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[Page: S881]  GPO's PDF
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   Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his leadership on the legislation that has been pending. I want to talk about wind energy . I suppose people will think then that I am talking about the Senate, but that is not the case.

   We are going to turn to an energy bill very soon. When we complete the pending legislation before the Senate, we will turn to the subject of energy .

   Our country and its economy are terribly dependent on a substantial amount of energy coming from the Middle East. We understand the dilemma for the American economy to be that dependent on a part of the world that is so unstable. So we ought to find a way to be less dependent on that part of the world.

   I was in recent weeks in Central Asia and understand even more, once again, how fragile circumstances are there. Our economy and our country would be well advised to create an energy policy that extracts the kind of ultimate dependence we now have on an oil and energy supply from the Middle East.

   How do we do that? We write an energy policy that does a lot of things: increases supply at home--oil, natural gas, and coal--and does so in an environmentally acceptable way; increases conservation; increases efficiency of appliances we use; and also especially promotes limitless and renewable sources of energy .

   I am interested in the wide range of resources that belong to the last category, renewables: biodiesel, using sunflower and canola oil to run engines, taking a drop of alcohol from a kernel of corn and using that to extend America's energy supply, and then still having the protein feedstock from the kernel of

   corn.

   Today, I also want to talk briefly about wind energy . The new technology in wind turbines is extraordinary. Being able to take energy from the air, from the wind , using new, high-technology blades and coursing the wind through these turbines, then transmitting that energy across the grid to provide electricity where it is needed in this country makes good sense. It is limitless energy . We can have it forever. We will never deplete the source of energy coming from the wind .

   The production tax credit that has been on the books that provides the enhancement for wind energy projects expired at the end of last year. It is unthinkable that the Congress, poised to take up energy policy legislation, has allowed the production tax credit for wind energy to expire, and yet it did.

   The production tax credit for wind energy needs to be extended, and not for one year and not for 2 years, but for 5 years. We need to do that now. We need to do that on an urgent basis.

   We just cut a ribbon on the first commercial wind turbine along Interstate 94 in North Dakota. There are three blades on that turbine, each weighing 4,200 pounds. The turbine is a remarkable structure, and the efficiency and the new technology of these turbines is outstanding.

   When we look at all of the States and the opportunity to take energy from the wind , North Dakota is No. 1. We are 50th in native forest lands, so we are dead last in trees, but we are No. 1 in the potential for wind energy . Any young boy or girl who has grown up in North Dakota knows that. We have a lot of breezes that move across the prairies in North Dakota. We are No. 1 in wind energy potential. They call us the Saudi Arabia of wind energy .

   A week ago, I had a chief executive officer of a company come to my office, and he said: we have a project ready to be built in North Dakota--ready to be built right now. It will be a 150-megawatt wind farm. The plans for it are complete. Regrettably, he said, they are on the shelf until Congress extends the production tax credit.

   It does not make any sense to me, at a time when we are trying to figure out how we increase our supply of energy , to have companies that have the money, the plans and the will to produce 150 megawatts of wind -generated electricity in a State such as North Dakota, but to have those plans on the shelf because the Congress is dragging its feet.

   I know some will say: the extension of the production tax credit for wind energy has been inserted in this bill or that bill. In fact, the House of Representatives included it, I believe, just yesterday. They wrote another stimulus bill, which is a perfectly terrible piece of legislation, a big give-away to a lot of big companies that do not deserve it, and then added the extension of the production tax credit for wind energy on that vehicle. It is like putting earrings on a hog. It just does not mean very much. That is not the way we are going to get an extension of the production tax credit for wind energy . The way we are going to get it is for Members of the House and Senate to understand that we cannot come to the end of the year and have important policy issues, such as the production tax credit for wind energy , expire so that we have fits and starts and an industry that cannot get off the ground.

   A major blade manufacturer in Grand Forks, ND, laid off employees because, when the production tax credit expired at the end of last year, projects were put on the shelf, including the project I just described--a project worth $150 million in North Dakota that would produce 150 megawatts of electricity. They have the money, they have the plans, and it is not happening, because this Congress has been dragging its feet.

   I know the Majority Leader, Senator Daschle, agrees with me that we ought to do this. We ought to do it right now. Yet we cannot get it done because we have some people who insist on playing games with stimulus packages that will go nowhere, because they make no sense and will do nothing to stimulate this economy.

   Let us extract the tax credit extensions from the stimulus package. Let us pass these on a stand-alone basis. Let us pass that package of extenders that should have been enacted by the end of last year. Congress should have done that. Everybody knows that. I hope when we return following next week's State work period that we will have, both on the Democratic and Republican sides, a desire and a will to

[Page: S882]  GPO's PDF

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from North Dakota.

   Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I associate myself with the remarks of my colleague from North Dakota on the subject of wind energy . Clearly, this is a circumstance in which the Government needs to act, and act quickly, to provide the incentives that have been previously put in place but have now lapsed, incentives that can make a difference between projects going forward and not.

   I do not know what could be more clear than that the incentives for wind energy are absolutely essential if we are going to diversify the base of energy supply in this country, move to more renewables, and have a greater chance of reducing our dependence on foreign sources of energy that leave us vulnerable in a time of conflict in the very areas of the world in which much oil production is occurring.

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