[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE CLEAN FUTURE ACT: POWERING A RESILIENT
AND PROSPEROUS AMERICA
=======================================================================
VIRTUAL HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 24, 2021
__________
Serial No. 117-18
Published for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
energycommerce.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
46-694 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
Chairman
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
ANNA G. ESHOO, California Ranking Member
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado FRED UPTON, Michigan
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
DORIS O. MATSUI, California BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
KATHY CASTOR, Florida DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
JERRY McNERNEY, California H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
PETER WELCH, Vermont GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
PAUL TONKO, New York BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York BILLY LONG, Missouri
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
TONY CARDENAS, California MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
RAUL RUIZ, California RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
SCOTT H. PETERS, California TIM WALBERG, Michigan
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois, Vice NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
Chair JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California DEBBBIE LESKO, Arizona
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia GREG PENCE, Indiana
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware DAN CRENSHAW, Texas
DARREN SOTO, Florida JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
KATHLEEN M. RICE, New York
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
KIM SCHRIER, Washington
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
------
Professional Staff
JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director
TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director
NATE HODSON, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Energy
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois
Chairman
SCOTT H. PETERS, California FRED UPTON, Michigan
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania Ranking Member
JERRY McNERNEY, California, Vice MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
Chair ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
PAUL TONKO, New York DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
KIM SCHRIER, Washington H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
DORIS O. MATSUI, California TIM WALBERG, Michigan
KATHY CASTOR, Florida JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
PETER WELCH, Vermont GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon DEBBIE LESKO, Arizona
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire GREG PENCE, Indiana
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware (ex officio)
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex
officio)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hon. Bobby L. Rush, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Illinois, opening statement................................. 2
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Hon. Fred Upton, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Michigan, opening statement.................................... 3
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey, opening statement......................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 8
Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Washington, opening statement..................... 9
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Witnesses
Yvonne McIntyre, Director, Federal Electricity and Utility
Policy, Natural Resources Defense Council...................... 11
Prepared statement........................................... 14
Answers to submitted questions............................... 182
Alison Silverstein, Independent Energy Consultant................ 23
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Answers to submitted questions............................... 184
Karen G. Wayland, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, GridWise
Alliance....................................................... 36
Prepared statement........................................... 38
Questions submitted for the record \1\....................... 187
Eric Hofmann, President, Utility Workers Union of America Local
132, AFL-CIO................................................... 53
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Answers to submitted questions............................... 190
Submitted Material
Statement of the Window and Door Manufacturers Association, March
23, 2021, submitted by Mr. Rush................................ 108
Letter of March 23, 2021, from Paul N. Cicio, President and Chief
Executive Officer, Industrial Energy Consumers of America, to
Mr. Rush and Mr. Upton, submitted by Mr. Rush.................. 111
Letter of March 17, 2021, from Advanced Energy Economy, et al.,
to Hon. Joe Manchin, Chairman, Senate Committee on Energy and
Natural Resources, et al., submitted by Mr. Rush............... 115
Summary, ``Additional Pipeline Capacity and Baseload Power
Generation Needed to Secure Electric Grid,'' National Energy
Technology Laboratory, February 20, 2020, submitted by Mr. Rush 118
Commentary of March 19, 2021, ``Department Of Energy Price Data
Spotlights Regressive Nature Of `Electrify Everything'
Effort,'' by Robert Bryce, Forbes, submitted by Mr. Rush....... 121
Commentary of March 19, 2021, ``Texas' Blackouts Blew In on the
Wind,'' by Wayne Christian, Wall Street Journal, submitted by
Mr. Rush....................................................... 127
Letter of March 11, 2021, from Dan R. Brouillette, Secretary,
Department of Energy, to Hon. John Hoeven, U.S. Senate,
submitted by Mr. Rush.......................................... 130
----------
\1\ Dr. Wayland did not answer submitted questions for the record by
the time of publication.
Report of March 12, 2021, ``Texas uses natural gas for
electricity generation and home heating,'' Energy Information
Administration, submitted by Mr. Rush.......................... 132
Commentary of September 24, 2020, ``Closing two Illinois nuclear
plants is bad news for working people and a clean energy
future,'' by Lonnie Stephenson, Chicago Sun-Times, submitted by
Mr. Rush....................................................... 134
Letter of March 17, 2021, from Mrs. Rodgers, et al., to Mr.
Pallone, submitted by Mr. Rush................................. 137
Commentary of February 25, ``To Prevent Blackouts From Happening
Again, Texas Should Go Nuclear,'' by Mark P. Mills, The
Federalist, submitted by Mr. Rush.............................. 139
Article of March 23, 2021, ``Why Biden's climate agenda might be
very, very `quiet,''' by Shannon Osaka, Grist, submitted by Mr.
Rush........................................................... 144
Article of March 18, 2021, ``Texas power crisis prompts Texas
House panel to advance several bills, including one requiring
plants to prep for extreme weather,'' by Erin Douglas, The
Texas Tribune, submitted by Mr. Rush........................... 152
Summary, ``2020 Long-Term Reliability Assessment,'' North
American Electric Reliability Corporation, December 2020,
submitted by Mr. Rush.......................................... 156
Texas House Bill No. 11, submitted by Mr. Rush................... 164
Texas House Bill No. 12, submitted by Mr. Rush................... 167
Texas House Bill No. 13, submitted by Mr. Rush................... 173
Texas House Bill No. 16, submitted by Mr. Rush................... 177
Texas House Bill No. 17, submitted by Mr. Rush................... 178
Letter of March 19, 2021, from George Lowe, Vice President,
Governmental Affairs and Public Policy, American Gas
Association, to Mr. Pallone and Mrs. Rodgers, submitted by Mr.
Rush........................................................... 180
Report of Vibrant Clean Energy, ``ERCOT Winter Storm Uri Blackout
Analysis,'' by Christopher T M Clack, et al., February 2021,
submitted by Mr. Rush \2\
----------
\2\ The report has been retained in committee files and is available at
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF03/20210324/111366/HHRG-117-IF03-
20210324-SD023.pdf.
THE CLEAN FUTURE ACT: POWERING A RESILIENT AND PROSPEROUS AMERICA
----------
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2021
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:07 p.m., via
Cisco Webex online video conferencing, Hon. Bobby L. Rush
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Rush, Peters, Tonko,
Veasey, Schrier, DeGette, Butterfield, Matsui, Castor, Welch,
Schrader, Kuster, Barragan, Blunt Rochester, O'Halleran,
Pallone (ex officio), Upton (subcommittee ranking member),
Burgess, Latta, McKinley, Kinzinger, Griffith, Johnson,
Bucshon, Walberg, Duncan, Palmer, Lesko, Pence, Armstrong, and
Rodgers (ex officio).
Also present: Representative Fletcher.
Staff present: Jeffrey C. Carroll, Staff Director; Waverly
Gordon, General Counsel; Tiffany Guarascio, Deputy Staff
Director; Perry Hamilton, Clerk; Mackenzie Kuhl, Digital
Assistant; Kaitlyn Peel, Digital Director; Tim Robinson, Chief
Counsel; Chloe Rodriguez, Clerk; Michael Cameron, Minority
Policy Analyst, Consumer Protection and Commerce, Energy, and
Environment; Nate Hodson, Minority Staff Director; Peter
Kielty, Minority General Counsel; Mary Martin, Minority Chief
Counsel, Energy and Environment; and Michael Taggart, Minority
Policy Director.
Mr. Rush. The Subcommittee on Energy is now in order.
Today, the subcommittee is holding a hearing entitled ``The
CLEAN Future Act: Powering a Resilient and Prosperous
America.''
Due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, today's
hearing is being held remotely. All Members, all witnesses will
be participating via videoconferencing.
As part of our hearing, microphones will be set on mute for
purposes of eliminating inadvertent background noise. Members
and witnesses, you will need to unmute your microphone each
time you wish to speak.
Documents for the record can be sent to Lino Pena-Martinez
at the email address that we have provided to staff. All
documents will be entered into the record at the conclusion of
the hearing.
The Chair now recognizes himself for 5 minutes for the
purposes of an opening statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BOBBY L. RUSH, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS
Good afternoon again. Today, the Subcommittee on Energy
will hold a legislative hearing as a continuation of the
committee's work to address recent grid failures in the south-
central region of our Nation. This morning, the Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations held a hearing to identify the
nature of this problem. We now convene to identify policies
that will relaunch a much-needed Federal grid investment in the
wake of these tragic failures.
In February, extremely frigid, Chicago-like temperatures
spread across the south-central region, resulting in
historically high energy demand and disastrously low energy
supply. This sharp energy decline was a result of every single
source of power supply underperforming during the same weather
event.
Further, every single source of supply underperformed as a
consequence of poor planning, deregulation by States, and
negligible weatherization practices. These widespread outages
threatened the health and safety of millions of Americans, and
particularly Texans, amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
It is incumbent on this committee and this subcommittee to
use its broad jurisdiction over national energy policy to
identify Federal solutions to prevent a disruption in vital
energy services from occurring again. This subcommittee has
prioritized legislative solutions in response to these types of
events under both Democratic and Republican majorities, and the
outages in Texas are no exception to this well-established
standard.
Just last year, the Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing
on the California wildfires. During the Republican majority, I
might add, Democrats also participated in a bipartisan hearing
to restore Puerto Rico's electric infrastructure after
Hurricane Maria.
And, in this same vein, the expert witnesses are called
before us today to discuss policies to deeply decarbonize our
economy and strengthen our infrastructure against threats like
those posed by climate change.
Federal investment to prevent these matters is of great
importance considering the recent tragedy in Texas and the need
to secure our Nation's energy system by and large. The CLEAN
Future Act, which I introduced along with Chairman Pallone and
Chairman Tonko, with contributions from every esteemed member
of this committee, one by one and name by name, aims to upgrade
and reinforce our energy infrastructure to those ends.
Just for an example, the CLEAN Future Act establishes
funding for a variety of grid resiliency measures, to include
crucial equipment replacements, microgrids, and programs to
provide distributed energy systems and solar power within
underserved and disadvantaged communities.
The bill also bolsters transmission infrastructure in order
to deliver clean energy to areas with high electricity demand.
Energy efficiency is also crucial and critical to a resilient
and reliable grid.
And, with that, I want to yield to my friend and colleague,
the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Upton, for 5 minutes for the
purposes of an opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rush follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Bobby L. Rush
Good afternoon. Today, the Subcommittee on Energy will hold
a legislative hearing as a continuation of the committee's work
to address recent grid failures in the south-central region of
the United States. This morning, the Subcommittee on Oversight
and Investigations held a hearing to identify the nature of
this problem. We now convene to identify policies that will
relaunch much-needed Federal grid investment in the wake of
these tragic failures.
In February, extremely frigid, Chicago-like temperatures
spread across the south-central region resulting in
historically high energy demand and disastrously low energy
supply. This sharp energy decline was a result of every single
source of power supply underperforming during the extreme
weather event. Further, every single source of power supply
underperformed as a consequence of poor planning, deregulation
by States, and negligible weatherization practices. These
widespread outages threatened the health and safety of millions
of Americans--and particularly Texans--amid the ongoing
coronavirus pandemic.
It is incumbent on this committee to use its broad
jurisdiction over national energy policy to identify Federal
solutions to prevent a disruption in vital energy services from
occurring again. This committee has prioritized legislative
solutions in response to these types of events under both
Democratic and Republican majorities, and the outages in Texas
are no exception to this standard. Just last year, the
Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing on the California
wildfires and, during the Republican majority, Democrats also
participated in a bipartisan hearing to restore Puerto Rico's
electric infrastructure after Hurricane Maria.
In this same vein, expert witnesses are called before us
today to discuss policies to deeply decarbonize our economy and
strengthen our infrastructure against threats, like climate
change. Federal investment to prevent these matters is of great
importance considering the recent tragedy in Texas and the need
to secure our Nation's energy systems by and large. The CLEAN
Future Act, which I introduced with Chairmen Pallone and Tonko,
with contributions from esteemed members of this committee,
aims to upgrade and reinforce our energy infrastructure to
those ends.
For example, title II of the CLEAN Future Act establishes
funding for a variety of grid resiliency measures to include
crucial equipment replacements, microgrids, and programs to
provide distributed energy systems and solar power within
underserved and disadvantaged communities. The bill also
bolsters transmission infrastructure in order to deliver clean
energy to areas with high electricity demand. Energy efficiency
is also critical to a resilient and reliable grid. The CLEAN
Future Act includes cost-effective, demand-reducing energy
efficiency provisions that will lighten the load on our grid.
Climate change poses a real, ever-present threat. Today's
policy discussion is an important step in fine-tuning Federal
solutions to secure a resilient and reliable energy system in
the face of those threats, and I look forward to a productive
conversation. And with that, I yield to my friend and
colleague, the gentleman from Michigan, Ranking Member Upton.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRED UPTON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN
Mr. Upton. Well, thank you, my friend and chairman, for
holding today's virtual hearing.
As we know, this is the first legislative hearing in this
subcommittee this Congress after a big bipartisan success--so
credit to lots of folks on both sides of the aisle and in both
sides of the Capitol--with the passage of the Energy Act of
2020 just 3 months ago.
You know, the Energy Act of 2020 is the most significant
energy legislation in more than a decade, with substantial new
regulatory policies and big increases in spending authority for
energy efficiency, technology innovation, and certainly grid
modernization, something that we all care deeply about.
We passed demonstration projects for natural gas, carbon
capture, nuclear energy storage, hydro--and the list goes on
and on. We came together on these clean-energy projects and
programs that the members of this committee have supported for
years, and we pushed them over the finish line. It was hard
work, it took some time, but that is what it takes to get
signed into law with real bipartisan support.
So the Energy Act of 2020 is our bipartisan roadmap for
clean-energy innovation and the most recent reflection of
bipartisan congressional intent now that we must turn to the
implementation.
So we have an aggressive timeline of new programs and more
than a dozen large-scale demonstration projects that have to be
funded in the next couple years. This committee must be focused
on holding DOE accountable to the Energy Act of 2020 timeline,
rather than rushing ahead, perhaps, with a new partisan bill.
But, unfortunately, that is not the approach it looks like
we are taking today. None of us on this side of the aisle are
embracing the Green New Deal, which has been rebranded by some
as the CLEAN Future Act.
To sum it up, the CLEAN Future Act is a 981-page bill with
hundreds of billions of dollars in American taxpayer giveaways
to countries like China that control critical mineral
production and cheap labor. It is a rush to green--no bad words
to our Chairman Rush--but it is a rush to green and a radical
transformation of America's workforce.
The CLEAN Future Act could eradicate millions of great jobs
in fossil, nuclear, and manufacturing while leaving energy
workers behind. This CLEAN Future Act promises to remove good-
paying jobs, retrain workers, relocate them to new cities where
they are going to have to make a new life for themselves. It
will decimate our energy security and leave us hooked on China
for cheap solar panels and batteries. That is not the future
that those of us on this side of the aisle are looking for for
America.
Rather than jamming this CLEAN Future bill through the
committee process, I would urge my colleagues to slow down,
think about the damage that it will do to America's workers.
And I look forward to using today's hearing to focus on these
very real issues facing our workers.
I would like to welcome Mr. Hofmann, president of Utility
Workers Local 132, who is going to testify today on behalf of
4,000 workers in southern California. They are on the front
lines in the fight in California, which is the model that some
Democrats want to focus on for the rest of the country.
So, Mr. Hofmann, I look forward to your testimony on the
importance of a balanced policy that protects workers and
access to affordable energy.
I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will
abandon this aggressive, partisan approach in favor of an all-
of-the-above strategy that prioritizes energy security,
reliability, and affordability.
And I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Upton follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Fred Upton
Thank you Chairman Rush, for holding today's virtual
hearing. This is the first legislative hearing in the
subcommittee this Congress, after a big bipartisan success with
the passage of the Energy Act of 2020 just three months ago.
The Energy Act of 2020 is the most significant energy
legislation in more than a decade, with substantial new
regulatory policies and big increases in spending authority for
energy efficiency, technology innovation, and grid
modernization. We passed demonstration projects for natural
gas, carbon capture, nuclear, energy storage, hydro, and the
list goes on.
We came together on these clean energy projects and
programs the members of this committee have supported for
years, and we pushed them over the finish. It was hard work and
it took some time, but that is what it takes to get signed into
law with bipartisan support.
The Energy Act of 2020 is our bipartisan roadmap for clean
energy innovation and the most recent reflection of bipartisan
Congressional intent--now we must turn to implementation. We
have an aggressive timeline of new programs and more than a
dozen large scale demonstration projects that must be funded in
the next few years.
The committee must be focused on holding DOE accountable to
the Energy Act of 2020 timelines, rather than rushing ahead a
new partisan bill.
Unfortunately, that is not the approach we are taking
today. Sadly, it appears the Democrats are embracing the Green
New Deal, which has been rebranded as the CLEAN Future Act. To
sum it up, the CLEAN Future Act is a 981 page bill with
hundreds of billions of dollars in American taxpayer giveaways
to countries like China that control critical mineral
production and cheap labor. It's a ``Rush to Green'' and a
radical transformation of America's workforce. The CLEAN Future
Act could eradicate millions of great jobs in fossil, nuclear,
and manufacturing, while leaving America's workers behind.
The Democrat's Clean Future Act promises to remove good
paying jobs, retrain workers, and relocate them to new cities
where they will have to make a new life for themselves. It will
decimate our energy security and leave us hooked on China for
cheap solar panels and batteries. This is no future for
America.
Rather than jamming this CLEAN Future bill through the
committee process, I urge my Democrat colleagues to slow down
and think about the damage this will do to America's workers.
I look forward to using today's hearing to focus on these
very real issues facing our workers. I would like to welcome
Mr. Hofmann, president of Utility Workers Local 132, who will
testify today on behalf of 4,000 union workers in southern
California. They are on the front lines of this fight in
California, which is the model the Democrats want to force on
the rest of the Nation.
Mr. Hofmann, I look forward to your testimony on the
importance of a balanced policy that protects workers and
access to affordable energy. I hope my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle will abandon this aggressive, partisan
approach in favor of an all-of-the-above strategy that
prioritizes energy security, reliability, and affordability.
Thank you, I yield back.
Mr. Upton. You have to unmute yourself again.
Mr. Pallone. Bobby?
I don't know if he can hear me or if any of you can hear
me.
Mr. Rush. I can hear you. Here I am.
The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Pallone, the chairman of the
full committee, for 5 minutes for the purposes of an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Chairman Rush.
Let me say, as much as I like Fred Upton, I totally
disagree with what he just said about the CLEAN Future Act. I
think that, if we don't want to be left behind by China and
other global competitors, we have to move towards a green
economy.
You know, Fred, you mentioned China and solar panels. I
mean, the mistake that has been made is that we did not
manufacture and encourage the manufacture of solar panels and
wind turbines, and so now the Chinese are way ahead of us.
But we just can't continue to rely primarily on fossil
fuels while everyone else, including China, moves ahead with,
you know, with green initiatives and renewables, because they
are just going to eat our lunch even more.
And so the answer is not to ignore the reality of the jobs
and the creation of jobs that come from a green economy but to
embrace it, the way China and so many, you know, of the more
developed countries have done. If we don't do that in this
global environment, then, you know, our economy will lose out,
the job creation that comes from renewables will pass us by,
and we will just suffer.
And so that is--it is just the opposite, I think, of what
you said. And that is what the CLEAN Future Act is about. It is
about the future and being competitive in the future.
So this is our first legislative hearing on H.R. 1512 in
this subcommittee, the Energy Subcommittee's first legislative
hearing on H.R. 1512, the CLEAN Future Act. And this hearing
will examine parts of the CLEAN Future Act that address
resilience in the power sector, with an eye towards the recent
Texas power crisis and policies to avoid a repeat of that
tragic situation.
This morning, as Chairman Rush mentioned, our Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee examined the Texas power crisis,
and now this afternoon we are talking about solutions.
The CLEAN Future Act contains numerous provisions to make
our power sector cleaner, more reliable, and more resilient.
First, the 21st Century Power Grid program, based on
legislation introduced by Representative Sarbanes, invests $7
billion over 10 years to improve the resiliency, performance,
and efficiency of the electricity grid. This critical
investment should help us avoid grid failures like we saw in
Texas.
The CLEAN Future Act also incorporates the Energy Resilient
Communities Act, authored by Representatives Barragan and
Clarke, which invests in clean-energy microgrids to increase
climate-change resiliency.
It also includes numerous provisions to boost energy
efficiency in homes, buildings, and other facilities. Reducing
energy demand can lessen stress on the grid and improve overall
grid reliability.
The bill also includes a suite of new provisions to enable
responsible build-out of the electricity transmission system to
increase reliability and achieve national clean-energy goals.
And this increased resilience and reliability could have
helped avoid some of the impacts of the extreme cold weather
event in Texas which took a crushing toll on the lives of
millions of Texans. Four million customers suffered without
power for days in subfreezing temperatures. More than 14
million people across Texas were under boil water notices,
forcing them to wait in line at distribution centers just to
get safe drinking water. And, tragically, at least 57 Texans
died during the storm.
As affected Texans try to piece their lives together, many
of us are left asking, how could this happen? And that is why
we held the O&I Subcommittee hearing this morning.
I think one thing is clear: The Texas grid operator should
have seen this coming. Texas and surrounding States have
experienced multiple extreme cold weather events over the past
40 years, and if you look at the reporting on these events,
common themes emerge. First is a failure to properly winterize
power generation facilities, natural gas production facilities,
and other related energy infrastructure.
It is also clear that natural gas facilities failed to
perform as expected during extreme cold conditions. During the
2014 polar vortex, natural gas represented over 55 percent of
the total outages, and in a similar cold snap in 2018, natural
gas generation represented at least 70 percent of the unplanned
outages. In this recent storm, natural gas outages represented
more than half of the total generation forced offline in
ERCOT's territory.
And as far back as 2011, one report found that the pattern
of natural gas production declines during extreme cold events,
indicating--and I am quoting--``the level of winterization put
in place by producers is not capable of withstanding unusually
cold temperatures.''
While nothing--I think we all agree, and Chairwoman Diana
DeGette said, that nothing could have completely prevented the
devastation from the storm, it is still evident that at least
10 years ago it was clear what needed to be done to prepare,
and no action was taken.
So these extreme weather events are only going to increase
in frequency and severity because of climate change. The CLEAN
Future Act is designed to get us to a 100 percent clean economy
by no later than 2050 and improve the resiliency of our
electric infrastructure.
While no one piece of legislation could have prevented the
devastation experienced from the storm, my hope is that the
CLEAN Future Act will serve as a foundation for exploring the
best solutions to our changing climate that could help protect
people in the future from suffering similar experiences.
So I just want to say, again, going back to what
Congressman Upton said, look, we want--the CLEAN Future Act is
what we have put forward as Democrats. We want input from the
Republicans. We understand that there are a lot of things where
we can have common ground, on things like resiliency, energy
efficiency.
As you know, both Chairman Rush and Ranking Member Upton
came together at the end of last year with an energy package,
the majority of which was actually incorporated in the end-of-
the-year omnibus bill. So we can work together. I don't want
anybody to think that, you know, the CLEAN Future Act is the
end and that is it. We want input. But I also think that we
have to recognize that if we don't move towards a green economy
we are going to be left behind.
And I agree with our ranking member of the full committee,
Mrs. Rodgers, that China is a huge threat. But the threat has
to be, you know, hit head-on. And to just, you know, say we are
going to continue to do things the old way while they move
ahead and eat our lunch, that is not the answer.
So I think there is a lot of common ground here, although
you may not hear too much about it today.
But thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr.
Today, the Energy Subcommittee is holding its first
legislative hearing on H.R. 1512, the CLEAN Future Act,
comprehensive and ambitious legislation to combat the climate
crisis.
This hearing will examine parts of the CLEAN Future Act
that address resilience in the power sector, with an eye toward
the recent Texas power crisis and policies to avoid a repeat of
that tragic situation.
This morning our Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
examined the Texas power crisis. And now, this afternoon, we
are talking about solutions. The CLEAN Future Act contains
numerous provisions to make our power sector cleaner, more
reliable, and more resilient.
First, the 21st Century Power Grid program--based on
legislation introduced by Representative Sarbanes--invests $7
billion over 10 years to improve the resiliency, performance,
and efficiency of the electricity grid. This critical
investment should help us avoid grid failures like we saw in
Texas.
The CLEAN Future Act also incorporates the Energy Resilient
Communities Act--authored by Representatives Barragan and
Clarke--which invests in clean energy microgrids to increase
climate change resiliency.
It also includes numerous provisions to boost energy
efficiency in homes, buildings, and other facilities. Reducing
energy demand can lessen stress on the grid and improve overall
grid reliability.
The bill also includes a suite of new provisions to enable
responsible buildout of the electricity transmission system to
increase reliability and achieve national clean energy goals.
This increased resilience and reliability could have helped
avoid some of the impacts of the extreme cold weather event in
Texas, which took a crushing toll on the lives of millions of
Texans.
Four million customers suffered without power for days in
sub-freezing temperatures. More than 14 million people across
the State were under boil water notices, forcing them to wait
in line at distribution centers just to get safe drinking
water. And, tragically, at least 57 Texans died during the
storm.
As affected Texans try to piece their lives back together,
many of us are left asking: How could this happen? That's why
we held the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing
this morning.
One thing is clear: Texas grid operators should have seen
this coming. Texas and surrounding States have experienced
multiple extreme cold weather events over the past 40 years.
And if you look at the reporting on these events, common themes
emerge.
First is a failure to properly winterize power generation
facilities, natural gas production facilities and other related
energy infrastructure. It's also clear that natural gas
facilities failed to perform as expected during extreme cold
conditions. During the 2014 polar vortex, natural gas
represented over 55 percent of the total outages, and in a
similar cold snap in 2018, natural gas generation represented
at least 70 percent of the unplanned outages.
In this recent storm, natural gas outages represented more
than half the total generation forced offline in ERCOT's
territory. And as far back as 2011, one report found that the
pattern of natural gas production declines during extreme cold
events indicated that ``the level of winterization put in place
by producers is not capable of withstanding unusually cold
temperatures.''
While nothing could have completely prevented the
devastation from the storm, it is evident that at least 10
years ago, it was clear what needed to be done to prepare and
no action was taken.
These extreme weather events are only going to increase in
frequency and severity because of climate change. The CLEAN
Future Act is designed to get us to a 100 percent clean economy
by no later than 2050 and improve the resiliency of our
electric infrastructure. While no one piece of legislation
could have prevented the devastation experienced from this
storm, my hope is that the CLEAN Future Act will serve as a
foundation for exploring the best solutions to our changing
climate that can help protect people in the future from
suffering similar experiences. Thank you, I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The chairman yields back.
And now the Chair recognizes the gentlelady from
Washington, the ranking member of the full committee, Mrs.
Rodgers, for 5 minutes for the purposes of an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Our shared goal is cleaner American energy. Our shared goal
is to make sure America continues to lead the world in energy
innovation. We must make sure our Federal laws and policies
will enable, not disable, the affordable and reliable delivery
of energy and power.
Keeping the lights on and heating and cooling our homes is
vital to health and safety. We saw the heart-wrenching
devastation when this goes wrong last month in Texas and the
surrounding States. The massive winter freeze extending from
the Plains into the south-central States created a record-
setting demand for power and heat. And, for a variety of
reasons, the ability to deliver energy when people needed it
most came up short. Energy managers had to cut off power for
millions of people to prevent catastrophic failure of the power
system.
During this hearing today, which follows a related
Oversight and Investigations hearing earlier today that I think
is still going on, we will examine how the CLEAN Future Act's
power-sector provisions may affect vital reliability issues. We
must ensure that this bill protects energy reliability--it is a
high expectation of all Americans--as well as protecting
families and the jobs of workers from increasing energy cost
burdens.
We know an abundant supply of dispatchable, predictable
baseload power, whether from fossil, hydro, or nuclear
generators, is essential for providing power when people need
it most. Yet the government-driven expansion of wind and solar,
weather-dependent energy sources, coupled with electricity
market designs that don't fully value reliability, has been
driving out baseload generation. There are even dangerous
efforts to remove renewable baseload hydropower that is in my
district.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation
continues to identify the growing reliability risk as a result
of growing reliance on weather-dependent energy. It warned
energy managers to take more action to address the risk in its
most recent long-term assessment issued in December, including
in Texas and California. Ladies and gentlemen, these outages
are a reality check.
The Department of Energy released studies last year of
previous cold events in the Midwest and New England, finding
that additional pipelines and baseload are needed to secure our
grid. Yet keeping the lights on is not the central focus of
this legislation.
The CLEAN Future Act mandates massive electrification on an
unprecedented scale and at an unprecedented pace with no regard
for cost. How do you realistically do that without weakening
reliability with the timelines in this bill?
Considerations for people's household budgets is also
absent. We have already witnessed how aggressive renewable
policies in California can't keep the lights on. Those policies
will be mandated nationally under this bill. That State's
electricity prices have increased seven times as fast as the
national average over the past 10 years--seven times as fast as
the Nation's average.
High rates squeeze household budgets needed to pay for heat
and electricity, especially when people need it most. Just like
we have seen in California and New York too: Add in the push to
keep fossil in the ground and remove gas as a source of heating
fuel, and the costs increase even further. This is a one-two
punch of electric mandates that raise prices and undermine
rewarding jobs in the energy sector.
This is not the way to build prosperity. We should reset
our focus. We should look at making improvements in our energy
and electricity systems to place reliable, affordable delivery
of energy and power back at the center of our energy policy. We
can do this by unleashing innovation through regulatory and
permiting reforms for the grid and for systems that use all
energy resources.
These are the reforms that the Republicans are leading for
in the Securing a Cleaner America Energy Act, and we would like
to work together to make it law.
The United States of America is blessed with abundant
energy. It is foundational to our energy security and our
economic competitiveness. We also have tremendous technological
know-how. There should be no reason we have to tell our
constituents in an energy emergency that we don't have enough
electricity to keep the lights on or the fuel to heat our
homes. Let's focus on making sure we can keep that promise and
win the future.
And, with that, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Rodgers follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers
One of our most important jobs is to make sure our Federal
laws and policies will enable--not disable--the affordable and
reliable delivery of energy and power.
Keeping the lights on is vital to health and safety. We saw
the heart-wrenching devastation when this goes wrong last month
in Texas and surrounding States.
The massive winter freeze extending from the Plains into
the south-central States created record-setting demand for
power and heat, and for a variety of reasons the ability to
deliver energy when people needed it most came up short.
Energy managers had to cut off power for millions of people
to prevent catastrophic failure of the power system.
This hearing, which follows a related Oversight and
Investigations hearing earlier today, seeks to examine how the
CLEAN Future Act's power sector provisions may affect vital
reliability issues.
We should look at what the overall thrust of this bill
means for energy reliability--as well as for energy burdens on
families and jobs on workers.
We know an abundant supply of dispatchable, predictable,
baseload power--from fossil, hydro, and nuclear generators--is
essential for providing power when people need it most.
Yet the government driven expansion of wind and solar--
coupled with electricity market designs that don't fully value
reliability--have been driving out traditional baseload
generation.
At the same time, increased opposition from the Left to
traditional baseload and pipelines are serious problems.
There are even dangerous efforts to remove renewable
baseload hydropower that's in my district.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation
continues to identify the growing reliability risks, as a
result of growing reliance on renewable energy.
It warned energy managers to take more action to address
the risks in its most recent long-term assessment issued in
December--including in Texas and California.
The Department of Energy released studies last year of
previous cold events in Midwest and New England finding that
additional pipelines and baseload are needed to secure grid.
Yet keeping the lights on is not the central focus of this
legislation.
The CLEAN Future Act mandates massive electrification on an
unprecedented scale and pace, with no regard for cost.
How do you realistically do that, without weakening
reliability, on the timescales in this bill? Considerations for
people's household budgets is also absent from this
legislation.
We have already witnessed how aggressive renewable policies
in California can't keep the lights on. Those policies will be
mandated nationally under this bill.
That State's electricity prices have increased seven times
as fast as the nationwide average over the past ten years. High
rates squeeze household budgets needed to pay for heat and
electricity--especially when people need it most.
Just like we've seen in California and New York too.... Add
in the push to keep fossil in the ground and to remove gas as a
source of heating fuel, and the costs increase even further.
This is the one-two punch of electrical mandates that raise
prices and undermine rewarding jobs in the energy sector.
This is not the way to build prosperity. We should reset
our focus.
We should look at making practical improvements in our
energy and electricity systems to place reliable, affordable
delivery of energy and power back at the center of our energy
policy.
We do this by unleashing innovation through regulatory and
permitting reforms for the grid and for systems that use ALL
our energy resources.
These are the reforms Republicans are leading for Securing
a Cleaner American Energy and they can become law if we work
together.
The United States has such incredible energy abundance. It
has tremendous technological know-how. There should be no
reason we have to tell our constituents in an energy emergency
that we do not have enough electricity, or enough fuel.
Let's focus on practical policies to make sure we can keep
that promise.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair would like to remind Members that, pursuant to
committee rules, all Members' written opening statements shall
be made part of the record.
Now I would like to welcome our esteemed witnesses for
today's hearing. Let me begin by introducing Dr. Karen Wayland,
who is the chief executive officer for GridWise Alliance; Ms.
Yvonne McIntyre, who is the director of Federal electricity and
utility policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council; then
Ms. Alison Silverstein, independent energy consultant; next we
will introduce Mr. Eric Hofmann, president of the Utility
Workers of America Local 132, Utility Workers of America, AFL-
CIO.
Thank you for joining us for today's hearing, and we look
forward to your testimony.
And now it is my honor to recognize Ms. McIntyre for 5
minutes for the purposes of an opening statement.
Ms. McIntyre, you are recognized.
STATEMENTS OF YVONNE McINTYRE, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL ELECTRICITY
AND UTILITY POLICY, NATURAL RESOURCES DEFENSE COUNCIL; ALISON
SILVERSTEIN, INDEPENDENT ENERGY CONSULTANT; KAREN G. WAYLAND,
Ph.D., CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, GRIDWISE ALLIANCE; AND ERIC
HOFMANN, PRESIDENT, UTILITY WORKERS UNION OF AMERICA LOCAL 132,
AFL-CIO
STATEMENT OF YVONNE McINTYRE
Ms. McIntyre. Thank you.
Good afternoon, Chairman Rush, Ranking Member Upton, and
members of the subcommittee, and thank you for the opportunity
to testify at today's hearing on ``The CLEAN Future Act:
Powering a Resilient and Prosperous America.''
My name is Yvonne McIntyre, and I am the director of
Federal electricity and utility policy at the Natural Resources
Defense Council, NRDC. Founded in 1970, NRDC is an
international nonprofit organization of scientists, lawyers,
and environmental specialists dedicated to protecting public
health and the environment.
Prior to joining NRDC, I spent over 30 years in the power
sector, working first as an electrical engineer and then in
government affairs.
Extreme weather events are posing increasing and more
persistent threats to our Nation's energy infrastructure. And
communities of color and low-income communities are typically
the most negatively impacted by these disasters. A prime
example is last month's cold weather catastrophe in Texas that
led to dozens of deaths, untold suffering, widespread
electricity outages, burst water pipes, and devastatingly high
electricity bills.
There were multiple causes of the crisis, but overall the
Texas catastrophe was caused by lax government oversight. And,
as we have seen time and again in our history, the poorest,
most disadvantaged paid the highest cost of that failure.
Effective government oversight is needed to ensure that the
grid operates during times of stress.
We need a 21st century power system that is responsive to
the climate emergency we are facing today. This means utilizing
clean, renewable energy and energy efficiency to curb our
dependence on fossil fuels. That will cut emissions that are
fueling climate change. It also means ensuring that our power
system can withstand the extreme weather we are already
experiencing by making our grid more resilient and responsive.
The good news is that we have a historic opportunity now to
make the investments that will create jobs, modernize our
electricity grid, and cut climate pollution. The CLEAN Future
Act is an important and ambitious framework for moving the
Nation to a clean economy and tackling the climate crisis.
It is a commendable effort but needs to do more to ensure
our power system is more resilient and reliable in the face of
the worsening climate crisis and extreme weather events like
what happened in Texas. To enable a cleaner and more resilient
grid, we recommend the Federal Government take a number of
steps.
First, we need to jump start transmission superhighways
across and between regions.
We also need to incentivize and expand energy efficiency,
distributed solar, storage, energy-efficient buildings, and
electrification.
Third, we must unlock the benefits of demand flexibility
and distributed energy.
And, finally, it is imperative that we provide assistance
and support to low-income communities and communities of color
to reduce the burdens and negative impacts from climate-related
disasters and harmful pollution.
Each of these measures would also improve air quality by
reducing locally harmful pollution. Congress can and should
reduce the toll that pollution takes on communities of color
and low-income communities.
And Congress must also ensure that the investments made to
transform the power system are targeted toward the communities
facing the greatest risk from climate change and those
disadvantaged by historic inequities, including paying the
largest percentage of their income on energy.
Taking these actions will not only improve the resiliency
of the power grid and lead to a cleaner environment, it will
also deliver jobs and economic development as well as lower
costs for consumers.
The CLEAN Future Act contains a number of provisions that
address these issues, but in most cases it needs to go further
to improve the resiliency of the electricity system and to
drive investment in a diverse portfolio of renewable resources,
efficiency, and demand flexibility.
The bill should provide for stronger tools to consider
climate change in transmission permiting decisions and to
address its lack of planning authority. To take advantage of
demand flexibility and enable greater access to distributed-
energy resources and electrification, we need major upgrades to
our grid. Therefore, the level of CLEAN Future Act funding for
such upgrades should be substantially increased.
Building electrification and weatherization are key
efficiency tools, but they are not addressed in the bill. There
should be a stronger focus throughout titles II and III on
providing benefits and support to, and engaging with, low-
income communities and communities of color.
Further details on these recommendations are provided in my
written testimony. NRDC looks forward to working with the
committee to improve the bill to address these critical issues.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McIntyre follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rush. I want to thank Ms. McIntyre.
And now, Ms. Silverstein, you are recognized for 5 minutes
for the purposes of an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF ALISON SILVERSTEIN
Ms. Silverstein. Thank you, Chairman Rush, Ranking Member
Upton, Chairman Pallone, and distinguished members of the
committee. My name is Alison Silverstein. I am honored to
appear before you today as a private citizen with personal
experience with the Texas power crisis.
First, about the Texas blackout: Generation on the ground
and fuel stockpiled in the yard won't help us if the generator
or its fuel supply freezes up. We need a diverse fleet of
generation and storage sources that don't all fail at the same
time due to common causes.
Texas's critical facilities were not ready with backup
power and on-site fuel. Texas's distribution utilities could
not rotate outages among circuits and customers once they
protected known critical facilities because the big circuits
they were serving used up all the available power. Texas
leaders didn't use several days of lead time to warn us to get
ready for the storm ahead.
But Texas energy uses and demand are also to blame. Too
many Texas homes have minimal insulation, so residents can't
stay warm in winter or cool in summer without wasting too much
energy. Fifty percent of Texas homes use inefficient resistance
heating that caused almost half of the ERCOT demand surge on
February 14.
This power disaster was an equity disaster. Poor people
suffer from energy poverty and live in lower-quality, leaky
housing in areas that are most likely to be shut off during a
mass load-shed event. They are more likely to suffer misery,
medical complications, or death from bad weather and power
shutoffs.
This was fundamentally a planning failure by ERCOT, by
NERC, by our energy providers, and by regulators at every
level. We consistently underimagine and underestimate the
magnitude of what could go wrong, so we fail to plan and
prepare adequately for very bad events.
Deadly, costly extreme-weather events are hitting the U.S.
with growing frequency and ferocity. We have to stop pretending
that each individual extreme weather event is a low-probability
occurrence and instead treat extreme weather collectively as
high-impact, medium-frequency events.
We also need to stop pretending that every type of extreme
event is special and deserves its own special preparation.
Almost every disaster that harms the grid has a common
consequence: the power goes off. Customers don't care what
caused it, and neither should we. We should protect our grid,
our citizens, and communities against the common consequences
of all of these disasters because we can't afford to harden the
grid against every threat.
Now, on to the CLEAN Future Act.
On subtitle B, all credible analyses of a reliable,
affordable clean-energy future recognize that we need to
massively expand electric transmission. Current FERC and DOE
authorities and processes aren't working to do that. Newer,
stronger physical infrastructure will not appear without a
stronger institutional infrastructure to facilitate that.
Please improve our institutional infrastructure by giving
FERC more authority over interregional transmission planning,
routes and interconnection, benefits, and cost allocation.
Create and fund a Federal transmission authority to manage
national-scale transmission planning, design, and construction.
This authority should work with others to build a robust
interregional transmission network.
Create a Federal funding program to finance much of the
needed electric system expansion and improvements.
Please modify the subtitle on infrastructure and resilience
by requiring utilities to sectionalize their distribution
systems into smaller circuits that can rotate the burden of
load-shedding more fairly.
Revise the microgrid provisions to offer standardized
microgrid and backup power systems containing photovoltaics,
battery storage, and backup generation. These could be deployed
economically to critical facilities and used for both community
resilience and grid emergency support.
Also, standardize community solar projects to deliver more
clean energy to communities using our taxpayer dollars.
On title III, efficiency, don't just make the grid more
resilient; make people and communities more resilient as well.
To do this, we need to deliver much more energy efficiency to
many more Americans at maximum speed.
Last month, leaky homes and wasteful electric heating drove
Texas demand very high and then leaked out all the warm air so
homes froze and people died without power. We must make
immediate, massive investments in energy efficiency and repairs
to low-income and multifamily housing using weatherization and
more efficient heat pumps and air conditioners. This will keep
people safer during bad weather, reduce energy poverty, speed
up decarbonization, and create many jobs. More efficient homes
and businesses will also improve grid reliability and
resilience.
Thank you all for your service to our Nation, and thank you
for the opportunity to testify.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Silverstein follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rush. Now the Chair recognizes Dr. Wayland.
Dr. Wayland, you are recognized for 5 minutes for the
purposes of an opening statement.
STATEMENT OF KAREN G. WAYLAND, Ph.D.
Dr. Wayland. Thank you, Chairman Rush, Ranking Member
Upton, and other members of the committee. Thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you today to participate in this
important hearing on how Congress can improve the resilience of
the electricity grid and the CLEAN Future Act.
My name is Karen Wayland, and I am the CEO of GridWise
Alliance. The mission of GridWise is to champion the
principles, policies, and investments needed to transform the
electricity grid. Our members include investor-owned utilities,
municipal utilities, rural electric cooperatives, grid
equipment manufacturers and technology companies, vendors,
National Labs, and others.
The Texas power failure and last year's wildfires in
California have focused public attention on the electric grid
and emphasized the growing dependence of all sectors of the
economy on reliable electricity. I know the other panelists
have discussed in greater depth what happened in Texas and
California. My approach is to use those blackouts as the driver
for discussions about enhancing grid resilience across the
country.
We should not lose sight of the range of threats that could
disrupt power supply at the local, regional, or national level.
Every utility in every State faces resilient challenges, each
requiring different risk management strategies. So let's talk
about the threats to grid resilience.
First, increasingly severe weather threatens power grids
across the country. There were a record 22 weather events in
2020 alone in which the cost of the damage exceeded $1 billion.
The last two decades have seen a 67 percent increase in major
power outages from weather events. Drought is increasing, and
five of the worst wildfires in the U.S. history occurred in the
last 4 years. Other natural risks are geological, like
earthquakes, geomagnetic pulses, and sea-level rise.
Cyber attacks are a constant, increasing, and evolving
threat to the electricity system. The growing number of grid-
integrated devices and utility-operating technologies that are
increasingly connected to utility information technology
systems increases the likelihood that a successful cyber attack
could significantly damage critical equipment and cause
widespread power outages. This is a national security threat
that policymakers must tackle, and I urge you to include cyber
provisions in the CLEAN Future Act.
Enhancing the resilience of the electricity grid is a
multipronged approach encompassing planning, operations, and
technology across a range of risks. It is as much about people
as it is about the physical grid. Utilities have a suite of
options to enhance resilience across the technology,
operations, and people spectrum.
On the operations side, trees are the leading cause of
power outages. So utility vegetation management programs reduce
flammable materials near power lines and remove trees at risk
of fall. In the days leading up to an event, utilities will
prestage trucks and equipment in advance.
On the people side, utilities conduct practice drills and
exercises throughout the year to prepare for disaster response
and engage in mutual-assistance agreements with neighboring
utilities.
On the technology side, we have numerous hardening
approaches and new grid technologies that can significantly
increase resilience. And those are dealt well with in the
sections of the 21st-century grid in the CLEAN Future Act.
A few years ago, GridWise Alliance brought together experts
from the utilities and grid equipment manufacturers to discuss
grid resilience in the face of large-scale events like the
Texas freeze and the California wildfires. The 20 utilities
participating represented over 40 percent of the Nation's
electric customers and came up with 4 significant lessons that
the CLEAN Future Act touches on.
First, grid-modernization technologies can prevent outages
and decrease projected impacts. Second, distributed generation
technologies, such as microgrids and DERs, can enhance the
resilience of electric infrastructure. Third, information and
communications technology infrastructure should be more
resilient, reliant, and secure. And for the fourth lesson, from
our workshop, enhanced emergency response planning processes
can result in better deployment and coordination of human and
other resources.
I address a number of these recommendations in my written
testimony, and I look forward to exploring these further with
you.
One final point on resilience: Planning for energy
resilience is not the sole purview of the energy sector. Large-
scale disruptions will often affect multiple systems, as they
did in Texas with water, and multiple States, affecting assets
outside the utilities' footprint and control. Thus, planning
must involve coordination between the public and private
sectors.
State and local governments are the first and second layers
of response planning, and virtually all States have energy
security plans for disaster response. Ideally, these plans
should be updated at least annually, but the reality is that
most States do not.
Working with industry and other stakeholders, GridWise
Alliance has developed a set of grid infrastructure priorities
for an infrastructure package or in evaluating the CLEAN Future
Act. Our policy framework includes over $50 billion in funding
for programs across the Federal Government to support grid
modernization, and our recommendations have significant overlap
with the CLEAN Future Act.
Federal funding for grid modernization will leverage
private capital, accelerate grid-modernization plans, help
derisk State public utility commission decisions, and put
people back to work. If Congress makes investments in the
Nation's grid in 2021, the electricity sector can be the engine
to drive post-pandemic recovery.
GridWise Alliance thanks the committee for the opportunity
to provide feedback on how to enhance resilience of the
Nation's electricity system, and I look forward to the
discussion following. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wayland follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Hofmann for 5 minutes for the
purposes of an opening statement.
Mr. Hofmann, you are now recognized.
STATEMENT OF ERIC HOFMANN
Mr. Hofmann. Thank you, Chairman Rush, Ranking Member
Upton, and all distinguished members of the subcommittee.
My name is Eric Hofmann, and I am president of the Utility
Workers Union of America Local 132, representing over 4,000
unionized workers at SoCalGas, covering over 20,000 square
miles of service territory and over 20 million customers.
Now, our members work in every facet that you could
possible imagine, from our welders and inspectors on the
pipelines to our technicians that service appliances in low-
income and underserved communities. We represent our folks in
the call center, men and women, many of them single moms. Every
walk of life imaginable is who our members are.
Climate change is real and no doubt caused by human
activity. The question becomes, what do we do about it? We know
we need to significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and
that should be the goal. The goal should be to reduce
greenhouse-gas emissions.
How do we get there? We are going to need wind. We are
going to need solar. We are going to need lithium ion battery
technologies. But we are also going to need renewable natural
gas. We are going to need hydrogen. We are going to need carbon
capture, utilization, and sequestration. And we are going to
need pyrolysis. We are going to need all of it.
We are going to need to include workers who work in these
spaces, who are the true experts on these energy systems. And
they should have a voice and a seat at the table. They are the
ones who are best served to explain to you all how to best move
forward and get our energy systems dramatically decarbonized.
When we talk about building electrification, building
electrification presents some of its own challenges,
particularly the solution on offer right now with heat-pump
technologies. The heat pumps contain refrigerants, currently R-
410A, which is 2,100 times worse than CO2,
particularly on the production side. There are other issues
with these heat-pump technologies in the ducting and the other
wiring and electrical components required in order to upgrade
these systems.
So, when we talk about decarbonizing, as far as UWUA Local
132 is concerned, it does not mean mandating electrification.
We need to get there, and the way we get there is by exploring
every option available and keeping all of our options at our
fingertips.
One of the other big problems you are going to find with
electrification is the renewable space that we currently have.
In southern California, the largest solar field has a dedicated
natural gas line in order to keep the panels heated during the
night and in the cold, so when the sun comes up in the morning
there is no condensation on the panels, so they are moving at
full capacity.
So we need to take all of these things into consideration,
particularly with our housing crisis in California, and we
cannot make things less affordable. We have to try to keep
energy as affordable as it can possibly be. Energy should not
be a luxury to only the affluent. Energy should be available to
everyone.
In closing, I will just say that, regardless of what letter
you have in front of your name, it is not lost on me for what
you guys do, and I am sure more often than not it is a
thankless job. So let me just say thank you for what you do and
your leadership. And I appreciate your line of questioning.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hofmann follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Rush. I want to thank all of our witnesses.
We have concluded our opening statements. We will now move
to Member questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to ask
questions of our witnesses.
And I will start by recognizing myself for 5 minutes.
Ms. McIntyre, in recent years extreme weather events have
posed a significant threat to our Nation's critical
infrastructure. A recent GAO study suggests that climate change
will have far-reaching impacts on our Nation's electric grid.
Would you describe why you think it is important to swiftly
invest in a 21st century energy system and, in particular, how
this investment will allow us to respond to climate change?
Ms. McIntyre. Thank you, Congressman.
We definitely agree with GAO's assessment and certainly do
believe that the extreme weather threats being caused and
fueled by climate change are certainly, you know, causing more
and dramatic impacts on our energy system.
And so we believe--and, again, as I go into in my written
testimony--that there are a number of steps, some that are
included in the CLEAN Future Act, that will address and
hopefully make the grid more resilient and reliable.
But, you know, action needs to be taken now. And foremost,
at the top of that list, is decarbonizing our grid. We need to
move away from fossil fuels that are fueling the climate
crisis, and so we need more access to renewable energy, energy
efficiency, storage.
We also need to expand our transmission grid and strengthen
transmission interconnections--you know, take other efficiency
measures, such as weatherization, electrification.
And so, you know, a whole host of steps that, again, I go
into in more detail in my written testimony.
But the time is now. We can't continue to hold off on
making these investments and transforming our grid. You know,
we need to move away from fossil fuels now to, you know----
Mr. Rush. Thank you very much.
Ms. McIntyre [continuing]. Lessen the impacts of climate
and----
Mr. Rush. Yes. I only have a few more minutes. Thank you,
Ms. McIntyre.
Ms. McIntyre. OK. Great.
Mr. Rush. Dr. Wayland, in your testimony you mentioned that
we must not lose sight of the range of threats that could
disrupt power supply at the local, regional, or national level.
In addition, you mentioned that resilient grid infrastructure
requires a range of risk management strategies.
How might policies to enhance Federal investment in grid
resiliency support a range of risk management strategies?
Dr. Wayland. Thank you, Congressman.
We believe that helping to accelerate grid modernization is
one policy that the Federal Government can take to enhance the
resilience of the electricity system. Deploying grid
technologies actually gives the grid operators a greater
flexibility in terms of dealing with a range of threats and
also allows them to take more advantage of the demand-side
assets--buildings, vehicles, water heaters, other things.
And in the energy efficiency provisions in the CLEAN Future
Act, we strongly support energy efficiency, but we would
recommended that, if the bill passes, that would result in an
enormous upgrading of buildings around the country, millions of
buildings. And during that construction, those buildings should
have advanced energy management systems installed that could be
grid-integrated and allow those buildings to become assets to
the grid that grid operators can use to provide additional grid
services and manage loads better across the grid.
I would also say that giving tools to utilities and to
policymakers to value grid resilience is very important. And
continued support for the Department of Energy and the National
Labs' work with stakeholders on evaluation of grid resilience
will be very critical to justify those resilience investments.
Thank you.
Mr. Rush. Thank you.
Ms. Silverstein, communities like the First District of
Illinois also experience extreme weather and summer weather
events. Given your experience in both the national and Texas-
specific grid policies, would you describe how policies from
the CLEAN Future Act might support Federal efforts to secure
vital grid infrastructure in a variety of communities?
Ms. Silverstein. Yes, sir. Thank you.
The most important thing that I recommend is measures that
work in Texas or in Chicago, in all of your States, and those
are: Don't just protect the grid. Protect people, and make
people more resilient.
And what that means is taking the benefits of things like
distributed generation and backup power systems and putting
them at critical facilities so that they serve everyone and
support the grid, and doing essential energy efficiency as
widely as possible for as many people as possible.
Because not all of the shiny things that Ms. Wayland
advocates will work all the time, particularly given potential
disruptions to communications and cyber attack. So I want to
make sure that people are protected by safer homes and
buildings that keep them safe, no matter what, wherever their
weather happens to hit them.
Thank you.
Mr. Rush. That concludes my questions.
The Chair now recognizes my friend from the great State of
Michigan, Mr. Upton, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Upton. Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a number
of questions.
I appreciate all the testimony.
Ms. Wayland, we--I have to say, all of us support grid
modernization. We have had a number of hearings over the last
good number of years, whether it be on cyber--obviously, what
we saw in California and Texas is not where we want to be.
How much do you think that we need to spend on grid
modernization? And what would be the leverage that we would be
able to get, do you think, from the utilities themselves to
help out with the cost? What is a ballpark figure in terms of
what we are going to need?
Dr. Wayland. Ballpark, we are recommending a suite of
recommendations for about $50 billion of Federal investment.
But that is across a range of direct grid technology
deployment, to resilience measures like microgrids, for
cybersecurity and other things. And I am happy to share with
you our Grid Investments for Economic Recovery proposal.
You will get significant leverage from utilities in these
investments. In fact, the investor-owned utilities don't want
free money from the Federal Government. They need to be able to
make their own investments here.
But I do think that the Federal investments would help
accelerate grid modernization. We have seen a number of public
utility commissions take a very hard look at grid-modernization
plans for a number of reasons but particularly because of the
economic downturn of the last year. And so Federal funding
would certainly help accelerate the regular investment plans
that are out there for grid modernization.
Thank you.
Mr. Upton. And, you know, we have heard a lot over the
years about the trouble in permiting for new grids, for new
lines. Do you support any permit modernization or reforms that
could be part of this package?
Dr. Wayland. We do believe that there is a mismatch between
the permiting for generation and the permiting for transmission
and that we need to look at a range of policy options to
accelerate our ability to both build new [inaudible] and to
upgrade existing facilities to make them more efficient and to
build their capacity.
Mr. Upton. And for the record, can you provide some of
those recommendations for us?
Dr. Wayland. I--yes. We----
Mr. Upton. Great. Thank you.
Dr. Wayland [continuing]. Particularly around--sorry.
Mr. Upton. That is the answer I wanted to hear. Thank you.
Dr. Wayland. Yes, I will provide them for you.
Mr. Upton. Great.
And, Mr. Hofmann, you mentioned in your testimony that you
represent thousands of utility workers. There are some 20
million people in southern California.
What are some of the greatest challenges for your workers?
And what keeps you up at night as you prepare for yet another
summer in California with a growing risk of wildfires and
perhaps rolling blackouts? What can we do today to help your
job a few months from now?
Mr. Hofmann. Sure. So, you know, in regards to, you know,
this summer and wildfires, you know, mudslides in the winter,
earthquakes, all of these things that happen, these sort of
major, catastrophic events, my members, quite frankly, they
call it a Tuesday. And that is what they are up against.
And, you know, when we talk about what can we do today,
there is--and in terms of impacts on reducing greenhouse-gas
emissions, we have a system of leaky pipes that we could be
fixing right now. We could work on this.
You know, Local 132 was the first of its kind to enact
legislation here in California in SB 1371 to actually adopt a
find-it-and-fix-it approach to natural gas leaks that have been
deemed nonhazardous by the Public Utilities Commission in terms
of their likelihood of ignition----
Mr. Upton. And what is your backlog? I don't mean to
interrupt, but what is your backlog on the find-it-and-fix-it?
Mr. Hofmann. Well, you know, when--I am not certain, but I
know that it is in the thousands.
Mr. Upton. Thousands of individual leaks?
Mr. Hofmann. Yes.
Mr. Upton. Wow. That would do a lot.
What is the reaction from your membership for those that
say, ``Well, maybe we can find you another job in a different
sector of energy, maybe at the same salary''? What level of
skepticism is there as it relates to that?
Mr. Hofmann. Off-the-charts high, quite frankly. When we
hear the term ``just transition,'' quite frankly, it makes our
skin crawl because we have not seen any example of anything
that is that just.
I worry about, you know, our newest member who signed up
last week--you know, what does that mean for his career going
forward? What about people that have 20 years? What about their
retirements and everything else and their families? There is a
lot for us to consider there.
Mr. Upton. And let me just--is there a log for the find-it-
and-fix-it? Can we find out the specific number of cases that
might be open in California that need to be addressed, through
the public service commission or somebody else?
Mr. Hofmann. Yes. The California Public Utilities
Commission, certainly, yes. It is under SB 1371, Senator Leno.
Mr. Upton. OK. Thank you.
I yield back. Thank you for the time.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the chairman of the full
committee, Mr. Pallone, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Chairman Rush.
I wanted to ask some questions about transmission. One
issue that the Texas energy crisis brought to the forefront is
whether ERCOT would have benefited from having more
transmission connections to the rest of the U.S. grid.
And, during the storm, Southwest Power Pool, the electric
market north of ERCOT, and the Mid-Continental Independent
System Operator, the electric market to the east of ERCOT, were
able to rely upon energy imports from the rest of the grid even
though those markets still experienced some shortages.
So let me start with Ms. Silverstein.
How could ERCOT have benefited from greater transmission
connections to the rest of the U.S. grid during this severe
winter storm? If you will.
Ms. Silverstein. Yes, sir. ERCOT could have benefited in a
couple ways.
One of them is, just because the other--there would have to
be significantly bigger interconnections than exist today, of
course. But just because another interconnection is wrestling
with its own winter weather doesn't mean there is nothing left
for them to share.
And so there are significant benefits for potential
additional flows and, more important, had ERCOT actually gone
into black start, though it is much easier to restore a grid
being able to import power from elsewhere than it is only to
depend on your own internal resources. So we could have avoided
a multiweek potential collapse of the entire Texas economy had
Texas had interconnection to support black start.
Mr. Pallone. Well, thank you.
Now, the CLEAN Future Act contains a suite of new
provisions that enable responsible build-out of the electricity
transmission system. So obviously, you know, we think that that
would help in terms of what you just discussed.
But let me go to Ms. Wayland.
Why is a robust transmission system so important for grid
reliability and resiliency?
Dr. Wayland. Well, a robust transmission system means that
it is able to respond quickly to changes across a large
geographical area. And so you are actually able to balance load
and supply across, you know, areas with different geographical
conditions.
So, in an event like a storm, where you might have
excessive demand, or extreme heat like we had in California,
you can call on power from different parts of the country and
actually balance it better than you would if you have a system
that is not as expansive.
So that is one way to think about a robust transmission
system.
Mr. Pallone. I mean, I know that even from listening to the
debate this morning in O&I that, you know, many of our Texas
members sort of pride themselves on the fact that Texas is on
its own and, you know, can do everything on its own. And I
understand that. Everybody has a sense of pride in their State,
and certainly Texans do. But, I mean, I think that it is clear
that if they were better hooked up to a national grid that
there would have been a better opportunity to prevent this from
happening, or at least it would have been lessened.
Let me ask Ms. McIntyre, will we be able to achieve our
clean-energy goals without building out the transmission system
to access renewable energy sources?
Ms. McIntyre. No, we will not. You know, having stronger
and more expanded transmission provides more access to clean-
energy resources where they are generating electricity and
being able to take that power to where it is needed.
And so, you know, right now, like, Southwest Power Pool,
actually, the majority of its generation is actually wind
power. And so, you know, in an overabundance of wind power, you
know, to have the ability to actually get that power to where
it is needed, particularly in times of storm and severe
weather, is going to be essential.
It will also provide--expanded transmission will provide
the balancing of intermittent renewable resources, again,
because, you know, if you are experiencing, you know, low wind
levels in one State, that doesn't mean that, you know, the same
level of activity is happening in another State. So, if the
wind is blowing in one State, you can move it to another State
if you have stronger transmission ties.
So I know there is a lot of concern that people raise about
the intermittency of renewable resources, but, you know, having
an expanded and stronger transmission system will allow the
balancing to be enabled to provide renewable power throughout
the country.
Mr. Pallone. Well, thank you.
Yes, I just want to stress, I know we have talked a lot
about Texas today, but modernizing the grid and expanding
transmission are important for reliability and resiliency in
all the States. And I just think there are also critical
activities we have to undertake to enhance the movement of
clean electricity across the country to ensure a reliable
source of supply and to meet our net-zero carbon energy goals.
So thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the ranking member of the full
committee, Mrs. Rodgers, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Hofmann, I want to join in just saying thank you for
being with us today and sharing your important perspective. I
think it is really important that we get that on-the-ground
perspective, especially from California and as someone that is
working every day to ensure that we have safe and reliable
energy.
You talked in your testimony about, quote, ``working to
optimize the natural gas and gas infrastructure, not minimize
or eliminate it.'' And I think that we want to do the same
thing. We want to build, not destroy. We want to improve our
energy systems using all our resources and really looking at
how we can make these resources cleaner. We want to do it
sensibly, and it takes time for that innovation.
My opinion is that the problem with the CLEAN Future Act is
that, with the timelines and the one-size-fits-all mandates and
the centralized planning, it makes no room for this.
So, Mr. Hofmann, you state in your testimony that
decarbonization does not mean building electrification. Would
you just tell us why and why it isn't necessarily ideal for
families and workers?
Mr. Hofmann. Certainly.
So, when you talk about, you know, building
electrification, you know, it is, what is the goal? And if the
goal is reducing greenhouse-gas emissions, then there are,
quite frankly, more cost-effective, more efficient ways to get
there.
For example, you know, going into low-income and
underserved communities and replacing their old, quite frankly,
junky appliances with more state-of-the-art natural-gas/
electric appliances, you know, that will decrease your energy
consumption. Therefore, you are reducing greenhouse-gas
emissions.
Talking about, you know, this whole prospect of making
everything electric, you are going to leave a lot of people in
the dark that can't afford to transition over. And I think from
a sense of, you know, just cost-efficiency measures, we would
all be better served, from our perspective, in repurposing and
refurbishing rather than recapitalizing everything.
Mrs. Rodgers. OK. I appreciate that.
And another title is--and one that I think is actually
pretty chilling in this legislation is the worker transition
title, which makes plans for the loss of these energy and
energy-intensive jobs expected from the bill.
Would you speak to what goes into your work and what it
means to you and your colleagues to build the skills that you
have and perform the jobs that you do?
Mr. Hofmann. Certainly. Thank you for that question.
You know, we secured our first bargaining unit here at
Local 132 in 1938, and it is a craft that we have been
perfecting every since. I am a second-generation utility
worker, and I am proud of it. And these skills that we have
honed and perfected over, you know, decades and generations--we
are not robots, and we can't just simply be reprogrammed to do
a completely separate skill. It is just not realistic.
And rather than, you know, focusing on things that are
largely aspirational, from our perspective, it makes more sense
to work on things that are actually achievable.
Mrs. Rodgers. Yes. So what do you think when DC is talking
about the other occupations that they can train you to do?
Mr. Hofmann. You know, from what I have seen--I mean, I
have seen, for example--you know, one example is that an
environmental attorney is considered a green job. And, quite
frankly, that is just not really an occupation that I see a lot
of my members transitioning into.
And, you know, there are other examples that I see real
challenges with also. You know, even the aspect of the
additional components needed on the electrical system, what
would be required would not--they would not require all 4,000
of my members and however many thousands of other gas workers
in the State would be needed to come over on the electric side.
It is just not realistic.
Mrs. Rodgers. So another concern I have with California
policies becoming our country's policies is the cost. And we
know that California has seven times the cost of the national
average.
And now the Governor is proposing to eliminate the sales of
light-duty, gasoline-powered vehicles. And that also is coming
to DC, where the two California Senators are asking for that to
happen nationally.
Would you speak to working-class communities and if you
think that they will benefit from the ban of these gas-fueled
vehicles?
Mr. Hofmann. It is kind of a difficult question. I mean,
you know, considering that, you know, tailpipe emissions, cars,
suggested that they contribute to, you know, roughly nearly 40
percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, I mean, that is
probably the best sector to work in, but, again, you have a lot
of things to consider. How are people going to afford these new
technologies that, from what at least they are right now, they
are very expensive?
Not to mention the fact that, what would happen today if
every single person who owned or drove a car in California
plugged in their car at night? You know, there are some
challenges there that I think a lot of people need to consider.
And, you know, from our perspective, the best people to talk to
are the ones who are actually going to have to do that work.
Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you. I really appreciate you being with
us.
I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Peters for 5 minutes.
Mr. Peters. Thank you, Chairman Rush, for convening this
hearing today.
The Oversight and Investigations committee, as you
mentioned, held a hearing this morning on the power crisis in
Texas. And while the Texas grid failed for a combination of
reasons unique to Texas, the extreme weather that triggered the
near-gridwide blackout was not a unique event. We have seen
grid vulnerabilities in other places, including my home State
of California.
That is why titles II and III of the CLEAN Future Act are
so important and timely. And I am especially grateful to the
committee chairs for including language from my bill, the POWER
ON Act, which encourages the siting of new interstate
transmission lines to increase overall capacity, reliance, and
resilience and lower electricity costs to consumers.
According to research from the Department of Energy's
National Renewable Energy Lab, if we connect centers of high
renewable resources with centers of high electric demand by
building a macro grid--that is, an overlay of high-voltage DC
lines--and optimize that grid for the Nation's best wind and
solar, we can dramatically reduce carbon emissions while
improving system resiliency and reducing wholesale power costs.
And, Ms. McIntyre, I appreciate you referencing this
concept in your testimony. And I would like to ask you and then
maybe Ms. Silverstein: Electrifying everything is one key
component to GHG emissions-reduction strategies. This would
require additional transmission to bring clean energy from
rural areas to our population centers.
Would it be a good strategy or would it not be a good
strategy to site transmission along highways and railways, with
the aim of supplying charging infrastructure along the routes,
while maximizing existing rights of way?
And Ms. McIntyre and then Ms. Silverstein.
Ms. McIntyre. Yes, I think that would be a good idea. You
know, any different ways that we can expand and strengthen the
transmission system to do exactly what you are saying, to help
enable, you know, bringing more clean resources and lowering
consumer costs, are good proposals to investigate. So thank
you.
Mr. Peters. Ms. Silverstein?
Ms. Silverstein. It is a wonderful proposal, and I
recommend that you supplement that with an extensive amount of
storage. As folks who are not fans of renewables are quick to
point out, the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't
always blow. So the more that we can support renewables with
not only large amounts of transmission but large amounts of
storage, distributed in places like charging stations, the
better we can support all of those uses.
Thank you.
Mr. Peters. Great.
A background grid is also a key to integrating low-cost
zero-emission resources. Given that Order 1000 interregional
coordination is not a requirement for planning, and only listed
pairs of Order 1000 planning regions, should we conduct
interconnectionwide or nationwide planning outside of that
process? Or does it make sense to reform that process to bring
broader regions to plan together?
And I will ask the same two individuals to comment, Ms.
McIntyre and then Ms. Silverstein.
Ms. McIntyre. We definitely think that FERC should be given
the authority to improve the interregional transmission
processes and have it be a requirement that utilities in the
region be involved.
Mr. Peters. OK.
Ms. Silverstein?
Ms. Silverstein. I concur.
Additionally, though, I recommend that you not only give
FERC more authority over that but that you additionally create
a Federal electric transmission authority. Because we know that
RTOs individually are incapable, it appears, of looking much
beyond their boundaries effectively. And so we need much better
definition of the benefits, we need much better cost
allocation, as well as planning processes.
Thank you.
Mr. Peters. And, to be fair, that would be what you would
expect out of RTOs, not necessarily to look nationwide. I think
that is why----
Ms. Silverstein. They are doing a great job at what their
job is, but we need more than that.
Mr. Peters. Exactly.
And, finally, Ms. Silverstein, we are likely to see more
and more of these extreme weather events, and that demonstrates
we need to improve resilience. But someone on the other side of
the aisle had been suggesting that the Texas energy crisis is
an opportunity to cast blame for the California blackouts on
renewables.
Can you give me your perspective on that? What do you say
to people who say they can't run a grid reliably and keep the
lights on if we rely on an increasing amount of renewable
resources?
Ms. Silverstein. I think they are wrong. California was
demonstrably not about the failure of renewables alone.
California was about the failure of all kinds of resources and
climate change. Texas was about climate change, an
extraordinary weather event, and the failure of every kind of
generation and every kind of customer demand problem. So, if
there was a way to screw up this Texas event, we found it, and
they all happened simultaneously.
But every complicated weather event and every grid failure
is going to have multiple parents and multiple causes. So you
can't just say renewables were the cause of either of those
events.
Mr. Peters. Great.
I really appreciate the testimony.
Mr. Chairman, I know my time has expired. I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Burgess for 5 minutes.
Mr. Burgess. Thank you, Mr. Rush.
So we all take it for granted that if you walk into a room
or flip the light switch the lights will come on. But, as we
learned in Texas and the recent blackouts in California, it
certainly shocked, no pun intended, many of those constituents,
and it caused many of us to realize just how fragile our
electric system can be.
We can all agree on cleaner energy production, and it
should be a priority. But, when drafting Federal policies,
Congress must not assume that every electron is as reliable, as
affordable as the one before. The resource of electricity has
positives and negatives--again, no pun intended. A diverse
portfolio of energy generation is integral to achieve the
competing priorities of energy reliability and environmental
stewardship.
I think Republicans on this committee are ready to work
across the aisle to modernize our energy sector, to ensure
reliable, affordable energy that is easily accessible, and to
increase American energy exports. But the majority's CLEAN
Future Act poses significant risks to those goals.
I also would like to mention, just on the issue of
transmission, Texas underwent a rather ambitious--they were
called the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones. And the idea was
to get the energy, the renewable energy, from the wind farms in
west Texas to where the consumption took place in Dallas and
Austin and points east.
I know this because many of those transmission lines
crisscrossed the district that I represent, and there was
considerable angst at the time of their construction. It was
about a $7 billion price tag that will be paid for by rate-
payers over the next several, several years. But it is like
anything else: You start building a major electrical
transmission line, even in a State as large as Texas, and you
don't have to go very far before you bump up against someone
who would just as soon not have it there.
So, while I appreciate the comments that have been made
about modernizing transmission, in fact, Texas--which many
people have held up as not the best-case scenario--Texas made a
significant investment in getting electricity from the wind
fields of west Texas to the areas of consumption in the more
populated eastern part of the State.
But let me ask Karen Wayland just very briefly, does the
CLEAN Future Act improve the resiliency of America's fuel
infrastructure?
Dr. Wayland. I believe it does. And when you talk about
fuel, we think of fuel in a range of ways. It is not just--you
know, I think you might be thinking of natural gas. We are
thinking of fuel in terms of all of the energy sources that can
generate electricity. And----
Mr. Burgess. Yes. Texas is all-of-the-above, for a fact.
Dr. Wayland. That is correct.
And I think that, you know, we have been talking about the
grid today, and we should be talking about the electricity
system and then the grid. So, in Texas, the issue was not the
grid, necessarily. It was the generation that is connected to
the grid. And Texas didn't necessarily represent an engineering
failure of the grid itself.
So, you know, it was much more about a failure of
generation capacity across all fuel sources, as well as, you
know, as Ms. Silverstein has mentioned, market issues and the
end-use issues of failure to really invest in the efficiency
and the weatherization of the end use as well.
Mr. Burgess. Well, Texas is a big State. As we learned in
the other hearing, the weatherization--it is not that it didn't
happen, it is that it didn't happen everywhere to the same
degree that some people thought it should.
Look, on the issue of Texas being its own system--and,
again, I referenced this in the other hearing that we had in
Oversight and Investigations--the electricity outage occurred
at 1:00 a.m. on a Monday morning. Saturday, Texas was buying
power from the Southwest Power Pool and was buying power from
northern Mexico. I presume that is because Texas was paying a
premium for that power. But when the weather got cold in Texas,
it simultaneously got cold in those other places, and they no
long had power to sell.
So, again--it came up in the other hearing, and I do feel
obligated to point out--there is a limit to how much energy you
can import if everyone is using their system to the maximum. It
is something that you want to be able to plan for, but you
can't always plan for it. And as I asked the head of NERC in
the last hearing, I said, ``Is there any system in the country
that is completely weather-proof?'' And his answer was, ``No,
there is not.''
Thank you, Mr. Rush. I will yield back to you.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. McNerney from California for 5
minutes.
Mr. McNerney. I thank Chairman Rush for holding this
hearing.
And I thank the panelists for your testimony today,
including the background on the situation in Texas.
My colleagues across the aisle have attempted to identify
the failures in Texas with those in California, but there are
some similarities--namely, that climate change is making both
situations worse--but they are really two separate challenges.
This committee held a hearing on California blackouts last
Congress, and we discussed the challenges the California grid
faces. But my Republican colleagues seem determined to falsely
blame the outages on renewable resources, but the real cause is
the new normal of massive wildfires every season. Similarly,
extreme cold was the immediate cause of the Texas outage. But
the underlying cause in Texas was the unprepared utility
system.
Worse, these extreme events are--they are not going to
stop. They are going to get worse year after year. This is the
new normal, so we have to be prepared.
Ms. Silverstein, what are the challenges unique to Texas in
terms of making their grid more resilient? And what do we risk
missing by not attempting to fully understand the Texas
situation on its own?
Ms. Silverstein. Texas is--I am going to get drummed out of
the State for saying this--but Texas isn't as special as we
like to think it is, and the challenges that we face in Texas
aren't all that different from every other State. We deny risk.
We underestimate what could go wrong. We are not creative to
imagine how bad storms and other threats could be, and so we
underinsure and underprepare.
Texas, like everywhere else, is not investing enough in
generation, we are not investing enough in transmission, we are
not investing enough in flexibility capabilities, and we are
just not ready to deal with all the stuff that is coming at us.
Mr. McNerney. Well, that sort of sounds like what
everyplace in the country ought to be doing.
Ms. Silverstein. Exactly.
Mr. McNerney. You know--and I know you already answered
this question, but I want to hear it again. Are renewables the
cause of what happened in California and in Texas?
Ms. Silverstein. They absolutely are not. They absolutely
are not.
In Texas, every single resource failed.
In California, they were just 500 megawatts short.
Actually, they did outages in California because load was
unprecedented high, not because resources were necessarily
short, and they were following the rules about being careful.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
Ms. Karen Wayland, one of the ways we can modernize the
grid is by investing in smart grid technology. Can you please
explain the importance of smart grid investments and how they
can help in the context of grid resilience?
Dr. Wayland. Yes. Thank you, Congressman. And thank you for
cochairing the Grid Caucus with Congressman Latta. We
appreciate interacting with you over the years at GridWise.
You know, grid modernization is essential for increasing
resilience. These new grid technologies have been proven to
significantly increase resilience. Sensors can alert grid
operators to downed lines. They can allow a more targeted
response.
We now have automated grid equipment that can sense and
respond to conditions immediately, including rerouting power
around downed lines and self-healing capabilities. We have
remote sensing in the planning process. We can use remote
sensing and NASA satellite imaging to better target vegetation
management and to assess damage.
I particularly am interested in modern utility
communication networks that can improve operational speed and
visibility for grid operators, and the kinds of smart energy
management systems, both in the buildings and vehicles, so that
they can become assets to the grid, and also the kind of data
analytics that grid operators can use to kind of figure out
what is happening on the grid, increase visibility, and improve
their ability to balance electricity across the system.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
With a ``yes'' or ``no,'' would authorization of the Smart
Grid Investment Matching Program be helpful for increasing our
grid utility resiliency efforts?
Dr. Wayland. Yes.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
I would be remiss if I didn't recognize Yvonne McIntyre. It
is good to see you and that you are still in the energy sector.
Yvonne, you said that the Texas power failures were caused
by lax government oversight and regulations. Do you have
specific recommendations on how to improve the situation so we
will be avoiding future calamities?
Ms. McIntyre. Thank you, Congressman McNerney, and it is
good to see you as well.
So the lax government oversight was a combination of, you
know, State, local, and Federal Government oversight. And so we
believe that there should be standards implemented at the
Federal level through NERC for weatherization efforts and also
taking into account in every step of the way the impact of
climate change through permiting decisions and build-out of our
energy infrastructure.
I think that there should be greater standards for
weatherization for building codes. You know, a lot of what
happened in Texas could have been less dramatic if there had
been less demand on the energy system through home and building
energy demand.
We believe that, you know, again, there should be stronger
ties between Texas and the other grids. I know Congressman
Burgess mentioned that there was power flowing between SPP and
Mexico, but the problem is that they don't have strong
transmission ties between the other grids. So, while, yes, some
power can flow, the amount of power that was needed to help
offset the outages in Texas were lacking. So stronger grids,
stronger interconnection would have also helped Texas.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you.
Well, I have gone way over my time, Chairman, and I yield
back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Latta of Ohio for 5 minutes.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thanks to our witnesses today for appearing before this
committee.
And before I get to my questions, I think it is important
for us to call attention to the fact that the American energy
renaissance we have experienced over the past 15 years would
not have been possible without the millions of hardworking
Americans who work in our energy industry. Workers in sectors
like oil, natural gas, nuclear, coal, propane, solar, wind,
hydro, and biofuels have put the United States in a position to
lead the world in cleaner and more efficient energy production.
My fear is that all this will go for naught and the
livelihoods of these Americans will be threatened if we follow
the majority down the path of increasing burdensome government
mandates in certain sectors of our energy industry.
The data has shown that we don't need to take this
approach. For example, emissions have fallen by more than 20
percent on a per-capita basis since 2005, the largest decrease
in the world, thanks to the advancement of hydraulic fracturing
and the emergence of American-produced natural gas as well as
more energy-efficient products. This proves that we can pursue
our goal of reducing current emissions while also preserving
and growing jobs in the energy sectors.
And I am also proud of the fact that I have First Solar in
my district, and they are a global leader in solar panel
production.
Mr. Hofmann, if I could start my questions with you. In
your testimony, you talk about that we shouldn't be looking at
prematurely picking preferred fuels and technologies and that
physical and commercial structures that link sources and sinks
risk setting us back in reaching our decarbonization.
And you go on to state that, you know, you advocate for a
policy to optimize the use of natural gas and gas
infrastructure, not minimize or eliminate it.
Could you talk a little bit about that, please?
Mr. Hofmann. Certainly. Yes, thank you for that question.
You know, here at Local 132 our perspective is that we are
better served in achieving reductions of greenhouse-gas
emissions by optimizing the existing natural gas
infrastructure. You know, energy moves in the space of
molecules or electrons. And so, you know, when we talk about
our natural gas system, that infrastructure is already there.
And by introducing blends of hydrogen, advancing more
optimizations levels in renewable natural gas, carbon capture,
utilization, and sequestration, these are the spaces in which
that infrastructure, for the most part, is already in place.
And we can dramatically reduce the carbon outputs, all the way
to the burner tip, by implementing and having greater emphasis
in these spaces.
And as far as achieving those climate goals, from our
perspective we are better served repurposing and refurbishing
that, rather than throwing the baby out with the bath water and
saying everything just has to be all electric. From our
perspective we don't think you can get there without these
other spaces.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you.
Dr. Wayland, I want to switch gears and talk about grid
security and cyber threats, as you and I have discussed before,
and about the threats to the grid from cyber attacks. And that
is why I have worked with my friend and colleague, Mr. McNerney
from California, on two bipartisan bills to address this issue,
the Cyber Sense Act and also the Enhancing Grid Security
Through Public-Private Partnership Act.
Given the threat to grid resiliency, shouldn't more
attention be paid to cybersecurity and solutions like these two
bills that tackle the problems we might be facing?
Dr. Wayland. Yes, absolutely. And I understand that there
are jurisdictional issues that complicate Congress tackling
cybersecurity, but it truly is a national threat. We know every
day that our utilities, not just electricity but water and gas,
are being probed by, not the guy sitting in the basement but
hostile, you know, states. And this is a really critical,
critical issue for Congress to tackle, and we urge you to do so
and are happy to help you in any way to make that happen.
Mr. Latta. Well, let me just follow up with you again. You
know, I talk with a lot of power companies, and, you know,
protecting the grid from cyber attacks is so important. Do you
think that that is an item that the general public understands
out there, how much the grid is subject to attack?
Dr. Wayland. I don't think they do.
And I also don't think they understand that as we
increasingly add digital equipment that can interact with the
grid that we are actually increasing the threats even further.
So, you know, as we plug things into the grid, we are
increasing the access points for cyber attacks to disrupt the
grid, from the distribution system all the way up to the
transmission system.
So I don't think the public fully understands. But I do
think that the SolarWinds attack and other things have started
to capture the attention of the public.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you very much.
And, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time, and
I think I have run over, but thank you very much for your
indulgence.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the chairman of the Environment
Subcommittee, Mr. Tonko, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Chairman Rush.
Dr. Wayland, I want to echo your support for Federal
investment in grid modernization, but I also want to ask you
about the role for distributed generation. Thinking back to the
experiences in my home State of New York, in some places
distributed generation was able to keep the lights on during
situations like Superstorm Sandy.
How can distributed generation contribute to the resilience
of our energy system, especially around critical facilities?
Dr. Wayland. Yes. Well, there are a couple ways.
One is that, obviously, if you have your own capacity to
generate if something happens on the grid, then you are able to
power your home.
And there are a couple of things that are going to be
critical there which we should consider in the CLEAN Future
Act. One is that, you know, storage, individual storage, has to
be a component of distributed energy resources. And the other
thing is that, if the power goes out, for many people who have
solar on their rooftop, their solar power is not going to power
their house, because, without a smart inverter, that power
would go out into the grid and it automatically shuts off so
that it doesn't electrocute line workers. So, if we really want
resilience for individuals who have solar power, we have to
talk about storage and inverters as well.
And then microgrids and distributed generation, distributed
generators, mobile generators, are also critical for--and those
are less likely to be, you know, in an individual's home, but
around large critical facilities like hospitals, like
universities and schools that can become shelters. So those are
critical aspects of resilience as well.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
The CLEAN Future Act includes a bill that I worked on
during the 116th Congress to develop a national standardized
model permit that local governments could adopt to streamline
distributed generation build-out.
So, Ms. McIntyre, do you think this is a good idea? Are
there things we can do to lower the existing barriers to
distributed generation deployment, including reducing permiting
costs?
Ms. McIntyre. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Tonko. And, definitely,
we believe that those measures that have been included in the
bill would be beneficial for enabling access to distributed
generation, and resources are much needed to provide this
transformation, so thank you.
Mr. Tonko. Well, thank you.
And while I support an increased role for distributed
generation in our energy mix, in order to achieve the ambitious
goals in the CLEAN Future Act, we are going to need a lot more
utility-scale renewables. These projects are often
geographically constrained, and we are going to need new high-
voltage transmission infrastructure to maximize the potential
of our Nation's low-cost renewable resources.
So, Ms. Silverstein, your written testimony mentioned that
all of the benefits of high-voltage transmission are rarely
acknowledged. Can you discuss what these are? I am guessing it
is a combination of emissions reductions and reliability and
resilience, perhaps?
Ms. Silverstein. It is those things. It is also lowering
costs and increasing access to preferred resources. Many
customers prefer renewable resources and low-carbon resources,
and they can't get them.
It is creating much stronger connections between
interconnection and between regions to enable more power flow.
This is what improves the reliability of the grid overall and
lowers the costs for delivered energy to all Americans, not
just to those who sit right next door to a renewable
generation.
It also allows the benefits of generators like nuclear and
others to support each other and to reach more broadly than
their next-door neighbors.
So there are many benefits. And the current reliability
rules and FERC rules do not allow all of those benefits to be
recognized and incorporated in grid planning.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
And can FERC and RTOs do more to account for these benefits
in transmission planning and cost allocation processes?
Ms. Silverstein. Absolutely. Transmission planning is now
run according to very limited definitions of benefits and
fairly locally negotiated cost allocation rules. And we need a
much bigger, national-scale recognition of all of these
benefits and the ability to assign costs more broadly, not just
according to the, quote, ``narrowly defined beneficiaries.''
Mr. Tonko. And some of these high-impact projects will need
to cross State and RTO boundaries. So, Ms. McIntyre, do you
have any recommendations for how we can improve interregional
transmission planning to make certain these projects are being
properly considered by each region involved?
Ms. McIntyre. Yes. We believe that FERC needs to be granted
greater authority for transmission planning and siting. And,
again, the CLEAN Future Act does provide a good start in
providing some of these authorities, but we think that they
need to be strengthened.
Mr. Tonko. Good. Thank you so much.
And, with that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the amazing gentleman from West
Virginia, my friend Mr. McKinley, for 5 minutes.
Mr. McKinley. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And please
give Paulette a hug from me, OK, as one friend to another.
Listen, Mr. Chairman, the Boston Consulting Group has
concluded that, with just a modest increase in the electronic
vehicles by 15 percent by 2030, our grid will require a 25
percent increase in generation capacity. Now, that may seem
doable, but within the same timeframe this particular
legislation calls for the abandonment of all fossil fuel
plants, coal and natural gas, by 2035 unless the utilities can
miraculously find a solution to this elusive technology of
carbon capture. Remember, fossil fuels make up 60 percent of
our existing power supply.
So, Mr. Hofmann, my question to you: Do you think it is
realistic to undertake a massive build-out of our grid without
including fossil fuels?
Mr. Hofmann. I don't see a space in which you don't explore
avenues to make existing fossil fuel supplies renewable and
clean them up where you can without getting----
Mr. McKinley. We will talk about that in a minute. We are
going there in a minute, so don't get ahead of me on this
thing. I am going to feed you another question.
But let's go into this transition into perspective.
According to our energy consultants, if just a modest 1,000-
megawatt fossil power plant were to close--that is modest--the
utility company would need to have the equivalent of
approximately 70,000 electric vehicle batteries for backup
power when the wind and solar aren't available.
So let's keep in mind, according to the Journal of Power
Sources and the Manhattan Institute, for 1 electronic vehicle
battery--not the 70,000, just for 1 battery--they would need to
excavate approximately 250 tons of earth to harvest the
minerals necessary for just 1 battery. And that is just for one
power plant alone. That would be enough--just for one power
plant alone, that would be enough dirt to fill a convoy of
dumptrucks from New York to San Francisco and back again,
bumper to bumper. Imagine this conversion if we are going to
close down 300 to 400 coal and natural gas power plants.
And my other question would be: How long are countries
going to tolerate us ripping up their back yards in our heavy
pursuit for lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, and copper?
Wouldn't it make more sense to continue burning our abundant
supply of fossil fuels using carbon capture?
This is precisely the legislation Kurt Schrader and I have
been working on for several years. It is a bipartisan,
innovation-based approach to use our resources--existing
resources--first. So wouldn't that be a more environmentally
sound approach, compared to alienating other countries by
ravaging their countryside just to satisfy the hungry needs we
have in America?
So let me just pose this question to you: If utility
companies have to compete with the electronic vehicle
manufacturers for the same critical minerals, won't prices
increase, as they did for PPE during the early days of the
pandemic? So, Mr. Hofmann, where am I wrong on this?
Mr. Hofmann. So I will say--I can certainly say this, that
it is certainly my understanding that there is no invisible
force field against the other unintended consequences of when,
you know, all these mining approaches and other countries who
don't have the stringent regulations that we do in term of
modernizing and cleaning our energy systems, that those impacts
will--the reason why--I mean, climate change is not restricted
to any set boundaries. It is a world challenge.
And that is, from our perspective, why we maintain that
advancing technologies in renewable natural gas, hydrogen,
pyrolysis--particularly here in California--carbon capture, as
you mentioned, utilization and sequestration, these are the
pathways on how we can drastically reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions without putting people who can't afford energy as a
luxury out in the cold.
Mr. McKinley. Well, I thank you. I think that is a good
approach, because I think what people are doing, they are
ignoring the impact this could have on jobs and what impact it
is going to have on people, the economy. I think we can use the
infrastructure we have within our power grid, and we just clean
it up and use it that way. I think that is a more practical
approach than taking this alternative and just throwing out our
natural gas and coal-fired power plants. We ought to be able to
use that.
So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of
any time I have.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Ms. Schrier for 5 minutes. She is
recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. Schrier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As we have discussed, we are living in a time where extreme
weather events are no longer extreme or rare, and States will
have to transition to this new reality and prepare accordingly
for cold snaps, hurricanes, and other extreme events.
Ms. Silverstein, your testimony succinctly says we need to
stop pretending that each extreme weather event is low
probability and instead start planning and investing as though
extreme weather collectively is a high-impact, medium-frequency
event. And part of the solution here is infrastructure, like
more robust investments in weatherization programs.
In Washington State, we have an absolutely fantastic
program operated under the Department of Commerce. The
Weatherization program, in combination with the Weatherization
Plus Health program, preserves existing affordable housing and
protects the health and safety of vulnerable populations by
making them safer, healthier, more comfortable, more energy
efficient.
And these are all interrelated. For example, Mr. Shaw is a
disabled, low-income senior citizen with chronic respiratory
illness in Pierce County, my district. And his home had become
dilapidated and in desperate need of repair. So, through a
unique collaboration between the Weatherization Office and the
Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, Mr. Shaw was able to
receive home repairs and weatherization services, also asthma
and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, education and
care plans. And ultimately this led to improved quality of
life, better health, energy efficiency, and fewer doctors
visits.
And this is a common theme. This joint health-
weatherization program has consistently reduced medical
expenses, emergency room visits, and missed days from school
and work. As a pediatrician, I am always seeking ways that we
can address public health issues holistically, particularly
when it comes to meeting needs of seniors and low-income
individuals and families.
So, to that end, Ms. Silverstein, some of your testimony
really caught my eye. On page 11, you state that changes are
needed to subtitles C and D to deliver massive energy
efficiency retrofits for low-income and multifamily housing.
So could you just take the remainder of the time here to
expand on this point, tell us what you have in mind and how we
can improve this bill?
Ms. Silverstein. Thank you.
And what I have in mind is that the benefits that your
constituent, Mr. Shaw, received shouldn't be limited to him and
to your other constituents alone. There are, gosh, probably 15
percent of Americans who are in energy poverty or energy
insecurity, and they are responsible for and suffering from an
extraordinary amount of damage and harm--food loss, health
loss, stress from bills--just under ordinary circumstances, and
the amount of economic benefit that they could receive and
human benefit that they could receive from these kinds of
repairs is impressive.
It is shocking that we have not done more. None of the
current programs that we have in place--LIHEAP, Weatherization
Assistance, other things--are able to do the kind of work that
the particular program you describe did. And the ability to do
that would create just a massive increase in decarbonization as
well as in economic growth to all the communities that are
affected, and it will start to address equity issues for all of
these communities of color and for lower-income citizens.
We have, at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient
Economy and organizations like the Texas Energy Poverty
Research Institute and others, have made very clear the degree
to which energy efficiency can massively reduce energy usage
and carbon emissions.
And so we will never be able to achieve the goals of
decarbonization at ambitious scale without doing a moonshot
level of retrofit work for low-income households and
multifamily housing, which are the hardest to change on just
regular energy efficiency programs. So we need to do something
special, and we need to do it fast.
Thank you.
Ms. Schrier. Thank you very much. I appreciate your
comments.
And I yield back. Thanks.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from the greatest
State in the Nation, Mr. Kinzinger, for 5 minutes.
[No response.]
Mr. Rush. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Virginia, Mr. Griffith, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate it.
In O&I this morning, or early afternoon, Republicans
recognized that in Texas all fuel systems failed, nuclear being
the least. But for a more resilient system, we will continue to
need baseload power, we will need storage of power, and, as Ms.
Silverstein says, more transmission capabilities.
And I quote from her testimony on page 5: ``All credible
analyses of a highly reliable, resilient, affordable, clean
energy future recognize that we need to massively expand the
continent's high-voltage electric grid.''
Ms. Silverstein: Now, with the regulations of local, State,
and Federal governments and the lawsuits that come from that,
building of the high-voltage electric grid that you envision
that we will need--and I agree with you--that will take 20 to
30 years at a minimum, won't it, yes or no?
Ms. Silverstein. Yes.
Mr. Griffith. I appreciate that.
And, with that, Mr. Chairman, I am going to yield the
remainder of my time for questions to my good friend, Dr.
Burgess of Texas.
Mr. Burgess. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Hofmann, let me ask you a question. It sort of came up
in your answer to a different question about the pipeline
system. We talk about the resiliency of the grid in a number of
ways. In Texas, of course, we have abundant natural gas in the
Permian Basin, but sometimes we lack the pipeline
infrastructure to get it to where it is necessary, where the
consuming public is.
So, in the energy workers' world, is there an opinion as to
whether or not a more robust pipeline network would facilitate
the movement of that product from where it is created to where
it is needed?
Mr. Hofmann. Yes, I don't think there is any question that
the more options you give yourself to be able to move energy
from point A to point B, the more responsive that system is
going to be able to react to, you know, the needs of the local
geographic regions that are hardest hit by whatever weather
events come their way. Yes.
Mr. Burgess. Well, and it is not even just the extreme
weather events. It is a normal product of commerce from
producing the natural gas in the Permian Basin, like, needing
to get it to centers of consumption or even centers from where
it would be exported.
We do seem to forget that literally just a year ago the
United States was a net exporter of energy. I hope to get back
to that position in the near future, but we won't do it without
things like a robust pipeline network. Is that not correct?
Mr. Hofmann. Absolutely. And, you know--yes, you are
absolutely right. And any system that needs to deliver--the
other advantage of having more of it is that, when systems
become compromised in any way, the more opportunities you have
to move that energy to other places and isolate that specific
problem, the less impacts there will be to the consumers on the
burner end.
Mr. Burgess. Very good.
And your union is primarily people who work in the oil and
gas industry. Is that correct?
Mr. Hofmann. Our local union is specific only to workers at
SoCalGas.
Mr. Burgess. Right. And the workers in, say, the nuclear
energy field, they have their own professional association?
Mr. Hofmann. That is correct.
Mr. Burgess. And they are not really interchangeable, are
they?
Mr. Hofmann. I have no idea. I wouldn't know anything about
nuclear.
Mr. Burgess. Right. The skill set is entirely different,
from what you do and a nuclear worker does.
Mr. Hofmann. There is no question. There is no question.
Mr. Burgess. And the hazards inherent in your----
Mr. Rush. The gentleman's time has expired. The gentleman's
time has expired.
The Chair now recognizes----
Mr. Griffith. He still had 50 seconds, Mr. Chairman. He
still had 50 seconds.
Mr. Burgess. So, Mr. Hofmann, the workers in oil and gas,
the skill set is different from workers in nuclear energy
because the hazards are different.
But I only bring that up to illustrate that the
interchangeability with someone in the solar and wind industry
is likewise going to be problematic. For people in your
profession to go to the solar and wind sector is going to be
problematic, is it not?
Mr. Hofmann. It would be indeed.
Mr. Burgess. And, again, same reasons are going to be
safety considerations. There are aspects of your training that
are unique to your field. And we thank you very much for what
you do and what you provide to the country, and we hope to not
damage you too much in the interim with this legislation.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Griffith. I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Carolina,
Mr. George Kenneth Butterfield, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Butterfield. Shhh. Don't tell everything you know, Mr.
Chairman. Thank you so much very, Mr. Chairman, for your
friendship. And thank you for being patient with me today. I am
testing out a new headset this afternoon, and so we will see
how this goes.
Mr. Chairman, this is a very, very important hearing. I
want to thank you for your leadership, not only on this
committee but in the energy space. It has been phenomenal.
And to the witnesses, your testimony today has been very,
very valuable, and I appreciate you as well.
Let me begin with Dr. Wayland.
Dr. Wayland, the CLEAN Future Act creates a $250-million-
per-year loan and grant program for solar installation in low-
income and underserved communities, which will lead to
increased construction of solar-generating facilities to serve
multifamily affordable housing. These funds will also create
many, many good jobs in low-income communities.
Could you please elaborate on how these types of Federal
investments into low-income communities can enhance our overall
effort to strengthen grid resiliency and modernization?
Dr. Wayland. Yes, I think that is a great question,
Congressman, and there are two set of benefits. One is the
benefits to the low-income communities that get the benefit of
clean, affordable electricity just like everybody who can
afford to put rooftop solar on their houses do. And the second
benefit is that those facilities should make those communities
more resilient in the face of energy disruptions, as long as
they are well-designed in order to be able to provide power
when the grid itself cannot.
So I commend you for including not just the program for
low-income solar, but, across the bill, there are provisions to
address the needs for low-income communities in weatherization,
energy efficiency, and microgrids and other provisions. They
are critical to----
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you.
Now let me go, please, to Ms. Silverstein. I think Mr.
Griffith referred to you as Ms. ``Silverstine.'' I am not sure
which it is. But, in any event, you stated in your testimony
that we need to go beyond the traditional block grants such as
LIHEAP and weatherization assistance programs and recommend a
more enterprising approach to energy efficiency measures that
include delivering energy efficiency retrofits for low-income
and multifamily affordable housing.
Here is the question: Could you elaborate on how adoption
of your more comprehensive energy efficiency approach can
benefit low-income communities and communities of color?
Ms. Silverstein. Yes, sir. Those are the very communities
who need this most, because traditional energy efficiency
programs only do energy efficiency, they don't do home repair.
They are relatively narrow in their funding, and they don't
serve enough people quickly enough.
And that is where the need is the greatest, in terms of
citizens who need help with better energy and better budget
control. And so having greater energy efficiency and improved
housing quality will do a great deal for their health, for
their wallets, for economic development, and for community
quality overall.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you.
And let me conclude with Ms. McIntyre.
Ms. McIntyre, the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment
Act, or ARRA, as some of us call it, created a cost-share
program to finance investments in advanced metering
infrastructure. Electric co-ops--and I have several in my
State--such as those in my district, use this cost-share
program to establish smart meters, which improve efficiencies.
They decrease costs for consumers and benefit the environment.
Section 230 of the CLEAN Future Act directs the Secretary
to establish a program that will provide funding to partners
such as electric co-ops to modernize the grid. Can you discuss
the benefits of providing funding for partnerships aimed at
improving the grid?
Ms. McIntyre. I am going to have to admit that I am not
that familiar with that section and what it does, so----
Mr. Butterfield. All right.
Ms. McIntyre [continuing]. I will get back to you with an
answer on that. But, again, any partnership that helps, you
know, fund these important programs is a good thing.
Mr. Butterfield. Absolutely.
Ms. McIntyre, would you--not McIntyre. Would Ms.--is it
``Silversteen'' or ``Silverstine''?
Ms. Silverstein. ``Silverstine,'' please. Thank you.
Mr. Butterfield. OK. Well, Mr. Griffith is right then. Can
you take a chance on this question? Are you able to help us
with it?
Ms. Silverstein. Yes. Thank you.
The benefit of public-private partnerships is that, usually
utilities and their regulators are not willing to spend as much
money as many of these projects take. And so the benefit of
Federal matching funds is that it brings additional attention
and opportunity and important investment matching to projects
that wouldn't be undertaken if the utility had to pay for it
all on its own.
Thank you.
Mr. Butterfield. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr.
Johnson, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, in listening to the testimony, one of our
witnesses, Mr. Hofmann of the Utility Workers Union, he
mentioned one of the values his workers hold in especially high
regard, and that is the importance of not cutting corners. This
is crucial in the day-to-day work of safely maintaining the
infrastructure that delivers natural gas to millions of
customers every day. As policymakers, we must also take great
care when considering legislation that would dramatically
impact industries that so many American livelihoods depend on.
I keep hearing from my colleagues on the other side again
and again, they make their proposed climate solutions sound so
simple: Transmit solar and wind energy electricity across the
continent when needed; electrify everything and hope for the
best; and my personal favorite, the fossil fuel workers can
just go build solar panels. But this isn't how the real world
works.
Going from A to B like this with nothing but government
mandates and bags of taxpayer cash is going to result in a lot
of cut corners along the way, a lot of jobs lost, and a lot of
hardworking men and women with diminished livelihoods.
Has anyone wondered what would happen if this doesn't go as
planned, the unintended consequences? I fear with this rush to
green, our committee, this committee, is ignoring serious
warning signs about future grid reliability, energy
affordability, and national security.
Mr. Hofmann, we have seen localities across the country
taking action to ban new gas lines into homes in the name of
fighting climate change to fully electrify home functions like
cooking and heating. In your expertise, can you speak to the
immediate risks and the cost of such mandates?
Mr. Hofmann. Well, the immediate risks are really pure and
simple, that they are directly impacted workers. So when all
new building construction is mandated, it can only be geared
for electric.
What happens to the other side of that system that is not
new? As utilities face the added cost of maintaining and
updating their system without those additional new revenue
streams to sort of spread across everybody, you know, more
equally, it is going to put an extra burden on people who can't
afford to pay for things to go all electric. And regardless of
what system you use or how clean it is, the system has to be
safe first and foremost.
Mr. Johnson. OK. Well, continuing with you, Mr. Hofmann, in
my district in eastern and southeastern Ohio, the oil and gas
industry has been a lifeline providing good jobs, many of them
union jobs, in an Appalachian region that has long prided
itself on keeping America's lights on.
Can you speak briefly to the dignity of work, the efforts
of proud Americans doing their jobs like their parents and
grandparents did in places like Appalachia Ohio, or your
community in southern California? How do you believe your union
membership would receive the news that they are out of work
because politicians demanded it instead of letting the free
market control it?
Mr. Hofmann. Well, I can tell you that they have already
responded, you know. In November of 2019, you know, prior to
the pandemic, we had over--we had close to 2,000 of our members
show up on a Saturday to voice their concerns about this push
for mandated electrification.
So we are a prideful craft and trade. As I mentioned, I am
a second-generation utility worker, and I am proud of it. It is
a craft that we have been perfecting for a very long time, and
we just--we are not the problem. We feel as utility workers
here in southern California, we are part of the solution to
solving this climate change crisis.
Mr. Johnson. OK. Well, thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back an entire 25 seconds.
Mr. Rush. The Chair certainly thanks the gentleman for
yielding back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from California,
Ms. Matsui, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Matsui. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you very much for the hearing today. And I want to thank all
the witnesses for being here too.
Last year's devastating wildfire season and this year's
deadly Texas winter storm are testaments to the catastrophic
impacts of intensified natural disasters due to the climate
crisis. These events expose the deep vulnerability of our
energy infrastructure and underscore the need to prioritize
grid resiliency and improve energy efficiency to combat climate
change and protect our communities, especially low-wealth and
communities of color who are on the front lines on the climate
crisis.
Energy efficiency investments not only create jobs and save
money for consumers, it can also cut national energy use and
greenhouse gas emissions by about 50 percent by 2050. Earlier
this year, I wrote a letter to the administration encouraging
the establishment of a national program to include indoor air
quality and HVAC energy efficiency in our Nation's schools.
Dr. Wayland and Ms. McIntyre, how would a dedicated program
to revamp HVAC systems and similar grants for school energy
efficiency improvements, like the ones included in the CLEAN
Future Act, help grid resilience and reliability? Dr. Wayland?
Dr. Wayland. I will start. Well, there are a couple ways
that upgraded HVAC systems could help. First is improving the
heat efficiency of the building and reducing energy costs. As
you mentioned, there are significant indoor air quality
benefits for upgraded HVAC systems. In fact, in areas where air
quality has improved because of either filtration or HVAC
systems, students actually learn better, significantly better.
So it has so many benefits beyond just energy efficiency.
For the grid, if those HVAC systems--and in larger
buildings like schools, those HVAC systems, actually when
aggregated, can become quite a resource that grid operators can
use to help provide grid services. So to the extent that we can
make sure that when upgrades happen that those investments also
encourage the integration with the grid, we get additional
benefits for grid resilience.
Ms. Matsui. That is great.
Ms. McIntyre?
Ms. McIntyre. [Inaudible.] And I agree with everything
Karen said. Certainly, upgraded HVAC systems would help reduce
demand on the grid, but also, when you do the upgrades, if you
include benefits of demand flexibility. So, you know, when in
times of crisis, if that HVAC system has the ability to be
controlled externally to, again, reduce the demand during that
crisis, then it improves the resiliency of the grid.
Ms. Matsui. OK. And both of you again, what additional
energy efficiency initiatives should Congress prioritize to
help reduce the burdens and negative impacts from disasters and
harmful pollution on disadvantaged communities?
Dr. Wayland. Well, I think that Ms. Silverstein and Ms.
McIntyre both touched on this, that the communities with the
greatest energy burden have the least ability to invest in
improving their building stock, and so it is incumbent on the
Federal Government to help with that. And so I think that to
the extent that we can move resources into that energy
efficiency bucket, it will be very critical for protecting
those low-income communities as well as a very significant
contributor to reducing greenhouse gas emissions overall.
Ms. Matsui. OK. Ms. McIntyre, any comments?
Ms. McIntyre. And I agree. And I mentioned it before, the
Weatherization Assistance Program needs to be expanded and the
funding needs to be increased for that. So, again, going in and
helping people insulate their homes, weatherize their homes
will, again, decrease energy demand. And so that is a very
important component of energy efficiency that needs to be
strengthened.
Ms. Matsui. OK. How can electric utility companies,
environmental stakeholders, and local, State, and Federal
governments work together to bring forth solutions that work
for our communities? Either one of you. Ms. Wayland, Ms.
McIntyre?
Dr. Wayland. Well, I think that addressing climate change
and building resilience is not the sole function of any one
component of our economy. So, for example, utilities have the
responsibility to make investments that protect reliability and
affordability.
But as I mentioned, the States and local governments also
have a responsibility for energy assurance planning, and the
CLEAN Future Act does include a provision that would require
States to submit to the Secretary of Energy an annual updated
energy security plan, which I think is a good way to really
address that, and that goes to those plans are developed in
conjunction with a whole broad range of stakeholders.
Ms. Matsui. Thank you very much. And I have run out of
time, so I yield back. Thank you.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr.
Bucshon, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bucshon?
All right. I don't see Mr. Bucshon.
The Chair will move on and recognizes the gentleman from
Michigan, Mr. Walberg, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Walberg? Mr. Walberg is not answering.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Duncan for 5 minutes.
The Chair now recognizes the Representative from----
Mr. Walberg. Mr. Chairman? Walberg here. It is turned on
now. Can you hear me?
Mr. Rush. Yes. OK. Mr. Walberg, you are recognized for 5
minutes.
Mr. Walberg. I apologize for that technological problem,
but--I am not only from Michigan, but I grew up in your
district, so it is good to be recognized by you.
I want to thank the panel for being here today. I want to
give a special shout-out to Ms. McIntyre, who I understand is
from--originally from southeast Michigan and started her career
with Detroit Edison, now DTE, so welcome especially to her. I
would also like to especially welcome Mr. Hofmann of the UWUA
Local 132.
Not many of us in Congress understand what it is like to
work with our hands every day, but I grew up in a union
household. My father was a machinist and union organizer for
part of his career. And upon graduating from high school, I
went to work at the U.S. Steel South Works, the same place that
my dad worked for a time. The lessons I learned from my father
and my own experience helped shape my understanding of what
really is a dignified, family-sustaining job that can be
produced here in America and produces things for America and
the devastating impact of those jobs being taken away.
Mr. Hofmann, I understand your union heritage--second
generation, proud of what you do--and I appreciate that. It is
not all that common that we get a witness outside of the
Beltway that can talk about real-world impacts of policies we
are considering here today.
Mr. Hofmann, it should be clear to everyone that the goal
of my Democrat colleague friends with this so-called CLEAN
Future Act is really ultimately to eliminate jobs for utility
workers like those you represent. They even have a section in
their bill called ``worker and community transition'' to pay
off what they are calling dislocated workers who lose their job
due to the closure of a major employer. In fact--and you can
all look at it--on page 949 in the bill, the bill lists a whole
range of jobs that it will terminate.
How does it make you feel, Mr. Hofmann, to hear politicians
demonize an entire workforce supporting clean and in some cases
even renewable natural gas?
Mr. Hofmann. I thank you for the question. I think it is
sort of--to be honest, it is a little--it is kind of
irresponsible in a way to sort of--we have got to move past
this overly simplified set of assumptions and presumed outcomes
of what our energy mix is going to be, you know, a decade from
now, two decades from now, three.
We need--you know, this is not a Democratic or a Republican
problem. This is an issue that--a phase that impacts every
American, and we have got to really find ways to work together
to make sure that no worker gets left behind and that we--that
energy does not become a luxury for just only the affluent. And
we have got some real work to do, and we are happy to partner
with all of you in any way we can.
Mr. Walberg. We appreciate your work. I have the privilege
also of serving on the Education and Labor Committee in
Congress here, and I am constantly hearing from employers about
the struggle to find well-trained workers to meet the growing
demand in skill trades. I call them professional trades or
technical fields.
Mr. Hofmann, can you tell me about your members, the
different types of jobs available in your industry, and the
skills you learned and now use to help train the next
generation for a career like yours?
Mr. Hofmann. Sure. So, like I said, you know, we cover here
wall to wall, all sorts of different aspects, from our
experienced welders on the pipelines for our mains and services
to our appliance technicians who go into people's homes and
help get their gas appliances burning more efficiently and
clean and effective. We have fleet mechanics that work, you
know, on our fleet, you know, our vehicles. We have got
facility mechanics that keep our buildings and everything up to
speed. You know, we have our admin clerks. We have our call
center reps.
I mean, we cover a very broad range of literally every walk
of life you can imagine. And these workers, they are incredibly
skilled and they are a resilient bunch, and it is pretty
impressive to watch.
Mr. Walberg. It certainly is. And I guess in my remaining
time, I would just like to respond, when we hear that it is
Republicans standing in the way of these renewable jobs and
renewable sources of energy, it is not the Republicans that are
doing the demonstrations; it is the left are to stop mining,
manufacturing of those resources that produce the alternatives.
But we need what you produce, Mr. Hofmann, and thank you for
the work you do. I hope we can see you do it for a long time.
I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Florida, Ms.
Castor, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Castor. Well, Thank you, Chairman Rush, for holding
this very important hearing today on the CLEAN Futures Act. It
comes at a critical time when we must act with urgency to
tackle the increasing costs and risks of the climate crisis and
do it in a way that creates jobs and economic opportunity,
especially in our underserved communities.
You know, after 2 years of work on the Select Committee on
the Climate Crisis, listening to experts and labor unions and
scientists and some of the folks who are here today, I have
learned that there are many ways to increase the resilience of
our energy systems and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at
the same time. And the Select Committee made a number of
recommendations to the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I
want to thank you for incorporating many of them into the CLEAN
Futures Act.
Let's go over a couple of them. Provide incentives to help
States and local communities to site interstate transmission
lines, to clear out interconnection queues to bring more
renewable energy and storage onto the electric grid. We suggest
that we direct FERC to work with, not against, States' efforts
on clean energy and energy efficiency to help lower the cost
for businesses and families alike, and invest in community
solar to ensure equitable access to clean distributed energy,
and ensure environmental justice communities have equitable
access to the benefits of clean energy, workforce development,
jobs, and then of course work on the resilience of the electric
grid that has become such a hot topic after the catastrophe in
Texas.
So we have had a good discussion here today, but I wanted
to ask our witnesses to comment on some of those
recommendations, especially the grid-enhancing technologies.
Some of the folks on the other side of the aisle think this is
pie in the sky, and what I have learned is these are
technologies that are available today, American-led innovative
technologies that can help build the macrogrid we need in
America.
Dr. Wayland, let's dive a little bit deeper. You have
suggested some grid investments for economic recovery. Where
would you target our innovative investments to create jobs and
at the same time build that resilient macrogrid for the U.S.?
Dr. Wayland. Well, I am glad that you mentioned that we
have the technologies today, because I think that is what the
21st century grid provisions in the CLEAN Future Act do that is
different from what was in the Energy Policy Act of 2020. And
we do believe that the grid provisions in the bill that you
passed in December were very important and critical. But in my
reading of the difference between the two, the Energy Policy
Act really focused on the research and development and
demonstration of grid technologies, and it appears to me that
the 21st Century Act focuses in on deployment.
And I think that is really critical because we have a range
of technology deployment across the country. We have some
utilities that have, over the course of the last 10 years, have
invested hundreds of millions of dollars in grid modernization,
and we have some utilities that don't even have the most basic
advanced meters and SCADA systems.
And so we would recommend a suite of investments to build
out the flexibility and the resilience across the country and
recognize that different business models--so whether it is an
investor in utility, a municipal utility, or a rural co-op, all
have different business models, and so in order to deliver
incentives that would help them accelerate their grid
modernization programs, we probably have to look at different
ways to deliver that aid.
Ms. Castor. And we learned from a number of studies that
have come out over the last year, this is enormous opportunity
to create jobs. Are you kidding me? Utility workers are going
to be at the top of the list. The number of new jobs here, we
are going to struggle, I think, to train and employ everyone if
we move forward with the macrogrid and community solar.
So, Dr. McIntyre, talk to us for a little bit about
equitable access to reliable clean energy.
And then I want to ask, Ms. Silverstein, what do we do with
States that are roadblocks to clean energy deployment? I may
not have time to get to that one, but so I will ask you to come
back with that.
Ms. McIntyre.
Ms. McIntyre. Thank you, Congresswoman. As we have
mentioned, you know, typically the low-income communities and
communities of color have had the most impact from the climate
disasters, pollution, and, you know, high energy cost due to a
lot of issues with, again, their homes being uninsulated and
whatnot.
So I think a lot of the provisions in the CLEAN Future Act
do go pretty far in trying to provide greater access to those
communities and provide benefits and assistance to ensuring
that they receive the benefits of a more resilient and reliable
grid.
Ms. Castor. Thanks so much.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair wants to inquire as to whether Mr. Kinzinger or
Mr. Buschon is on the line or on the Zoom.
Hearing otherwise, the Chair now recognizes the gentleman
from South Carolina, Mr. Duncan, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Duncan?
The Chair recognizes Mrs. Lesko from Arizona, the
Representative from Arizona, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Debbie Lesko here. Can
you hear me?
Mr. Rush. Yes, Mrs. Lesko.
Mrs. Lesko. Can you hear me? Hello?
Mr. Rush. You are recognized.
Mrs. Lesko. OK. Fantastic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My first question is for Mr. Hofmann. Mr. Hofmann, do you
think that greater use of carbon-capture technology, creating
jobs that potentially could be built on the skills that many of
your workers use, like if we use carbon-capture technology?
Mr. Hofmann. Yes, absolutely. You know, CO2
pipelines is a pipeline, and it is molecules. It is what we do.
And to be honest, in order for us to meet our goals, my opinion
is that we are going to need to in order to get there.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, Mr. Hofmann. Mr. Hofmann, I have
another question for you, if you know the answer: Do you think
there is an opportunity for hydrogen production and its
potential for safety reliability and affordability to help us
to fully optimize our existing energy infrastructure? What do
you think of using hydrogen?
Mr. Hofmann. I absolutely believe that it is something that
we need to do. We need to do it sooner than later.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you.
And my next question is the same question for Ms.
Silverstein: What do you think about investing or using more
hydrogen technology? My understanding is that some of the
natural gas facilities could be utilized then.
Ms. Silverstein. I cannot give you an informed answer on
that, ma'am.
Mrs. Lesko. OK. And, Ms. Silverstein, I have another
question for you. Earlier this week, in a different Energy and
Commerce Committee hearing, former Energy Secretary Moniz said,
if I am not mistaken, that to install one offshore wind turbine
would take 1 ton of critical minerals to make it, to produce
it.
And so I am concerned on our reliance on China for
processing a lot of our critical minerals, not only for wind--
production of wind turbines, but for the lithium needed in
battery storage, whether that is battery storage for
electricity or whether that is electric vehicle batteries.
Would you support more domestic mining and processing of
critical minerals here in the United States?
Ms. Silverstein. I have not studied that issue deeply. I
cannot give you a good answer. Thank you.
Mrs. Lesko. Can any of the witnesses answer that for me?
Dr. Wayland. Well, I am actually a geologist by training,
so--and I am sitting here in Nevada where we actually are--
there are a number of lithium mines. There is currently a
lithium mine in Silver Peak, Nevada. It is a lake bed brine
facility, and there are a number of investors that are looking
around the State and also in California at building out lithium
mines.
So I think we will see an increase in domestic production,
not just of lithium but some of the other critical minerals.
And if I am not mistaken, there is a provision in the CLEAN
Future Act that requires an evaluation of critical minerals. I
know the Defense Department has done that several times over
the last few years, because many of those critical minerals are
important for defense equipment as well. So I think there is a
lot of attention being paid to, not only where the sources of
critical minerals are, but recycling and alternatives as well.
Mrs. Lesko. Yes. Thank you, Ms. Wayland. I appreciate that.
I too, as you guys know, previously--I think this is a really
critical factor, because what I read is that most of the
processing of lithium takes place in China, where they use
coal-fired plants to process the lithium.
So it doesn't make sense to me, if we are going to
promote--and we should, to an extent--electric vehicles, we
need to look down the road. Like, how are they going to be
made? Are we going to have enough lithium? And if we have other
renewables, are we going have enough critical minerals? And so
we need to be less reliant on China and possibly other foreign
hostile countries.
Mr. Hofmann, I have 27 seconds left. Do you have anything
you would like to add?
Mr. Hofmann. Just that we are going to need everything at
our disposal, whether it is hydrogen, wind, lithium, ion,
solar. We are going to need everything.
Mrs. Lesko. Thank you, sir.
And I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Rush. I want to thank the gentlelady. Please accept my
sincere apologies, Mrs. Lesko.
All right. The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Vermont, Mr. Welch, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Welch. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
for the hearing. And I want to thank the witnesses for a
wonderful hearing.
I have been working on this committee with many of my
colleagues, both sides of the aisle, on energy efficiency
measures. It is the cheapest form of power, saves money,
reduces carbon emissions, creates local jobs.
Ms. Silverstein, I wanted to ask you, as we continue to
electrify our power sector, how could a national energy
efficiency resource standard that sets utility-level
electricity and natural gas efficiency requirements help us
meet national environmental goals and improve the resiliency of
the national grid?
Ms. Silverstein. That is a great question. Thank you, sir.
With respect to improving the decarbonization, everything
that we do for efficiency will--is one of the cheapest ways to
reduce carbon emissions from across the board. The level of
waste in fossil fuel burning, not all of the energy that goes
into production of electricity comes out as--a lot of it goes
up as carbon and as waste and doesn't get into our homes and
businesses to provide meaningful services. So the more that we
can save electricity, the more that we can save carbon, and it
is often the cheapest way to do so.
With respect to grid reliability of resilience, energy
efficiency, by reducing the amount of load that we have to
meet, it means that there is less burden on the grid
operationally----
Mr. Welch. That is great.
Ms. Silverstein [continuing]. And there is less burden for
all of the services and the peak loads and operationally, hour
to hour, minute to minute.
Mr. Welch. Great.
Ms. Silverstein. So it is incredibly efficient.
Mr. Welch. Thank you so much.
Ms. McIntyre, Representative McKinley and I have been
working to improve model building codes. And I want to ask you
this: How do model building codes help State and local
governments achieve energy and climate goals? And, importantly,
how can model building codes improve resilience in safety in
the face of weather and climate disasters?
And I want you to answer that in the context of a lot of
folks don't want codes. They fear that they will increase cost.
Mr. McKinley and I think if you have codes and it sets a
reasonable standard, everyone has to compete to that standard
to get the benefit of the energy savings that would occur.
Thank you.
Ms. McIntyre. Thank you, Congressman. And I commend the
work that you and Congressman McKinley have done on this issue.
Again, building energy codes are one of the key policy tools
that State and local governments have at their disposal to
address energy use and climate impacts of new buildings.
Buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of all
carbon emissions in this country, and it is cheapest and
easiest to reduce building emissions at the time of
construction. So constructing new buildings to be efficient and
decarbonized from the start means lower energy bills for
homeowners and businesses who use those buildings, and prevent
the need for expensive retrofits in the future.
So it can lower the cost, obviously, of energy use, and if
you do it from the get-go, you know, you are saving the money
from having to do retrofits in the future. So they are very
critical to have these codes and implemented. And, again, the
CLEAN Future Act does recognize the importance, and we
encourage there to be strengthened provisions in there on
building codes.
Mr. Welch. What do you say to some of the builders--they
are always concerned about cost, and I respect that--who say
that, if you have any codes, that is going to lead to higher
cost?
Ms. McIntyre. If you have the codes, again, from the
beginning and, as you said, you know, you have competition
among the developers to, you know, drive the most efficient
buildings, you know, again, once you----
Mr. Welch. Right.
Ms. McIntyre [continuing]. Build those buildings, you
decrease the energy cost and the cost of----
Mr. Welch. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman does yield back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Indiana, Mr.
Pence, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Pence. Thank you, Chairman Rush and Ranking Member
Upton, for holding this hearing.
Like my colleagues on this committee, I support a diverse,
all-of-the-above strategy for energy production. But like my
peers on the Republican side, I am concerned that the one-size-
fits-all mandates in the CLEAN Future Act far outpaces the
current state of technology, leaving consumers to foot the bill
for higher costs on everything from electricity prices in
heating their homes to the appliances they will need to buy
from the department store.
All the while, power generation will not have the security
of baseload supply from natural gas or coal, resulting in a
less reliable grid, as we have recently seen. The provisions
for clean energy standards, microgrids, and distributed energy
systems, while good in academic theory, all rely on the
adoption of technology that is still bridging the gap between
basic research and commercialization.
In a mere 2\1/2\ years, starting in 2023, zero-emission
electricity requirements will begin straining the budgets of
our power sector. Even if they started this very afternoon,
public power agencies, electric car co-ops, and utilities in my
district will be hard pressed to incorporate even more
renewable energy generation or carbon mitigation equipment into
their already robust portfolios. These entities will have no
other choice than to raise prices on their ratepayers, my
constituents.
This bill disregards critical things like permiting reforms
that will be necessary to meet its own timeline for
infrastructure construction. Carbon-capture equipment alone may
take 5 years to be fully operational. To find out who will pay
for these programs, look no further than to the provisions on
electric vehicle infrastructure buildout.
To support the extensive electric vehicle network this bill
envisions, the language acknowledges expected price increases
and gives a green light to pass these costs on to utility
customers as a whole.
Since electric vehicles will be best suited for urban
centers and densely populated areas, rural customers like those
in my southeast Indiana will still have to foot the bill.
Companies that will likely take advantage of these electric
vehicle charging stations will look to the highest rate of
return on their investment, meaning they will look toward
cities and not the rural and hard-to-reach parts of our
country.
Even without these extensive subsidy programs that will
have been packed into this bill, auto manufacturers operating
in the free market are already moving in this direction.
Companies throughout Indiana's Sixth District are leading the
way to produce innovative batteries, hybrid engines, and
alternative transportation fuel vehicles.
But until this technology can sustain the mileage
requirements for those beyond densely populated areas--and
recently I have heard complaints about suburbs and the ability
to run around--this bill will benefit urban centers at the
expense of rural America.
Lastly, I am concerned about the implications this bill
will have on pensions that are tied to the companies this bill
seeks to put out of business. What happens to hardworking
Hoosiers nearing the retirement age, as we have talked about?
What will happen to local taxpayers that are investing their
savings in anchor institutions in the community that will go
under when this bill is signed into law? I don't think my
Democratic colleagues are prepared for the extensive
implications this will have on our communities.
Mr. Hofmann, this bill would implement an untested
transition program for energy workers. The provisions in this
bill would even target the manufactured sector for light- and
heavy-duty vehicles adversely affecting our workers' earnings
as well. As the crossroads of America, these programs will
directly impact hardworking Hoosiers who have stable, good-
paying jobs producing the necessary transportation equipment
that our country currently relies on to move goods along our
highways.
I got into Congress because I have watched for decades the
long destruction of the middle class in Indiana as great-paying
manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, leaving Hoosiers
with few options to provide for their families.
My question to you, sir, will the transformative measures
of these bills continue a similar assault on the middle class
in my and communities across this country, in your opinion?
Mr. Hofmann. I would caution those who think that these
systems are simple. These systems are very complex, and they
require a lot of attention and detail. And there needs to be a
great consideration and reverence to the workers who make these
systems go and who overall maintain these systems, and that is
the best way I could answer that.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman's time is expired.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Oregon, Mr.
Schrader, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Schrader. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I really
appreciate this hearing. Looking forward to continuing our work
to address climate crisis and, in particular, to achieve deep
decarbonization of our power sector by enhancing grid
resilience, supporting our energy and utility industries and
the workers around the country that keep our lights on.
And shout-out to Mr. Hofmann. Folks like you kept the
lights on in Oregon. While Texas had its deep freeze, we had a
big deep freeze in my district, in the Willamette Valley. And
the overtime work, the extra mile that the utility workers did
to get us back online, I just really appreciate that and want
to thank you and all your folks for that.
And for my colleagues that are worried about the world
ending with the CLEAN Futures Act, I have got the answer for
it. Congressman McKinley alluded to it earlier. We actually
have a bill that would fit nicely into subtitle E, the clean
electricity generation portion of the CLEAN Futures Act. It is
agnostic as to the source of power, but it does drive deep
opportunities for us to reduce energy usage and, frankly,
decarbonize.
Our legislation--we introduced it last year, we are
reintroducing it this Congress--would commit significant
resources to energy innovation, not just on the renewable side
but also on the fossil fuel side, to get to the decarbonization
that many of you have alluded to here today. That is real. It
will happen. And I think the best way to make it happen is by
partnering, as Dr. Wayland referred to, with private industry,
matching dollars, matching opportunities, and not just in, you
know, research but in applying the technology going forward.
We could have--and coupled with that innovation is an
actual clean energy, clean electricity standard that would
drive that decarbonization with timelines, put in statutes so
that the utilities, so that environmental groups, so that
Americans can make investments based on a defined statute that
would stand the test of time no matter what administration
walks into the White House every 4 years.
I guess I would just urge my colleagues to really look
closely at this. We have talked to the chairman of the full
committee. We are going to be talking with committee staff
later this week, trying to, you know, frankly, explain what our
options are here. This could be a great opportunity to bring
our committee together, bring America together, not lose jobs
but, to the testimony we have also heard today, actually
increase jobs going forward.
It is inclusive as to the energy sources. It is not some
carbon tax proposal that would raise prices. It is a more
innovative and the only bipartisan solution that is out there
at this point in time. So I would really urge all my
colleagues, Republican and Democrat, take a close look at this.
I would encourage the Natural Resources Defense Council,
Ms. McIntyre, I would like to get your feedback on this, and
GridWise's feedback also, Ms. Wayland--or Dr. Wayland. That
would be very, very helpful for us.
We see this as a path forward, along with the efficiencies
that we see in this bill and some of the innovations. And,
again, it would be nice to have a great bipartisan approach to
driving our power sector emissions to down almost 95 percent by
2050. And we are open to the timelines going forward.
And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you so
much.
Mr. Rush. I thank the gentleman for yielding back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from North Dakota,
Mr. Armstrong, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Armstrong. Well, I would start with saying, Congressman
Schrader, I hope you keep it as a stand-alone bill because I
want to be able to support it, and if it goes into subsection E
here, I might have a little trouble.
But this is just kind of a yes-or-no question because we
are talking about interoperability and reliability and
resiliency of the grid, and I am all in on boning up that
infrastructure. I did the FAST Act permiting, looking for help
with that on any other side of the aisle. Hopefully, we can get
some bipartisan solutions moving forward so companies who
divest their capital can see a return and not deal with some of
those issues. But the grid is only reliable as the energy that
is being put on to the grid.
So just really quickly, yes or no, Ms. McIntyre: Under
current technology, should we consider wind and solar baseload
power?
Ms. McIntyre. No.
Mr. Armstrong. OK. Ms. Silverstein?
Ms. Silverstein. No. But let's be clear that coal and
nuclear are not baseload power all the time either.
Mr. Armstrong. Well, all the time--well, they are
dispatchable, though, correct?
Ms. Silverstein. Yes, but dispatchable and baseload are not
the same thing.
Mr. Armstrong. I understand that, because in some places we
are dealing with that, but--and just since we are there now,
right, I mean, the one problem with wind and solar is they
can't ramp up, they can only ramp down.
Ms. Silverstein. That is true, but increasingly there is
hybrid storage attached to those that makes them dispatchable
and rampable.
Mr. Armstrong. Well, hybrid storage, as it exists now and
as the technology will advance in the future, are very
different things. I agree technology is going to advance. I
don't agree that we should regulate and legislate on technology
that doesn't exist yet.
Ms. Silverstein. It does exist. It is on grids today, sir.
Mr. Armstrong. OK. Not at the scale we are going to need to
replace solar, wind--or natural gas, wind, and nuclear.
But do we produce any lithium--Mr. Hofmann, do we produce
any lithium in the United States?
Mr. Hofmann. I am not aware of that.
Mr. Armstrong. Do we produce any cobalt in the United
States?
Mr. Hofmann. Again, not my area of expertise.
Mr. Armstrong. Do any of the witnesses know if we produce
any lithium or cobalt in the United States?
OK.
Dr. Wayland. I do believe--I do----
Mr. Armstrong. Oh, go ahead.
Dr. Wayland. Yes. I do believe we produce lithium, and I do
believe that there are a number of lithium mines in the process
of being developed.
Mr. Armstrong. We don't produce any lithium. We had a mine
in Nevada. There may be some in development.
Does anybody know if we place any environmental conditions
on the countries we import lithium from?
Does anybody know if we place any environmental or human
rights conditions on the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
where we get our cobalt from?
Sometimes it is hard to do this when you have to wait hours
to do this, but early on the chairman of the full committee
said we don't produce these things here. And I just want to say
that Republicans in the private sector are not the ones
preventing the manufacture of more solar panels. We actually
produce solar panels in North Dakota--or not solar panels, wind
turbines. But we are not the ones stopping more solar panels,
wind turbines, and batteries in the U.S.
Environmental groups, their lawyers, cheap foreign labor,
better environmental and regulatory conditions are the reasons
that we don't have the mining, extraction, or processing, or
manufacturing capacity that is necessary to onshore even a
small portion of these supply chains, which is why, with the
last minute, I would like to go back to Mr. Hofmann.
And when they talk about repurposing your members--and not
just yours, but union workers all across the country--I mean,
all the pipe laid in North Dakota is laid by union workers,
come from all over the country. We love to have them there.
They shop at our restaurants. They do all of those things. They
are great citizens when they are there.
But when you hear people talk about this, one, the jobs
don't exist; two, your members aren't trained for this. We talk
about these issues from a national security issue and we talk
about it from a reliability and resiliency issue, but can you
just expound on the human level of where that ends up with your
members and so many like that across the country?
Mr. Hofmann. I don't think there is any question that a
greater level of reverence needs to be recognized to the men
and women who make these systems work. No question.
Mr. Armstrong. I mean, when people just say ``We will
retrain you,'' do you know of--I mean, do those jobs exist at
any scale? Is there any place right now that, if they were out
of work in the next 3 days, is there somewhere they could go
now in the renewable field where those jobs exist at any kind
of the same capacity?
Mr. Hofmann. What I can say is, in my hometown I am not too
far away from the Palm Springs Windmills, and you will see lots
of things out there, but one thing I have never seen is an
employee parking lot.
Mr. Armstrong. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from New Hampshire,
Ms. Kuster, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Kuster. Thank you very much, Chairman Rush, and thank
you for convening today's hearing on the CLEAN Future Act. We
have great jobs right here in New Hampshire, from solar and
wind and lots of renewable energy, so I am happy to share that
with the committee.
Climate change poses an existential crisis to humanity, and
the most important thing we can do to prevent not only our
country but the world from experiencing the worst effects of
climate change, including the dramatic weather patterns such as
the storm that hit Texas this winter, is by eliminating carbon
emissions. By putting the U.S. in a viable pathway to achieving
that goal, the CLEAN Future Act is a significant milestone, and
I look forward to working with my colleagues to getting it
signed into law.
The CLEAN Future Act provides a historic investment to
upgrade the resilience of our grid. And I am particularly
excited about the clean energy microgrid grant program
spearheaded by my colleagues, Representative Barragan and
Clarke, which would help communities around the country create
microgrids, units that are able to insulate themselves during
times of crisis from the broader grid.
So, Ms. Silverstein, this question is to you: Would the
grant program created by the CLEAN Future Act to install more
microgrids for critical infrastructure help mitigate the impact
of future large-scale blackouts like we saw in Texas? And how
can we improve these grants to help more communities realize
the benefits of microgrids?
Ms. Silverstein. Great question. Thank you very much. Yes,
it is a wonderful idea, and, yes, it can make a huge difference
to protect communities and critical facilities and community
cores from future disasters of all kinds, including grid
failures. But I believe that you can do better.
We have been working on microgrid technology for almost two
decades now, and yet today almost every single microgrid grant
is for an individual science project. There isn't enough
interoperability, there isn't enough replicability, there
aren't enough standard packages. And, frankly, most of these
situations aren't as different as they appear.
The more that you could do to get common instructions,
engineering programs, packages of equipment put together in
advance by doing an investment with DOE and the labs and
research, the more that you can produce packages that are
quickly replicable, that are economic, that are easier to
evaluate and install, and put more of the money into
communities quickly rather than into one-at-a-time studies that
don't really add value to the rest of the industry quickly.
Ms. Kuster. Terrific. Thank you so much.
Switching gears, I want to brag for a minute on some of the
great work that is happening in renewable energy right here in
New Hampshire. One of our public housing authorities in my
district, Keene Housing, has utilized power purchase agreements
to install solar panels on the roofs of many of their
multifamily housing units. These solar panels are reducing
electric bills and carbon emissions. These savings will allow
Keene Housing to improve the quality of life for residents, and
long term could free up capital to build new units and serve
more Granite Staters.
Now, this won't surprise you, the biggest hurdle they faced
installing these solar panels was cost. Ultimately, they were
able to find creative ways of covering the expense, but this is
an obstacle.
In your testimony, Ms. McIntyre, you mentioned the CLEAN
Future Act should increase funding to install distributed
energy sources. My bill, the Clean Energy Savings Program Act,
which I was proud to introduce last year with Senator Merkley,
would provide no-interest financing for exactly this type of
project.
Can you explain how increasing funding for distributed
energy sources would help more individuals and nonprofits
around the country realize the benefits of solar energy? And I
might add, it is a win-win-win, not only lower energy costs,
save the planet, and their jobs for installation.
Ms. McIntyre. Thank you, Congresswoman. And, you know, I
really commend the work and the programs that you have going on
in the State and the legislation that you have introduced.
And I agree, you know, being able to bolster the ability of
particularly low-income communities and communities of color to
have access to distributed energy resources by providing
funding will help both them achieve the benefits of cleaner
power sources, lower energy costs, as well as, again, enabling
greater resiliency of the grid.
Having these resources--and, again, the impacts of any
disasters that could happen, you know, being able to have
access to distributed energy resources helps the power keep
going if those resources are--if the crisis is going on, but
also helps reduce demand from the grid in those times of
crises.
Thank you for your work.
Ms. Kuster. Well, thank you so much. My time is up, but I
look forward to working with this committee on this important
bill.
And I will yield back to the chair.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Alabama, Mr.
Palmer, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Palmer, are you online? All right.
Now the Chair recognizes the gentlelady from California,
Ms. Barragan, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you, Chairman Rush, for holding this
important hearing on the energy resilience, grid modernization,
and energy efficiency sections of the CLEAN Future Act.
We have seen the deadly costs of extreme weather events
influenced by climate change and the challenges they cause our
grid. While there is no silver bullet to preventing these
outages, investments in clean energy microgrids can help to
keep the lights on in our most critical facilities.
The CLEAN Future Act includes the Energy Resilient
Communities Act, legislation I have proposed with
Representative Clarke, to provide funding and technical
assistance for microgrids with priority for low-income and
communities of color. It is critical that we center energy
justice for these communities at the heart of the clean energy
revolution.
Dr. Wayland, Black, Latino, and indigenous communities
suffer the most from poor air quality and are hit hardest by
climate-fueled weather disasters. These frontline communities
have the most to lose if we fail to take decisive climate
action.
How can investments in clean energy and energy storage,
including microgrids, reduce the damaging climate and health
impacts of fossil fuels to these communities?
Dr. Wayland. Well, thank you for the question. I think
there are two ways that investing in these technologies that
you mentioned would address some of the harms that these
communities face. The first is by reducing not just greenhouse
gas emissions but the air pollution that some of these
communities are disproportionately affected by.
And the second is by making them more resilient in two
ways. One is by reducing their energy burden. As Ms.
Silverstein has mentioned, you know, when we can reduce the
energy burden, we actually improve the kind of social
resilience of these communities.
And the second is by helping to insulate them from
disruptions in the energy supply. So microgrids, for example,
in areas near public housing, in shelters where these
communities might have to go if their power is out, these are
critical for helping the resilience of those communities in the
event--during the event that might disrupt power.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you, Doctor. And a followup. In 2019,
546 microgrids were installed in the United States. Of these,
86 percent were powered, at least in part, by burning fossil
fuels. Do you agree this trend will make it difficult to reach
the CLEAN Futures Act's goal of 100 percent clean energy by
2035, and that the legislation's grant funding for clean energy
microgrids can help reach the bill's goal?
Dr. Wayland. I agree with you. It is great that you
mentioned the fact that so much of micro--I mean, the basic
microgrid is a diesel generator, and that is certainly not
clean. And, you know, microgrids that are powering hospitals,
that is an essential service that the microgrid provides right
now, and most of those are run in part with diesel generators.
So I think that moving forward, what we need to do is make
sure that we are building out microgrids that have a more
diverse source and that is solar or clean hydrogen. So there
are other ways of powering microgrids, and I agree with you
that we are going to have to address that in order to meet
climate and air quality goals.
Ms. Barragan. Great. Thank you.
Ms. McIntyre, one of the recommendations in your testimony
is to give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission tools to
consider climate change when assessing the impacts of
transmission projects in implementing national transmission
policy goals. Can you talk about what these legal tools are and
how they would help to improve the reliability of the electric
grid?
Ms. McIntyre. So currently there is uncertainty whether or
not FERC has the explicit authority to consider the climate
change impacts of various energy products, including
electricity transmission. So we would like to give them--have
Congress give them the explicit authority to take that climate
impact into account. This will then help--and also to take in
climate considerations in the buildout of transmission.
So if you take in the climate considerations as you are
determining which transmission projects should go forward and
where they are needed, that means that you are looking at where
is the best path for a transmission project to either bring in,
you know, renewable energy where it needs to come from and is
accessing, you know, the clean energy that we need and taking
it to where it needs to go.
And so currently, without having those explicit
authorities, you are just not being able to--not giving FERC
the tools it needs to ensure that we are addressing and
building an electricity system that is going to be able to
withstand the worsening climate crisis.
Ms. Barragan. Right. Thank you very much.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Delaware, Ms.
Rochester, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling
this important hearing on the CLEAN Future Act. And thank you
to all of the witnesses for your testimony today.
The recent extreme weather event in Texas and parts of the
Midwest exposed the need for a more resilient energy
infrastructure, and as we all know climate change is fueling
extreme weather across the country and we need to work together
to fix the vulnerabilities in our energy system and better
prepare for future disasters.
A safer, cleaner, and more resilient energy system is
possible with smarter planning and better decisions, which is
why I am proud that the CLEAN Future Act includes the Open Back
Better Act, which I recently reintroduced.
The Open Back Better Act invests in retrofits to public
buildings, such as hospitals, libraries, and community centers,
making them more energy efficient and more resilient against
future threats. It creates good-paying jobs and prioritizes
upgrades to low-wealth communities and communities of color,
which are so often disproportionately burdened by the impacts
of public health emergencies and natural disasters. And as we
work to rebuild our Nation's economy in the wake of the COVID-
19 pandemic, we need to work toward a more resilient and clean
energy economy.
Ms. McIntyre, during natural disasters and national
emergencies, it is our mission to ensure safety of all
Americans. How can more energy efficient and resilient public
facilities enhance our ability to protect the public during
times of crises?
Ms. McIntyre. More energy efficiency buildings will, again,
help provide insulation, weatherization for buildings, and in
particularly, you know, low-income housing and better to be
able to withstand the impacts of the weather-related events.
So, you know--and Texas was a prime example of very inefficient
buildings. And so, you know, the impacts of the cold weather
were felt much more by those communities, and again,
inefficient buildings cause more stress on the grid. And so, if
you provide more efficiency and weatherization of buildings,
then you enable lower energy demand and, again, then have less
of an impact from the weather events on the electricity system.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. The Open Back Better Act prioritizes
upgrades to low-wealth communities and communities of color.
Can you talk about how we can ensure that these communities are
active partners in building a more resilient energy system?
Ms. McIntyre. So that is one of the concerns that we have
with some of the provisions in the CLEAN Future Act, is while
it has provisions to take into account communities of color and
low-income communities, it does not provide any guidance as how
to meaningfully interact with those communities and include
those communities in the decisionmaking of where funding is
going, where the needs are the greatest. And so, you know,
there needs to be, you know, stronger provisions to actually
direct how the government can work with those communities and
get their input.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you.
And Dr. Wayland, following up on Representative Welch's
question, can you talk about incorporating energy efficiency
retrofits in public buildings and how that makes the community
more resilient against future threats?
Dr. Wayland. Yes. That is a great question. We are strongly
supportive of addressing the inefficiencies in public
buildings, from schools to city town halls and city buildings.
And similarly to what Ms. McIntyre described in terms of the
effects on the residential communities, you are going to lower
the energy burden of the local governments. You will then make
them more resilient in the face of any kinds of disruptions
that happen to power. And many of those public buildings are
the places of respite during those events for low-income
communities and communities of color. And so making sure that
those buildings are clean, efficient, and have backup power is
really critical for equity issues in the face of climate
change.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. And in my last 30 seconds, how can we
ensure that the grid--that grid resiliency efforts protect
against multiple threats, such as hurricanes or cyber attacks?
Dr. Wayland. Well, that is a great question. And I think
that, you know, we have to make sure that we are addressing,
taking a multihazard approach when we are looking at the
investments that utilities are asking to make in upgrading the
grid. So as Ms. Silverstein mentioned in the very beginning, we
have to assume that these events are going to happen, and so we
shouldn't just plan for the last thing that just happened. We
should be looking at the full range of hazards that will
confront a community.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you so much.
And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for the time. I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Arizona, Mr.
O'Halleran, for 5 minutes.
Mr. O'Halleran. I want to thank the chairman and the
ranking member for their--putting this committee together
today, the panel, and the panel for the great discussion we
have had today.
You know, today's hearing comes at a critical time for our
Nation's energy transformation. Our natural disasters are not
new. Their impacts on electrical grid are raising important
questions about the reliability of our electric grid.
Arizona's grid infrastructure already faces constant
threats from extreme heat waves, creating increased demand for
electricity, and wildfires threatening these same valuable
assets. I am thankful we are having today's hearing to examine
how the CLEAN Future Act and other Federal policies can make
our electric grid more resilient against threats posed by
natural disasters and cyber attacks.
My first question goes to Ms. Silverstein. Section 218 of
the CLEAN Future Act would establish a DOE program to help
State, local, and Tribal governments with evaluation permitting
and siting of interstate transmission lines. Your testimony
highlights how over 700 gigawatts of rural generation projects
have been unable to interconnect to the grid due to, in part,
to delays in necessary transmission not being built.
Could you comment how improving the transmission siting and
approval process will support rural economic development,
decrease electric costs for consumers, and increase overall
grid reliability?
Ms. Silverstein. Yes, sir. Thank you. The reason that so
many new projects cannot get access to the transmission grid is
because there is not enough transmission for them to hook up
onto. So the more that we--because all of the transmission is
full with the generators that are already using it. The only
way to bring more generation onto the system is to build more
transmission, frankly, and to make marginal improvements in the
care and capacity of the transmission that we have. We are
trying to do both.
But in order to build--to really bring on and free up all
of the capability of this new generation, we need much more
transmission. That means much faster permiting. It means better
siting. It means much more coordination and identification of
the benefits. It also means, by the way, that one of the things
we need to do is stop the old assumptions that the cheapest
transmission is the best transmission to build. The cheapest
transmission today is the transmission that we can get built as
big and as quickly as possible, which means that if you need to
take a dogleg, if you need to big it builder--build it bigger--
excuse me--those are the right things to do because it creates
more value for the Nation faster.
So with more transmission, we can have more generation and
storage added. We can have better reliability. We can reduce
delivered economic costs and allow that new generation is out
in rural areas. And so by building transmission to open up
generation in those rural areas, we add tax base. We add the
ability to bring new generation and new jobs into those
regions.
Thank you.
Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you. And I have a couple of other
questions, but I would like to ask everyone on the panel: How
long do you think our grid system has been in this crisis
situation over the last number of years?
Starting with anybody.
Ms. McIntyre. I will start. You know, we have been facing
these weather events for decades. And what has been happening
is, because of the climate crisis, those events are becoming
more severe and creating even more damage to our systems. And
so this is not necessarily new, but the severe impacts of them
are becoming greater.
Dr. Wayland. I will say that in addition to severe weather
we face a number of threats that are growing. And in
particular, this committee has talked about cybersecurity. That
is a growing threat. And the changing nature of the grid in
terms of it becoming more connected and more digitized only
makes the threat even greater. And so cyber is something that
we really thought about in terms of protecting personal
information, you know, the front office kind of thing, and not
necessarily cyber that will damage the operating systems, you
know, of our grid, and that is changing and can lead, you know,
not just to having an identity stolen but to having massive
damage inflicted on the grid.
So there are a number of other things in terms of aging
infrastructure in our workforce that are putting pressure on
the grid, but I think that cybersecurity is a new thing that
requires attention.
Mr. O'Halleran. And my time is up, and I yield. Thank you
very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rush. The gentleman yields.
The Chair now recognizes Ms. DeGette from Colorado. I don't
see her on the line.
Then the Chair will proceed and recognizes Mr. Veasey from
Texas.
Mr. Veasey, are you on the line? I don't see Mr. Veasey.
We will move on and recognize Mr. McEachin from Virginia. I
don't see Mr. McEachin from Virginia.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Texas, Mrs.
Fletcher.
Mrs. Fletcher, you are now recognized for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you so much, Chairman Rush.
Thanks to you and Ranking Member Upton for holding this hearing
and for allowing me to be part of it. And I thank the witnesses
for taking time to testify today.
I have had a day focused on these issues, starting with
this morning's oversight hearing on the catastrophic failures
here in Texas during the winter storm and the challenges to our
grid system and the need for diverse fuel sources, and then of
course this afternoon's hearing on the CLEAN Future Act and the
things that we can do to build a more resilient grid system and
power generation and delivery system across the country.
A lot of the comments today that I have heard are focused
on some of the partisan and other divisions, but I think there
is a lot of room for agreement, maybe more than it might appear
from the hearing, and I really urge my colleagues to continue
working together to address the challenges and opportunities
before us.
As the Representative--or a Representative from the energy
capital of the world and as somebody who witnessed firsthand
the devastating impacts of the loss of power during the Texas
winter storm from my home here in Houston--where, like people
across my community, we had no power and no water in our home
for days--I am hopeful that our witnesses can help shed a light
on what we can do going forward to ensure that extreme weather
hitting the grid doesn't result in grid events with a large
loss of life and huge economic costs like we are seeing here in
Texas right now.
So I want to start with Ms. Silverstein. In your testimony,
you talk about how the required infrastructure of the next
century will not appear without significant improvements in
institutional infrastructure. And can you talk a little bit
about or tell us what new authorities the FERC and DOE would
need to realize this goal?
Ms. Silverstein. Thank you. As I have said, I think that it
is necessary for FERC to have greater authorities--Ms. McIntyre
talked about that--and to be able to do permiting and planning.
It is very clear that current planning [inaudible] structures
and processes are not working effectively, and those need to be
changed. Cost allocation needs to be changed hugely. DOE is
working on a variety of planning capabilities and technologies
that need to be changed.
And, frankly, one of the biggest challenges is the way we
now assign cost to beneficiaries means that you never recognize
all the beneficiaries, because everyone in the Nation would
benefit from a macrogrid and from many of these improvements.
But it is very difficult using current definitions and
processes to identify beneficiaries and assign cost to them
when they are not inside the little box that you are working
within. So all of those things need to be improved.
We also need to, frankly, change institutional
infrastructure with respect to how we organize and manage
distribution systems, because all of the--all of us sat in the
dark because the distribution systems, once you take up all the
critical facilities, there is no power left for everybody else.
And if we had much smaller circuits and much--the capability to
sectionalize and cut up a distribution system, you could
actually rotate power outages fairly among many more people.
The last institutional thing we need to do is to make
critical facilities stand up and protect themselves in order to
protect us. And it is just infuriating that all of the critical
facilities don't have the kinds of clean backup power systems
with battery and PV and combined heat and power or other stuff
that can keep them up for a couple of days, including, by the
way, compressor stations and a lot of wellhead production
systems. If they think they are that critical, they should
start acting like they are critical instead of just lying low
and whining later on.
Thank you.
Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you for that. And I agree. I mean, one
of the challenges that we have heard here is that there needs
to be not just investment at the generators but throughout the
entire supply chain to make sure that we can get the power when
we need it. And so that definitely resonates, as does the idea
that we can roll the outages, which certainly we saw here. And
there is a huge difference between having 2 or 4 hours without
power and having 3 or 4 days without power, and those are
really dramatic differences. So there those are helpful.
I am already running out of time, which is amazing. So I am
just going to direct my last question to you and some
additional questions for the record for our other wonderful
witnesses. But can you just talk a little bit more about how
the transmission and distribution circuits are designed and how
that more precise approach that you were talking about can help
in response to winter storms?
I will put the rest of my questions in for the record, and
thank you all so much.
Ms. Silverstein. Thank you. Yes, circuits are designed very
large, and you can use sectionalization devices to make them
smaller and cut them up and reroute power. And we have been
doing that a lot in California in order to do the wildfire
shutoffs protections. But we don't have that in Houston. We
don't have that in Austin. We don't have it in a whole lot of
places across the country. And we need to be able to do that so
that, for instance, sea level rise doesn't take out one part of
a town and force the rest of the town to go down as well. That
is what would have kept most of our homes from freezing and
having pipes blow up.
Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you so much. I have gone over my
time, and, rather ironically, I have someone here working on
fixing my pipes today. So, certainly, we are continuing to live
with these challenges, and it is something we can learn from. I
thank all of you for your time.
And, again, Mr. Chairman, thank you so much for allowing me
to participate. And I yield back.
Mr. Rush. The gentlelady yields back.
I want to return to the roster and ask these Members who
didn't have a chance to ask questions. I don't see them on the
camera, but I am going to ask are they present.
Is Mr. Bucshon present?
Is Mr. Duncan present?
Is Mr. Palmer present?
Is Ms. DeGette present?
Is Mr. Veasey present?
Is Mr. McEachin present?
So, seeing that they are not present, the committee staff,
both the Republicans and the Democrats, are--well, let me just
say to conclude the hearing, that concludes the witness'
questions. And I would like to thank each and every one of our
dear, respected, and beloved witnesses for their participation
in today's hearing. We want to thank you for your durability
and for your endurance for this hearing. Thank you very much
for your contributions to our Nation's energy future.
I want to remind Members that, pursuant to committee rules,
they have 10 business days to submit additional questions for
the record to me, answered by the witnesses who have appeared
before us. And I ask each witness to respond promptly to any
such questions that you may receive.
Before we adjourn, I don't know--we are awaiting the
staff's review of the unanimous consent request, and as they
are reviewing that, we want to take a moment to allow them to
finish their review so that we can be prepared for a UC
request.
So I will ask the ranking member, Mr. Upton, are you aware,
are they--are they--have your side and the minority side agreed
to the UC request?
Mr. Upton. I am not aware of any, but if not--if so, I will
come back to you.
Mr. Rush. OK. All right. Well, we will await. I will ask
the witnesses--allow the witnesses to depart, and then Mr.
Upton and I and whoever the other members of the subcommittee
will remain online until we get the staff concurrence with the
UC request.
So I don't want to keep the witnesses. So you are free to
leave at this moment. And, again, thank you each and every one
of you for your outstanding testimony. Thank you.
Voice. Thanks, everybody.
Mr. Rush. So, Fred, you and I and Mr. Armstrong are still
on the video. And so we just have to bide our time, but while
we are waiting, I like that little snide remark that you made
about my name. Yes. I am going to start calling you Downton as
opposed to Upton.
Mr. Upton. I got a lot of nicknames.
Mr. Rush. The minority staff signed off.
And so I request unanimous consent that the reference and
testimony and other information be entered into the record en
bloc, and then there are about 20 documents. So I am
requesting, then, unanimous consent that the documents be
entered into the record en bloc.
Without objection, so ordered.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the
hearing.\1\]
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\1\ One document, a report from Vibrant Clean Energy, has been
retained in committee files and is available at https://docs.house.gov/
meetings/IF/IF03/20210324/111366/HHRG-117-IF03-20210324-SD023.pdf.
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And at this time, the subcommittee stands in adjournment.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 5:27 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
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