Tom Vilsack Quotes

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

By encouraging conservation, increasing investments in clean, renewable sources of energy, and promoting increased domestic production of oil and gas, we can build a more secure future for our country.

Balancing our energy portfolio is a real chance to reduce energy bills, revitalize rural America, slow global warming and strengthen our energy security.

If you could wean yourself off of oil and not be dependent on the Middle East, obviously it's better.

For the Navy, developing alternatives to fossil fuels isn't just about fighting climate change - though that's an important side benefit. Biofuels will also play a much more practical role in the Navy's fuel mix, boosting our energy security and supporting the U.S. economy.

If you're going to spend most of your time in your democracy figuring out how to get oil by intervening into other people's countries and insuring that you follow it with military might, we think there's an alternative. Which would be renewable energy.

Ethanol is a premier, high performance fuel. It has tremendous environmental benefits and is a key component to energy independence for our country.

Hydrogen holds great promise to meet many of our future energy needs, and it addresses national security and our environmental concerns. Hydrogen is the simplest, most abundant element in the universe.

I came here to help make America more competitive and prosperous by developing an energy policy that increases conservation, promotes cleaner technologies, encourages development of renewables and enhances domestic production of gas and oil.

I think God has blessed this country with enormous natural resources, and we should pursue all of the above. We should be developing oil, and gas, and coal, and nuclear, and wind, and solar, and ethanol, and biofuels. But, I don't believe that Washington should be picking winners and losers.

Boone Pickens should be commended for his leadership on American energy security, and for bringing Ted Turner along on some sensible approaches to enhancing it.

Corn ethanol can help in the short term, but it has serious limitations, and none of this is going to work if we don't dramatically improve the efficiency of our cars and trucks.

It's important to understand that oil and renewables do different things. Wind and solar are for power generation, so they don't replace oil. About 70% of all oil produced is used for transportation fuel. Renewables are good projects, but they don't get us off of foreign oil.

You have to work with the auto industry, the oil companies, you have to work to develop renewable fuel, whether it's solar or different kinds of fuel or whatever.

Mr. Speaker, high natural gas prices and the summer spike in gasoline prices serve as a stark reminder that the path to energy independence is a long and arduous one.

We must shift the energy policy debate in America with an increased focus on alternative and renewable fuels and Congress must pass meaningful alternative fuels and incentive programs to help move the U.S. away from dependence on foreign oil.

Ethanol reduces our dependence on foreign sources of oil and is an important weapon in the War on Terror. By investing in South Dakota's ethanol producers, we will strengthen our energy security and create new jobs.

It is important that the United States move with all deliberate speed to develop and get into usage alternative fuels that will allow us to end our dependence on foreign oil.

Our oil problems are only going to get worse. Our trade balance is only going to get worse. So we have to slow the growth of U.S. oil consumption, particularly imported oil consumption.

One of our priorities should be to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

By reducing our dependence of foreign oil and increasing alternative energy sources such as ethanol, we can begin to bring down prices at the pumps, create thousands of new jobs and bring a much needed boost to our economy.

... the rising costs and risks of these fossil fuels are undercutting the security and prosperity they have enabled. Each day, the United States spends about $2 billion buying oil and loses another $4 billion indirectly to the macroeconomic costs of oil dependence, the microeconomic costs of oil price volatility, and the cost of keeping military forces ready for intervention in the Persian Gulf.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil.

Along with Senator Lieberman and others, I introduced the Energy Security Bill to use existing technologies with a variety of tax incentives to reduce our dependence on oil.

I stopped - just killed - President Obama's $10-a-barrel gas tax.