Political Quotes

“yesterday, the Senate passed an amendment from Senators Collins and Klobuchar to promote biomass energy. I would like to take a couple minutes to express my support for biomass energy. Using biomass to create energy can be significantly better than using coal. I think it is great that people use wood to heat their homes, instead of heating with fossil fuels--like oil--particularly, when they do so with clean-burning, EPA-certified wood stoves or pellet stoves, particularly, when the stoves are produced by great companies--like QuadraFire, based in Colville, WA. Professors at University of Washington have emphasized the need for such an amendment to encourage the development of new emission-reducing energy facilities that use the types of biomass that will achieve our country's renewable energy and climate mitigation goals. Last October, EPA recognized that the use of some biomass can play an important role in controlling increases of CO<INF>2</INF> levels in our atmosphere. EPA stated that the use of some types of biomass can potentially offer a wide range of environmental benefits, aside from the important carbon benefits. We have a wildfire problem in this country, and we need to encourage markets for the small trees, slash, and brush that we want to remove from our most at-risk forests. According to the EPA, the growth in U.S. forests offsets 13 percent of total U.S. CO<INF>2</INF> emissions annually.…”