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To extend
energy conservation programs under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act through fiscal
year 2003
DISSENTING VIEWS A major shortcoming of H.R. 2884 is the omission of reauthorization for export promotion programs for energy-efficiency and renewable energy. The Council on Energy Efficiency Commerce and Trade (COEECT) and the Council for Renewable Energy Commerce and Trade (CORECT) were designed to help facilitate the export of U.S. energy-efficiency and renewable energy technology. These programs are needed now more than ever, making the failure of the Committee to include them in the reauthorization of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act a critical flaw in the bill. Regardless of one’s view of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, promoting exports of renewable energy and energy efficiency technology makes good sense. Both COEECT and CORECT were designed to help U.S. companies make contact with buyers in developing countries, facilitate innovative financing strategies, and promote the development of policies in developing nations that favor clean energy investments. We must ask why, with a soaring trade deficit, would we fail to support programs that are helping to sell American products in multi-billion dollar markets for energy equipment abroad, leaving U.S. manufacturers to be swallowed up by heavily subsidized competitors from other industrialized nations. These are tiny programs that are producing impressive results. Although the authorization of appropriation has expired, COEECT has been funded continuously. In the four years of its existence, funded at less than $1 million per year, COEECT has led over 100 U.S. producers of energy-efficient products to Australia, Brazil, Chile, China, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, the Phillippines, Thailand, and other nations for focused meetings and workshops with foreign buyers, leveraging over $600,000 of in-kind company contributions, and resulting in over $7 million in completed sales to date, with over $10 million worth of projects in the pipeline. Meanwhile, COEECT has worked hard in this country to alert the manufacturers of energy-efficient products to the opportunities available to them abroad. Many of these are small to medium-sized companies that do not have the resources to do extensive international marketing efforts. Through their work with COEECT, however, many of these U.S. companies have been able to make direct contact with key buyers around the world, increasing sales substantially and creating jobs here in the U.S. CORECT has a more woeful tale to tell. While similar positive results were being achieved on the renewable energy side, the export program for renewable energy has been zeroed out for the past two years by the Energy and Water Subcommittee of Appropriations. This will not be reversed unless the Committee reauthorizes this program. We should not be ceding energy policy decisions to the Appropriations Committee. In the business of wind turbines, photovoltaic cells, biomass combustion technologies and the production of other renewable energy technologies, U.S. companies are forced to go head to head against highly subsidized competitors from the Netherlands, Japan, and other nations. The failure of the Commerce Committee to reauthorize this program compounds this folly, making it even more difficult to restore CORECT funding in future years. There are many reasons why the U.S. government should support – even significantly expand – these successful, cost-effective efforts to promote U.S. exports of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies. These programs have cost us pennies and are yielding millions in results. We urge that issue be revisited in conference. JOHN D. DINGELL | |
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