[Senate Hearing 116-302]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 116-302
OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENERGY INNOVATION AND
OTHER POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS TO HELP
ADDRESS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 11, 2019
__________
[GRAPHIC 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
36-264 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
Jed Dearborn, Senior Counsel
Sarah Venuto, Democratic Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
Luke Bassett, Democratic Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
----------
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.................................................. 3
WITNESSES
Majumdar, Dr. Arun, Jay Precourt Provostial Chair Professor,
Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Co-Director, Precourt
Institute for Energy, Stanford University...................... 5
Silverman, Abraham, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel,
NRG Energy, Inc................................................ 12
Ladislaw, Sarah, Senior Vice President; Director and Senior
Fellow, Energy and National Security Program, Center for
Strategic and International Studies............................ 40
Sandalow, Hon. David B., Inaugural Fellow, SIPA Center on Global
Energy Policy, Columbia University............................. 56
Bryce, Robert, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute................ 67
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Alexander, Hon. Lamar:
Hearing Statement: ``One Republican's Response to Climate
Change:
A New Manhattan Project for Clean Energy''................. 84
Barrasso, Hon. John:
S. 2614, the Greenhouse Gas Emission Atmospheric Removal
(GEAR) Act from the 110th Congress......................... 117
Bryce, Robert:
Opening Statement............................................ 67
Written Testimony............................................ 69
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 157
Cassidy, Hon. Bill:
Transcript of a YouTube video (TEDxDanubia) entitled, ``Why
renewables can't save the planet,'' by Michael
Shellenberger, dated January 4, 2019....................... 100
King, Jr., Hon. Angus S.:
Map entitled, ``Nobody Lives Here: The 4,871,270 U.S. Census
Blocks with zero population (2010)''....................... 110
Ladislaw, Sarah:
Opening Statement............................................ 40
Written Testimony............................................ 42
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 149
Majumdar, Dr. Arun:
Opening Statement............................................ 5
Written Testimony............................................ 7
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 133
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
Opening Statement............................................ 3
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Sandalow, Hon. David B.:
Opening Statement............................................ 56
Written Testimony............................................ 58
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 154
Silverman, Abraham:
Opening Statement............................................ 12
Written Testimony............................................ 14
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 145
OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENERGY INNOVATION AND OTHER POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS TO
HELP ADDRESS GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 11, 2019
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:04 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.
We are here to continue our ongoing dialogue and
conversation about the electricity sector, climate change and
opportunities for innovative technologies that will further
reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.
During a hearing we held in March, we discussed the
reductions that have already taken place in the electricity
sector, largely driven by nearly flat demand growth, low cost
natural gas and the declining cost of renewable technologies
like solar. Although we saw an uptick in 2018 driven by robust
growth, U.S. emissions have declined in seven of the last ten
years and are now 14 percent lower than in 2005. We know that
that is impressive, but we also know that these trends are not
always being replicated around the world. In fact, we know for
a fact they are not.
When Dr. Fatih Birol, who is the Executive Director of the
International Energy Agency (IEA), appeared before the
Committee in February, he noted that global demand for
electricity is on track to increase by 60 percent by 2040. As a
result, electricity is now the ``largest target for energy
investment.''
Greater use of electricity will almost certainly lead to an
increase in global emissions. The opportunity we have in front
of us is to foster an innovation ecosystem here in the United
States that can lead to energy breakthroughs that deliver
cleaner, more affordable and more reliable energy technologies.
The United States leads the world in energy innovation. Our
national labs and universities, as well as the private sector,
are developing technologies that could be deployed around the
world to reduce our emissions. And that could occur through a
number of pathways, whether it is advanced nuclear, carbon
capture, utilization and storage, energy storage or a
technology that is just starting to show its potential.
We have seen firsthand the opportunity for moving to lower-
emission technologies realized in my state. In Igiugig, an
Alaskan village with a year-round population of about 70
people, a little bit more in the summer, they are installing a
turbine system that will create emission-free electricity using
river currents. The City of Kodiak generates nearly all of its
electricity, almost 100 percent, from renewable resources,
including hydropower and wind. In Southeast Alaska, the Haines
Brewing Company is going to add more solar to their facility to
power more of their beer production. And it is just kind of an
added benefit that they make really great beer on top of it.
[Laughter.]
Alaska is feeling the effects of climate change, but our
communities are making strides to responsibly reduce their
emissions. Alaskans are pioneers, and we kind of view ourselves
as this ``living laboratory'' for innovation. We figure if you
can prove the technology out there in a sometimes harsh
environment where it is very remote, if it works in the Arctic,
trust me, it can probably work just about anywhere else.
We also recognize the transition to cleaner resources will
take time. There is no overnight, magic-wand solution, as much
as many would want it to be that way. But we simply do not have
unlimited amounts of taxpayer dollars. We cannot simply replace
markets with mandates and call it good. So even as we take real
steps to promote clean energy, know that I am going to be
working to fully protect our energy security as well as keeping
our energy costs affordable.
This is a timely discussion, but also a nuanced one on the
policy side. We have some impressive witnesses with us this
morning to join the conversation.
We have Dr. Arun Majumdar, Co-Director of the Precourt
Institute for Energy at Stanford. You have been a frequent
visitor here before the Committee, and we are very pleased to
have you back and for your leadership here.
We have Ms. Sarah Ladislaw, who is the Director and Senior
Fellow at the Energy and National Security Program for the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). We are
pleased to have you here.
Mr. Abe Silverman, we are kind of going back and forth
here, Vice President and Deputy General Counsel at NRG Energy.
It is good to have you before the Committee.
Mr. Robert Bryce, at the end, is a Senior Fellow at the
Manhattan Institute, and Mr. David Sandalow is the Inaugural
Fellow at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia
University.
So we have a great panel to help us discuss innovative
solutions that will work to reduce our greenhouse gases.
With that, I turn to my friend and Ranking Member, Senator
Manchin.
STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III,
U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA
Senator Manchin. Chair Murkowski, thank you so much for
convening the Committee and second hearing on climate change
for this Congress, and we are very proud about that. And thank
you all for being here. We really appreciate you bringing your
expertise to the Committee.
I understand that we will also be having tech-focused
hearings in the near future to take a hard look at carbon
capture, nuclear, energy efficiency, renewable and storage
technologies. I appreciate your ongoing commitment to
innovation as a key solution to the climate crisis. I think
this Committee has begun a very productive conversation. I am
looking forward to continuing that with our witnesses today and
in hearings ahead.
This year the Committee has begun to establish the facts
about greenhouse gas emissions, particularly in the power
sector, and we are looking at this problem from both domestic
and international points of view. So far, the expert testimony
we have heard has clearly stressed the need for technological
advances to tackle the issue here at home but also strengthen
America's position as a global leader in this space.
Since our last hearing on climate change, the International
Energy Agency issued a report that showed energy demand around
the world grew by 2.3 percent over the past year. Fossil fuels
filled a lot of that demand, including in Asia, where coal-
fired power plants have an average age of 12 years which means
they are going to be around for a while. They are not going to
retire any time soon.
Here in the United States we need to focus on
commercializing technologies that can be used on our fossil
fuel power plants and exported to markets around the globe.
Projects like Petra Nova and NET Power capturing carbon dioxide
from coal and natural gas power plants are shining examples of
what is possible.
We need a moonshot to get carbon capture technologies to
commercialization, and I am very happy to be introducing a bill
today, along with my friend here, Chairman Murkowski, that will
set the ambitious authorization levels that are needed. Our
bill will focus the Department of Energy (DOE) on coal and
natural gas technologies, carbon utilization and storage and
atmospheric carbon removal.
The DOE and our national laboratories play an essential
role in leading low-carbon energy innovation. Just last week
Secretary Perry testified to the outstanding capabilities of
the DOE and the labs in bringing new technologies to life, and
many of those developments have kept our energy cost affordable
in much of the country while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Programs like DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency for
Energy, or ARPA-E, and the Title 17 loan programs invest and
demonstrate those technologies across the U.S. The Department's
investment in solar research and development, for example, led
to advances in solar panels that when demonstrated with
financing from the loan programs kickstarted fast growing
utility scale solar plants across our country.
The DOE plays a critical role in advancing innovation, and
I believe their good work can be amplified through public-
private partnerships. For example, Chairman Murkowski's Nuclear
Energy Leadership Act (NELA), which I co-sponsored, will
leverage these partnerships to build demonstration reactors
that will play a vital role in decarbonizing the industrial
sector. I believe in innovation, not elimination.
Now as former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has said, we
need a ``green real deal.'' As he, Bill Gates and other
innovation champions have pointed out, we need a practical plan
to address climate change that does not take technologies off
the table or leave workers and communities stranded.
At the end of the day we need reliable, dependable and
affordable power. So let's make headway on carbon reduction
technologies for fossil fuels while also moving ahead with
advanced nuclear and storage technologies. Let's also take a
closer look how we manage the growing additions of renewable
energy with a need for electric infrastructure and reliability.
We need to continue pushing the limits on research and
commercialization so that every region finds the solutions that
work best, because it is not a one-size-fits-all.
In that vein, I also believe it is our duty to recognize
the historical contributions of energy producing states like
West Virginia and Alaska. And I know we seem like maybe the
couple talking about what we need and what needs to be done,
but when you look at the devastating effects that climate has
had in our states, it is real. It is not a myth. I will
continue to say this, if the solution to climate crisis leaves
West Virginia coal communities behind, then it is not a
solution in any community that is left behind. As we move
forward with the climate conversation, I am going to continue
to consider global, national, regional perspectives.
With that, Chairman Murkowski, I think we have a big job
ahead of us to find solutions, but I think that we are up to
the task. And as part of the movement toward pragmatic
solutions, I look forward to hearing from each and every one of
you on this distinguished panel that we have assembled today.
So thank you for coming.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Manchin.
We do have a great deal to talk about this morning, and I
look forward to the respective contributions from each of you
followed by questions from our panel here.
I am particularly pleased that the Senator from Tennessee
is here because he has laid down, as he usually does, a little
bit of a road map from his perspective on some of these issues.
So I look forward to the exchange.
I introduced each of you a little bit earlier, so let's
just go straight into it.
Dr. Majumdar, if you would like to lead off the panel?
We would ask you to try to keep your comments to about five
minutes. Your full statements will be included as part of the
record.
Welcome.
STATEMENT OF DR. ARUN MAJUMDAR, JAY PRECOURT PROVOSTIAL CHAIR
PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, AND CO-
DIRECTOR, PRECOURT INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY
Dr. Majumdar. Chair Murkowski, Senator Manchin and all the
members of this Committee, thank you for inviting me and giving
me the honor to speak out here.
Just a little bit about my own background. I was the
Founding Director of ARPA-E and also the Acting Under Secretary
for Energy in the Department of Energy and thereafter was the
Vice President of Energy at Google and now running the Stanford
Precourt Institute for Energy. And I've been involved as
advisor to many businesses and governments on this particular
issue.
I just want to talk about four things: Number one is the
impact and urgency of climate change, very briefly. The
technology innovation that is needed for a transition to a low-
carbon economy and how to get there. And then two policy
innovations. One is a new infrastructure initiative to provide
the infrastructure to deliver the low-carbon solutions to our
people, and some market and regulatory policy to create the
demand for low-carbon technologies. And finally, a booster shot
on education because we need our people to be able to provide
these services and be beneficiaries of this transition.
Very quickly on climate change. We normally talk about 1.5
or 2 degrees which is accurate, but I think we miss the point.
It is the extreme that these weather events create that really
hurts the people and our agriculture and our economy and our
livestock. And I think we should be talking about the extreme
weather condition. These extremes are happening more often, and
we know that is going to happen. The uncertainty is we don't
know where it's going to hit next. So we are really exposing
all our citizens to a game of Russian Roulette.
To avoid the extremes, we have really, if you want to keep
the temperatures below two degrees, we have really 20 years or
less. That's the urgency that we have. And after that, the
emissions have to be zero. That's the challenge that we have.
The question is what do we need to do? What are the
technology innovation solutions? Well, we know about the good
news stories. ULTRA achieved solar and wind. We know about the
batteries that is leading to electrification and some of the,
and the unconventional oil and gas.
That's all terrific but we still have 80 percent of our
energy coming from fossil fuels around the world. And we need
new technologies, grid-scale storage at one-tenth the cost of
lithium-ion batteries, small modular nuclear reactors, new ways
of air conditioning, zero net energy buildings at zero net
cost, carbon-free hydrogen that can enable the steel and
concrete industries to decarbonize and, of course, carbon
capture and sequestration and utilization and finally, I would
also add the use of the food and agriculture sector, not only
to increase the food productivity but also to suck out carbon
from the atmosphere and keep it and store it on the ground.
This is, if you think about it, this is essentially a new
industrial revolution. It is a remake of much of our global
economy. We're talking about electricity, oil and gas,
transportation, steel-concrete construction and food and
agriculture. That's about $10 trillion per year of global
economy. And this is a global race. No question about it.
And so, if you are to take the lead in this effort, it will
decide the economic growth, the environment, the geopolitics
and international security of the 21st century. That's what is
at stake. And so, we must seize this opportunity.
As I've said many times before, we need to invest in R&D,
ARPA-E. Budgets should be about $1 billion a year, but also the
applied energy programs of the basic energy sciences in the
Department of Energy.
As was pointed out, we have some of the best universities
and national labs. The scientific infrastructure that we have
in the United States is the best in the world. And we have
amazing--as the Director of ARPA-E, I realized how much of an
amazing capacity we have in the United States to innovate and
deliver on these investments.
The two-policy innovation. Quoting Justice Brandeis, ``Our
states and local government act as laboratories of democracy.''
I think the diversity of energy needs that I have seen around
the country in your states can offer this. This is the strength
that we have to become the laboratories of this low-carbon
industrial revolution that I was talking about.
In 1936 we had a Rural Electrification Act for the way the
Federal Government provided low interest loans while local
electric power cooperatives to bring electricity services to
millions of Americans around the country and that transformed
America.
We need a 21st century initiative to infrastructure to
provide these low-carbon services to our people, and I've
talked about what those technologies are. We need federal,
state and local governments, along with the private sector to
create the innovation pipeline for technologies and also to
convene and create the permitting and speed up the permitting
processes and create innovative policies to stimulate private
sector investments.
The markets and regulation, I think there's a lot of
discussion on carbon pricing. I think that will accelerate the
transition of the carbon, the price on carbon.
And lastly I would say that education and training, we need
the people to be able to get the benefit of this and provide
the infrastructure that we need for this low-carbon economy.
Let me stop here.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Majumdar follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Majumdar.
Mr. Silverman, welcome.
STATEMENT OF ABRAHAM SILVERMAN, VICE PRESIDENT AND DEPUTY
GENERAL COUNSEL, NRG ENERGY, INC.
Mr. Silverman. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Abraham
Silverman, on behalf of NRG Energy.
NRG is a 100 percent competitive power company which means
that we have no captive customers and it is our shareholders,
not ratepayers, that fund all of our initiatives. We have over
three million retail customers nationwide with a large
generation fleet that spans the dispatch order. We have
nuclear. We have coal. We have carbon capture. We have natural
gas. Battery, solar, wind and demand response. I think that's
everything. So we bring a very practical practitioners view to
this discussion today.
You know, when we think about climate change, we really
start from two fundamental premises. The first is in order to
avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to
rapidly decarbonize our energy sector at a price consumers can
afford. If we don't have affordability, we will fail. The
second premise is that clean energy is not exempt from the laws
of economics, nor should it be. You know, we look at American
history and we see innovation and competition and competitive
forces drive down prices, increase service and drive innovation
in every possible sector. Markets are not broken. They simply
need to be retooled for the 21st century needs and our concerns
about carbon.
So when we think about what we need to do to drive the
innovation, we need to refocus those markets on two primary
goals.
One is competitive choice and the other is competition. So
when we--we sell a lot of green product nationwide. Let's talk
about choice. Our customers want this product. Let's give it to
them. Right now, government, at many levels, restricts our
ability to sell green power to customers and restricts the
customer's ability to buy the power that aligns with their
values. Why do we do that? We should get out of the way and let
people shop and pick who they want to deal with. They want to
fire your utility? Go ahead. Why not allow that?
We hear a lot of talk these days about big tech and, you
know, problems, trust concerns, about them operating a platform
and then selling products on the very platform that they
dominate. That is exactly what happens today in the energy
sector.
Everything we do when we innovate, we know that if we take
it into a new market, outside of Texas which will solve this
problem, we know that the local monopoly utility is likely to
sell the identical product and compete with us, often using
ratepayer funds. It's very difficult to innovate in that
environment.
And whether we talk, whether we work toward ensuring a
commercial environment free from unfair competition and
domination by utilities, that's what the green new deal says or
whether we want to quarantine the monopoly, as conservative and
free market advocates put it. There's a shocking amount of
consensus that enabling consumer choice will drive green
outcomes faster and with less government regulation.
So step two, and these two steps are inseparable. Step two
is that we need a robust, competitive market for free--for
clean energy with understandable and predictable rules,
operating is free as possible from intervention by government
policymakers who want to pick politically driven winners and
losers.
I attached a white paper to my testimony that lays out some
specifics for, I think, a very innovative clean energy program
that could be implemented at the state or federal level, but
I'm going to give you three highlights.
First is we need to define the clean energy attribute that
we want our market to get. Let's start there. We could use the
available climate science to set targets and we will use the
competitive market to achieve those targets in the least
possible cost.
Second, the environment doesn't care how a carbon-free
megawatt of electricity is generated. So why pay more if
there's lower cost green options available?
We should have a market that rewards all innovators and all
carbon-free megawatts equally.
Fourth, let the competitive market work because it will
drive down prices and get us to where we need to be.
Unfortunately, the very concept of a pro-innovation,
competitive approach to energy markets is under attack. In the
absence of federal leadership, many states are falling prey to
subsidies and to parties and companies that would rather
compete for subsidies than compete in the market to deliver
power, clean power, at the lowest possible cost.
So three, sort of, rules of thumb. One, don't redistribute
precious tax dollars or ratepayer dollars via subsidies for
technology that once it leaves the R&D phase. Second, don't
lock customers into excessively priced contracts for specific
clean energy technologies when clean energy, when other lower
cost--when lower cost sources of clean energy are available.
And three, certainly don't provide corporate welfare to
existing power plants that are profitable under the guise of
promoting carbon-free power.
I'll go ahead and stop there.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Silverman follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you. You have a lot more there, and we
will have an opportunity to pursue that in the questions. So
thank you for that, Mr. Silverman.
Ms. Ladislaw, welcome.
STATEMENT OF SARAH LADISLAW, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT; DIRECTOR
AND SENIOR FELLOW, ENERGY AND NATIONAL SECURITY PROGRAM, CENTER
FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Ms. Ladislaw. Thank you, Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member
Manchin and members of the Committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today.
I'd also like to additionally thank the Committee for its
commitment to fostering a constructive dialogue on the urgent
need to tackle global climate change challenges.
The United States is one of the most energy and innovation-
advantaged nations on the planet. I firmly believe that we have
every conceivable tool at our disposal to chart a viable
pathway to a net zero emissions, resilient energy system at
home and also provide global leadership in the strategies and
technologies that can bring sustainable and affordable energy
supplies to the growing and developing populations of the
world. We simply need to decide to do it.
Your previous hearings on this topic have been robust and
very useful. I have four major points to add to the already
strong and important messages that you've received.
First, as both of you mentioned at the outset, energy is
playing an increasingly important role in how states and
regions think about economic opportunity. The state level
interest can be an important catalyst for innovation in climate
solutions as well as creating the economic opportunity sought
by states.
Federal level policymakers should pay close attention to
how energy development, innovation clusters, worker retraining
programs and energy policies and incentives in general fulfill
or fall short of delivering on the expected economic outcomes
at the state level.
Most pertinent to this hearing, there are important lessons
learned about how to create successful innovation clusters and
help make the most out of R&D spending at the state level.
Federal involvement in these clusters can help shape them to be
more successful.
Second, it's true that innovation defines the art of the
possible when it comes to meeting society's basic energy needs
and it's at the heart of U.S. economic competitiveness. But
innovation is the means to a solution and not a solution in and
of itself. Innovation in this context, must be harnessed to
achieve certain societal goals, and it is in setting these
goals that the biggest disagreements often exist.
Currently, the international community has organized itself
around three energy relevant goals. Reduce emissions for the
purposes of dealing with climate change, eradicate energy
poverty, and ensure secure and resilient energy systems.
The second important takeaway for this Committee is to use
these agreed upon global goals to drive the relevant
conversations around climate change both within your
jurisdiction and across the committees with whom you work.
Too often, these three challenges are pitted against one
another to suggest that achieving one means neglecting or
working against the other. While tradeoffs do exist, the
solutions are not mutually exclusive and innovation and climate
policies should work toward solutions that contribute to
achieving all three goals simultaneously and reject the notion
that one goal is more important than the other.
The third main message is that we need to seriously commit
to a robust innovation agenda, and Senator Alexander's bill is
one example of how to do that.
Relative to the challenges we face that all-of-the-above
energy challenge is in the danger of becoming a cliche for
muddling along without making any decisions. We need an all in
on the all-of-the-above strategy where we redouble our
commitment to make every resource compatible with the needs of
a 21st century energy strategy, low-carbon, cost competitive
and secure.
Among experts there is a great deal of agreement about the
suite of technologies we need to drastically reduce emissions.
Supporting all of these solutions includes but should not be
limited to increased R&D spending.
Moreover, in a world where we're confronting large-scale
industrial competition from other countries, particularly
China, we should consider more deliberately creating an
industrial strategy around certain technologies where we want
to compete for a host of climate competitiveness, security and
economic reasons. Advanced nuclear, carbon capture and
sequestration, battery storage and electric vehicles are all
areas that immediately come to mind.
The fourth and final takeaway for this Committee is that
moderate climate policy need not be mediocre. In my written
testimony I give two examples. Greater support for energy
efficiency through DOE programs, efficiency standards,
regulations and tax incentives and also, the implementation of
policies like a clean energy standard. They're all places where
moderate federal climate policy could make a really big
difference.
The key to moderate climate policy is to use policy and
regulatory mechanisms that people recognize, trust and use
today but be ambitious about their targets and implementation.
There will be ongoing efforts to build support for economy wide
strategies like a carbon tax which will be necessary as part of
a suite of policies to develop deep decarbonization.
But there are things that we can do to make notable
progress on this issue right now and are needed to supplement
the impacts of a more robust approach to innovation.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Ladislaw follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Ms. Ladislaw.
Mr. Sandalow, welcome.
STATEMENT OF HON. DAVID B. SANDALOW, INAUGURAL FELLOW, SIPA
CENTER ON GLOBAL ENERGY POLICY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Mr. Sandalow. Thank you, Chairman Murkowski, Ranking Member
Manchin and all members of the Committee on Energy for the
opportunity to testify today.
I've been privileged to appear here several times before,
and I've observed your long tradition of constructive,
bipartisan dialogue.
I've worked on the topic of today's hearing, energy
innovation and climate change, for many years on the White
House staff, as an Assistant Secretary of State, as an
Assistant Secretary of Energy and as Acting Under Secretary of
Energy. Today I'm honored to be the Inaugural Fellow at
Columbia University Center for Global Energy Policy.
My testimony today will have three core points.
First, energy innovation is central for fighting climate
change. In the past decade dramatic innovations have begun to
change the energy sector. Solar and wind power costs have
fallen dramatically, for example, but more is needed. To help
cut carbon emissions at the speed required in the decades
ahead, we'll need innovation in many areas. The highest
priorities, in my view, include energy storage, floating
offshore wind, industrial heat, heavy duty road transport,
aviation, carbon capture, utilization and storage including
direct air capture of carbon dioxide and cheap, passably safe
nuclear reactors. I discuss each of these areas in more detail
in my written testimony which is submitted for the record.
My second and perhaps most important point is that
innovation alone won't solve climate change. Innovation is
essential for fighting climate change, but it's not enough. The
most innovative low-carbon technologies won't help fight
climate change unless they're deployed, and widespread
deployment of low-carbon technologies often requires a range of
policies. The building sector offers a classic example. Many
simple technologies for improving the energy efficiency of
buildings are readily available, but they sit unused due to
features of the real estate market. Policies such as building
codes and appliance standards are necessary.
More broadly, access to low cost capital is especially
important for moving innovative technologies to market.
Historically, this has been a significant challenge for low-
carbon technologies and without government programs to reduce
capital costs, many innovative low-carbon technologies will
never make it to market. Removing subsidies enjoyed by fossil
fuel technologies so that low-carbon technologies can compete
on a level playing field is an especially important tool for
moving innovative low-carbon technologies from the lab to
market. And finally, global engagement is essential for solving
climate change. Policies to promote the global deployment of
low-carbon technologies are essential.
My third core point is that as a nation we should build on
our strengths and address our weaknesses when it comes to
energy innovation. The United States has an extraordinary
record when it comes to energy innovation. And Madam Chairman,
as you said, our strengths include our great universities, our
national lab system and our entrepreneurial culture.
At the same time, I believe we have weaknesses that inhibit
our ability to promote energy innovation. One is our broken
politics. You know, U.S. politics has always been rough, but in
recent years polarization has been especially extreme. A second
weakness is a lack of respect for science. It's ironic that in
a nation with such extraordinary universities and national
labs, the envy of much of the world, science receives such
little respect. Top leaders and significant minorities of the
public reject scientific conclusions on topics as wide-ranging
as climate change and vaccinations. In my travels in Asia and
Europe, I often encounter people who are deeply puzzled by this
phenomenon. And a third weakness I would point to is our short-
term focus both in government and in many parts of the
investment community.
So, what can we do to build on our strengths and address
our weaknesses? Step one, increase federal budgets for energy
innovation and I applaud Senator Alexander's call to double
federal funding for clean energy innovation. Second, channel
U.S. entrepreneurial spirit toward meeting the climate
challenge. Policies that improve the returns that businesses
earn from deploying innovative energy technologies are
essential, that could include tax credits, performance
standards, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and a price on
carbon. Third, build long-term thinking into federal decision-
making on energy innovation with multiyear planning processes
and investors focusing long-time horizons on their investments.
So my testimony today has had three core points. First,
energy innovation is essential for fighting climate change.
Second, innovation alone won't solve climate change. And third,
as a nation we should build on our strengths and weaknesses
when it comes to energy innovation.
Thanks for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to
answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sandalow follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Sandalow.
Mr. Bryce, welcome.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT BRYCE, SENIOR FELLOW, MANHATTAN INSTITUTE
Mr. Bryce. Good morning.
Electricity is the world's most important and fastest
growing form of energy. The electricity sector is also the
biggest single contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions.
My third point, that right now at current rates of growth,
about four percent per year, global electricity demand will
grow and it will rather double in just 18 years. So given those
facts what should we do?
Well, first of all we cannot rely on renewables alone.
Numerous environmental groups and politicians are pushing for
all renewable energy systems, but the hard truth is that these
100 percent renewable energy scenarios are nothing more than
politically popular distractions. These scenarios are neither
doable nor desirable. These scenarios ignore basic math and
simple physics. Worse yet, they perpetuate what I call, the
``vacant land myth,'' the idea that there's endless amounts of
land out there in flyover country that's just waiting for all
kinds of renewable energy infrastructure to be built on top of
it. Nothing could be further from the truth.
By my count, since 2015 some 225 government entities from
New York to California have moved to reject or restrict wind
energy projects. New York has a 50 percent renewable
electricity mandate by 2030 but dozens of local governments in
New York have either passed measures restricting or outright
rejecting wind energy projects.
You won't read about this in the New York Times, but the
towns of Yates and Somerset as well as three upstate New York
counties, Erie, Orleans and Niagara, have spent the last three
years fighting a proposed 200-megawatt lighthouse wind project
which aims to put dozens of wind turbines near the shores of
Lake Ontario. New York's offshore wind plans are being
vigorously opposed by the state's commercial fishing groups.
California has a 60 percent renewable electricity mandate
by 2030, but in 2015 the Los Angeles County Board of
Supervisors banned wind projects in the county. In February of
this year, San Bernardino County, the largest county by area in
America, banned large scale renewable projects throughout much
of the country. San Bernardino County is the home to two of the
largest thermal solar projects in America, Abengoa Mojave and
Ivanpah. Today California has less installed wind capacity than
it did in 2013.
Last year high voltage transmission projects designed to
transport renewable energy across New Hampshire and Arkansas
were both canceled due to state-level opposition.
In short, renewable energy alone cannot provide the vast
scale of energy that the U.S. and global economies demand at
prices consumers can afford.
So what is the best approach? In my view, it is N2N,
natural gas to nuclear. These sources provide the best, no
regret strategy because they are low-carbon, scalable, and
affordable.
Thanks to innovations in the shale revolution, the U.S. has
become the world's biggest and most important natural gas
producer. Natural gas helps reduce or helps decarbonization,
because it emits half as much CO2 during combustion
as coal and about a third less than fuel oil or diesel fuel.
Natural gas has helped cut U.S. CO2 emissions
which in 2017 were at their lowest level since 1992. Last year
the U.S. exported LNG to 30 different countries including
Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. It's an open secret in
Houston that Saudi Arabia is now seeking a long-term LNG supply
contract with American companies.
What does the U.S. natural gas sector need in terms of
federal policy? In my view, nothing. Where federal policymaking
is needed and needed in a big way is in the nuclear energy
sector. There is no credible pathway toward widespread, large-
scale decarbonization that doesn't include large increments of
new nuclear capacity.
Congress should develop a strategy that includes preserving
existing plants and nurturing the development and commercial
deployment of the next generation of smaller, safer, cheaper
reactors. The Federal Government should support nuclear energy
because it is emissions free, has extraordinarily high-power
density, meaning it requires very little land, and it helps
diversify the electric grid.
Let me be clear, the nuclear industry faces myriad
challenges, opposition from some of the biggest environmental
groups in America including Sierra Club and the Natural
Resources Defense Council are among them. Many existing
reactors cannot operate at a profit. New reactors cost way too
much and, of course, Congress continues to doddle when it comes
to the issue of nuclear waste storage and disposal.
But I will reiterate my point. There is no reasonable or
affordable pathway to decarbonization of the electric sector
here in the United States or around the world that does not
include big chunks of new nuclear capacity. If Congress wants
to foster innovation in nuclear energy, Republicans and
Democrats will have to forge significant, long-term, and by
that I mean decadal, commitments toward making that goal a
reality.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bryce follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Thank you.
Lots, lots to begin with here this morning. I appreciate
the contributions of each of you. And clearly, there is an
agreement that technology is how we address these issues of
increased emissions or worldwide, global emissions. But as you
have pointed out very, very clearly, Ms. Ladislaw, you can have
all the great technology but if we do not have the deployment
out there, we have not even started to leave the house yet. So
how we make that leap is part of our discussion here.
The other thing that I have underlined from your testimony
that I really appreciate is this recognition that we need to be
all in on all-of-the-above. When we determine here in Congress
through our policies, or perhaps our policies by default, that
we are going to favor one over another by way of subsidies or
credits or what happens, as you point out, Mr. Bryce, with
state policies that say we want to have renewables, except we
do not want your kind of renewable, that is where we start to
get in our own way here.
The question that I would pose to you all as a panel is,
there is no shortage of good ideas with the technologies that
are out there but we are stumbling in the deployment end of it.
What should our role be here in the Congress to help facilitate
to a better level this deployment? I am all in on what Senator
Alexander has proposed in terms of increasing the funding for
research and development and doubling up on ARPA-E, but outside
of the obvious, what more do we need to be doing?
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. You have indicated, Mr. Sandalow, that we
need to be focusing on longer-term visioning so that investors
then are interested in coming to the table. But help me out.
Let's have this conversation.
Go ahead, anyone can jump in here.
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, I'll offer just a couple of ideas. I
mean, I think, you know, there was a Wall Street Journal
article that had most of the prominent economists saying that
the carbon tax is probably the most efficient way of trying to
send that signal to market.
I would say most of the people that I talked to in the
energy field somewhat agree, right? I mean, I've had people
tell me, CCS wouldn't actually be terribly hard if you had a
high enough carbon price to at least, you know, be trying more
of it in the field, right? And so, however those economists
aren't in Congress, right? That's not, they don't exist here--
--
The Chairman. Well, that goes back to Mr. Sandalow's point
about politics.
Ms. Ladislaw. Yeah, so I think that if you look at like
policies like a clean energy standard, most states have
renewable portfolio standards. A lot of them are revising them
now. They know what they are. They know what they do.
You could have a federal level clean energy standard that
tries to build on that, that says well, let's try and--you
could probably do most of the work that you need in the
electric power sector, in terms of decarbonizing through a
policy like a clean energy standard.
So there are lots and lots of performance-based energy
standards that you can put in place that say I don't care how
you get there, but here's the target, here's the goal.
And we apply some of those standards in our innovation
programs, right? I mean, be supporting those national
standards. We just need them echoed out there in the market as
well.
The Chairman. Mr. Sandalow?
Mr. Sandalow. I completely agree with Ms. Ladislaw.
You know, these clean energy standards, or renewable
portfolio standards, have been very successful at the state
level. Applying that to the federal level would be a big step
forward.
In some ways, even an easier step could be eliminating
fossil fuel subsidies. I mean, why are we subsidizing fuels
that are polluting the atmosphere? If we could get rid of
those, that would provide a level playing field for some of
these clean energy technologies.
And then I would point to the point I made about planning
in my testimony. You know, it's striking to me some European
governments, some Asian governments, they set 5-, 10-, 15-year
targets on these long-term issues and then they adjust as they
go forward. In this country, we celebrate it when we pass a
one-year appropriations bill. I think we can to better. And we
should work to have 5-, 10-, 15-year targets. The Department of
Energy has tremendous expertise to help with that and really do
long-term planning in a way that we don't today.
Mr. Silverman. I was just going to add to that, you know, a
green grid is largely an economics problem frankly, not a
technical problem. We can get to, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40
percent, whatever the standard that we need, whatever the
climate change science tells us we need to do, we can get to
that standard. The market can get there using economic
principles and that really does mean choice and then going
through and creating the kind of durable market structure that
will actually attract private capital.
I know there's always a temptation to want to subsidize and
to use tax dollars, but really we will be much better if we
have a public-private partnership where we have a durable
market structure that drives that kind of private investment.
You really want to unleash that and bring it into the market.
And again, that comes back to having that nice, solid
market. And unfortunately, you know, we've seen really a
retreat from markets as if somehow markets and green outcomes
are incompatible. And so, I would love to see this Committee,
sort of, go at that, go at that issue head on.
The Chairman. Doctor?
Dr. Majumdar. If I could just add.
Energy infrastructure lasts for 50, 60, 70 years. We have
to think about this as the 21st century game, and we have to
take the lead on this because the rest of the world also has to
change.
Given that, coming back to the planning, the long-term
planning, I completely agree with some of the things that Mr.
Bryce was talking about and I outline that in my written
testimony. This whole idea of looking at 1936 Rural
Electrification Act, if he could create a similar kind of thing
to get the clean energy services deployed into our cities and
towns and villages, that will require the federal, state and
local governments to come together and streamline the
permitting and the regulatory process to expedite it.
We need to create, figure out, how to get private capital
into the energy system. And there is, Senator Coons and others
have put a Master Limited Partnerships Parity Act which will
essentially put everything on a level playing field.
Talking about the price on carbon. Where markets work, they
are efficient. We could either have a direct price on carbon or
an indirect price whether it's a clean energy standard, it's an
indirect price on carbon. But we need to have to accelerate
that. Technology innovation is not enough. We need the market
pull.
But there are places where the markets don't work. And we
know. And there are market failures in energy efficiency.
That's why we have appliance standards. That's why we have
clean fuel efficiency standards.
And I would go full force in creating, not just building
codes which are for design, but actual performance-based
standards for the buildings across the United States. I think
if you could do that and provide the infrastructure to deliver
these solutions, I think that's the transition path that I see.
The Chairman. Very good.
Mr. Bryce, you are the only one that has not spoken. We are
out of time, but go ahead.
Mr. Bryce. Yes, ma'am.
My quick comment would be what is the priority? It would,
I'm sorry I'm a one trick pony here. It's a sense of urgency on
the deployment of nuclear energy at scale.
The United States is not the world. The coal sector,
globally, in the global electric sector, coal's share of
electricity generation has stayed at about 40 percent for 30
years. What can supplant coal in developing countries as
baseload form of electricity generation? It would be nuclear,
but the U.S. has to play in that game and right now that game
is being dominated by the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians
and the South Koreans.
And that is where the U.S., I think, could make a long-
term, lasting contribution but it would have to be done with
urgency and it would, it's going to require significant federal
involvement.
The Chairman. Thus, the need for NELA.
[Laughter.]
Senator Manchin.
Senator Manchin. First of all, I think, and do you agree,
that we need increased funding for the DOE as far as technology
research and development? Everybody agrees on that, okay.
Mr. Silverman, on the Petra Nova company's carbon capture
facility in Houston, I had a chance of visiting them. I really
enjoyed this visit.
Petra Nova is the only U.S. power plant currently
generating electricity and capturing carbon dioxide in large
quantities, about 5,200 tons per day, and I understand over a
million tons within the first ten months.
And so, I would ask, of all of you, you have the only
commercialized experience in that realm. How does it work? What
have you learned from it? Can it be done? And should it be
continued?
Mr. Silverman. Absolutely, it could be done because we're
doing it. It's an incredibly exciting project, and we're all
very proud of it.
I mean, CCS is one of the--carbon capture and sequestration
is one of the potentially least cost methods of getting to
fight climate change. You know, it is an experimental project.
It is absolutely dependent on federal R&D dollars and, you
know, it is a difficult and frankly, you know, any time you
deploy a new technology, it always takes a while to get it
right.
But you know, when we look forward to a market structure
that really is an all-of-the-above, if we want carbon-free
power, let's talk about including letting nuclear compete
against renewables, compete against carbon capture and
sequestration, compete against repowering or shutting other
facilities down.
If we have that transparent price in that market mechanism,
we really are looking at an all-of-the-above because we're
talking about having a market structure that will allow us to
come in and finance that kind of innovation, particularly as it
gets more commercialized. I don't think we're there yet. But as
it gets more commercialized, if we have that transparent market
structure then all of these technologies will compete and we
really will find the least cost solution out there.
Senator Manchin. What I am hearing from all of you is that,
basically, there is a challenge with renewables, as far as
where we should go and wherever we are going with it may have a
road block. I think, Mr. Bryce, you have pointed out the road
blocks that are out there.
Now I am for getting it up to the level of power sources
that we are going to need in order for the country to have what
it needs, I understand that. What about China and India and
Asia, where they are coming on so strong with coal, what are
they going to rely on? That is my concern.
Global climate is not the U.S. climate, and it is not North
American climate. And for some reason we lose sight of that. We
think that if we can basically penalize, or whatever, the rest
of the world is going to follow suit. I don't see, from what I
understand, the average coal-fired plant in Asia is what, 11,
12 years of age? They plan on running them for another 30
years. What are you all planning to do there? How do we get
them onboard?
Mr. Sandalow. Thank you for raising the issue, Senator.
It's absolutely fundamental to solving this problem.
You know, the United States is the largest cumulative
emitter of carbon dioxide over the past 100 years.
Senator Manchin. Right.
Mr. Sandalow. With the second largest in the world, but
last year the vast majority of greenhouse gases came from
outside the United States.
Senator Manchin. Absolutely.
Mr. Sandalow. When you say there's no solution without
engaging China and India, one core piece is U.S. leadership.
One thing I hear all the time when I travel is, we think you're
not doing anything on climate change right now because your
political leadership is denying the reality of it. And I say,
that's just not true. Look at the statistics, look at what
we're actually doing. But that type of political outlook is
extremely important.
Then, innovation in low-carbon technologies, I mean when we
produce cheap solar innovations, when we produce innovations in
a variety of other areas, they spread around the world. And
that's going to be a core part of the solution.
Senator Manchin. Let me just interject, if I could----
Mr. Sandalow. Please.
Senator Manchin. ----because our time is running short.
If that is the case and carbon tax, or carbon pricing, a
carbon pricing to find the solution for carbon emission is one
thing. Carbon pricing to basically restructure or redistribute
the wealth and does not find the solution, does not make any
sense to me at all. It just really does not make sense to me
that you are saying we are going to put a carbon price on but
we are not going to use to find the solution. There is no way
that China or Asia is going to use this, because they are not
going to do the same. That is going to be a self-inflicted
wound.
Anybody want to jump in on that?
Ms. Ladislaw. I think there are ways of mitigating the
impact of a carbon price, and it depends on the pricing
mechanism, right? So, cap and dividend is a lot of what people
are focusing on now because----
Senator Manchin. That is popular, give them a price. Okay,
fix the problem.
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, to be honest with you, like, I think
the appropriate way to think about China is that they're both a
leader and a lagger in emissions, right? They emit a ton, but
they're the largest market for low-carbon energy, right?
They're making that market----
Senator Manchin. Unfortunately, they are still emitting
more than we will ever emit. They are polluting more than has
ever been polluted.
Ms. Ladislaw. And I think that that's true.
Senator Manchin. And you think they are going to put a
carbon tax on?
Mr. Sandalow. They have, Senator.
Ms. Ladislaw. They have.
Senator Manchin. They have?
Mr. Sandalow. Yes.
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, they have cap and trade programs and
their demonstration programs and largely, I think, that that's
part of----
Senator Manchin. They won't even run their emissions at
night. They are not even taking--I mean, their nighttime
emissions, look at the emissions they have at night versus day.
Ms. Ladislaw. Right.
So, quick analogy. I'm from New England so I do hockey
analogies, right? And I think part of the challenge on climate
change and technology is to skate to where the puck is going. I
think that they're investing a ton of money in markets that are
about low-carbon technology with----
Senator Manchin. We are talking within a ten-year span, and
the only way you are going to do it is decarbonizing the use of
fossil fuels through technology and more nuclear. That is the
only way I see to quickly get at a ten-year to where we can
save the planet.
Ms. Ladislaw. Sure. Just get them into the market.
Senator Manchin. Go ahead.
Mr. Silverman. Senator, one thing to keep in mind is the
greatest threat to our existing coal facilities is subsidies
because we cannot compete if a state has started handing out
free money to our competitors. That will kill our coal
facilities faster than anything else.
Senator Manchin. Do you mean subsidies to coal plants?
Mr. Silverman. No, not to--subsidies to coal plants,
frankly, don't work either, but for a different reason. But
what I'm talking about are competitors getting subsidies
whether it be renewable or nuclear subsidies.
Senator Manchin. I got you.
Mr. Silverman. They do not work with the competitive
market, and we rely on the competitive market.
So the reason a carbon tax actually is preferable from our
point of view isn't that it's good for coal plants, because
it's not, but what it does is it has a market mechanism that we
can then compete against. And it preserves the integrity of the
existing competitive markets and that actually allows us to
deploy capital in a much more sensible way because, you know,
if we are faced with our competitors, other technologies,
operating basically for free, then there is no more competitive
market. Ratepayers and consumers have lost the benefits. And
you know, I would much rather have a tough competitive market
that I can actually compete in than a market that I can't
compete at all.
Senator Manchin. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Thanks to the panel.
Ms. Ladislaw, I heard a California physicist who switched
from being a climate skeptic to a climate believer say this. He
said, ``When we were little our mothers told us to clean our
plates because the children in India were starving.'' That was
a good thing to do, but it did not help the starving children
in India. He said, ``Climate is a lot the same. We can do
everything here, but the problem is there.''
If you look at the statistics, we have reduced carbon
emissions more than any other country in the last 15 years.
China has tripled. India has doubled. So if we are looking at
the near-term, why wouldn't we try to help the rest of the
world do in the near-term what we have done in the last 15
years?
It seems to me what we have done in the last 15 years is
maintain our nuclear reactors, that is 60 percent of our
carbon-free emissions, and introduced natural gas and
conservation in smokestacks and tailpipes. It looks to me like
natural gas and conservation has been the reason for our
reduction. What can we do in the next near-term to help the
rest of the world do that?
Ms. Ladislaw. There's a lot that we can do. I think selling
other countries our technology, exporting some of the energy
that we produce here is a good example.
I think your focus on if we want nuclear to be part of the
solution, the United States is going to have to work much, much
harder to bring some of those advanced nuclear technologies out
into the field. It's not competitive now, and we're not
competitive internationally to do that. So I think there are a
lot of those, sort of, very smart things that the U.S. can do
to promulgate and, quite frankly, has done that around the
world.
We run a project where we connect U.S. states and Indian
states to try and----
Senator Alexander. Well, why don't they use natural gas and
conservation in India and China?
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, they're trying. I mean----
Senator Alexander. Well, if it worked for us why wouldn't
it work for them?
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, I mean, to be honest with you we've had
the largest surge in natural gas production over a ten-year
period of five.
Senator Alexander. Oh, I know, well why don't they?
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, they would love to if they could.
Senator Alexander. Why can't they?
Ms. Ladislaw. Well, we have a giant industrial base of
natural gas companies and a huge resource here.
Senator Alexander. If you can make money there, can you not
make money in India?
Ms. Ladislaw. Yes, the resource base isn't there in India
for unconventional gas.
Senator Alexander. But I am saying it looks like the
problem is there in the solution.
Mr. Bryce, let me move to nuclear with you. Nuclear is 60
percent of our carbon-free emissions. The estimates are that 15
to 20 of our reactors, of our 100 reactors, will close in the
next ten years. Let's say 30 close. That eliminates, by my
math, 18 percent of our carbon-free emissions. That is the
total amount of carbon-free emissions that wind produces in the
United States after 25 years of billion dollars of subsidy.
So a great many people who are urgently concerned about
climate change are switching their view to say it is really
wrong not to emphasize nuclear.
So you and I believe that. Exactly what should we do in the
next near-term, in addition to the advanced reactors which are
down the road, for results? What should we do to keep 15 to 20
reactors from closing in the next ten years and to producing
more nuclear power in our own country?
Mr. Bryce. It's a very difficult problem, Senator, and Mr.
Silverman and his company is facing this.
I think, to me, one of the simplest ways to address it is
do a contract for difference. If these nuclear plants can show
that they're operating at a loss, subsidize them to the point
where they can compete and/or get made whole in the wholesale
market.
But the U.S. electricity market is extraordinarily
fragmented. There are a lot of players and there is going to be
a lot of opposition to that kind of, call it what it is, a
subsidy.
But I agree with you that if those plants close, they're
going to be replaced by natural gas-fired power plants. I'm
pro-gas but that means an increase in CO2 emissions.
Senator Alexander. Right.
Let me use my last question for Dr. Majumdar.
As you know I have always thought that carbon capture is
the holy grail of what we are talking about because if we ever
could commercially capture it at a cost that mattered and find
something to do with the result of what we had captured, why,
we could burn coal everywhere in the world and since we know
how to deal with sulfur, nitrogen and mercury and that would be
carbon.
You worked on that some at ARPA-E. What did you find? Is
that ever going to happen? I don't mean sequestration. I mean
some other physical, biological invention that I am not smart
enough to know about. Is that ever going to happen?
Dr. Majumdar. Well, Senator Alexander, I think one of the
last reports we wrote as part of Secretary Moniz's Advisory
Board was on exactly this issue--how do you do global carbon
management and carbon capture is absolutely the right in it.
Today if you'd look at a coal-fired power plant and tried
to capture the carbon, it costs about $60 a ton. That needs to
come down to about $30, $20-$30 a ton because there is a market
on carbon for enhanced oil recovery et cetera, which is about
roughly $30. So, if the cost is lower than the price in this
business and so, that needs research, that needs new
technologies to be created.
And so, I think this is absolutely the right thing to do
and, in fact, in talking with India since I go there once a
year, and every time I go there to New Delhi, to meet and talk
to the government and the businesses. They're looking for
technology. They realize that they have to shift. They're
looking at their air pollution, and they realize that they
cannot survive this way.
And so, they're looking for technology and I think if you
look at China and India broadly at an international level, they
look at this 21st century shift and they want to be part of the
supply chain which is going to be a new supply chain. And I
think we need to think strategically to see how we can capture
a large value of the supply chain in the United States and part
of that is technology innovation.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Alexander.
Senator Stabenow.
Senator Stabenow. Well, thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking
Member, for holding another very important and thoughtful
hearing. I really appreciate this, and I appreciate the fact
that we are focusing on the opportunities of addressing climate
change as well as the serious impacts on carbon pollution. I
appreciate we are actually talking about climate change as a
real thing and that we need to actually do something about it
which is a wonderful conversation at least to have.
Given the volatility of the weather, which is getting worse
all the time because of carbon pollution, and what we are
seeing in the atmosphere in the warming of the atmosphere and
holding more snow, holding more rain, I mean all of this is
happening. Coming from a state with a large agricultural
presence I know it is dramatically changing what is happening
for us and not in a good way.
I also just want to raise for us, to me, even though this
obviously is a global issue, it starts with American leadership
which means we should be in the Paris Climate Accord and as a
voluntary leader. But it also means that we are impacted right
now.
We have a disaster assistance bill on the Floor, another
one, billions of dollars. Taxpayers in America are paying. It
is a question of are we going to pay for innovation and jobs or
are we going to pay for picking up the pieces because of all of
the volatility in the weather and what has been happening.
So it is not a surprise that I, coming from Michigan, am
focused on ways in the transportation sector to be able to
address this, as well as other areas. And we know from the
United States' perspective this is the largest source of
emissions.
And so, yesterday I was very pleased with Senator
Alexander's and our peers and Senator Collins to introduce the
Driving America Forward Act to extend the tax credit for the
purchase of electric and fuel cell vehicles. We need to do that
until there is a broad enough adoption that we can actually see
the price come down, which it eventually will, but we do know
that this creates jobs. It is creating jobs in my home State of
Michigan and is a very important part of the all-of-the-above
structure.
Let me just say that electric vehicles can reduce carbon
pollution by up to 70 percent and as the power sector becomes
more increasingly green, life cycle emissions will drop
further. This is a good thing.
Also, hydrogen fuel cells, I don't think we have focused
enough in that area. I know that we have global competitors in
China and Japan that are investing heavily and have even
shorter refueling times and longer driving ranges for electric
vehicles.
I do want to say on the hydrogen fuel cell, and because
this is part of our legislation, when I talk hydrogen fuel
cells people often think of the Hindenburg and we are not
talking about dangerous fuel here. In fact, in many ways, it is
safer than gasoline. The army now, in Michigan, tactical, our
U.S. Army research arm is working with the Department of Energy
on developing fuel cell tactical vehicles, and that is very
exciting to see what they are doing.
So when we look at this, but my concern--let me just ask
Mr. Sandalow, when we look at how we bring down the cost in
terms of deployment and so on, we know that the battery
accounts for about 30 percent or more of the cost right now in
an electric vehicle. And in fact, McKinsey is reporting today
that about the importance of lowering battery cost. I am
wondering for yourself and Mr. Majumdar, how can Congress, the
Federal Government, speed up the commercialization of this? I
mean, we are hearing that it could be 20 years before we see
the research necessary on battery technology. That is just not
fast enough.
Mr. Sandalow. Senator, thank you for the question.
I think the bill you submitted yesterday is a great start
on this. I think one of the lessons from our experience with
the reduction of costs of solar power is that scale makes a big
difference. Once these technologies are deployed in large
volume, the costs come down.
Senator Stabenow. Right.
Mr. Sandalow. And the same thing is going to be true with
electric vehicle batteries. I've seen projections that are more
optimistic than the one you just related.
Senator Stabenow. Good.
Mr. Sandalow. Projections that say that the purchase price
of electric vehicles is going to be competitive with the
purchase price of comparable conventional vehicles in the
middle part of the next decade.
Already electric vehicles are probably cost competitive on
a total cost of ownership basis over the life of a vehicle
because it's cheaper to drive on electricity than on fuel. But
people don't buy cars that way. They look at the sticker price.
And so, once we get that purchase price comparable, it's going
to make a big difference. And so, I think deployment policies
are what's absolutely central here.
Senator Stabenow. Well, let me just add that infrastructure
is also absolutely critical because right now people want to
know how are they going to be able to charge their vehicle. If
they can do that at work and they can feel comfortable at home,
I think we will see much more rapid deployment.
I know I am out of time but Mr. Majumdar, I am not sure, I
am so sorry if I am pronouncing that incorrectly. If you just
had a sentence or two you wanted to add to that in terms of
what we should be doing?
Dr. Majumdar. I think with any new technology, as we do
more, the cost comes down. That's the learning curve. And
sometimes initially it is a little too high, maybe just maybe a
little higher and cannot compete. So, they need a first market.
I come from Silicon Valley and people think Silicon Valley
was created by venture capitalists. It's wrong. It was created
by the Dean of Engineering of Stanford, Fred Thurman, who used
to work in the Department of Defense during the World War. When
he went back to Stanford, he asked the Department of Defense to
create the market for the Hewletts and the Packards, et cetera.
So the government has a role to play to create the first
market. We are the biggest, the government is the biggest user
for energy in the United States. And I think if you could use
that power, the market demand power to bring down, to increase
the scale and bring down the cost in the United States, you
will then see the supply chain of manufacturing, et cetera, to
be established out here. And I think that's one that should be
on the table as we speak about this.
Senator Stabenow. Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Cassidy.
Senator Cassidy. You know I am a physician so I look at
things empirically. I have to admit that some of what has been
said does not seem, and I mean this by no offense, some of what
has been said does not seem to empirically hold up.
I mention that because this is such an important issue and
it can't be, kind of, don't we wish this would be reality. It
has to be the reality.
I will point out that if you look at that portion of our
usage which is the industrial base of the grid, that is mobile.
If you increase the cost of their input, they move and they
move their jobs overseas. Indeed, since 1994 when the EU cap
and trade and the U.S. regulatory system began on carbon,
industry moved to China. And the increase in emissions by China
exceeds the decreases in the EU and the U.S. put together.
Carbon leakage. And you can see what happened in Great
Britain. They have achieved their success principally by the
employment of natural gas versus coal and by carbon leakage.
Now carbon leakage means you are moving to China which has coal
at 63 percent of its fuel base despite voluntary, voluntary,
voluntary regional cap and trade systems to China which
continues to build, I think they are building coal-fired
plants, not only in their own country but in 17 other countries
simultaneously. They show no true commitment to this.
And a carbon tax? We would have to have a border adjustment
carbon tax aside from WTO problems, empirically this is going
to be complicated because of international supply chains.
Let me just say that is a preamble because this is too
important to, kind of, hope. It has to be something embedded in
empiricism, and empirically, frankly, Mr. Bryce, you seem to
have it most.
No offense, sir, but if we look back and said 15 years ago,
we are going to have a national, not market driven, but a
national kind of priority, natural gas was $13 per MCF 15 years
ago. Natural gas would not have been part of your fuel base
because at that time industry was moving their fertilizer
plants to Chile because they could not afford $13 per MCF. Now
it is $2.50 and that same natural gas plant is moving back. So
I think empirically, I think market forces are going to be that
which is most.
And the renewables, it depends on how you define renewable.
I understand renewable can be nuclear because it is always
there. It can be natural gas because, gosh, it always comes out
of the ground. It could be wind and solar. But I think I know
the physics limit the solar and wind from achieving anything
beyond a marginal improvement in generation.
Mr. Bryce, any kind of comment on that?
Mr. Bryce. Well, just a couple ones which is that when
you're talking about, I have solar panels on the roof of my
house. I have eight kilowatts of solar on the roof of my house.
Solar is growing and growing rapidly. I'm bullish on solar. But
it still has major land requirements.
Wind energy, they're reaching the limit. It's known as the
Betz limit in physics which limits the amount of energy they
can harness from the wind. So the only way to dramatically
increase energy production from wind energy is by increasing
the footprint of the wind turbines.
And as I testified, this backlash against the wind energy's
encroachment is happening coast to coast and it's happening in
my home State of Oklahoma. I talked to the Mayor of Hinton,
Oklahoma, three days ago. They got sued by Next Air Energy
because they passed an ordinance that prohibited the
construction of wind turbines within two miles of their town's
borders.
Senator Cassidy. So, let----
Mr. Bryce. They beat Next Air but I agree with you, sir, in
terms of the growth of natural gas it's really a truly American
success story.
Just to give you a couple of quick metrics. Just the growth
in gas production in the U.S. from 2005 to today is roughly 44
billion cubic feet per day. That's two times Iran's gas output.
It's four times Saudi Arabia's output.
Senator Cassidy. So the degree to which the U.S. exports
natural gas and coal use, India and China use our natural gas
versus their coal, is the degree to which we will achieve
significant decreases in global greenhouse gas emissions.
By the way, let me also point out that if you look at the
academic journals, all of China's coal-fired plants on the
Pacific Coast emit SOX and NOX that blows
over the Pacific and lands on our Pacific Coast. The idea that
we are going to somehow increase the price of energy on the
grid and industry will not move to China and we won't have
SOX and NOX blowing over on our country,
I think, empirically is wrong. So I do think natural gas is the
way to go.
Let me also say, I have never done this before, Madam
Chair. I would like to submit a YouTube video for the record.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Are we capable of receiving that?
Senator Cassidy. I don't know that.
[Laughter.]
[YouTube video transcript from Michael Shellenberger
follows.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Cassidy. It is by Michael Shellenberger who was
formerly involved with the Obama Administration, who now goes
on and says, listen if we are going to achieve a carbon-free
future it cannot be solar and wind because the footprint
required is requiring destruction of Joshua Tree, pulling
turtles out of the ground, all of whom die, and cutting the
forest and that that footprint cannot be expanded much further.
Therefore, he, if you will, working with the Obama
Administration, has said that we cannot go in that direction if
we wish to achieve our goals. That said, thank you all for your
testimony and I appreciate it.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator. We will figure out how we
put that video into the record. But thank you for that.
Let's go to Senator Hirono.
Senator Hirono. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Majumdar, sorry, we seem to be doing damage to your
name, I apologize.
I was particularly taken by the portion of your testimony
that really points to a sense of urgency that we should have
and particularly when you note that climate change is resulting
in extreme weather conditions such as extreme heat and cold,
droughts, excessive rainfall and we certainly saw that on the
island of Kauai where more rainfall fell on that island in a 24
hour period than in the entire history of our country. That is
saying a lot. The President had to declare a national disaster
declaration. So, flooding, all of that.
And that a rise of the temperature, average temperature to
two degrees Centigrade, and we are at 1.2 degrees Centigrade
right now, would be devastating to the world and, by your
calculation, it would just take us another 20 years to get to
the point of a two-degree Centigrade temperature. And then
thereafter, the emissions must be zero. So I think that the
sense of urgency is there.
You noted in your testimony also that research alone is not
sufficient to bring innovative technologies from the laboratory
to a commercial scale where they can benefit people. Do you
think the Department of Energy should support demonstrations,
demonstrations of new technologies to improve the performance
of the electric power grid to handle large amounts of renewable
power, energy storage, electric vehicles and other needs?
Dr. Majumdar. Senator, that's a great question.
I think that, so Department of Energy, in terms of ARPA-E,
the applied energy program, energy and sciences, they're
supporting research.
When it comes to demonstration, I think we should look at
the needs of our states. We should look at the energy
requirements and the diversity of what's required, because
there's no one solution to climate change, as we all know. We
have a diversity of solutions and there's a diversity of needs.
I think we should use the states' needs and create federal-
state partnerships with the private sector to create the
environment for demonstration projects so that they actually
prove out and de-risk the technologies so that then the markets
can look at that and say that that's what we want, not just
U.S. markets but international ones. So I think we should use a
leverage of states to demonstrate, to create demonstration
projects.
Senator Hirono. I think that is a very good point and, in
fact, there are a number of bills that would support public-
private partnerships to demonstrate, for example, innovative
grid technologies so the grid can accommodate more renewables.
We are always told by the utilities that their grids cannot
accommodate more renewables, so that is really an area that I
think we should focus on and I have a bill to do just that,
strangely enough. But I do thank the Chair for including such
demonstration grants in her Energy and Natural Resources Act
last Congress.
Mr. Silverman, you spoke about using a carbon tax and Ms.
Ladislaw, you spoke about a national clean energy standard to
provide a way to recognize that we shouldn't allow fossil fuel
plants to continue emitting carbon pollution for free. What are
your views on applying a cap and trade system to set a limit on
carbon pollution?
Mr. Silverman. So we are very much in favor of an economy-
wide carbon price, because it's very difficult to have
competition across sectors if you don't have some common
language. So, we do think that makes a lot of sense.
In terms of in the electricity sector, you know, we really
do think the low-hanging fruit is choice. Let people buy it if
they want. Senator Heinrich left, but businesses are actually
some of our biggest customers demanding green power.
Senator King. Heinrich is right here.
Mr. Silverman. I'm sorry, Mr.----
Senator Hirono. Cassidy.
Mr. Silverman. Apologies. Thank you.
So, anyway, businesses are some of our best customers who
want green power and, you know, not everywhere in the country
can they buy it and that's very frustrating.
Now in terms of cap and trade we could, you know, this
panel could go on forever talking about the various benefits of
putting a price on carbon, absolutely. We tend to think that
you actually have to make a policy choice between the lowest
carbon grid tomorrow in which case a price on carbon is very,
very effective or are you really interested in driving
investment directly to zero carbon resources? Those are two
different policy outcomes.
If you want the lowest carbon grid tomorrow, absolutely put
a price on carbon. But if your goal is to drive investment in
clean tech, actually it's a more direct subsidy or more direct
means of getting it if you establish a market that values the
clean energy attribute and then says, okay, we're open for
business. Any technology that wants to come in can compete,
because, of course, the climate doesn't care where we're
getting our clean megawatts from. And so, we really do like
having that direct price signal where the money goes directly
to support clean energy investment as opposed to a carbon tax
but we're very much in favor of sort of using both tools in
conjunction where the use case makes sense.
Senator Hirono. Madam Chair, could I ask Ms. Ladislaw to
also give us her comments?
Ms. Ladislaw. Sure. I think a carbon tax, cap and trade
system clean energy standard, there's public policy ways of
designing each of these programs to meet a variety of different
needs. So I have no problem with the cap and trade program.
I think there's a little, there's more in just today in,
sort of, a tax and dividend scheme because it speaks to paying
people back, right? And there's a concern that the tax, the
increased cost for energy might harm people. And so, it really
just is about priorities. And we've seen different states have
cap and trade programs and they work well.
I think that the issue is we really need to kind of pick
one and do it in earnest because a lot of time has been wasted
sort of debating about the mechanisms and we, kind of, just
need to do something.
Senator Hirono. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. I am going to stay on the same thing and
just first start, I am curious how many of you agree that
putting a price on carbon pollution either indirectly or
directly is a good thing? Anybody no? Okay. That is not bad.
That is not 100 percent, but 80 percent is pretty good.
When it comes to if we put a price on carbon and in
particular, Mr. Silverman and then also Ms. Ladislaw, that next
step of how to use that price because one step is introducing
the price on carbon. The next step is, is it a tax? If it is a
tax then you use that to fund government. If it is a dividend
or a fee, it goes someplace else next, either back to a
consumer, for example, where you target it to the most exposed
energy consumers to make sure that they don't bear the price of
us cleaning up our grid or it goes someplace like into research
or into the transitioning the workforce.
So do you have strong opinions on what that next step
should look like?
Mr. Silverman. Yeah, well, I have a 15-page version
attached to my testimony. I'd be happy to talk about it more.
Where you sort of start getting really wonky, it's about
setting up a market structure that delivers what we need at the
least possible cost. Our wholesale markets, overseen by FERC,
are just viciously competitive.
Senator Heinrich. Absolutely. I hear where you are going
with that, but so what we are doing up here is we are trying to
marry what the economists all agree on with what the world of
the political possible is and also trying to avoid, you know,
what Macron just went through in France where the wrong people
bore the cost of that transition.
Mr. Silverman. Yeah.
No, and my only point about the competitive markets is the
FERC angle has been completely ignored.
Senator Heinrich. Absolutely, yes.
Mr. Silverman. We have basically sidelined the people who
are the best market designers in the world.
Senator Heinrich. And that brings me to transmission which
I disagree with this footprint issue. I mean, we have a lot of
footprint to offer in New Mexico, and we are happy to sell
clean power all day long to hungry markets.
We have one wind project that is about to break ground that
is over half a megawatt or half a gigawatt, excuse me, not to
mention all of the other projects in the pipeline right now.
But maybe one of the biggest challenges here is that there
are very long lead times for actually creating the transmission
to be able to marry those projects with where the demand is. Do
you have strong opinions on what we ought to be doing on
transmission right now?
Mr. Silverman. You know, I will just say, a little bit like
a broken record, but competitive markets because if there is
the cheapest way to----
Senator Heinrich. The market failure there is where we hear
about these issues where one state in between the market that
wants to sell and the market that wants to buy says no. So
there has to be some sort of backstop approach to this that
addresses when the market failure exists.
Mr. Silverman. I think that would be great but, and here's
the but. Let's take the grid as it is and say if we put an
appropriate market in place and let private capital and
companies fight those battles because if we say that carbon is
particularly valuable in this place or that there is a, you
know, a set pot of dollars that we can go out and finance
against, the private capital will find a way. I mean, it's
never pretty, but that's okay. And if the technology is less
expensive, if wind is less expensive in one place and
transmission in another, we need to have a price that lets the
market----
Senator Heinrich. If one state or one municipality, someone
along the way, is not sharing in that, is not a participant in
that market, they can just say no. Right now, we have a failure
as a result of that.
I am curious, maybe switching gears a little bit to Mr.
Majumdar, long-term storage, getting beyond the four-hour
lithium-ion place that we are now. What are you most excited
about? Is it compressed cryogenic air? What are you seeing in
that space that is going to be the next extended, long-term,
even seasonal solution to storage?
Dr. Majumdar. Well, I mean, the question is a great
question. What should be the cost of storage if you want to do
multi-day storage which if you are at 80 percent renewables or
70 percent, you will need that.
Senator Heinrich. Have to, yes.
Dr. Majumdar. And that is on the order of about $10 to $20
a kilowatt-hour because we're not going to use it enough in
cycles of it to pay it off. And that's about a factor of ten
lower than lithium-ion batteries. So lithium-ion battery is not
going to cut it.
Senator Heinrich. Yes.
Dr. Majumdar. And the cheapest way to store electricity at
that cost level is pump hydro. And then we have compressed air.
Those are scalable things.
Senator Heinrich. Right.
Dr. Majumdar. If you're looking at batteries,
electrochemical batteries that are coming onboard, there are
lots of very exciting things that are happening. Iron sulfur
batteries, these are low cost of materials, cost of bill of
material batteries. They are still in R&D. Some of them are in
the pilot stage.
Senator Heinrich. Right.
Dr. Majumdar. Many of them funded by ARPA-E when I was
there. And so, I think that's the pipeline that you've seen
coming onboard. It's actually very positive, but we should not
ignore pump hydro and compressed air.
Senator Heinrich. Great. Thanks.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Heinrich.
Senator King.
Senator King. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am loving this
hearing. I really appreciate your putting it together.
A little bit of background. I spent most of my adult life
in energy. I have worked, I have made my living in hydro,
biomass, energy efficiency and wind, so this is very familiar
to me.
The first thing I want to say is I want to match, I want to
see Senator Cassidy's video and raise him by a map.
[Laughter.]
Senator King. And the map is called----
The Chairman. We can handle maps.
Senator King. The map is called ``Nobody Lives Here.''
[Nobody Lives Here Map follows.]
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator King. Forty-seven percent of the census tracks in
the United States have zero population. I urge him, if he
thinks we are out of room for solar and wind projects, to look
down when he is flying home to Louisiana tonight. To say that
there is no place for these projects to go just, you know, as
much as I love the Senator from Louisiana, that just does not
pass the straight face test.
Secondly, my experience in energy is there is no free
lunch. Every form of energy has some drawback, some questions,
some cost, whether it is environmental or economic, and I
understand that.
It seems to me though that Senator Heinrich's last
question, there are several really important goals here.
One is storage. Storage unlocks enormous potential for
renewables. And by the way, the other place Senator Cassidy
ought to look is in the Gulf of Mexico, the offshore wind has
enormous potential, higher capacity factor, higher efficiency,
larger turbines, less environmental impact, less neighbors
impact. So, enormous potential. But storage unlocks huge
potential for solar and wind.
Number two is efficiency. The cheapest, cleanest kilowatt-
hour of all is the one that is not used. My experience in the
energy efficiency business is the problem is energy efficiency
investments have insufficient return in and of themselves at a
fairly low energy cost. There has to be some subsidy. My
suggestion is that utilities could pay customers to do energy
efficiency which would lower their cost of acquiring new power.
In other words, new energy efficiency is a ``negawatt,'' if you
will.
Carbon capture, I think, is also critical. We have this
huge coal resource. We have huge energy resources. Carbon
capture has got to be part of the future, it seems to me.
Number four is nuclear. I agree with you, Mr. Bryce. I
think the problem I have is not, and you said something that,
sort of, piqued me. Right now, it is not affordable. I mean, it
just isn't. The cost per megawatt of installing a new nuclear
plant is just not comparable even to any other technology and
sitting next to this lady, we have to figure out what to do
with the waste. It is not responsible for our generation to say
we are going to solve our climate problem by building nuclear
plants, and we are going to let you guys and our children and
grandchildren deal with the waste. This government made a
commitment to dealing with waste 70 years ago. They have not
done it, and that is one of my problems with going whole hog
into nuclear. But I do think, clearly, the new generation, if
it comes, smaller, scalable, those kinds of solutions are
important.
Number five, for me, is research and innovation. Got it,
that we have all agreed on that. The shale revolution, in part,
came out of research at the Department of Energy and if we can
have similar research that brings us innovations like that in
batteries, we are in business. I mean, that is a big deal and I
think we need to appreciate that.
Finally, the point you all have made, and if you could find
a question in here, by the way, you are welcome to it.
[Laughter.]
Number six is it does have to be an international solution.
CO2 does not respect boundaries. And if we do
everything we possibly can, which I think we should, but India
and China do not, then we are still not going to solve this
problem. By the way, to put a fine point on the problem, we are
now at 410 parts per million of CO2. First time in
three million years we have been there. And the last time we
were there, the oceans were 60 feet higher. I mean, to me that
sort of captures where we are. So, I think, we have to be
talking about all of these things.
I am a little bit worried about a carbon tax because my
fear is that a carbon tax would be just high enough to be
annoying and not high enough to change behavior. All the data I
have seen is people, and we have lived through it, people are
not going to stop driving until gas goes up a dollar or two a
gallon. And nobody is talking about a carbon tax that would
have that level of increase. Yet we would be taking, it is a
regressive tax in a sense that we would be taking out of
consumers.
You found a question. Answer.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Senator King, we were waiting for that
question.
[Laughter.]
Senator King. Well, I figured if I threw enough out there--
--
The Chairman. We were going to give you a little extra
time. You found it there.
Senator King. Yeah, okay, alright. Go for it.
Ms. Ladislaw. I was just going to offer two really quick
things.
Yes, you're right, it's a well put concern about a carbon
tax. It can't do everything and it can do some things and you
can design it to not be regressive.
The most regressive thing about climate change is the
impacts. That is absolutely the case. Everything else you can,
sort of, design to be a little bit better.
And I think your point on global leadership is really
important. I think if we use empirical evidence about why we're
doing something and other people aren't to block action, it
doesn't make answering the problem any easier.
Senator King. No, and that is why leaving the Paris Climate
Accord was a disaster because that, at least, was global
leadership. It was non-binding, but at least put us out there
with the rest of the world. Now we are saying to them, we are
not worried about it. You do not have to worry about it.
Anyway, thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator King. I don't usually make speeches here, you have
to admit, but----
The Chairman. But this is just one of those hearings where
there is a level of thought that is provoked and any time you
have good thought being provoked, this is, again, this is a
Committee that is taking on these issues because they demand
some considered thought and, perhaps, provocative discussions.
Senator King. Thank you for your tolerance.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Barrasso, you are up next but if you would like a
breather, we can turn to Senator Cortez Masto? It is your call.
Senator Barrasso. Well, thank you very much, Madam
Chairman.
The Chairman. He is ready.
Senator Barrasso. I am ready to go, and I am very thankful
to you and to Ranking Member Manchin for holding this hearing
today because technological advancements have always improved
our quality of life in this country and advancements in energy
are certainly no exception.
When I first arrived in the Senate over a decade ago, you
and I worked along with Jeff Bingaman, who was a Democrat and
Chairman of this Committee, in a bipartisan way. We introduced
something called the GEAR Act. Is it? Over a decade ago, a bill
to----
The Chairman. What did it stand for?
Senator Barrasso. I will tell you that in a second.
[Laughter.]
Because it was very good.
But it was designed to remove greenhouse--we have high paid
staff that come up with these names and then it stands for
something.
The Chairman. Yes.
Senator Barrasso. But the idea was to remove greenhouse gas
emissions from the atmosphere. We had a hearing in EPW last
week about the advances in technology over the last decade to
be able to do that. So it has been a big deal.
And just yesterday the Senate Committee on Environment and
Public Works unanimously passed something called the USE IT Act
which stands for something different. Again, it is bipartisan,
it is bicameral--it promotes carbon capture, utilization, and
storage.
Certainly there is a lot of momentum behind carbon capture
and I really look forward to working with both of you and all
the colleagues to quickly pass this kind of legislation to
promote the development of carbon capture technologies. As we
continue to pursue carbon capture and other innovations to
address greenhouse gas emissions, I think it is important that
all discoveries, all findings and failures are shared
throughout the research community so people can know what
worked, what did not work and where we ought to be then
focusing the next level of research.
So in the past, federal research has not always been
available to private researchers. I had a visit with Bill
Gates, and he was trying to say how do you get more
information? How do we get shared information? And I think
sometimes this lack of communication among researchers presents
a risk of duplicating ongoing efforts. You are shaking your
heads up and down so I will start, maybe run the panel. How do
we ensure transparency among researchers to ensure that we do
not waste time and money, both are critical resources, with how
we spent this on complementing each other on improving the
research instead of duplicating it?
We will run down the panel.
Dr. Majumdar. Sure. As I said before, having been the first
Director of ARPA-E and then also the Acting Under Secretary
with all the applied energy programs, I think there's
tremendous value in looking at increasing the budget. We had an
ARPA-E hearing where I said that the ARPA-E budget ought to be
on the order of $1 billion.
But also look at the effectiveness, not just of ARPA-E but
the applied energy program, Basic Energy Sciences. I think
that's the fundamental base, the foundation of everything. We
have to look at how our entrepreneurial spirit is ignited with
this.
I think creating market demand, we talked about this
earlier as well, of how, you know, I'm from Silicon Valley and
people think that Silicon Valley was created by the venture
capitalists. That's wrong.
It was created because the Department of Defense wanted to
buy things of new technologies. And I think we should be
looking at the biggest energy user in the country which is the
U.S. Government, to see how to look at energy efficiency in
buildings, new kinds of fuels, new electrification of batteries
so that these technologies come down on the cost curve and
become competitive, not just in the United States, but around
the world.
So I think there's a whole--we have to look at it
holistically, not just innovation out here, policy over there,
just combining.
Senator Barrasso. And to that point, in a second, Mr.
Silverman.
If you cannot do it worldwide the impact is nothing because
emissions in the United States are actually going down where
they are going up in China and in India and around the world.
But if you shut off the United States completely, it would not
make the kind of----
Dr. Majumdar. It's a $10 trillion per year export market
that we're talking about, because the rest of the world is
looking for technology.
Senator Barrasso. Sure.
Mr. Silverman?
Mr. Silverman. I love the order we're going in because
we're the customers who take the technology that ARPA-E and
others develop and then we, sort of, take it to the next stage
whether it's through something like the carbon capture system
down at Parish or the Ivanpah facility which is the largest
concentrated solar facility in the world, but we also take a
lot of other technologies.
And you know, I love going to pitch meetings with people
who come out of ARPA-E because they always have such
fascinating ideas. And you know, the thing that we often lack,
the thing that prevents us from taking those and really running
with them and making them commercial isn't the technology. It's
the lack of a comprehensive, long-term price signal because
it's really hard to take capital and deploy it if you don't
know what the market is going to look like if you don't have a
financeable price signal that you're being sent.
And so, a lot of this, you know, I almost don't care what
the technology of the future is, because a competitive market
that sends the right price signal and says, hey, we want more
of this attribute and we're willing to pay for it. That will
get at the right technology. And so, when we think about it,
that's what we're looking for and that's what we really lack in
today's markets.
Senator Barrasso. Ms. Ladislaw?
Ms. Ladislaw. I thought Secretary Moniz and Secretary
Dabbar both had great ideas about how to increase transparency
and cooperation within the research structure.
Just as a simple observation, I think anything that's like
an XPRIZE or a grand challenge or something that, sort of,
organizes researchers against a challenge, kind of just
naturally brings out what are people doing relative to one
another and draws in the private sector. So I think more things
like that are really proven to be quite effective.
Senator Barrasso. That is exactly what the GEAR Act was
about, a gear, an XPRIZE to make carbon productivity.
And--yes?
Mr. Sandalow. Three points, Senator.
First, engage globally. You're 100 percent right. There's
no solution to this problem unless we do that. That means not
just being part of the Paris process, but engaging robustly in
the Paris process. It means participating in other processes,
like the Clean Energy Ministerial, that help to disseminate
these technologies around the world.
Second, plan. Planning is a real gap in this country. Other
countries do a much better job than we do. And having served as
Acting Under Secretary at the Department of Energy, I think the
applied programs working with Congress can do a much better job
of long-term planning with assistance from Congress.
And then third, deploy. There is no long-term, real cost
reduction for many of these technologies unless they're being
deployed in the private sector. We need the policy framework
that gets them out into the marketplace.
Senator Barrasso. Mr. Bryce?
Mr. Bryce. Yes, sir, Senator. I'll give you a slightly
different answer.
I think these energy technologies are diffusing around the
world with remarkable speed without much government assistance.
Just finished shooting a documentary called, ``Juice: How
electricity explains the world.'' I was in Lebanon about 18
months ago. I was in the Chouf Mountains, southeast of Beirut,
and I saw 100 kilowatts of Chinese solar panels that were
capturing Lebanese sunlight that was being stored in lead acid
batteries that were designed in Bulgaria and manufactured in
India. So there's a robust international marketplace for all
kinds of energy technologies, and in my view, these are
diffusing very rapidly because there's a market for them.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
Mr. Sandalow. If I could, Senator?
That cheap solar panel is cheap because the German
government over the course of ten years deeply subsidized the
purchase and the Chinese government deeply subsidized solar
manufacturing and because this government, over the course of
many years, was a leader in research and a variety of other
government factors. So to say that solar panels are deploying
around the world because governments are staying away is not
really the full story.
Senator Barrasso. Madam Chairman----
Mr. Bryce. I'll just say that's not my point.
Senator Barrasso. Regrettably, my time is expired.
But Madam Chairman, just to tickle both of our memories,
the GEAR Act stood for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Atmospheric
Removal Act, and I submit that as part of the record.
[Laughter.]
[Details of the GEAR Act follow.]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. That is worthy of submission. We will have to
re-up that one.
[Laughter.]
Thank you, Senator, and I appreciate the exchange here.
Senator Cortez Masto.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
First of all, let me thank the Chairwoman and the Ranking
Member for this great discussion, so appreciated. And thank you
all for being here.
I am from Nevada and let me just say I appreciate the
conversation--not just about the solar and the wind but we have
geothermal, we have hydropower. That is an important part of
our energy portfolio.
Let me ask you this because I do not disagree with what I
hear today. I think we are all, kind of, talking about the same
thing which is you can have a diverse energy portfolio but our
stated outcome with that is to reduce our carbon footprint.
Would you all agree with that? Yes? Yes, everyone is nodding
their head yes.
Dr. Majumdar. And affordability.
Senator Cortez Masto. And affordability, correct, right.
But that is the ultimate goal here.
Let me ask you this--and because we have pulled out of the
Paris Climate Exchange, because we are not engaging globally
now--do you think this country, the United States, should not
or stop reducing its carbon footprint? Does anybody believe
that? I don't think anybody agrees with that.
Mr. Sandalow. It's absolutely imperative that we continue
to reduce our carbon footprint and that the whole globe do
that.
I mean, we've talked a little bit in this area, not a lot,
about the urgency of climate change. I mean, we are already
experiencing the dangers of climate change. It's unbelievable
the amount of flooding, severe storms, fires that we've
experienced in this country and around the world. Unless we
jump on this problem now, those risks are going to be even
worse in the decades to come.
Senator Cortez Masto. Right, and I agree. I think we can
lead, and this country should be leading in this direction.
The other thing is, I think at a federal level, we should
be investing at a federal level in this new technology. ARPA-E
is incredible where I think there is that partnership between
the Federal Government and the private sector.
I guess my question for you, and I am going to butcher your
name, Doctor, Dr. Majumdar?
Dr. Majumdar. That is perfect.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, sorry.
In your testimony you mentioned a handful of potential
innovative solutions to address climate change such as grid-
scale storage, modular nuclear reactors, we have talked about
that, decarbonizing, industrial heat processes and others. Can
you discuss the intersection of what is needed from a policy
perspective to ramp up such technologies and how can we better
facilitate the development in them and deployment?
Dr. Majumdar. Senator, that's a great question, and I think
we have to look at it holistically.
It is absolutely critical to invest in the research, this
foundational science and energy research, that the Department
of Energy invests in and support them. It's also very important
to get the right people in the Department of Energy to be the
best stewards of this and that depends, of course, on the
Executive Branch.
I think it is also important to create, as was discussed,
the markets for these new technologies, otherwise it's very
difficult for these new technologies to be able to get in there
because they need a little bit of health initially.
And whether it's a price, whether it's standards, I think
we can discuss that, but I think we need some kind of pull on
the other side of the value chain. In between, we need
infrastructure. And I think, I can't overemphasize how
important that is.
There was a question from Senator Heinrich about
transmission lines. We are not very good at building
transmission lines. That requires the Federal Government and
the state governments and the local jurisdictions to partner
together to expedite and streamline this process. Otherwise, we
can put all the wind farms up but if you can't get the
electricity to the places where the people live--it's all about
the people at the end of the day----
Senator Cortez Masto. Right.
Dr. Majumdar. ----then we are not doing a good job. It's
not optimal.
So I would say paying attention to the infrastructure,
paying attention to the capital requirements to build
infrastructure, to bring in private capital, to use the federal
dollars to be able to leverage and maybe create a little bit of
a competitive spirit amongst the states who can deliver. And
that's the kind of way to draw that in, to bring in these new
technologies, test them out, put them, deploy them and then if
you can lead that in the world, that creates the international
market where everyone is looking for technologies in the
future.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you to the panel. I appreciate the
conversation this morning.
The Chairman. Thank you.
This has been good discussions and good debate going on.
There has been a little bit of discussion on the efficiency
side. I think you pointed out in your monologue there or
soliloquy or whatever it was.
Senator Manchin. It was in there somewhere.
The Chairman. It was in there somewhere.
But the focus that what we do not spend is, in fact,
probably our wisest energy source here.
This is not a budget hearing, but we have been in the midst
of budget hearings. I am on the Approps Committee, so we have
been looking critically at those parts of the budget, whether
it is in DOE or other parts, where I think we can be making a
difference when it comes to our missions.
When I see programs such as the Weatherization Assistance
Program being zeroed out, it just causes me to, I guess there
is a level of frustration there because it is seemingly the
easy things. Maybe it is because we think we do not need to be
doing the easy things anymore.
We talk a lot around here about let's go after the low-
hanging fruit, and I think sometimes we think that if it is too
small we are not making a difference, we have not addressed the
urgency of now that you all speak to.
Can you share with us your observations in this regard that
doing a little bit every day, maybe this incremental, I think
you said, Ms. Ladislaw, moderate climate policy need not be
mediocre which I think is well said.
But we are kind of dealing with the rhetoric around here.
We have a Green New Deal that is out there that is going to be
everything to everybody. We are going to be 100 percent
renewable in a couple decades. It makes it all sound so easy.
Then people come to us and say, well why haven't you made it
happen? So some of this is about managing expectations while at
the same time we are pushing ourselves on a daily basis.
But can we have a couple minutes of discussion about why it
is also important not to overlook the smaller, more incremental
things that clearly are making a difference there? And I throw
it out to any of you.
Mr. Silverman. I'll go ahead and start.
I love energy efficiency because it is such a cost-
effective, commonsense, you know, it's what I tell my daughter,
right? Shut the light off when you leave the room.
The Chairman. It's what everybody can contribute.
Mr. Silverman. Absolutely.
But here's the business model challenge that my company
faces when we try to drive energy efficiency spend because we
go in and we're competing with the utility monopoly and they
don't want to give us access to the meters. They don't want to
give us access to the customers. We can do on bill financing of
energy efficiency improvements.
These problems actually have been solved in one state which
is Texas where they actually have really restricted the utility
to being the monopoly utility to being the poles and wires
company and the rest of us are out there in the market doing
really crazy, fun, interesting energy efficiency retail demand
response products.
We actually compete with other competitive suppliers on who
has the best rate for retail demand response, you know, where
we send out a text message and if you reduce your electricity
over the next hour, you get paid.
I mean, these are the kind of innovative products, but
really outside of Texas, our ability to compete to provide
those products and take them to consumers and market to
consumers is either restricted or entirely non-existent.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Mr. Sandalow. Senator, my favorite energy efficiency
investment are white roofs, cool roofs. They are so simple and
so cheap and so low tech, but in warm climates, simply painting
your roof white will save a lot in terms of air conditioning.
Some places do it, some places don't. There are lots of other
examples of that type of investment that we can make.
Senator Manchin. How about black roofs in real cold areas?
Mr. Sandalow. Don't know if that helps, Senator.
The Chairman. Well, I do know that it has impact on the
wind turbines, the color that you paint the blade to keep them
from icing is darker blades.
Mr. Sandalow. It's just a great example of the type of
simple changes that we can make. And you know, I think we also
need to be doing leading R&D on things like carbon fiber
materials that are very lightweight that can be used in
vehicles to save energy. I mean, there's lots of high-tech
research to be needed, but also just some very simple things we
can do and government policies can help to push those out into
the marketplace.
The Chairman. Ms. Ladislaw?
Ms. Ladislaw. So, just very quickly on the psychology of
the issue, right?
We're not going to be done with this climate problem,
right? So the idea that we do a thing and that it's solved,
we're behind. And the volume and the magnitude of the Green New
Deal isn't wrong, we're just that behind.
But we need to do like an improv class approach, right? A
lot less of the ``no, but'' and a lot more of the ``yes, and''
because we just have to build momentum. That's really key to a
lot of these solutions.
So on energy efficiency it really does make a lot of sense.
It is one of those areas where a price on carbon may not,
doesn't make that much of a difference and you know, when we
have the government shutdown, right? We really learned how very
close the American public lives to not having enough money to
pay their bills. Even if efficiency makes sense, they don't
have the cash to do it.
So if we're going to make, sort of, you know, progress on
some of those issues, we need to have this consistent, let's
learn from what has worked, let's learn from what hasn't worked
and let's keep going and sort of keep revisiting these things
because if we're going to re-engineer the entire economy to be
net zero if we're going to tackle the carbon management side of
this problem. And that's not resilience. So yes, and keep doing
stuff that's working, revisit it on a regular basis. The small
stuff really does add up.
The Chairman. Senator Manchin, do you want to step in?
Senator Manchin. I just want to say that first of all, I
appreciate it, this has been a wonderful, informative
discussion that we have had. I think you have been so helpful,
and I think everyone on this Committee has enjoyed it that has
been here.
I am going to take my State of West Virginia. We are still
producing 91 percent of our power from coal-fired units.
Nothing has changed except the prices have gone up for some of
the most challenged incomes of people anywhere. They are on the
front end. They get beat up unmercifully and all we have done
is drive the price of coal-fired plants to the point to try to
make our renewables look more competitive and it is just
causing a tremendous hardship. We were so attractive to
industries in manufacturing because we were in the four-cent
category per kilowatt-hour. We are up to six and eight and ten
cents now in the commercial arena. We used to be at six and
eight cents in residential. We are at 12. We are up to the
national average.
That is what you cannot sell. And you want to know why we
lose the rural areas? It makes no sense to them. Why are you
punishing the people who have done the heavy lifting?
Mr. Bryce, I think you are an all-in energy person, but you
are very pragmatic about your approach. If we are going to do
something, let's do it and don't dillydally around. I think my
good friend, Angus King, says there's still an awful lot of
energy property that he can put a lot more renewables on. That
is fine, but I understand the grid system is not there to
deliver what you can produce in those empty areas and that cost
would be pretty extravagant.
What is the quickest solution, is nuclear? Bill Gates is
giving me the same kind of spiel you have given me on what he
is trying. Bill Gates says, listen, Joe. He said everybody
talks a good game. I put my money where my mouth is. I have
spent billions. I can tell you what works and doesn't work. I
can tell you what is aspirational and what is doable. And he is
big on this nuclear, but like you said, speaking of Catherine
Cortez Masto, our Senator, she says, why do you keep pushing it
on me? Why is it Nevada? Why is it Yucca Mountain? Where are we
going to get rid of this stuff? And it lasts for eternity, so?
Just give me a real quick response on where you stand on
what you think is the quickest change we can make within that
ten-year window. Use the ten-year window.
Mr. Bryce. Well, I think in the ten-year window I think
it's going to be U.S. exports of natural gas that are going to
make the biggest effect on decarbonization.
There was a report recently out of Singapore that Shell has
offered a Japanese company to supplant the coal-fired power
plant, that they want to provide them with a long-term LNG
contract. So, the maturation of the global LNG market is----
Senator Manchin. They are going to take a coal plant that
has a lot of use of life?
Mr. Bryce. The proposed coal plant would not be built,
instead it would be supplied by natural gas.
Senator Manchin. Okay.
Mr. Bryce. In Japan.
But my quick response overall, Senator, is I'm incredibly
optimistic. I'm a humanist. I've been traveling the world the
last three years looking at what's going on. The prize for
companies that create key innovations, yes, government policy
can have an effect, but the global energy market is a $5
trillion a year business. And so, the U.S. Government can
affect policy, but those policy results are going to be
limited.
And I'll just end with this. Again, this is not just a U.S.
issue. There are three billion people, roughly today, in the
world who use less electricity than my kitchen refrigerator.
So, the defining inequality in the world today is about
electricity and energy poverty and these countries that in
India, Lebanon, places I visited, they are not going to sit
around and say, well yes, we may want clean energy, but we want
electricity now.
Senator Manchin. Well, rural India is a good example.
Mr. Bryce. Exactly.
Senator Manchin. They don't care what comes out of the
smokestack.
Mr. Bryce. Or they're relying on diesel or fuel oil-fired
generators which are expensive but, in many cases, that's their
only option.
Senator Manchin. Yes.
The Chairman. Welcome to rural Alaska where so many of our
villages are still powered by diesel-powered generation. That
is it. They get their fuel brought in by barge twice a year and
some years they do not judge correctly how cold and how long
that winter is going to be, so they run out of fuel in
February. The river is still locked in with ice.
How do they get their fuel? It is flown in 50-gallon
barrels at a time.
So if you do not think it is already costly enough--to be
locked into a fuel price that was set eight months prior and
you have full transportation costs coming from the Lower 48 up
the coast and up into the Yukon. But what is your alternative?
What is your alternative?
And so, as difficult as it is in many parts of the world
that we would consider Third World countries, when we talk
about energy poverty, Alaska is poster child for the land of
riches and abject poverty when it comes to meeting energy
needs. That is why we feel like we're the incubator of some
really cool and innovative ideas, because when I can go out to
a village like Kwigillingok, you have 400, 500 people in there.
They have been powered by diesel for as long as anybody in that
village can remember. They have a couple wind turbines that are
clicking along. A little bit of a storage facility. It looks
like a couple outhouses put together, lifted up off the tundra
that you go inside, looks like little Chevy Volt batteries that
are there, probably nothing more sophisticated than that. And
on the day that I was there, everyone says, can you hear that?
I am like, I cannot hear anything. And they said, that is the
point. The generators are off. The generators were off for
three days of quiet. And for that community, it was life
changing.
And so, incrementally, in little bits and pieces, this is
where I get so excited about microgrids and thank you, Dr.
Majumdar, for your leadership when we had National Lab Day up
in Fairbanks last year. You saw some of the innovation that not
only is going on within our national labs but what is going on
within our living laboratories up north with these microgrids,
what we are able to do. Sometimes it is not even engineers, it
is people that just know how to fix an engine. And they are
working good ideas, a little bit of duct tape and some rope and
it is amazing what you can make happen.
Senator King. Madam Chair, in Maine we call those people
the guy you call when the horse falls down the well.
[Laughter.]
That is native engineering skill.
The Chairman. I will remember that. We do not have a lot of
horses that might fall into the well.
Senator King. Okay, the moose.
The Chairman. The moose that falls into the well.
[Laughter.]
Thank you all. This has been very, very interesting and
provocative and helpful to us.
Know that we will count on you as resources as we continue
our discussion, but I appreciate each of you and what you have
helped fill the record out.
With that, the Committee stands adjourned for yet another
fun return to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
[Whereupon, at 11:58 a.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
----------
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
[all]