Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison tours the Southwest Texas Project Nuclear Power Plant in Wadsworth.
Can you believe the predicament we’re in?
So many other countries in the world are looking for ways to provide their own energy. They don’t have the advantage of our abundant natural resources. We have them, yet we aren’t using them. It’s unprecedented. Name another country with natural resources that doesn’t use them. We have the capability to do this and we’re turning our backs on it. It’s unbelievable.
Does Washington get it? Are concrete solutions emerging to end our dependency on foreign oil?
I believe Washington gets that we have a problem. I think Washington gets that importing more than 60 percent of our oil is not good for America, both in national security and economic security.
But Washington doesn’t seem to connect the problem with the solution, and they are going opposite the overriding goal, which is Boone Pickens’s overriding goal, and that is use every resource we have right now. We can look at all of the vast opportunities for the future, but we have opportunities today that we’re missing, and that’s where Washington is not connecting the dots.
Instead of saying, “Here’s the problem, and here’s the solution,” the solution being discussed right now doesn’t answer the problem. Talking about research that’s going to develop technology and harness the wind and get it into an electric grid on an ongoing basis is exactly what we ought to be doing for the next 30 years, but today we have the ability to cut imports by 25 percent just by beginning to drill in an environmentally friendly way for our own natural gas and our own oil, including ANWR and our shores, our east and west coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. That should be Phase One.
What’s Phase Two?
Phase Two is working on a replacement as soon as we possibly can. That would be the responsible, long-term solution for America’s energy problem.
You are for tackling both phases head-on.
That’s right.
On the one hand, you support expanding domestic drilling.
Absolutely. I am seeing so many signs from this administration that they want to pull back the opportunity to drill on our east and west coasts and on the eastern part of the Gulf of Mexico, which I think is totally the wrong direction. We should be doing what Boone Pickens has been advocating and that is access all potential sources of energy to wean ourselves from foreign imports. As we are doing research for renewables and clean energy going forward, we need to be using what we have in abundance. Frankly, the advantage that America has is our natural resources. They could take us through this period until we develop the new technology. Congress last year ended the moratorium on drilling on the east and west coasts, and now the Obama administration is threatening to go in the other direction and stop states from even exercising their rights to explore off their own shores, which Virginia has taken the steps to do.
You are also a proponent of funding key research programs.
I am. The purpose of the CREST Act [Creating Renewable Energy through Science and Technology] is to develop these emerging avenues for new energy sources. Our bill directs the core to be established within the National Science Foundation. You would have research institutions represented. You would have industry represented, state officials, and our departments of Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, the NOAA, and the President’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. And this would bring together the best minds in energy innovation, including industry, which can start looking at some of the things that are very, very new but have potential.
You’ve been a big backer of the Lone Star Wind Alliance.
Absolutely. The Lone Star Wind Alliance was selected by the Department of Energy to do the planning and designing for renewable and offshore wind production. The development of these new sources was put in the hands of this great alliance, which includes many of our universities as well as some of our state offices. Texas is the perfect place to do this because we have so much opportunity in these areas. Texas is the largest producer of wind energy in America. We also have huge amounts of solar power. Making wind production and solar power more efficient and more usable is something that Texas is advantageously situated to do. And then of course we have enormous potential for cellulosic ethanol production and the new biofuels. The Gulf of Mexico offers us opportunities to generate power from currents and waves. We’ve just got so much capability in Texas to do this research, and what we need to do now is open all of our avenues, our great natural resources of oil and natural gas as well as these other opportunities.
INTERVIEW CONDUCTED, CONDENSED, AND EDITED BY ERIC O’KEEFE