December 21, 1973
Page 43163
Mr. MUSKiE. Mr. President, Congress, in a very short time, has produced legislation that directly addresses the immediate energy crisis facing the country. The agreement reached last night in the House-Senate conference committee gives the President and his Energy Administrator, Mr. Simon, the authority to move immediately with a firm hand to put in place the programs needed to protect the country from the fuel shortages that are now appearing around the country.
Mr. Simon has indicated that he places high hopes in an energy conservation program of substantial dimensions to save scarce fuel. This legislation will give him authority to mandate such a program.
He has indicated that programs to restrict gasoline sales and make substantial reductions in lighting for business, Government and commercial operations will be the heart of this program.
This legislation is a quick yet careful response to give the administration the tools necessary to carry out such a program.
The conference agreement also directs that actions taken under the authority of this bill will be fair and equitable. The legislation gives the administration the authority to stop the, export of products and materials that are vital to the production of energy.
The conference report on the Energy Emergency Act contains a compromise I proposed to preserve the section of the bill controlling windfall profits of the energy companies. Many questions were raised about problems in the mechanisms used to implement such a proposal. In order to keep the idea alive, I proposed language, that would allow the excess profits section adopted by the other body to go into effect January 1, 1975. But it would cover excess profits, earned in 1974. Thus, the delay will not exempt excess energy company profits next year.
However, we felt that the question of dealing with excess profits was by its nature complicated and sensitive. At this point, we do not know how serious the problem will be, and there has been inadequate time to consider what steps might be most effective in dealing with these profits. The provisions can be considered an incentive for the appropriate committees of Congress to begin their deliberations on this issue early heat. year.
This serves notice that price gouging and windfall profits will not be allowed, but gives the Congress, and the appropriate tax committees in Congress, time to formulate the best possible approach. If they devise no better language, then the provision in this bill will automatically take effect.
Mr. President, the problem of excess profits is one which rightfully angers and frustrates average Americans. They see dramatic increases in oil company profits, and wonder if the sacrifice and
suffering their Government asks of them is no more than a hoax designed to swell the coffers of the industry. If we demand sacrifice from our people, we must also demand a reasonable profit structure from the energy industry.
Another important energy provision will give the administration the power to order substantial conversion from the burning of oil to the burning of coal in places where such a switch is possible. This will allow scarce oil to be released for areas of critical concern – areas such as Maine and the rest of New England, where 90 percent of the heat for the winter comes from oil.
For the rest of the country, that figure is substantially lower – approximately 50 percent. So this conversion will give areas of the country that are very dependent upon oil a better prospect of receiving those oil supplies.
The country needs swift and decisive action on the energy crisis. The Congress has acted rapidly in setting up the organization and policy to carry out that action. The ball is now in the court of the executive branch.
MINIMIZING ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS OF ENERGY ACTIONS
The importance of this energy legislation and the unique interrelationship between energy and virtually all other aspects of our lives made possible its use as a vehicle for a significant number of amendments not necessarily related to the energy emergency.
For some, the emergency energy legislation became a cover for immoderate attacks on environmental goals. The conference has struck down most of these. These goals have been carefully established in acts of Congress over many years. One of the areas in which the other body proposed sweeping change was the Clean Air Act. Had the House amendments survived the conference, the Clean Air Act would be rhetoric rather than substance. I am pleased to announce to my colleagues today that that is not in fact the case.
The Senate, in order to preserve the structure and the substance of the Clean Air Act, had to make one significant concession. Your conferees had to accept the application of a new standard for the emissions of oxides of nitrogen pollutants for 1977 automobiles. On Monday of this week I told this body that the Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution would consider the issue of oxides of nitrogen emissions in hearings early next year. I told this body that we would weigh carefully a recommendation to the Congress by the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Russell Train, to raise the near-term oxides of nitrogen emission standards to 2.0 grams per mile. The House bill extended the oxides of nitrogen standard to 2.0 grams per mile for the indefinite future with no authority for the Administrator to reduce it.
The price we paid to protect important clean air provisions of the emergency energy legislation was a 1-year extension on 2.0 NOx. I must say this will remove some pressure early next year to act precipitously on the current standard. There can be little argument now against awaiting the completion of the National Academy of Sciences' review before we take any further action on future requirements for this significant pollutant.
At the insistence of the Senate conferees, the Members eliminated the extra year's freeze for auto emission standards contained in the House bill, as well as the potential for five additional 1-year freezes at the Administrator's discretion. The House ban on the use of special bus/carpool lanes was dropped, as was the 2-year delay in transportation control plans.
The conference did agree to suspend EPA's authority to impose a parking surcharge. While I recognize that a surcharge may be very useful in stimulating mass transit, substantial questions exist about EPA's authority to impose such a tax. It was not directly anticipated during passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970. I believe it appropriate that we continue to study this thoroughly through the public hearings begun earlier this year by my subcommittee.
The House ban on the use of parking management schemes has been replaced by assurance from EPA that such actions will be suspended until January 1, 1975, so that these plans might be thoroughly studied.
We have eliminated provisions that would arbitrarily deny authorized tools that may be needed to reach clean air standards designed to protect the public health. We will now have the opportunity to weigh the merits of these strategies in orderly legislative hearings.
This was an important step in preserving public participation in decisions regarding key features of the Clean Air Act.
STATIONARY SOURCES
The Senate, in its version, insisted that any changes made in the regulation of stationary sources be kept related to the Emergency Energy Act. Many House provisions that dealt broadly with the Clean Air Act have been eliminated.
Provisions exempting many fuel burning stationary sources from emission limitations have been dropped.
The House legislation attempted to sanction an approach to pollution control which was not anticipated under the Clean Air Act. This is the use of intermittent control measures for cleaning up pollution. This system allows companies to withhold pollution temporarily, and then when weather conditions are favorable the smoke and soot is dumped into the air. This is not an adequate alternative to purchasing equipment or fuel or fuel byproducts that will provide for continuous and constant emission reduction and the conferees rejected it.
One of the most controversial provisions in the House legislation was an attempt to encourage conversion of power plants to coal without also requiring that such plants comply fully with their current Clean Air Act requirements. If left standing, this provision would have created the potential for such converted companies to consistently ignore air quality standards – standards that are based on the need to protect, at a bare minimum, the health of our population.
At the same time, the House provisions raised doubts about the right of a State to set higher emission limitations than are established under Federal standards.
Instead of these provisions, the conferees established a framework that will preserve the Clean Air Act while providing needed energy by allowing necessary short- and long-term switches to available fuels. The conference proposal permits the EPA Administrator to suspend Federal, State, and local clean air requirements through November 1, 1974. Short-term suspensions would be granted if an adequate supply of conforming fuel is not available.
A suspension can continue until January 1, 1979, with a potential single 1-year extension provided for plants which convert to coal if the plants submit – and obtain approval of – compliance schedules to achieve Clean Air Act standards by 1979. EPA can prohibit the use of coal where it is likely to materially contribute to significant risk to public health.
A converted plant can use continuous emission reduction systems, low-sulfur coal or low-sulfur coal byproducts to achieve such limits. A new compliance schedule must mandate steady progress, but compliance with the emission limits established for that source under existing implementation plans must be achieved not later than January 1, 1979.
Binding contracts must be entered into for coal and pollution control equipment as a part of a new compliance schedule.
I am fully aware that problems may exist in some of the changes we have made in the law. But I believe those interested in these matters should also recognize that tremendous problems have also been eliminated by insistence of the Senate conferees. We now must monitor the actions that result from this law. The entire Clean Air Act will be reviewed and reauthorized next year. I believe we have now protected that orderly review.
In other respects, Mr. President, the conference agreement emerges much as the Senate had hoped and if anything perhaps narrower than some had construed the Senate bill. Those aspects of the conference agreement which amend the Clean Air Act are restricted to actions arising out of the energy emergency. We believe we have given the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency the needed authority to respond to the energy emergency without giving the opponents of the environmental programs the mechanisms to gut the Clean Air Act.
Mr. President, I would like to express my appreciation to the Senator from Washington (Mr. JACKSON) and my fellow conferees for their confidence in Senate Public Works Committee conferees on the issue of the Clean Air Act. At the time the Senate enacted this legislation, the Senator from Washington committed himself to support of the agreements which the committee on Public Works conferees were able to negotiate. We were given sufficient time, to the extent that there was sufficient time at all on this legislation, to work out our differences with our counterparts on the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee. The conferees supported this agreement with unanimity.
I would like to say a word also about people with whom we negotiated this agreement on the House side. Congressman PAUL ROGERS, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Public Health and the Environment, and his ranking member, Congressman JIM HASTINGS of New York, recognized the need to fashion a bill providing emergency powers rather than attempting to deal with large questions surrounding the Clean Air Act. Their cooperation made possible today's agreement. I compliment them for being statesmen of the highest order. I look forward to next year, when the Clean Air Act must be reauthorized, to working with them to improve the processes which we finally approved in the Senate 3 years ago.
We knew on September 22, 1970, that the full implications of the policies we were enacting would be difficult to predict or completely understand.
We knew in 1970 that the Clean Air Act would reshape our lives in many ways, and we knew in 1970 that there would be problems resulting from the act which could not be solved in the administration or in the courts. Next year we will review those questions. We will attempt in a deliberate way to develop more and better tools to improve the quality of the environment.
Mr. President, the committee report on this bill also contains language expressing congressional concern over the very real threat of a cutoff of Canadian oil to the United States. Businesses in my home State and elsewhere along the Canadian border have entered into oil supply contracts from Canadian suppliers. But Canada is experiencing a shortage of its own, and the Canadian Government has adopted a very strict policy toward exports to the United States. In my home State, this policy means the threatened loss of 8,000 jobs by the end of January.
I proposed an amendment in committee, stating:
Whenever, as a result of action by the Canadian Resources Board, fuel exports to any manufacturing plant in the United States are interrupted, the Administrator shall make an allocation to such manufacturing plant in accordance with the provisions of the Emergency Petroleum Allocation act. Wherever possible, such allocation shall be from fuel which would otherwise be exported from the United States to Canada.
This amendment was withdrawn after the committee received assurances that this problem is being dealt with on a diplomatic level. The report expresses strong congressional interest in these negotiations, and encourages vigorous use of all diplomatic avenues to resolve he problem.
The first reaction of many in facing he energy crisis has been to suggest degrading the environment as a first course of action. I believe we have been successful in turning back much of that thrust a this legislation. I am not totally satisfied in all respects, but I believe we have
struck a compromise that has substantially repaired the public interest.
Conservation of all scarce resources ought to be our first action. Instead, environmental degradation has been the first choice of some. Ironically, this degradation virtually never yields additional energy. I have confidence that the American people will see past any attempt to create an environmental scapegoat in the energy issue. No amount of relaxation of pollution controls will invent new oil or new natural gas. Relaxation will only dangerously delay addressing the real changes we must make to protect our health and our environment.
I have assumed all through my deliberations on this legislation that my colleagues greatly desired an emergency energy bill before the Christmas recess. Based on that assessment, I have agreed to compromises that I might have rejected in a different context. But I believe we have protected basic environmental values. On that basis, and in the belief that energy measures provided in this bill are vital to the country, I recommend that the Senate swiftly approve the bill's passage.