Text-Only Version
Senator Joseph Lieberman:
"Pleasure to have you here. Dr. Dagher is a professor of Civil and
Structural Engineering at the University of Maine--which we on this
committee know is one of America's great public universities--and
Director of the university's Advanced Structures and Composites
Laboratory. We thank you for being here and invite your testimony
now."
Habib Dagher, Director, Advanced Engineered Wood Composites: "Thank
you, Mr. Chairmain Lieberman, and ranking member Collins. Thanks for
inviting me, Senator Collins, to be here today. I would like to
start by acknowledging the inspiring role as a system architect for
this testimony I'm working on with my colleague Dr. George Hurt, as
well as Mr. Matt Simmons, who is well known as alerting our country
to peak oil and peak oil issues. You've heard about the financial,
geopolitical, and security dimensions of our energy crisis. I would
like to put a human face to this crisis. Maine will likely be the
first state to experience a heating state of emergency. I say that
with confidence because we are living it right now, and Senator
Collins has been very concerned about the our future. Some
statistics about Maine: Eighty percent of Maine families use heating
oil to heat our homes. Next winter's heating oil costs will be $5 a
gallon if you try to lock in today. That means the average Maine
family will pay $5,000 a year just to heat their home next winter.
In 2020, if we don't do anything--we don't do the Pickens plan or
any other plan--those numbers will be $10,000 a year, just to heat
our homes.
If you look at chart number four of the testimony, it shows you in
red how much of the Maine family budget goes to energy. Ten years
ago, less than 5 percent of the Maine family budget went to energy.
Today, close to 25 percent--a quarter of the Maine family
budget--goes to paying for energy. That's transportation, that's
heating, that's electrical power. In 10 years, if we don't make any
changes, about half of the Maine family budget would go to energy.
Clearly, this is not sustainable. The state of Maine pays close to
$5 billion a year out of the state of Maine in energy costs, and we
only have a little over a million people."
