[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CLIMATE AND ENERGY SCIENCE RESEARCH
AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 4, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-12
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
44-717PDF WASHINGTON : 2021
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma,
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California PETE SESSIONS, Texas
PAUL TONKO, New York DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
BILL FOSTER, Illinois MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
DON BEYER, Virginia YOUNG KIM, California
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina JAY OBERNOLTE, California
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DAN KILDEE, Michigan VACANCY
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Energy
HON. JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York, Chairman
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon RANDY WEBER, Texas,
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan Ranking Member
JERRY McNERNEY, California JIM BAIRD, Indiana
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey MIKE GARCIA, California
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina PETER MEIJER, Michigan
C O N T E N T S
May 4, 2021
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Jamaal Bowman, Chairman, Subcommittee
on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S.
House of Representatives....................................... 8
Written Statement............................................ 9
Statement by Representative Randy Weber, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 12
Written Statement............................................ 13
Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 14
Written Statement............................................ 15
Witnesses:
Dr. Kristin Persson, Director, Molecular Foundry, Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 17
Written Statement............................................ 20
Dr. Fikile Brushett, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Oral Statement............................................... 30
Written Statement............................................ 32
Dr. Esther Takeuchi, Chair, Interdisciplinary Science Department,
Brookhaven National Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 43
Written Statement............................................ 45
Dr. Xubin Zeng, Professor, Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences,
the University of Arizona
Oral Statement............................................... 51
Written Statement............................................ 53
Dr. Narasimha Rao, Associate Professor of Energy Systems, Yale
School of the Environment
Oral Statement............................................... 61
Written Statement............................................ 63
Discussion....................................................... 71
CLIMATE AND ENERGY SCIENCE RESEARCH
AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
----------
TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11 o'clock
a.m., via Zoom, Hon. Jamaal Bowman [Chairman of the
Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Bowman. This hearing will come to order. Without
objection, the Chairman is authorized to declare recess at any
time.
Before I deliver my opening remarks, I wanted to note
that, today, the Committee is meeting virtually. I want to
announce a couple of reminders to the Members about the conduct
of this hearing. First, Members should keep their video feed on
as long as they are present in the hearing. Members are
responsible for their own microphones. Please also keep your
microphones muted unless you are speaking. Finally, if Members
have documents they wish to submit for the record, please email
them to the Committee Clerk, whose email address was circulated
prior to the hearing.
I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
Good morning, and thank you to all of our witnesses who
are joining us virtually here today to discuss the importance
of climate and energy science research at the Department of
Energy (DOE). This hearing is one of a series on research and
development (R&D) activities sponsored by the DOE's Office of
Science. This office was funded at over $7 billion in fiscal
year 2021, and accounts for over half of DOE's non-defense R&D
budget. The energy sciences and climate research programs were
each funded at over $2 billion and three quarters of a billion
dollars in fiscal year 2021, respectively. Today, we will just
be focusing on these two programs, though there are others that
we will examine in the months ahead.
While these investments are not insignificant by any
means, they are simply not enough to tackle the climate crisis.
This research is not just a nice-to-have; it is a must-have for
the safety, security, and future of humanity.
The Basic Energy Sciences (BES) program is one of our
Nation's biggest sponsors of research in the natural sciences.
This research helps us understand matter and energy down to the
atomic level to ultimately inform advances in a broad range of
green energy technologies. A great example of this work is
battery technology development, which we will hear much more
about today. Understanding the materials properties of various
building blocks of batteries and being able to observe how
batteries perform in real time at the molecular level, this is
the kind of cutting-edge scientific research we need as we
drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We should also keep in mind, however, that solving the
climate crisis is not only a technological challenge. To meet
our climate goals, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change has said, will take ``rapid, far-reaching, and
unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.'' And as the
Biden Administration has made clear, these changes can and must
lift up workers, the poor, and redlined communities of color,
who are already hardest hit by the fossil fuel economy and the
impacts of a warming planet.
Bold climate action can create millions of jobs, union
jobs and make life better for all. And we already have the
technologies we need to go all-in on the transition. Here too,
research at the Department of Energy has a crucial role to
play. I am pleased that we are joined today by experts who can
speak to the interdisciplinary research and new kinds of
collaborations we need. That includes more integration with the
social sciences to help us deploy existing green technologies
faster and better, in ways that promote justice and build
community power. Let's learn by doing, and plug those lessons
into science research and technology development as we go.
We also have distinguished witnesses present today who
will discuss the climate science activities carried out by
DOE's Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program. This
research helps us understand complex Earth systems, the
accelerating impacts of climate change, and how we can better
protect people and infrastructure. It also aims to improve our
understanding of regional differences in climate and Earth
systems at a more granular level to help inform policymakers.
This kind of data would be incredibly useful for my district,
as I have seen firsthand how communities are dealing with
climate impacts like flooding and extreme heat, which are
compounded by failing infrastructure and other forms of
environmental justice.
One of the most important features of these programs are
the operation and maintenance of state-of-the-art scientific
user facilities. These facilities attract some of the world's
most talented researchers from academia and industry. They
range from giant synchrotron light sources to nanoscale
research facilities, all of which are used to imagine and
understand the fundamental properties of materials and chemical
processes for a wide range of clean energy, medical, and other
important applications.
The Office of Science is also--also supports field
observatories around the world that measure atmospheric data
that feed into climate models. But the research infrastructure
is not--is only one piece of the puzzle. We need people,
talented and trained professionals, to perform this research
and help lead us into a green, just future. And we need to
increase the participation of marginalized communities,
including with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics) education infrastructure and workforce pipelines
that will unleash the talents of students of color who have
been neglected. This is a topic that is near and dear to my
heart, and I am proud that this Committee is working to make
our research activities more inclusive at every level through
various legislative proposals.
I want to again thank our excellent panel of witnesses
assembled today, and I look forward to hearing your
testimonies.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Bowman follows:]
Good morning, and thank you to all of our witnesses who are
joining us virtually today to discuss the importance of climate
and energy science research at the Department of Energy.
This hearing is one of a series on research and development
activities sponsored by the DOE's Office of Science. This
office was funded at over seven billion dollars in FY21, and
accounts for over half of DOE's non-defense R&D budget. The
energy sciences and climate research programs were each funded
at over two billion dollars and three quarters of a billion
dollars in FY21, respectively. Today we will just be focusing
on these two programs, though there are others that we will
examine in the months ahead.
While these investments are not insignificant by any means,
they are simply not enough to tackle the climate crisis. This
research is not just a ``nice-to-have''; it is a must-have for
the safety, security, and future of humanity.
The Basic Energy Sciences program is one of our nation's
biggest sponsors of research in the natural sciences. This
research helps us understand matter and energy down to the
atomic level to ultimately inform advances in a broad range of
green energy technologies. A great example of this work is
battery technology development, which we will hear much more
about today. Understanding the materials properties of the
various building blocks of batteries, and being able to observe
how batteries perform in real time at the molecular level--this
is the kind of cutting-edge scientific research we need as we
drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
We should also keep in mind, however, that solving the
climate crisis is not only a technological challenge. To meet
our climate goals, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change has said, will take ``rapid, far-reaching and
unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.'' And as the
Biden administration has made clear, these changes can and must
lift up workers, the poor, and redlined communities of color,
who are already hit hardest by the fossil fuel economy and the
impacts of a warming planet. Bold climate action can create
millions of good, union jobs and make life better for all. And
we already have the technologies we need to go all-in on the
transition.
Here too, research at the Department of Energy has a
crucial role to play. I am pleased that we are joined today by
experts who can speak to the interdisciplinary research and new
kinds of collaborations we need. That includes more integration
with the social sciences, to help us deploy existing green
technologies faster and better--in ways that promote justice
and build community power. Let's learn by doing, and plug those
lessons into science research and technology development as we
go.
We also have distinguished witnesses present today who will
discuss the climate science activities carried out by DOE's
Biological and Environmental Research program. This research
helps us understand complex Earth systems, the accelerating
impacts of climate change, and how we can better protect people
and infrastructure. It also aims to improve our understanding
of regional differences in climate and Earth systems at a more
granular level to help inform policymakers. This kind of data
would be incredibly useful for my district, as I have seen
firsthand how communities are dealing with climate impacts like
flooding and extreme heat, which are compounded by failing
infrastructure and other forms of environmental injustice.
One of the most important features of these programs are
the operation and maintenance of state-of-the-art scientific
user facilities. These facilities attract some of the world's
most talented researchers from academia and industry. They
range from giant synchrotron light sources to nanoscale
research facilities, all of which are used to image and
understand the fundamental properties of materials and chemical
processes for a wide range of clean energy, medical, and other
important applications. The Office of Science also supports
field observatories around the world that measure atmospheric
data that feed into climate models.
But the research infrastructure is only one piece of the
puzzle. We need people--talented and trained professionals--to
perform this research and help lead us into a green, just
future. And we need to increase the participation of
marginalized communities, including with STEM education
infrastructure and workforce pipelines that will unleash the
talents of students of color who have been neglected. This is a
topic that is near and dear to my heart, and I am proud that
this Committee is working to make our research activities more
inclusive at every level through various legislative proposals.
I want to again thank our excellent panel of witnesses
assembled today, and I look forward to hearing your testimony.
With that, I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. With that, I now recognize Mr. Weber for
an opening statement.
Mr. Weber. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate that. And thank you for hosting this hearing. And we
want to say thank you to our witnesses and our witness panel
for taking the time to be with us today.
Passage of the Energy Act of 2020, comprehensive
bipartisan energy legislation which became law at the end of
the last Congress, was a giant leap in the right direction when
it comes to updating U.S. energy policy and deploying a diverse
portfolio of clean next-generation power sources. But the
applied energy activities authorized by the Energy Act only
represent, quite frankly, about half of the Science Committee's
jurisdiction at DOE. The other half is the Department of
Energy's Office of Science, a $7 billion, with a ``B'', program
that oversees 10 of DOE's national labs and 28 user facilities.
Armed with the most cutting-edge tools of modern science--
like advanced light sources, particle accelerators, and two of
the top five fastest supercomputers in the world--the Office of
Science has made invaluable contributions to the United States
scientific progress. This office has repeatedly demonstrated
that basic science research is the most effective way to
encourage the development of those kinds of new technologies
we're seeking. But as I speak here today, other countries like
China are making significant investments in science and
threatening our global leadership when it comes to innovation.
That is why the Department's continued investment in basic
and early stage research is vital, vital to maintaining our
technological edge. And I'm proud to report that we're in the
middle of a bipartisan process to reauthorize the Office of
Science, which will invest in the facility upgrades and basic
infrastructure that attracts and retains the absolutely best
scientists in the world.
As part of that reauthorization process, today, we'll
focus on two specific programs within the Office of Science:
Basic Energy Sciences (BES), Biological and Environmental
Research (BER). At the simplest level, BES researchers discover
new materials and designs new chemical processes. While this
touches virtually every aspect of our energy resources, the
ultimate goal of the program is to better understand the
physical world and harness nature to benefit people and society
as a whole. Pretty powerful stuff. BES's focus includes
materials science research that leverages DOE advanced
computing resources to aid in the development of novel
materials used to make energy production, energy storage, and
use cleaner and more efficient.
Just last Friday, I introduced H.R. 2950, the Computing
Advancements for Materials Science, or CAMS, Act, which in part
establishes DOE computational materials and chemistry science
centers and a materials research data base. I am excited to
hear from our panel of witnesses, including Dr. Kristin Persson
from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, on how applying advanced
computing capabilities to materials science will accelerate our
progress in developing those very exact new clean energy
technologies.
The BER program, the other subject of our hearing today,
is more focused on the natural world and aims to uncover
nature's mysteries involving genomics, plants, ecosystems, and
complex Earth science systems--or complex Earth systems rather
in an effort to reengineer microbes and plants for energy, as
well as other applications. In this capacity, BER also plays a
unique and essential role in researching the relationship
between the atmosphere, ocean, land, and us humans to improve
climate and Earth system models.
I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses on how
they've utilized the many user facilities, the tools, and the
collaborative resources that both BER and BES have to offer,
and what groundbreaking discoveries are right around the corner
as a result. We'll see if Ms. Kristin can pontificate on the
future.
I'd like to take a moment to thank my friends across the
aisle, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing and making
bipartisanship a priority when it comes to this kind of
legislation. It's a good thing. We appreciate that. It's been a
long time coming, but I am beyond excited to think we are
shaping the future of science and energy through the focus on
the Office of Science.
Thank you again for all the witnesses for being here. I
look forward to their testimonies. And with that, Mr. Chairman,
I yield you back 2 seconds.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]
Thank you, Chairman Bowman, for hosting this hearing and
thank you to our witness panel for taking the time to be with
us today.
Passage of the Energy Act of 2020, comprehensive bipartisan
energy legislation which became law at the end of last
Congress, was a giant leap in the right direction when it comes
to updating U.S. energy policy and deploying a diverse
portfolio of clean next-generation power sources. But the
applied energy activities authorized by the Energy Act only
represent about half of the Science Committee's jurisdiction at
DOE. The other half is the Department of Energy's Office of
Science, a seven-billion-dollar program that oversees ten of
DOE's national labs and twenty-eight user facilities.
Armed with the most cutting-edge tools of modern science--
like advanced light sources, particle accelerators, and two of
the top five fastest supercomputers in the world--the Office of
Science has made invaluable contributions to U.S. scientific
progress. This office has repeatedly demonstrated that basic
science research is the most effective way to encourage the
development of new technologies. But as I speak here today,
other countries like China are making significant investments
in science and threatening our global leadership when it comes
to innovation.
That is why the Department's continued investment in basic
and early-stage research to vital to maintaining our technology
edge. And I'm proud to report we're in the middle of a
bipartisan process to reauthorize the Office of Science, which
will invest in the facility upgrades and basic infrastructure
that attracts and retains the best scientists in the world. As
part of that reauthorization process, today we'll focus on two
specific programs within the Office of Science: Basic Energy
Sciences (BES) and Biological & Environmental Research (BER).
At the simplest level, BES research discovers new materials
and designs new chemical processes. While this touches
virtually every aspect of energy resources, the ultimate goal
of the program is to better understand the physical world and
harness nature to benefit people and society as a whole. BES's
focus includes materials science research that leverages DOE
advanced computing resources to aid in the development of novel
materials used to make energy production, storage, and use
cleaner and more efficient.
Just last Friday, I introduced H.R.2950, the Computing
Advancements for Materials Science (CAMS) Act, which in part
establishes DOE computational materials and chemistry science
centers and a materials research database. I am excited to hear
from our panel of witnesses, including Dr. Kristin Persson from
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, on how applying advanced
computing capabilities to materials science will accelerate our
progress in developing new clean energy technologies.
The BER program, the other subject of our hearing today, is
more focused on the natural world and aims to uncover nature's
mysteries involving genomics, plants, ecosystems, and complex
earth systems in an effort to reengineer microbes and plants
for energy and other applications. In this capacity, BER also
plays a unique and essential role in researching the
relationship between the atmosphere, ocean, land, and humans to
improve climate and Earth system models.
I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses on how
they've utilized the many user facilities, tools, and
collaborative resources that both BER and BES have to offer,
and what groundbreaking discoveries are right around the corner
as a result.
I'd like to take a moment to thank my friends across the
aisle for holding this hearing and making bipartisanship a
priority when it comes to legislation. It's been a long time
coming, but I am beyond excited to think we are shaping the
future of science and energy through our focus on the Office of
Science.
Thank you again to our witnesses for being here, and I look
forward to hearing each of your testimonies. I yield back the
balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes the
Chairwoman of the Full Committee, Ms. Johnson, for an opening
statement.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Bowman. Good
morning to all. I'm appreciative of your holding this important
hearing today and want to thank all of our esteemed witnesses
that are here.
Today, we meet to discuss the pioneering research
supported by the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and
how the national laboratories, major facilities, and cutting-
edge programs that it stewards are leading our Nation to a
cleaner energy future.
The Office's Basic Energy Sciences program, or BES as we
call it, is one of the Nation's largest sponsors of research in
the physical sciences, supporting research at nearly 170
universities, laboratories, and other research institutions
throughout the U.S. The program also currently oversees 12
national user facilities, two Energy Innovation Hubs, and 41
Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) tasked with finding
solutions for our Nation's greatest energy challenges.
Many significant innovations can be traced to decades of
BES research and--such as the LED (light-emitting diode)
lighting; efficient solar cells; better batteries; improved
production processes for high-value chemicals; and stronger,
lighter materials for transportation, nuclear power, and
national defense applications. The program is also instrumental
in fostering the next generation of scientists, which echoes
the importance of our Nation's continuous support of STEM
education from K-12 through the doctorate degree level.
Not to be overshadowed, the Biological and Environmental
Research program, or BER, seeks to equip our leading
researchers and policymakers with the knowledge and tools
necessary to better understand and predict the behavior of
biological, climate, and other environmental systems. BER
supports atmospheric and ecosystem research at all levels, from
microscopic to field-scale. This work is carried out by
scientists at universities and other research institutions
across the Nation and is further enabled by the two state-of-
the-art user facilities, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
facility and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.
The research supported by BER is ultimately--provide us
with a more holistic and predictive understanding of our
climate and environment that accounts for regional and temporal
variations and considers the complex impacts they have on human
behavior. That, in turn, will enable us to better anticipate
shifts in our climate and to design and develop more efficient
and resilient energy generation systems and infrastructure.
Today's witnesses should know that it is a priority for
this Committee to strengthen and support the scientific
capabilities of our national labs and universities, so I look
forward to our distinguished panelists sharing their
perspectives not only on future research pathways to solve
grand challenges, but also how we can expand access to the
unique capabilities of these critical facilities and programs.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
Chairman Bowman, thank you for holding this important
hearing today, and thank you to our esteemed panel of witnesses
for being here.
Today we meet to discuss the pioneering research supported
by the Department of Energy's Office of Science, and how the
national laboratories, major facilities, and cutting-edge
programs that it stewards are leading our nation to a cleaner
energy future.
The Office's Basic Energy Sciences program, or BES, is one
of the nation's largest sponsors of research in the physical
sciences, supporting research at nearly 170 universities,
laboratories, and other research institutions throughout the
U.S. The program also currently oversees 12 national user
facilities, two Energy Innovation Hubs, and 41 Energy Frontier
Research Centers tasked with finding solutions for our nation's
greatest energy challenges.
Many significant innovations can be traced to decades of
BES research, such as LED lighting; efficient solar cells;
better batteries; improved production processes for high-value
chemicals; and stronger, lighter materials for transportation,
nuclear power, and national defense applications. The program
is also instrumental in fostering the next generation of
scientists, which echoes the importance of our nation's
continuous support of STEM education from K-12 through the
doctorate degree level.
Not to be overshadowed, the Biological and Environmental
Research program, or BER, seeks to equip our leading
researchers and policymakers with the knowledge and tools
necessary to better understand and predict the behavior of
biological, climate, and other environmental systems. BER
supports atmospheric and ecosystem research at all levels-from
microscopic to field-scale. This work is carried out by
scientists at universities and other research institutions
across the nation, and is further enabled by two state-of-the-
art user facilities, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
facility and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.
The research supported by BER will ultimately provide us
with a more holistic and predictive understanding of our
climate and environment that accounts for regional and temporal
variations and considers the complex impacts they have on human
behavior. That, in turn, will enable us to better anticipate
shifts in our climate and to design and develop more efficient
and resilient energy generation systems and infrastructure.
Today's witnesses should know that it is a priority of this
Committee to strengthen and support the scientific capabilities
of our national labs and universities. So, I look forward to
our distinguished panelists sharing their perspectives on not
only future research pathways to solve grand challenges, but
also on how we can expand access to the unique capabilities of
these critical facilities and programs. Thank you. I yield
back.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
The Chair now recognizes the Ranking Member of the Full
Committee, Mr. Lucas, for an opening statement.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairman Bowman, for hosting this
hearing, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being with
us today.
The Department of Energy is the largest Federal sponsor of
basic research in physical sciences and is a world leader in
science and technology innovation. Through its Office of
Science and national laboratory system, the Department supports
research across scientific disciplines and plays a lead role in
U.S. research and development ecosystem.
Today, we have an opportunity to examine the activities of
two of the Office of Science programs, the Basic Energy
Sciences and the Biological and Environmental Research. These
two programs cover a wide variety of high-priority R&D
initiatives from advanced materials science in biochemistry to
geoscience and climate systems modeling.
The science impact of BES and BER cannot be overstated.
BES funds basic research at more than 150 U.S. academic,
private-sector, and nonprofit institutions, and its user
facilities support approximately 16,000 scientists and
engineers each year. Over the past 40 years, BES research has
led to major discoveries in solar cells, battery technology,
advanced transportation materials, manufacturing processes,
nuclear power, and LED lighting.
The other program we're considering today, BER, has helped
redefine modern biotechnology through the Human Genome Project
and since the 1950's has driven innovation in U.S. cutting-edge
U.S. environmental science--systems sciences. Today, BER is
accelerating the capacities of complex Earth system models
using large-scale data and high-performance computing. This is
the kind of fundamental research that will not only enable the
development of next-generation technologies but will also
support U.S. competitiveness in science and establish our
global leadership in the industries of the future.
This is why my bill, the Securing American Leadership in
Science and Technology, SALSTA, which creates a long-term
strategy for investment in U.S. research and infrastructure,
includes a comprehensive reauthorization of the DOE Office of
Science, roughly doubling the funding for programs like BES and
BER over 10 years. SALSTA also provides specific funding for
key DOE national laboratory user facilities like the light
sources and neutron sources that enable BES work. And it
establishes a program for the development and construction for
BER user facilities.
I'm also proud to join my colleagues on two bills to
strengthen the work done by BER and BES. Last week, Randy
Weber, the Ranking Member of this Subcommittee, introduced the
Computing Advances for Materials Science Act, which will create
a program at DOE to apply advanced computing practices to
materials research sciences challenges. And my colleague
Representative Baird of Indiana introduced a bill today to
reauthorize Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) and create user
facilities to help us address complex challenges in
environmental science. These bills are important steps forward
in improving our Nation's clean energy research.
This hearing comes at a critical time in our conversation
on the state of our Federal R&D enterprise. Lately, we've heard
a lot of talk about big investments in American innovation, but
at this moment we face very real threats to our global
scientific leadership. Only serious proposals can be
considered. Maintaining U.S. leadership in science and
technology will require a shared commitment to prioritize DOE
and its Office of Science. And let me be clear, any American
R&D investment plan that lacks this commitment is fundamentally
flawed.
The Science Committee may not agree on everything, but
we've always been united in our support of the Office of
Science. This Congress, I look forward to continuing to work
with Chairwoman Johnson and my friends across the aisle on
bipartisan Office of Science legislation that will make a
strong commitment to the success of programs like BER and BES
and ensure the long-term stability of our international
leadership in science.
I once again want to thank our witnesses for being here
today, and I look forward to a productive discussion. Thank
you, Chairman Bowman, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]
Thank you, Chairman Bowman for hosting this hearing, and
thank you to all our witnesses for being with us this
afternoon.
The Department of Energy is the largest federal sponsor of
basic research in the physical sciences and is a world leader
in science and technology innovation. Through its Office of
Science and National Laboratory system, the Department supports
research across scientific disciplines and plays a lead role in
the U.S. research and development ecosystem.
Today, we have an opportunity to examine the activities of
two Office of Science programs, in Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
and in Biological and Environmental Research (BER). These two
programs cover a wide range of high priority R&D initiatives:
from advanced materials science and biochemistry, to geoscience
and climate systems modeling. The scientific impact of B-E-S
and B-E-R cannot be overstated.
BES funds basic research at more than 150 U.S. academic,
private sector, and nonprofit institutions, and its user
facilities support approximately 16,000 scientists and
engineers each year. Over the past 40 years, BES research has
led to major discoveries in solar cells, battery technologies,
advanced transportation materials, manufacturing processes,
nuclear power, and LED lighting.
The other program we're considering today, BER, has helped
to redefine modern biotechnology through the Human Genome
Project, and since the 1950s has driven innovation in cutting-
edge U.S. environmental systems science. Today, B-E-R is
accelerating the capabilities of complex earth systems models
using large scale data and high-performance computing.
This is the kind of fundamental research that will not only
enable the development of next-generation technologies, but
will also support U.S. competitiveness in science and establish
our global leadership in industries of the future. This is why
my bill, the Securing American Leadership in Science and
Technology Act (SALSTA), which creates a long-term strategy for
investment in U.S. research and infrastructure, includes a
comprehensive reauthorization of the DOE Office of Science,
roughly doubling funding for programs like BES and BER over ten
years.
SALSTA also provides specific funding for key DOE national
laboratory user facilities, like the light sources and neutron
sources that enable B-E-S work. And it establishes a program
for the development and construction of B-E-R user facilities.
I'm also proud to join my colleagues on two bills to
strengthen the work done by BER and BES.
Last week, Randy Weber, the Ranking Member of this
Subcommittee, introduced the Computing Advancements for
Materials Science Act, which creates a program at DOE to apply
advanced computing practices to materials science research
challenges. And my colleague Representative Baird of Indiana
introduced a bill today to reauthorize bioenergy research
centers and to create user facilities to help us address
complex challenges in environmental science. These bills are
important steps forward in improving our nation's clean energy
research.
This hearing comes at a critical time in our conversation
on the state of our Federal R&D enterprise. Lately, we've heard
a lot of talk about big investments in American innovation. But
at this moment, as we face very real threats to our global
scientific leadership, only serious proposals can be
considered. Maintaining U.S. leadership in science and
technology will require a shared commitment to prioritize DOE
and its Office of Science. Let me be clear--any American R&D
investment plan that lacks this commitment is fundamentally
flawed.
The Science Committee may not agree on everything, but we
have always been united in our support for the Office of
Science. This Congress, I look forward to continuing to work
with Chairwoman Johnson and my friends across the aisle on
bipartisan Office of Science legislation that will make a
strong commitment to the success of programs like BER and BES,
and ensure the long-term stability of our international
leadership in science.
I once again want to thank our witnesses for being here
today. I look forward to a productive discussion. Thank you
Chairman Bowman and I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Mr. Lucas.
If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
point.
At this time, I would like to introduce our witnesses. Dr.
Kristin Persson is a Professor in Materials Science and
Engineering at UC Berkeley with a joint appointment as Faculty
Senior Scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory where she also serves as Director
of the Molecular Foundry. She has published more than 200
papers in peer-reviewed journals, holds several patents in
energy applications, and is among the world's 1 percent most-
cited researchers.
Dr. Fikile Brushett is an Associate Professor of Chemical
Engineering and Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His research
group focuses on advancing the science and engineering of
electrochemical technologies needed for a sustainable energy
economy. Dr. Brushett received his bachelor's in chemical
engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, a master's and
Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and was
a postdoc at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory.
Dr. Esther Takeuchi is a SUNY (State University of New
York) Distinguished Professor and a William and Jane Knapp
Chair in Energy and Environment at Stony Brook University. She
holds a joint appointment at DOE's Brookhaven National
Laboratory as Chief Scientist and Chair of the
Interdisciplinary Science Department. She is also a Director of
an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Department.
Dr. Takeuchi is a member of National Academy of Engineering,
was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by
President Obama, and was inducted into the National Inventors
Hall of Fame.
Dr. Xubin Zeng is an Agnes N. Haury Chair in Environment,
Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, and Director of the Climate
Dynamics and Hydrometeorology Center at the University of
Arizona. Through over 200 peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Zeng's
research has focused on land-atmosphere-ocean interface
processes, weather and climate modeling, hydrometeorology,
remote-sensing, and big data analytics. He also serves on the
Science Advisory Board of the DOE Pacific Northwest National
Laboratories Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate and the
Science Advisory Board Environmental Information Services
Working Group of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA).
Last but certainly not least, Dr. Narasimha Rao is an
Associate Professor of Energy Systems at the Yale School of the
Environment. Dr. Rao has two decades of global experience in
energy, first as an energy consultant and, for the last decade,
as an academic. Dr. Rao's research examines energy systems,
climate change, and human development. He is particularly
interested in equity and energy transitions and the impacts of
climate change and its mitigation on poverty around the world.
Thank you all for joining us today. As our witnesses
should know, you will have 5 minutes for your spoken testimony.
Your written testimony will be included in the record for the
hearing. When you all have completed your spoken testimony, we
will begin with questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to
question the panel. We will start with Dr. Persson. Dr.
Persson, please begin.
TESTIMONY OF DR. KRISTIN PERSSON,
DIRECTOR, MOLECULAR FOUNDRY,
LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY
Dr. Persson. Thank you. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member
Lucas, Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member Weber, and distinguished
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to testify
today. My testimony is my own and does not necessarily reflect
the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the University of
California.
I'm an immigrant and a naturalized citizen and Basic
Energy Science has touched virtually every aspect of my
scientific career in the United States. My testimony is based
on my leadership roles in three BES programs, the Joint Center
for Energy Storage Research (JCESR), the Materials Project, and
the Molecular Foundry. I also have a strong connection to
industry and the applied sciences, which allows me to observe
how Basic Energy Science insights translate into technological
solutions.
As you know, BES provides world-leading expertise and
instrumentation to advance fundamental knowledge. It also
provides training of our next-generation scientists. And from
my experience, BES funding provides a foundational path forward
for future-looking innovation leadership, democratizing the
access to knowledge and workforce development.
For example, on innovation leadership, the materials used
today in lithium-ion batteries were first studied in the 1970's
and 1980's at places like Bell Lab's national laboratories and
universities. Today, the main question that I get from
investors and EERE (Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy) is how do we deal with the mineral resource
limitations? Our current lithium-ion batteries can't operate
well without some of these metals, for example, cobalt.
However, our most promising next-gen materials are quite
different than our current ones, and these materials are
directly related to strong long-term investment in the
understanding of how ions arrange and how they move in battery
materials.
To support future innovation, the energy storage hub at
Argonne, JCESR, focuses on beyond lithium chemistries, and as
one major breakthrough I can mention, JCESR has uncovered the
fundamental reason why we don't have high energy density
magnesium and calcium batteries like lithium. JCESR has now
turned that knowledge into a discovery vehicle for the
development of new materials to increase stability, and we
currently hold the world record in new liquid formulations.
The Materials Project is a BES-funded Materials Genome
Initiative software center, and today, it's the world-leading
materials data platform. It provides a stellar example of the
impact of Basic Energy Science and democratizing knowledge and
accelerated learning. The Materials Project uses high-
performance computing to calculate the foundational properties
of materials rather than measuring them, which is so much
faster and cheaper. For example, measuring even one property by
traditional means across tens of thousands of materials, that
would take decades and millions of dollars, and we can
calculate it in a matter of weeks to months.
This high-value and precompetitive materials data is then
made available free of charge to the world. Every day, tens of
thousands of users, diverse minds and innovators, access this
data to train machine-learning algorithms to develop novel
materials that support our future energy solutions. Our
audience has been growing exponentially since we started. The
Materials Project is now approaching 200,000 registered users.
And finally, the Nanoscale Science Research Centers, the
NSRCs, are BES-funded user facilities, one of them being the
Molecular Foundry. They are knowledge-based centers for
interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale where access to
leading expertise is as important as access to state-of-the-art
instrumentation and resources. Electron microscopy is one of
those resources, and now, hopefully, thanks to the wonderful
virtual format of this hearing, I'd like to take you to
California.
This is the Molecular Foundry. This is the user facility
where we house, for example, the TEAM (Transmission Electron
Aberration-corrected Microscope) microscopes. The TEAM
microscopes are a product of multi-institution industrial
collaborations funded by the BES. They were the best in the
world in 2009, and they're still a critical resource today. The
picture you're seeing here is an iron-platinum nanoparticle
where we can image exactly where each atom sets and correlate
that to the knowledge of its magnetism. And this is
fundamentally important for new applications in next-generation
hard drives.
This is just one of the hundreds of free-of-charge
capabilities that the Foundry provides, and each year, the
Foundry supports roughly 1,000 users, including academics,
students and training, small businesses, and 2/3 of these are
early career scientists. It's a shining example of how BES-
funded science democratizes both the expert knowledge, as well
as high-value instrumentation, which enables a broad spectrum
of today's breakthroughs and contributed to the next generation
of workforce development.
These are some of the many vital roles that BES science
plays in the U.S. energy ecosystem, and without sustained
investment, we shortchange or stall technological advances so
necessary for our future generations. Thank you for listening,
and I look forward to taking any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Persson follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Persson. Dr. Brushett, you
are now recognized.
TESTIMONY OF DR. FIKILE BRUSHETT,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING,
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Dr. Brushett. Thank you. Chairman Bowman, Chairwoman
Johnson, Ranking Member Weber, Ranking Member Lucas,
distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, I'm honored to
testify before you here today at this hearing. My name is
Fikile Brushett, and I'm an Associate Professor of Chemical
Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I'm
also a contributor to the Joint Center for Energy Storage
Research, JCESR, an Energy Innovation Hub sponsored by the
Department of Energy's Basic Energy Sciences program.
My research program at MIT focuses on advancing the
science and engineering of electrochemical technologies needed
for a sustainable energy economy. My principal research
interest has been the development of redox flow batteries,
which have the potential to enable such a transition by
facilitating the integration of intermittent resources like
wind and solar into the electric grid, as well as by optimizing
existing grid infrastructure. While state-of-the-art redox flow
batteries have achieved niche successes, present embodiments
are too expensive for ubiquitous adoption. We are vigorously
pursuing opportunities for transformative advancements that
will change these economics. My group, along with others, are
searching for inexpensive electrolyte formulations, developing
high-performance electrochemical reactors, and working to
establish manufacturing capabilities for battery systems and
the materials and components they are made of.
We work on these important problems with other academics,
with national laboratories, and with industry. JCESR has truly
served as a hub for these collaborations, without which I would
have sought other, safer directions, and my group's progress in
flow batteries would have been slower and ultimately our work
less impactful.
So let me tell you how BES has supported the career
development path I've taken. When I finished my graduate thesis
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I knew I
wanted to apply my training to problems in energy storage. An
appointment at the--as a Director's Postdoctoral Fellow at
Argonne National Laboratory provided a rapid entrance into my
newly chosen field. There, dozens of research professionals
with diverse scientific backgrounds were working in the battery
group addressing an interconnected set of problems for modeling
the chemistry inside an electrochemical cell at the atomistic
level to building and breaking large battery packs. I was
immersed in battery science and engineering and learned much
from this vibrant research community surrounding me.
I also had easy access to experts at Argonne's cutting-
edge facilities. I could grab coffee with a beamline scientist
at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) or have lunch with a
synthetic chemist from the Center for Nanoscale Materials. I
learned new science, expanded my research skills, and was
inspired to explore new research directions.
Beyond research, I was also able to develop other
important skills essential for running a successful group,
things like project management, scientific leadership, and best
practices in environment, health, and safety. My postdoc at
Argonne also provided an opportunity to participate in writing
what would become the winning proposal for an Energy Innovation
Hub focused on energy storage, JCESR. Thus, when JCESR ramped
up at the same time I started at MIT, I was able to secure
research funding for my group, pursue ideas that I had helped
to develop, and gain immediate visibility both at MIT and
within the energy research community.
My own experience at Argonne, first as a postdoc and now
as a JCESR researcher and team leader, opened my eyes to
educational and scientific opportunities that DOE offers young
scientists and engineers through the national laboratories,
opportunities I now often suggest to undergraduate students,
graduate students, and postdoctoral associates I mentor at MIT.
In conclusion, while I have undoubtedly benefited from the
rich research environment at MIT in terms of student education,
faculty mentoring, fundraising, and fruitful collaborations, my
engagement with JCESR has added another dimension, accelerating
my career growth as a scientist, as a teacher and mentor, and
as a leader.
Thank you for the invitation to testify before this
Senate--this Subcommittee. I would be happy to answer any
questions you or other Members of the Committee may have. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Brushett follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Brushett. Dr. Takeuchi,
you are now recognized.
TESTIMONY OF DR. ESTHER TAKEUCHI,
CHAIR, INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE DEPARTMENT
BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY
Dr. Takeuchi. Good morning. Chairman Bowman, Ranking
Member Weber, Chairwoman Johnson, Chairman Lucas, Committee
Members, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with
you today. I draw on my experience of several decades in
industry leading a research and development group in battery
manufacturing, as well as my current position where I'm a joint
appointee at Stony Brook University as a faculty member and a
member of the Brookhaven National Lab.
Let me start with a few words about the energy landscape.
It really is imperative to rapidly change the energy landscape
in order to address not only resiliency but environmental
sustainability. The two opportunities that I want to describe
for you today are electrification of transportation and
broadening adoption of renewable energy into the electric grid,
and both of those opportunities depend on energy storage.
Specifically, I'm going to talk about batteries. What
batteries do is take chemical energy and reversibly allow
electricity to be delivered. When I was in industry, I
developed the battery for the implantable cardiac
defibrillator. While that battery works very well for its
application, it's entirely different than the batteries in our
laptop computers, the batteries in electric vehicles that are
much larger, and now we're talking about even larger batteries
for the grid that must last 10 or 20 years, so lifetimes and
size keep both increasing.
In terms of research and development structure, complex
problems such as energy storage are best addressed in teams.
I'm the Director of an Energy Frontier Research Center funded
by BES. This is a vehicle that has allowed me to pull together
a team of highly talented researchers on their own and focus
them collectively to address items that they could not address
singly. From 2014 to 2018, we probed the question of the
balance of batteries delivering electricity and heat. If we can
minimize heat, they become more efficient, and now we're
looking into the fundamental science of making batteries big
and scalable.
Researchers, talented researchers need tools. When I
started my career, the best way to figure out what was
happening in a battery was to test it, cut it open, and look at
the pieces. Today, I can go to facilities such as the National
Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Lab. I can
probe a working battery using high-energy x-rays strong enough
to visualize what's taking place inside a sealed battery in
real time. This information really accelerates ability to
develop and visualize next-generation batteries because we have
unprecedented information.
Our findings in the EFRC have also led us to be able to
work with more applied programs in the Department of Energy.
Some of the materials findings we're working with the Office of
Electricity to probe whether these ideas are relevant to large-
scale batteries with water-based electrolyte or working with
the Vehicle Technologies Office, part of EERE, to investigate
fast charge, a 10-minute charge of vehicle batteries. That
technology approach we patented, and now we have follow-on
funding from the Technology Commercialization Fund to
demonstrate that approach at scale.
Workforce development and interacting directly with next-
generation scientists is one of the major drivers for me to
leave industry and move to academics to be able to shape and
inspire the next generation of scientists and leaders. The
EFRCs provide a venue where young investigators can be
supported, gain insight into national lab, academic, and
collaborative research, and frame their careers for the future.
So, in closing, I want to highlight that availability of
clean, reliable energy directly correlates with standard of
living and the quality of human life. We must ensure that this
is the case. Transformation of our energy landscape is an
imperative. That's why the investments by DOE and BES are so
critical. Let me be clear. This is a race. There are
significant global investments, and these investments over the
next several years will determine not only the energy landscape
but whether the United States maintains an opportunity to lead.
Thank you very much for your time, and I look forward to
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Takeuchi follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Takeuchi. Dr. Zeng, you
are now recognized.
TESTIMONY OF DR. XUBIN ZENG,
PROFESSOR, HYDROLOGY AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES,
THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
Dr. Zeng. Chairman Bowman, Ranking Member Weber,
Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, and the Members of
the Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be here
today to discuss climate and the environmental science research
at the Department of Energy or DOE.
Starting this week, I begin to co-chair the Scientific
Steering Group of the Global Energy and Water Exchange Project,
which is one of the major international programs on climate and
water sciences. My testimony today draws on my extensive
leadership experiences and a publication record of over 200
peer-reviewed papers.
I will briefly cover four topics: current status of the
DOE research, unique aspects, major challenges, and future
directions.
For the current status, DOE programs support three primary
research activities on the atmospheric system, environmental
system, and the Earth and the environmental systems modeling.
This portfolio also supports true scientific user facilities,
the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement facility and is an
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. In particular, the
modeling program supports the development of the DOE energy
exascale Earth system model.
To illustrate the success of these activities, here, I
share just one example. DOE's [inaudible] model version I was
released in 2018, including a unique capability to zoom in for
a closer look of the particular regions such as the United
States. More recently, a new global cloud-permitted modeling
capability of a 2-mile grid spacing has been developed, making
this model the world's highest resolution climate prediction
capability.
Regarding the uniqueness, four unique aspects of DOE's
research efforts can be identified. First, DOE climate model
stands out for being the first Earth system model of its kind
to be drawn on the ultrafast supercomputers, that is exascale
computers developed by DOE.
Second, DOE emphasized the extreme weather under global
warming and a geographic domains that exist--exhibit sharp
gradients such as coastlines and complex terrain over Western
United States.
Third, DOE is integrating its human system model with its
climate model. This represents the world's first attempt to
develop a fully coupled human-Earth system model to make more
consistent and realistic predictions.
Finally, DOE's user facilities are world-leading in
relevant fields. For instance, the comprehensive observatory
approach using ground and airborne measurements is now widely
adopted by other national and international programs.
But at the same time DOE's research faces several major
challenges in integrating Earth system modeling with exascale
computing, the understanding of predictability of the fully
coupled human-Earth system and in keeping up with new observing
technologies for the user facilities.
Based on these discussions, the future directions include
several areas. First, global cloud-permitting model with a grid
spacing of 2 miles should continue to be developed for exascale
computers. Also needed is the use of innovative artificial
intelligence (AI) for coupled human and natural system modeling
and uncertainty quantification, computational efficiency, and
the model process representation.
Second, closer collaborations with DOE applied programs
are needed to assist in the planning of our Nation's energy and
related infrastructure. In particular, this planning can be
assisted by tradeoff and scenario analyses using full coupled
human-Earth system modeling.
Third, DOE user facilities need to keep up with new
capabilities, and enhanced better service is needed to expand
the user base and to help convert data into knowledge. DOE also
needs to proactively reach out to minority-serving institutions
and historically Black colleges and universities.
Besides interagency collaborations, the coupled human-
Earth system modeling capabilities can also assist the private
sector on topics like extreme events under climate change.
Finally, DOE can benefit from and contribute to the new
initiative of the World Climate Research Programme on Digital
Earth, which is a dynamic representation of the Earth system
based on optimal blending of models and observations.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Zeng follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you very much, Dr. Zeng. Dr. Rao,
you are now recognized.
TESTIMONY OF DR. NARASIMHA RAO,
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENERGY SYSTEMS,
YALE SCHOOL OF THE ENVIRONMENT
Dr. Rao. Chairman Bowman, Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking
Member Weber, Ranking Member Lucas, distinguished Members, I'm
honored to have the opportunity to address you today.
I was asked to speak about the social sciences and climate
research and specifically about the benefits of integrating
socioeconomic aspects into climate models. First, as a matter
of clarification, the models that I address are those that
project greenhouse gas emissions from human activities and
simulate policies and actions to reduce these emissions. I
would like to make the case today that we need more social
science research to understand how different communities around
the country may be impacted by and respond to climate policies.
These energy and climate models can support the design and
implementation of climate policies by incorporating insights
from such research into realistic projections of emissions
reductions so that we can more accurately assess progress and
the best path forward to achieve our targets.
Our energy systems are embedded in social institutions
with changes implied by our targets are potentially far-
reaching across society involving not only how we produce and
deliver energy but also how we use energy. These changes may
affect our homes, how we get around, as well as how we organize
our lives Achieving the scale of transformation in society
requires turning knowledge into action, action by government,
organizations, and individuals, and understanding the social
processes by which these actions can lead to transformative
change is the domain of social sciences.
My focus today is specifically on households, how energy
climate models represent household consumption behavior and
their response to policies. The motivation for my focus is
twofold. First, there is wide recognition that climate change
is a matter of social justice and equity. We know that low-
income communities globally are likely to face a
disproportionate burden of climate change and of efforts to
mitigate its effects. Racial and income inequalities and energy
burdens in the United States are already stark. Low-income
Black communities spend more than double the share of their
income on transport as the average American, while 1/3 of them
have no vehicular and poor transit options. Mortality during
heat waves is higher in low-income communities very likely due
to lower use of air-conditioning.
The social sciences offer a rich understanding of poverty
and structural inequality. We can draw from these insights and
research approaches to better understand energy burdens on
which we will impose new policies and technologies.
My second motivation for focusing on households is that
climate researchers have identified many changes in our
lifestyles that would improve our well-being such as health and
reduce emissions. For instance, walking or cycling to work,
riding transit in cities, reducing waste, using products longer
with more care can reduce overall material use and free up
societal resources to improve our lives in different ways.
However, we need more research in the social sciences to
examine the scope and feasibility of these changes and realize
the potential benefits.
Let me speak specifically of the models. Energy climate
models have been instrumental in getting us to this point. They
have helped us understand how human systems drive emissions
growth, the portfolio of technologies we need to mitigate
climate change and the pace of decarbonization required to
avoid the worst effects of climate change. These models are
widely used by different communities, including policymakers,
the finance community, development agencies, and researchers
who want to understand what to expect from future climate
policies.
However, these models have simplistic representation of
households. For instance, they typically model single
representative households per region. As we move to
implementing policies, it is critical that we disaggregate
households based on structural differences such as income,
contextual factors such as the people live in cities or suburbs
or rural areas, and assess noneconomic considerations such as
health, all of which influence decisions.
Household decisions in these models also neglect social
norms, peer effects, and various constraints that shaped
decisions. For instance, homes located near those that have
rooftop solar panels are more likely to invest in them
themselves. Financial constraints, the digital divide, poor
electric charging infrastructure may all be barriers to
widespread adoption of new electric mobility options. And
making these effects more explicit in models can enable more
realistic assessment of technology adoption.
Energy services are instrumental to meet other needs. Poor
transit limits job opportunities, access to nutritious food,
and the scope for other activities. Our energy use impacts
others' well-being such as through air pollution. New electric
mobility options could reduce local air pollution, but they may
increase pollution from power plants, which can affect other
communities.
So, in conclusion, with more social science research, we
can develop a more systematic understanding at a local level of
the impacts of future policies on our climate goals, on equity,
and on our overall well-being. And by integrating this research
into climate models, we can link local policies and responses
to national and global emissions targets, we can assess the
broader social impact of an energy transition, and more
realistically track progress in achieving our long-term climate
goals. Thank you for listening. I look forward to your
questions.
[The prepare statement of Dr. Rao follows:]
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Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Rao.
At this point we will begin our first round of questions.
The Chairman recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
Dr. Rao, thank you for your fascinating testimony. I
wanted to follow up on your comments about climate policy
focused on well-being. I believe we need to break out of the
simplistic economic assumptions that too often shape the
parameters of policy, and your remarks underscored that for me.
In a country where the rich have massively higher carbon
footprints, achieving a fairer distribution of wealth is a
matter of climate policy. Giving people more time to care for
and enjoy their loved ones is a matter of climate policy, too,
because we need to shift away from harmful kinds of consumption
and toward an abundance of the things that genuinely improve
quality of life.
If we went big on investing in the modeling improvements
you described and integrated cutting-edge social science, can
you say more about the different kinds of possibilities that
might be opened up? Would that kind of modeling allow us to
demonstrate how climate action and building a better society
can go hand-in-hand?
Dr. Rao. Yes, sir. I do believe there are many
opportunities that are opened up to seek a more equitable
society from pursuing climate policies that we assess in models
that assess a wide range of impacts besides economic impacts.
So I'd like to classify them into two types of
opportunities. One of them is to be able to alleviate some of
the existing burdens that people already face from their energy
situations. So, for instance, if we think about people who live
in inner cities who don't have access to transit today, they
may not have vehicles, and the existing options may be too
cumbersome for them to really travel outside their
neighborhoods in order to seek employment opportunities or seek
places where they can buy nutritious food. New mobility options
such as car-sharing options or introducing new routes, electric
buses, for example, these could potentially fill a gap in the
existing services that they receive today.
And so if we can understand with social science research
these vulnerabilities that people have in different parts of
the country, understanding the actual energy burdens they face,
not only economic but actual deprivations of energy services,
we may find ways that these new abilities, these new options
could actually meet some of these needs that aren't being met
today.
Another example might be heat stress. We--if we understand
better the extent to which people are not using equipment today
in order to keep their homes cool in summer or warm in winters,
we can potentially think about upgrades to buildings that can
offer new technologies that could alleviate problems such as
respiratory illnesses due to mold, it can make sure that they
have the ability to afford to heat their homes as well or cool
them in summer. So these are some of the options that we can
exploit with these new technologies, and social science can
help us understand the potential for that.
There also are other range of opportunities that we open
up in thinking about well-being when you consider our broader
consumption. So, for example, we may think about the fact that
we waste a quarter of our food supply, and that has an impact
on greenhouse gas emissions. We have a lot of congestion and
air pollution from our use of private vehicles in cities. If we
introduce policies that can encourage people to use transit, to
share vehicles, we can reduce air pollution, which may affect
particular communities, and we may raise the overall level of
resources that are freed up by reducing waste and channel them
to improving our well-being overall. So those are some
examples.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you, Dr. Rao. I wanted to try to
squeeze in one more question.
Dr. Takeuchi, thank you for your testimony as well. I want
to zoom in on what you said about training the next generation
of scientists and leaders and ask if you have further
reflections on that subject. I may be biased, but as a former
teacher and principal, I tend to think that education is the
answer to everything and particularly more equitable education
so that we are tapping into the potential of communities that
have seen decades of disinvestment. We've had several
discussions on this Committee about the role of education in
preparing our young people for the green energy transition.
Given what you've told us about the importance of
interdisciplinary research and collaboration across different
aspects of a scientific problem, do you see ways that we can
infuse those principles into STEM education more broadly,
particularly at the K to 12 level?
Dr. Takeuchi. Thank you, Chairman. I'm going to have to
speak quickly here. I think part of the key is to making sure
that everyone is included. I'm extremely proud of our own
research group that is highly diverse not only in ethnic and
cultural background but gender as well. The FRC team that I
assembled is also highly diverse, and I think demonstrating to
people that everybody counts is a key aspect of showing people
that there's an opportunity for them so they don't feel left
behind or excluded.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you. I now recognize Mr. Weber for
5 minutes. Oh, excuse me.
Mr. Weber. I'm here. I'm here.
Chairman Bowman. Disregard. Who's next in line to ask
questions? My apologies.
Staff. Mr. Weber is next.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you.
Mr. Weber. If I can figure out how this machine works, I
can do this. Can you all hear me? Mr. Chairman? OK, thank you.
Dr. Persson, in your opening--like I mentioned in my
opening statement, I recently introduced the CAMS Act, which I
think you will--I hope you will agree really touches in a good
way on a critical area of research in addition to establishing
computational materials in chemistry science and in materials
research data base. My bill aims to improve materials science
research by applying advanced computing practices to emerging
chemistry and materials science challenges. It did not escape
me that one of the other witnesses--I think it was--is it Dr.
Takeuchi--said that we are in a race, and boy, she's right
about that.
Anyway, Dr. Persson, you said in your testimony that 45
million data records are requested and delivered daily, and
tens of thousands of community researchers log into the
materials data base every single day. If you could quantify it,
how much or what percentage of that data is being fed into
advanced computers or artificial intelligence algorithms, No.
1, first question? No. 2, how unique are DOE's computing
resources and knowledge and how would they help improve your
particular materials research? And I'll stop for your answers.
Dr. Persson. Thank you for that question. I--indeed, I am
passionate about this subject. This is the foundational work
that the Materials Project relies on and hopes to bring to the
future.
Your question goes first about how much or the percentage
of the data that gets fed into AI and machine learning, the
best answer I can give to that is that every day a paper is
published using Materials Project data that uses also the word
machine learning. It's hard for us to track exactly how people
use data, but that is one way. We can use natural language
processing to look into papers rapidly, even though so many are
published every day, and literally say, OK, they've mentioned
the materials part and they've mentioned machine learning.
Every day a paper is published doing that.
We have seen a tremendous increase of the number of data
points the Materials Project delivers--is requested and
delivers every day. From the last couple of years with the
acceleration of machine learning as being such a popular and
powerful way to address materials innovation and design, the--
being the only data base that gives this many properties for
materials available, this is why we're seeing such a tremendous
increase.
Your question--the second question was on the DOE
computers. The--they're amazing. We would never be able to do
what we do today without them. I have had tremendous support
from--for example, from NERSC (National Energy Research
Scientific Computing Center) and Berkeley Lab but also from
places like NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory) and
Argonne in terms of using their computers.
There are different kinds of computers useful for
different things. If you're doing climate modeling or social
sciences modeling or materials research modeling, and the one
thing I would say is that we need the diversity of computing
architectures to address all of those different kinds of
computing needs. And I'm really happy to see that those are
being met at different kinds of computing centers in the United
States.
Mr. Weber. So do you go onsite to use those computers? How
often do you interface with those computers?
Dr. Persson. We run 24/7. I don't--thankfully, I don't
have to go there in person. We are scripts and our algorithms
run every day 24/7 as long as they have up time. Sometimes they
go down for maintenance, but that is the only time we don't
run.
Mr. Weber. And you say there's many, many papers every day
published. You're right, this is absolutely fascinating. Who
keeps up with those papers? How do you talk to your colleagues?
Who decides what papers, what's the best article? I know you're
limited by time.
Dr. Persson. No, that's a great question, too, and we are
struggling with out. There's no researcher today that can
physically read every paper that's produced, so we're actually
starting to use automated ways to analyze which papers to read
and how to read them. So, like I mentioned, natural language
processing is a way for machines to read papers and to extract
the knowledge from them.
Actually, we have to--in my opinion, papers are wonderful,
they're storytelling vehicles, but we also need to actually get
the data out of them more quickly. That's one way of doing it.
But if we were better at putting the data in places like data
bases like the Materials Project, we would have to go back and
actually extract different papers. So in my opinion we should
do better.
Mr. Weber. Well, hence the need for advanced
supercomputing in a major way. And I have a lot more questions,
but I'll yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Staff. Ms. Johnson is next.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Oftentimes when people think of climate science research
they think of NOAA, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency),
NSF (National Science Foundation), and understandably so
because they may forget about the vital work of DOE and what
they do in this space such as contributions to the national
climate science and modeling efforts to the U.S. Global Change
Research Program and the international level through
contributions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
I'd like to ask Dr. Zeng, can you discuss what makes--I'm
sorry. Can you discuss what makes the Department of Energy
uniquely qualified among the Federal Government science
agencies to conduct climate science research? And then to what
extent do these agencies currently collaborate on climate
science research?
Dr. Zeng. Thank you for the question. Among the different
Federal agencies, when I think of DOE, I can think of a few
unique aspects. The first one is DOE's climate model is
optimized for the fastest computers in the world. This is super
fast exascale computing. It is a big deal because the hardware
speeds of the supercomputers can be ranked and benchmarked, but
what's equally important is what's the percentage of those
capabilities actually used? This is related to architectural
and the software engineering of the climate model. And the DOE
is moving very rapidly in that direction. The lessons learned
and the best practices of DOE can be followed and will be used
by other agencies and worldwide.
The second unique aspect is about the coupled human-Earth
system model. There are around 50 Earth system models, and
there are around 10 human system models in the world. And only
DOE is in the process to bring them together. So with limited
time I just give you those two examples.
And in terms of the multiagency collaborations, there are
already some interactions of different levels. Scientists
supported by different agencies are talking with each other all
the time, and the program managers from different agencies are
talking with each other. Even today, we are having our
scientific steering group meeting, so I escape from that
meeting, come here to testify. And it's there we have managers
from different agencies in the United States and worldwide.
There is cross-agency collaboration mechanism such as the U.S.
Global Change Program. But I still--more can be done,
particularly on big projects.
I'll give you an example. If you cannot balance your
checkbook, you don't feel good. But if we ask we cannot balance
our water for major basins for Mississippi, for Colorado, as
scientists, we do not feel good either. In other words, we
don't know exactly how much water go to the Colorado River
Basin, how much water come out and where are the sources and
the sinks. And the community wants to have big projects working
together with different agencies to solve this kind of grand
challenge.
I will stop here. Thank you.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. One other
question. In developing legislation to reauthorize activities
of the Biological and Environmental Research, the BER program
within the Office of Science, we've heard from stakeholders
that there is a gap in research funding mechanisms. I
understand that this program funds large-scale experiments and
the user facilities we've heard a lot about in this hearing and
also small individual research grants, but there is no in-
between. So do you think that the BER program could benefit
from having a midscale funding mechanism to fund research that
would be carried out by multiple institution research centers,
similar to the Office of Science's Basic Energy Sciences
program that supports the Energy Frontier Research Centers?
Dr. Zeng. Making it simple, it's a great idea. I just hope
at one more point these university partners should also include
the involvement of underrepresented groups such as students
from minority-serving institutions and historically Black
institutions and universities. Thank you.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I yield back, Mr.
Chairman.
Staff. Ranking Member Lucas is next.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I would address my
questions, my inquiries to all the witnesses.
As I mentioned, SALSTA doubles our investment in basic
research in the Department of Energy over the next decade. What
role do you think of DOE's Office of Science and its national
laboratories play or perhaps I should say should play in
enhancing our competitiveness with other nations in science and
technology? And while you're thinking about that, what if
anything should we be doing to enhance DOE's role in our
Federal research enterprise as we seek an edge over
international competition? And I throw that open to the entire
panel.
Dr. Takeuchi. Let me just make a few opening comments. I
think----
Mr. Lucas. Please.
Dr. Takeuchi. [continuing]. BES investment is really
critical because it does lay all of the foundational science,
and I think that the continued DOE investments in the more
applied offices are also critical because we need that
translational infrastructure to ultimately end up in the
private sector as well. So the way I see it that there's really
four circles. Academics, national labs, industry, and let me
add policy all need to work together to advance the field to
accomplish what you're talking about in having international
competitiveness.
Mr. Lucas. Anyone else care to touch on that?
Dr. Zeng. Yes. From the----
Mr. Lucas. Please.
Dr. Zeng [continuing]. Our sides, there is substantial
competition from our partners in Europe. They are very
aggressive in terms of supporting big science. And our hope is
that we want to maintain our leadership. In terms of the
coupled human-Earth system modeling, the integration of
modeling with exascale computing and our observing user
facilities in each area, OK, even today, we are having the
international steering committee meeting. You can see there are
very ambitious projects supported by E.U. And on the American
side, the DOE is always about the big projects. Besides the
small and now we talk about midsize, we need those ambitious
big size projects to maintain our leadership.
Mr. Lucas. Anyone else care to touch on that subject
matter, the question?
Dr. Persson. I'd be happy to. I completely agree with the
latest comments. I have collaborators and colleagues in Europe
and also in Asia, and what I can see, for example, the
Materials Project funding, they are getting funding that are
four times that. They're still behind us because, quite
honestly, American innovativeship--innovativeness is hard to
beat, and we're also the first ones to do what we did. But in
the end funding will matter, so that is the one big vehicle.
I also--I see the tremendous passion that the scientists
at the Molecular Foundry and the NSRCs and the labs have for
working with our community. Doing that better, being vehicles--
bringing in vehicles that allows, for example, professors and
graduate students and postdocs to travel from the rest of the
country to be part of the knowledge sharing and the ideas that
we leverage to solve our future problems, that would be a big
deal for the user facilities and for our communities in
general.
Mr. Lucas. Anyone else?
Dr. Rao. Sure. I'd just add one small point here.
Mr. Lucas. Please.
Dr. Rao. I wanted to mention that the European Research
Council, I've recently seen their strategic plan over the next
5 years for research and they've allocated $15 billion toward
climate. And one of the main elements of that strategic plan is
to have social science and humanities research be a core part
of every single cluster that they have announced. And so I
think, you know, interdisciplinary collaborations within the
sciences and social science to really understand how we can
have widespread adoption of these technologies I think would be
also valuable.
Mr. Lucas. In my few remaining seconds, and I have to ask
from both perspectives, what if anything we should not be
doing, we should not be doing? And you don't have to answer,
but your insights are appreciated.
Dr. Zeng. Yes, I do have one comment here. I don't have a
direct answer, but I feel accountability and a metrics for
success is crucial.
Mr. Lucas. Fair enough, Doc. With that I see the balance
of my time is expiring. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank
all the witnesses for their insights today.
Staff. Ms. Bonamici is next.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair Bowman,
Ranking Member Weber. Thank you especially to our witnesses for
your expertise. This is an excellent discussion this morning.
I represent northwest Oregon, and here, the climate crisis
is not a distant threat; it's really a reality. We see it in
many ways. And the need for robust climate science will only
grow as our communities and our economy experience the
increasing effects of the climate crisis.
I'm honored to serve on the Select Committee on the
Climate Crisis. Last year, we released our bold, comprehensive,
science-based climate action plan to reach net zero emissions
no later than midcentury and net negative thereafter. And we
acknowledge that we need high-quality, peer-reviewed climate
science to serve as the foundation for our efforts to solve
this crisis. Our plan calls for robust climate science
research, observations, monitoring, and modeling activities,
including support for Earth observations, climate model
development, international collaboration, and improvements in
data and computing infrastructure.
And I know certainly on this Science, Space, and
Technology Committee we have a lot of support for quantum
computing and we've shown that over the years.
Dr. Zeng, I'm the Co-Chair of the bipartisan House Oceans
Caucus, so I'm particularly interested in your research on the
land-atmosphere-ocean interface processes in the Earth system.
How can efforts through the Biological and Environmental
Research program within the Office of Science better inform our
understanding of sea level rise and other effects of the
climate crisis on coastal communities?
And following that, Dr. Rao, how can we make sure that
this research better integrates the socioeconomic modeling to
support frontline communities in those coastal regions?
Dr. Zeng?
Dr. Zeng. Yes. You know, you pick up all those crucial
topics. Actually, DOE's climate modeling at this time has three
focus areas. One of them is cryosphere in terms of the
Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets melts, how does that affect
sea level rise? For Oregon, of course, as a coastal state, and
DOE just initiated a new program on the coastal study for the
interaction between ocean, lands, and atmosphere.
So, obviously, DOE research and the results will directly
benefit States like Oregon. Even from my own research is
directly relevant to say our Nation's weather forecasting, my
group has contributed the software developments for the weather
forecasting every single day over ocean and over land, of
course, including Oregon.
Now, in terms of the social sciences sides, DOE does have
a multisector dynamics program that's about human system
modeling. There, human activities are included, things like
urbanization, irrigation, agriculture, deforestation, for
example. And the socioeconomical projects are also included.
What has not been treated well is about the human behavior. We
are human beings. We have a lot of complicated decisionmaking
process. Those are the processes----
Ms. Bonamici. And, Doctor, I don't want--mean to cut you
off, but I want to ask a Dr. Rao that question as well and then
I have one more question I wanted to try to get in. Dr. Rao,
can you add anything to the social services--or, excuse me,
social sciences aspect of the ocean and economic model?
Dr. Rao. Yes, thank you very much. Just to build on what
Dr. Zeng was saying, which I agree with, we need a deeper
representation of households, which includes looking at the
spatial regularity, so understanding what populations are
located on the coast, what are their characteristics in terms
of income and other attributes. We need to understand the
physical infrastructure around them in order to assess the
vulnerability to sea level rise and other impacts. We need to
think about migration, migration into coastal areas and away
from coastal areas and what--under what conditions people are
amenable to that. And there are models that are trying to look
at that in terms of climate resilience and adaptation, but we
need a lot more granularity to really understand and make them
responsive to future conditions.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. I'm going to get one more
question in. Dr. Takeuchi, in your testimony you talk about the
importance of teamwork, working in partnership to develop new
generations of battery and energy storage. As a longtime
advocate for integrating the arts into STEM education, I truly
appreciate your arts analogy of a symphony orchestra bringing
together--you know, with a conductor bringing together
everyone. You talk about that in your collaboration potential
of the Energy Frontier Research Centers.
So recognizing that the existing lithium-ion batteries
will not meet the growing need for more complex energy storage
challenges like electric vehicles or a clean energy grid, how
can the Basic Energy Sciences program better support that type
of collaboration to accelerate the development of clean energy
technologies and energy storage?
Dr. Takeuchi. I do think that the program such as the
Energy Frontier Research Center and the hubs are really
outstanding vehicles to bring together teams of scientists and
technologists and engineers to focus on kind of mission-driven
science questions. So I think that those vehicles should be
maintained, expanded where possible because they are
outstanding concepts that allow addressing exactly the point
that you're making.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you so much. I yield back. Mr.
Chairman, I wish we had 5 hours per Member instead of 5
minutes. Thank you. I yield back.
Staff. Mr. Baird is next.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Weber. I appreciate this opportunity, and I really appreciate
the insight from the witnesses that we have here today.
As Ranking Member Lucas mentioned, I introduced the
Department of Energy's Biological Innovation Opportunities, the
BIO Act today, and it is to support DOE's biological research
infrastructure initiative, which would include reauthorization
of DOE's Bioenergy Research Centers and establish a program for
the construction of Biological and Environmental Research user
facilities.
And one example we've talked about across various
disciplines in our discussion here this morning, there are
multiple benefits for society that are derived from the
Department of Energy's Office of Science basic research. And we
are constantly looking for sustainable domestic biofuels and
bioproducts that are derived from nonfood lignocellulose plant
biomass. And for those of you that might be interested,
lignocellulose is the most abundant biological material on
Earth, and it's most often contained in plant cell walls. It's
made up of long, tightly bound chains of sugars,
polysaccharides, that can be either converted to biofuels and
bioproducts by microbes. And so I am making the connection here
because of agriculture and the role they might play or it might
play in this energy solution.
But my question really deals with knowing the importance
of this interdisciplinary Office of Science research and how
important that can be, my question to the witnesses is how your
perspective, what opportunities there are for additional BER
user facilities? So I really want to focus on those user
facilities, what we might derive from expanding and increasing
the number of those. So, Dr. Zeng, would you care to express an
opinion on that?
Dr. Zeng. Regarding biofuel or crops, the good news is
that DOE climate model actually includes the treatment of
biofuel crops in the model, so that means we can look at the
potential impacts in the modeling system. For the biofuel
itself, that's not really my research area. Probably I should
not say anything I don't understand.
Mr. Baird. How about any of the other witnesses? Do you
care to address that question about biofuels and the importance
of research and the interdisciplinary connectivity?
Dr. Takeuchi. Representative Baird, I wanted to comment on
your question regarding research facilities and infrastructure,
and I wanted to point out that, for example, the synchrotrons
are used very often in biological and pharmaceutical and
clinical-type investigations. So I think that the fundamental
infrastructure in terms of both the nano centers and the large-
scale synchrotron facilities are also highly relevant to the
questions that you're asking regarding biofuels and
understanding the fundamental physiology and mechanism of
plants.
Mr. Baird. Anyone else care----
Dr. Persson. I----
Mr. Baird. Go ahead.
Dr. Persson. I'll just add that even though this is not my
core expertise either, the beauty of the NSRCs is that we have
many different floors and many different expertise, and one of
our floors in the Molecular Foundry is the bio floor. They work
very closely in partnership with the JGI, the Joint Genome
Institute, that actually works on biofuels.
So the number of user facilities that work together from
the characterization of the light sources to the nano centers
to the BER user facilities, they're all actually--that's part
of the teamwork, too, that we have discussed previously and I
would like to highlight it. It's a vital part of that
innovation.
Mr. Baird. Very good. Anyone else have a comment? If not,
I yield back the balance of my time, and thank you, Mr.
Chairman. I yield back.
Staff. Mr. McNerney is next.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank the Chairman, and I thank the
witnesses. This is a great subject. I majored in chemical
engineering, and then switched to mathematics at some point in
my career, but I really appreciate the testimony.
Dr. Zeng, cloud aerosol research and computing seem to
help us understand some of the key climate challenges, but
uncertainty on how aerosols impact on the clouds seem to hinder
our ability to determine climate sensitivity to greenhouse gas
levels. Reducing this uncertainty will improve our ability to
forecast weather and climate. How critical is increasing
investment in the modernization and acceleration of the Energy
Exascale and Earth Systems Model program? Dr. Zeng?
Dr. Zeng. Yes. I'm thinking of two things. One is the
research, and one is the application. On the research side, for
example, I mean, a couple of weeks ago, news media asked me
about hurricane activities because there are above average
hurricane activities 5 years in a row. This year, we predict an
above average hurricane activity. How can we predict hurricane
activities in the future if we use today's climate model, the
grid size is 50 miles. We cannot even see the eyes. What we
need would be at least the 5 miles grid spacing and a DOE
computer. And the climate model can do that to help the
fundamental understanding.
And for the application sides and thinking about the DOE
climate model can be used for the planning to assist in the
planning of our Nation's energy and its related infrastructure,
scenario analysis and risk analysis and about working with
applied programs of the DOE.
Mr. McNerney. Well, you mentioned a 2-mile resolution, so
we have a little ways to go on that then. A 2-mile resolution
is the--is what you'd prefer. How essential is artificial
intelligence to climate models?
Dr. Zeng. It's crucial because the data volume becomes
huge. Frankly, we human beings don't even know how to handle
them anymore, so we need artificial intelligence from different
perspectives, first help us to save computer time. Second, help
reformulate the model processes and third, help us to do that
uncertainty quantification and wherever possible, uncertainty
reduction.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Dr. Brushett, in November of 2020
the Wall Street Journal published an article in which Dr.
George Crabtree, Director of the Office of Science's Joint
Center for Energy Storage Research, discussed the crucial role
that AI plays in the battery materials discovery process. What
roles do emerging technologies such as AI and robotics play in
battery storage in AI development and battery storage
technology development?
Dr. Brushett. Thank you for this question, and I think
also Dr. Persson can also answer this, but I'll give you a
first pass. I think AI and machine learning dramatically
accelerate critical activities like materials discovery and
material synthesis, which are two vexing bottlenecks in the
development of new technologies. They do so by finding sort of
hidden correlations between desired performance metrics, which
we could calculate, and actually then finding the structure and
composition of materials that would be able to meet those
desired performance metrics. These correlations can then define
new classes of materials that will likely exhibit those desired
properties and performance. It's tens to hundreds of times
faster than searching for new materials by laboratory sort of
brute force computation. Long used in drug discovery, I think
that this is the next way for discovery for energy storage
materials and materials science in general.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. And I was going to follow up with
Dr. Persson on the same question. I'm interested in AI. I am
Chairman--Co-Chairman of the AI Caucus in Congress and the use
of AI in battery development and the researcher's ability to
interact with the AI-driven insights. Could you discuss that a
little, please?
Dr. Persson. Absolutely. Thank you so much for your
support of science in Berkeley lab in particular.
So materials science is not like the social sciences or
like they can leverage Google. We're actually data-poor in many
cases, which is so important to also have a vehicle for
harnessing our data or where it comes from, from experiments,
from computations so that you can actually train machine-
learning algorithms on top of that data.
So the first part--and I always liken this to like you--
machine algorithms are a Ferrari but you need fuel, the data,
to actually run it. The automation--and I know I'm over time--
is a really critical aspect to it, too. If we have more time
later on, I'll be happy to elaborate on what that's needed to
close the loop between the modeling, the synthesis, and the
characterization faster.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. And I'll be visiting the
Molecular Foundry sometime as soon as I can.
Dr. Persson. Fantastic.
Mr. McNerney. I yield back.
Staff. Mr. Feenstra is next.
Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Chairman Bowman and Ranking
Member Weber. Thank you to each of the witnesses for their
testimony and sharing their extensive research and opinions
with us.
The research and collaboration lead by the Department of
Energy's Office of Science is crucial for the future of
American energy. I represent Iowa's 4th District, a leader in
wind energy, so I am thankful for the ongoing research into new
energy storage technology and critical materials that are
important for renewable energy. And with our State being a
leader in clean-burning biofuels and other forms of bioenergy,
I appreciate the work being done at the Office of Science and
Biological and Environmental Research programs.
I have a question for Dr. Takeuchi. I was pleased to read
about your research about leadership at one of the Energy
Frontier Research Centers. It truly is a unique model that you
pointed out that is similar to a conductor who understands an
orchestra's music results from just one person and all the
orchestra pieces playing together. Your specific EFRC focuses
on scalable electrochemical energy storage systems, which are
crucial as we grow wind energy in my district and across the
country.
Elsewhere in the Office of Science and Biological and
Environmental Research programs are the Bioenergy Research
Centers. And in my district, Iowa State University is a partner
in one of these BRCs called the Centers for Advanced Bioenergy
and Bioproducts Innovations, which focuses on increasing the
value of energy and crops and converting biomass into valuable
chemicals.
So this is my question. My question to you is at what
level of interaction do EFRCs have with any of the Bioenergy
Research Centers, and what role do Bioenergy Research Centers
play in being part of this group of people aiming for this
common goal? Is increasing collaboration something that I could
or we in general could assist on moving forward? Could you
comment on that?
Dr. Takeuchi. Thank you very much for your question. I
just have to say really quickly I understand your interest in
wind energy. I live on Long Island, and soon, we will have some
of the greatest offshore wind energy in the entire country, so
we will face similar challenges for integration.
One of the things that DOE does very effectively is bring
together the different Energy Frontier Research Centers in
things called principal investigator meetings where the
different centers focused on different areas come together and
share their research and findings to facilitate interaction
among the different groups. And I think that could be readily
expanded to not only include BES but BER as well where cross-
population and cross-fertilization of ideas and findings could
really be facilitated, and by sharing the findings, the
different groups can then internalize how those findings would
be relevant to their specific areas of research even though the
specific thing that they are researching is different. And that
can be a really effective way to kind of fertilize that
interaction and make sure those communications take place.
Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Doctor, for that answer and those
comments. I have one other question for everyone. One of the
newer technologies that I have heard promised about is in
regard to fuel cells. As you know, fuel cells can use a variety
of fuels, including bio-based fuels, which is of particular
interest in Iowa. In fact, Dr. Persson of Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory has been awarded funding to conduct
research into metal-supported solid oxide fuel cells for
vehicles that could be used as part of the rapid start fuel
cell system that uses the liquid bioethanol as a fuel. This is
just one example of how biofuels could fit into future fuel
technologies that dramatically lower our transportation sector
carbon footprint.
An open question to all witnesses, do you think we should
drive more research into renewable fuel technology as an
alternative to petroleum?
Dr. Persson. Maybe I'll start. I think that it's--one of
the beauties of biofuel is that we already have an
infrastructure for liquids, and it nicely also ties into our
climate mitigation. If we could harness CO2 and turn
that into viable products, which is something that we work on
from LiSA (Liquid Sunlight Alliance), which is the continuation
of JCAP (Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis), of one of
the innovation hubs, of how actually to turn CO2,
and that is also a materials problem, right? You have to
actually come up with the catalyst that helps you to turn
CO2, which is an extremely stable molecule, into a
liquid fuel that you can burn and become carbon neutral.
At the Foundry, we also have several users that come to
the Foundry with exactly that dream. They come from places like
Houston in Texas or out in California with--and having seen
their environment where they grew up and the climate impact on
that environment, then they bring that passion and they bring
their ideas to places like the NSRCs. And we work together with
them to find solutions. We have startup companies that work
with CO2 capture and turning that into actually a
viable fuel.
So that is a similar problem, but I'm going to turn it
over to others.
Mr. Feenstra. Well, thank you so much, and I yield back. I
ran out of time, but thank you so much.
Staff. Mr. Casten is next.
Mr. Casten. Thank you so much. The--this panel is--I don't
mean to get all scientific, but you guys are awesome. I'm
learning so much here. I really appreciate it.
I got concerned several years ago that the--as we are
deploying increasing volumes of intermittent renewables on our
grid, we have the potential to start seeing increased CO2
emissions, not because the renewables are generating CO2
but because the only tool grid managers have is really
inefficient partially loaded but quickly ramping gas cycles
that ramp up and down to balance. And we started seeing some
evidence of that in the Midwest where I'm from in Illinois a
couple years ago. And it was really--and that was really what
drove me to introduce the Grid Energy Storage Act last term,
which worked with Congressman Foster, became the BEST Act,
which was signed into law by the prior Administration to put
about $1 billion into research, development, and deployment of
grid energy storage because, of course, we're going to do grid
energy storage or transmission to solve that problem. There's--
there are not a lot of other solutions to it. Hopefully, we
will get that appropriated shortly and it will help support
some of the research that all you people are doing here.
But I want to start with you, Dr. Takeuchi, given your
expertise on grid energy storage systems. Can you give us some
sense of where are we at best-in-class right now especially
around, you know, energy density and cost per kilowatt hour,
and where do we need to get to before we're really going to
have viable--commercially viable grid energy storage systems to
start to balance out some of those imbalances in our system?
Dr. Takeuchi. Thank you very much for the question. You
know, in terms of energy density, my own personal belief is
that for installed systems, the energy density itself is a
little bit less critical than in applications like vehicles or
portable power because most of the time it doesn't have to
move. You know, we put it in place and it sits there.
I think that the two critical things really are longevity
and cost and they're related. Longevity is extremely important
because then you can amortize the cost over a longer time. If
the thing can last longer, you don't have to replace it as
often. So I think we're still a distance away in terms of the
cost targets that the utilities would like to see. I interact
with many utilities in the Northeast to understand their needs
and concerns.
And I think another area that's really critical is the
understanding and the education and the interaction with the
ultimate customer, meaning the utility and the ultimate user,
to make sure that the energy storage technologies that are
deployed are deployed in an effective way such that their
longevity, their lifetime, and their efficiency is maximized
through the use profiles.
So we're developing modeling systems on that integration
question to make sure that when the energy storage is
integrated, that it's integrated in the best place, best
location, and with the best usage profile to, let's say,
optimize the cost deployment profile.
But the amount of research dollars that has been invested
in grid scale storage is still far, far, far less than things
like vehicle technology, et cetera, so there's still work
definitely that needs to be done.
Mr. Casten. Well, thank you. And I could ask Dr. Brushett
or Dr. Persson the next question, but I'm going to go with
Brushett only because I started my career at Arthur D. Little
in Fresh Pond, and we cross-pollinated with a lot of your folks
at--over at MIT. And of course now Argonne National Lab is just
south of my district.
The Advanced Photon Source, which of course is part of the
BES program, has done all sorts of just fascinating things to
develop some of these advanced battery chemistries. In the
minute or so we have left, can you maybe just share with us
some of the tools that we can use through that APS program to
help develop these larger scale--particularly in the energy
grid storage batteries?
Dr. Brushett. Thank you. I'll do my best in the time that
remains, and if you would like some more information, we can
certainly follow up.
So I think one of the things that Professor Takeuchi
mentioned was lifetime associated with grid scale batteries and
understanding how those batteries might decay over the lifetime
and establishing mitigation strategies early on to allow them
to last for longer and to allow us to use cheaper materials. A
lot of the phenomena that we need to see our atomistic changes
in catalysts or in electrode-type materials within that
battery, and being able to see those often requires resources
that you need to penetrate into an operating battery and see
how the dynamic processes are occurring on that interface. It's
not possible to do that at top-tier research facilities like
MIT. You really need synchrotron resources and those powerful
x-rays to peer inside the battery and understand where decay
mechanisms are coming from. And so that's how we've been using
it to understand how we can extend lifetime of these new
materials.
Mr. Casten. Thank you so much. I'm out of time and yield
back. Dr. Persson, I'm sorry I didn't get to you, but if you do
have more comments, please feel free to follow up with our
office. Thank you.
Staff. Mr. Gimenez is next.
Mr. Gimenez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And it's been really
fascinating listening to all the experts on the questions. I
share my colleague's fascination with fuel cells and think that
that is a viable alternative to large-scale batteries on
transportation simply because of the refueling time and the
impact that actually if we moved everything into electric
vehicles, the impact that's going to have on the grid. And also
how do we dispose of these batteries at the end of their useful
life? I don't think we have a great answer for that.
So--but regardless of that, my first question I guess is
to Dr. Persson. And where do you think the United States lies
right now in terms of computing power? Are we No. 1, are we No.
2, and is the world catching up with us?
Dr. Persson. That's a good question. I think the way I
would see it--so I--there's competitiveness out there. I
don't--I'm not entirely sure we're No. 1. But the No. 1
question is a multifaceted question. Is it really just the
exascale, like how fast? Is it really just how many CPU
(central processing unit) hours you're getting? It's--or how
many of those processes do you have? The important part is that
we invest in the computing that will drive our innovation
forward.
So I'll give you an example. Some of our computing centers
are particularly well-suited for certain algorithms. Some
algorithms that I run can only run on other computing systems,
so it's important to ask the question maybe what computing do
we need to solve today's and maybe the next decade's problems?
So, for example, machine-learning algorithms run on certain
computers. The kind of algorithms that materials scientists
run, run on other kinds of computers. And I do think in terms
of those, we're leading.
Mr. Gimenez. How fast is the world catching up to us, and
who is our leading competitor? I already know the answer, so go
ahead and answer.
Dr. Persson. I would venture to guess that China is our
competitor when it comes to the computing.
Mr. Gimenez. OK. In terms of artificial intelligence
because I think that's the great leap that we have--we have to
win the race to artificial intelligence. Once we do that, then
I think that, you know, the knowledge that we have and the
ability to take unlike concepts and put them together and come
up with something revolutionary is just going to take off. And
so where are we in terms of the development of true artificial
intelligence? And again, how close is our nearest competitor or
are we lagging behind right now in achieving that?
Dr. Persson. So there are two aspects to artificial
intelligence. It's the data part, and it's the machine-learning
part, the algorithm part. The machine-learning algorithm part
is very tightly integrated with our ability to compute fast and
efficiently in certain ways, so, for example, quantum computing
is one of those avenues toward actually making artificial
intelligence a reality.
If I were to bring that back to my field because I would
have to refer to experts in computing architectures to really
truly talk about that aspect, if I bring it back to my field,
quantum computing is inherently tied to materials. We don't
have the materials today that can realize quantum computing in
a cost-efficient way that operate with higher coherence that
can actually like have those electrons talk to each other
without losing signal across information flow. That is a
materials problem, and that's one of the problems that we work
on as materials scientists to try to enable the materials that
can do that kind of talking lightning fast.
Mr. Gimenez. Is that a material----
Dr. Persson. Yes.
Mr. Gimenez. Is that a material problem just for the
United States or is it a material problem that the world has?
Dr. Persson. Everywhere. Everywhere. That is a fundamental
global and I would say precompetitive problem in the sense that
the mechanisms for decoherence, for losing that signal strength
is a precompetitive problem that BES funding is coming into.
The actual material that eventually will go into a quantum
computer, a truly successful one, that is more of the sort of
more proprietary pathway.
Mr. Gimenez. What can we do as a government in order to
help you? I know it's going to be money, but what else can we
do to help you to achieve--for the United States to be the
leader in artificial intelligence and computing and maintain
its leadership?
Dr. Persson. So I would say that, again, going back to
those two pillars, right, the computing, the materials aspect,
and the data, we need data to actually train the machine-
learning algorithms. They don't work--they don't--they cannot
operate without huge amounts of data to train them. We are not
leveraging the data that's already being produced today in our
user facilities, in our basic research programs because it's
such huge amounts, right? And that's great, that's awesome.
That means our scientists are immensely productive. But imagine
now that you harnessed all that data and you learned from it
more than just reading an article, which is hard enough to keep
up with. If we harnessed our data in a more efficient way
today, we cannot only turn machine-learning algorithms, we
would be much more efficient in using the knowledge for
[inaudible].
Mr. Gimenez. Thank you so much, and I guess I'm out of
time and I yield back. Thank you.
Staff. Mr. Lamb is next.
Mr. Lamb. Thank you all for hanging in there with us and
for appearing today and sharing all the information that you
have.
I wanted to ask--I think maybe this is a question for Mr.
Brushett, but I'll leave it open to anybody. With respect to
the state of things today for grid scale battery storage, is it
correct to say that in the United States the length of time
that any grid scale battery installation lasts is somewhere
around 4 to 6 hours at most? Is that like an upper limit of
where we are today?
Dr. Brushett. In terms of how you might want to use that
application, yes. Most of the applications would require 4 to 6
hours of storage or less. Is that what you intended to say, Mr.
Lamb?
Mr. Lamb. I think what I mean is just in practical terms
if we lose power generation at 10 o'clock at night, is there
anywhere that lasts beyond 4 a.m. the next morning? That--my
understanding was that that was the roughly the limit of where
we are now in terms of intermittency and the ability to cover
that period.
Dr. Brushett. Yes, I understand, and that is a correct
understanding. Most of the backup battery installations that
exist in the United States are designed for 4 to 6 hours
largely for at time of energy management, so shifting energy
from one part of the day to the other.
Mr. Lamb. OK. And do either you or Ms. Takeuchi or
anybody, do you guys have a sense of the time it will take us
from today to transcend that in a meaningful way, you know, to
get to not just 10 hours but to 100 hours with specifically
batteries? I know there's other storage technologies and
everything but just kind of the outlook for battery R&D?
Dr. Brushett. So that's happening right now. There is
ongoing research in long-duration energy storage that extends
to, we'll say, multiple--a daylong worth of storage all the way
out to a couple of days to, say, cover an outage that lasts for
a week or a few days. Some of that work is sponsored within
JCESR. One example is Form Energy, which is focused on, as you
mentioned, a 100-hour battery, but some of that research
nucleated in JCESR looking at long-duration energy storage with
ultracheap materials and then ultimately spun off as a startup
that became Form Energy.
There's also increasing research within JCESR and other
parts of the DOE as well on redox flow batteries. I mentioned a
little bit earlier in my oral testimony, and these systems are
designed for that 6 hours plus, right? The reason you want to
go to a system like that is because, as it scales out in terms
of time, the cost of the installation reduces per-unit energy
based upon the system architecture. And so there is--but people
are also looking into that as well.
As was mentioned I think a little bit earlier, the amount
of investment as compared to the investment in energy storage
for transportation applications is decidedly less, and that's
an area that I think is going to become increasingly important
as more and more locally available renewable resources come
onto the grid and we wish to utilize those. We're going to have
to think about ways to store that energy and deliver it in a
dispatchable way.
Mr. Lamb. Yes, that's an important point, and thank you
for emphasizing it.
I know this is always a hard question to answer, but from
what you know of the state of the research now, is it at all
possible to forecast whether you think there would be a
demonstration project of longer duration storage within the
next 5 years, 10 years, 15 years? Do you have any idea what
kind of timescale we're talking about there?
Dr. Takeuchi. I personally am pretty optimistic. I'm not
going to point to a specific example, but I think within the
next 5 to 10 years--I'll put it this way--I think not only will
it happen, I think it has to happen. So I think that's where
the--you know, let me just echo what [inaudible] that, you
know, the investment in long-duration or large-scale energy
storage I think has been, you know, too low to be blunt, and I
think that there is huge opportunity that--and a lot of insight
that can be tapped to get us where we need to be.
Mr. Lamb. Great. Thank you all. I'm out of time, Mr.
Chairman. I yield back.
Staff. Ms. Ross is next.
Ms. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been a
wonderful Subcommittee meeting. And I really thank all of the
folks who have come to testify.
My question initially is for Dr. Rao, but if other people
want to pipe in after he's answered it, please feel free.
So I'm from North Carolina. I'm from the Research Triangle
area, and I've done some work with renewable energy and with
integrated resource plans. And North Carolina was the first
State in the Southeast to adopt a renewable energy portfolio
standard. And in addition to adopting that standard, it created
incentives for the regulated utilities to encourage
conservation because, as we know, if we conserve energy, then
we don't have to produce as much, right?
And so because you are working in multidisciplinary areas
and trying to reach communities that might not be like the
techie community I live in that looks at their smart meter and
tries to figure out how to peek shave and do all of this, how
can we use research and in particular behavioral research to
encourage conservation? And what else should be added to enable
communities that don't traditionally think about conservation
to see it both as cost-saving and a way to improve our planet?
Dr. Rao. Thank you so much for that question. That's a
really important dimension. One aspect of this is involving
customers more directly in reducing load, and that involves
potentially using new technologies, smart appliances, smart
devices, potentially having to be much more involved in your
energy conditions or thinking about energy costs if you have a
smart meter that tells you more information about your real-
time prices and how you respond to them. We need to understand
if people are able and willing to engage that much more in the
effort to try and save energy. So I think we can do a lot of
research on the customer side to understand behaviorally what
will incent customers to really engage, and we need more
research that's qualitative fieldwork to talk to people, engage
stakeholders. That's one aspect.
I think we also need institutional research and
understanding how we provide the incentives to utilities and to
other agencies and to State governments to provide the kind of
support that we need both to prepare the grid in order to
deliver those--that information to people, to understand the
physical conditions of buildings to know where we can maximize
or get the most bang for the buck in terms of a shell, building
shell improvements, for example, and also making sure that you
have the right set of incentives for coordination amongst
different players to make sure that all these end up leading to
significant long-term investments in efficiency because, as you
already rightly said, the more we invest in conservation, the
less we have to invest to a greater extent in supply of energy.
Ms. Ross. And just one part of my question was for less-
educated and low-income communities who traditionally do not
live places where it's easy to conserve energy and don't come
from a culture where that's something that's valued or it's
complicated to figure--you know, my mother couldn't figure out
how to use an AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) meter. So
what can we do to bridge that gap? Because not only will that
help our environment, but it will lower their energy costs.
Dr. Rao. Yes, I absolutely agree. There is a digital
divide in some sense. There's an information gap. We know some
things about it. What can we do about it? We can ask people. I
think we need strong stakeholder engagement to understand what
it will take for people to engage, and that's really what I
think is the first step.
I'd also mention we have a lot of publicly created data
from national surveys that starts to hint a little bit at some
of these conditions, people's education level, people's
engagement with other technologies, that we can use as a
starting point. But we definitely need to ask people. That's my
main message.
Ms. Ross. I only have a couple seconds left, so if anybody
else wants to pipe in, please do so. Otherwise, I'll yield
back.
Dr. Takeuchi. I just wanted to comment that, you know, at
Brookhaven we created a department that I chaired that brings
together energy efficiency, integration, and grid modeling, as
well as energy storage because, as you so correctly said, all
of those questions are interrelated. Thank you.
Staff. Ms. Stevens is next.
Ms. Stevens. Thank you, Mr. Chair Bowman, Dr. Bowman. This
is just a real honor to be with my Chair of the Energy
Subcommittee on House Science and all of our fantastic
witnesses and also my colleague, the previous questioner, also
from the freshman class of the 117th Congress, along with Chair
Bowman, Congresswoman Deb Ross. This is just, you know, one of
the examples of how fantastic this Science Committee is and the
type of Members that come onto it and help lead the charge. And
of course we're doing this work alongside the researchers and
the experts and the doctorates, all of you who provide
[inaudible].
I think Mr. Casten reflected on just the level of detail
and expertise that you all have brought to today's hearing,
which, again, is a part of Chair Bowman's effort to reauthorize
some of the basic research funding in the Department of Energy,
you know, part of the reauthorization that we're doing with
DOE.
And one of the things I wanted to ask about with Dr. Zeng.
And, again, I'm holding your testimony, clutching it because I
loved it. I loved all of your testimonies but I'm really like--
can't take notes fast enough and all this great stuff that you
covered. But I wanted to ask a higher level question just to
level set what we're up to here today, which is about the role
of climate science research and the role of the Department of
Energy. And if you could articulate how that operates, you
know, what that looks like here. We're doing climate research.
This is a major topic. There's a lot to delve into. You know,
we've got--obviously, you've got NOAA, which is in the
Department of Commerce. I guess some people are wondering about
why, but NOAA is in the Department of Commerce, and they do a
lot of this atmospheric work. But how are you using the
Department of Energy and their basic research for climate
science?
Dr. Zeng. Yes, I'll give you two examples. First one,
earlier, we discussed about the supercomputers. OK. For the
speed of supercomputers you can rank who is No. 1, No. 2. But
that is not the most important factor. What's most important is
what the actual capability used by the end user for this case
by the climate models. Why the DOE has done a great job is to
recognize what you need, the hardware. You also need the
scientific computing office and to work with many scientists
for this case climate modelers to bring them together to get at
the best computing capability out of the hardware. That's what
DOE does very well. That's something we'll have, help other
agencies and help that the science overall worldwide. That's
what I think.
The second is about extreme events under climate change.
DOE does not work on tomorrow's extreme weather over any parts
of the Nation. That's a job for NOAA. But the DOE's focus is
about extreme events for the future with climate change. How do
we prepare our national energy infrastructure for the future
extreme events? What I want to see is closer interactions
between the climate research and the applied energy research
within DOE so that they can talk more with each other and that
use those knowledge for the actual planning of our Nation's
energy infrastructure for the future.
Ms. Stevens. Thank you. Well--and I know we've also
touched on the grid. Obviously, the supercomputer consideration
is major because of the cost. And, you know, it's expensive to
access these supercomputers. And I know the Chair has been
touching on this, too, which is the human capital
considerations and the research opportunities. But do you feel,
Dr. Zeng, that we are able to cover enough of the research with
a--either the flow of applications coming in or the dollars
coming in? And is there any confusion by--of what the DOE does
as compared to other agencies that are also covering basic
research? Do we have to deal with any confusion? And, as usual,
10 seconds left so maybe I can take that to a written one, but
if you have anything before we have to close.
Dr. Zeng. You know, there is no confusion. Part of the
competition for DOE research dollars is too fierce to the
degree sometimes it's discouraging to the university
investigators.
Ms. Stevens. Great. Well, thank you all. Thank you for the
whole panel. And again, to my Chair, Dr. Bowman, I yield back.
Chairman Bowman. Thank you so much. Before we bring the
hearing to a close, I want to thank our witnesses for
testifying before the Committee today. The record will remain
open for 2 weeks for additional statements from the Members and
for any additional questions the Committee may ask of the
witnesses.
The witnesses are excused, and the hearing is now
adjourned. Thank you all so much. Have a great day.
[Whereupon, at 1:01 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]