"Federal dollars for this purpose help to leverage millions of additional dollars in private investment and state and local funding," Grassley said. "The situation we're in right now, with OPEC's stranglehold on the U.S. economy due to our unhealthy and expensive dependence on foreign sources of oil, underscores how critically important it is to develop renewable, domestically-produced energy."
Grassley has asked the Senate appropriations subcommittee in charge of providing money for renewable energy programs to provide $409 million for this purpose in the fiscal 2001 budget. This year, these programs received $310 million.
The Department of Energy says that if the U.S. were to achieve a goal set in the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to replace fossil fuels with renewable fuels, oil prices could be reduced by $3 a barrel. Since the U.S. now consumes 6.8 billion barrels of oil every year, the resulting savings to consumers would be about $20 billion a year.
Grassley said that the 3.6 percent market share held by alternative fuels already reduces the cost of each barrel of oil by a dollar. Considering the U.S. consumption level, the result is a savings of approximately $7 billion every year.
"It looks like American consumers could be paying as much as $2 a gallon for gasoline this summer, and diesel fuel has already topped $2 in some places and it's on the rise," Grassley said. "The United States needs to protect itself from being held hostage by oil-rich nations in the future. This year, the Clinton administration was caught off-guard by not having much of an energy policy. Clearly, the government needs to accelerate efforts to promote and use alternative sources of energy."
Grassley is a long-time advocate for renewable fuels. In the U.S. Senate, he has worked to expand the viability of clean-burning ethanol, soy diesel, wind energy and biomass.