In North Dakota, energy is a key and growing industry. From traditional resources, like coal and oil, to renewable resources like wind and biofuels, energy is not only powering our homes and fueling our vehicles - it's powering our economy. Thanks to our comprehensive state energy plan, EmPower ND, North Dakota has provided our energy companies with the incentives and certainty they need to develop our energy resources and implement the technology they need to produce more energy with good environmental stewardship.

Washington's approach to domestic energy development is to tax energy providers with Cap and Trade - or Cap and Tax. This approach will raise costs for families and businesses. It is already freezing investment of new technologies on the sidelines - technologies that will help our country produce more domestic energy in environmentally sound, cost-effective ways.

Instead of Cap and Trade, Congress needs to implement a comprehensive energy policy that will incentivize industry to develop all of our energy resources, both traditional sources and renewable sources.

A comprehensive energy policy should include - but is not limited to:

• Incentives to encourage research and development of new renewable energy and the technologies needed to develop our traditional resources in an efficient and clean way. This includes the development and use of horizontal drilling for oil, and clean-coal technologies like carbon capture and sequestration.
• A legal and regulatory framework that provides predictability and incentives to companies looking to start or expand carbon capture and sequestration operations.
• The infrastructure we need to get our energy from local markets to the national market.
• Incentives on the federal level to encourage the development of natural gas collection and distribution to collect this clean-burning gas and get it to market.
• Continued pressure on the EPA to increase the ethanol standard to E-15. This will help bring emissions from cars down and help bring the nation closer to energy independence.
• The continued development of a favorable framework for aggressive development of our wind energy resources.