Energy - Joint

The joint energy committee to order first order businesses approve the minute saw entertainment motion I have motion have a second all in favor say I thank you appreciate our guests being here with us today congressman western thank you for taking time to join us and import some knowledge in wisdom to this committee he needs no introduction so I won't waste the time I think everyone knows who he is spent all time in the legislature is the majority leader but with that i'm again i'm not going to take the time to work through his vast buyer so with that congressman you're recognized please make his many remarks as you wish and have some time for questions. Thank you chairman go more and chairman back into the joint energy committee for allow me to. Come before you today and speak about something that near endear to me with is also very important to our country. An extremely important to the state of arkansas and it's really important anywhere you go in the world when you talk about. The importance of energy. So in congress I serve the chairman of the house committee on natural resources and we have jersey over the federal lands and waters of the us. And that includes energy production and moning on those federal lands and those federal waters flow I spend a lot of time in washington DC working on federal energy policy. And you're trying to come up with the best approach for the future so that we can all have have energy security and there's three things i've learned about energy that I think should drive all of our thoughts and all of our decisions when it comes to energy policy whether it's on the national level. Or whether it's here local and the first thing is that what people the manned is affordable energy. Then they demand reliable energy and we live in a world a day where people want clean energy so I think if we could make that the three pillars of energy policy to make it. Affordable reliable and clean I think that say a winning solution. And obviously energy is not just important in arkansas and in america it's important around the world and as we see more developing countries. Growing their economies energy is an important part of it just like energy with a very important part of the economy in economic growth in our country and it still is today. Phone. Also when you talk about energy there's three things that in my world at least it always come up and that is your conventional energy and energy extraction with oil and gas. And then when you talk about new energy markets it's heavily dependent upon moning so you really can't even talk about energy without talking about manning in the same breath. And the other thing is the effects on the climate and the environment all of those things go hand in hand as we look at energy policy i've got some groups and I think you've got a hand out of this and we we've got him on the screen but this first group I think tills a story that we all need to understand so that we know where we're starting from on this discussion of energy and this group simply shows the consumption of energy. Over time by fuel source and you can see in eighteen hundred the world consumption of energy with a round five thousand terror what hours of energy in that predominantly all came from traditional bowl mass so would or our animal dongle or other forms about mass that people gathered and used for energy are you can see in the late eighteen hundred the industrial revolution started and cole came on the scene so by nineteen hundred the global consumption of energy doubled and if you see that chart it hasn't slowed down since then it doubled again in roughly nineteen forty nineteen forty two. The global consumption double then it doubled again in the nineteen sixties it doubled again in the nineteen eighties and it just recently doubled. A few years ago so since eighteen hundred the global consumption of energy has has doubled far towns and some people are projecting that it will increase by another fifty percent by twenty thirty five some with that number out to twenty fifty but one thing we know is that the world consumes more energy all the town. In something I want to point out on this chart. Is if you look here to the top of them the purple everything below there is a carbon emitting source of energy in above that are non carbon admitting sources of energy so what is chart tells you is that there's not a quote transition period of where we're going to be carbon free energy in any time in the near future and that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards cleaner energy benefits that are the world's desire to have energy without carbon emissions then that's certainly a possible attainable goal at some time in the future but it's nowhere close to the twenty third year twenty fifty or probably in the next hundred years when the world's going to be a consuming energy that has zero carbon emissions. And although we're making strawds here in the us were still over sixty percent of our energy production in the US comes from carbon meeting sources also want to show you this next chart. And this is what happened with with some key statistics in the us over the past thirty two years are actually forty two years. And you can see that our gdp has increased seven hundred ninety one percent so I don't think anyone could argue we haven't seen some pretty good economic growth in our country. We've seen our vehicle miles traveled increase one hundred and thirteen percent. Our population has increased forty seven percent. Our energy consumption has increased twenty nine percent with this bottom line is one that people don't look at closely enough it with all of that happening our omissions in the us have dropped sixty percent over the last forty two years so you might ask yourself how that we have such economic growth how do we have increases in vehicle miles travel with population growth our energy consumption actually went up but our missions went down sixty percent and the answer to there is innovation and it's really the innovation of fracking that allowed us to discover we had a lot more natural gas in this country a lot more guess that we could. Dull has then we knew in the past and because of that we've all said a lot of electrical generation from cole with natural gas in its driven our emissions down. Currently the united states and thirteen and a half percent of the world's green house gas submissions while channel is more than double that and if we go back to this. Chart right here you see there still an opportunity. In the youth of call today. Well the the last call plant that was built in the united states with built down in my district in full the northern saw the turkplant. It was it's name plates six hundred and fifty mbit generating capacity. That's a huge call power plan the last one built in the united states and I guess it's close to a decade older older than a decade. The other side of the store that's not being told it's while the us is cutting our emissions. At home last year china built fifty gigawites of callpower plans. So if you haven't had time to do the math like I have that means they're building and starting up a turkplant every five days and that's hard to imagine that there's that much construction in the energy sector but when we talk about global emissions when they're building a new coal part plant and bringing one online every five days it makes you wonder how much benefit it's going to be into the us to implement what it seems to be our major energy policy and that's to have everyone drive an electric vehicle and i'll tell you if every electorate vehicle in the united states with converted to or if every passenger car and light due to truck in the united states was converted to an electric vehicle overnight it would reduce global greenhouse gas ambitions less than one percent and that's not including the embedded carbon that's in the electorate vehicle which if you look at the components that go into an electric vehicle many if not most of those are being made in china right now which buries me to this well ahead another slade. But. And I must have accidentally closed it out that you've got it in your. In your packet. The. And this is a. The. This flag shows you are very telling story about moning in the united states if you look at the this house minds and metal production but if you look at. It copper and not five the us produce two point three million tons of copper today we produce point nine million tons of carper. So in nineteen ninety five. With bad computer operational mop or. But. In nineteen ninety five we produced over three times as much copper is china produced. Today. They're producing eleven times more copper then we're producing when you talk about an electrified economy when you talk about a carbon free energy environment copper is is critical to that is oral is default for fuels. As my fact the world bank estimated that by twenty fifty we need demand more copper then we've mind in the history of the world. For let that think in and it's not just copper we produced more steal than channel in that ninety five and I know arkansas strong steel producing state with today china produces about twelve toms more steal than we. Those are just your two other. Major components to an electrified economy which you get down into the critical minerals and it's almost embarrassing as to how much china produces more than us and critical minerals in components that are not only important to electrification but are also important to national security so when we talk about a future economy in the future of of electric jeneration electric transmission. And the electorate components. Morning is crude of one goes hand in hand with fortunately god blessed america with an abundance of natural resources he blessed arkansas with an abundance of natural resources as many of you know we have about fifteen percent of the world's luthian deposit in southwest arkansas and the smack over formation in the heavy water that we can pull the water up extract the lithuan out and pump the brown back in where most places where you mind looking on. I involve strip moning and it also involves him pretty insense of processing to get the lucy on out. There is a place in south america where they have heavy brown water that has luthy a minute locked in south arkansas with a difference is it's a very erred region. And it's also a poor region and instead of using mechanical means to take the lithium out they put it in large. Pools her ponds and led it a very and they lose the water to the atmosphere so. We could spend the whole time talking about moning and we're. The important to that to the us and and to arkansas we can talk about. The. Where we go from here on energy but one thing that i've done with the natural resources committee as i've taken our field hearings out across the country and met with people whose jobs and livelihoods are effective our policies. And i've found that it's it's just as important to loosen as it is to take adults out so I hope you can share some things with me today to take back to dc so that we can work together to make sure that arkansas has a strong energy future and that were working hand in hand to make that happen and mister chairman with that i'll be glad to answer any questions or have any kind of dialogue you'd like to hear thank you congressman I know I know we do have some questions we'll get to those one of the one of the questions that is on my mind it's sort of a something we've talked about quite a bit or the new rules coming out from the EPA related air quality I know your problem for with those and what that means it's very burdensome do you have any thoughts on there's a lot of thoughts on those this is it is close to one of the most insane rules of servicing the epa come out with your tumble the two point five mark ron rule where they're trying to lower it from was it eleven or twelve macro eleven or twelve micro grounds for leader of particular demision they are going to take it down to nine. Or coming from an engineering background. That may not sound like much. But right now there are very few countries in the whole country that can meet these standards. And the cost to get to that compliance. It's searched as it would put a lot of businesses out of business and my understanding is there they're giving like sixty days to be in compliance which basically everybody that i've talked to. This is going to be out of compliance on the rule which would open up businesses for funds hopefully the epa will back off on this rule I think that. Sometimes they came out with things that I couldn't dream it up to be as a barbaric on american industry is. Is what they come up with and I don't know where they pull the stuff from it it's a serious serious problem if they go through with enforcement on this. Two point five particular matter rule that they've promulgated. Thank you congressman and we have other questions representative ray you're recognized. Thank you mister chairman congressman you had mentioned the role that natural gas has played and reducing emissions over the the timeline on that hand out I want to ask if you can talk a little bit about this executive order that the administration is put out banning exports of lng and what what that's doing to are energy sector across the country and then specifically if you could come out on what that means for europe with russia's invasion of ukraine and who europe has to rely on for their energy needs yeah I knew thank you very present of rate that the you brought out a lot of very important things to discuss they're not only us economics but also are global positioning in national security and support of our allows all of that's wrapped up in that. Ing ruling now speaker johnson was tell me he was at a meeting at the white house and mentioned this to president barden and the president basically denied making that that ruling to ban lng exports which technically there may be a way to say that but what they banned is getting the gas out to the export terminal but the the end result is. We're gonna take the cleanest. Most efficiently produced natural gas in the world all for the market. And. You've got the our european allies who every time I go to europe and visit with a leader there. There's easily two topics that come up in the first five minutes one will be in regards to nato and the other one will be in regards to how can we get more american natural gas. And they would love to import our guess but if we can't export it they can import it but guess what the factories in germany are not going to close because they can't get us gas that means they're going to be going back to pooting to get his gas which by the way has a forty percent higher carbon footprint than you ask yours because booton doesn't care about environmental standards are fixing leaks in are fusion of methoding emissions. Not only does it take our guests off the market it raises a global price of gas so putin selling more gas and a higher price so it's boosting his coffees to fund his war in ukraine so again you probably couldn't make up for lack of better terms a more dumb rule to put in place at this point in time then to ban the export of of us l and g we should be building lng terminals as fast as we can build them in the the other issue we have that I can't stress enough in it is getting the gas to the ports. And the people who want to stop illing production no. The there's there's different places of attack it's it's the ground for you have the oil. Or they can't stop that as much on private land as they can public plan with the transport of gas through poplands and oil through paplands have become a favorite target of people who are trying to stop the use of a parcel fuels but what they never tell you is how they're going to make up the difference in that chart that I point it out because. Today over eighty percent of the worlds energy comes from farce or fuels and just because we don't produce it in the us doesn't mean that the global man for it has gone down it plays right into the hands of. Of russia of saudi arabia of vinis wailer and you know the other opec countries I hear people talk about the record all company profits well if you want to see a really record oil company profit look at a ramco the saudi arabian old company and look at what their profits were last year by producing more us energy whether it's. Oil or gas we can have effects not only on the global are cast but also on the global impact on the environment. Thank you for that I agree it seems insane that we would have a policy that shoots ourself and the foot economically strengthens one of our primary adversaries on the other side of the world and does nothing to help lower emissions all at the same time thank you for that. Thank you center mark johnson you're recognized thank you mister chairman in congressman again welcome with great so you back up thank you for all you do especially your comments a moment ago about the turk plant in courts we are to other call fired plants and arkansas frankly saved our behand when we had the record cold a couple of winters ago and i'm which is why I am very concerned when we have in effect as you mentioned the newest cleanest. Call fire plan in the world in arkansas and they're already scheduling to to shut it down I have a real problem with that from a introduced security standpoint but also you know your chart and I really appreciate you giving us that chart to let us really see some of the numbers you're talking about but. That chart doesn't differentiate between the older call plants that certainly would have a higher emission level in something like turkey's only the term they use is hyper critical there is much much more efficient I mean it hardly admits anything at all and comparison to what we used to and are you to see the smoke stax billing out. Why are we. Dealing with this madness to get this you know in tiny incremental decrease in emissions of these these vital plants to energy security when our biggest adversary on the other side of the world is you said is building a new one know where near that efficient every five days is there some way we can you know hit people upside the head and say no no you don't need to take these plans off like. Yeah when you talk about it pm two point five rule that's not just energy plans that's everybody that manufacturers it has a air discharge permitted and it's talking about particular matter. M since the clean air act has been in place the us has done a tremendous job that cleaning up small in particular in the atmosphere. You get to a point where. It's downslow so low right now that to get any kind of benefit it takes enormous capital investment so it's what we would call a point of diminishing returns and the regulators and deceits seem to not care about that they don't care about the economics. And they don't care about the fact that the tony bit that you're getting has really know public health benefit to it is just the fact that we're going to set the bar a little bit higher well it makes sense it gives us a competitive disadvantage to others around the world that are doing manufacturing now when you're talking about a call plant. The emissions are talking about there now are not the ones you can see that's the the co two coming out of the out of the stack in the turkplant because of the materials they were able to put in it to get up to the super critical temperatures and pressures allows it plant to operate somewhere in the neighborhood of forty percent system officially which means that for a hundred units of energy you put into it you get forty units of energy out which that's better than other call plants were turned down around the twenty five to thirty percent it's better than an internal combustion engine but what the regulators are going after now is something they've never gone after before and that's the co two that's coming out of the stack simply because you're burning cool and that's one of the burning natural gas. Has had such a decrease in co two omissions because natural gas plants burn it anywhere from eighty ninety from on probably plus ninety percent efficiency now meaning for a hundred units of energy you put in your getting eighty denied the units of energy out so you're producing a lot less correct for the amount of energy you're getting out. With that doesn't change the fact that the channel and other developing countries are building call plants etc and wrap it rate. And we're not going to offer the co two emissions that they're producing. Bye shutting our plants down and making our energy group less reliable and we've all seen the importance of reliable energy group when we saw what happened and in texas a few years ago. And and when you look at the green it's it's very complicated and I think that something that we have to realize in arkansas that we have a pretty diverse electorate created in our country or in c we would still do have some call plants we got gas plants we've got nuclear power plants which is another big discussion we need to have for talking about zero carbon admitting energy and we've got quite a few solar farms not as much wind here. But we've got an amount of got had true. So we've got a what I would call and all of the above approach to energy and I think everybody that's in the energy sector realizes how important each one of those components are to having reliable and affordable inergian and obviously we've got some things here that produce a lot of clean energy but even when you're looking at nuclear energy you've got a look where the fuel for that nuclear energy comes from and we produce less than one half of one percent of the nuclear fuel that we use and america anymore then at the same time we're talking about clean green energy on a federal level we're closing down areas that are like from the northern room of the green canyon up to the utah lanes where our largest deposit raining on laws in the us and this administration just took that off limits for development for mining iranian we have huge copper deposits in northern minnesota but they're on federal land and we can't get permits demand up there so that's why we need to be looking at the whole energy part policy and. And where are ultimate goals are going to be in a holistic manner in having a realistic view of what's going on the world and what's going on. Here for we can control things and to me we're giving up a lot that we shouldn't be giving up and we're not accomplishing anybody's goals. Thank you for a very thorough answer congressman thank you mister chairman. The. Representative ladyman you're recognized thank you mister chairman. Can't remember western and I want to call you bruce fence okay that's what I go. You know you've talked about the three three still three legs of the store reliability clean affordability and it may be a fourth state which is mining because we have to get those sources out of the ground so mindings using mining is probably required for most of these so you met a nuclear and I want to get into that little bit if you look at your chart nuclear as the. First or most used green energy excuse me non carbon emissions. Is the fourth of the the most used well maybe i'm wrong about that had rules a little bit but I think globally had but we we know that nuclear is a good reliable source because we've had it around for fifty years or more. The. We know it's clean though there's no emissions basically. The two problems with nuclear I believe is affordability and the mining of the uranium or actually the availability of your raining and with the new nuclear process that we have nuclear could be calm a big portion of our energy source if we could prove that it's affordable and if we could use the large source of. A uranium that we have in waste nuclear fuel around the country so you know here in arkansas we've started processed with a act to look into recycling nuclear waste in proving that that's affordable that's that's the result of the purpose of that process do you withdraw meetings and you're traveling leading that you add. Is there anyone else looking at that proving that new nuclear or nuclear is affordable in can we access their available fuel that we have in waste. Yeah great questions I would say if nuclear is unaffordable it's because of the regulatory cost that we've put on it. The last nuclear power plant that was built here was built over in the savannah georgia and I got a chance to true that when they were constructing them the nuclear reactor. Containment area. And having an engineering background I was fascinated the amount of reborn and concrete they were putting into this the three actor. At the time I believe. That plant was forecast to cost about ten billion dollars I may be off a little bit. But if if i'm not mistaken when they finally got it online it was over thirty billion dollars I may be off on this number but i'm not too far off and in talking to the people involved with it most of the was regulatory cost I remember seeing a. On this wall where they were going to build the reactor. They had two inch damned rebar on sixty centers. Both ways. For this entire wall and it was like three or four for thick so you can imagine you could hardly see through the rebar will apparently. A federal inspector came through and determined the piece of the rebar was off and eighth of an each something that made absolutely no difference and they had to cut it all down and start over and rebuild it again just you know one one example. But getting the the permitting and through the regulatory process has made nuclear. Very expensive. Now that's generation one nuclear technology that's the way we've been doing a nuclear power since we've been doing it. And there's a some great advancements happening and small modular nuclear reactors and solid core cool nuclear reactors and if you look at where there's been nuclear incidents around the world it generally happens and when there's a a fair. Of the cooling system and nuclear wrackers are cool but circulating water around the reactor so take **** shima the last nuclear problem that we had and if I understand correctly the the backup power system went down they couldn't pump water to cool the reactor in the director overheated. Well at the time I believe germany had seventeen nuclear reactors and they made a decision they were going to close down all their nuclear reactors. And just a few years ago I was in germany meeting with the. He was it is a week before he became chance of a loss should and I was asking him about where you going to close down your last three remaining nuclear reactors he said absolutely we're going to close them down in germany will be a nuclear free country. They had the nordstream poplar and coming from russia they were doing it they're still doing a lot of research on hundreds and power. And the next thing you know put in invest your crane and germany's backed up and said maybe we don't need to close her nuclear reactors. Because the nuclear power is so reliable. If you've already invested in the cost then. I don't know why you would take a plant off line if you've already got the asset paid for a party paid for. But. Going forward I don't see how we meet any kind of clean energy goals without having a much richer mix of nuclear power in it. Now we have these department of energy research laboratories scattered across the country. And the pacific northwest national laboratory up in the transcititary of washington state does a lot of research on on small modular reactors I was up there a while back. In. You know they have a lot of wind power in washington state too but a statistic that really stuck with me was at a few developed. A section of land with small modular nuclear reactors so we're talking about six hundred and forty acres one mile but one mile if you develop there with nuclear reactors they said it would take. Seventy seven thousand acres of wind farms to produce the same amount of power this does nuclear reactors would previous and also something very critical and important with the new design or nuclear reactors other than they'll not being dependent on water to call the core they use moulton salts to to cool the course of the few added the shut down it cools off automatically regardless if you're able to pump water or not. They can modulate the power out of these new style nuclear reactors which means you can use it to to peak enter to marginally how much power you're putting on the grill. And as we take not necessarily cole but sat to some extent cole. And natural gas offer the green and we add more wind in solar to the grid which calls its more fluctuations in causes you do need more building to fill in the the top of the crew on the peak being able to modulate that power coming out of a nuclear reactor would be something very beneficial to balancing out the load on the group. So we've got to get past the point of being scared about nuclear reactors if we're really serious about heaving affordable and reliable energy that has zero carbon emissions then nuclear has to be part of it and to your point these next generation nuclear reactors my understanding is they can utilize spin fuel sales which I was also shocked to learn that the spent fuel filled still have about anywhere from eighty five to ninety percent that their energy capacity still in the spent fuel so lot of upside potential for. For nuclear reactors and especially the small modular reactors. In another benefit of that you hear all the talk about needing to build massive new transmission lines across the country. If you can distribute the power where you're not having two transmitted long distances then it takes a lot of the demand offers you transmission system so building a lot of small reactors around the country has benefits versus building a massive power plant somewhere like with seen in the past I got a chance to get on the nuclear submarine last summer I thought it was interesting the captain told me a thirty five years worth of fuel and is in assure and you know if we can build something the field is in a smaller than a submarine and make it safe I think we are to be able to build and distribute on around the country as well thank you for that detail answer german could I have another question please briefly if you don't mind we got those in the well put me back in the boundary let's do that thank you represent if. Centers double filled you recognize thank you chairman you disagree with I want to ask you something. And i've sorted on this sunstation you bought an energy council. The the total decoration of the us of of america. Would you agree that very it would barely move the neighborhood in regard to the mount of carbon in the apps or the US produces thirteen a half percent of the carbon admitted every year or so if somehow you could take every bit of carbon out that the us minutes it would reduce global carbon by thirteen have percent that's not realistic. In your. If you just. Won't pay an attention to the details you would think that if we all drove an electric vehicle that's going to solve the the carbon issue but i'd just go through the simple math third thirteen a half percent is produced by the us. Twenty seven percent of twenty eight percent of the us emissions comes from all of transportation. In fifty seven percent of transportation comes from large duty trucks. And passenger vehicle so you're down to about two percent of global emissions come from lot duty trucks and passenger vehicles. And then we're producing about forty percent of our electricity right now with non carbon admitting sources so that's why I said you could if you could waive a magic one and everybody's driving an electric vehicle tomorrow. Without even calculating how much embedded carbons in the electric vehicle from all of the money and processing it takes. On the critical minerals and the elements you're you're less than one percent of global greens gas emissions so I asked myself with it worth trillions of tax per dollars through this global greenhouse gas ambitions less than one percent when again I look up and see channels building a call fire plan every five days. So if we wanted to impact. This. Carbon emissions globally which you can't talk about carbon emissions of if you're not talking about on globally. You would want to come up with innovation and technology. That made their allow reliable affordable energy clean so that developing countries would adopt that and I think we're filling ourselves short on innovation. And we're pushing too hard on regulation then it's not going to generate the the benefits and it hasn't generated the benefits that that I think anybody wanting to achieve. A few years ago mister few year to go I was in a meeting down in there museum and i'd just go off the phone with the governor of missippi and. About repealing that and I had a resolution to present to that committee about repealing the goals act you would have thought I had a a nuclear barm in my pocket when I brought it up and I was asked not to run it I had no idea that you know states did not does that produce cities shifts that can carry liquid financial guess yet so the john's act ironically falls under the jurisdiction of my committee some very very well versed in the john zach and the closer to the coast in the ship building you get the more the more protective people are of the john vac and it was actually a well meaning act because in more war. Are we found out we didn't have any us shipping vessels and it causes a huge national security problem so. Congress enacted the jones act which there's if you're going to move something from a us port to a US port. Then it has them be flagged as a us vessel. And you are exactly we don't have a us flagged versal to transport local fire natural gas. And. Where the us has imported rushing gas has been in new england we can't build a parkland the new england and we can't put. Ing on a shipping golf transport to new england because it's going from a us port to us for it so I think we should do. At least some kind of a waiver or something on the jones act. To be able to ship from us for to us pork. Under a non us flagged vessel while we build the us flag ing versus it has other implications as well so porter rico which also the the territories fall under the natural resources committed to restriction they pay extravagant energy process in porto rico but they can't take l and g from a us from louisiana to porter rico because it's a us port us port so the end of having to bar natural gas from guitar or I can't remember the other nation they they bought from but we just make some way since with all the money we're investing the rebuild porter rico after the hurricane to put natural gas generating facilities there enter figure out how to get gas from the go off out to porter rico but the point well may you're we we get in the way of ourselves a lot of time because we don't use commences well the portal recondelegation was there and whenever the resolution was voted and they got up and walked out because they couldn't understand why the united states could not supply having with natural gas because of a simple act it was put in place that were no longer or we no longer need an infact that we don't have any shifts that can transport liquid financial gasoline and I live in areas got a lot of natural guess. And why we can't transport that to europe places like germany there gone in and re looking reopening their their call fireplace or nuclear place because I found out that it went in solar justice not enough to keep that grid going. And it's a lot of this is just common sense but they are entered to common misconception and i've learned this over the years that. These large changes and atmospheric co two translate into it didn't necessarily translate into similar law changes in the green house. In a certain amount of carbon is needed to keep our forced intergress you know this is better than. Yeah and yet we've listened to these doom day scenarios for so long. That people are had been sold them also we've had much higher concentrations of atmosphere co two in the past and long before there is any kind of men made carbon emissions and we've seen. Huge wings and sacraments of of temperature plus in in sea level you know there's a. An underground bull are an under water bald shopper is forest off the coast of alabama. That they think it's about. From about seventy thousand years ago. And it was drawing in a in an obviously a. It wasn't growing out of the ocean it was growing in a bargain area there and at the time they think sir. There was a valley going down to the mississippi river in and louisiana so we've seen vast swings over the. Large town skills of ocean level rise and fall and. Oh. In a week when we started measuring atmosphere carbon word about two hundred eighty parts per million and now we're a little over four hundred parts familiar which is. Zero point zero four percent of the atmosphere is carbon dog side so. Yeah we we live in a minimum half or since their world anymore we want staff and just have these conversations about what does this actually mean. If what has happened in the past. But there seems to be an all out effort to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that were responsible for. So senator thank you that we do have other members in the queue and and i'm trying to get us out of here close to three as we can so with that coach you're back. Thank mr chair thank you again for coming in speculating that enjoy the conversation I was very glad to hear you bring up smart II recently was studying red and a paper talking about their damages of the density of power not the words the bit the built is for doing a lot of energy and and relatively small space and and location. The smarts and nuclear in general kind of feel that gap very well where we get a lot of energy for relatively small small amount now. My question then is this. What do you feel like I mean Two right which was a multitart reactor that we operated for years the game and test test light that relatively large operated for years and then was actually dismantled in checked in said it paid this thing worked great it now where nearly so. Why do you feel like from from your perspective from the fair perspective what is a holder. We have the technology we we've done this technology. What is it that's holding us back from moving these forward I heard once that and i'm I made a common approach in the neighborhood they said it takes. To get what is the proposals approved just a proposal to start putting on this in the gare takes five years from the nuclear regulatory commission in our site how does something take five years I mean. Can we double the amount of engineers there to get this that some of these designs safely forwards but what do you feel like from the federal level is the hold up as far as this it seems like everyone within the energy sector agrees that nuclear is going to be one of the clean sources of power in the future because of its density and the class power cleaned it is what do you feel like the hold up is it. Are it is there any hold up it looks like me like it is I think there's definitely hold up and I think you can go through the the alphabet super the federal government but you've got fork in the nrc then you get into any kind of project it has a federal nexus to that you're going to have to go through a need for analysis which some of those can take decades and the the average is on four point seven years to do a need but when you're talking about something like a nuclear power plan or any kind of power plan it's probably going to make the the time frame on there even longer. But you know I think arkansas has an opportunity to lead the way on. Energy innovation and if if I know that's an area that some of you all are very interested in with the small modular reactors. And I think if you're pushing from the state side and then call on us in the federal delegation to help where we can their town you might get out there head of some other states on smarts and other new technology. And we will be very rarely talk about had an and hundreds of fuel sales which also offer some. Some benefits and something i'm very bullish on for the state of arkansas are vast forest industry. And there's a lot of energy held in our are forest and ways that we can utilize this forest to produce a lot of things including energy and and something a lot called boucher which is a form of carbon that we can you can put it the soil it'll stay there for thousand years or more isn't as a means of carbon sequence duration so. I'm open to working with you all however we can on the state and federal level and I know you're committed to doing the same here you wouldn't be having a meeting like this today so whether it testing mars are boucher you know arkansas got tremendous potential they have more had power to existing downs. Believe our are ready to report the core of engineers could they have twelve gb of power to existing downs in the us and most of those are on the the mississippi and the arkansas. River waterways so there's ways that arkansas can diversify or energy mix. And I think put ourselves in strong position going forward to have the affordable reliable and clean energy and when you've got affordable and reliable energy you're gonna attract businesses and people in economic growth to the state. Our members have a few members in the I try to be mindful the congressman's time as well so if we can be sort of quick and in our questions represent long committee. Direct me to rich chairman thank you congressman for coming talking with us today it sounds like every one of the things that we talked about today the whole up is always some regulatory agency the period talked about the main by scarf to rails is there any movement or support in congress for starting to look at cutting their budget sir definitely some of these agencies can't get him get their attention and maybe bring them back into line with reality thanks are thank you the. About this time last year we were passing hr one in congress which was called the lower energy call stack and that's a bill that came through the natural resources committee of a big component of that was not only accessing our energy resources here including l and g and unsure and offshore production but it was also to streamline the permitting process and we had it really comes from a bill called the builder act. And I can't start to stress how much money it would say states and save the country. Not just an energy but across the board if we could modify the neighbor permitting process everything again that has a federal nexus has to go through a neighbor promoting prices congress passed a big law to bring marfor processing back to the us and put a lot of federal money out there to build microtop processing plants. Well the intel on these other companies that are trying to build these plants found out that since they were getting federal money to build the plants they had to go through a need analysis and all these chip building plants are being held are the neighbor process. The the last runway built at the atlanta airport took eleven and a half years it actually took one and a half years to build it but it took nine and a half years to permit it everything that happens on the interstate on a bridge anything that happens on the naval water ways of report anywhere federal money goes to help build the project you're going to have to have a need for permit and it can get held up in court and in litigation and it literally cost the american tax period of trillions of dollars because we haven't streamlined the need of being processes and that's something that i'm going to continue working on in congress not to barpass environmental laws that are well meaning and we're put in place for good reason but to make the process actually work so that you can have a strong economy and the healthy environment and some people think there's two mutually exclusive with they actually go hand in hand. Chairman gilmore maybe you're you're remarks should admitted to me to answer smarter instantaneous people request II will say what I told staff it's not necessarily the questions but the length of answer so now you're being very helpful thank you for that center clark you're recognized. Mr chair. Conscious it is good to have you here just cause it's always good to have you here and it's good to have you speaking on this subject I tended a meeting of electrical coops last week and went just to be polite didn't know what it was going to be about but what it was about was their warning that with the two call plants closing an arkansas in the next four to six years which most are candidates are not aware of a which is already a done deal. That warning us of rolling blackouts. Much hard process energy process which in term since jobs to john in india you point fifty one cold plants came along in china. Last year you said one over five days now in india is not far behind them and cheap energy that's one of the things arkansas had to bring jobs here and it's and then of course also if there was if we're going to be in a war with someone at this point I think I could be china and it were there and their energy up we've got to electrical co op's warning us of or at least those of us listening rolling blackouts it seems like from a device defense position that were putting ourselves in a bad place. So long term we've always got to change this but what do we do short term and we get these two call plants and and arkansas shutting down soon what do we do in the short term short term to avoid disaster. Yeah you know those plants have been scheduled to the clothes for quite some time now my understanding is the start doing. Normal preventive maintenance and those things that we prolong the last of the plants because they knew there were going to be controlled shut down mode but it creates them a huge problem as you mention with electrical reliability and all of add some too there is our travel around the country i've found out that or had real power plans aren't being operated as baseload power like they were designed but because of all the wind and soldiers coming online. These plants are having to be used to to modulate the power on the top of the curve to fill in the blank. But there's not much we can do about the two plants that have already been announced to close an arkansas but we need to. Fart to keep these other plants open and to make sure that when these call plants are going off line there were at least back filling them a gas or some other kind of baselone power so that we don't have blackouts and we don't have increased cost or her unreliability because it the end of the day that's going to negatively impact not just your. Consumers purchasing their home energy but also businesses that would look to to have come to arkansas it's a very serious issue. It's on. You know I think until the. The problems that texas had people thought this can't happen to end you reach state like texas but it it sure enough deal they were they were pooling power from arkansas even then. Which there's there's another issue we got to work on in this interconnectibility of the regional power authorities. We not share a lot of power across the lines and if we want to have more reliability we need to book that in a connectibility better too which is also a federal issue that we're getting with. Thank you carsman and glad you're on top of this thank you mister chair thank you I remember is going to the last three one question each of you don't mind considering all of all the questions so we're going to end it with the. Since double you get back in yeah get back in but we're going to represent ray first thank you just a quick question on the strategic patrolling reserve. I know back in twenty twenty two when russia invaded ukraine the administration released. Basically I think it was almost half of our strategic patrolling reserves. My concern is that that believes this vulnerable from an energy standpoint if there were something to go arrive in the middle east and now we have hostilities in the middle east neither of the countries involved their big oil producing countries but there's the potential for countries to be drawn into a conflict like that do you have any thoughts on where we're out with the srp yeah I was pretty vocal about that being a very dumb thing to do when we did it and you've stated the purpose of the strategic patrol in reserve it's for an emergency situation and going into a midterm election with hard gas prices was it an emergency situation but I believe it was depleted to help lower prices at the park going into the midterm election. The. And I looked my knowledge it hasn't been replenished. Arkansas because we are number two in solar energy production now there's an eleven hundred acre born that I drive my solar form i'd rather buy every time I come to little rock and we're seeing more and more those huge solar fields my question is there's there's a concern in our concern about reliability of the great because we're getting too much solar as a percentage of our told language production in that we may have brown outs in the areas because of that so there's been discussion a couple bills and brought over here in arkansas to put a percentage on green energy. That's all and when when is not a player here in arkansas a percentage of production twenty percent of power can come from solar and that's it so that we don't have so we don't have a a lack of baseline so and also to replace the coal plants if we were if we shut down a call plan we should require by law in the state of arkansas a replacement of a base load energy so those are things that we've discussed here in the state are you aware of any other states that are looking at that sort of thing with a dollar or not that in is it possible. I'm not aware of any states looking at it mandates for replacing baseline power but you bring up a very. Import an issue because and and again. I'm not technology neutral on energy I just like technology that can stand on its own two feet and it works without any kind of a government incentive to make it work in your just to be free there wouldn't be any windmills in this country if the government wasn't paying two point seven since for killer what hour for every kill what hour that comes off the windmills and there will be very very few solar farms if the government was at paying a thirty percent tax credit to install the silver form so the incentive they've been put out there about a government to get more wind and so even though. From a technology standpoint when and solar aren't nearly as reliable as other forms of energy they do provide zero carbon energy on the bridge. Another problem with those when in solar farms is if they take a vast amount. Of the landscape a lot of that farm land of and take you to a solar form where they cut down at your forest to build the silver farm is a forester I have a hard time with their but on type of all the those components that are going into the siller panels and the wind bills a lot of them are being made in and channel actually a vast majority of when we're being made in china. Were their building co power plants so they can make the solar panels and windmills for us to put up but at the end of the day we've got to go back to reliable and affordable and is the green. That we have here locally is the great across our country is it going to be reliable and is it going to be affordable for consumers to consume energy offer that grid and I would encourage the legislature to take a deep look into that and see what what arkansas needs and what consumers in arkansas are need. I don't have a knowledge answer their question for you right now but I can tell you as a general trian or getting rid of more baseload power and we're putting more intermittent power sources on the grid which is a recipe for more instability and blackouts and for a skidding car in a bad situation her own agreed thank you for that answer thanks for me all right understood film up you turn to are you run and you're recognized I thank you mischance bridges one way of saying you know I think one of the things troubles not only me but a lot of americans in our kansas especially is the fact that we see our government pushing something on the american people that they don't want an areas they're putting regulations on on our moment manufacturers that in trying to regulate him and put more regulations on them to force them to make the cost of that vehicle higher in order to get them to purchase electric vehicle. And it just seems to me like we no longer live in a capitalist free market society anymore than we have a federal government this seems to know what's best for us. And we lose our choices and that's what one of the things are separated as. From the rest of the world is in fact we have that incentive because of capitalism and free market in our and now seeing her a president put all these restrictions. On the internal combustion in the colors where we are today and for so to be higher when we've got parking lost full of ebays. We've got four that love several billion dollars couldn't sell evs we had the catastrophe like we had back in february with card not charging textures we should a few minutes from having a total blackout people dying I just want you to know that I think that most people in the structuring after you are you know. Because I served with you how long enough to know you pretty well but we are just fed up with a federal government telling us what we can can't. Yeah and you mention another epa regulation that we haven't talked about the day and that's the till part of the missions. Rule that they came out with just recently and. You know we saw hurts so thousands of of electric vehicles that they couldn't rant you mentioned forward and some the other auto manufacturers will and still have taking that as a sign that maybe we can't force this technology on americans the came out of this top up a mission rule. There is a just about going to force if you'd buy a new vehicle to buy an even I believe that you'd have to sell three or four evs to be able to offer the omissions from one pickup and this is being put out there and the not to dear that two distant future that is tell part permissions reminder of coming to play and I think it's it's going to be a further disaster the free market works when you have real innovations that people wall bothers innovations that works but when it's forced by government regulation I can't think of anything that's really ever worked and I don't see a gambler trying to force americans to drives is going to accomplish the stated goal of reducing emissions then it's sure not going to help with the economy when I uncle sounds good his food on the skill transated favor of one technology over another. Thank you. Thank you center thank you members for this congressman thank you so much I guess it's a chairman thank you for being here taking the time always a pleasure to hear from you in the knowledge you bring so with that trying to get you out on the keep you on schedule thank you so much members were germent. Yeah.