcing distributors and retailers to make heavy investments in new hardware if they want to carry these fuels. H.R. 547 initiates a program to research ways to mitigate many of these problems and make bio-based fuels more compatible with the country's petroleum-based infrastructure, thus avoiding the massive costs to the country of a whole new infrastructure.”