[Senate Hearing 116-244]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-244
THE STATUS AND OUTLOOK OF ENERGY INNOVATION IN THE UNITED STATES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
----------
FEBRUARY 7, 2019
----------
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
THE STATUS AND OUTLOOK OF ENERGY INNOVATION IN THE UNITED STATES
S. Hrg. 116-244
THE STATUS AND OUTLOOK OF ENERGY INNOVATION IN THE UNITED STATES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 7, 2019
__________
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
35-554 WASHINGTON : 2020
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon
MIKE LEE, Utah MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
STEVE DAINES, Montana BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
CORY GARDNER, Colorado MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
MARTHA MCSALLY, Arizona ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada
JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
Brian Hughes, Staff Director
Kellie Donnelly, Chief Counsel
Chester Carson, Senior Professional Staff Member
Dr. Benjamin Reinke, Professional Staff Member
Sarah Venuto, Democratic Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
Brie Van Cleve, Democratic Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENTS
Page
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from Alaska.... 1
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
West Virginia.................................................. 2
WITNESSES
Dabbar, Hon. Paul M., Under Secretary for Science, U.S.
Department of Energy........................................... 4
Moniz, Hon. Ernest J., Founder and CEO, Energy Futures Initiative 35
Wince-Smith, Deborah L., President & CEO, Council on
Competitiveness................................................ 56
Faison, Jay, Founder, ClearPath.................................. 211
Grumet, Jason, President, Bipartisan Policy Center............... 216
Wood, James F., Interim Director, Energy Institute, West Virginia
Uni-
versity........................................................ 230
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Dabbar, Hon. Paul M.:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
Written Testimony............................................ 6
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 266
Faison, Jay:
Opening Statement............................................ 211
Written Testimony............................................ 213
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 315
Grumet, Jason:
Opening Statement............................................ 216
Written Testimony............................................ 219
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 323
IEEE-USA:
Statement for the Record..................................... 333
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
Opening Statement............................................ 2
Moniz, Hon. Ernest J.:
Opening Statement............................................ 35
Written Testimony............................................ 38
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 296
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Wince-Smith, Deborah L.:
Opening Statement............................................ 56
Written Testimony............................................ 58
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 312
Wood, James F.:
Opening Statement............................................ 230
Written Testimony............................................ 233
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 329
THE STATUS AND OUTLOOK OF ENERGY INNOVATION IN THE UNITED STATES
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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:37 a.m., in
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Lisa
Murkowski, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI,
U.S. SENATOR FROM ALASKA
The Chairman. Good morning, everyone. The Committee will
come to order. It has been a busy week here on the Energy
Committee with our Lands bill that is currently on the Floor.
We had a business meeting a couple days ago, and now we are
here for our second full Committee hearing. So we welcome those
of you on the panel this morning.
On Tuesday, we heard from those in the energy and minerals
market an overview looking at the current trends. Today we are
going to look at what is happening to drive the energy trends
of the future, what could be the next breakthrough energy
technology. We use the term ``breakthrough'' a lot. Let's try
to define that a little bit this morning. We are also looking
to how we can encourage innovation that will deliver better,
cleaner and cheaper energy for American families and
businesses.
Here in the United States we have long been on the cutting
edge of energy innovation. Whether the battle for electric
current supremacy between Nicola Tesla and Thomas Edison, the
invention of the semiconductor or the revolution in hydraulic
fracturing, American ingenuity has led the way in global
innovation, but we want to continue to lead the way in global
innovation.
Underpinning all these efforts is strong support for the
basic sciences and the people who dedicate their lives to
furthering scientific pursuits. The Department of Energy plays
an outsized role in pushing the limits of basic science,
furthering discovery and finding the breakthroughs that can
change our energy future, and they further leverage this by
partnering with private industry and the great researchers at
our nation's universities.
Our role here in the Congress is to help foster an
environment that encourages that innovation. Last Congress we
enacted a number of important innovation policies into law,
ones that promoted a national quantum initiative, advanced
nuclear energy and energy efficiency. But looking forward, we
also know that the energy challenges facing us here in the
United States and the world will require bigger, bolder,
better, brighter, faster, smarter ideas.
I have often spoken about clean energy innovation policies
as ``no-regrets'' solutions, but in reality, these are just the
first steps. It is time to push hard to bring down the cost of
clean energy, technologies like renewables, advanced nuclear
and next-generation energy storage and carbon capture. If we
want credible technological solutions that are cost-effective
and deployable globally and at scale, we must ensure that the
policies that we put in place propel these forward.
I am pleased to welcome a very distinguished panel of
witnesses that we have before us. From the Department of Energy
(DOE) we have the Under Secretary for Science, Paul Dabbar.
Thank you for being here and for your work that you are doing
to further the basic science research and the innovation that
goes on at the department. We appreciate that.
Next we have someone who is truly a friend of the
Committee. We have seen him in different capacities here.
Secretary Moniz is a former Secretary of Energy. We welcome you
back to the Committee and appreciate the insight that you will
provide and what you will be able to share with us with this
recent report that is out. It was a pleasure to be able to
visit with you and Mr. Yergin yesterday to get some of the low-
down there. So thank you and welcome to the Committee.
We have Jay Faison who is with us this morning with
ClearPath. Jay has been a real leader in so many of these
clean-energy solutions and how we advance those benefits, so it
is good to have you back with us.
From the Council on Competitiveness, we welcome back its
President and CEO, Deborah Wince-Smith. It is good to have you
here.
Jason Grumet has, again, also been before the Committee
many times and is a good strong voice on so many of these
issues, but he is the President of the Bipartisan Policy
Center.
And then finally from the fantastic little state--Senator
Manchin is always saying ``my little State----
Senator Manchin. Compared to Alaska.
The Chairman. ----of West Virginia.'' Yes, we are good with
that. But it is wonderful to have you here, Mr. Wood. He is the
Interim Director of the West Virginia University (WVU) Energy
Institute. It is a pleasure to have you with us here this
morning.
With that, I turn to my Ranking Member for any comments
that you may have.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
Senator Manchin. Let me say thank you, Chairman Murkowski,
for convening this hearing to discuss how we develop, test and
commercialize breakthrough energy technologies and to have all
of you. This esteemed panel is really special.
This hearing is particularly important because innovation
is a critical piece of how the Committee can contribute to the
pursuit of technological energy manufacturing solutions that
will help reduce carbon emissions and address climate
challenges.
The Breakthrough Energy Report that was released yesterday
has some ideas I think this Committee should consider. Senator
Murkowski and I had a robust discussion with Secretary Moniz
last night, and I look forward to continuing that today.
I am especially pleased to have my friend, Jim Wood, here
from the West Virginia University Energy Institute to talk
about the cutting-edge solutions that WVU is working on today.
Much of WVU's good work is in partnership with the National
Energy Technology Lab, both mainstays in the Morgantown, West
Virginia, area and leaders in finding ways to burn coal and
natural gas in a cleaner, more efficient way. As I said in our
last hearing, my home state, my great little, compared to
Alaska, home State of West Virginia, is committed to solving
the climate crisis. Breakthrough technologies will help us
reliably meet our energy needs in the future while
decarbonizing our energy system. Now as we think about
affordable and reliable electricity, we must acknowledge that
fossil fuels will continue to play an integral role in our
electricity generation. With that in mind, we need to
prioritize the advancement and commercialization of
technologies, like carbon capture, that we can employ both here
at home and overseas.
In 2017, China and India used coal for 67 and 74 percent
respectively of their electricity needs. While I understand
both countries are taking steps to reduce emissions and add
more renewable generation, fossil fuels are still a part of
their future, and ours. By 2040, the International Energy
Agency says China will still be about 51 percent dependent on
coal and India will be 57 percent.
Dr. Jesse Jenkins and Samuel Thernstrom recently wrote in
the New York Times that if we are going to decarbonize our
economy, we must do so with more than just wind and solar. They
concluded that it would be much cheaper to include so-called
firm, low-carbon technologies such as nuclear, carbon capture,
or reliable renewables like hydro than it would be to build a
clean-energy system without them.
So it is time to seek out practical solutions for emissions
and ways to strike the balance between energy, the environment,
and jobs. A large part of finding that balance is strengthening
our investments in advanced R&D, which we will talk about
today, for carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration
(CCUS) and making coal plants more efficient. It also means
investing in advanced nuclear technologies that make the
current nuclear fleet more cost-effective while moving the ball
forward on small modular reactors. That is going to take a lot
of private capital from leaders such as Mr. Bill Gates, but it
will also require even more leadership from the Federal
Government.
Then there is energy efficiency. As we heard from the panel
at Tuesday's hearing, energy efficiency really is the low-
hanging fruit. The DOE estimates that efficiency improvements
can save U.S. consumers and businesses 741,000 gigawatt-hours
of electricity between 2016 and 2035, which is equal to 16
percent of the electricity used in 2035. That is a tremendous
energy resource. That is a potential cumulative savings of 6.5
gigawatts in my great little State of West Virginia alone by
2035.
But it is not just about efficiency savings in buildings,
it is about what technologies will make electricity
transmission in particular more reliable and more efficient. So
I am interested to hear from this panel on the level of
investment there and what the ongoing regulatory challenges are
to reducing those losses in the line.
That brings me to storage. Whether we are talking about
batteries or pumped hydro, there is a lot of good work going on
about how we approach energy storage, but we do not have the
magic answer yet. So let's talk about the timeline and how we
get there and how we can do it in the interim to ensure the
lights stay on, homes stay warm, and businesses keep running.
We need cost-effective technologies and solutions that make us
productive and competitive in a global market while allowing us
to lead on climate solutions.
We have an esteemed panel here today, and we are eagerly
waiting to hear from you all to give us the answers we need.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Manchin.
I think we have introduced folks in terms of a little bit
of your background, so let's just begin the testimony here this
morning. We will begin with you, Under Secretary Dabbar. I
would ask that you try to keep your comments to about five
minutes. Your full statements will be included as part of the
record. Again, we are very, very pleased to have such a well-
rounded and distinguished panel. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL M. DABBAR, UNDER SECRETARY FOR SCIENCE,
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. Dabbar. Thank you, Chairwoman Murkowski and Ranking
Member Manchin, for the opportunity to come and discuss the
nation's energy innovation cycle.
Before I begin, I'd like to thank Secretary Moniz and
Deputy Secretary Poneman for their stewardship of the
Department and the national labs. The Department holds the
legacy of innovation that helped win World War II and the Cold
War. Fermi and Lawrence, Rickover and Oppenheimer combined
brilliance with action. I submitted to this Committee a copy of
the 75 Breakthroughs of National Labs which summarizes some of
the top innovations that have come out of our national lab
complex since their start.
We also submitted our new policy paper, American Scientific
Leadership for the 21st Century, and it's also on the DOE
website. In it, we highlight our policy positions on execution
and federal support for discovery. We highlighted the six
exciting areas which have the possibility of truly
transformative opportunities for humankind: artificial
intelligence, quantum technologies, advanced and sustainable
energies, space and the universe exploration, advanced
mobility, and genomics. Major breakthroughs in these areas are
in our grasp, and we are proud of the role the DOE has in
advancing them. The American energy technology revolution
driven by the national labs, universities and the private
sector has dramatically improved emissions, costs and energy
production. There has been significant increase in policy
proposals as of late around mandates and taxation to drive
energy and emission goals. These positions are being driven
without full understanding that the labs and the market have
driven significant jumps in energy technologies. Wind turbine
capacity factors have increased by more than 50 percent. Solar
costs have dropped by more than 90 percent. Utility-scale
batteries are now cost competitive with gas turbines without
incentives. Gas turbine heat rates, which is an efficiency
factor, have dropped by more than 10 percent, and it's hard to
get thermo to move 10 percent. Oil and gas cost improvements
have dropped prices by over 60 percent. Our costs, energy
production and emissions have dramatically improved because of
American innovation driven in part by broad bipartisan support
for the national labs.
What is on the horizon for American innovation for energy?
Research will continue to deliver significant reductions to
emissions and costs. There will be significant jumps in
technologies including battery chemistries three to five times
better than lithium-ion; carbon capture based on new materials;
next generation nuclear; and, distributed grid technologies.
And there are three private fusion companies looking to build
their first power prototypes including one that Secretary Moniz
sits on the board of.
We are also committed to the policies that support
commercialization to combine the expertise of the labs with the
energy of the private sector to speed the movement of
technologies to the marketplace. For example, in November we
launched the laboratory agreement and liability reform
initiatives to streamline our labs' abilities to enter into
partnering agreements. These will significantly reduce the
efforts for commercialization.
The DOE is co-leading the Administration's lab-to-market
goal with the focus on reducing execution burdens, increasing
private sector engagement and building a more entrepreneurial
workforce, R&D workforce. We have designated the Director of
the Office of Technology Transitions as the Department's Chief
Commercialization Officer, which elevates the status of driving
DOE technology. We also just established a Research and
Technology Investment Committee implementing the requirements
of the DOE Research and Innovation Act that was passed this
last year. This Committee will convene R&D elements of the
Department to coordinate research priorities, cross-cutting
opportunities and ensure the key decisions are leveraged. These
actions we just took are in alignment with the Breakthrough
Energy Report that was just submitted this week.
Additionally, DOE has kicked off a series of summits called
InnovationXLab. The XLab summits increase lab engagement with
industry, investors and customers in which we both highlight
the research from the national labs that is approaching
commercialization application but also hear from industry about
its interest and its investment criteria. In this way, we
incorporate market pull as an important part of our R&D
planning portfolio.
As a part of this, I'd like to kindly ask the Committee for
consideration at one point around the leadership positions that
are still open for us as a Department. We very much appreciate
the leadership of this Committee on reviewing our nominees, but
we still have the heads of the Office of Science, ARPA-E, as
well as General Counsel on Nuclear Energy. We kindly ask for
potential full Senate consideration should the nominees be
voted out of this Committee again.
So thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dabbar follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you. We appreciate that. And rest
assured, we too are trying to get these nominees through the
process just as quickly as we can. You need to have your full
team up and running and particularly in these key areas. So
thank you for that, and thank you for your testimony this
morning.
Secretary Moniz, it is a pleasure.
STATEMENT OF HON. ERNEST J. MONIZ, FOUNDER AND CEO, ENERGY
FUTURES INITIATIVE
Dr. Moniz. Well thank you, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking
Member Manchin and members of the Committee, most of whom are
extremely familiar, and I must say I've been testifying before
this Committee and Chairman Murkowski for more than two
decades. And I thank the Chair and the Ranking Member also for
the time yesterday when we could discuss our new report. I've
always been happy to work with this Committee in a bipartisan
way and look forward to helping any way we can going forward.
Also I'd like to recognize Under Secretary Dabbar whose
background also in investment banking and I think is a very,
very good background for this, this subject.
Much of my career has focused on innovation from initiating
the MIT Energy Initiative which had new ways of working with
the energy industry, my tenure as Secretary making innovation a
cornerstone of our approach to energy--our energy policy and
initiatives; now in a new organization, the Energy Futures
Initiative, from which we issued yesterday this report,
``Advancing the Landscape of Clean Energy Innovation,'' and
this is a report done in collaboration with Dan Yergin and IHS
Market. I want to emphasize the report is our responsibility of
EFI and IHS Market but with the strong support of Energy
Breakthrough, the organization established by Bill Gates to
focus on energy innovation.
The context certainly starts by--we all know this but it
deserves repeating. Innovation is at the heart of the American
success story, driving our economy and security for a long
time, and we emphasize that we must continue to place our bet
on innovation outcomes rather than prescribed or planned
outcomes as has often been the case in other countries, and
this remains very wise counsel in discussing clean energy
innovation going forward and the massive low-carbon energy
economy transformation that we are just at the beginning of.
Accelerating this transition will not be easy. The nature
of the business, highly regulated, large capital assets and the
like leads to risk aversion. But we emphasize that if we are
going to accelerate, the incumbent energy companies must be
part of this just as the disrupters, entrepreneurs, must be
part of it, and we have to see them as partners in a successful
transformation. Part of that involves what we call the platform
technologies like edited manufacturing and big data and AI, et
cetera. We need to do more to integrate that into the energy
innovation challenge.
We have challenges to our preeminence in clean energy
innovation. China certainly, for example, with its rapidly
growing markets--market pull is a big stimulus to energy
innovation, but that highlights even more why we need to focus
on this and maintain our preeminence.
Let me highlight--actually, let me also add that we should
remember that this energy innovation agenda is equally
important for energy security, and I refer the Committee back
to the 2014 energy--Modern Energy Security Principles endorsed
by the G7 and the EU.
Let me highlight just a few themes from the report. One
focus of course is a methodology for looking at our RD&D
portfolio itself, and we narrowed down from over 100 to 10 what
we consider to be premier opportunities, areas of considerable
underinvestment.
Storage, for example, is very prominent, but emphasizing it
is about things like new chemistries with earth-abundant
elements but it's also about completely new approaches to
seasonal storage, as an example, where we are hardly addressing
it.
Advanced nuclear. How do we get this unprecedented
innovation across the finish line? It's going to require
public-private partnerships.
We need to revive and re-look at hydrogen in some sense as
an evolution from natural gas to a low-carbon fuel that can be
used across multiple sectors, but natural gas itself with
carbon capture and sequestration can be a part of that, of that
hydrogen economy. That in turn emphasizes that we must focus on
the fact that when you go beyond electricity to go to the hard-
to-decarbonize sectors like industry, like agriculture, et
cetera, they must be part of the solution. I posit they will
not be enough even then without adding to it large-scale carbon
management. CCUS in the broadest sense is part of that,
including areas like biological sequestration, which we are not
really doing enough on.
And then finally, and this is very much in Paul's
bailiwick, there are the areas which could be enormous
breakthroughs but extremely high risk and extremely early in
the innovation process, like sunlight-to-fuels, for example,
where there are very, very fundamental science issues still to
be addressed. So our report kind of paints that picture and
hopefully provides some guidance in terms of portfolio
construction.
A second point is the scale of investment, and I'll leave
that to Jason Grumet to talk about the AEIC, but we do need a
very, very large increase in our investment but we all know
this is going to come into fiscal headwinds going forward. And
so we do recommend a re-look, and I know this Committee has
done some of this in terms of new, dedicated funding streams
that can help support innovation.
We need to align key policies, programs, players. For
example, state regulators play a key role. They must not
provide, especially in the competitive markets, headwinds. They
need to provide tailwinds for innovation. We discussed that.
We emphasized the importance of regional innovation. And
again, we think the Federal Government can do a lot to
stimulate this. We need innovative ecosystems in more
geographies. We need a set of priorities and opportunities that
will emerge in different geographies in different ways. And in
fact, the states of our Chair and Ranking Member are examples
of how priorities could be set in very, very different ways to
address key low-carbon solutions. The national labs that Paul
discussed in detail and other FFRDCs could be one of the
cornerstones for these regional ecosystems in many ways.
In concluding, there's a clear need for sustaining U.S.
preeminence in clean energy innovation, but we need to work at
it. This is not going to be automatic. But it's also an
enormous opportunity, and this Committee is poised to play a
central role.
My colleagues and I remain available to help in any way we
can. I look forward to the discussion.
Thank you, Madame Chair.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Moniz follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you so very much. I appreciate your
contribution.
Ms. Wince-Smith, welcome.
STATEMENT OF DEBORAH L. WINCE-SMITH, PRESIDENT & CEO, COUNCIL
ON COMPETITIVENESS
Ms. Wince-Smith. Thank you, Chairman Murkowski, Ranking
Member Manchin and members of the Committee, for the
opportunity to address our nation's innovation imperative.
I, too, would like to thank Secretary Moniz for his
tremendous leadership, Under Secretary Dabbar and the other
members of the panel.
I will focus my remarks on today's reality; namely, that
access to low-cost, abundant domestic energy and increasing
energy efficiency and productivity coupled with the emergence
of U.S. advanced manufacturing capacity has created a
tremendous economic opportunity for our country and, since
2008, a significant positive decoupling of energy use from
economic growth. This opportunity calls for national
leadership, investment and public-private partnerships to
capitalize on this nexus of energy abundance and our
manufacturing renaissance supported by America's great research
universities, national laboratories, global industrial
enterprises, emerging new companies and skilled workforce.
Unparalleled advances in science and technology are
transforming our economy and the energy systems that power and
enable its productivity. These advances are ushering in new
industries, disrupting the old and up-ending the skill sets
required for our citizens to prosper in a relentless world of
competition and transformation.
The digitization of the economy is moving ahead full speed
with smart sensors, the tsunami of data, deployment of AI and
autonomous systems, the emergency of 5G telecom infrastructure,
next-generation microelectronics moving us beyond Moore's Law.
Advanced manufacturing processes and new materials are driving
the emergent battery technology required for all energy sources
to power an interoperable smart grid system.
Yet we face formidable challenges: challenges that demand a
national commitment to optimize our innovation system, one
weakened by chronic underinvestment in federal R&D, hampered by
outdated innovation-hostile regulation, limited by lack of
access to patient long-term capital to support innovation
cycles from startup to scale-up, and deficient, degrading
infrastructures such as interstate transmission.
Of both economic and national security concern are critical
technology startups supported with federal investment that have
produced tremendously valuable intellectual property, and many
are systematically being acquired by Chinese companies'
investors. While U.S. investors stay on the sidelines, skilled
jobs and manufacturing are moving to China, all incubated by
the U.S. taxpayer.
As the U.S. advances its energy and production distribution
systems with notable progress in energy efficiency, the
Council's recent report, Secure, asserts that cybersecurity and
cyber resiliency must be at the center of grid modernization
and nuclear plant monitoring. With 90 percent of our grid in
the private sector, companies must adopt cyber hygiene, best
practices, NIST standards, and the deployment of proven
technologies to harden digital systems from pernicious
cyberattacks. Underpinning all of these challenges is an
overarching workforce skills gap that requires systemic
reskilling. The Council's report, Accelerate, sets forth a call
to action, a road map to turbocharge the competitiveness of the
U.S. energy and manufacturing enterprise.
First, the U.S. must level the federal and state regulatory
playing fields to capitalize on the potential of nuclear energy
and new technologies such as mini modular reactors, key
components of a low-carbon clean energy portfolio. Utilities
must be allowed to recoup a percentage of R&D investments in
rate increasing. Modernizing the grid must, of course,
encompass cyber resiliency.
Second, we must lead in research and commercialization at
scale of the critical technologies driving global
transformation for our society, economy and national security.
The Made in China Manifesto calls for massive investments in
AI, supercomputing, gene editing, nanotechnology, blockchain,
and yes, clean energy, not to mention microelectronics and 5G.
We must invest and deploy the enabling digital infrastructure
of the future including our leadership in advanced computing,
exascale and the frontiers of quantum computing. We must expand
our strategic national network of innovation hubs and regional
testbeds such as Argonne Labs' Joint Center for Energy Storage,
Berkeley Lab's Cyclotron Row, Lawrence Livermore's High
Performance Computing for Manufacturing, Oak Ridge National
Lab's manufacturing demonstration facility and PNNL's Good
Modernization and Resiliency Center.
Third, we must ramp up our game in workforce upscaling in
concert with growing the number and diversity of a STEM-enabled
workforce. The U.S. is at a critical moment with systemic long-
term productivity decline and the myriad of challenges I have
touched upon. It is a time to reimagine and build a flexible,
dynamic, responsive national innovation system that includes
and rewards all Americans and that ushers in a new era of
inclusive prosperity and security.
The Council on Competitiveness is launching a national
commission on innovation and competitiveness frontiers to
optimize the policies and spur the initiatives to propel us
toward that future, looking at the acceleration of the
development and deployment of emergent technologies, leveraging
the future of production, sustainable consumption in work, and
optimizing the innovation systems that are hostile or enabling,
such as finance, regulation, standards, competition policy,
trade, et cetera.
Madame Chairman, Ranking Member Manchin, we look forward to
working with you and the members of the Committee to shape this
important national initiative. Thank you for the opportunity to
be with you today, and I look forward to answering any
questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Wince-Smith follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you for that. We look forward to that
report.
Mr. Faison, it is wonderful to have you before the
Committee.
STATEMENT OF JAY FAISON, FOUNDER, CLEARPATH
Mr. Faison. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Murkowski,
Ranking Member Manchin, and other members of the Committee.
My name is Jay Faison. I'm the founder of ClearPath.
ClearPath is a 501(c)(3) organization that develops and
advances conservative clean-energy policies. I started
ClearPath because I thought our national energy policy debate
had become ``drill, baby, drill'' versus ``keep it in the
ground,'' and I thought there might be a better way.
I found the 2018 National Climate Assessment deeply
sobering. Forest fires are one example. On average, the annual
amount of area burned has increased fourfold in the last 30
years. PG&E, one of the nation's largest utilities, has
declared bankruptcy as a result of their liability for recent
fires. DoD's report on a changing climate released last month
showed that 53 of the 79 military installations studied in the
report are currently affected by floods and other impacts.
Given the risks of climate change, what could be a bigger
priority for DOE's national energy laboratories than developing
the next generation of affordable clean-energy technologies?
Heavy industry is now responding. Most major utilities have
ambitious emission reductions goals. Senior executives from
Southern, Shell and BP are beginning to link future bonuses to
emissions targets. These actions make it clear that large
energy companies understand that a low-carbon energy future is
inevitable.
Some would argue that we have the technologies that we need
to solve for climate change. First, it's important to recognize
that a molecule of CO2 emitted on the other side of
the world has the same impact as one emitted here. Since 2000,
coal-power generation in China has nearly quadrupled. Bloomberg
reports that China's plans for new coal plants roughly equal
the size of the entire U.S. coal fleet. Abroad, China is
financing another 100 gigawatts of coal in at least 27 other
countries.
So we have a choice. We can bet that the Chinese and
Indians will close recently-built plants at the expense of
economic growth or we can develop, demonstrate and export U.S.-
based emission control technology.
Second, we should not put all of our eggs into one basket
of technologies. It is unknown how far batteries and other
forms of storage can fill in for renewables when the sun isn't
shining and the wind isn't blowing. This is where the
Department of Energy comes in. Many people are well aware of
the Sunshine Initiative launched eight years ago. It set
ambitious cost-reduction targets for solar panels for the year
2020 and achieved its goals three years ahead of schedule.
Most people are not aware of how DOE made the shale gas
revolution possible. Decades of R&D coupled with a $10 billion
alternative-production tax credit yielded breakthroughs in
horizontal drilling, combined cycle turbines, diamond drill
bits and 3D imagining that resulted in a 28 percent emissions
decline. That same ingenuity that produced the shale boom can
make gas fully clean.
Last May, a company called NetPower successfully
demonstrated a zero-emission natural gas technology that could
transform the global energy sector. This new technology could
capture all of its emissions at effectively zero cost.
ARPA-E and Bill Gates-backed QuidNet is developing long
duration storage solutions that could expand renewables.
NuScale, a next-generation nuclear technology, could have
demonstration reactors operational at Idaho National Lab in
three to four years. These are the type of programs that will
make a big dent in this enormous global problem.
The last Congress accomplished more in clean tech
innovations than people think. Successes include incentives for
carbon capture, renewables, and advanced nuclear; record
investments in R&D and streamlined permitting for advanced
nuclear and hydropower.
But what exactly are we shooting for? What does success
look like? I'm a strong advocate for big, ambitious goals that
deliver a full toolbox of clean and affordable energy
solutions, smart investments in moonshot goal programs that
deliver low cost, high performing, clean technology from basic
research all the way through demonstration. Let's create
stronger financing incentives to commercialized cutting-edge
companies and deploy these technologies globally. Let's
streamline regulation to get clean energy online quickly.
Ambitious bipartisan cooperation on innovation is essential
and attainable. In fact, it is the only chance our nation will
have if it's going to play a significant role in the global
solution.
Thank you again for this opportunity, and I look forward to
the discussion.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Faison follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you so much for your contribution.
Mr. Grumet, welcome.
STATEMENT OF JASON GRUMET, PRESIDENT,
BIPARTISAN POLICY CENTER
Mr. Grumet. Thank you, Chairman Murkowski and Ranking
Member Manchin and the entire Committee, for the privilege of
being with you today as you start to think about the ambitious
agenda I know you have for the next two years.
I have burdened your staff with lengthy testimony that I
will summarize in two overarching points. The first is that
public and private investment is needed to sustain our
remarkable energy dominance that the United States has achieved
in the last few years, and the second point is that until we
establish a shared national purpose and goal our innovation
policy will lack the ambition and the resolve that are
necessary for ultimate success.
While a lot of the focus today is going to be on
breakthroughs, I think we also have to recognize the importance
of supporting near-term critical investments to improve the
efficiency, the safety and the performance of our existing oil,
gas, nuclear, coal, and renewable resources as well as our
investments in grid and pipeline infrastructure. These are the
components that are going to be necessary to sustain our
current economic might and in fact buy the time we need for our
innovation agenda to succeed.
There are a lot of ideas in my testimony. I will just note
two that I think that are particularly important to frame the
debate, and the first is the core idea of the American Energy
Innovation Council which in 2010 argued that we must triple our
energy investment from roughly $5 to $15 billion a year. I
recognize that that is a lot of money; but as Norm Augustine,
one of our committee members and truly a former rocket
scientist, likes to remind us, if your airplane is burdened,
you don't drop weight by losing the engines. This is something
the nation needs to do for our future.
Second, we must design all of our policies, our
investments, our incentives and our requirements, to encourage
all forms of noncarbon energy. Recent efforts like the Clean
Energy for America Act and state efforts in New York,
California, and New Jersey are really good steps in this
direction.
I now want to turn to this broader question of national
purpose. In my opinion, effective innovation requires clear,
realistic national goals, a relatively stable policy
environment, and a culture that is resilient to occasional
failure. These are not easy conditions to meet in a competitive
and closely divided democracy and they are almost impossible to
achieve if this Committee and this Congress does not in fact
come together around a broad and shared idea. It's remarkable
what our nation can achieve when we have that kind of
commitment.
And while the analogy to moonshot may be overused, an
aspect of it is also overlooked, and that is that before our
space program was a historic success, it suffered horrific
failures. January 27th, 1967, six years into the space program,
a fire erupted on the launch pad killing astronauts Gus
Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee. Congress didn't turn on
itself. It didn't restrict NASA funding or filibuster budgets.
The country came together; 18 months later, we held our breath
and three astronauts were put into space; and 10 months later,
Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
It is an understatement to acknowledge that we do not have
a similar consensus in this Congress on energy and climate
policy. I think there's broad support for promoting security, I
think there's broad support for competitiveness, but the
absence of a shared vision about whether and how to address
climate change remains an intractable barrier to an effective
policy.
I firmly believe the U.S. must achieve net zero carbon
emissions by midcentury, but I reject the notion that we can
accelerate the future by messing up the present. After a decade
of what I honestly believe has been reckless debate about the
existence of the climate problem, we simply do not have time
for a fact-free debate about the solution. What I think we need
is a ``Green True Deal'' anchored in innovation that embraces
all non-carbon sources and is designed to cushion the economic
impacts and dislocations that are inevitable during the
transition to a low-carbon economy.
I see five broad pathways that can move us in this
direction: advanced energy storage, advanced nuclear power,
carbon capture and utilization, and storage for coal and gas,
low-carbon transportation fuels, and, finally, direct air
capture technologies that remove carbon from the air. This is
an issue that I think needs more discussion, and the Bipartisan
Policy Center is very focused on the potentials around direct
air capture.
If none of these technologies are price competitive and
massively deployed in the next 30 years, I am not optimistic
about the future. If all are successfully commercialized, we
will dramatically strengthen the U.S. economy and literally
save the world. With some reasonable combination of success and
failure, I think we can actually provide a better future for
our children, which actually has been the human tradition for
10,000 generations.
So I want to close where I began. Federal energy innovation
investments are providing valuable economic and environmental
benefits, but it is simply not possible to design a coherent
energy policy by triangulating the vast and empty space between
the Administration's resistance to acknowledge the climate
problem and new progressive demands to solve it through
renewable power in ten years.
I know that no one on this panel wants to impose economic
hardship on millions of Americans, and no one on the panel
wants to condemn future generations to diminished opportunity
or reduced quality of life. If you'll permit me as the clock
winds down with just one personal reflection, I can't be in
this room and not think of my friend Senator Pete Domenici who
worked at the Bipartisan Policy Center until he passed away
about 18 months ago. And I think everyone on this Committee
remembers in 2005 and 2007 what Senator Domenici and Senator
Bingaman did when they traded the gavel back and forth and
passed remarkable legislation that set the stage for the
renewable progress the energy efficiency, and the remarkable
production that now makes us an energy exporter.
And Senator Murkowski, I think you'll agree that when you
think back, that was not a Committee of gentle souls. It was a
group that had strong partisan disagreements. And when I think
about Senators Domenici and Bingaman and I'm looking at Sam, I
remember them having two things in common: they cared about
facts and they happened to be from New Mexico. But they were
about, because they cared about facts, to actually sustain huge
battles that were anchored in evidence and fundamentally in
friendship.
And I think it is in this tradition, if this Committee can
lead a national debate where both the climate problem and the
potential solutions are grounded in science and engineering and
economics, I am confident that American innovation will do the
rest.
It is a privilege to be with you, and the Bipartisan Policy
Center hopes that we can help as you move forward with this
agenda.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Grumet follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you. We appreciate that message and,
again, the reminder of the leadership of Senator Domenici
particularly when it came to what we refer to as a nuclear
renaissance. He believed in it, and he advanced it in a
significant way.
Your challenge to us is good and appreciated. We can have
great debate about the matter of climate change. I have adopted
a new phrase that was provided to me by one of our military
leaders in Alaska. He says, ``I'm not a scientist, but I am a
master of the obvious.''
Let's go to Mr. Wood.
STATEMENT OF JAMES F. WOOD, INTERIM DIRECTOR, ENERGY INSTITUTE,
WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY
Mr. Wood. Chairwoman Murkowski, Ranking Member Manchin and
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to give
testimony and to answer your questions.
The WVU Energy Institute serves to facilitate collaborative
and innovative solutions for the energy future of West Virginia
and the United States and also supports sponsored and grant-
funded research programs and seeks ways to commercialize
intellectual property at the university.
From 2009 to 2012, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for
the Office of Clean Coal and Carbon Management in the U.S.
Department of Energy's Office of Fossil Energy. In that
position, I was responsible for the agency's coal research
program and the large demonstration projects co-funded with
industry under the third round of the Clean Coal Power
Initiative.
West Virginia University is a public, land-grant, research-
intensive university founded in 1867. It's designated an ``R1''
Doctoral University by the Carnegie Classification of
Institutions of Higher Education. Funding for sponsored
research programs and grants exceeded $185 million in 2017. In
addition to the Energy Institute, the Morgantown campus also
houses the Center for Alternative Fuels, Engines, and
Emissions, which we call CAFEE, which discovered the Volkswagen
diesel engine emission software issue that allowed its diesel
engines in test mode to meet emissions compliance standards but
to operate out of compliance when not in test mode.
Along with Ohio, Pennsylvania, Western New York and
Southeastern Kentucky, West Virginia shares portions of huge
natural gas and natural gas liquids in the Utica and Marcellus
shale formations. West Virginia desires to harness the economic
value of these reserves to grow the economy, attract industry,
provide jobs, improve education opportunities and increase the
wealth of its citizens.
Examples of West Virginia University's innovative research
activities that support these aspirations include:
--Developing concentrated rare earth oxide extraction
processes from U.S. coal mine wastes. This work is
being done in collaboration with Virginia Tech and
Rockwell Automation. WVU has constructed a lab scale
operation producing commercial concentrations of rare
earth oxides from mine sludge and acid mine drainage.
Rare earths, as we know, are critically important to
defense and industrial products and are largely
produced in other countries that set prices and control
availability.
--An area of promising research at WVU involves the replacing
of high carbon-emitting steam methane reforming
processes with catalyst thermochemical conversions of
methane to CO2-free hydrogen and solid,
highly pure crystalline carbon. We are collaborating
with Pacific Northwest and Southern California on that.
--Development of techniques and technologies to integrate
state-of-the-art down-well innovative fiber optic and
micro-seismic sensors; improvement in data collection,
and production tools with advanced big data and
machine-learning applications for accurate reservoir
characterization and modeling of the Marcellus and
Utica shales.
--In conjunction with National Energy Technology Laboratory,
we are developing tools and techniques and above-well
sensors that detect even small releases of greenhouse
gases during the stimulation, drilling or production of
operating shale wells.
--We developed complex combustion systems that burn fossil
fuels in vessels containing inexpensive oxidants like
iron oxide and aluminum oxide, models that can be used
to develop technical solutions for combustion without
air, which may generate pure, dense phase supercritical
CO2, ready to transport to safe storage
locations or for reuse in enhanced oil recovery at
wells that no longer have sufficient pressure to
continue producing.
--Research into technical and economic advances of renewable
geothermal sources of energy. It turns out Eastern West
Virginia has valuable resources of geothermal energy,
and WVU in conjunction with Lawrence Berkeley, Cornell
and West Virginia National Guard are researching
designs for the deep direct use of this resource on
campus.
--WVU also led tri-state efforts with Ohio and Pennsylvania
Geologic Societies and State Departments of Commerce to
undertake rigorous sub-surface analyses of proposed
Appalachian Storage Hub locations for natural gas
liquids that will greatly reduce fugitive emissions for
shale gas produced in Appalachia as compared to
emission releases if that gas was transported to hubs
south or east of Appalachia.
The Advanced Coal Technology Consortium managed at WVU is
one of five consortia created through a bilateral protocol
signed in 2009 between the United States Department of Energy
and two agencies of the People's Republic of China. West
Virginia's role in managing this consortium gives the
university good visibility into China's research and
development on solutions to carbon emissions and coal
byproducts. Consortium members include University of Wyoming,
the University of Kentucky, Washington University at St. Louis,
several national labs and many private sector companies.
This research that is undertaken by the consortium includes
advanced combustion technology including chemical looping and
pressurized oxy-combustion and post-combustion carbon capture
technologies and techniques including micro-algae absorption of
CO2 with co-production of medicinal chemicals.
West Virginia is committed to managing active, innovative
and outcomes-based research that will improve the carbon
footprint of the resources available in the Appalachian Basin
so that industry and commerce may continue to grow and provide
opportunities to its citizens.
Thank you for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wood follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Wood. Very interesting and
sure to get us charged up for the New Year as we think about
the goals and outlines for this Committee. But so many of us
are talking about where we are going with technology, so the
focus that you have provided here this morning is good.
I was looking, Under Secretary Dabbar, at the 75
Breakthroughs, and I think it is just a good reminder to us
what comes out of our national labs. We all recognize the
benefits that come from the supercomputing, but it is
everything from working on photosynthesis to the protein data
bank to powering NASA spacecraft to making refrigerators cool
to discovering 122 elements, improving automated steel, the
maglev train, the levitated train with magnets; early universe
quark soup (I don't know what that one is), good and bad
cholesterol. I mean it really is a reminder to us of the
significance, and really so many of the day-to-day applications
that then follow from the benefits of those national labs.
Secretary Moniz, again, I appreciated the conversation that
we had yesterday about the Breakthrough Energy Report, and I
look forward to absorbing that whole thing.
I am looking at your one-page handout here, as you talk
about increasing and better targeting public investment. This
is something that, as we look at the panel, is very key to it
all.
But the statement that you have here is the government
needs to better target investment in solutions that have the
highest breakthrough potential and to do so at the most
critical times in their path to commercialization. Absolutely
positively agreed. Our problem around here from a policy
perspective is we have this tendency to pick winners and
losers. We decide who is going to be the favored child, if you
will. And so when you are from the investment side of it, you
want to be where you know that you are not going to be running
up against the political or the policy friction so you go for
those safer bets.
How do we do a better job of making sure that it truly is a
more even playing field? I don't think that we should be the
ones that are targeting the best investment solutions, because
I am not sure that we know what it is. I think you all know
more about that. Secretary Moniz, if you can address that--and
anybody else who would like to speak to this--because I think
it is a key part of how we move forward with these great
technological opportunities. If you don't have the investment,
it is hard to figure out how to make that go forward.
Dr. Moniz. Thank you, Madam Chair.
First of all, let me reassert what Mr. Grumet said, that--
and as you know, I've been a long-standing supporter of the so-
called ``all-of-the-above'' approach. I think we really need to
work on all of the low carbon pathways that we can see in front
of us.
The Chairman. I like the fact that we are calling it carbon
management.
Dr. Moniz. Yeah. So the----
The Chairman. I think it is important.
Dr. Moniz. I think another point is--and this goes back to
the regional innovation also that we advocate--that there is no
single low carbon one-size-fits-all solution. The resources, be
they in terms of physical resources, the innovation resources,
the nature of the industries in different regions are in fact
quite different, and what we need to do is have the full quiver
of arrows for which low carbon solutions can be fit to purpose
in different regions of our country and in different countries.
Now, I would say at some level--I mean all the elements of
the portfolio that we discussed at some level are, I would say,
in the Department of Energy's portfolio, but we think that
there is a significant reweighting that's needed. There is a
significant need to focus on different time scales for moving
to the low carbon economy, and, frankly, that is going to be
very hard to do if we cannot increase the resource level that's
available at the federal level, at the Department of Energy, at
other departments as well. For example, I mentioned biological
sequestration earlier. The Department of Agriculture has an
enormous role to play.
And as I said earlier, that's easy to say and hard to do in
the time of fiscal challenge, and that's why I think we need
creativity on adding also new funding streams. We've done that
not so long ago with some of the royalties from oil and gas
production going into innovation. Years ago there was the FERC
allowing, if you like, the surcharge, a small surcharge on
interstate gas transmission to fund R&D, critical for what
became the unconventional natural gas revolution.
So I think, again, this Committee can play a really
important role in thinking about these creative approaches. We
need that portfolio diversification. We need it to focus on
these breakthrough opportunities, and that's going to require
both design of the portfolio and, as I say, I think some
significant additional resources.
The Chairman. We have a lot to talk about here. I am going
to go to Mr. Grumet real quickly, and then I am going to step
out. I have asked Senator Gardner to sit here with Senator
Manchin as we go through the rest of the questions, and then I
am coming back.
Mr. Grumet. Alright.
The Chairman. So Mr. Grumet----
Mr. Grumet. Well, thank you for letting me extend your
time.
I think what Secretary Moniz said is very important, which
is we cannot pick technologies but we also aren't agnostic. Is
the ``all-of-the-above'' toward a particular outcome? I believe
low carbon has to be one of those outcomes. But that's what we
need you all to do.
I think sometimes people just say ``all-of-the-above,'' and
that's like yeah, we just don't really--just throw money at
everything. And I know that is not what this Committee believes
and will raise but not answer what I think is the hardest
question, which is the billion-dollar stair steps. You can
invest a million dollars in a software app and provide a
valuable service to the United States of America. And energy
choices are billion-dollar choices, and that's hard and it's
expensive, and we need to go all in on some things that aren't
going to work, and that's really hard.
There's a culture of innovation. I've said if you're an
investor and you're right 9 out of 10 times--I'm sorry. If
you're an investor and you're right 1 out of 10 times, you're a
billionaire; if you're a DOE official and you're right 9 out of
10 times, you're potentially indicted. So there has to be a
different imagination of the risk profile that's going to be
required to succeed.
The Chairman. I greatly appreciate that.
Senator Manchin. First of all, thank you, Madam Chairman,
and I thank all of you for your wonderful testimonies.
There is a lot going on, and I know you have been hearing a
little bit about the Green New Deal, and there is now, I think,
a resolution coming out of the Senate on our side. If somebody
wants to comment on that--and I think you all have in your
testimonies to a certain extent, saying that this is in a
perfect world an ideological belief. But in the real pragmatic
world that we are living in right now, are we able to get
there, what timeframe are we going to need to get there, how
much are we going to have to invest, and is the rest of the
world going to come along with us? Those are all the big
``ifs.''
Right now, I think there is about $40 million or $40
billion for loan programs at DOE?
Dr. Moniz. There's approximately $40 billion left.
Senator Manchin. $40 billion. And there is about $11
billion that we have in research and development. Is that
adequate to do the job? The $40 billion has been there for
quite some time, I am understanding. We have not had a run on
the loan programs.
Mr. Dabbar, you might want to speak on that, where we are
and why there has not been more of a demand for that.
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Senator. So approximately $11.7 billion a
year is spent in non-defense R&D across the lab complex and, as
you know, we are also a contract researcher. We actually get
people who come in and hire us for another $2.2 billion a year.
So that's the scope. It is a significant scope. It is larger
than any corporation in terms of R&D.
Obviously, we have the loan guarantee program. The loan
guarantee program in general is there to help support specific
projects. In the big scheme of the capital markets, it's a lot
of money, but it's not a lot of money in the scheme of the
private markets. And so it is there really to support.
Senator Manchin. I am just asking why there has not been
more of a demand for the $40 billion, because I think it has
been there for quite some time----
Mr. Dabbar. Yeah.
Senator Manchin. ----and we have had a surplus. We have not
had anyone either coming and asking for it or being a part of
that loan program.
Mr. Dabbar. Yeah, Senator. In general, I think a lot of the
times the way the program has been managed, it's about waiting
for people to come to it. And at least one of the things that
we've been trying to do--and I have some experience in this--is
to actually be proactive and reach out. So some of the members
of our loan program have actually been going to some of the
trade conferences where the power developers who actually go
out and build power plants for a living in the energy complex,
to let them know that we're available, how to do it. Because a
lot of times people don't know how, so we've been proactively
reaching out.
Senator Manchin. Dr. Moniz.
Dr. Moniz. Yes. Thank you, Senator Manchin.
First of all, the loan program, it has the order of $30
billion in play and I would say it's been extremely successful.
But Mr. Grumet mentioned that risk appetites are such that,
you know, one investment defaults and the whole portfolio is
talked about, and yet it's been extremely successful as a
portfolio.
Now, going forward, I agree with Secretary Dabbar that
reaching out is important. For example, there were investments
made successfully in auto battery manufacturing. But reaching
out to the supply chain now is an example of something that can
be done. Using the program for advanced nuclear could be
something very important in the next years.
But I'd like to emphasize a third area, and I think the
Committee might help in clarifying the availability of the
remaining authorities for energy infrastructure. The
Administration and, I believe, the Congress are very much
supporting energy infrastructure. Well, here we have $40
billion of authority which, when matched with private sector
equity investing, for example, we could have $80 or $100
billion of energy infrastructure investments. Let's get on it.
And that doesn't require an appropriation.
Senator Manchin. Dr. Moniz, thank you.
Real quick, and I have one final question for Mr. Grumet,
but--
Mr. Wood, as far as the work you all have been doing on
extracting rare earth minerals that we need so desperately in
our country--because right now we are depending on China as I
understand--how is that coming along, and when do you think
that we could be commercialized to the point that we could have
our own supply, if it is possible, Jim?
Mr. Wood. It's coming along a lot faster than I would have
thought six months ago. We have built a laboratory in the high
bay at WVU. We have staffed that with some people. We have run
in some acid mine drainage and some sludge, and we have
produced better results than we told the Department of Energy
we would produce when we got the cooperation agreement signed.
We're now taking a trailer and taking it out on the road to
acid mine----
Senator Manchin. Okay.
Mr. Wood. ----locations and producing oxides of rare earth.
The quality and the concentration of rare earths that we are
getting of the process that we have designed and the
intellectual property that we have, which we haven't protected
yet, is very good, better than we thought it was going to be,
so I'm very optimistic that----
Senator Manchin. Right.
Mr. Wood. ----this process as relates to mine wastage is
going to be commercial in a year.
Senator Manchin. Wonderful.
Mr. Grumet, just a final question very quickly. Being the
bipartisan committee that you are and the group of people you
put together in your organization, how can you best help us as
a Congress and the Senate? We have a lot of our colleagues
focused on the Green New Deal. And it is very--you know, we are
excited about people having all different ideas of how we get
to where we can save our planet and decarbonize, but also in a
practical way.
What is your best way of making sure that we are all
working off the same set of facts? Because right now, I think
there are some people moving in their opinions and trying to
create their own facts to justify their opinions versus working
off a set of facts from which we can all find a solution.
Mr. Grumet. Senator, I think the optimistic take right now
is there is now symmetry of magical thinking about the climate
change debate on the left and on the right.
Senator Manchin. Good.
Mr. Grumet. And the only way that's going to change--and I
think this is something I think you are uniquely good at--is if
members enforce against their own edges. It does nothing to
have the Sierra Club and the Heartland Institute yelling at
each other.
I think most members of the Republican party believe that
climate change is real but tend to avert their eyes when people
say it's not, because like why pick up the fight? And I think
most all members of the Democratic party know we are not going
to eliminate fossil fuels in 10 years or go to 100 percent
renewables but they kind of avert their eyes, right, because
like that's where the energy in the party is and, you know, no
one wants to be on the wrong. Then we just seed it to the
edges. Alright?
I think this Committee fundamentally knows that both those
things are wrong and that the answer requires an evidence-based
approach to both. It's not popular to say it, but the only way
we're going to make progress is if you do.
Senator Manchin. Thank you.
Senator Gardner [presiding]. Thank you, Senator Manchin.
Senator Hyde-Smith.
Senator Hyde-Smith. I want to thank the panel today for
your expertise. You're sure going to be helpful when we are
deciding on legislation to vote on.
Mr. Faison, you know as we well know our revolving needs
will require innovation and significant investment in the
energy sector. And in his written statement, Under Secretary
Dabbar had discussed the essential need for the basic research.
In your opinion, how much involvement should DOE have in
research and new technologies?
Mr. Faison. I think just coming at this from an outsider's
point of view, somebody who does not have all the insights,
obviously that are here on the panel, I have always been
confused by the distinction between basic research and applied
research.
I don't think the Chinese have the same distinction. I
think they are focused on outcomes. I've heard one guy say one
time that scientists look for outcomes and business people look
for--scientists look for learning and business people look for
outcomes. And I think that we need to look for outcomes and
then plug the holes that we have in that technology-development
ranking system so that we can compete with the Chinese.
I'll give you one example: A123 batteries. We do a great
job at the basic research. Companies spin out and then they go
to market. There's no incentives for their products, there's no
financial support; they're kind of out on their own. They
declare bankruptcy, and the Chinese buy them for cheap and
scale them up. That's been a pretty consistent happening, and I
think that's something we need to fix.
Mr. Grumet. Senator, if I could just add one insight on the
scale of the challenge, and again it comes back to the unique
characteristics of this industry that the Secretary talked
about.
The energy industry does a ton, but it devotes--0.3 percent
is total capital to R&D; pharmaceuticals, about 20 percent;
electronics, about 10 percent--and this is because they are
making rational choices. The industry does not have the
capacity to recoup the benefits of those early investments.
They are expensive; they take a long time.
And so when I think we think about imagining our innovation
across the entire portfolio of what the government cares about,
I think energy is going to have to play a bigger role. The
government and the private sector are going to have to work
together and understand that the energy industry is no
different than the pharmaceutical industry if we're going to
make this progress.
Dr. Moniz. Mr. Chairman, may I just have a comment, because
it goes directly to the Senator's question and Mr. Faison's
statement about the basic and applied?
Frankly, the whole innovation chain is much more integrated
with all kinds of feedbacks than is generally acknowledged.
It's not some linear thing that happens. And a consequence of
that is one reason in our report why we emphasize that the
Federal Government and the Department of Energy are one very
important player. There are others. But that player, in
particular, really needs to work across the innovation chain,
not fall into the trap of this false linear separation. And in
doing so, that will address part of the issue that Mr. Faison
announced, that we cannot leave the ``playing field'' beyond
the basic research to a place like China. We need to compete
along that entire feedback, feedback system.
Mr. Dabbar. Maybe I should comment since it was a bit about
us across the board here.
You know, I think, Senator, this goes into the balance
between curiosity and usefulness, and the way we like to think
about it in terms of a portfolio of the different investments
that we're doing. We certainly pursue a lot of fundamental
understanding of physical phenomena such as quark and gluons
and how they hold together, neutrons, and not knowing exactly
where they go in terms of that research, and then the balance
of looking at things that have practical and useful
applications.
I'll give you an example. Our computing power--this is a
non-
energy example but something a lot of people may not know. If
you look at the computing power and the imaging, a lot of which
was used for atomic level structure, that some people basically
at one of the weapons labs at Livermore were poking around
about and figured out that they could use the same computing
power and the same imaging to sequence genes. And most people
don't realize the Human Genome Project was predated by
something called the Human Genome Initiative which was started
at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, and they brought that to
the National Institutes of Health and it spread from there. So
it's a non-energy example.
But one interesting thing about the national lab complex,
and people don't really understand if you don't spend a lot of
time here--a lot of people do spend a lot of time there--it's
actually quite entrepreneurial. We allocate the capital, the
budget that you give us and we send it down to the principal
investigators and we give them the flexibility within bounds of
certain areas that you guide and we guide them on and then we
kind of let them go. And a tremendous amount of this innovation
that people are talking about here today is based on the
entrepreneurial spirit and the flexibility that we give them.
And as the Senator, as the Chairman announced, there's a long
list of these examples, far too long to get into.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Hyde-Smith.
Senator Stabenow.
Senator Stabenow. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is a very
important discussion. Thank you to all of you. In fact, I can't
think of a more important discussion, and there are a lot of
things that I care about.
Mr. Grumet, first of all, I could not agree with you more
about a national goal and understanding of where we are going
and the sense of urgency that we need to have to get there and
that we need--it is not ideological. We need to be looking at
the practical fact of how we cut carbon pollution so that we
are addressing the threats to, frankly, our way of life, and
taxpayer costs. We are seeing it every day in extreme weather,
health risks, and everything else. It is clear what is
happening. So I hope we can do that, and I think this Committee
could come together to do that.
And also, Ms. Wince-Smith, I appreciate your focus.
Everyone talked about investments, but thank you for talking
about best investments and advanced manufacturing, which we
know a lot about in Michigan. I could not agree more with you
about the focus on workforce development. I think that, from an
economic standpoint, certainly in my state, it is the major
barrier right now to moving forward in terms of where we need
to go on the jobs front. So I appreciate that very much.
I do want to comment on how Michigan has benefited from a
great industrial revolution, where 100 years ago we embedded
incentives in the tax code on oil, gas, and coal. We benefited
from that. We also understand now that we are paying the price
of carbon pollution, and we better figure out a different way
to do this where we can still prosper economically, which is
what we are now doing.
And so Joe, when we talk about jobs, there are 8,000 parts
in a big wind turbine and we are prepared to make every single
one of those in Michigan. But you can do some in West Virginia
too.
There are jobs, and I just want to make a point about how
we say we should not pick winners and losers. A hundred years
ago, we picked winners. They are embedded in the tax code. Even
in the new tax laws, there is a new $4 billion tax benefit for
oil and gas. So it is amazing that wind and solar are doing as
well as they are. They are incredibly competitive. And I am all
for not picking winners and losers if we are really unleashing
the private sector.
I have to, coming from Michigan, talk about the
transportation sector and ask a question. We know at this point
the transportation sector generates the largest share of
greenhouse gas emissions and, according to EPA, 90 percent of
the fuel is still petroleum-based. We have to be very serious
about what we are doing. There are great new technologies. I
appreciate very much that our auto manufacturers are investing
aggressively in new advanced technologies over the next five to
ten years. This is very important. But they cannot do this,
just as in any other country, by themselves without a public-
private partnership. And at the moment, we have 1.3 percent of
the U.S. light-duty fleet in electric vehicles or hybrids, and
yet we have to get that to about 10 percent to be sustainable
here in terms of the economics of it, and that relates to
charging stations, tax credits to continue, and so on.
So one other thing before a question, and that is China.
While they are doing everything--they are doing all-of-the-
above, right? Everything. But one of the things they are
doing--this last year they spent $7.7 billion on electric
vehicle subsidies alone, and they are not debating whether or
not they are going to put in infrastructure. I mean no other
country is debating that at this point. And now they are going
to hydrogen-powered vehicles.
So when we look at this, and I will start with Dr. Moniz,
what policies should we be pursuing to pursue the investment in
the widespread adoption of advanced vehicles, and are these
investments critical to ensuring that we remain a leader and
can be successful in this area?
I have asked Dr. Moniz; and then, Ms. Wince-Smith, if you
would like to chime in and anyone else.
Dr. Moniz. Thank you, Senator Stabenow. The transportation
sector is indeed one that we really need to focus in on because
of its--it's the data.
Senator Stabenow. Right, right.
Dr. Moniz. It is the biggest emitting sector and it is not
the easiest sector to decarbonize.
It may be worth putting something in perspective in the
sense that if we look at say California, which has always
played a major role in advancing the transportation issues that
the goal of California is five million zero-emission battery
vehicles basically in 2030. But we should have the context.
That's out of 35 million light-duty vehicles, not even counting
heavy-duty vehicles. So all of these themes come together just
in those facts.
Now, to make these transformations occur, infrastructure is
a huge issue. So obviously for electric vehicles the charging
infrastructure is a major challenge. That is relatively easy
compared to some other infrastructure challenges. If we went to
hydrogen, for example, much more expensive, much more
difficult; and yet it's chicken-and-egg. We're not going to get
there without the infrastructure being built, and that may be
especially important for things like heavier vehicles than the
light-duty vehicles, so that's a big challenge.
But then again, in the innovation arena, we could have
breakthroughs that really minimize some of those challenges in
the sense of, okay, suppose we do develop an affordable, low
carbon substitutable fuel, a hydrocarbon, basically, fuel but
with different feed stock. Well, suddenly the infrastructure
isn't the issue; it's the innovation of the fuel itself. And
that goes into this, I think, theme: that we need--it's a
relatively inexpensive investment given to work across the
board on those issues in terms of the prize that would be at
the far end.
So I think all of that's important. And that's where again
going back to the earlier statement--it's not the only example;
I don't want to beat a dead horse--but something like the loan
program might be an important way of providing debt financing
for getting some of this infrastructure built.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
Senator Barrasso.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman,
since my earliest days in Congress I have been diligent about
developing legislation and policies to advance carbon capture
technology that many of you are aware of. My home State of
Wyoming is a national leader in oil and gas and coal
production. I am very supportive of all of these industries as
they keep our world running, and they provide critical jobs and
revenue for Wyoming.
In my view, it is necessary that we continue to develop
traditional energy sources while simultaneously pursuing
advancements in carbon capture technologies. We do not have to
choose between these two goals, and, in fact, I have a record
of developing these policies in a bipartisan and bicameral
manner. So I want to emphasize the importance of developing
successful technologies and practices here in the United
States. When these technologies are successful at home, we can
then export these discoveries around the world.
So today, along with my friends and colleagues, Senator
Whitehouse from Rhode Island and Senators Capito, Duckworth,
Kramer, Smith and Manchin--thank you, Joe--and then Senator
Carper as well, we are introducing again the USE IT Act. This
bill supports carbon utilization and direct air capture
research, and it encourages the commercial use of man-made
carbon dioxide emissions. The USE IT Act encourages the
development of carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration
facilities and carbon dioxide pipelines. In our last Congress,
this bill had broad bipartisan support, and I look forward to
passing the USE IT Act into law this Congress.
My state is also the home to the Integrated Test Center,
the ITC it is called, in Gillette, Wyoming. This unique
facility allows for research and testing at an active power
plant, allowing for real world discovery. I am proud of what is
going on in Gillette, and it is becoming the world's Carbon
Valley. I will continue to work and lead the policy discussions
here in Washington to advance these groundbreaking solutions.
In addition to using Wyoming's vast oil, gas and coal
resources, uranium mined in my home state can provide clean,
affordable electricity through the development and deployment
of advanced nuclear technologies which have been mentioned
today. Last Congress, the bill that I introduced, the Nuclear
Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, was signed into law
with the purpose of doing just that. So I am looking forward to
the innovations that America's nuclear scientists and engineers
will create as a result of this legislation.
Secretary Moniz, earlier this week you discussed a recent
report issued by your nonprofit, the Energy Futures Initiative.
You said that a 100 percent renewable system by 2050 is not
politically or economically realistic. I visited with Bill
Gates last weekend about the same issues. You also mentioned
the importance of natural gas in balancing the energy mix into
the future. This is an abundant, affordable fuel source, that
yields less carbon emissions as compared to other fuels.
Can you talk about how you view the use of traditional fuel
sources in the short-term and then in the long-term, realizing
this gap continues to exist?
Dr. Moniz. Thank you, Senator Barrasso.
I believe that statement on the all renewables was in the
2030 timeframe.
Senator Barrasso. I am sorry, yes.
Dr. Moniz. However, also in the longer-term, I do think, as
I said earlier, that there are going to be different kinds of
low carbon solutions elsewhere. And, for example, I strongly
agree with your position on the importance of developing what
we call the large-scale carbon management options like carbon
capture utilization, sequestration--not only geological
sequestration but biological sequestration--capture from both
concentrated and dilute sources like direct air capture, for
example; utilization in major commodities.
So this is a critical need. I believe, and the IEA has
stated, that we are going to need those tools, the CCUS tools,
if we are going to, in a reasonably economic fashion, be able
to meet the very, very low carbon goal.
I'll just add that I think we need a lot more work on novel
carbon capture technologies because that's actually the big
cost center in the entire--in the entire chain. We need a lot
more basic science in CO2 utilization at gigaton
scale. And on sequestration, we do need more science done. But
we also need to think about--and this is something which of
course has come up in the nuclear context a lot as well--we
need to think about public attitudes. The ability to--to
sequester gigaton carbon dioxide annually, for example, is a
big challenge I think in the--it will be a big challenge in the
public view about that much underground storage.
Senator Barrasso. I only have a few seconds left, and I am
going to go to Mr. Faison. I have a question for him.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a global challenge.
The U.S. is capable of developing the technologies to address
climate change. As other countries grow their economies, they
should be using the best possible technology to capture
emissions. As the Asian countries continue to grow, how quickly
can we quickly develop and deploy the emission control
technologies that we are going to be leading on?
Senator Gardner. Would you press your microphone, please?
Mr. Faison. Thank you for the question, Senator Barrasso.
And also thank you for your thoughtful op ed in the New York
Times and your sponsorship of the Nuclear Innovation--Energy
Modernization and Innovation Act. Really important.
As far as scaling up quickly, I've been to the centers out
there in Wyoming and we are huge proponents of that. I think if
you look at the National Carbon Capture Center, the other major
public-private partnership in Wilsonville, Alabama, we are, I
think, severely underfunded in those areas. And so one I think
it's not invested in at the scale and level that it should be
given that Asia's coal is really sort of, at least in the
energy sector, you know, a majority of the global greenhouse
gas emissions growth that we have worldwide.
So interestingly, you're seeing these cross-cultural
opportunities. For example, I met the India Prime Minister of
Coal in Wilsonville, Alabama, and he brought a whole team over
to learn from us. They want to catch up. Their oil wells are
depleted. They could use this to domesticate their oil supply
and grow their coal technology, and they're going to do it
regardless of the impact. And so there are some green shoots,
and I think we just need to build on that--more money and more
attention and focused goals.
Senator Barrasso. Mr. Chairman, my time has expired. I know
the Secretary has had his hand up, so----
Senator Gardner. Mr. Secretary, briefly.
Mr. Dabbar. Yes. Thank you, Senator.
I want to point out one particular area at NETL in West
Virginia and in Pennsylvania that we have going on that I am
particularly excited about. Obviously a lot of carbon capture
just deals with basically how do you screen out the molecules.
And one of the things that we've done is using the computing
power that you all have given us is to be able to go through a
whole series of materials to identify what sort can screen out
the molecules of carbon dioxide basically in a film. And we can
go through millions of different types of designs of materials
and be able to narrow it down, so before we get to the lab, we
have a pretty good idea if it is going to work, and we are
using artificial intelligence to help drive that.
We have a series of material in which there is a
possibility--and I do not want to go too far because this is
research--that the sort of film that we have developed that
could just literally screen out the molecules could be in the
range of $40.00 a ton. And when you ask the researchers how far
could you push that, they think they can push it even farther
in terms of lowering the costs of screening out. So when you
stop and you think about the practical realities of the
research that we are doing, that we are doing at the labs that
you all fund and we start getting down to realistic numbers,
when people start talking about things and other policies--and
once again, I think, as we've talked about, I think technology
can be the solution--that's a very particular one that I want
to make certain people kind of hear about which way we're
going, and I'd like to thank you for the support of that.
Senator Gardner. Thanks, Mr. Secretary.
Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. I am going to continue along with that
with Under Secretary Dabbar.
I want to ask you, when it comes to platforms, have you or
the Department of Energy looked at AI and machine learning as a
way to more effectively manage the grid and do it from a point
of view of responsiveness and lower carbon intensity?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Senator. So we have several programs using
AI and machine learning for grid and energy management. I'll
give you three examples.
First of all, the smallest one which is building
management. So there's probably no one running this building
right now in terms of when to turn on and off the lights, when
to turn on and off the air conditioner, so it's highly
inefficient in the big scheme of things. It takes a pretty
simple artificial intelligence set of data to develop an
algorithm to run this building based on data of when people
come and go and so on. We have a series of research at
Berkeley, at Lawrence Berkeley, on that.
Number two, in Washington State at Pacific Northwest Labs--
it's a leader in grid management--we work with the Bonneville
Power Authority. It's a test-bed utility that we own. And we
have built a series of machine learning algorithms to collect
all the data of all the municipalities, all the interconnects
down to California, all the wind, all the weather, day after
day of data. And for example, for our dams that we have, what
the buildup of the water is. And it is giving us now--we are
working with that and Bonneville to predict any problems and to
give us direction on how to dispatch our dams.
As we all know, grid management has historically been three
people sitting in a----
Senator Heinrich. Right.
Mr. Dabbar. ----control room dialing and using their
judgment.
Senator Heinrich. Yep.
Mr. Dabbar. This should be a machine learning algorithm.
Maybe I won't go drop so far as artificial intelligence and
handing----
Senator Heinrich. Right.
Mr. Dabbar. ----it over completely, but clearly we are, and
it should be, all the grid should be machine learning.
Senator Heinrich. Great.
Direct air capture. Maybe I will start with you, Dr. Moniz,
and then go to other folks if they want to add to that. What is
the state of technology, what is the role of policy in moving
that forward, and what are the best policy tools to get that to
a place where it is actually going to be more economically
attainable? Because we are sitting at 411 ppm right now.
Dr. Moniz. Say that again?
Senator Heinrich. We are sitting at 411 ppm and----
Dr. Moniz. Oh.
Senator Heinrich. ----there is more every year. We are way
past our carbon budget. So if we are going to do something
about this, we are going to have to get direct air capture up
and running.
Dr. Moniz. I would add, Senator Heinrich, that we are at
411 or so in terms of CO2 but we should also
remember that the other----
Senator Heinrich. All of our short-term----
Dr. Moniz. ----greenhouse gases, which really----
Senator Heinrich. Methane----
Dr. Moniz. ----with the very imperfect equivalence, which
is above 450 already.
Senator Heinrich. Yes.
Dr. Moniz. So that's one reason why I agree with what I
think you said implicitly, that we are going to need these
direct carbon removal technologies.
I do want to emphasize that removal from the atmosphere
also can be done biologically----
Senator Heinrich. Okay.
Dr. Moniz. ----and well beyond simply planting trees, and
so that's also an important part of the research.
In terms of the current technology for air removal, I think
the first thing to say about the status of the technology is
it's very expensive. There are debates about that, but I
certainly believe today, quite honestly, one is $500 and north,
frankly, per ton. So we have a long way to go in terms of some
undiscovered approach.
I think what Paul Dabbar just mentioned in terms of the
kind of materials by design, for example, could be a
contributor to resolving that, but we have no answer. We have
some who would say that they have line-of-sight to the order of
$100 a ton. I am not quite there yet, but--they have better
eyes, apparently, than I do--but if one could reach that, that
would be a transformative development.
Senator Heinrich. I am quickly running out of time, but I
want to go to Mr. Grumet. In addition to what you want to add
on direct air capture, talk to me a little bit about how we
build risk tolerance. You look at the solar panels, I mean in
1970, it probably would have cost you, I don't know, $150,000
to put enough solar panels on your house to run your home.
Every time we doubled manufacturing capacity that went down 20
percent. Today it is at incredible levels. But if you listen,
if you were around here when the word Solyndra was popular, you
would think that we were making no progress on that. So how do
we build that risk tolerance? Because we are going to fail, and
we need to fail in order to succeed.
Mr. Grumet. Well, first of all, Senator, thank you for
bringing an engineering degree to this conversation. I think
that makes you quite an unusual member of the Congress.
First, just on direct air capture, obviously I think the
Secretary laid out the big picture. But in terms of what, you
know, the Congress and this Committee could do, the National
Academy of Science has laid out a really thoughtful agenda for
the next decade, and our opinion is that to achieve that in the
next year, we need about $60 million, so just to give you kind
of a scale. Potentially, direct air capture could fundamentally
change this entire equation, and so I think it is a very high
upside and high-risk opportunity.
And that goes to your other question. I think there really
has to be a conversation about what innovation means. You know,
when the Congress passes a loan guarantee, you score it usually
at about 10 percent, which means you are assuming that $1 out
of every $10 will not be successful such that the company will
not be able to pay you back and the taxpayer has to. We have
done much better than 10 percent. But still there is this
reluctance to tolerate that failure.
And again--I don't want to bring it back all the time--I
think it just comes back to the climate debate. There were a
lot of people who were very frustrated with what they believed
to be the Obama Administration's approach on climate change,
and anytime anything screwed up there was a ``gotcha'' moment.
And you know, this Committee should never tolerate
mismanagement. You absolutely have to put DOE on a path to
success with gateways and oversight, but things are going to go
wrong and the other team is going to be in charge, and what the
Committee does at that moment says a lot about whether we send
the kind of consistent signal that's going to be necessary for
success.
Senator Gardner. Thank you, Senator Heinrich. I have a
couple of questions for the panel, myself. Thank you to all of
you for being here and for your distinguished service. But one
particular thank you to Secretary Moniz for being here.
Seventeen inches of snow for Telluride over the last 72 hours,
so just so you know, we are heading out there next.
Dr. Moniz. I like snowpack out in Colorado.
Senator Gardner. Very good.
Secretary Dabbar, thank you very much for your leadership.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado is an
incredible, incredible crown jewel of our energy ecosystem and
the work that they do out there. We had the opportunity to
travel there with Secretary Perry in the last several months
and look at a number of projects they have.
I would like to follow up with you a little bit more about
how we make sure that they are coordinating with other areas of
the Federal Government because I think Secretary Moniz's
testimony makes a good comment about how the renewable energy
work that may be taking place in other parts of the government,
like within USDA, how are we coordinating across the agencies
with the Department of Energy like NREL to make sure we are not
``siloing'' off, I believe is the term Secretary Moniz uses,
when it comes to clean energy efforts.
Secretary Moniz, we talked about all-of-the-above strategy.
In your testimony you say this: that a large American company
that makes up the American Energy Innovation Council argued for
tripling federal clean energy investment, but more than
increased funding is needed. In your testimony you state the
federal energy innovation portfolio, it is our innovation
chain, actually, needs to be all-of-the-above. What do you mean
by that? How do you go to all-of-the-above energy, all-of-the-
above sort of innovation?
No, go ahead, Secretary. We are going to follow up. That
was the warning that I am calling him later.
Secretary Moniz.
Dr. Moniz. Thank you, Senator Gardner.
So yeah. So first of all, we do support the AEIC notion.
And by the way, that can be very loosely argued to in terms of
the generally-accepted level of federal R&D funding broadly
combined with the fraction of the economy in energy, and it
kind of gives a loose support to the AEIC objective. But we do
need to go beyond that. And I would add, however, going beyond
that is certainly made easier if we can get the additional
resources to our friends at DOE and elsewhere.
So there the--what I mean by ``all the above'' is that
every way of getting to low carbon technologies that can
contribute to the future needs to be in our robust portfolio.
What I said earlier, and it's also in the testimony, that
reinforces that is I think history shows in this country that
betting on prescribed outcomes, prescribed answers to a problem
is far inferior to betting on the outcomes of innovation and
having our--having our scientists, our engineers, our
policymakers, our government officials----
Senator Gardner. If I----
Dr. Moniz. ----in that framework.
Senator Gardner. Yes. If I could interrupt right there
because I think it is a really good question. Do we like the
energy because of the technology or do we like the technology
because of the energy is the question. I mean, do we like gas
because of the energy or do we like, you know, the energy that
comes from big gas? Is that what we like? So I think that is
the question that we have to answer here, gasoline or fossil
fuels or renewable energy, those kind of things.
Dr. Moniz. And time scales come in. Obviously, in ten
years, it's with technologies that we now see improved
somewhat; but longer-term, let's let the innovation get turned
loose.
Senator Gardner. In Colorado, Xcel Energy has been doing
some pretty incredible things. They have set up some very
aggressive goals when it comes to emission-free energy. They
are doing a remarkable job. They are about 23 percent carbon-
free production right now, generation. But 60 percent of that
carbon-free energy is--of that 23 percent, 60 percent of that
production comes from nuclear.
So in any scenario, whether we are looking at existing
technology, do you see a path to emissions-free energy in the
next 10 to 20 years that does not involve nuclear energy? And
this is a question for everybody on the panel.
Mr. Dabbar. If I have the risk of saying something--not
saying something nice about the other 49 states, I actually
think Colorado is actually the most interesting piece of data
that's about to come out this year. You mentioned about Xcel.
But one particular area that's going on right now is that
they did exactly what Secretary Moniz was talking about in
terms of what the target--not technology but what you're trying
to accomplish. And when they put out offers--and there's public
information but they haven't selected winners, but if you see
the firm renewable bids; so this is batteries and solar or wind
and solar bids that came in, they published the average prices,
and so you kind of know where things are going to end up. And
so there were firm renewables--batteries and/or batteries and
solar--at around $31.00 a megawatt-hour. They didn't publish
the gas prices bids. They blanked it out. I just happen to know
a little bit about power trading. The dollars about that for a
20-year bid are about 45 in Colorado. So the odds of this year
firm renewables, batteries plus renewable, clearing in Colorado
seems highly likely. I'll leave it at that. They're kind of
moving down that road of analysis.
What's interesting is if you back out the tax policy, the
IDC and the PTC, they're pari passu. So going to--this was a
much larger discussion around batteries and nuclear and solar.
But on the narrow point of technology, without any incentives,
it looks like the price for power for firm, whether it's gas or
it's renewables, in Colorado looked like it's about the same. I
think this is a really important piece of data.
Senator Gardner. Thank you for bringing that up. Thank you.
Could we go back to----
Mr. Grumet. Just if I could----
Senator Gardner. ----the question.
Mr. Grumet. ----answer your question?
Senator Gardner. Yes.
Mr. Grumet. Nuclear power provides about two-thirds of our
existing non-carbon energy. The idea that we would start
swimming farther away from the shore just makes no sense to me.
And if we believe that climate change is a kind of, you know,
global species-challenging problem, we should be doing
everything we can to sustain every single non-carbon electron
we have and, you know, we're going to need new nuclear
technology. But trying to--you know, absent existing
technologies from that discussion, I think would be a terrible
mistake.
Senator Gardner. I am over time, Mr. Faison.
Mr. Faison. I think if you look at the examples of France
and Sweden versus Germany, France and Sweden deployed clean
energy at five times the rate at Germany, and France's
electricity bills are 45 percent less than Germany's. And so if
we have new nuclear technologies that could be built and
manufacturing plants, my guess is we could scale multiples
faster than we could on renewable deployment.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
And with the leniency of my colleagues, Secretary Moniz.
Dr. Moniz. This will be extremely brief, but just to follow
up on Paul's point, yes, so-called firm renewables have made
tremendous progress and it's great, but we can't only talk
about two- to four-hour storage times. We have a lot of other
issues in evolving the system.
Senator Gardner. Thank you.
Ms. Wince-Smith. I have to jump in on the workforce issue
on the nuclear----
Senator Gardner. Briefly, briefly please.
Ms. Wince-Smith. Right now we have a very weak workforce in
nuclear, and young people are not going into nuclear
engineering except perhaps at the Naval Academy and MIT and
RPI. And if we want the next generation of talent in the
nuclear industry, that's something we really need to focus on.
Senator Gardner. Very good point. Thank you.
Senator King.
Senator King. Thank you. A couple of preliminary
observations.
Dr. Dabbar, please apply artificial intelligence to the
scheduling of Senate hearings. We are all supposed to be at two
or three places at once, and none of us have managed to do it.
I just want to follow up on the comment of Senator
Heinrich. He mentioned we are now at about 400-plus parts per
million of carbon in the atmosphere. The last time we were
there was 3.6 million years ago, and the average temperature in
the Arctic was 60 degrees, so that just gives you a flavor of
where we are. We are in totally uncharted territory now, and I
do think it is urgent.
Secretary Moniz, it is wonderful to see you. As a fellow
New Englander, I am sure you are glad, as I am, that the
Patriots ended the terrible three-month drought in world
championships that we have had----
Dr. Moniz. I was there.
Senator King. ----since the Red Sox won in November, so it
has been tough but we made it through.
Dr. Moniz. The Celtics are coming on.
Senator King. Senator Cantwell, you are recognized.
[Laughter.]
Senator King. I just could not resist.
``Moonshot'' has been used a number of times, and I think
it is fascinating that the origin of that term is the Apollo
program, and the key to it was Kennedy saying we are going to
it in ten years. The other example of the government is, I
think it was, Lyndon Johnson said we are going to get a train
from Washington to New York in three hours. A concrete goal is
what made those two things happen.
How do we--what should be our concrete goal in energy? I
don't think ten years is realistic, but shouldn't there be some
number? Because otherwise we don't have anything to shoot for.
If you are going to do a moonshot, you have to know what it is
and where you want to land.
Mr. Grumet. So I'm going to give you a few suggestions and
then I'm going to turn it over to Jay, who's also talked about
this a lot.
You know, there is an intellectual sequence to get there.
The first thing we have to do is decide what the problem is.
Senator King. Exactly.
Mr. Grumet. Once we decide what the problem is, then we
have to have a general and philosophical sense of how we want
to approach it, and I think most people on this panel would say
a performance standard: a zero-carbon or a low-carbon as
opposed to a particular technology. And then you have to do
something a little harder, which is to look at the world and
say these are the eight things that seem like they might get us
there. Alright? This idea that after just saying we want a
performance standard, Congress or the Administration just kind
of steps back and just--things don't just happen.
Senator King. Right.
Mr. Grumet. And so, you know, I think there are a lot of
different ways to slice this. I, because I'm not nearly as
sophisticated as the Secretary, think about it in terms of
technology: that there's a critical opportunity around nuclear
and we can set a real clear goal.
Senator King. Nuclear storage, carbon capture.
Mr. Grumet. Exactly.
Senator King. Hydrogen.
Mr. Grumet. If this Committee were interested in having a
discussion about what those kinds of goals could be and what
would be the processes along the way that we could allow
ourselves to do.
Senator King. And if we don't set them, somebody is going
to set them, and they will be set sort of randomly. I think
this is a better public policy.
Let me follow up, Mr. Faison. I think you had a really good
insight that a molecule of CO2 released anywhere in
the world has the same impact. Why did we leave the Paris
Accord, which was not a binding treaty, but was at least the
first real international effort to acknowledge the problem and
to deal with it? Because we could do everything in the world
here in the U.S.; we could lower our output by 50 percent or 90
percent, and as you pointed out, it wouldn't matter because
China and India are still pumping CO2 out in record
amounts.
So don't we need some international--isn't this an
essential part of dealing with this issue?
Mr. Faison. Well, I'm for the Paris Agreement. Fortunately,
we are kind of like artillery officers where we focus on the
target rather than stuff going on around us.
Senator King. But part of the target has to be
international, doesn't it?
Mr. Faison. I agree. I see there are two things to that.
Yes, I'm for Paris, I'm for standards, I'm for this government
setting--making this a priority and setting ambitious goals.
Goals are at the very top of our agenda.
However, if we put standards in place, for example, is
Nigeria going to follow them? So there are a lot of countries
in the world--Indonesia, India; China may. But I think in order
to achieve the kind of decarbonization that we need, we have to
deliver the next set of affordable and clean technologies that
we can export.
Senator King. Oh, everywhere. I totally agree with that.
But there do have to be standards and we have to realize that
this is a global problem. It's not a New England problem or a
U.S. problem.
Mr. Faison. Correct.
Senator King. Secretary Moniz, just in a few seconds, if
you were going to advise us, what should be the top five
priorities for federal R&D on energy?
Dr. Moniz. If I may take the liberty of a brief comment on
the global issue, absolutely. But I think there's also an
understanding that there will be kind of tiers of compliance in
the timeframe with the industrialized nations, which is where
most of the emissions are today, needing to lead. The emerging
economies may be a little bit behind, and certainly the less
developed countries behind as well. So I think that's a clear,
clear pathway going forward.
In terms of the areas, well, again, you know, our analysis
from over 100 technologies initially, we came down to ten areas
that we feel are ones that are underfunded and have great
breakthrough potential, and those were storage broadly, many
time scales; advanced nuclear; a set of technologies that can
serve multiple sectors, like hydrogen, like advanced
manufacturing which Senator Stabenow mentioned earlier; but
grid modernization.
And something we haven't mentioned today, but integrating
all of those platform technologies into the grid and into so-
called smart cities, which is also a way of bringing new
services to consumers. But that's an area where the new
players, like the big data companies--Senator Cantwell has a
few near her--and the energy incumbents must find a way of
using their skill sets cooperatively.
And finally, a set of these deep decarbonization, large-
scale carbon management issues, many of which we've talked
about today, and I would just repeat: the whole suite of carbon
capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies including
new things like--``new things'' in the sense that it happens in
nature but it doesn't happen at the scale to accelerate--things
like biological sequestration: literally, perhaps engineering
plants with much deeper root systems, for example, to fix
carbon dioxide.
So that's kind of a suite that we would emphasize.
Senator King. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Gardner. Senator Cortez Masto.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, and thank you all. This
has been a great conversation this morning.
Can I ask, just so I have a clear understanding, does
anyone on the panel disagree that we should be looking at an
all-of-the-above portfolio when it comes to energy geared
toward a particular outcome, and that outcome would be
decarbonization? Does anybody disagree with that?
[No response.]
Okay, and I agree with it. I think that is why we are here.
That is where we could set our long-term mission and goal. As
you can see, there are challenges, obviously, and competing
interests, political interests.
But I also think, besides the fact that we are here and
hopefully going to be setting that standard, don't you also
agree that standard is going to be set by the demand? We are
hearing of individuals across this country that are demanding
that decarbonization, that are demanding those electric
vehicles, that are demanding those smart communities and
intelligent transportation systems. That is going to help drive
this as well, wouldn't you agree?
[Witnesses nod in agreement.]
And I do too. I think we have a perfect opportunity here to
really coordinate with that demand and do something. And it
starts with the innovation. I absolutely agree that an energy
innovation ecosystem is where we as a country should be
leading. We should be leading in this space and take every
advantage when it comes to investment and incentivization and
whatever else we need to do.
Here's the challenge I always hear, and it goes back to, I
think, what Ms. Wince-Smith talked about: workforce. As we go
down this path, what are our challenges for our workforce of
the future, and how do we bring them along with us? What should
we be doing to also focus on those workforce needs? And let me
start with you.
Ms. Wince-Smith. Well, one of the things we need to do on
the workforce is really recognize the whole up-skilling that
has to be done, because the jobs we're talking about require a
degree of literacy in coding and computing and the digitization
of the economy, so that's a very different workforce than the
20th century manufacturing workforce of the past.
One thing that is very exciting that's underway in the
skilled labor unions is how they are taking the lead on a lot
of this training and they are doing it in partnership with
large energy companies, and it's that partnership between labor
and industry that's advancing the immediate needs. But for the
long-term, you know, states need to recognize that while it was
unfashionable to support vocational training, we need to
reinvent that for the 21st century model.
And the other thing I would add is if you look at our
competitors around the world, Germany being a very good example
on workforce, they have such a sophisticated strategy really
targeting these jobs and putting the co-ops in place to really
get the workers that are able to earn high wages. I mean
Germany's wage structure is higher than ours and yet you never
hear of Germany about not having the workers we need, where we
do in the United States.
And Senator, if I may, I wanted to just add something on
the issue of the standards and decarbonization, because no one
yet has mentioned that global supply chains in which all our
companies are operating are increasingly demanding
decarbonization to participate in these supply chains. And if
you look at what the EU has been doing right now on privacy, no
one is going to operate in the EU without having certain
privacy. I'm hearing that very soon they are going to be using
standards and metrics of decarbonization as perhaps a non-
tariff barrier. But if we want the exports of the clean
technology that we want to develop from our R&D, we should be
at the head of the curve on that. So I wanted to really bring
that in because no one had really mentioned that heretofore.
Mr. Grumet. Senator, if I could just add, I think your two
points are actually one and the same because if we have a
better vision, we will then change the conduct of the
workforce. Right now, joining an energy company is a political
decision. Some people will only want to work for solar
companies. Some people will only want to work for oil
companies. I have the privilege right now of working on the
National Petroleum Council's study on energy infrastructure,
and the technology innovation that is happening right now in
pipelines is phenomenal. And so I think that what will change
the workforce, again, is having the sense that we're all part
of something that's important and something that the nation
cares about.
And, you know, I think what Senator Barrasso and others
were able to do with the FUTURE Act, change the conversation
around coal in the environmental community. People are having a
hard time. It sends a signal that there is a future here. It's
not a bad fuel, it's not a good fuel; it's a possibility for
the future. And it's had, you know, a real impact on the energy
in that community. I think you're having tough conversations.
And so I think, again, if we can get on that kind of sense
of we're going to do something great together, you will see
people entering the energy field who otherwise would not.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
I know my time is running out. Secretary Moniz.
Dr. Moniz. Yeah. I just want to add to what Deborah said in
the workforce, and she mentioned the labor unions, with whom I
speak quite often. And this is something I know Senator Manchin
feels very strongly about and I agree with. Look, what we tend
to do is immediately go to the issue of let's put in some
retraining dollars in various places, and that's--and I'm not
arguing against it. But frankly, the labor unions tell me:
Look, we can do the training. Give us the jobs. Give us the new
manufacturing.
That's why also looking at advanced manufacturing, what can
we do with additive manufacturing? We have a possibility of
doing this really across the country, and I think that's the
mentality that we need to have.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Dr. Moniz. Get the jobs. And building energy
infrastructure, building other infrastructure.
Senator Manchin. If I can just say something very quick and
add to that. I have experienced it in parts of our state. They
just got left behind. And I say, give them a choice. But it
takes a while to build a factory. It takes a while to get a
factory into operation. During that period of time that it
takes, if there is an announcement there is going to be a
factory in a certain part of any of our states that is
transforming our energy delivery system, they will prepare. We
will get people ready. They will go and they will be educated,
because they know that job and that paycheck is waiting.
What we have done is, basically, we have eliminated and
changed courses, and then we say we are going to go down and
retrain. Well, what the heck are you retraining them for? There
is nothing coming. There is no hope. They don't want to leave
the area. That is where their family is.
That is the problem we run into, and then we get in these
divides where our caucuses, whether it be Democrat or
Republican, are divided within the whole Senate or the whole
Congress.
We don't want to drink dirty water. We don't want to
breathe dirty air. We want our kids to have a future. We really
do. But they also realize they have to have a job to sustain
themselves.
We think we can make this happen and we are hoping that--I
am just hoping that, basically, the Green New Deal gets us on a
path where we can come together, understanding that is a really
lofty goal. Can we accelerate it? I think Martin has talked
about acceleration of things happening more quickly than what
we ever thought. That is all doable, and I am just hoping that
we can find that path. I am worried about the rest of the world
unless we find the cost-effectiveness of making sure there is
going to be an incentive for them to jump in.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Can I make one comment? Because I do not disagree with my
colleague, and thank you for the comment, but let me just say
this: ten years ago Nevada was known for gaming, entertainment
and mining. Now we are an innovation state. That is because we
got together as a state and did just what you said: Where is
our focus? Where is our future? Where can we bring in new
business? What can we do collectively to change it? And we
have.
And I think that is what it takes: that combination of the
federal level with the innovators, with the private sector and
your local governments, everybody coming together. But you have
to ask that question first and you all have to work together to
figure out where we want to go. And it can be done. I think you
are right.
Senator Manchin. You have to have a tax base for that.
Gambling gave you the tax base----
Senator Cortez Masto. No, it didn't.
Senator Manchin. ----for what it cost to diversify.
Senator Cortez Masto. No. That is why we had to diversify.
Senator Manchin. No. I am saying that our tax base has been
coming from extraction, and when it left, we had a hard time
just----
Senator Cortez Masto. I am just telling you, we were
hardest hit in the recession, and I am telling you gaming
didn't help us. It is the reason why we came together and said
we have to focus on another industry.
Senator Gardner. Once in a while in the U.S. Senate, debate
breaks out. That is really good.
[Laughter.]
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you. Thank you very much. I
appreciate the indulgence.
Senator Gardner. Senator Cantwell.
Senator Cantwell. Mr. Chairman, I love the lively debate
among the panelists, the members, everything. All I can say is
the Quadrennial Energy Review and the needs--the needs of our
nation for the next four years.
It is good to see all the panelists, including Secretary
Moniz, because I think that report just laid out everything
that we all are saying again today, which is that we need a
workforce. We know what our challenges are moving forward, we
know what our needs are, we know we need to invest in
technology, and so a very good panel discussion.
I wanted to ask Under Secretary Dabbar and Secretary Moniz
a couple of things. You mentioned PNNL. Thank you for
mentioning that and the great work that they are doing out
there. Obviously we are a region that gets the smart grid. I
don't know if it is the marrying of hydro and the technology
base or--you would think if you are producing three or four
cent kilowatt power, you might not keep looking for
efficiencies. But we do, and we keep finding them. I guess
maybe that culture really did help us understand how much
efficiency, which I think is going to be the juggernaut of the
future, can do. Because it doesn't matter what the source of
energy is, if you can make it more efficient and deliver it
more cheaply, then that is what people are going to do. Being
the leader in efficiency is just going to be huge, so I wanted
to ask you about the testing. You know, part of the efforts
that we need from DOE is how to test storage, how to help
utilities at all or other industries test out in real live
situations what storage and integration can do, so I want to
get your comments on that.
I know Senator Murkowski was probably here earlier. I don't
know if she asked about quantum information sciences, but what
can we expect from quantum computing to help us in these
efforts, if you could, Under Secretary or Dr. Moniz?
Mr. Dabbar. Thank you, Senator.
So from a testing point of view, one of the things I think
the lab complex does well is basically the contract research
that we do, you know, for people, and I'm going to give you an
example. I think our two lead battery--well, I know our two
lead kind of battery areas are at NREL and at PNNL. They do
slightly different ones, but I'm going to give an NREL example.
At NREL, we have a test bed which is funded by the big three
auto companies where they jointly got together with our test
bed, with our kind of capabilities, to run electric vehicle
testing jointly for systems. And we do research on their behalf
jointly, that they, kind of, pre-competitive between
themselves, where they decided to get together as an American
footprint. And I do think we are very much in the lead in front
of Europe in particular on this particular topic, in part
because of some of the testing that we are able to do.
I think one thing that we do well at PNNL is actually work
with the utility industry. I'll give you one particular
example. Flow batteries have the ability to get from multi-day
sort of storage and some of the things that many people here
have been talking about earlier, and actually doing testing of
larger-scale deployment working with industry is actually
something that PNNL is working on.
So I agree that--and this goes back to sort of the broader
lab-to-market points in my earlier testimony of how do we bring
people together more and how do we take the basic research and
chemistry, for example, in this particular case for PNNL and
others, and how do we help bridge it down into a product?
And I think one of the challenges of the lab complex was,
historically, culturally it was, we'll build it, and someone
will come and grab it from us if it's interesting. And so we
have been working, you know, the Secretary, myself and others
have been working on actually a bit of a cultural change, which
is increasing dialogue so that we have capabilities at the labs
to hand it off and to help develop with them paying to a large
degree, but using our capabilities and then using our test
capabilities in helping to create product.
Senator Cantwell. Great.
Dr. Moniz, did you have any comments on quantum and where
it might take us?
Dr. Moniz. Well, first of all, there's no doubt there's
been, in my view, rather surprising progress in terms of
quantum computing. And I want to say that the department I know
hosted a meeting that I was told went extremely well last, I
think, Friday, on a major new focus in quantum computing that
Paul might want to elaborate on.
I mean I think we are a long way from having anything that
I would call general purpose applications, but obviously in the
near-term there are significant possibilities in terms of
encryption and the like. But I think the developments in the
physical objects that one needs in quantum computing has been
just nothing short of remarkable.
Mr. Dabbar. Yeah. So going back to the grand challenge
concept that we were talking about earlier, I can tell you that
the bill that you all passed has really ignited a tremendous
amount of energy and interest across the country from
universities and industry. I was just in Seattle with Microsoft
and the President of the University of Washington who have
partnered with PNNL just to get it all together in the state to
form the Northwest Quantum Nexus where they've jointly come
together to try to attack in particular this one chemistry
problem at PNNL and bring their various skill sets together.
So as I like to think about what the Department does in
part is that we are seed money to try to get the rest of the
country--universities, private sectors, states--to work
together. And I think there's a number of things. I'll give you
a couple of quick points.
We were able to--we are in the process of standing up the
first entangled quantum internet ever in the world at Argonne
and at Fermi in Chicago. It's a big deal. It is far beyond
anything else, what anyone else is doing.
And I'll give you one other one about general-purpose
quantum is a ways away, but you all fund--we have at the
national lab complex the top supercomputers in the world and we
continue to build the next ones. One of the things that we're
looking at for post-exascale, so way out there, is actually
looking at quantum accelerators, so a quantum computing
capacity concurrent with traditional classical computers so
that we can concurrently separate problems within the same
supercomputer and use basically an analysis of the quantum
application for the analysis for the data. Might be better than
the portion of the computer that's classical. We are already
talking about that.
I'd like to once again thank this Committee and the whole
Congress for really jump-starting this in the nation.
Dr. Moniz. And if I--Oh. Deborah, go ahead.
Ms. Wince-Smith. Well, I was just going to add that the
quantum initiative and the bill that you passed and what's
occurring in the Federal Government and these partnerships is a
fantastic way to look at these enabling strategic technology
transformations that we need to prioritize on. This is not
picking a winner and a loser; this is a global race for
leadership in the quantum frontier.
China--I mean if we lose the quantum race to China, there
are huge national security implications. And interestingly, the
Council on Competitiveness has a very robust group of CTOs and
heads of research from our universities, deputy lab directors.
We're forming a very strategic partnership with Australia, one
of the Five Eyes, because they are also a leader in quantum. So
this is, again, an area where we need to come together, use all
our assets--DoD, DOE, et cetera.
The other one that I mentioned in my testimony, and I know
that Under Secretary Dabbar and Secretary Moniz have done a
huge job, is next-generation microelectronics. I was involved
in the creation of Sematech, you know, many years ago in the
Reagan Administration. Again, we had the opportunity not just
to lead beyond Moore's Law but to develop the hardened
electronics for cybersecurity and build these systems in the
United States. We don't have the manufacturing here, but we
can, and that's an area we should put huge federal investment
and priority in and build the complex public-private
partnerships to take it forward.
Dr. Moniz. If I could just add a note, it's kind of obvious
but I think it deserves explicit statement that I think the
Department of Energy--and I go back to when I was in DOE, then
of course it was DOE and DoD that jointly kind of came together
on the major computing initiatives. And a reason why DOE is so
important in this area, of course, is that it's a little bit of
an unusual Department in the sense of its major national
security responsibilities in addition to its responsibilities
in the science and energy realms.
Senator Gardner. Thank you. Thanks to all of you.
Members will have two days to submit questions for the
record. I would ask for your responses as quickly as possible.
Thanks to all of you for your time and testimony today and
for the participation of the members. This hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:43 a.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
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