Mr. President, another amendment that I filed to S. 1867, the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2012 National Defense Authorization bill, would have advanced new clean energy opportunities and enjoyed bipartisan support. The amendment’s cosponsors included Senators Shaheen, Portman, Gillibrand, Merkley, and Kerry. Unfortunately, we were not able to offer it this week because of a disagreement over scoring. It was an important opportunity missed so I wanted to take a moment to note what this amendment entailed.
Senate Amendment 1265 would have confronted a critical long-term challenge facing our nation’s military: the spiraling cost of its reliance on petroleum. As we look for ways to save taxpayer dollars and reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, utilizing more electric vehicles should become a priority for the Defense Department and the entire federal government.
Investment in clean energy technology is an investment in America’s energy security. Liquid petroleum accounts for three-quarters of our armed forces’ energy consumption, and approximately 60 percent of that comes from abroad. The Defense Department has explicitly cited the operational risk inherent to our dependence on foreign oil and has committed itself to aggressively reducing energy consumption.
Senate Amendment 1265 would allow the Defense Department and other federal agencies to purchase electric vehicles and charging infrastructure under Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPC). ESPCs themselves aren’t new: the government has used ESPCs for years to pay for energy efficiency upgrades. It has been enormously successful and costs the government nothing up front. That’s right, ESPCs are paid for, financed, performed and guaranteed by the private sector with the government paying the back private sector through guaranteed energy savings over time. Our amendment would have made electric vehicles and charging infrastructure eligible for the program.
Mr. President, energy efficiency is about more than turning the lights off when you leave a building. It is about the appliances you buy, the tools you use, and the vehicles you drive.
The federal government is America’s largest energy consumer and within the government, the Defense Department is the biggest energy consumer. One out of every three vehicles owned by the federal government is owned by the Pentagon, which is why we raised this amendment this week.
Senate Amendment 1265 would have helped increase the share of the government-owned fleet that is cost-efficient, energy-efficient electric vehicles. On top of that, it would not add a dime to the federal deficit. By buying these vehicles in through ESPCs, the government does not put up any money up front. Rather, it enters an agreement with a private-sector contractor — a job-creating private-sector contractor — where the agency pays the contractor over an agreed-upon period of time – as many as 25 years.
What they are paying each month, though, is the net savings achieved by using the electric vehicle instead of a conventional vehicle. This is an unconventional, but creative and cost-efficient way to save money, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and even to help support a growing private industry.
This amendment would have simply provided the Defense Department with a new tool for acquiring cost-efficient electric vehicles, which is what they are asking us to do. They want to add electric vehicles to their fleets. The Defense Department has already done extraordinary work in leveraging energy efficiency to reduce its costs and reduce its dependence on foreign oil. We want to help them do more.
This is a challenging economic time for our country, and our military needs every advantage it can get as it confronts dangerous threats to our national and energy security. By empowering the Pentagon to buy more of these energy-efficient, cost-efficient electric vehicles, we are saving taxpayer dollars and reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Investment in clean energy technology is an investment in America’s energy security, and energy security is, without a doubt, an increasingly important, and increasingly fragile, aspect of America’s national security.
This is a common-sense policy that unfortunately cannot be considered at this point because of a technicality in how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scores ESPCs. It has been going on for 10 years and, as I understand, it has provided endless frustration to my colleagues on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and several other congressional committees, and this problem reaches beyond the electric vehicle option alone.
A key point to make here is that whenever Congress tells the federal government to become more efficient but does not provide appropriated funding for the purpose, a score is triggered because the government might use ESPCs to meet the mandate. Effectively, Congress cannot tell the federal government to save money through efficiency. Further, while ESPCs are scored by the CBO rules, OMB does not score them because the government does not incur any costs through their use. This specious score has essentially limited our ability to reduce appropriated dollars and achieve energy efficient simultaneously using private sector expertise and funding.
This amendment is something that is important to me, I am hopeful it is something that we will be able to pass down the road. In the meantime, it is an opportunity lost, to help our military prepare for the threats facing our nation.