Wilmington, DE – This July 4th, as we celebrate our country’s independence from Great Britain over two centuries ago, we are confronted once again with the position of being reliant on far-away nations who are not always most concerned about America’s best interests.

America consumes 25 percent of the world’s oil, yet we only have 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

I believe it is time for a new kind of revolution. But instead of muskets and cannon balls, we will depend on American ingenuity and know-how to secure our freedom. Such a revolution is necessary to guarantee our nation’s future safety and security, as well as offer relief to Americans facing record gas prices that are only projected to keep rising. In every sense of the word, we can no longer afford to be so dependent on oil, especially oil from unfriendly nations in a volatile part of the world. 

While this new kind of revolution will take time and resources, I am pleased to report that it has already begun. Last fall, Congress approved a bill to make cars more fuel efficient and American automakers are hard at work developing vehicles that use less gas. We also called for the development of more alternative fuels, and by 2020 – if not sooner – there will be 21 billion gallons of alternatives on the market.

State and local governments are also finding ways to help Americans get out of their cars but still get where they need to go, while saving a whole lot of gas, and a great deal of money.

Late last month, I met with many of these progressive local leaders from all over America at the annual Democratic Leadership Committee’s National Conversation in Chicago and, as a vice-chairman of the DLC, I was honored to speak to the group. I offered some of my own thoughts about how we can lessen our dependence on foreign oil (while at the same time reducing the amount of pollutants we pump into our air!), and I also highlighted what other leaders around the country are doing to cut America’s oil dependence, as well.

I would like to share with you some of my comments:

Last December, the President signed into law the first increase in fuel efficiency standards for cars, trucks and vans in three decades -- CAFE legislation that Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Dan Inouye (D-Hawaii), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and I worked on for a number of years. 

By 2020, the overall fleet average of vehicles sold in this country must reach 35 mpg, an increase of 40 percent over the previous standard of 25 mpg. But I’m betting that market forces will compel U.S. automakers to reach and exceed that new standard well before 2020 if they are to return to profitability.

To help make sure they do, the federal government has invested over a half-billion dollars in the American Freedom Car initiative in recent years to hasten the development of fuel cell- powered vehicles. 

This year and next, we’ll invest another $100 million or more to expedite the development of a new lithium ion battery that will help make the much anticipated Chevrolet Volt a reality in 2010.

The Volt, a flex-fuel, plug-in hybrid can be recharged just about anywhere. Its drivers will be able to travel 40 miles on battery power alone on a single charge and then drive another 600 miles or so before the vehicle’s auxiliary power unit runs out of fuel. Eighty miles per gallon is not out of the question.

In addition to making substantial R&D investments, the federal government began using its purchasing power this year to help commercialize advanced technology vehicles when they come to the marketplace. This means that we have committed to making 70 percent of the government’s automobile fleet – including Post Office vehicles – advanced technology vehicles, which includes alternative fuel, hybrid, fuel cell and very low-emission diesel.

And third, federal tax credits, ranging from $400 to $3,500, are now available to purchasers of hybrid powered vehicles, as well as very low-emission, highly efficient diesel-powered vehicles. 

While the folks at Ford will continue to sell a lot of fuel-efficient Focuses, the tax credits I’ve just mentioned will help to move – among others – Ford Escapes, Chevrolet Malibus, Saturn Auras and brand new hybrid-equipped Dodge Durangos and Chrysler Aspens built in Newark, Delaware out of dealers’ showrooms and onto roads across America.

In addition to requiring that the cars, trucks and vans sold here in the United States be at least 40 percent more fuel efficient by 2020, we also are encouraging the use of alternative fuels by requiring the production of 21 billion – billion with a “B” – gallons of advanced renewable fuels by 2020. By the time that 2020 rolls around, I suspect that we’ll be producing a lot of ethanol from cellulose, but little, if any, of that 21 billion gallons will be comprised of ethanol made from kernels of corn. 

In fact, American ingenuity is already at work to produce more environmentally friendly biofuels that will make their way into the market place in the next few years. One of them is called biobutanol, a biofuel developed by DuPont that’s being test marketed in a partnership with BP in Britain this year.

Capable of being made from sugar beets, switch grass and a variety of other crops, biobutanol has better energy density than ethanol. Unlike ethanol, it travels in pipelines. And, unlike ethanol, it mixes better with gasoline at different temperatures.

This spring, I learned from GM that they had taken an equity in a new biofuels company called Coskata. The ethanol produced by Coskata’s technology apparently can be made for about a buck a gallon. It can be produced from plant waste, municipal waste and even from the worn-out tires of the vehicles that we drive.

The company’s process uses less than a gallon of water to create a gallon of fuel. The energy content of that fuel is roughly seven times greater than the energy used to create it. Apparently, it costs about a buck per gallon to make, and the greenhouse gases it produces are about 80 percent less than gasoline.

One of the thoughts I want to leave you with today is that if we’re intent of reducing our dependence on foreign oil, on fossil fuel, and the cost of energy, it’s not enough to build more energy efficient vehicles by 2020. It’s not enough to produce 21 billion gallons of biofuels by then. It’s not enough for oil and gas companies to actually begin tapping the full energy potential of the tens of millions of acres of federal lands they’ve leased and have yet to produce any fuel from. 

No. None of that’s enough. We’ve also got to encourage and incentivize Americans to get out of our cars, trucks and vans from time to time so that we don’t end up increasing the number of miles that we drive them by 150 percent over the next 30 years like we’ve done over the past 30 years.

What would happen if all new development was done in a smarter way? What if we built new homes closer to offices, schools and stores so that more Americans could walk or bike, take a bus or just drive less? This one step alone, I’m told, would, over time, reduce gasoline use by as much as 30 percent and reduce CO2 emissions by 10 percent. And if we built better transit systems along with smarter development, we could reduce our air pollution even more.

It’s time to start thinking outside the box. Fortunately, a number of the cities, towns, counties and states represented here in this room already have begun to do just that. You’ve found innovative new ways – and rediscovered some terrific old ideas – to get people out of their cars, preserve their freedom of movement and save them some money, while reducing pollution, congestion and oil consumption.

To start with, Mayor Daly and other leaders here in Chicago deserve a whole lot of credit. They have invested heavily in mass transit. They encourage development around transit, and many neighborhoods here now accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians. And, Chicago business leaders are allowing more people to telecommute. Taken together, this means fewer cars on Chicago streets and highways.

In other parts of the country, cities like Meridian, Mississippi; like Little Rock, Arkansas; like Tampa, Florida; and even Washington, D.C. are going back to the future and bringing back streetcars.

And, in many other cities, like my home town of Wilmington, Delaware, people are getting back on trains and buses – diesel-hybrid buses. 

As some of you may know, Senator Joe Biden and I commute almost daily to work on Amtrak – from our homes in Wilmington to our offices on Capitol Hill.

We see every day, close up, more and more people riding the train with us. And it’s not just the Northeast Corridor either. During the past 12 months, Amtrak revenue and ridership are up almost 15 percent nationwide. Amtrak ridership in West Coast corridors is up over 15 percent.

In Midwest corridors flowing in and out of Chicago, ridership is up over 20 percent. 

In Seattle, commuter rail ridership is up 28 percent, and light rail ridership in Minneapolis is up 16 percent.

Do trains save energy? You bet they do. We can move a ton of freight by rail from D.C. to Boston on one gallon of diesel fuel. Think about that. One gallon!

And it’s not just trains either. Buses are so full in cities like Indianapolis and Austin that some would-be riders are left to watch as full buses drive off without them!

Where public transit is available, Americans are eager to get out of their cars. In fact, more than half of Americans say they would rather walk than drive short distances.

Recent studies show that one-third of Americans who live near rail transit use it regularly. That’s great! What’s not so great is that less than one in every 20 Americans lives within a half mile of rail transit.

We need to do better than that – a lot better – and a number of you here with us today are showing the rest of us how.

I found the ideas and proposals laid out at the National Conversation very inspiring and I hope some of these solutions inspire you, as well.

So this holiday weekend, as we celebrate our independence, let’s begin working on a new kind of independence – energy independence – by taking a bus, riding a bike or walking wherever we can, and I think we’ll begin to see how achievable victory might be in this revolution, too.

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