[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


               KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON: STRATEGIES FOR GRID
                       RESILIENCE AND RELIABILITY

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                        SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE 
                             CLIMATE CRISIS
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                              HEARING HELD                              
                           FEBRUARY 15, 2022

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-14
                           
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]                          

                            www.govinfo.gov
     Printed for the use of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis
     
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
47-483                      WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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                 SELECT COMMITTEE ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS
                    One Hundred Seventeenth Congress

                      KATHY CASTOR, Florida, Chair
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             GARRET GRAVES, Louisiana,
JULIA BROWNLEY, California             Ranking Member
JARED HUFFMAN, California            GARY PALMER, Alabama
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia         BUDDY CARTER, Georgia
MIKE LEVIN, California               CAROL MILLER, West Virginia
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
JOE NEGUSE, Colorado                 DAN CRENSHAW, Texas
VERONICA ESCOBAR, Texas              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
                                 ------                                
                Ana Unruh Cohen, Majority Staff Director
                Sarah Jorgenson, Minority Staff Director
                        climatecrisis.house.gov
                        
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                   STATEMENTS OF MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

                                                                   Page
Hon. Kathy Castor, a Representative in Congress from the State of 
  Florida, and Chair, Select Committee on the Climate Crisis:
    Opening Statement............................................     1
    Prepared Statement...........................................     3
Hon. Garrett Graves, a Representative in Congress from the State 
  of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Select Committee on the 
  Climate Crisis:
    Opening Statement............................................     4
Hon. Veronica Escobar, a Representative in Congress from the 
  State of Texas, and Member, Select Committee on the Climate 
  Crisis
    Prepared Statement...........................................     6

                               WITNESSES

The Honorable Nancy Sutley, Senior Assistant General Manager of 
  External and Regulatory Affairs, and Chief Sustainability 
  Officer, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power
    Oral Statement...............................................     8
    Prepared Statement...........................................     9
Dr. Karen Wayland, Chief Executive Officer, GridWise Alliance
    Oral Statement...............................................    12
    Prepared Statement...........................................    14
Mark Mills, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
    Oral Statement...............................................    31
    Prepared Statement...........................................    33
Katherine Hamilton, Chair, 38 North Solutions; and Chair, Global 
  Future Council on Clean Electrification, World Economic Forum
    Oral Statement...............................................    35
    Prepared Statement...........................................    37

                       SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Report from Stanford University, Assessment of the Diablo Canyon 
  Nuclear Plant for Zero-Carbon Electricity, Desalination, and 
  Hydrogen Production, submitted for the record by Mr. Gonzalez..    46
Report from U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Oil-
  fired generators helped meet electric demand in New England 
  this January, submitted for the record by Mr. Graves...........    68
Report from Princeton University, Net-Zero America: Potential 
  Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts, Final report, submitted 
  for the record by Mr. Graves...................................    68
Report from Grid Strategies, The One-Year Anniversary of Winter 
  Storm Uri: Lessons Learned and the Continued Need for Large-
  Scale Transmission, submitted for the record by Ms. Castor.....    68
Report from Grid Strategies, American Council on Renewable Energy 
  (ACORE), and the Macro Grid Initiative, Transmission Makes the 
  Power System Resilient to Extreme Weather, submitted for the 
  record by Ms. Castor...........................................    68
Report from Environment America Research & Policy Center and the 
  Frontier Group, Rooftop Solar and the 2021 Texas Power Crisis: 
  Exploring Small-Scale Solar's Potential to Improve Grid 
  Resilience During a Deep Freeze Event, submitted for the record 
  by Ms. Castor..................................................    68

                                APPENDIX

Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Hon. Nancy 
  Sutley.........................................................    69
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Hon. Nancy 
  Sutley.........................................................    74
Questions for the Record from Hon. Veronica Escobar to Hon. Nancy 
  Sutley.........................................................    75
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Karen Wayland.    76
Questions for the Record from Hon. Veronica Escobar to Karen 
  Wayland........................................................    79
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Mark Mills...    80
Questions for the Record from Hon. Kathy Castor to Katherine 
  Hamilton.......................................................    81
Questions for the Record from Hon. Garret Graves to Katherine 
  Hamilton.......................................................    87

 
                         KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON:
             STRATEGIES FOR GRID RESILIENCE AND RELIABILITY

                              ----------                              


                       TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2022

                          House of Representatives,
                    Select Committee on the Climate Crisis,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The committee met, pursuant to call, at 2:30 p.m., via 
Zoom, Hon. Kathy Castor [chairwoman of the committee] 
presiding.
    Present: Representatives Castor, Bonamici, Brownley, 
Huffman, McEachin, Levin, Casten, Neguse, Graves, Palmer, 
Carter, Miller, Armstrong, Crenshaw, and Gonzalez.
    Ms. Castor. The committee will come to order.
    Welcome, everyone, to the ``Keeping the Lights on: 
Strategies for Grid Resilience and Reliability'' hearing.
    Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a 
recess of the committee at any time.
    As a reminder, members participating in a hearing remotely 
should be visible on camera throughout the hearing. As with in-
person meetings, members are responsible for controlling their 
own microphones. Members can be muted by staff only to avoid 
inadvertent background noise.
    And, as a reminder, statements, documents, or motions 
must be submitted to the electronic repository at 
[email protected].
    Finally, members or witnesses experiencing any technical 
problems should inform the committee staff immediately.
    And I want to thank you all for joining our remote hearing 
of the Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. Today, we will 
review how the bipartisan infrastructure law's policies and 
investments will help improve grid resilience and consider what 
additional climate and clean energy investments are needed to 
help strengthen America's electrical grid.
    I will now recognize myself for 5 minutes for an opening 
statement.
    As the climate crisis continues to threaten our 
communities, we cannot remain stuck in the past. The key to 
solving the climate crisis is electrifying our economy now, and 
the key to electrifying our economy is a strong and reliable 
grid, with all of the incredible innovations that were not even 
envisioned 20 years ago.
    Strengthening the grid today increases the chances that we 
can keep the lights on tomorrow after extreme weather hits. A 
strong grid also will help us drive down the costs of 
disasters, avoid disruptions, and allow businesses to bounce 
back faster. And it can reduce the cost of energy year-round, 
as more Americans power their homes and cars with affordable 
clean energy made in the USA.
    Strengthening the grid is also about saving lives. Just 
last summer, at least one in three Americans experienced a 
climate-fueled disaster, and in many cases the consequences 
were deadly. We all remember the destructive winter storm only 
1 year ago that knocked out electricity in much of Texas and in 
other areas across the Southeast, leaving millions without 
power. Nearly 250 people died in the aftermath, and too many 
families were left without drinking water, without food or 
shelter, and stuck with astronomical energy bills.
    And it is not just winter storms; the climate crisis is 
making wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves more frequent. In 
2018, California experienced the costliest and most destructive 
wildfire in its history. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 
18,000 buildings and killed 85 people. It was a devastating 
reminder of how aging transmission equipment, coupled with 
climate fueled drought, exposed communities to unexpected 
risks.
    And it was a devastating example of how climate change is 
expanding the number of harmful scenarios we need to prepare 
for, making it more challenging to safeguard the places we call 
home.
    And that is why today we are focusing on how we strengthen 
the grid and lower costs for the American people. I am proud 
that President Biden's bipartisan infrastructure law made 
historic investments on this front, including $5 billion for 
grid hardening, another $5 billion to spur technologies that 
will improve grid reliability and resilience.
    The infrastructure law also included $2.5 billion to help 
build new transmission lines, as well as $3 billion devoted to 
enhancing grid flexibility. And it made investments to help 
address the growing threat of wildfires, including $5 billion 
to bury power lines and build microgrids and more than $3 
billion for hazardous fuel reduction, controlled burning, and 
community defense.
    The innovative advances in grid-enhancing technologies are 
remarkable, and we must deploy them at a wide scale to benefit 
all Americans and help them save on their electric bills.
    All of these investments provide a great foundation to 
strengthen our grid, but we cannot stop there. We need 
additional strategies to keep the climate crisis from getting 
worse and to unleash an economy powered by our own abundant and 
affordable renewable energy.
    That includes enacting new tax credits for transmission and 
storage. It includes expanding tax credits for clean energy and 
electric vehicles. And it means investing in the Greenhouse Gas 
Reduction Fund, which will help us deploy resilient distributed 
energy equitably to communities across America.
    Those are the things the House sent to the Senate in our 
Build Back Better Act, and we look forward to the Senate 
getting these critical investments across the finish line.
    Before I introduce our witnesses, I also want to set the 
record straight. In the United States of America, we do not 
need to choose between energy that is affordable, reliable, or 
clean. It is not an either/or situation. We can have all three. 
We don't need to pick between lower costs or a reliable 
electric grid or clean air for our kids. Clean energy gives us 
the chance to have it all.
    That is why the Biden administration and Democrats in 
Congress are taking steps to meet these challenges head-on. 
That includes work to develop a national strategy on critical 
minerals and recycling, which will help us secure the 
components that we need to expand clean energy nationwide. And 
it means doubling down on innovative tools, whether it is 
harnessing the advances in Artificial Intelligence or expanding 
the use of buildings to grid, and vehicles, to grid 
technologies.
    That is what is great about innovation in America and our 
can-do spirit. Our aging electric grid needs major upgrades and 
expansion, and it is time to integrate the lower-cost clean 
technologies into the power system, to invest in adaptation and 
resilience, and to solve the climate crisis.
    With that, I am happy to recognize the Ranking Member.
    Mr. Graves, you are recognized for 5 minutes for an opening 
statement.
    [The statement of Ms. Castor follows:]

                Opening Statement of Chair Kathy Castor

                  Hearing on ``Keeping the Lights On:

            Strategies for Grid Resilience and Reliability''

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                           February 15, 2022

                        As prepared for delivery

    As the climate crisis continues to threaten our communities, we 
cannot remain stuck in the past. The key to solving the climate crisis 
is electrifying our economy now--and the key to electrifying our 
economy is a strong and reliable grid with the incredible innovations 
that were not even envisioned twenty years ago. Strengthening the grid 
today increases the chances that we can keep the lights on tomorrow 
after extreme weather hits. A strong grid also will help drive down the 
costs of disasters, avoid disruptions, and allow businesses to bounce 
back faster. And it can reduce the costs of energy year-round, as more 
Americans power their homes and cars with affordable, clean electricity 
made in the USA.
    Strengthening the grid is also about saving lives. Just last 
summer, at least one in three Americans experienced a climate 
disaster--and in many cases, the consequences were deadly. We all 
remember the destructive winter storm only one year ago that knocked 
out electricity in much of Texas and other areas across the Southeast, 
leaving millions without power. Nearly 250 people died in the 
aftermath--and too many families were left without drinking water, 
without food or shelter, or stuck with astronomical energy bills.
    And it's not just winter storms; the climate crisis is making 
wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves more frequent. In 2018, 
California experienced the costliest and most destructive wildfire in 
its history. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 18,000 buildings and 
killed 85 people. It was a devastating reminder of how aging 
transmission equipment, coupled with climate-fueled drought, expose 
communities to unexpected risks. And it was a devastating example of 
how climate change is expanding the number of harmful scenarios we need 
to prepare for, making it more challenging to safeguard the places we 
call home.
    That's why today we're focusing on ways to strengthen the grid and 
lower costs for the American people. I'm proud that President Biden's 
bipartisan infrastructure law made historic investments on this front--
including $5 billion for grid hardening and another $5 billion to spur 
technologies that will improve grid reliability and resilience. The 
Infrastructure Law included $2.5 billion to help build new transmission 
lines, as well as $3 billion devoted to enhancing grid flexibility. And 
it made investments to help address the growing threat of wildfires, 
including $5 billion for burying power lines and building microgrids, 
and more than $3 billion for hazardous fuel reduction, controlled 
burning, and community defense resources. The innovative advances in 
grid-enhancing technologies are remarkable. And we must deploy them at 
a wide scale to benefit all Americans and help them save on electric 
bills.
    All of these investments provide a great foundation to strengthen 
our grid. But we cannot stop there. We need additional strategies to 
keep the climate crisis from getting worse--and to unleash an economy 
powered by our own abundant and affordable renewable energy. That 
includes enacting new tax credits for transmission and storage. It 
includes expanding tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles. 
And it means investing in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which will 
help us deploy resilient distributed energy equitably to communities 
across the country. Those are all things that the House sent to the 
Senate in our Build Back Better Act. And we look forward to the Senate 
getting these critical investments past the finish line.
    Before we introduce our witnesses, I want to set the record 
straight: in the United States of America, we don't need to choose 
between energy that's affordable, reliable, or clean. It's not an 
either/or situation. We can have all three. We don't need to pick 
between lower costs, a reliable electric grid, or clean air for our 
kids. Clean energy gives us the chance to have it all. That's why the 
Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress are taking steps to meet 
these challenges head on. That includes work to develop a national 
strategy on critical minerals and recycling, which will help us secure 
the components we need to expand clean energy nationwide. And it means 
doubling down on innovative tools, whether it's harnessing advances in 
Artificial Intelligence, or expanding the use of buildings-to-grid and 
vehicles-to-grid technologies.
    That's what is great about innovation in America and our ``can do'' 
spirit. Our aging electric grid needs major upgrades and expansion. 
It's time to integrate lower-cost clean technologies into the power 
system, to invest in adaptation and resilience, and to solve the 
climate crisis.

    Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you.
    And I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today.
    Madam Chair, we certainly share the objective--and I think 
I speak for all members of the committee that we share the 
objective--of moving in a direction of improved access to 
energy, improved affordability to energy, and lower emissions 
from energy. I think we also agree that our energy needs to be 
sourced or supplied within the United States.
    We have had witnesses come and testify before this 
committee and we have read expert reports that have found by 
some measure that we are going to have to triple--we are going 
to have to triple--investment in our electrical grid to meet 
growing demand.
    And it is not just about investment in transmission, 
investment in the grid; it is investment in generation capacity 
as well.
    Unfortunately, what we have seen over the last several 
months is we have seen energy policies that have not resulted 
in those outcomes. As a matter of fact, we have seen energy 
prices, depending on the type of energy and the area, increase 
anywhere from 24 to 54 percent. We have seen one in every five 
Americans say they can't even afford to pay their energy bill 
in full each month. This is forcing more Americans into energy 
poverty. We have seen one of the highest rates of emissions 
increases last year that we have seen in recent history. And so 
we are not achieving these objectives of energy affordability, 
energy access, or lower emissions.
    And I think it is important that we look, for example, at 
my good friend Mr. Huffman's state of California and others as 
examples of where we can extract lessons learned.
    We have seen examples where the State of California is 
choosing to shut down nuclear power plants and then the next 
day sending a letter asking for waivers on Clean Air Act 
emissions so they can emit more because they are going to go 
from a carbon-free generation capacity into using coal and 
natural gas.
    We have seen a state with the least reliable grid in 
America--and this is the state that is leaning farthest forward 
in regard to trying to implement a climate strategy and forcing 
markets in directions of renewable energy where markets clearly 
aren't capable of sustaining them.
    We see a state that is the most dependent state on 
importing energy, including, as we recently discussed last 
week, the state that is responsible for 50 percent of the 
energy coming out of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.
    I mean, these are things that simply don't make sense.
    Maybe we can go over to the Northeast--sorry, Mr. Huffman, 
I am going to pivot now--go over to the Northeast--I know you 
are going to get me back, but--go over to the Northeast, where 
we have seen repeatedly where in New England they have had to 
bring in liquefied natural gas from Russia to meet the energy 
demands.
    It is amazing. There was a recent EIA report that says that 
``although oil-fired generators are infrequently used in New 
England, they play an important role in meeting electricity 
demand in the region during times of high demand and limited 
supply of alternative fuel sources such as natural gas.''
    It goes on to say that ``cold weather and constraints on 
natural gas pipelines to New England can sometimes limit the 
availability of natural gas delivered to power plants during 
winter months. These constraints can increase the price of 
natural gas in the region.''
    Madam Chair, if we simply applied the electricity rates of 
my home state of Louisiana to the State of California, you 
would see a reduction in rates of almost 51 percent--51 
percent. I am sure that the citizens of California would 
welcome that type of reduction.
    We can't sit here and have rational discussions or move in 
the direction of rational policy where we are saying the same 
thing--energy access improvements, energy affordability 
improvements, lower emissions--whenever the facts that are 
being--or the words that are being thrown out there don't match 
the facts. The reality is, California has had some of the worst 
emissions growth in America.
    We need to be learning from California, learning from New 
England, and even learning from the U.K., where they went and 
leaned too hard on wind energy, had a year without much wind, 
and saw spikes in natural gas prices in that country that is 
causing the lack of affordability and the lack of access.
    Madam Chair, the Biden administration has said energy 
demand is going to increase 50 percent between now and 2050, 
and, depending on developing or nondeveloping countries, you 
are going to see an increase in natural gas demand alone 
anywhere from 31 to 80 percent increase.
    We need to have a strategy in the United States to meet 
these demands to ensure that our citizens aren't forced into 
energy poverty as a result of these policies that lack 
evidence, that are actually ignoring evidence to the contrary.
    And a perfect example is the Biden administration choosing 
to shut down the Twin Metals mine that is projected to serve 
approximately 70 percent of the rare-earth and critical mineral 
needs in the United States. They just--they don't match 
reality.
    So, Madam Chair, I look forward to hearing from some of our 
witnesses today and I look forward to being able to ask 
questions, but making sure that we are heading down a path that 
is actually logical and based on the evidence that has been 
presented to us.
    I yield back.
    Ms. Castor. And, without objection, members who wish to 
enter an opening statement into the record have--everyone has 5 
business days to do so.
    [The information follows:]

                        Statement for the Record

                         Rep. Veronica Escobar

                  Hearing on ``Keeping the Lights On:

            Strategies for Grid Resilience and Reliability''

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                           February 15, 2022

    Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to our witnesses. I represent 
the safe and secure border city of El Paso, Texas. Last year's Texas 
winter storm stemmed from extreme weather and the lack of electric grid 
investments like winterization of energy infrastructure. Those planning 
failures caused millions of Texans to lose power, and many lives were 
unfortunately lost. However, my district was not affected by Winter 
Storm Uri due to El Paso being part of the Western power grid. 
Throughout the years our local electric utility company has made 
winterization investments to ensure El Pasoan's do not suffer from 
major power outages.
    I would like to include as part of the record a February 2022 New 
York Times guest essay by University of Texas Professor Michael Webber 
titled `When Will Texas Emerge from the Dark?' which explains that El 
Paso survived the Texas Freeze much better than many other parts of the 
state because of its investments in winterization of its equipment and 
its connection to the Western grid (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/15/
opinion/texas-electricity-grid.html?smid=tw-share).
I join many of my colleagues who are local Texas elected officials in 
urging the state of Texas to expand interconnections to the Eastern and 
Western Grids.

    Ms. Castor. Now I would like to welcome our witnesses. We 
will hear from leading industry experts regarding how the 
bipartisan infrastructure law and additional clean energy 
investments can help us increase the resilience of our nation's 
grid, the whole grid infrastructure, especially as we move 
towards the clean energy economy.
    First, I will recognize Congresswoman Brownley to introduce 
Nancy Sutley.
    Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Madam Chair, for this honor. I 
appreciate it very much.
    It is a pleasure to introduce Ms. Nancy Sutley, who 
currently serves as the Senior Assistant General Manager of 
External and Regulatory Affairs and the Chief Sustainability 
Officer for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
    In her role, Ms. Sutley oversees conservation, regulatory, 
and sustainability efforts for the largest municipal utility in 
the United States, serving 4 million residents. Not a better 
witness for us today.
    I have known Ms. Sutley for many years, and our work 
together dates back to my time in the California State 
Assembly, when Ms. Sutley served as a board member for the 
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and as 
Deputy Mayor of the City of Los Angeles for Energy and 
Environment.
    Our work together continued when Ms. Sutley was appointed 
to lead President Obama's Council on Environmental Quality. 
Under her leadership, CEQ played a central role in shepherding 
the Obama administration's signature environmental projects, 
and she was one of the chief architects of President Obama's 
Climate Action Plan.
    Ms. Sutley has dedicated her career to public service and 
environmental protection and has long been recognized for her 
work as a climate leader as she has advocated for strong 
climate policies aimed at improving conservation, environmental 
regulation, decarbonization goals of the energy sector, and so 
much more.
    Ms. Sutley is a forward-thinking leader in government and 
has extensive experience bringing together stakeholders from 
all sectors to shift to a more sustainable future.
    Thank you, Nancy, for being here today to speak about your 
work. I look forward to hearing from you.
    And I yield back, Madam Chair.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. Brownley.
    And welcome, Ms. Sutley.
    Next, Dr. Karen Wayland is the Chief Executive Officer of 
GridWise Alliance. She is an expert in energy and environmental 
policy and leads a diverse group of stakeholders supporting 
grid modernization.
    During the Obama administration, Dr. Wayland oversaw the 
development of strategies for working with state and local 
governments at the Department of Energy. Dr. Wayland also 
previously served as Senior Advisor for Domestic Energy Policy 
to the Deputy Secretary of Energy.
    Mr. Mark Mills is the Senior Fellow at the Manhattan 
Institute, Faculty Fellow at the McCormick School of 
Engineering and Applied Science, and Co-Director at the 
Institute of Manufacturing Science and Innovation at 
Northwestern University.
    He is a former experimental physicist and engineer and 
provided science and technology policy counsel to private-
sector firms, the Department of Energy, and the U.S. research 
laboratories. Mr. Mills previously served in the White House 
Science Office under President Reagan.
    And Ms. Katherine Hamilton is the Chair of 38 North 
Solutions and Chair of the Global Future Council on Clean 
Electrification at the World Economic Forum. She provides 
public policy and business development services to clean energy 
companies and organizations.
    Ms. Hamilton is an international clean energy policy expert 
and led several councils of the World Economic Forum. She 
previously led buildings research at the National Renewable 
Energy Laboratory and designed grids for Virginia Power.
    Without objection, the witnesses' written statements will 
be made part of the record.
    With that, Ms. Sutley, you are now recognized. You are 
first up to give a 5-minute presentation of your testimony. 
Welcome.

  STATEMENTS OF THE HONORABLE NANCY SUTLEY, SENIOR ASSISTANT 
 GENERAL MANAGER OF EXTERNAL AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS AND CHIEF 
SUSTAINABILITY OFFICER FOR THE LOS ANGELES DEPARTMENT OF WATER 
  AND POWER; KAREN WAYLAND, PH.D., CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF 
 GRIDWISE ALLIANCE; MARK MILLS, SENIOR FELLOW AT THE MANHATTAN 
     INSTITUTE, FACULTY FELLOW AT THE MCCORMICK SCHOOL OF 
    ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE, AND CO-DIRECTOR OF THE 
     INSTITUTE ON MANUFACTURING SCIENCE AND INNOVATION AT 
 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY; AND KATHERINE HAMILTON, CHAIR OF 38 
NORTH SOLUTIONS AND CHAIR OF THE GLOBAL FUTURE COUNCIL ON CLEAN 
          ELECTRIFICATION AT THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM

            STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE NANCY SUTLEY

    Ms. Sutley. Thank you very much.
    And, first of all, thank you, Representative Brownley, for 
that kind introduction and for all that you do for the people 
of California and the United States.
    Chair Castor and Ranking Member Graves and members of the 
committee, I am very honored to be here with you today.
    As you have heard, Los Angeles Department of Water and 
Power is the nation's largest municipally owned utility. We 
serve the 4 million residents of Los Angeles, its businesses 
and visitors, including some of those who were in town for some 
big football game over the weekend. For more than 100 years, 
LADWP has provided the city of Los Angeles with reliable water 
and power service in a cost-effective and environmentally 
responsible manner.
    LADWP's power system is vertically integrated with our own 
transmission and distribution system in a diverse mix of energy 
generation resources. Today's hearing topic is very important. 
A reliable and resilient electric grid is essential for a 
strong and vibrant Los Angeles, and we have a strong track 
record and invest significantly in our power infrastructure.
    However, the impacts of climate change can affect the 
reliability of our grid. Los Angeles lives with the ever 
present threat of longer wildfire seasons, more extreme heat, 
and prolonged droughts.
    The men and women of LADWP work every day to ensure our 
grid is reliable, resilient, and affordable. And even during a 
heat wave, we have enough electrical capacity to meet the 
highest demands. But sustained high temperatures strain 
electrical cables and distributing stations, and when it 
doesn't cool down at night during a heat wave, high nighttime 
temperatures further tax equipment.
    Our wildfire mitigation efforts include system-hardening, 
vegetation management, operation protocols, and maintenance 
programs. But wildfires can potentially put power lines out of 
service for days or weeks.
    To support Los Angeles's decarbonization goals, LADWP is 
transforming its electric grid to 100-percent clean energy. 
And, over the decades, we have expanded renewable energy and 
replaced coal with clean energy; upgraded our transmission; 
invested in energy storage, rooftop solar, energy-efficiency 
measures; and supported electrification. And, as a result, we 
have cut our greenhouse gas emissions by more than half from 
our 1990 levels. And we have kept our power rates competitive. 
They are generally lower than other cities in California.
    To understand the pathways to 100 percent clean energy for 
LADWP, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory completed its 
``LA100'' study in March of 2021. And this study showed 
multiple pathways to achieve a 100 percent renewable energy 
grid while prioritizing reliability, equity, and affordable 
rates. And, in fact, it found that it was feasible to get there 
by 2035.
    The 2035 carbon-free scenario increases renewable energy, 
energy storage, and anticipates more rooftop solar, energy 
efficiency, and demand management, investments in transmission 
and distribution infrastructure, and firm generation using a 
renewable fuel, such as green hydrogen.
    We are making investments in clean energy. Some recent 
examples: The Red Cloud Wind Project in New Mexico began 
commercial operation in December of 2021. We are launching a 
new program to assist apartment dwellers to save energy and 
money. And the IPP Renewed Project will replace coal with green 
hydrogen, first as a mix with natural gas and then 100-percent 
green hydrogen.
    Now, there are a number of things that the Federal 
Government can do to help us meet these goals.
    Federal funding can leverage our investments and can 
accelerate technology development and deployment of low- or 
zero-carbon energy resources. An example: We are part of a 
cooperative called HyDeal which is trying to reduce the cost of 
green hydrogen. Money in the bipartisan infrastructure law 
around hydrogen and the hydrogen hubs at DOE can really help 
accelerate that goal.
    The Federal Government can support the expansion of the 
nation's transmission grid. We see a need for transmission 
investment, including increasing local transmission capacity.
    Federal investment in electric vehicle charging 
infrastructure will help meet the needs of the growing electric 
vehicle market, but we also know from the ``LA100'' study that 
high levels of electrification can help mitigate rate impacts.
    Federal policies and investments to reduce wildfire risk 
can help us remain reliable and resilient.
    Finally, tax credits have helped to spur the clean energy 
industry. Policies could allow tax-exempt utilities like LADWP 
to benefit directly from those renewable and clean energy tax 
incentives.
    Thank you for inviting me today to share these thoughts, 
and I am happy to answer any questions. Thank you.
    [The statement of Ms. Sutley follows:]

                       Statement of Nancy Sutley

  Senior Assistant General Manager of External and Regulatory Affairs

                      Chief Sustainability Officer

               Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

        Before the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

        Hearing on ``Keeping the Lights On: Strategies for Grid 
                      Resilience and Reliability''

                           February 15, 2022

    Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves and Members of the Committee: I 
am Nancy Sutley, Senior Assistant General Manager of External and 
Regulatory Affairs and Chief Sustainability Officer at the Los Angeles 
Department of Water and Power. I am grateful for this opportunity to 
appear before you at this important hearing, ``Keeping the Lights On: 
Strategies for Grid Resilience and Reliability.''
    The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is the 
nation's largest municipally-owned utility, with 10,454 megawatts of 
electric capacity and serving an average of 435 million gallons of 
water per day to the more than 4 million residents of Los Angeles, 
California, its businesses and visitors. For more than 100 years, LADWP 
has provided the City of Los Angeles with reliable water and power 
service in a cost-effective and environmentally responsible manner. 
With a workforce of more than 11,000 employees, LADWP is guided by a 
five-member Board of Water and Power Commissioners, appointed by the 
Mayor of Los Angeles and confirmed by the Los Angeles City Council.
    LADWP's power system is a vertically integrated power generation, 
transmission and distribution system that spans five Western states and 
delivers electricity to more than 1.5 million residential and business 
customers. In Fiscal Year 2019-2020, we supplied more than 21,130 
gigawatt hours (GWh) to our customers--businesses, industry and 
government agencies consumed about 62 percent of the electricity, while 
residents constituted 90 percent of total customers. LADWP's generation 
capacity is made up of a diverse mix of energy resources, including 37 
percent renewable energy (solar, wind and geothermal) in 2020. LADWP 
also has about 4000 miles of overhead transmission circuits and over 
100 miles of underground transmission circuits and, as its own 
balancing authority, operates its own transmission grid.
    Today's topic of strategies for grid resilience and reliability is 
incredibly important to LADWP and Los Angeles. A reliable and resilient 
electric grid is essential for a strong and vibrant Los Angeles. 
LADWP's power reliability continues to beat national norms for both 
interruption frequency and duration indices, which are reported by most 
U.S. electric utilities. Through the Power System Reliability Program, 
we continue to invest significantly in our power infrastructure, 
replacing aging electrical equipment and upgrading undersized ones.
    Impacts of a changing climate affect the reliability and resilience 
of LADWP's electric grid. As Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said when 
he appeared before this committee last summer, ``we now live with the 
ever-present threat of longer wildfire seasons; with more days of 
extreme heat; with prolonged drought conditions''. For example, in July 
2018, Los Angeles experienced record-breaking heat, not only in the 
typically hotter San Fernando Valley, but temperatures in downtown Los 
Angeles reached 108 degrees. And in the summer of 2020, California 
experienced its worst heat wave in more than a decade. During that 
time, LADWP was able to provide surplus power to the California 
Independent System Operator to support the electrical grid in other 
parts of California. LADWP has had enough electrical generating 
capacity to meet its needs on the highest demand days, the Power Supply 
Reliability Program investments have strengthened the grid, and power 
system crews work around the clock to keep the power on but sustained 
heat waves drive soaring demand for electricity and strain on 
electrical cables and distributing stations. That can lead to power 
outages. When it does not cool down at night during a heatwave, higher 
nighttime temperatures can further tax equipment and potentially cause 
more or longer outages.
    Los Angeles' grid is also threatened by more frequent and intense 
wildfires. Wildfires pose a significant threat to public safety--
directly and also because of their impact on the electrical grid. Over 
the past several years, California has experienced its largest fire 
seasons on record and the fire danger is magnified by higher 
temperatures, high winds, drier conditions and drought. Wildfire can 
damage the electrical grid--potentially putting power lines out of 
service for days or weeks. For example, in 2019, the Saddleridge Fire 
burned in an area with three major transmission corridors that bring 
electricity into the Los Angeles basin, reducing power imports. 
Fortunately, temperatures were cool, electrical demand was low but 
LADWP came within 135 megawatts (MW) of shedding load. Like other 
California electric utilities, LADWP prepares and implements a wildfire 
mitigation plan which includes system hardening, vegetation management, 
operating protocols and maintenance programs.
    While we work every day to ensure our electricity grid is reliable, 
resilient and affordable, LADWP is transforming its electric grid to 
100 percent clean energy to support the City of Los Angeles' 
decarbonization goals. LADWP's strategy--to expand renewable energy, 
replace coal with clean energy, transform local generation, upgrade 
transmission, develop energy storage systems, invest in distributed 
energy resources like rooftop and other local solar, help our customers 
use electricity more efficiently and support the electrification of 
vehicles and buildings--is dramatically reducing our greenhouse gas 
emissions. By the end of 2019, LADWP reduced its greenhouse gas 
emissions from electricity generation by approximately 56 percent below 
our 1990 levels, all while maintaining power rates that are 
competitive, and generally lower than in other cities in California. 
Through the remainder of this decade, Los Angeles' goals include 
providing an energy mix that is 80 percent renewable and 97 percent 
carbon--free resources by 2030 on the way to a 100 percent clean energy 
grid.
    To understand the pathways to 100 percent clean energy for LADWP, 
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory completed its LADWP's 100 
Percent Renewables (LA100) Study in March 2021. https://www.nrel.gov/
analysis/los-angeles-100-percent-renewable-study.html This in-depth and 
sophisticated analysis studied various scenarios to achieve a 100 
percent renewable energy grid while prioritizing reliability, equity 
and affordable rates for our customers. NREL's LA100 study showed 
multiple paths for LADWP to achieve a 100 percent renewable and carbon-
free grid and by as early as 2035. Following the release of the LA100 
Study, Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti and the City Council committed LADWP 
to achieve 100 percent carbon free energy by 2035. LADWP's zero carbon 
grid will also enable deep decarbonization and reduction in air 
pollution, including nitrogen oxides and fine particulate emissions 
coming from other sectors of the economy through electrification of 
end-uses such as transportation and buildings, improving the health of 
Angelenos.
    This 2035 carbon-free scenario includes significant rapid increase 
in the deployment of renewable and zero--carbon resources and shows 
that wind and solar resources, enabled with energy storage, are 
fundamental to providing the majority of energy required to meet future 
load. There is a need to accelerate the construction of new 
transmission lines and investments in the distribution grid to support 
the growth in renewable energy and meet increases in energy demand. 
Customers will play an important role through equitably increasing 
rooftop solar, energy efficiency and demand management and through the 
electrification of transportation and buildings. In the Los Angeles 
basin, firm generation, using renewably derived fuels such as green 
hydrogen that can come on-line quickly but is likely to be used 
infrequently, will help maintain electric system reliability.
    While we continue to develop the steps to meet the 100 percent 
carbon free power supply target by 2035, projects that support these 
goals are moving forward. For example, in December 2021, the Red Cloud 
Wind project in New Mexico went into service, increasing renewable 
energy by 6 percent for 2022. We are also launching the Comprehensive 
Multifamily Retrofit program for deep energy savings for residents 
living in multifamily units. We are moving forward with a number of 
needed transmission and distribution grid infrastructure upgrades in 
the Los Angeles basin. We are also partnering with the Los Angeles 
Department of Recreation and Parks on a grid resiliency project at the 
Green Meadows Recreation Center in South Los Angeles, providing solar 
panels, energy storage and electric vehicle chargers in a disadvantaged 
community.
    Other key projects currently underway include transforming the 
Intermountain Power Project in Utah, the last remaining coal plant in 
LADWP's energy portfolio. With our partners in the Intermountain Power 
Agency, we are building a new state-of-the art combined-cycle 
generating system that will use green hydrogen as a fuel source. ``IPP 
Renewed'' will be capable of operating with a blend of natural gas and 
30 percent green hydrogen when it starts operation in 2025 and 100 
percent green hydrogen in the decades to come. It will also feature a 
seasonal renewable energy storage system using salt caverns for storage 
of green hydrogen and will utilize the existing high-voltage 
transmission line to carry renewable energy to the Los Angeles basin.
    We are committed to achieving these decarbonization goals in an 
affordable, equitable and reliable way. There are a number of things 
that the federal government can do to help us in our efforts towards a 
reliable, resilient and clean grid in Los Angeles. First, federal 
funding can help leverage our investments towards a clean energy grid. 
Federal investments aimed at carbon reduction can accelerate technology 
development, deployment and help utilities like LADWP and others 
decarbonize at scale equitably. For example, LADWP is participating in 
HyDeal LA, a cooperative effort aimed at delivering green hydrogen at 
$1.50/kg by 2030. Other types of federal support, including the 
Department of Energy Loan Program Office loan authority can help bring 
innovative projects to market.
    Furthermore, the federal government can accelerate renewable energy 
deployment by supporting the expansion of the nation's transmission 
grid. LADWP is a large transmission infrastructure owner, with 
transmission assets that span five western states. We see the need for 
additional transmission investment, including increasing local 
transmission capacity to integrate renewables and maintain resiliency. 
We also know from the LA100 study that high levels of electrification 
will provide additional electricity sales that will help mitigate rate 
impacts. Federal investment in electric vehicle charging infrastructure 
could help us realize those benefits in addition to meeting the needs 
of the growing electric vehicle market.
    Other federal policies can help utilities remain reliable and 
resilient by supporting efforts to reduce wildfire risk. LADWP has 
water and power infrastructure that goes through National Forests and 
Bureau of Land Management lands and we work closely with those agencies 
to ensure continued and safe operation of those important assets.
    Federal renewable and clean energy tax credits incentivize the 
deployment of those technologies. However, as a public agency, LADWP 
cannot access those directly. The value of the tax credits may be 
reflected in, for example, the price in a power purchase agreement but 
not in projects we may build or own ourselves. Policies that would 
allow tax-exempt utilities like LADWP to benefit directly from those 
energy tax incentives can make them fairer and more effective.
    Thank you for inviting me to share some thoughts about the critical 
issue of grid resilience and reliability.

    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Ms. Sutley.
    Next, Dr. Wayland, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

               STATEMENT OF KAREN WAYLAND, PH.D.

    Dr. Wayland. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Castor, 
Ranking Member Graves, and members of the committee. Thank you 
for convening this important discussion on the resilience and 
reliability of the nation's electric grid.
    My name is Karen Wayland. I am the CEO of GridWise 
Alliance. Our members are industry stakeholders focused on 
accelerating innovation to deliver a secure, reliable, 
resilient, and affordable grid and support decarbonization of 
the U.S. economy.
    GridWise members include utilities of all sizes and 
business models--regional transmission operators, grid 
equipment manufacturers and tech companies, research 
institutes, and others. For our members, especially our 
utilities, the resilience, reliability, and affordability of 
electricity is of paramount importance, and all are committed 
to a low-carbon power supply.
    Let me start by saying that every utility in every state 
faces resilience challenges, from severe storms to drought, 
earthquakes, sea level rise, and geomagnetic pulses, each 
requiring different risk management practices. And cyber and 
physical attacks are a constant, increasing, and evolving 
threat to the electricity system.
    GridWise member Hitachi Energy notes that ``our grid is 
evolving to be more interconnected and operating closer to its 
limits, making the ability to ride through disruptive events 
like extreme weather more important than focusing just on 
avoiding disruption entirely.''
    They note, ``Power systems should be able to fall back on 
locally available sources in case the transmission grid is not 
available. Even if local generation capacity is insufficient to 
cover local load completely, supplying critical 
infrastructures, such as water supply, hospitals, or 
telecommunication networks, would be essential at the 
minimum.''
    GridWise convened members representing over 40 percent of 
the U.S. electric customers to discuss grid resilience a few 
years ago in the face of large-scale disruptive events. Our 
report includes lessons from our members' real-world 
experience.
    First, grid modernization technologies can prevent outages 
and decrease projected impacts.
    Second, distributed generation technologies can enhance the 
resilience of the grid.
    Third, information and communications technology 
infrastructures should be more resilient, reliable, and secure.
    And then, fourth, emergency response planning processes can 
result in better deployment and coordination of human and grid 
equipment resources.
    I would like to give you some examples of GridWise members' 
work to enhance grid resilience.
    First, let's start off with Chair Castor, a utility in her 
state, FPL, Florida Power and Light. Following devastating 
hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, FPL invested significantly in grid 
hardening and preparedness and has since become a leader in the 
industry on resilience.
    The 2017 Hurricane Irma was a stronger storm than Wilma in 
2005, but, as a result of their investments, average customer 
outages were 60 percent less and days to full power restoration 
for all customers went from 18 days to 10 days. The faster 
restoration had broad societal and economic benefits, but the 
investments in resilience also had day to day reliability 
benefits.
    Portland General Electric will mitigate wildfires, severe 
storm events, and growing load by adding weather stations and 
wildfire cameras, underground and high-voltage lines, adding 
smart protective relays, storage, and rebuilding substations, 
upgrading transmission lines, and creating resilience zones 
that will serve residents during potential outages during 
winter storms and wildfire season when power shutoffs may be 
necessary to prevent a catastrophic wildfire event. PGE's 
distribution automation investments alone have prevented 
millions of customer outage minutes since 2018.
    The February 2021 freeze led Bandera Electric Cooperative 
in Texas to focus on behind-the-meter residential resources 
like solar storage, HVAC systems, pools, and other distributed 
energy resources as critical to grid resilience. BEC's new 
platform, Apolloware, now collects real time-data to provide 
visibility at the grid edge.
    For example, during the freeze event, home power use was 
500 percent higher and HVAC demand 620 percent higher than 
normal, but energy use varied by a factor of 21 times, meaning 
that some homes were more cold-sensitive and used more energy 
relative to other homes.
    Apolloware also provided insights into how appliances 
behind the meter were using electricity and allowed BEC to 
notify customers to stop charging storage units to save energy.
    In a filing to the Public Utility Commission of Texas, 
BEC's CEO concluded that ``having behind the meter visibility 
would help ERCOT with better grid planning and, more 
importantly, better understanding of how to minimize blackouts 
through the development of an intelligent demand response 
program based on fleet-wide monitoring control of HVAC, water 
heaters, pool pump devices,'' and others.
    Further, ``we have the technology to operate an intelligent 
grid down to the appliance level, but we need energy-efficiency 
programs and demand response programs tied to market pricing to 
keep the loss of power voluntary. If these programs had been in 
place last February, [the CEO believes] . . . that voluntary 
load reductions would have been adequate to keep the grid from 
rolling blackouts on a statewide basis.''
    The $11 billion in the bipartisan infrastructure law for 
resilience funding will allow utilities around the country to 
accelerate their resilience projects. GridWise Alliance thanks 
the committee for the opportunity to provide insights on the 
resilience of the nation's electricity system.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Dr. Wayland follows:]

                              Testimony of

                        Karen G. Wayland, Ph.D.

                        Chief Executive Officer

                           GridWise Alliance

  U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

      ``Keeping the Lights On: Strategies for Grid Resilience and 
                             Reliability''

                           February 15, 2022

    Good afternoon, Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and other 
members of the Select Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to 
appear before you today to participate in this important hearing on the 
resilience and reliability of the nation's electricity grid.
    My name is Karen Wayland, and I am the CEO of GridWise Alliance. 
The GridWise Alliance leads a diverse membership of electricity 
industry stakeholders focused on accelerating innovation that delivers 
a secure, reliable, resilient, and affordable grid to support 
decarbonization of the U.S. economy. GridWise is unique in its focus on 
the electric grid's broader ecosystem, advocating the value of 
integrating technologies that modernize and transform the grid. We 
drive impactful change through our diverse membership of utilities, 
manufacturers, grid operators and researchers united in a common belief 
that the electric grid is the critical enabling infrastructure of a 
decarbonized economy.
    The GridWise membership includes investor-owned utilities, 
municipal utilities, rural cooperative utilities, regional transmission 
operators, grid equipment manufacturers and technology companies, 
vendors, national laboratory and research institutions, and others. 
GridWise has been convening member companies that have been leading the 
transformation of the electricity industry since our founding in 2003. 
For our utility members, the resilience, reliability, and affordability 
of electricity is of paramount importance, and all are committed to a 
low-carbon power supply.
Threats to the Nation's Electricity System
    The massive Texas power failure in February 2021 and wildfires in 
California have focused public attention on the electric grid \1\ and 
emphasized the growing dependence of all sectors of the economy on 
reliable electricity. The Texas blackout exposed some market and 
regulatory issues unique to that state, and the scale of economic loss 
is related to the size of the nation's largest state over which those 
losses are projected, but increasingly severe weather threatens power 
grids across the country. There were a record 22 weather events in 2020 
in which the costs of damage exceeded $1 billion,\2\ and the last two 
decades have seen a 67% increase in major power outages from weather 
events (Texas ranks second behind Michigan in the number of major 
outages).\3\ Five of the worst wildfires in US history occurred in the 
last four years.\4\ The utility industry is also under increasing 
threats of disruption from cyberattacks from both state-actors, like 
Russia and non-state actors. And because our critical infrastructure 
systems are increasingly interdependent, power outages can lead to 
cascading failures that affect other systems like water treatment (as 
happened in Texas last month) or gasoline dispensing (as happened in 
New York following Superstorm Sandy).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ GridWise Alliance uses the term ``electricity system'' to 
encompass the entire network of generation, transmission, distribution 
and consumer/end users of electricity, and ``electric grid'' to refer 
to the transmission and distribution system. Here, we use ``electric 
grid'' as it has been used in the popular press.
    \2\ National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ``Billion 
Dollar Climate and Weather Disasters: Time Series.'' https://
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series, accessed March 22, 2021.
    \3\ Climate Central. ``Power OFF: Extreme Weather and Power 
Outages.'' https://medialibrary.climatecentral.org/resources/power-
outages, accessed March 22, 2021.
    \4\ New York Times. ``These Changes Are Needed Amid Worsening 
Wildfires, Experts Say.'' https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/climate/
wildfires-climate-policy.html, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    We should use the Texas and California blackouts as drivers for 
conversations about enhancing grid resilience, but we should not lose 
sight of the ranges of threats that could disrupt power supply at the 
local, regional, or national level, or even globally, each requiring 
different risk management practices.
    When I was at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), my policy team 
commissioned a report titled ``Resilience of the U.S. Electricity 
System: A Multi-Hazard Perspective'' \5\ as part of the second 
installment of the Quadrennial Energy Review.\6\ The report identified 
a range of threats to the electricity sector that grid owners and 
operators, and federal, state, and local regulators and policy makers 
must consider while planning for and investing in grid resilience 
(Table 1). These threats range from extreme weather (hurricanes, 
floods, winter storms) to geological (earthquakes and geomagnetic 
pulses) to human-caused (cyber and physical attacks), with likelihood 
of occurrence varying from extremely low but with high impact to very 
likely with low- to-high impact. Similarly, the risks differ across the 
components of the electricity system. Planning for grid resilience 
requires risk management strategies for the range of hazards and 
probabilities that could impact grid infrastructure.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific 
Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. 
``Resilience of the U.S. Electricity System: A Multi-Hazard 
Perspective.'' https://www.energy.gov/policy/downloads/resilience-us-
electricity-system-multi-hazard-
perspective, accessed March 22, 2021.
    \6\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``Quadrennial Energy Review--
Transforming the Nation's Electricity System: Second Installment of the 
Quadrennial Energy Review.'' https://
www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/02/f34/
Quadrennial%20Energy%20Review--
Second%20Installment%20%28Full%20Report%29.pdf, accessed March 22, 
2021.
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Table 1.  Detailed Integrated Assessment of Risk and Resilience in the 
        Electricity Sector.
Source: ``Resilience of the U.S. Electricity System: A Multi-Hazard 
        Perspective
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
        

Caption: Assessment of risk and status of risk management practice are 
based on information in Section 4, published literature, and expert 
judgement (for statistically unknown threats). Table cells represent a 
qualitative assessment of risk by electric system component and threat. 
Some threats are divided into low or high intensity threats. Estimates 
of individual subcomponents of risk are presented for each system 
component and threat: probability refers to the frequency or likelihood 
of a threat occurring; vulnerabilty refers to the sensitivity of a 
system component to harm or damage; impact refers tothe potential 
severity of damage in terms of financial costs, affected coustomers, 
and/or health and safety. This table forms the basis for Table 7 in 
Section 5.2.
Achieving Resilience
    The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the 
organization that sets standards for the reliability of the nation's 
bulk power system, defines reliability as the ability ``to meet the 
electricity needs of end-use customers even when unexpected equipment 
failures or other factors reduce the amount of available electricity.'' 
\7\ Reliability metrics capture the frequency (System Average 
Interruption Frequency Index, or SAIFI) and duration (System Average 
Interruption Duration Index, or SAIDI) of power outages. These metrics 
are inadequate to describe the ability of the electricity system to 
withstand disruptions, minimize the consequences of disruptions that do 
occur, and quickly recover from those disruptions, which are the 
defining characteristics of system resilience. A resilient electricity 
system can also adapt through post-incident learning that feeds into 
planning and future response.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \7\ North American Electricity Reliability Corporation. 
``Frequently Asked Questions.'' https://www.nerc.com/AboutNERC/
Documents/NERC%20FAQs%20AUG13.pdf, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Enhancing the resilience of the electricity grid is a multi-pronged 
approach encompassing planning, operations, and technology. The 
``Resilience of the U.S. Electricity System: A Multi-Hazard 
Perspective'' \8\ report identified three facets of building 
resilience:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \8\ Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, 
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific 
Northwest National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories. 
``Resilience of the U.S. Electricity System: A Multi-Hazard 
Perspective.'' https://www.energy.gov/policy/downloads/resilience-us-
electricity-system-multi-hazard-
perspective, accessed March 22, 2021.

          Resourcefulness: in practice this could be applied to 
        the power transmission and distribution system by implementing 
        a constant monitoring and optimized dispatching and/or load 
        shedding to respond to anomalies. For example, if a critical 
        transmission line is lost, power might still be delivered by 
        temporarily overloading parallel/alternative routes and 
        monitoring conductor temperature and time of overload 
        conditions.
          Redundancy: over-engineering critical systems to be 
        able to function, at least at a reduced level, in critical 
        conditions.
          Restoration: coordination and integration among 
        stakeholders of restoration efforts, plans optimized for a 
        variety of scenarios to avoid the need of improvising a 
        solution during critical conditions. Sharing best practices 
        among different organizations (from local to global, 
        nationwide) and practicing simulated emergencies should be 
        mandated and coordinated at the national level. This sharing 
        should include mutual assistance programs and their resources 
        (personnel, equipment, parts) during the restoration phase. 
        Electric utilities have a range of resilience options depending 
        on the threats and hazards facing the region and specific 
        infrastructure. Table 2 presents a list of options that 
        utilities are pursuing to enhance system resilience with the 
        goal of protecting the system, reducing the impact and areal 
        extent of any damage, and accelerating restoration time.\9\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \9\  Argonne National Laboratory. ``Front-Line Resilience 
Perspectives: The Electric Grid.'' https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1344876, 
accessed March 22, 2021.

    Utilities have a suite of options to enhance resilience of grid 
infrastructure (Table 2). Grid resilience measures aim to prevent 
disruptions to power supplies and reduce the severity of impacts and 
time to recovery in the event of power loss. Hardening of critical 
infrastructure for resilience may include undergrounding of some power 
lines, upgrading poles and towers to withstand high winds, and 
elevating substations above projected flood levels. Trees are the 
leading cause of power outages,\10\ so utility vegetation management 
programs reduce flammable materials near power lines and remove trees 
at risk of falling. Utilities conduct practice drills and exercises 
throughout the year to prepare for disaster response. In the days 
leading up to an event, utilities will pre-stage crews and equipment in 
advance of events and may have plans to deenergize some facilities to 
prevent damage. Mutual assistance agreements with neighboring utilities 
help speed restoration efforts by deploying emergency response crews to 
disaster areas. But hardening and disaster planning alone are not 
sufficient to improve resilience.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ T&D World. ``Plan for Better Vegetation Management in 2019.''
https://www.tdworld.com/vegetation-management/article/20971840/plan-
for-better-vegetation-management-in-2019, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    New grid technologies that improve situational awareness and 
control of grid equipment can improve the reliability and resilience of 
the electricity system. Sensors can alert grid operators to localized 
disruptions, allowing more targeted response by line crews, and 
automated grid equipment can automatically sense and response to 
conditions in the field, including rerouting power around downed lines 
and self-healing damage. Remote sensing technologies allow utilities to 
obtain data from drones or NASA images to more effectively manage power 
line vegetation or assess damage. Advanced meter infrastructure (AMI), 
or ``smart meters,'' help grid operators identify local outages and 
prioritize response crews and verify when power is restored, both 
reducing the time of outages and the cost of response by reducing 
``truck rolls'' or repair visits.
    GridWise member Siemens Energy describes some of its new 
technologies that utility and power generation customers are deploying 
to improve resilience:

          Mobile Resiliency Flexible Extra High Voltage Large 
        Power Transformers: different from the traditional solutions in 
        the industry, these Siemens Energy units can be deployed and 
        energized extremely quickly (in benchmark times and much 
        quicker than standard in the industry), are extremely flexible 
        (can be used in a variety of configurations and voltage levels) 
        and have large power (MVA) ratings to be used in large 
        substations and power plants. While several utilities in the US 
        have purchased these units to store in their equipment yards, 
        Siemens Energy also operates a leasing program in which a 
        Resiliency Generator Step Up (GSU) Large Power Transformer is 
        owned by Siemens Energy in the US and leased to customers 
        during contingency situations until they are able to source a 
        permanent replacement transformer.\11\ Note: that transformer 
        is currently deployed at a power plant and other utilities have 
        requested Siemens Energy deliver it to their sites as soon as 
        it is again available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \11\ https://financialpost.com/pmn/press-releases-pmn/business-
wire-news-releases-pmn/siemens-energy-installs-worlds-first-leased-
rapid-response-transformers-allowing-a-large-generating-
facility-to-return-to-
service#:˜:text=Siemens%20Energy%20is%20leasing%20the,
their%20existing%2C%20conventional%20GSU%20transformer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
          Mobile Substations: A mobile substation can act as a 
        stand-by emergency grid restoration solution. It can be 
        mobilized and set up within a couple of hours in the event of a 
        grid failure, hence reducing the technical and financial impact 
        of power outage.
Table 2. Electric Utility Resilience Enhancement Options.
Source: Argonne National Laboratory, Front-Line Resilience 
Perspectives: The Electric Grid (ANL/GSS-16-2).
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


          Mobile SVC (STATCOM): Siemens Energy developed a 
        flexible, mobile substation for GridWise member Dominion Energy 
        (Virginia) to help keep the grid stable to allow sufficient 
        time to plan for renewables on its system. The substation 
        technology also responds to any faults on the network within 
        milliseconds.\12\ Dominion notes that ``The mobile STATCOM 
        gives utilities the flexibility to develop short-term plans 
        while successfully constructing a long-term solution. The 
        ability to reduce outage contingencies and improve economic 
        opportunity were the driving force.'' \13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ https://www.smart-energy.com/regional-news/north-america/
dominion-energy-to-utilise-
mobile-svc-statcom-tech/
#:˜:text=US%20utility%20Dominion%20Energy%20will,fast%20
and%20controlled%20reactive%20power.
    \13\ https://www.tdworld.com/digital-innovations/statcom/article/
21132983/dominion-energy-
develops-mobile-statcom
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          UPFC+ (Unified Power Flow Controller): UPFC+ is used 
        to effectively manage the transmission system and provide the 
        stability and resilience through an extremely fast response 
        with both series and parallel compensation to keep lines within 
        the n-1 criterion and the electricity flowing. The UPFC can 
        balance load flow in the AC grid, rapidly bypass overloaded 
        line sections, provide reactive power and dynamic voltage 
        control. It provides reactive power compensation, voltage 
        control and active power load flow control in one unit.

    Modern utility communication networks are critical for grid 
resilience. Modern networks improve operational speed and visibility 
for grid operators, and customer-facing communication channels provide 
information to customers on estimated time of power restoration as well 
as safety information and recommendations in the event of extended 
outages. Whether new utility applications provide grid situational 
awareness, automatically de-energize broken power lines before they hit 
the ground and start a wildfire, or coordinate small, distributed 
microgrids into a single virtual power plant, their operation will 
require utility private broadband networks--both wireless and wired. 
For example, Anterix, a GridWise member, recently announced the 
publication of a joint White Paper with Schweitzer Engineering Labs 
detailing the successful testing of a wildfire mitigation solution that 
when deployed as part of a wireless broadband network, can de-energize 
a falling power line before it hits the ground, removing its ability to 
spark a wildfire.
    As decarbonization efforts lead to increased reliance upon 
distributed renewable energy resources and vastly greater 
electrification, the reliable, resilient, efficient and safe operation 
of the grid will be of growing importance in major sectors of the 
economy, from manufacturing to transportation. Utilities' broadband 
communications networks are a foundational element supporting 
decarbonization goals--they enable the smart grid capabilities 
utilities will rely on to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In the 
last year alone, a number of GridWise members have investigated, 
supported, or pursued the deployment of private wireless networks.
    Distributed generation technologies such as microgrids and mobile 
generators can enhance the resilience of electric infrastructure 
serving critical loads, such as hospitals, water treatment facilities, 
and emergency shelters. Microgrids incorporate a generating source like 
a generator or solar panels with storage and energy management systems 
and can be ``islanded'' from the grid during power disruptions to 
provide back-up power. Mobile generators can provide temporary power to 
critical facilities, and utilities should identify locations where 
generators can be easily connected to the grid during emergency 
planning processes. Rooftop solar and storage systems can provide 
backup power to homes during short outages. Aggregated distributed 
energy resources can contribute power to meet load during extreme heat 
or cold events and mitigate disruptions associated with distribution or 
transmission line failure or loss of generation units.
    GridWise member Hitachi Energy notes that our power systems are 
evolving to be more interconnected and operating closer to their 
limits, making the ability to ride through critical disruptive events 
like extreme weather more important than focusing instead on avoiding 
disruptions entirely: ``Power systems should be able to fall back in a 
mode using locally available sources in case the transmission grid is 
not available. Even if local generation capacity is insufficient to 
cover local load completely, supply critical infrastructures, such as 
water supply, hospitals or telecommunications networks, would be 
essential as the minimum.'' \14\ (Figure 1)
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    \14\ https://www.hitachienergy.com/us/en/news/perspectives/2020/07/
flexibility-and-resilience-our-aces-in-extraordinary-times

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Figure 1.  Increasing resilience by ability to fall back on local 
        supply (Source: Hitachi Energy)

GridWise Alliance Member Investments in Grid Resilience

    As noted above, the U.S. economy is increasingly dependent on 
electric power and this dependence is likely only to grow in coming 
years with growing electrification of the transportation, building and 
industrial sectors. The growing interdependency of lifeline systems and 
the electricity system increases the risk of a ``cascading effect'' 
during extreme events. As extreme weather events increase in frequency 
and strength, grid owners and operators are taking deliberate measures 
to ensure the system's reliability and flexibility support the Nation's 
needs. Utilities around the country are developing investment plans to 
deploy grid modernization technologies that can significantly enhance 
electric system reliability and resilience and prevent these cascading 
events. Several GridWise member utilities provided examples of their 
resilience investments to share with the Committee.
FPL (Florida)
    The 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons were one of the most 
extraordinary and challenging seasons on record for FPL and its 
customers. In 2004 alone, there were 15 storms and six major 
hurricanes. FPL was impacted by seven storms in its service territory, 
that resulted in significant customer outages and requiring 
extraordinary efforts to rebuild and restore the electric 
infrastructure which compelled FPL to re-examine and evaluate its 
infrastructure and policies.
    Since 2006, FPL has been implementing Florida Public Service 
Commission-approved programs to strengthen its transmission and 
distribution (``T&D'') infrastructure (See Figure 2). These programs 
include multiple storm hardening and storm preparedness programs, such 
as feeder hardening, replacing wood transmission structures, vegetation 
management, and pole inspections. As demonstrated by recent storm 
events, these ongoing storm hardening and storm preparedness programs 
have resulted in FPL's T&D electrical grid becoming more storm 
resilient, experiencing less infrastructure damage and reduced 
restoration times, as compared to non-hardened facilities. 
Specifically, Table 3 highlights the significant reduction in 
restoration times due to hardening the grid from Hurricane Wilma in 
2005, and Hurricane Irma in 2017. Despite Hurricane Irma being a 
stronger storm, the average customer outage during Irma was over 60% 
less than Hurricane Wilma. FPL's hardened feeders have performed over 
40% better than non-hardened feeders on day-to-day reliability not just 
storm events. The faster restoration during storm events results in 
positive economic impact to communities with customers getting back to 
normal operations sooner. FPL is an industry leader in the electric 
grid resiliency space and has shared best practices and strategies with 
other utilities across states.
    These programs have also provided significant improvements in day-
to-day reliability. When old conductors, equipment and connectors are 
replaced as part of feeder hardening, the system becomes more efficient 
and therefore improves line losses resulting in a positive economic and 
environmental benefits.
    Additionally, as FPL President and CEO Eric Silagy stated late last 
year regarding climate change: ``Florida is a rapidly growing state on 
the front lines of climate change and our customers deserve bold, 
decisive, long-term actions as we continue building a more resilient 
and sustainable energy future all of us can depend on, including future 
generations.''
FPL Key Storm Hardening Initiatives
Feeder Hardening:
    Feeders (main distribution lines) are the backbone and therefore a 
critical component of FPL's overhead distribution system. Since 2006, 
FPL has been hardening its distribution feeders to meet Extreme Wind 
Loading (EWL) as defined by NESC rule 250.C to existing and new 
feeders. This allows poles to withstand wind gusts in upward of 145 mph 
in many parts of our service area. The design loading impact to meet 
EWL usually requires some combination of stronger poles and shorter 
span lengths (distance between poles) to reduce the wind loading 
imposed on the conductors and cables.
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Figure 2. FPL investments in grid resilience.

Table 3.  Improvement in restoration times from Hurricane Wilma to 
        Hurricane Irma due to grid hardening.
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
        

    FPL's design strategy considered a philosophy of Prevention (EWL)/
Mitigation (minimizing damage) and Restoration (improving the 
efficiency of restoration in the event of failure). FPL implemented a 
system-wide Design Guidelines containing criteria which will apply EWL 
to the design and construction of all new overhead facilities, major 
planned work, relocation projects, as well as daily work activities. 
These guidelines primarily are associated with changes in pole class, 
pole type and desired span lengths. FPL began its efforts by hardening 
feeders serving Critical Infrastructure Facilities (CIF) such as 
hospitals, 911 Centers, special needs shelters, water treatment plants, 
police, and fire stations. In addition, FPL targeted feeders that 
served community needs such as gas stations, pharmacies, and grocery 
stores to help bring the community back to normalcy after a major storm 
event. FPL hardened over 125 highway crossings, that could otherwise 
impede traffic flow of support and emergency vehicles after a major 
storm and over 300 ``01'' switches (first pole out of a substation with 
a feeder switch). As of year-end 2021, nearly 2/3\rd\ or 64% of FPL's 
feeders are either hardened or placed underground.
Distribution Pole Inspection:
    FPL inspects all its distribution poles on an 8-year cycle or 
roughly 1/8\th\ of its distribution poles annually. Inspections include 
a visual inspection, sound and bore, excavation and treatment where 
applicable. Strength calculations are also performed on wood poles to 
determine compliance with NESC requirements. The poles that are not 
suitable for continued service are designated for replacement or 
remediation.
Transmission Pole Inspection and Hardening:
    FPL inspects its transmission circuits, substations, and other 
equipment on a six-year cycle. All of FPL's transmission structures are 
visually inspected from the ground each year. FPL performs climbing or 
bucket truck inspections on all wood transmission structures on a six-
year cycle and all steel and concrete structures on a ten-year cycle. 
Inspections for wood structures include an overall assessment of the 
condition of the structures, as well as other pole/structure components 
including the foundation, all attachments, insulators, guys, cross-
braces, cross-arms, and bolts. If a wood transmission structure does 
not pass visual inspection, it is designated for replacement with a 
concrete or steel transmission structure. Ninety-nine percent of 
transmission structures are now concrete or steel with the plan to 
reach one hundred percent by 2022. One hundred percent of ceramic post 
insulators on square concrete poles were replaced, to avoid cascading 
events. FPL has started a multiyear program for strategically 
converting overhead river crossings to underground.
Undergrounding:
    To promote undergrounding, FPL provides cost credits towards 
applicable local government sponsored overhead to underground 
conversions. Over 63,000 customers have been converted as part of this 
initiative.
Vegetation:
    FPL's has a systemwide three-year average trim cycle for 
distribution feeders and six-year average for lateral circuits (fused 
tap lines). FPL's transmission system is inspected annually to prevent 
vegetation-related outages.
Substation Storm Surge/Flood Mitigation Program:
    FPL installed flood resistant substation doors and hardened windows 
and louvers, as well as flood monitoring systems both inside the relay 
vault and outside for situational awareness. FPL also developed a 
process to deploy an AquaDam System to help protect against flooding.
Storm Secure Underground Program (SSUP): Lateral Undergrounding
    In 2018, FPL began the SSUP pilot which targets certain overhead 
laterals that were impacted by recent storms and that have a history of 
vegetation-related outages and other reliability issues for conversion 
from overhead to underground. Objectives of the pilot include 
determining the most cost-effective ways to underground lateral 
(neighborhood) power lines and testing different design and 
construction methods. FPL has completed approximately six hundred SSUP 
projects through the end of 2021, with another six hundred more planned 
in 2022.
Smart Grid:
    In addition to making FPL's electrical system more resilient, the 
utility has installed several self-healing smart switches that help 
during storm events and reduce the time it takes to restore power. 
Those include more than 7,000 Automated Feeder Switches (AFS), more 
than 95,000 Automated Lateral Switches (ALS), more than 40,000 
Automated Transformer Switches (ATS) and approximately 40,000 
Intelligent Sensors. Since 2011, over ten million customer 
interruptions have been avoided because of smart grid devices.

Portland General Electric (Oregon)

Wildfire Mitigation:
    PGE has developed plans to help mitigate increasing risk of 
wildfires in our service territory due to climate change. Mitigation 
activities include installing a network of weather stations and 
wildfire cameras to increase our situational awareness and respond to 
potential wildfire incidents in a more timely manner. System hardening 
projects include targeted undergrounding of high voltage infrastructure 
and/or reconductoring overhead lines in high risk fire zones with 
covered (insulated) conductors. Other mitigations include installing 
smart faulted circuit indicators, intelligent reclosers, and deploying 
smart protective relays and settings to limit the arc energy during a 
system fault and hence lowering the potential of starting a fire. These 
targeted system upgrades are over the next 10 years with an investment 
of $80-$100 million/year.
    Benefit calculations for resiliency have not yet been developed, 
however we expect significant reductions in Customer Minutes 
Interrupted (CMI) in the areas that are transitioned to underground or 
covered conductors.
Mt Hood Reliability:
    Due to increasing wildfire risk and impacts from more severe storm 
events, PGE is developing plans to increase reliability and resiliency 
along our transmission and distribution system that serves customers 
along the Mt Hood corridor. Included in this project is undergrounding 
our 57kV transmission system that is the energy source for the mountain 
and serves the City of Portland's Bull Run water and hydro generation 
facilities. The Bull Run reservoirs are the main water source to nearly 
1 million residents in the Willamette valley and is located in the 
heavily treed forest on Mt Hood. The project aims to increase the 
resiliency of this water supply system and reduce the risk of a 
devastating wildfire in the protected area. Also included is developing 
a resiliency zone in the Welches downtown area that will serve 
residents during potential outages during winter storms and during 
wildfire season where a Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) may be 
necessary to prevent a catastrophic wildfire event. This total project 
is expected to take 10 years to complete at an estimated cost of $400-
$600 million dollars.
Willamette Valley Resiliency:
    Due to increasing impacts from more severe storms, increasing load 
growth in the Willamette Valley, and aging assets, PGE is developing 
plans to increase reliability and resiliency on the transmission and 
distribution system in the Willamette Valley Area. Included in this 
project is the rebuild of six substations and the addition of two new 
transmission sources. As part of the rebuilds, five substations and 
their associated transmission lines are upgraded from 57 kV to 115 kV. 
To increase reliability and resiliency on the transmission and 
distributions systems, the upgraded substations are converted from 
simple bus to ring bus configurations, aging substation assets are 
replaced, direct buried feeders are replaced, and transmission lines 
are upgraded. This total project is expected to take 7 years at an 
estimated cost of $240 million dollars.
Energy Storage Microgrids:
    PGE has developed two energy storage microgrids in our service 
territory to offer community resiliency benefits. Both projects 
leverage partnerships with customer investments in new solar resources 
paired up with utility investment in energy storage and microgrid 
controls. These projects were implemented with a PGE capital investment 
of $2.5 million.
Distribution Automation:
    PGE has been implementing a Distribution Automation (DA) program 
for several years. This program installs intelligent devices on the 
distribution system to automatically switch around faulted sections of 
the system in order to restore customers quickly. PGE has spent at 
least $13 million since 2018 on its DA program, benefiting 134,000 
customers. PGE deployed SCADA-integrated G&W Viper ST reclosers, 
Sentient MM3 and ZMI smart line monitors, S&C TripSaver II reclosers 
and SEL-751 feeder breaker protective relays. PGE estimates the 
TripSaver reclosers have prevented over 3 million customer outage 
minutes since 2019 and the G&W Viper ST reclosers prevented over 8 
million customer outage minutes since 2018.

Bandera Electric Cooperative (Texas)

    In February 2021, the ERCOT power grid collapsed, reflecting 
failures on several different levels. As a transmission-owning electric 
utility, Bandera Electric Cooperative (BEC) was forced into ``rolling 
black-outs'' to save the grid from complete collapse. Prior to the 
ERCOT-mandated outages, Bandera had over 1500 outage events between Feb 
12-14, 2021. The lessons BEC learned from the February 2021 event was 
the need to understand what was going at the edge of the grid and 
behind- the-meter residential solar, energy storage, HVAC systems, and 
other distributed energy resources.
    Having visibility into what is happening at the edge of the grid is 
critical to grid resilience. BEC developed an energy analytic platform 
called Apolloware that greatly improved grid resilience in 2022. 
Apolloware Control Module (ACM) installs on residential and commercial 
buildings where it monitors various appliance, solar panel power and 
inverter, and electric service circuits, providing granular real-time 
data on behind-the-meter energy consumption and generation. The ACM 
transmits this data to a secure Apolloware cloud using the local 
internet connection. Homeowners and authorized users can view this data 
from any device through the Apolloware mobile app or website. In 
February 2021, Bandera had over 400 service locations with Apolloware 
with another 200 units planned for deployment by the end of 2021.
    Apolloware allowed BEC to analyze energy use at the appliance level 
after the 2021 freeze event and published the results in a paper 
entitled, ``What was happening inside Texas homes during the February 
2021 freeze?'' \15\ In this paper and a submission to the Public 
Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT, Docket 52373), BEC described the 
impact of energy efficiency on grid reliability and affordability. 
Average home power draw was almost 500% higher and average HVAC power 
demand 620% higher during the period of February 11-20 compared to 
February 1, 2021. However, the kWh/sqft of homes monitored by 
Apolloware varied by a factor of 21, meaning some homes were more cold-
sensitive and used more energy the colder the outside temperatures 
relative to other homes. Apolloware also allowed BEC to gain insights 
into what appliances behind the meter were using electricity (Figure 
3). BEC discovered that during the freeze event, home batteries were 
still being charged, so the utility was able to notify customers to 
stop charging to save energy.
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    \15\ https://www.ideasmiths.net/wp-
content/uploads/2022/02/BEC_TX_FREEZE_HOMES_APW_20220212_v2.pdf

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Figure 3.  Average demand on 2-15-2021, by major end use within 
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        residential homes, as measured by Bandera Electric Cooperative.

    While the weather in Texas on Feb 3-6 of 2022 was not as severe as 
2021, Bandera experienced only 10 outages and was able to utilize 
energy analytics to provide better transparency of real time energy 
usage to its customers. In its submission to the PUCT in November 2021, 
BEC concluded that ``Having granular individual data tied to 
substation, feeder and phase is an important aspect of understanding 
energy use tied to weather. . . Having behind the meter visibility and 
transparency would help ERCOT with better grid planning and more 
importantly better understanding of how to minimize black-outs through 
the development of an intelligent demand response program based on 
fleet wide monitoring and control of HVAC, Water Heaters and Pool pump 
devices ties to wholesale market prices. If this type of program had 
been in place during Winter Storm Uri the impacts would have been 
minimal. With the right pricing signals (utilities) could incentivize 
voluntary load reductions thereby avoiding MANDATORY rolling 
blackouts.''
    BEC's CEO, William Hetherington, concluded in the PUCT filing, ``We 
have the technology to operate an intelligent grid down to the 
appliance level, but we need energy efficiency programs and 
individualized demand response programs that tie directly to market 
pricing to keep the loss of power voluntary. If these programs had been 
in place last February, I believe that Voluntary load reductions would 
have been adequate to keep the grid for rolling blackouts on a 
statewide basis.''
Exelon (Multiple states)
    Preparing for the impacts of climate change across all its 
jurisdictions, Exelon is investing to modernize its transmission and 
distribution grids to make them stronger and more resilient. Efforts 
include replacing poles to meet higher wind speeds, undergrounding 
select lines and expanding capacity to increase redundancies to meet 
critical load.
    In New Jersey, as part of our broader strategic effort to better 
serve its customers and modernize the energy grid, Exelon (Atlantic 
City Electric) launched the Atlantic-to-Ocean Counties Reliability 
Project, which includes rebuilding 15.1 miles of critical transmission 
line using stronger utility poles and modern equipment between Port 
Republic and Tuckerton. This transmission line serves more than 22,000 
customers in the eastern portion of our service area in South Jersey 
and is critical to customer reliability in Atlantic, Burlington and 
Ocean counties. Construction began in 2020 and will be completed by 
Summer 2022.
    In the District of Columbia, the DC Power Line Undergrounding 
initiative (DC PLUG) is a $500 million multi-year Pepco partnership and 
engagement with the District of Columbia government to strategically 
underground lines to secure the most vulnerable distribution power 
lines in the face of increasingly severe weather. In 2020, Pepco 
energized the first completed feeder, located in Ward 3, and initiated 
new projects in Wards 7 and 8. This initiative is expected to improve 
resiliency against major storms and to improve reliability by an 
estimated 95% on selected feeders.
    ComEd in Illinois is the first utility in the U.S. to permanently 
install superconductor cable technology at a substation in Chicago's 
Irving Park neighborhood. Superconductor technology can support 200 
times the current of standard copper wire, and allows electricity to be 
rerouted, creating a backup system that keeps electricity flowing in 
the event of a major power grid interruption.

Grid Resilience in the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act

    The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed 
by Congress in 2021 includes significant investments to make the grid 
smarter, more secure and more resilient. Federal funding for grid 
modernization will leverage private capital, accelerate grid 
modernization plans, and help de-risk state public utility commission 
decisions.
    GridWise Alliance developed a set of investment priorities, ``Grid 
Investments for Economic Recovery,'' \16\ for an infrastructure 
package. The policy framework included recommendations for over $50 
billion in funding for programs across the federal government to deploy 
technologies that would increase grid flexibility, improve the 
integration of buildings and vehicles with the grid, address 
cybersecurity threats, create a domestic supply chain for critical grid 
equipment, modernize utility communication networks and help address 
the digital divide, and provide workforce training for digital, high 
tech grid jobs. The GridWise investment recommendations also include 
over $18 billion for mission critical public infrastructure resilience 
and emergency preparedness. Our recommendations also include funding 
for wildfire detection technologies.
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    \16\ GridWise Alliance. ``Policy Framework for Grid Investments for 
Economic Recovery.'' https://gridwise.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/
Policy-Framework-for-Stimulus-Investments-in-Grid-Modernization-FINAL-
1.5.21-002.pdf, accessed March 22, 2021.
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    The IIJA includes significant funding as recommended in the 
GridWise policy framework to defray the costs of resiliency, smart grid 
flexibility, cybersecurity and other emergency preparedness 
investments. Federal funding will leverage billions of dollars in 
private capital total for grid-integrated resiliency infrastructure.
    According to the 2020 U.S. Energy and Employment Report 
(USEER),\17\ energy jobs grew faster in 2019 than job growth as a 
whole, and the transmission, storage, and distribution sector, which 
employed over 700,000 people, was projected to grow 3.5% in 2020. This 
growth can be restored or accelerated by federal investment. Smart grid 
funding of $8 billion in the 2009 recovery bill created 80,000 jobs and 
accelerated the deployment of new technologies. The overall 2009 clean 
energy investments, including renewable generation, advanced vehicles, 
transit, equipment manufacturing, and job training, resulted in at 
least 720,000 new jobs.\18\ The grid investments in IIJA will create 
significant jobs over the five years of funding and spur economic 
growth.
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    \17\ National Association of State Energy Officials and Energy 
Futures Initiative. ``U.S. Energy and Employment Jobs Report.'' https:/
/www.usenergyjobs.org/, accessed March 22, 2021.
    \18\ White House Archives. ``Impact of the American Recovery and 
Reinvestment Act on the Clean Energy Transformation.'' https://
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2010/04/21/impact-american-recovery-
and-reinvestment-act-clean-energy-transformation, accessed March 22, 
2021.
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GridWise Alliance Grid Resilience Workshop Outcomes

    With support from DOE, the GridWise Alliance brought together 
experts from utilities and grid equipment manufacturers and vendors for 
a workshop to develop recommendations for improving grid reliability 
and resilience in the face of very large-scale events (VLSE) like the 
Texas freeze of 2021, Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and the California 
wildfires of 2012 and 2020. The 20 utilities participating in the 
workshop represented over 40% of the nation's electric customers. The 
workshop resulted in a set of key recommendations detailed in 
``Improving Electric Grid Reliability and Resilience: Lessons Learned 
from Superstorm Sandy and Other Extreme Events.'' \19\ Those 
recommendations are relevant for today's hearing about grid resilience, 
implementation of IIJA, and further actions Congress can take to 
improve grid resilience and reliability.
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    \19\ GridWise Alliance. ``Improving Grid Reliability and 
Resilience: Lessons Learned from Superstorm Sandy and Other Extreme 
Events.'' https://gridwise.org/superstorm-sandy-report/, accessed March 
22, 2021.

GRIDWISE LESSON LEARNED: GRID MODERNIZATION TECHNOLOGIES CAN PREVENT 
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OUTAGES AND DECREASE PROJECTED IMPACTS

    State and federal policy makers and electric utilities must 
accelerate the integration of existing grid modernization technologies 
to enhance grid resilience, reliability, safety, and security. Smart 
grid technologies can monitor and protect against disruption, optimize 
performance, and self-heal automatically. Improved situational 
awareness and control of grid equipment significantly enhance a 
utility's ability to reduce the impact of VLSEs and speed restoration 
efforts.

GRIDWISE LESSON LEARNED: DISTRIBUTED GENERATION TECHNOLOGIES SUCH AS 
MICROGRIDS AND MOBILE GENERATORS CAN ENHANCE THE RESILIENCE OF ELECTRIC 
INFRASTRUCTURE SERVING CRITICAL LOADS

    A diversified and integrated grid can enhance resilience, with 
distributed energy resources able to provide back-up power to 
individual customers and flexibility for grid operations. Microgrids-
distributed electric generation resources incorporating storage, load 
control, and energy management systems-are able to operate 
independently of the grid, although in normal operating conditions, 
they are integrated with the grid. On the customer side, distributed 
energy resources (DERs) like electric vehicles, rooftop solar, and 
storage can provide resilience to individual buildings; when DERs can 
be integrated with the grid and aggregated, they can provide services 
(e.g. power, voltage support, frequency regulation) that grid operators 
can harness to balance the grid during extreme events.
Microgrids
    GridWise Alliance supports the expanded deployment of microgrids to 
provide power to critical infrastructure and isolated communities. 
Technical assistance should include identifying policy and regulatory 
issues that inhibit the management of microgrids and DERs during 
emergencies. Congress should ensure that as DOE implements its 
resilience grant programs that it engages stakeholders to explore 
potential solutions to regulatory and policy barriers associated with 
multi-customer microgrids. Some issues raised by GridWise resilience 
workshop participants include:

          Backup generators can run out of fuel; how will fuel 
        supplies be obtained and ensured?
          Backup generators can be rendered inoperable due to 
        flooding; are there ways in which to protect these assets from 
        flooding?
          Renewable energy (e.g., rooftop solar) still requires 
        an operational grid to supply local loads; how can the system 
        supply these loads without grid power?
          Multi-customer microgrids have diverse operating 
        requirements; who balances supply and demand on multi-customer 
        microgrids?
          Some states prohibit third party sales of 
        electricity; how will that affect the viability of multi-
        customer microgrids?
          Microgrids are becoming more prevalent; will 
        utilities be allowed to own and/or manage microgrids?
          Regarding ways in which to integrate and tie multi-
        customer microgrids to the utility grid: what new rules, if 
        any, are needed?
Distributed Energy Resources (DERs)
    GridWise Alliance supports the expansion of DER deployment to meet 
resilience and climate goals and to meet changing customer 
expectations. To maximize the full value and potential of DERs for 
resilience and other goals, grid operators need a more flexible and 
agile grid architecture.\20\ Advanced control and monitoring systems 
that can dynamically respond to system changes will enable safe and 
reliable power restoration and support safe dispatch of DERs during 
VLSEs. GridWise recommends pairing investments to scale deployment of 
DERs on the customer side with investments in grid modernization to 
achieve continued power quality and reliability at the distribution 
level through the optimization and aggregation of local DERs.
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    \20\ GridWise Alliance. ``In an Accelerated Energy Transition, Can 
U.S. Utilities Fast-Track Transformation?'' https://gridwise.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/12/Perspectives-on-a-Future-
Distribution-System.pdf, accessed March 22, 2021.
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    Congress should ensure that DOE funding for resilience and grid 
flexibility can be used to continue the deployment of Advanced Metering 
Infrastructure (AMI, or ``smart meters'') and smart inverters.

          Smart meters significantly contribute to grid 
        resilience by providing grid operators with granular 
        information about the location of power outages and 
        verification that power has been restored. Utilities use this 
        information to prioritize dispatching repair crews and in 
        communicating with customers, which reduces restoration costs 
        and total outage time. Customers also experience benefits, 
        including less lost productivity, food spoilage, and 
        inconvenience, and reduced public health and safety 
        hazards.\21\ GridWise resilience workshop participants 
        estimated that integrating AMI meters with restoration 
        processes shaved 2-3 days off the time it would have taken to 
        completely restore power after Superstorm Sandy, a 10-15% 
        improvement in the speed of restoration.
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    \21\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``Smart Grid Investments Improve 
Grid Reliability, 
Resilience, and Storm Recovery.'' https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/
files/2014/12/f19/SG-ImprovesRestoration-Nov2014.pdf, accessed March 
22, 2021.
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          Smart inverters provide grid support functions, such 
        as voltage regulation, frequency support and ride through 
        capabilities.\22\ In the event of a power disruption, a rooftop 
        solar system will automatically shut off to prevent electricity 
        to flow onto the power lines and potentially electrocute line 
        workers. Smart inverters may include a circuit to allow 
        customers to power their homes without sending electricity to 
        the grid. Solar-battery combinations also allow customers to 
        island their systems from the grid during power outages but 
        have the added resilience benefit of providing power when the 
        sun is not shining.
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    \22\ Interstate Renewable Energy Council. ``Smart Inverters.'' 
https://irecusa.org/regulatory-
reform/smart-inverters/, accessed March 22, 2021.
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Buildings and Energy Efficiency
    Buildings consume 76% of electricity generated in the United 
States.\23\ IIJA includes significant funding for weatherization and 
energy efficiency improvements for federal, residential, and commercial 
buildings through updated building codes, funding for building 
retrofits, state energy grants, and other policy levers. Improving the 
efficiency of the nation's building stock will enhance resilience to 
energy disruptions in addition to saving energy. Well-insulated 
buildings reduce heating and cooling load during periods of high 
electricity demand associated with extreme weather and keep occupants 
more comfortable during power outages. Focusing resources for 
weatherization on underserved and low-income communities is critical to 
ensure that those populations do not suffer disproportionately during 
energy disruptions. IIJA funding will result in the weatherization and 
retrofitting of millions of public and private buildings across the 
country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``Quadrennial Technology Review, 
Chapter 5: Increasing 
Efficiency of Building Systems and Technologies.'' 
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/qtr-2015-
chapter5.pdf, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Congress should ensure that any programs to retrofit buildings 
encourages the installation of grid-connected Energy Management Systems 
(EMS) in addition to insulation and energy efficient windows and 
appliances, where possible. Grid-integrated buildings can be 
significant assets to the grid through load shifting, demand response, 
and aggregation of distributed generation. According to the National 
Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), greater optimization of 
the significant energy demand and supply functions that buildings 
offer--on an automated basis--has far-reaching electricity policy and 
regulatory implications. The benefits include lower costs, enhanced 
resilience, reduced peak loads, enhanced energy efficiency and better 
integration of distributed energy resources.\24\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ National Association of State Energy Officials. ``Grid-
interactive Efficient Buildings: State Briefing Paper.'' https://
naseo.org/data/sites/1/documents/publications/v3-Final-Updated-GEB-Doc-
10-30.pdf, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Funding should facilitate aggregation and management of building 
loads through grid-connected Energy Management Systems (EMS) and smart 
equipment/appliances within the building, and Advanced Meter 
Infrastructure (AMI) at the grid-building interface. Though not the 
subject of today's hearing, electric vehicles (EV's) can also provide 
power and essential reliability services to the grid, and policies 
designed to increase deployment of EVs (Title IV) should also encourage 
vehicle-to-grid integration capabilities.

GRIDWISE LESSON LEARNED: INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY 
(ICT) INFRASTRUCTURES SHOULD BE MORE RESILIENT, RELIABLE AND SECURE

    Utilities' investments in operational fiber and wireless broadband 
communications network are essential for a modern grid, as noted 
previously. The legacy communications networks utilities have used for 
decades to monitor and control the state of the grid and stay in 
contact with utility workers and customers are inadequate for 
integrating new grid and customer technologies, which are driving 
increased communications traffic. These include ``demand response 
systems, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), distributed grid 
operations, grid automation, operational systems for managing power 
generation, outages and flows, two-way communications for consumer 
energy efficiency initiatives, transmission interconnectivity, and 
network security monitoring and reporting.'' \25\ Utility communication 
systems can include fiber networks and private wireless networks must 
be integrated with legacy communications networks.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \25\ Power Grid International. ``Challenges, Solutions in Utility 
Communications Networks.'' https://www.power-grid.com/smart-grid/
challenges-solutions-in-utility-communications-
networks/#gref, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    The broadband provisions in IIJA recognize that modern 
communications networks can also be leveraged to provide middle mile 
broadband and last mile internet service for end-use consumers. A 
modern, digital communications network is therefore the backbone of a 
modern grid and can provide significant resilience benefits, but it 
will have to be more reliable than other grid infrastructure in order 
to support a resilient grid that can monitor and react quickly to 
disruptions.

GRIDWISE LESSON LEARNED: ENHANCED EMERGENCY RESPONSE PLANNING PROCESSES 
CAN RESULT IN BETTER DEPLOYMENT AND COORDINATION OF HUMAN AND OTHER 
RESOURCES

    Electric utilities, in conjunction with the appropriate federal and 
state agencies, continually develop predictive restoration plans at a 
regional level. These plans can be informed by enhanced weather and 
damage forecasting and advances in situational awareness and should use 
real-time validations to continually refine and update such plans. 
Mutual assistance agreements with neighboring utilities help speed 
restoration efforts by deploying emergency response crews to disaster 
areas. In the days leading up to an event, utilities will pre-stage 
crews and equipment in advance of events and may have plans to 
deenergize some facilities to prevent damage. Congress has raised 
specific concerns about the vulnerabilities of large power transformers 
(LPTs) given the growing threats to transformers and the long lead time 
in replacing them and required DOE to submit a plan to Congress for the 
establishment of a strategic transformer reserve.\26\ The utility 
industry has a number of initiatives to create spare transformer 
reserves and stockpile parts and related equipment. The House of 
Representatives recently passed the COMPETES Act, which includes 
language to create a Strategic Transformer Reserve.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``Strategic Transformer Reserve: 
Report to Congress.'' https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/04/
f34/Strategic%20Transformer%20Reserve%20Report%20-%20FINAL.pdf, 
accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Planning for the response and restoration of energy disruptions is 
not the sole purview of the energy sector. VLSEs often affect multiple 
interdependent infrastructures (e.g., ICT and water) and several states 
and/or regions. Thus, planning for an event of this magnitude must 
involve coordination and collaboration at the federal, regional, state, 
and local levels, and between the public and private sectors, to 
address the breadth and inter-related nature of these potential 
impacts. Such efforts also must integrate people, technologies, and 
processes to maximize preparedness. State and federal emergency 
management offices should conduct annual joint simulations, drills, and 
related ``pre-event'' scenario planning efforts at the local, state, 
and regional levels to test their plans and strengthen their ability to 
collectively respond to VLSEs.
    In 2009, DOE provided $38 million in funding to states to update 
their energy assurance plans, and in 2010 provided $8 million for 43 
cities to do the same.\27\ (The funds came through the Infrastructure 
Security and Emergency Response division, or ISER, within the Office of 
Electricity; ISER is now within the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy 
Security, and Emergency Response, or CESER.) DOE also provided funding 
and technical assistance for a series of exercises to test the updated 
energy assurance plans. Energy assurance plans identify key public and 
private points of contact for the energy sector and emergency response 
units, formulate roles and responsibilities, lay out legal parameters, 
and identify critical infrastructure and potential hazards to each, as 
well as outline mitigation measures. Ideally these plans should be 
updated at least annually, but the reality is that most states and 
municipalities do not. In 2017, 12 states updated their energy 
assurance plans with some form of DOE assistance, and the National 
Association of State Energy Officials provided some technical 
assistance to three states in the process of updating their plans.\28\ 
IIJA builds on this history with additional funding for state emergency 
planning.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``Recovery Act: Local Energy 
Assurance Planning Initiatives.'' https://www.energy.gov/ceser/
recovery-act-local-energy-assurance-planning-initiatives, accessed 
March 22, 2021.
    \28\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``State, Local, Tribal and 
Territorial Energy Assurance: 
2017 Year in Review.'' https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2018/
03/f50/SLTT%20
Energy%20Assurance%202017%20Year%20in%20Review.pdf, accessed March 22, 
2021.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONCLUSION

    GridWise Alliance thanks the Committee for the opportunity to 
discuss critical issues surrounding grid resilience and reliability. As 
Congress considers Build Back Better or other legislation related to 
the grid, we urge you to consider additional grid funding as 
recommended in the GridWise Alliance policy framework for grid 
investments.
GRIDWISE RECOMMENDATIONS
      Increase funding for Smart Grid Investment Grant Program 
at DOE to enhance grid flexibility: $10 billion

    To balance electricity supply and demand, the grid must have system 
flexibility. Grid technologies like controls, sensors, storage, data 
analytics, advanced communications networks, and software-as-service 
can provide flexibility by improving visibility of the system for grid 
operators, helping to quickly rebalance system stability, and 
facilitating the integration and aggregation of distributed energy 
resources, including electric vehicles, to serve as assets to grid 
operations. Utilities' investments in operational fiber and wireless 
broadband communications network are essential for a modern grid. 
Utility communication systems can include fiber networks and private 
wireless networks that could also be leveraged to provide middle mile 
broadband and last mile internet service for end-use consumers.
    If Congress creates significant new incentives for electric 
vehicles and charging infrastructure in Build Back Better, it must make 
commensurate investments in grid modernization to ensure the grid can 
serve as a platform for transportation electrification. Utilities will 
need to accommodate significantly increased load as well as provide 
customers with the tools to manage their charging, granular metering to 
generate billing to create rate plans and tariffs that reflect EV, 
upgraded communications and IT networks. Without parallel investments 
in grid modernization, utilities will face new challenges to grid 
reliability and stability at the local level driven by the forecasted 
electrification of fleets and residential vehicles. Also, rural 
cooperatives are less prepared for this type of engagement because 
historically EV adoption has been concentrated in urban and suburban 
neighborhoods where range anxiety is less of a concern.

      Increase funding for DOE cybersecurity programs: $1.5 
billion

    Cyberattacks are one of the most significant threats to the 
security of the grid. DOE funds platforms that can monitor attacks and 
share information across the utility industry and can also provide 
funding for the deployment of technologies that can prevent 
cyberattacks from damaging grid equipment. Unlike cyber funding from 
other federal agencies, DOE programs are designed to support utility 
cybersecurity efforts. Even with federal funding for monitoring 
platforms and technology, protecting the grid from cyberattacks is 
hampered by the lack of qualified cyber professionals. The current 
cybersecurity workforce shortage in the United States alone is 
projected to be 498,480.\29\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ https://www.cpomagazine.com/cyber-security/cybersecurity-
workforce-shortage-continues-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
to-grow/

          $250 million to DOE Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery 
        Systems (CEDS) for cybersecurity workforce development
          $250 million to DOE CEDS for cyber assessments and 
        cyber threat monitoring for small and medium utilities
          $1 billion to DOE CESER for cybersecurity technology 
        deployment

      Include the 48(c) manufacturing tax incentive: $8 billion

    The Section 48C Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit in ARRA 
originally provided a 30 percent investment tax credit to 183 domestic 
clean energy manufacturing facilities valued at $2.3 billion and was 
extended to provide an additional $150 million in 2013. The tax credit 
helped build a U.S. manufacturing capacity and supported significant 
growth in U.S. exports. Qualifying manufactured clean energy products 
must include advanced grid technologies.

    Ms. Castor. Thank you very much.
    Next, Mr. Mills, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

                    STATEMENT OF MARK MILLS

    Mr. Mills. Thank you, Chairman Castor and Ranking Member 
Graves, for the opportunity to testify.
    As you accurately pointed out in your introductory remarks 
and everyone knows, electricity infrastructures are, of course, 
critical to modern societies. And citizens and businesses 
expect and even take for granted that our grids will operate 
reliably and affordably.
    So it is relevant to note some differences between 
America's grids today compared to a couple of decades ago. 
Overall grid reliability has actually been degrading even as 
the average consumer electricity costs have risen. The latter 
is up about, on average, 50 percent since the year 2000. And, 
of course, today, one big difference is that a significant 
share, almost 12 percent, of the nation's electricity is now 
supplied by solar and wind.
    The fact is, wind and solar technologies are far cheaper 
and more useful than any time in history and, thus, have a 
substantial role in the nation's energy mix. But the critical 
issue now is how much nondispatchable wind and solar capacity 
can be added without further degrading grid reliability, 
because those two sources dominate current plans and proposals 
to expand energy supplies.
    Grid reliability so far has been achieved by using power 
plants that can be dispatched when needed, at the time needed 
to meet expected peaks and unexpected peaks and for when 
outages occur from machine failures or from weather.
    Going forward, there are three key realities relevant to 
grid reliability that emerge I would like to point out from the 
physics of energy systems that depend on batteries, the sun, 
and wind.
    First, obviously, sunlight and wind vary, and quite 
radically, and are impossible to dispatch at will. The central 
issue isn't the daily or hourly variability that people talk 
about but seasonal variabilities. While the amount of sunlight 
or wind can be 50 percent less in off seasons, far more 
challenging are the days-long droughts, or so-called droughts, 
if you like, of wind when there is no wind or no sun at all.
    Such episodes are surprisingly common, even if inherently 
unpredictable in terms of precisely when they occur, but they 
do occur. The adage that it is always sunny or windy somewhere 
in the country is simply not true over decade time periods.
    One solution to this reality would be to copy the German 
model, which has built essentially two grids--one using solar 
and wind, the other keeping conventional generation. That is a 
big reason German households, by the way, pay about 300 percent 
more for electricity than in America. But, as Europe discovered 
recently, when the inevitable wind droughts happen, the dual-
grid option exposes consumers to radical energy price spikes. 
In fact, the dual-grid model creates those price spikes.
    The other option, of course, is to use grid-scale 
batteries. These require extra generating capacity, again, 
roughly double, to both meet peak demand when the sun and wind 
are available and have surplus to simultaneously store in the 
batteries.
    Which brings us to the second physics reality: Storing 
electricity is extremely difficult at grid scales. Some 
analysts propose that 12 hours of national backup would enable 
a nearly all solar/wind grid to keep America's lights on 99.97 
percent of the time. However, that statistically and 
meteorologically means about a half day of no power anywhere in 
the country every few years or so. And the 12 hours of 
batteries would cost about a trillion dollars to build.
    As for claims that batteries will get cheaper, last year 
the historical trend in battery price declines saw a dramatic 
slowdown, down just 6 percent. And prices are now forecast to 
rise this year. The reason is that mineral commodities make up 
60 to 70 percent of the cost to build batteries. And, going 
forward, commodity inflation is likely to continue.
    Which brings me to my third and last point anchored to the 
physics of energy: Batteries are very materials-intensive ways 
to store large amounts of energy. About 50 tons of batteries 
are needed to hold the amount of energy contained in 1 ton of 
oil, and then roughly 25,000 tons of materials have to be mined 
and processed to obtain the minerals needed to fabricate those 
50 tons of batteries.
    The IEA, among others, has studied the implications of 
this, and they have pointed out that these energy transition 
goals based on batteries, wind, and solar will require a 400 to 
4,000 percent increase in the mining of a range of critical 
minerals--far more than all the global mines now produce or any 
plans for expansion.
    Finally, it bears noting that China is the single largest 
source--by most accounts, nearly half--of all the critical 
materials for making batteries, as well as solar modules by the 
way. The United States is a minor player.
    And aside from the geopolitical and trade considerations, 
it would require a World War II level of construction effort to 
build the quantities of wind, solar, and battery systems needed 
to replace America's conventional power plants by, say, 2040. 
The latter couldn't happen unless we cleared away regulatory 
delays, something else that is not now being proposed anywhere.
    Thank you.
    [The statement of Mr. Mills follows:]

                              Testimony of

                             Mark P. Mills

                   Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute

                                 Before

           U.S. House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

      ``Keeping the Lights On: Strategies for Grid Resilience and 
                             Reliability''

                           February 15, 2022

    Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to testify. I'm a 
Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute where I focus on science, 
technology, and energy issues. I am also a Faculty Fellow at the 
McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University where my 
focus is on supply chain systems and future manufacturing technologies. 
And, for the record, I'm a strategic partner in a venture fund focused 
on software in energy markets.
    The focus of this hearing comes at an important time. Electricity 
systems are the most important infrastructures of a modern society. We 
use the euphemism of ``keeping the lights on'' because everyone knows 
that it's about far more than that. It's about water pumps and gasoline 
pumps as well as EV charging stations, and it's about both home 
furnaces and steel furnaces, refrigerators for vaccines hospitals and 
food in homes, and, critically, it's about the internet and Cloud 
networks that businesses of all kinds and sizes, not just citizens, 
increasingly depend on. The long-run electrification of society has 
been underway for over a century. and it is far from over.
    Ensuring grid reliability and resilience requires dealing with the 
challenges of meeting both expected and unexpected peaks in demand that 
are a normal feature of society, while using electricity-producing 
machines that are episodically unavailable. Thus, the key issue for 
planners is in ensuring that power is always available to be 
``dispatched'' when needed, and for the length of time needed. Today, 
the eight major grids that supply America have, collectively, hundreds 
of thousands of megawatts of `excess' conventional generation--i.e., 
more than is needed most of the time--that can be dispatched when 
needed to fill gaps created by outages from machine failures or 
weather, or to meet unexpected peaks.
    There are three important differences between America's grids today 
and in earlier decades. First, as EIA data shows and may in fact 
understate, overall grid reliability has been degrading; put inversely, 
outages have been increasing. Second, the average retail cost of 
electricity has been increasing for two decades, up 50% since the year 
2000, after earlier declining for several decades. And third, there is 
now a significant share, almost 12%, of the primary electricity supply 
that cannot be dispatched when needed; that is of course the supply 
from wind and solar.
    Setting aside state and federal policies intended to induce or 
require greater use of solar and wind, the fact is those technologies 
are now far cheaper and more useful than at any time in history and 
thus can now have a substantial role in the nation's energy mix. The 
key issue going forward is in how reliability--in particular 
dispatchability--can be maintained at prices consumers are willing to 
pay as more solar and wind systems are added.
    Since sunlight and wind are, by definition, impossible to dispatch 
at will, the obvious critical issue is in how to fill gaps of 
unavailability. There are only two ways to do so: maintain or build 
additional conventional, dispatchable back-up capacity, or built lots 
of electricity storage. The amount and costs of the latter is almost 
entirely determined by the nature of nature.
    The central challenge isn't so much the oft-noted diurnal 
variability of sunlight and wind. Rather, it's with two other features 
of nature. One is the seasonal variability of the wind and sun. The 
overfall amount of either can be 50%, or more, less in the off season, 
depending on geography. The other is the regular occurrence of days-
long ``droughts'' of no wind or sun. Such multi-day weather events can 
be continent-wide (as Europe recently experienced). Meteorological 
history shows that while such episodes are inherently unpredictable in 
terms of exactly when they occur, it is entirely predictable that they 
will occur, and frequently, over the decades that grid equipment is 
built to operate. The adage that it's always sunny or windy somewhere 
in the country is simply not true over decadal periods. That reality, 
by the way, novates the benefit of building more transmission lines to 
use solar or wind installations elsewhere as backup.
    Thus far, the primary means to ensure grid reliability as the 
solar/wind share rises could be called the German solution, which is, 
in effect, to build two grids; one based on solar and wind, and the 
other with conventional generation to serve, in effect, as the backup. 
The expense of such a solution is not born by the builders of the solar 
and wind machines, but by ratepayers. That approach is one reason that 
the average German residential customer pays about 300% more for 
electricity than the average in America. However, as Europe has 
discovered during this past winter when an (inevitable) extended wind 
drought happened, the dual-grid option exposed consumers to radical 
fuel price spikes arising from the reality of supply chains. Converting 
a grid's fuel supply for conventional generation from long-term 
baseload contracts to episodically buying huge quantities, not only 
exposes consumers to huge price spikes, it creates those spikes.
    The other option increasingly discussed, and even mandated in some 
states, is the use of grid-scale batteries. It's relevant to note that 
using solar and wind as a primary source of electricity--which some 
propose--means that grids will requires at least twice today's 
installed generating capacity. Far more than the normal peak generation 
would be needed to supply both peak demand when sunlight and wind are 
available, and to have surplus to simultaneous store in batteries. Such 
costs are typically not included in the calculus of aspirations for 
greater use of solar/wind on grids.
    One can estimate the quantity of batteries required to, say, 
provide an average of 12 hours of backup for the nation. That's a 
quantity some analysts propose would be sufficient to allow an all 
solar/wind grid to keep America's lights on 99.97% of the time. That 
sounds good except that, statistically, mean on average, there'd be a 
few hours of zero power every year, or as a practical matter, nearly a 
half-day of no power, anywhere, every few years or so.
    Nonetheless the nation is on track to build far more grid-scale 
batteries. And to be clear, those will be very useful for many short-
term outages and other grid management and stability issues. But when 
it comes to using batteries to fill the solar/wind droughts that are 
inevitable, the 12-hour storage target for the nation would require 
spending over $1 trillion to build enough batteries. Even then, as the 
meteorological record shows, there will be frequent episodes in the 
foreseeable future when the entire nation would be lights-out if there 
isn't enough conventional generation available. For comparison, about 
$100 billion in capital--one tenth as much as the battery solution--is 
associated with the ``excess'' capacity on today's grid to ensure the 
lights are always on.
    As for claims that batteries will soon become far cheaper; last 
year saw a dramatic slowdown in the decadal trend of battery price 
declines. Average lithium battery prices were down just 6% in 2021 and 
are forecast to rise this year. The reason is found in the fact that 
mineral commodities account for 60 to 70% of the cost to build a 
battery. Going forward, mineral commodity inflation will be fueled by 
the unprecedented increases in mineral demands to build energy systems.
    The International Energy Agency, amongst others, has documented the 
magnitude of minerals that will be needed to accommodate massive 
increases in battery production for grids and, simultaneously, for 
electric cars. Combined with aspirations for greater use of solar and 
wind technologies--which also require far more minerals than 
conventional generation--the IEA estimates the world needs a 400% to 
4,000% increase in mining of a range of critical energy minerals in the 
coming decade or two. Such an unprecedented increase in global mining 
is not now underway, nor planned--nor I might add, particularly 
encouraged by most policies.
    Such surprising materials demand comes from physics realities. 
Batteries are an extremely challenging and expensive way to store large 
quantities of energy. It requires about 50 tons of batteries to hold 
the amount of energy contained in one ton of oil. And storing a ton of 
the later is very easy and cheap. Obtaining the minerals needed to 
fabricate the 50 tons of batteries requires mining and processing 
roughly 25 thousand tons of materials. This kind of disparity really 
adds up at grid scales.
    Building enough grid-scale batteries for 12 hours of storage for 
the U.S. grid--never mind other grids in the world--would entail mining 
a quantity of materials equal to that needed to fabricate 100 centuries 
worth of batteries for all the world's billions of smartphones. This 
calculation doesn't count the minerals needed for the expanded use of 
electric cars, or the ``energy minerals'' needed to build the wind and 
solar machines.
    Of course, it's reasonable to expect that different and even 
superior chemical concoctions will be discovered for future batteries. 
But it takes many years, even decades to make progress from discovery 
to industrial scales. For the usefully foreseeable future, and 
certainly in the timeframes contemplated in many policies, the 
technologies that exist today are what will be used to build systems.
    It bears noting the geopolitical implications of all these energy 
minerals. China is not only the primary supplier of the world's 
polysilicon for solar modules, but it is also the single largest 
source--by most accounts nearly half--of most of the critical materials 
needed to build batteries. The United States is a minor player. The 
rush to build battery assembly plants here in America is the equivalent 
of building cars here but importing all the gasoline.
    Finally, building batteries, solar and wind machines at grid-scale 
is not fundamentally different than building anything else at such 
scales. All of it always entails massive uses of materials, 
construction equipment, time, capital and, critically, regulatory 
clearances and permits.
    Building and installing enough hardware to replace all of America's 
conventional gas- and coal-fueled electric power plants by, say, 2040 
would require a continuous grid construction program several hundred 
percent greater than occurred during any single peak year of grid 
construction over the past half-century. Such an endeavor would be, 
quite literally, an industrial effort comparable to a World War II 
level of mobilization. And it wouldn't be possible without clearing 
away regulatory delays, something that is not now being proposed 
anywhere.
    Our increasingly digital economy, which everyone recognizes is ever 
more important to fueling economic growth, will require both more 
electricity and especially more reliability. While there is clearly a 
role on modern grids, and one greater than today, for solar, wind and 
battery systems, caution is in order when it comes ensuring the 
reliability of society's most critical infrastructure.

    Ms. Castor. Thank you.
    And, Ms. Hamilton, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

                STATEMENT OF KATHERINE HAMILTON

    Ms. Hamilton. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you to Chair 
Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and the entire Select Committee 
for inviting me to testify.
    I will explore what makes our grid and communities more 
resilient and how resilience has been partially incentivized in 
the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act but will 
be even further enhanced by final passage of the Build Back 
Better Act.
    First, to briefly differentiate between reliability and 
resilience, since they are often used interchangeably, 
reliability is the characteristic of being there all the time--
24/7, 365 days a year. Resilience is the ability to recover 
quickly from interruption.
    Our electric grid has been designed for reliability: power 
plants, transmission lines, distribution systems that are 
available and operating all the time. And yet that system is 
becoming less reliable.
    The drop in reliability can be tracked to weather related 
climate events--wildfires, ice storms, unprecedented flooding, 
extreme heat and cold--that have been increasing in frequency 
and level of damage.
    Resilience and reliability are now linked inextricably and 
must be considered together.
    In response to that need, utilities have been investing 
billions of dollars on equipment, technology, and updated 
systems to help withstand these extreme conditions. They have 
expanded vegetation management, line clearance, inspections, 
and system hardening and undergrounding.
    And yet we have even more sophisticated technologies and 
applications at our disposal which are not being deployed at 
scale: transmission ties between regions, grid-enhancing 
technologies that allow for more visibility on those lines, and 
distributed energy resources which are all well-suited to 
providing resilience. Demand response and other customer-sited 
resources can provide crucial resilience services and be 
amplified through digitization. Nearly all of these technology 
solutions and applications are available today.
    While the U.S. excels at technology innovation, policy is 
the crucial link and is foundational to filling gaps, crossing 
``valleys of death,'' scaling technologies, catalyzing 
industries, and sending market signals to the private sector 
that can then put to use that innovation.
    The infrastructure bill makes available significant funding 
for grid modernization, energy storage, and transmission, which 
are strong underpinnings for the clean energy transition and 
increased resilience of the grid. But it will be essential to 
pass in the Senate what the House passed in the Build Back 
Better Act, which complements the infrastructure bill's direct 
funding with market mechanisms to spur private sector certainty 
and investment in resilience.
    A report from last month estimated that the cost of climate 
change in the U.S. could reach $14.5 trillion by 2070. As a 
recent Boston Globe headline read, ``Compared with climate 
inaction, Build Back Better is downright cheap.''
    In the Build Back Better bill is the Greenhouse Gas 
Reduction Fund, which would be seeded by the government but sit 
outside as a nonprofit to provide creative finance solutions 
for zero-carbon technologies.
    State level green banks, which are structured on the state 
level in the same way that a national fund would be set up, are 
already financing critical energy infrastructure to ensure grid 
resilience and support those most vulnerable to power outages. 
They are financing microgrids for local governments, clean 
backup power for affordable housing communities, and directly 
hardening structures against damaging weather caused by climate 
change.
    Rebates for electrification are part of Build Back Better 
and are a pathway to engaging customers and providing access to 
clean and safe technologies for low- and middle-income 
communities. If electrification is planned and deployed 
correctly, reliability and resilience should increase.
    One of the most important market tools is in the tax code. 
Access to tax credits will drive down the cost of energy 
storage of all types, opening up new markets in dozens of 
states and lowering the costs in states that already have 
storage targets.
    The tax credit inclusion of interconnection costs will help 
smaller community solar projects penciled out for neighborhoods 
where rooftops are not always suited to solar or where 
consumers do not own their own homes.
    The tax credit for microgrids will allow critical community 
services to operate when the grid goes down.
    The tax credit for transmission would increase resilience 
in the supply side of the grid, spurring nearly $40 billion in 
private sector investment in inter-regional transmission and 
mitigating losses, such as those in the February 2021 polar 
vortex.
    Other programs include the Department of Energy's loan 
program that will open up to additional sectors, like aviation 
and maritime, that can scale the clean energy transition in 
other parts of our economy.
    But, of course, if we truly want to mitigate the climate 
crisis and deploy technologies that will be both reliable and 
resilient, we need to not only execute well on the 
infrastructure bill and pass the Build Back Better Act, but we 
need targeted appropriations funding, regulatory signals 
through the Environmental Protection Agency, market structures 
through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
    In truth, all agencies in our government can take some 
responsibility within their missions for leading our nation to 
a safer, cleaner, more secure future from our climate crisis. 
And with our Federal Government aligned with the private 
sector's recognition that swift action must be taken on 
climate, there is far greater hope that we can reduce the 
impacts of this crisis on our nation.
    Thank you for the opportunity to present this testimony, 
and I look forward to your questions.
    [The statement of Ms. Hamilton follows:]


                               Testimony

                                   of

                           Katherine Hamilton

                               before the

                        House of Representatives

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                           February 15, 2022

    Good morning. My name is Katherine Hamilton. I am the Chair of the 
firm 38 North Solutions and serve as Chair of the World Economic 
Forum's Global Future Council on Clean Electrification. Thank you to 
Chair Castor, Ranking Member Graves, and the entire Select Committee 
for inviting me to testify before you today regarding clean energy 
resilience and reliability in the United States. I started my career 
designing grids at a utility for a decade and thus understand how our 
electric grid works and that both investment in that infrastructure as 
well as openness to technology innovation and customer engagement are 
necessary for the transition to a clean, resilient, and reliable grid. 
This testimony explores what will make our grid and communities more 
resilient and how resilience has been partially incentivized in the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and will be even further 
enhanced by final passage of the Build Back Better Act.
I. Reliability and Resilience.
    First, I would like to differentiate between reliability and 
resilience since they are often used interchangeably but are different 
in important ways. Reliability is the characteristic of being there all 
the time, 24/7, 365 days a year. Resilience, on the other hand, is the 
ability to recover quickly from interruption. Our electric grid has 
been designed for reliability--power plants, transmission lines, and 
distribution systems that are available and operating at all times--and 
yet, that system is becoming less reliable, leading to a downgrading of 
utilities by Fitch Ratings.\1\ This drop in reliability can be tracked 
to weather-related climate events-wildfires, ice storms, unprecedented 
flooding, extreme heat and cold--that have been inexorably increasing 
in frequency and damage as a result of greenhouse gas emissions. 
Throughout the U.S. this physical risk from lack of resilience is 
compounded by the economic toll on our communities. Lawrence Berkeley 
National Laboratory studied the cost of these disasters--not just to 
the grid, but to the economy--and found that if the Bay Area in 
California lost power for 1-2 weeks, as much as $1-2 billion of 
economic output from downstream, non-utility activities would be lost 
in the region.\2\ Importantly, resilience and reliability are now 
linked and must be considered together. And even more importantly, 
technology solutions exist today to address both while also reducing 
greenhouse gases that have led to the need for that resilience.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ Bloomberg article here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/
articles/2021-11-08/u-s-power-grid-becoming-less-reliable-due-to-
extreme-weather
    \2\ Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory paper, page 24: 
https://eta-publications.lbl.gov/sites/default/files/
hybrid_paper_final_22feb2021.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
II. Technology Solutions.
    In response to the need for more resilience, utilities have been 
examining their ability to ensure grid safety and climate resilience, 
with many investing billions of dollars on equipment, technology, and 
updated systems to help withstand extreme conditions. These 
comprehensive risk management programs include expanded vegetation 
management, line clearance, and system inspections as well as system 
hardening and undergrounding. When I led the GridWise Alliance, I 
testified before the Senate about the importance of smart grid 
technologies to economic growth and significant funding was deployed in 
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for technologies that could 
increase visibility on the electric grid. The co-benefit of this 
funding was that, thanks to smart grid technologies, today it would not 
take a year to determine that a branch falling on an electric line in 
Cleveland could bring down the entire Northeast grid.\3\ A decade 
later, we have even more sophisticated technologies and applications at 
our disposal and yet many of those are not being deployed at scale. For 
example, transmission tie lines between regions can allow for seamless 
flow of electrons between areas that have power available and those 
that are experiencing outages. Had there been ties from Texas to other 
states or even between states like Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and 
Arkansas, the recovery time from Winter Storm Uri could have been 
significantly reduced. When Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana in August of 
2021, the lack of appropriate investment in transmission hardening and 
distributed resource solutions became even starker with widespread 
outages impacting over a million people and lasting for weeks.\4\ 
Digital awareness combined with grid enhancing technologies could play 
an important role in grid resilience strategies by continuously 
monitoring overhead lines to ensure they are within safe operating 
limits and alerting operators when there are anomalies which pose risks 
to grid reliability or public safety.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ See article: 
https://www.cleveland19.com/2020/08/14/years-later-blackout-that-
impacted-million-people/
    \4\ https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/why-hurricane-ida-
crippled-new-orleans-power-grid-2021-09-04/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Distributed energy resources are particularly well suited to 
providing resilience. In the U.S., experience in storms and other 
weather-related events has proven out that demand response and other 
consumer-sited resources can provide crucial resilience services \5\ 
and research has only confirmed the importance of customer-side 
solutions to keeping grids operating during extreme temperature 
events.\6\ During Winter Storm Uri, extreme cold increased demand for 
electricity by 8% while causing generation and transmission resources 
to become inoperable. Blake Shaffer, a professor of economics and 
public policy at the University of Calgary, told Marketplace Morning 
Report that, after Uri, so much of the conversation was about the 
supply side. ``Our research sheds light on demand,'' Schaffer noted. 
``The sensitivity of demand to cold temperatures has risen a lot. 
Utilities and regulators need to consider demand when planning for 
future power system needs.'' \7\ As far back as Hurricane Sandy, 
microgrid technology in New York and New Jersey enabled university 
campus facilities to continue operation in the face of massive power 
outages.\8\ During heat waves in California, hundreds of energy storage 
facilities at office buildings in San Francisco were called to operate 
collectively as a ``virtual power plant,'' reducing demand on an over-
taxed grid. During the solar eclipse in 2017, over 750,000 programmable 
thermostats were lowered by their consumers to reduce demand by 700 MW 
as solar systems across the country were displaced in the temporary 
darkness.\9\ Those thermostats alone provided as much grid service as 
seven gas peaker plants, often the most inefficient and emitting 
resources. All of these technology solutions and applications are 
available today and often simply need investment gaps filled or market 
signals put into place to make the grid more resilient, leading us to a 
discussion of federal policy.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ Multiple FERC filings from Advanced Energy Management discuss 
examples of resilience, one such example: https://aem-alliance.org/
aema-files-reply-comments-in-resilience-proceeding/
    \6\ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3980881
    \7\ https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/
lessons-learned-from-the-power-outages-in-texas/
    \8\ Article on Princeton's microgrid can be found here: 
https://www.princeton.edu/news/2014/10/23/two-years-after-hurricane-
sandy-recognition-
princetons-microgrid-still-surges
    \9\ See blog from Nest thermostats:
https://www.smartnest.io/solar-eclipse-meet-the-nest-thermostat/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
III. Policy Solutions.
    While the U.S. excels in technology innovation, public policy is 
foundational to filling gaps, crossing ``valleys of death,'' scaling 
technologies, catalyzing industries, and sending market signals to the 
private sector that will then put to use that innovation. The 
bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (``infrastructure 
bill'') makes available significant funding for grid modernization, 
energy storage, and resilience. These grants will provide a strong 
underpinning for the clean energy transition and increase resilience of 
the grid. Last month the Administration launched the Building a Better 
Grid initiative which will execute on this legislation. As highlighted 
in this initiative, formula grants, competitive grants, and competitive 
awards would focus on enhancing grid resilience by upgrading 
transmission infrastructure. Investments in transmission infrastructure 
include increasing the capacity of existing lines, using advanced 
technologies to minimize transmission losses and maximize the value of 
existing lines, and building new long-distance, high voltage 
transmission lines. There is new funding for the deployment of 
technologies to enhance grid flexibility in the Smart Grid Investment 
Grant Program, which specifically calls out advanced transmission 
technologies and their ability to integrate renewable resources and 
create real-time situational awareness as a means of providing a more 
resilient grid. Other programs in the infrastructure bill that are 
important for resilience are electric vehicle charging infrastructure, 
energy efficiency, and appliance electrification, all of which allow 
for real-time management of customer load as a flexible grid resource.
    In addition to the infrastructure bill, however, it will be crucial 
to pass in the Senate what the House passed in the climate portion of 
the Build Back Better Act (``BBB''). While the infrastructure bill will 
provide direct funding for innovative projects and manufacturing, the 
complementary BBB offers market mechanisms to spur private sector 
investment in resilient technologies and applications. The cost of 
damage from natural disasters in 2021 was $145 billion; \10\ Hurricane 
Ida alone cost $75 billion.\11\ A Deloitte report from last month 
estimated that the cost of climate change could cost the U.S. $14.5 
trillion by 2070.\12\ As a recent Boston Globe headline read: 
``Compared with climate inaction, Build Back Better is downright 
cheap.'' \13\ \14\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/summary-stats/US/2021
    \11\ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
    \12\ https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/about-deloitte/articles/
press-releases/deloitte-report-
inaction-on-climate-change-could-cost-the-us-economy-trillions-by-
2070.html
    \13\ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/21/science/compared-with-
climate-inaction-build-back-better-is-downright-cheap/?p1=StaffPage
    \14\ 
These findings were summarized in an Evergreen Action article: https://
www.evergreenaction.com/blog/why-we-cant-afford-not-to-pass-the-
climate-investments-in-build-back-better
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One program that was passed several times in the House, including 
in the Build Back Better Act, is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, 
originally passed as the Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator. 
This non-profit entity would be seeded by the government but sit 
outside the government to provide creative investing solutions to scale 
zero carbon technology deployment. Many state-level green banks, which 
are structured on a state level the way a national level entity would 
be set up, are already financing critical energy infrastructure to 
ensure grid resilience and support those most vulnerable to power 
outages. This investment includes financing microgrids for local 
governments, and clean back-up power for affordable housing 
communities. In other cases, investments are made to directly harden 
structures against damaging weather caused by climate change. For 
example, the Solar and Energy Loan Fund in Florida provides financing 
not just for solar panels and efficiency measures, but also for roof 
hardening to make the home more resilient to hurricanes. This, in turn, 
lowers the home's insurance costs, with the savings used to pay back 
the loan.\15\ Senate passage of this bill would enable investments such 
as these to be made in states and communities across the U.S. through 
the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \15\ https://solarenergyloanfund.org/loan/wind-resilience/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Rebates for electrification are part of the BBB and are essential 
to engaging customers and providing access to clean and safe electric 
technologies for low- and middle-income communities. If electrification 
is planned and deployed correctly, reliability and resilience should 
increase, not decrease. In fact, in a study released by the American 
Council for an Energy Efficient Economy,\16\ the analysis showed an 
increase in reliability as a result of a combination of energy 
efficiency and electrification (which included heat pumps at a minimum, 
but in some cases heat pump water heaters, induction stoves, and 
electric vehicles).\17\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\ https://www.aceee.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/
programs_to_electrify_space_heating_brief_final_6-23-20.pdf
    \17\ See testimony at FERC: https://
www.ferc.gov/media/panel-1-katherine-hamilton-world-economic-forum
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    One of the most important market tools in the BBB is tax credits. 
Access to the Investment Tax Credit will be important to driving down 
the cost of energy storage of all types, opening up new markets in 
dozens of states and offsetting the cost of deployment in states like 
California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Virginia that have 
robust energy storage targets in place. The investment tax credit 
inclusion of interconnection costs will enable smaller community solar 
projects to be cost-effectively deployed in neighborhoods where 
rooftops are not always suited to solar or where consumers do not own 
their homes. Opening the tax credit to microgrids will also directly 
impact resilience. Communities throughout the country are already 
installing microgrids to provide backup services in case of outage. 
Some examples include a microgrid at the Sonoma Valley Unified School 
District that will achieve bring more solar online, participate in 
wholesale markets, and charge electric school buses; \18\ an Oakmont, 
California 1800 acre senior community of 3,204 homes, 24 businesses and 
a fire station, that has experienced nine public safety power shutoffs 
in the last four years has been approved to build a microgrid; \19\ and 
the city of Gonzales in Salinas Valley has planned a $70 million 
microgrid to provide a business park with round-the-clock reliable 
power at cheaper than utility rates. \20\ Projects like these and many 
more would benefit from this tax credit.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ https://microgridknowledge.com/front-of-meter-microgrid-
sonoma/
    \19\ https://microgridknowledge.com/oakmont-california-seniors-
community-microgrid/
    \20\ https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/california-town-
tests-new-model-for-microgrids-as-a-service
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Opening the tax code to transmission would increase resilience on 
the supply side of the grid by incentivizing transmission technology 
deployment. Significant losses incurred during the Polar Vortex in 
February 2021--which claimed 246 lives \21\ and caused $130 billion in 
damage in one week--could have been mitigated or avoided had there been 
more transmission ties to neighboring regions. A technology that would 
benefit from this credit is advanced high voltage direct current 
(``HVDC'') technology, which strengthens reliability by controlling 
power dispatch, avoiding cascading outages and improving power quality 
by quickly adjusting voltage, frequency, and reactive power. Some 
developers are designing underground cable projects that can further 
protect them from extreme weather events, including storms, as well as 
flooding given the water impervious nature of the cable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \21\ https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/02/texas-winter-storm-
final-death-toll-246/amp/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Other programs included in the BBB are the Department of Energy's 
loan program that will open up to additional sectors--such as aviation 
and maritime--to scale the clean energy transition in other parts of 
our economy. Funding for state and local governments and tribes will 
enable communities across the country to accelerate deployment of 
energy efficiency and electrification technologies. Many other programs 
are included in the BBB that will send those market signals to the 
private sector.
IV. Conclusion.
    Of course, if we truly want to mitigate the climate crisis and 
deploy technologies that will be both reliable and resilient, we need 
to not only execute well on the infrastructure bill and pass the BBB 
Act, but we also need targeted Appropriations funding, regulatory 
signals through the Environmental Protection Agency, and market 
structures through the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In truth, 
all agencies in our government can take some responsibility within 
their missions for leading our nation to a safer, cleaner, more secure 
future from our climate crisis. With our federal government aligned 
with the private sector's recognition that swift action must be taken 
on climate, there is far greater hope that we can reduce the impacts of 
this crisis on our nation. Thank you for the opportunity to present 
this testimony; I look forward to your questions.

    Ms. Castor. Well, thanks to all of our witnesses for your 
informative and insightful testimony.
    I will recognize myself for the first 5 minutes for 
questions and start with a focus back on the bipartisan 
infrastructure law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
    And I think what policymakers--what we were thinking about 
as we moved forward with the grid resilience piece is some win-
win-win propositions. When you are strengthening the grid, you 
are making it more resilient to these climate fueled disasters, 
these more frequent and intense weather events; we want to 
lower the cost for consumers; we want to create jobs, good 
American jobs--when you are talking about the grid, these are 
all American jobs--and then reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
    So, now, the DOE, the Department of Energy, will begin 
rolling out a lot of these moneys in partnership with 
communities and the private sector and other municipally owned 
like Ms. Sutley runs.
    Ms. Hamilton, do you think we can do all of this and stay 
on the track for affordability and reliability and resilience? 
Do you agree that they are not mutually exclusive?
    Ms. Hamilton. Yes. Thank you for the question. They are 
absolutely not mutually exclusive. I absolutely agree with 
that.
    One thing we do have to think about, though--and Mr. Graves 
mentioned this in his opening statement too--is that we do have 
to, like, plan for this. We have to think about, what are all 
the pieces of this that are going to work together, be the 
least-cost options, and keep prices down for customers?
    So you look at the supply side and how many clean energy 
technologies are available on that side--from solar and wind 
certainly, but also hydropower, nuclear, geothermal.
    And then you look at the demand side, which is all the 
customers, right? So doing demand response, energy efficiency--
which is the cheapest form of energy--and rooftop solar, 
battery storage, all these technologies on the demand side that 
the customer can bring.
    And then the connective tissue. So you think about energy 
storage, you think about transmission and all the technologies 
that enhance transmission to work better, and then all the 
distribution technologies as well. All of these can be 
intertwined and allowed to work in real time using 
digitization.
    So I think it is absolutely possible to do it all. And we 
have the technologies today. And I will tell you, I work with 
dozens of companies that want to invest and come and work with 
the government, partner with the government, to make sure that 
we can do this and transition.
    Ms. Castor. Well, thank you.
    And, Ms. Sutley, your utility, one of the largest 
municipally owned in the country, you have set a 100 percent 
clean energy goal by 2035.
    How are you going to ensure that consumers are protected 
and yet you build in clean energy resources over time? What is 
your plan?
    Ms. Sutley. Thank you, Chair Castor, for the question.
    Well, we absolutely take it as our responsibility to ensure 
that this transition happens in a way that protects our 
customers, and we work very hard to make sure that that is 
happening.
    We worked with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to 
analyze scenarios that would get us to 100 percent clean 
energy. And it was really informed by a stakeholder group of 
businesses and community leaders and members of the community 
who helped us to kind of focus on the priorities for the kinds 
of investments that will help Los Angeles meet its goals and 
continue to flourish.
    And sort of as a follow on, we started a process around 
equity strategies to make sure that all communities in Los 
Angeles see the benefit of this transformation.
    But I would say that, you know, we have been meeting our 
financial targets. We have been, you know, managing our rates 
to try to protect our consumers. We also offer a lot of 
programs that help our customers save energy and save money 
while helping us to manage the grid better.
    And one of the things that we found in the ``LA100'' study 
was that the electrification of transportation and of buildings 
can really help to manage costs by expanding the sales of 
electricity in helping us to manage costs.
    So this is first and foremost in our minds, to make sure 
that we do this in a way that protects Los Angeles's economy, 
creates jobs, and serves all of our communities.
    Ms. Castor. Great.
    Okay. Next, we will go to Mrs. Miller.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Miller. Thank you, Chair Castor and Ranking Member 
Graves.
    And thank you to all the witnesses for being here today.
    Grid resilience is one of the most important aspects of our 
national energy strategy. And, luckily, the United States has 
recently proven that it does not need to depend upon 
adversarial regimes to provide power to our constituents, due 
to the boom in American produced energy over the last several 
decades.
    Under President Trump, America became a net energy exporter 
for the first time in a generation, selling our crude oil, 
natural gas, and coal all over the world, while providing 
everything we needed here at home.
    Unfortunately, this progress is under siege by radical 
activists who are pressuring the Biden administration to shut 
down American energy jobs and leave behind production focused 
communities.
    Look no further than President Biden nominating Sarah Bloom 
Raskin to serve as Vice Chair for Supervision at the Board of 
Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Ms. Raskin is an anti-
American energy activist whose vision for the Federal Reserve 
is to block or discourage traditional energy companies from 
accessing capital markets in the American banking system.
    Without the ability to finance costly upgrades, traditional 
energy companies will not be able to employ the future of 
carbon capture technology, leaving millions of Americans 
without jobs and the rest of our country reliant on either 
foreign imports from Russia and the Middle East or untested 
renewable energy that will never be able to supply the power 
that Americans have become accustomed to--all the while, still 
relying on China to source most renewable technologies.
    We need smart policies to protect American energy producing 
communities and tackle the real problem: cutting carbon 
emissions. This won't be done by the Federal Government picking 
winners and losers but, instead, through an all-of-the-above 
energy strategy where we use American ingenuity and effective 
government incentives, not decades-long subsidies and reliance 
on foreign competitors.
    Mr. Mills, in your testimony, you mentioned how essential 
it is for our energy infrastructure to be able to meet both 
expected and unexpected peaks in demand. Could you expand on 
what the scale of such an effort would look like for our 
country to fully rely on wind and solar technology?
    Mr. Mills. Thank you, Congresswoman Miller. It is an 
interesting problem, the scale problem.
    I think everyone agrees the grid is critical and needs to 
be reliable. The scale of America's grids--and there is not one 
grid, as everyone knows--is really daunting to think in terms 
of supplying electricity from storage of any form, in terms of 
storing electricity directly.
    If one were to calculate the quantity of minerals needed to 
produce enough batteries for the 12 hours I mentioned--and 12 
hours is a typical number offered for grid-scale storage for 
the United States. And, today, just as a calibration point, the 
country has about 1 minute's worth of grid-scale electricity in 
grid-scale batteries stored at any given time. So we are, you 
know, many thousandths of a percent away from getting to 12 
hours.
    To get there would require mining more minerals that are 
now mined for all other purposes in the world for those 
batteries. There simply aren't enough mines yet. It doesn't 
mean we couldn't build the mines somewhere, but no one is 
proposing, really, to build the mines here.
    Congress has ordered and administrations have looked at 
critical mineral dependencies now for roughly 60 years. This is 
not a new subject. The United States is 100 percent dependent 
on 17 minerals; imports more than half of another two dozen 
minerals. We are hostile to mineral expansion, mineral 
processing, and the related manufacturing in the United States. 
It is just a fact of the nature of the business for decades.
    It is sort of naive to think that we are going to expand 
that kind of industry without radically increasing imports. In 
effect, building battery assembly plants here, bridge storage 
or for cars, is equivalent of building cars here and importing 
100 percent of the gasoline.
    You know, critical energy minerals are at the heart of the 
challenge that the IEA has pointed out. I am not the first to 
point this out. And it is a challenge that is not being taken 
up. And, in fact, the IEA's latest paper, buried on about page 
20 of its sort of victory lap on the expansion of wind, solar, 
and electric cars in the last year, points out that the world 
is not now--no country is now expanding its mineral production 
capability.
    Those that do have it, of course, as I mentioned, is China, 
the biggest processors; Africa; South America. My homeland, 
Canada, produces lots of minerals and is probably happy to 
produce more. But nobody is planning the scales needed.
    Mrs. Miller. Thank you.
    You also mentioned the expansion of grid----
    Ms. Castor. I am sorry--I am sorry, Mrs. Miller. Your time 
has expired.
    Mrs. Miller. Thank you.
    Ms. Castor. And I would also like to ask members to please 
refrain--I know we don't share all of the same views, but I 
would ask that we not make any personal attacks on any 
individual, especially if they are not a party to our hearing 
today.
    And, next, we will go to Rep. Bonamici.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member 
Graves and our witnesses.
    And thank you, Madam Chair, for noting that. I thought the 
comment was unnecessarily confrontational. We are here to have 
a debate about policy, not personal attacks.
    So I am here in the Pacific Northwest, and we are no 
stranger to extreme weather and natural disasters that stress 
our energy grid. And, last summer, we had unprecedented heat 
waves sweep across Oregon, causing extreme precautions, 
including shutting down Portland's streetcars and light rail 
system to prevent equipment from melting.
    Portland General Electric--and thank you for the shout out, 
Dr. Wayland--PGE relied on a demand response program that 
helped prevent a worst-case scenario. It is a program that 
compensates consumers and businesses for shifting energy used 
during peak demand. PGE estimates that this program saved about 
62 megawatts of power during the June 2021 heat wave, and that 
was enough to power 25,000 homes.
    So, Dr. Wayland, what are some of the policy changes 
inhibiting utilities around the country from implementing their 
demand response programs or increasing consumer participation?
    Dr. Wayland. That is a great question. When I was at the 
Department of Energy, I looked at the demand response capacity 
around the country, and it is quite significant, the amount of 
energy--even if you just look at large customers, not at ways 
that we can encourage smaller residential customers to be 
involved in demand response programs. And the delta between the 
demand response capacity and the actual contracts that we had 
was pretty large. And then the delta between the contracts that 
we had and what was actually delivered when called upon was 
also pretty large.
    So I think that there are a number of both regulatory 
pricing structures that--signals that can be sent, but also 
encouraging customers to join these programs and also 
encouraging third-party aggregators to go out looking for those 
customers.
    And I think what you will see with FERC Order 2222 is a 
growth in the aggregators who are going out and looking for 
those distributed energy resources, whether they are going to 
bundle them into the wholesale market for power or for demand 
response programs.
    So there is a number of things that can be done there with 
demand response.
    And I do think that what we will see increasingly is the 
smaller customers becoming part of demand response programs as 
a result of--and these would be active load management 
programs--but as a result of smart appliances and smart 
thermostats and ways that residential customers can participate 
and benefit and earn money from participating in these 
programs, but do it in a way that they don't have to think 
about it, where it is really automated.
    And, again, that only happens if we have a very smart grid 
that allows communication with these customers.
    Ms. Bonamici. Exactly.
    Dr. Wayland. So the flexibility funding, the Smart Grid 
Investment Grant flexibility funding, and the broadband 
funding--and, of course, broadband is going to be the backbone 
of a smart grid in the future, whether it is wireless or 
fiber--and the funding in the bipartisan infrastructure law 
will actually help support demand response programs.
    Ms. Bonamici. Terrific. Thank you so much.
    So, this year, coal will account for about 85 percent of 
electric generation capacity retirements, while solar and wind 
are projected to account for about 63 percent of new capacity. 
Investing in the bulk power system has been and will continue 
to be critical to a resilient grid, especially as polluting 
baseload generation is taken off line and replaced by renewable 
resources.
    So I wanted to ask you, Ms. Hamilton: In your testimony, 
you mentioned the importance of building inter-regional 
transmission lines. How would ratepayers benefit from 
transmission build out? And how does the Build Back Better Act 
help us with this goal?
    And thank you for pointing out in your written testimony 
and your oral testimony the Boston Globe article that said, 
compared with climate inaction, Build Back Better is downright 
cheap.
    So will you please talk about how ratepayers would benefit 
from that transmission build out and how Build Back Better 
would help?
    Ms. Hamilton. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for that 
question.
    So there was a recently released Grid Strategies report 
that says, for every $1 invested in transmission, customers see 
$3 in benefits. And that is because it keeps the prices down 
for customers. You are able to move electricity from places 
that have a lot of resource to places that have a lot of load. 
And you can do that in real time with a lot of different 
technologies that are available today.
    So, for example, you look at what we have in our nation 
today, and a lot of our systems are very isolated from other 
systems. Right now, there is no connection, a seam, between 
MISO in the Midwest and PJM, which has an enormous amount of 
load. So, like, let's build a transmission tie there to move 
all of that great wind out of Iowa into Chicago that is going 
to need it, especially with their new goals.
    And so what we need to do--and when you look at Texas and 
the lack of ties that they had during the polar vortex, how 
difficult that was for them to manage the system. Whereas in 
MISO, across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Indiana, there 
were more transmission ties. They were able to import 15 times 
more power than Texas was, simply because they had transmission 
ties.
    So transmission is incredibly important. And I think if we 
look at transmission overlaid with our rail, with our highway 
rights of way, there are plenty of ways to get transmission 
built.
    And if you look at what right now is in the infrastructure 
bill, there are certainly programs that are going to be able to 
incentivize that and allow us to be catalytic. So perhaps 
funding one project will lead to not just that project being 
built but really catalyze multiple projects after that by 
sending the signal to the private sector that you can build 
transmission now.
    Ms. Bonamici. That is great. Thank you.
    And my time has expired. I yield back. Thank you, Madam 
Chair.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you.
    Next up, Rep. Gonzalez, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And thank you to our witnesses.
    I want to start by submitting for the record from Stanford 
University, ``An Assessment of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant 
for Zero-Carbon Electricity, Desalination, and Hydrogen 
Production,'' for the record.
    Ms. Castor. Okay. Without objection, so ordered.
    [The information follows:]

                       Submission for the Record

                    Representative Anthony Gonzalez

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                           February 15, 2022

ATTACHMENT: Aborn, J., Baik, E., Benson, S, et al. (2021 November).
        Assessment of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant for Zero-Carbon 
        Electricity, Desalination, and Hydrogen Production. Stanford 
        University.
This report is retained in the committee files and available at:
        https://energy.stanford.edu/sites/g/files/sbiybj9971/f/
        diablocanyonnuclearplant_report_11.02.21.pdf

    Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you.
    I want to first just cite something from there. We have 
talked about the impact that Diablo Canyon could have on 
California's energy. This report analyzed various scenarios and 
concluded that keeping Diablo Canyon running would, quote, 
``significantly reduce California's use of natural gas for 
electricity'' and ``save $2.6 billion in costs to the state's 
power system from 2025 to 2035.''
    Additionally, if closed, a carbon-free electrical system in 
California in 2045 would need 18 gigawatts of PV solar and 11 
gigawatts of energy storage, and the additional capacity of 
solar to replace Diablo Canyon would take up 90,000 acres of 
land. By comparison, the footprint at Diablo Canyon is just 900 
acres and only 140 acres for the plant itself.
    So hopefully that provides some context for folks. I think 
shutting down any nuclear plant in this country is insane, yet 
it is something that people continue to do for some reason.
    So, that being the case, we obviously disagree on policy, 
but I do believe all of us here believe American families and 
businesses deserve access to affordable, reliable, and 
resilient energy. That is why I have been an advocate for 
generating electricity from a diverse set of energy sources, 
including nuclear. You all are probably sick of me saying that 
at this point, but I just think it is a no-brainer.
    Mr. Mills, in your testimony, you highlighted a case study 
that I bring up quite frequently at this committee, and that is 
Germany's high-priced transition to renewables.
    In Germany, wind and solar make up roughly 20 percent of 
the energy mix, and supply anywhere from a negligible amount to 
roughly half of all demand during certain sunny and windy 
hours. These large fluctuations require backup from other power 
plants, typically coal- or gas-fired, or increased electricity 
imports. And, as you noted in your testimony, all this 
variability can cause serious disruptions in electricity flow 
and, thus, dramatically raise consumers' prices without a 
significant reduction in emissions.
    Now, when I raise these concerns and specifically cite the 
emissions and costs from Germany, one response I often hear is 
that, because the U.S.'s geography and resources is 
dramatically different than Germany's, there is no reason for 
us to be concerned with the consequences of pursuing the exact 
same policies. Some would suggest, hey, it is sunny in Arizona, 
so that should work fine in northeast Ohio. I would argue that 
is also kind of crazy.
    Can you help us understand why it would be a mistake for 
the U.S. to support and implement the same renewable energy 
strategy as Germany?
    Mr. Mills. Well, I encounter the same comments, Congressman 
Gonzalez.
    I think the answer, first of all, is that the European grid 
does have a lot of interties there. It is a fairly integrated 
set of grids among many countries. The geography of continental 
Europe from its south to its north is very similar in terms of 
the latitude and, therefore, solar insolance, very similar in 
terms of wind. Some of the challenges there intercountry are 
moderated much like we have here with our FERC.
    So the reality is, in terms of the primary resources, wind 
and sun, if that is where most of the expanded capacity is 
focused, it is not very different, continental United States 
and continental Europe.
    And the other reality is, of course, that Germany has done 
the experiment for us, as has England, where you provide 
reliability by essentially building two grids. And even if the 
two sources of electricity--broadly speaking, the hydrocarbon 
traditional sources and the newer sources, wind and solar--were 
the same price, you have, by definition, roughly doubled the 
cost of the supply system.
    And you increase costs because you need more interties. I 
think we do and should have more interties, but you need more 
of them. And then you have to underutilize the--we will call it 
the old grid. Underutilized assets cost more per unit of energy 
delivered and actually have operational structural cost 
increases on grids when you start doing cycling of these 
assets.
    So they have done the experiment, and it does cost more. I 
think people need to be honest about the fact it just costs 
more, not less.
    Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you.
    And with my final 30 seconds, the suggestion that we can 
just send solar power from places like Arizona all over the 
country and that is somehow a solution to our grid challenges, 
that is sort of silly, right?
    Mr. Mills. Well, you can do it, but it costs a lot of money 
and exposes the long transmission lines to precisely the 
extreme weather events people are worried about. It is 
expensive, and it doesn't guarantee it will have enough of the 
physical resource available when required, for the exact 
meteorological reasons I point out in my testimony.
    Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you for your responses.
    And I yield back.
    Ms. Castor. And, next, we will go to Rep. Brownley.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Brownley. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you for 
pulling us together for this important hearing. I appreciate it 
very, very much.
    Ms. Sutley, I was particularly interested in your--
particularly your written testimony, and in talking about green 
hydrogen, and not only in terms of getting to your 2035 goal 
but also in terms of, you know, reliability in and of itself.
    So I am sort of curious, is the use of green hydrogen, is 
there--obviously, to expand your renewable energy options in 
your portfolio has got to be one reason, certainly. But I was 
curious to know, is there something special around green 
hydrogen when you were talking about reliability, other than 
just its availability?
    Ms. Sutley. Thank you.
    When we looked at the--well, the ``LA100'' study looked at 
what was necessary to get us to 100 percent renewable energy, 
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory pointed out that we do 
need dispatchable capacities, as Mr. Mills was mentioning. We 
agree with that. But one way to provide that is with green 
hydrogen.
    We understand from the people involved in the technology 
that, you know, a certain amount can be blended into a power 
plant today and that, you know, the technology is evolving to 
ensure that we can use 100 percent green hydrogen in a 
combustion turbine in the future. And so that would provide 
that dispatchable capacity.
    The ``LA100'' study also pointed out that it would be 
different than we use our natural gas power plants today in the 
L.A. Basin, where they run much of the time, probably 30 
percent of the time, to where we would be using that 
dispatchable capacity infrequently, in times of very high 
demand or where there was an interruption for some reason in 
the grid where we couldn't import some of the renewable energy 
that comes from outside of the Los Angeles Basin.
    The other thing is, we were part of a consortium that is 
retiring a coal plant in Utah and are looking at green hydrogen 
and the ability to actually make it on site through 
electrolysis and store it on site and potentially provide 
seasonal storage of excess renewable so that that renewable 
energy when it is available can be used to make the green 
hydrogen, and then at that particular site we can store the 
green hydrogen on site and use it when it is needed for the 
grid.
    Ms. Brownley. And I notice in your testimony, too, in terms 
of storage of that, it is in salt caverns that Utah has, but 
that has to be a cheap way, I would imagine, in terms of 
storing energy?
    Ms. Sutley. Well, it's--yeah, that may be some--there may 
be some particular things about that site that are particularly 
attractive but we also think a good opportunity to show how 
this technology could work.
    There are extensive salt caverns underneath this power 
plant. There is water, there is gas lines, there is power lines 
that bring renewable energy both into that area and then energy 
from the plant into southern California. So it is sort of an 
ideal place to do this kind of project.
    Ms. Brownley. And when do you think you will get to 100 
percent green hydrogen?
    Ms. Sutley. Well, at that plant, the new turbines are 
coming in in 2025, and they will be capable of burning about 30 
percent hydrogen the day they are turned on. And over the next 
decade or so, as it goes through its maintenance cycles, the 
plan is to convert it probably in the mid-2030s to something 
that can run on 100 percent green hydrogen.
    Ms. Brownley. Great. Thank you so much.
    And, Ms. Hamilton, I have about 30 seconds left, but, you 
know, in your testimony, you really talked about microgrids, 
and certainly they are very important when we are talking about 
resiliency and reliability.
    And I was particularly interested in--you gave a couple of 
different examples, and one of those examples was the Sonoma 
Valley Unified School District, in terms of what they are 
doing. And I am a former school board member, and so I can't 
get away from it too far.
    But, you know, just in thinking about that and the 
possibilities of microgrids being, you know, judiciously spread 
across particularly the State of California, when we are 
thinking about that, seems to be a great win-win opportunity. 
And, actually, school districts could actually perhaps earn 
some revenue in terms of education for their kids.
    So do you agree with all of that and that assessment?
    Ms. Hamilton. I do. Not only can they bring solar on line, 
they can earn more money by participating in the wholesale 
market, and they can charge electric school buses. And if you 
have ever sat in the back of a school bus, you know it is 
stinky, and electric school buses are really the way to go for 
these school districts. And the microgrid supports all of 
those.
    Ms. Brownley. Thank you so much.
    And, Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you.
    Next up, Rep. Carter, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Carter. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And thank all the witnesses for being here.
    I will go ahead and get this out of the way. Georgia is the 
number one forestry State in the nation, and I am very proud of 
that.
    Thank you, Ranking Member Graves, for bringing that to my 
attention before I get started.
    Mr. Mills, I wanted to direct some questions to you.
    Look, we all agree--we all agree that we need to modernize 
our grid. Everybody here; we disagree on how we do it, but we 
all agree we need to modernize it. I don't think there is any 
question about that.
    We know that our economy is electrifying more and more, 
and, as a result of that, we have to have both generating 
capacity and grid capacity, and we have to increase that 
significantly. And, again, I think everybody agrees with that.
    You make that point, Mr. Mills, in your testimony, and I 
appreciate that very much.
    And I am not against using any particular or any specific 
type of form of generation, whether it be wind, solar, or 
whatever. I am an all-of-the-above type guy as far as the 
energy goes. But the reliability and the resiliency are 
extremely important to me, and also the affordability. You just 
mentioned when we were talking about getting solar power from 
Arizona, you know, the cost of the transmission lines. 
Obviously, that is something that would deter us. I mean, that 
makes sense to anybody. I think a third-grader could understand 
that.
    But you also mentioned in your testimony that, if we were 
to primarily switch to solar and wind, that the battery storage 
would--that is necessary for 12 hours, we would need to spend 
almost a trillion dollars on batteries alone. Not to mention 
how we make those batteries, the energy that it takes to make 
those batteries, and what we do after they are no longer being 
used. Those are things we should consider as well.
    But the one thing that I am really concerned about, again, 
is the reliability and the resiliency. And I wanted to ask you: 
You understand just like all of us do what is going on right 
now with rising energy costs. You have seen it; we have all 
seen it. In light of that, what can we expect to happen to 
electricity rates if we were to make such a transition as some 
have described here--that is, to try to go totally to wind and 
solar and do away with all the other sources?
    Mr. Mills. Well, thank you, Congressman. I think we know 
the answer because it is already happening in the United States 
and around the world: electric rates are going up, not down.
    And there is a one-to-one correlation in European nations 
and in the United States, in U.S. regions. As more wind and 
solar capacity is added per capita, electric rates are going 
up.
    And that is not a subsidy effect, in the sense the 
subsidies should keep the rates down because the capital costs 
are shifted from the ratepayers to taxpayers broadly. That is 
where the subsidies come from.
    So the fact electric rates are rising--in fact, in Xcel 
service territory, they have gone from a few percent wind plus 
solar to about, I think they are at 10 or 12 percent now, maybe 
15, and the average costs of electricity for the average 
homeowner has gone from $800 a year to $1,600 a year.
    So, you know, they are following the path the commission 
wants and that we all would like to have, more wind and solar, 
but it costs more money--it has been costing more money. The 
idea that it will get cheaper in the future is entirely 
anchored on forecasts, not on experience.
    What is actually happening is solar module prices have gone 
up 50 percent in the last 2 years. Battery costs are forecast 
to rise this year. Wind turbine costs have stopped--prices have 
stopped going down, are going to rise slightly this year, all 
because of the commodity inputs for them. Commodities account 
for 60 to 70 percent of the cost of making solar panels, about 
30 percent of the cost of making wind turbines. When commodity 
prices escalate, it ripples through. It ripples through other 
things too, for fertilizer, food----
    Mr. Carter. Right. Right. And----
    Mr. Mills. But that is the path that we are on.
    Mr. Carter [continuing]. I have just got a minute left. And 
you just answered my second question, and I appreciate that, 
about the increasing cost. And, obviously, we all understand 
that.
    But how can we ensure that our transition--if we were to 
transition too quickly, obviously we are going to bring into 
light the reliability and the affordability. But how can we 
transition significantly investing in the grid in a way that 
doesn't necessarily put this undue pressure on electricity 
rates and how we could reduce affordability?
    Mr. Mills. Well, so I am sorry the answer is to go slower. 
And no one likes that answer, because to get the cost down of 
the technologies we would like, they are going to take a lot 
longer to get cheap.
    I would just mention quickly, hydrogen on a unit of energy 
delivered basis is about 300 percent more expensive than 
natural gas. There is no path to making hydrogen as cheap as 
natural gas anywhere visible in any of the physics or physical 
chemistry.
    So it works; you can electrolyze water and make hydrogen. 
It doesn't matter that you use solar panels to do that. It 
produces very expensive energy. It is a solution. I like 
hydrogen fuel cells personally. We can burn it in engines. It--
--
    Mr. Carter. As do I.
    Mr. Mills [continuing]. Is just very expensive.
    Mr. Carter. Good.
    I know I am out of time, and I will yield back, but thank 
you, Mr. Mills, for making what I consider to be very important 
points.
    Look, we all want the same thing, but how we get there is I 
think where we differ.
    Ms. Castor. All right.
    Next up is Rep. Huffman from the Redwood forests.
    Mr. Huffman. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    I wanted to show you a little bit about what California 
really looks like. It is not this, you know, doom and gloom 
place that some of my colleagues have been describing. In fact, 
I am sitting here in my home powered 100 percent by renewable 
energy right now, and the lights are still on and I think my 
connection is still working.
    It is amazing, this alchemy, this magic, we have been able 
to achieve in California, contrary to all of the anti-renewable 
doom and gloom we continue to hear from the other side, who for 
some reason thinks that we have to go slow and we should not go 
too fast in this transition to clean energy. Let's keep in 
mind, we have a climate crisis out there, and there is an 
enormous cost of making this transition too slowly. We should 
talk about that cost as well.
    But, look, I don't want Mr. Carter to be the only one to 
brag about his state. We hear a lot about the beautiful State 
of Georgia, Mr. Carter, but let me tell you a little about 
California.
    Right now, in real time, we have this wonderful website 
that our grid operator, the California ISO, puts out there. You 
can go to CAISO.com, and you can see that, right now, as I am 
talking to you, we have a current demand of a little over 
22,000 megawatts. Over 70 percent of that demand right now in 
real time is being met by renewable energy. And somehow the 
California economy, fifth-largest economy in the world, is 
plugging right along.
    Only about 9 percent of our energy in this moment is 
imported, contrary to some of these claims about our extreme 
dependence on imported energy. We have an increasing amount of 
battery storage that is helping keep our grid working. None of 
it is contributing to our load right now because the sun is 
shining and the wind is blowing, and so we are charging those 
batteries.
    And, as we go forward, those batteries as well as our hydro 
and our other assets, including geothermal, which is about 5.5 
percent of our load right now as we speak, are going to keep 
our grid balanced. And, in fact, the grid has never failed here 
because we had too much renewables. This is a canard, this is a 
myth that we continue to hear. In fact, I am not aware of any 
grids failing anywhere because there were too much renewables.
    I am aware of Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz and Republicans 
claiming that the Texas failure last year was because of too 
much wind, but that just forced the fact checkers to totally 
debunk that. The turbines kept working; the wind worked just 
fine. It was, in fact, a deregulated grid that depended on some 
really neglected fossil fuel infrastructure that brought all of 
the reliability problems in Texas.
    So we do a lot of debunking and fact checking when we try 
to have a forward looking conversation in this committee, and I 
needed to cover some of those bases, but I want to bring this 
back to Nancy Sutley.
    We are proud of the fact that LADWP is one of the nation's 
largest utilities and you have set these great goals for 100 
percent clean energy. How are you going to make this magic 
alchemy happen without crashing your grid, as we have, you 
know, heard all these warnings about too much renewables?
    Ms. Sutley. Well, thank you, Mr. Huffman, for the question. 
Well, I would say a couple of things.
    First of all, we have this ``LA100'' study done for us by 
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that literally looked 
at thousands of scenarios and modeled L.A.'s grid literally 
down to the building level and came up with a number of 
scenarios that would get us to 100 percent clean energy 
reliably, affordably, and equitably, including by 2035. The 
state's current goal is 2045 for a 100 percent clean energy 
grid.
    And then the second thing is that, you know, we have been 
making these investments in renewable energy. We have brought 
on line a number of new projects, including some of the 
cheapest solar to date and cheapest wind to date. We have 
invested in storage. We have sort of repurposed a hydro pump 
storage project that was built in the 1980s to work alongside 
the renewable energy to provide that, sort of, longer duration 
storage. And we are investing in, sort of, management of the 
grid. And we believe that even on, kind of, our current 
investment path that we can get to about 80 percent renewables 
by 2030 and 97-percent greenhouse gas free.
    So looking at a diverse energy source--diverse clean energy 
sources and continuing to invest in our grid to protect 
reliability and to invest in electrification and energy 
efficiency and demand management that help our customers help 
us manage the grid. So----
    Mr. Huffman. Thank you.
    Ms. Sutley [continuing]. We believe this is all possible.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Huffman. I realize, Madam Chair, I am out of time. I 
had another question I wanted to ask other witnesses about some 
of the microgrids we have begun to deploy and the big grid/
little grid issue. If there is a second round, I will hang 
around for that. But I am out of time, and I will yield back.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. Huffman.
    Next, Rep. Palmer, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Madam Chairman. And thank the 
witnesses and Ranking Member Graves.
    Mr. Mills, The New York Times put out an article last week, 
couple weeks ago maybe, that showed where we would have to 
locate solar farms and wind farms for generating the power that 
the nation would need to run on, and a lot of that was in the 
Midwest. Would that not create some major eminent domain 
issues?
    Mr. Mills. I am sorry, what kind of issues, Congressman? I 
apologize.
    Mr. Palmer. Eminent domain.
    Mr. Mills. Oh. Yeah, I think--well, certainly, this 
administration and previous ones have struggled with the 
eminent domain challenges with building any large scale 
facilities that take acres and acres or millions of acres. 
Transmission line has failed serially to get clean hydro from 
Canada down into New York City.
    So the opposition to using large areas of land for wind and 
solar is rising, but that is--you know, everyone is familiar 
with the NIMBY challenge. It is not new. Yeah, I think it will 
become more severe as we expand the use of wind and solar, 
sure.
    Mr. Palmer. Well, it already has with transmission lines, 
and----
    Mr. Mills. Certainly.
    Mr. Palmer [continuing]. We are taking an enormous amount 
of land to site these solar farms and these wind farms.
    The other thing is--you are involved in engineering. I 
worked for two international engineering companies. Just from 
an engineering feasibility perspective, from my understanding 
of engineering, it is not feasible to build this out in 13 
years, by 2035.
    Mr. Mills. Well, not at the national level it is not. There 
is not enough construction capacity to do it. And as we push 
the construction capacity hard, you get price escalation, you 
get labor cost escalation, and materials escalation. And if I--
--
    Mr. Palmer. There are shortages, as you have already 
pointed out, particularly in rare earth elements. As you 
pointed out, half of that is controlled by China. And I think 
we get 80 percent of our rare earth element material from 
China.
    Mr. Mills. Right.
    Mr. Palmer. But Finland--in one of the articles that you 
wrote, you quoted the geological survey by the Finnish 
Government about the capacity for providing the other 
materials, I mean just basic materials. Could you comment on 
that?
    Mr. Mills. Certainly.
    And just for the record, you know, I have worked for dozens 
of utilities over the years. I have to--some of the most 
impressive engineering anywhere on the planet is in American 
utilities. They have kept the lights on, as the Congressman has 
observed, and done so under duress many times, both from nature 
and from human nature.
    What the Finnish Geological Survey did was look at the 
global plans--many countries are emulating what the United 
States is talking about--to do a transition to using lots more 
wind, solar, and batteries, and water electrolysis. We can 
throw that in as well. And they calculated the existing 
availability of known reserves of minerals--copper, nickel, 
lithium, cobalt--not just the rare earths.
    And their conclusion--and this is not an anti-renewable 
energy conclusion. It is simply an analysis, the same that was 
done by the Dutch Government at the Delft University. The world 
doesn't have enough proved reserves, not just mines----
    Mr. Palmer. Thank you.
    Mr. Mills [continuing]. Of the minerals that are needed to 
fabricate all the machines that are being contemplated right 
now.
    Mr. Palmer. And wouldn't it make more sense to utilize next 
generation nuclear, which can utilize and recycle spent fuel 
rods, instead of putting all of our eggs in this renewable 
basket?
    And it seems even dumber to me that the Biden 
administration is rejecting or rescinding permitting for a 
nickel and cobalt mine in Minnesota when we know you have to 
have that to build these facilities.
    Mr. Mills. Well----
    Mr. Palmer. Does that make sense?
    Mr. Mills [continuing]. Yeah, we need a lot more--I am a 
nuclear bull. I think there is a tremendous opportunity for 
more both small and large nuclear plants. I am also very 
bullish on literally doubling the amount of solar/wind capacity 
in America, more than tripling the battery capacities on grids. 
This is going to happen. It is useful.
    What I challenge is a future that is fully dependent on 
that, because the data don't show that is possible. Nuclear has 
a very important role in all this.
    Mr. Palmer. Well, that is the point that I wanted to make. 
And you look at what has happened in the U.K. and in Germany 
and how much household utility costs have gone up, how it has 
impacted the lives of particularly lower income people. It has 
literally created energy poverty----
    Mr. Mills. Right.
    Mr. Palmer [continuing]. In Europe and the U.K., and it has 
here to a certain extent as well.
    With that, Madam Chairman, I yield back.
    Ms. Castor. Great. Thanks, Rep. Palmer.
    And, fortunately, in the bipartisan infrastructure law, we 
were thinking ahead, and it includes some new policy direction 
on pre-siting consultation to try to avoid any problems with--
and that includes siting backstop authority for DOE, because 
there are issues when you are trying to plan interstate power 
lines and transmission lines. And I hope somebody will ask our 
experts to expand on that as well.
    Next, we will go to Rep. McEachin.
    You are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. McEachin. Thank you, Madam Chair. And, again, I want to 
thank you for your marvelous leadership of this committee and 
for having this hearing today.
    The Congress--this Congress, at least--and the Biden 
administration have taken steps through the bipartisan 
infrastructure law to increase the reliability and resilience 
of our grid in the face of extreme weather events and 
significant risks that are posed to our nation's electric grid. 
These investments are critical, and I look forward to the 
continued work with my colleagues to implement these 
investments and ensure continued efforts to make our grid more 
resilient and reliable, including those included in the Select 
Committee's Majority Staff Report.
    Ms. Sutley, environmental justice communities are on the 
front lines of the climate crisis. In your testimony, you 
explained that moving to a zero carbon grid will help reduce 
air pollution, including nitrogen oxides and fine particulate 
matter. Can you explain how this process might play out?
    Ms. Sutley. Thank you, Representative, for the question.
    Yes, we have seen here in Los Angeles--we still have the 
worst air quality in the nation. Smog and particulate matter 
pollution affects many of our communities, particularly low-
income and disadvantaged communities. But most of it right now 
is coming from the transportation sector. It is coming from the 
cars on the road, the trucks and buses and the goods movement 
coming out of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
    And so, as the grid gets cleaner and cleaner, 
electrification of those transportation sources will help to 
get rid of the largest sources of smog pollution and other 
toxic air pollution that is affecting our communities.
    So we believe that, even today, electric vehicles or other 
electric equipment, today, even with the power mix on our grid, 
is up to four times cleaner than the diesel or gasoline powered 
vehicles that are on the road today. So we are able, as we 
electrify, to address the major sources of air pollution that 
are harming our communities.
    Mr. McEachin. And let me ask you this question, ma'am, if I 
can. You know, we are trying to invest to do the very important 
work of grid resilience and grid reliability. As we do that, 
how do we also advance the cause of environmental justice?
    Ms. Sutley. Well, we are right now engaged in a community-
based and community-led effort around equity strategies as we 
implement these policies and these programs to get us to 100 
percent clean energy. We have really tried to make sure that 
all of our communities are benefiting from these investments.
    So, for example, you know, many residents in Los Angeles 
are renters. They live in apartments and can't necessarily put 
a solar panel on their roof. So we have created a shared solar 
program where apartment dwellers can take advantage of solar 
energy.
    We are also investing in electric vehicle charging 
infrastructure in disadvantaged communities. So, for example, 
we have a customer service center in the Crenshaw neighborhood 
of south Los Angeles where we have installed a number of 
electric vehicle chargers that are available to the community. 
And they are very popular and they are used all the time.
    So I think what we are trying to do is really be deliberate 
about addressing the needs of the community and taking the 
input of the community to do that.
    Mr. McEachin. Okay.
    With an organization like yours, how can this Congress or 
any Congress be a strong partner to help you in your efforts to 
advance environmental justice? In other words, what else can we 
do or what else should we be thinking about?
    Ms. Sutley. Well, as I said, the biggest, sort of, bang for 
the buck on that right now is to reduce the pollution coming 
out of our transportation sector, and electrification really 
offers a pathway to do that in a cost effective way.
    And so the investments that the Congress made in the 
bipartisan infrastructure law and contemplated in Build Back 
Better, as well, will go a long way to building both the 
charging network that will allow that large scale 
electrification of transportation and also support the vehicles 
being on the road today.
    Mr. McEachin. Thank you. I think Los Angeles is lucky to 
have you. Thank you for all your hard work.
    And, Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Ms. Sutley. Thank you.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. McEachin.
    Next up, Rep. Armstrong, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And thank you, Mr. Mills, for talking a little bit about 
the economics of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a great fuel source. The 
problem is, you can't economically scale up the electrolysis 
for green hydrogen without it being unbelievably expensive to 
consumers under current technology.
    And if you use gray hydrogen, you need to have natural gas 
as a feedstock, which, while very effective, one, doesn't help 
the carbon emissions as much and, two, it is pretty hard to 
compete with natural gas when you are using natural gas as a 
feedstock, regardless of the price of natural gas.
    But the Majority's memo for this hearing highlights a 
previous staff report that recommends backup storage as a means 
to address instances when intermittent generation sources are 
unavailable to provide electricity--essentially when the wind 
doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. And we have seen this 
argument before. Proponents of widespread renewable deployment 
advocate that batteries are the answer when those sources are 
completely offline. But this argument ignores the reality of 
our technological, material, and production limitations.
    And, Mr. Mills, when you have written on this topic, you 
have often framed the scale of this problem using the world's 
largest battery manufacturing facility, the Tesla Gigafactory 
in Nevada. Using current levels of production, approximately 
how long would it take to produce the number of batteries to 
store 2 days' worth of U.S. electricity demand?
    Mr. Mills. Well, the short answer is: centuries. Or, put 
differently, you have to increase by a hundredfold the global 
manufacturing capacity, which is not happening because it can't 
happen.
    Mr. Armstrong. Well, and your critics argue that, right, 
with additional battery facilities----
    Mr. Mills. Right.
    Mr. Armstrong [continuing]. Will be built over the next 
decade to add to this production. But it completely ignores the 
reality of global supply chains and the availability of 
essential materials like, I mean, lithium, cobalt, just to name 
a few.
    Mr. Mills. Well, that is correct. And I want to again go on 
the record of pointing out that I am reflecting observations 
about mineral supplies made by the U.N., by Geological Surveys 
in European nations, by the EU itself, by the way, and by the 
IEA's magnificently long and detailed report on the minerals 
required they published last year to very little fanfare.
    Mr. Armstrong. Well, and I say that a lot in this hearing 
and others. And I think one of the fundamental things that I 
get so frustrated with is, a lot of our policy seems to be 
outsourcing our guilt. I mean, by your admissions, right, we 
are going to have to increase lithium mining by at least 500 
percent worldwide.
    Mr. Mills. Right.
    Mr. Armstrong. And, I mean, given the regulatory hostility 
in the United States, do you think it is realistic that we can 
onshore that production?
    Mr. Mills. No. If the average time to open a new mine 
anywhere in the world is 16 years, average, the United States 
is far longer. Mines have been canceled recently. This 
administration canceled the Minnesota copper/nickel mine just a 
week and a half ago.
    So, just as a practical matter, even if we were all 
enthusiastic, as I am--I worked for a mining company in Canada 
years ago. I am bullish on mining. I think we should open more 
mines here. I think we should require more mining here as a 
condition of more green energy machines being built here. I 
think we should link them, personally. But it will take 
decades, not a few years, to expand mining capacity, not only 
here but globally.
    Mr. Armstrong. Well, and I think we are seeing that in real 
time right now, the impacts of global supply chain, with the 
United States almost entirely dependent on what I would call 
our strategic global adversaries for critical minerals.
    I mean, palladium is an essential material used for 
catalytic converters to clean auto emissions----
    Mr. Mills. Correct.
    Mr. Armstrong [continuing]. And Russia is currently the 
largest producer of palladium. In fact, they produce more than 
the next four countries combined.
    And just in the real world, how this is working today, as 
tensions on the Ukrainian border have increased over the last 2 
months, so have palladium prices, simply due to the market 
making assumptions about future access. With news this morning 
that the Russian troops near Ukraine might be returning to 
their bases, palladium slid 5 percent.
    What happens when something beyond market forces limits the 
availability or alters the price of these materials, 
particularly when they are produced by our strategic 
adversaries and we have no realistic way to onshore them?
    Mr. Mills. Well, we have a realistic way to onshore a lot 
more of it; it just takes time. That is why--I wasn't being 
facetious about going slower. We can't build these things 
faster. We have to recognize, not as a policy matter, that we 
should slow down; I think we have to recognize the velocity 
with which global-scale mining and manufacturing can expand to 
our aspirations. We should expand them. I think we should try 
to accelerate them. But I don't think they can go at the pace 
people imagine.
    America has plenty of minerals. The United States just 
hasn't had the appetite to provide the right incentives to 
expand mineral processing and mining. And both are required, 
not just the mining, but the very difficult chemical processing 
that happens after you dig up the rocks is something else that 
we are not a very friendly nation to the expansion of those 
kinds of industries.
    Mr. Armstrong. And I agree with that. I mean, we have a lot 
of lignite coal in North Dakota. We have a lot of people who 
would do a really good job of getting that out of the ground. 
It also happens to be pretty high in rare earth metals. But I--
and my dad used to tell me this when we were hunting when I was 
a kid. He said, ``Slow is steady, and steady is fast.''
    And, with that, I will yield back.
    Ms. Castor. Okay. Thank you.
    Next up, Rep. Levin, you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Levin. Well, thank you very much, Chair Castor.
    I wanted to start off with what I believe has been a great 
California success story, and that is the expansion of rooftop 
solar in the State of California.
    And, Ms. Sutley, it is good to see you. I will start with 
you.
    I think as you know, across California we now have 1.3 
million Californians who have installed a total of about 10 
gigawatts of rooftop and home-based solar.
    And, in your testimony, you referenced how NREL recently 
completed its ``LA100'' study, which examines various scenarios 
for how Los Angeles can reach 100 percent carbon free energy by 
2035. The study covers how L.A. alone has over 13 gigawatts of 
solar rooftop potential, over half of which is the residential 
sector.
    Can you discuss the role that rooftop solar, coupled with 
energy storage, needs to play for L.A. to meet its clean energy 
and grid resilience goals?
    Ms. Sutley. Thank you, Representative Levin. Nice to see 
you. I appreciate the question.
    Yeah, there is no question that rooftop solar will play an 
important role in us meeting our clean energy goals. Los 
Angeles is proud to be the number one solar city in the 
country, and we have long supported our customers in embracing 
rooftop solar through the California Solar Initiative and solar 
incentive programs.
    We have a feed in tariff program that really looks at, sort 
of, a power purchase agreement with us, you know, to 
incentivize solar on, for example, warehouse roofs--we have a 
lot of those in Los Angeles--as well as recognizing, as I 
mentioned, that 60 percent of our residents live in multifamily 
dwellings, and so we have to design other kinds of solar 
programs to ensure that folks can access the benefits of solar 
energy through our shared solar program as well as the solar 
rooftop leasing program to basically lease people's roofs for 
solar that they might otherwise not be able to afford to put on 
their own roof.
    So it has been a very successful program, but I think it 
recognizes, and the NREL study recognizes, that we need that 
local generating capacity here in the Los Angeles Basin. We do 
get a lot of our power imported. That has been going on now for 
many decades. It used to be coal plants in Arizona and Nevada 
and Utah, and now, increasingly, solar and wind coming from 
other parts of California as well as from other Western states. 
And we do have the transmission to support that.
    But, really, for that, to maintain resilience and 
reliability, we need local sources of generation, including 
rooftop solar. And we are fortunate in Los Angeles we have, you 
know, 350-plus days of sunshine a year, and it makes it an 
ideal place to really make rooftop solar a critical part of our 
energy future.
    Mr. Levin. Fantastic. Thank you for that.
    And I am glad that the California PUC has indefinitely 
postponed its changes to net metering. Because I want to make 
sure that, as we look at the Federal level to make investments 
in clean energy, California continues to adopt policies that 
really keep rooftop solar deployment growing rather than 
undermining that growth.
    Ms. Hamilton, I will turn to you. It is nice to see you. As 
my colleagues have discussed, the bipartisan infrastructure law 
included a lot of funding to modernize our grid and to advance 
energy storage. In your testimony, you discussed how the 
Investment Tax Credit included in the House Build Back Better 
Act would help drive down the cost of energy storage and solar 
and transmission.
    I would also like to note the inclusion of direct pay 
provisions. I have been advocating for that, really building on 
something that Earl Blumenauer and I introduced, the Renewable 
Energy Investment Act. Direct pay, I think, is particularly 
important as we continue our economic recovery, since the 
volatility driven by the pandemic has made it more challenging 
to finance clean energy projects.
    With the time I have left, could you elaborate on why this 
is all critical, these tax policies are critical, in building 
grid resilience?
    Ms. Hamilton. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for the 
question, Mr. Levin.
    The tax credits will send a signal to the private market. 
And direct pay is incredibly important for those people who do 
not have a tax burden. And so, as you are talking about rooftop 
solar, there is a 10 percent bonus credit for rooftop solar for 
people in low-income communities, and there is a 20 percent for 
community solar for low income communities. That is incredibly 
important. And direct pay will help those people who don't have 
tax burdens to be able to take advantage of those kinds of 
systems.
    The other thing is, for energy storage, you know, there are 
a lot of technologies other than batteries. There are long-
duration storage projects, including in Mr. Carter's State of 
Georgia. Georgia Power is proposing in their Integrated 
Resource Plan to install a long-duration storage battery that 
will accommodate seasonal storage. That is the kind of project 
that will also benefit from a tax credit.
    And there are investors--and I have worked for a private 
equity company before--who will say, this means we are ready to 
invest and we are ready to move forward on these technologies. 
So having the Tax Code signal that to the private sector is 
really crucial.
    Mr. Levin. Thank you.
    I am out of time, but I thank you both for your leadership.
    And I will yield back, Chair.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. Levin.
    Next, Rep. Crenshaw, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 
Welcome.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And thank you to the witnesses.
    You know, I just want to address this notion that we should 
sprint to what are inherently unreliable forms of weather 
energy. And the narrative goes something like this: we have to 
sprint there because there is a crisis and it is an emergency.
    And I would challenge my colleagues to point out where in 
the U.N. IPCC report it says there is a climate crisis. It does 
say, there are costs. The costs are about 4 percent of global 
GDP, and by the year 2100 that is 4 percent less than it 
otherwise would be. That is not nothing, but it is pretty close 
to nothing.
    The recent statement by the New York Federal Reserve stated 
very clearly, after researching this topic extensively, that 
the costs of the proposed climate policies are far greater than 
the costs of climate change itself.
    So we don't want to debate climate change here, but we do 
have to get at the actual facts and what the consensus, the 
scientific consensus, dictated by the United Nations, actually 
says. Because that informs our thinking moving forward. It 
informs our solutions. And it actually tells us it is pretty 
good news. You don't have to sprint to unreliable energy.
    Let's take a look at Texas. Texas has 30 gigawatts of wind 
capacity. That is enough to power the whole state. Now, the 
thing is, when the weather gets really bad and it freezes--and, 
by the way, it didn't just freeze in Texas; in surrounding 
states, too, they also couldn't get power. So let's just--that 
is to dispute the notion that if we were just connected to the 
grid everything would be fine. That is not necessarily true. 
But guess what? Wind didn't really work very well. It wasn't 
windy. Some of the turbines froze.
    So it was actually producing about 6 percent of the total 
generation needed. That meant that coal, gas, nuclear had to 
provide an outsized amount. The problem wasn't underinvestments 
in that baseload energy. We have to accept that fact before we 
move on.
    And then we have to accept the next fact: Our goal is to 
reduce carbon emissions, not just keep the oil in the ground. 
It is to reduce the carbon emissions because, we agree, it does 
have an effect on the climate in the long term.
    So, Mr. Mills, I am going to ask you a set of very simple 
questions, and please provide simple answers.
    Does the grid become more stable or less stable when more 
intermittent power sources are put into it?
    Mr. Mills. Less stable, but harder to manage.
    Mr. Crenshaw. It is certainly harder to manage.
    Can solar or wind power the grid 100 percent of the time?
    Mr. Mills. There is no scenario where that is reasonably 
feasible at any price.
    Mr. Crenshaw. But they say they can put batteries in place. 
I mean, how many batteries would you need to do something like 
that?
    Mr. Mills. Can't build enough batteries. You could do other 
things. There are other forms of storage. They are all 
expensive. Pumped hydro is the cheapest, then compressed air. 
All cost more money than storing oil in the ground, gas in the 
ground, or piles of coal near a power plant, by factors of 10 
to 100.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Yeah. There are some interesting statistics 
on how much batteries would be needed. I think that Tesla's 
Gigafactory in Nevada can make 35 gigawatts of battery capacity 
each year. That would be 46 years of production to make up what 
Texas would have needed if we were on a 100 percent electrical 
grid.
    Here is another question. Does our current permitting 
system even allow a wide-scale increase in building out things 
like transmission lines that would be required for this all 
solar/all wind kind of scenario?
    Mr. Mills. No, it doesn't. I think we need to fix a lot of 
things in the regulatory system, and NEPA itself is an 
impediment to an awful lot of different structure expansion, as 
everyone knows.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Can you make the materials that go into wind 
and solar without fossil fuels?
    Mr. Mills. No. The world's capacity to make mined minerals 
is dependent on oil, coal, and gas. The path to decarbonizing 
that sector is even longer than the path to, quote, 
``decarbonizing the grid.''
    Mr. Crenshaw. And if America ceased all fossil fuel 
production, where would we get the raw materials and chemicals 
that go into everyday products--I mean, biomedical devices, our 
computers, our phones, literally everything that we use?
    Mr. Mills. Well, you are referring to the use of 
hydrocarbons or oil for petrochemicals.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Uh huh.
    Mr. Mills. Well, you could, in theory, synthesize them from 
biofuels. That is possible. That would require an expansion of 
epic proportions that no one can imagine doing and at great 
costs. Or you don't produce the stuff. You go back to using 
wood, leather, you know, glass, instead of plastics.
    Mr. Crenshaw. And, more importantly, if we don't produce 
them, somebody is going to produce them. So, if countries with 
poor environmental regulations produce these products----
    Mr. Mills. Correct.
    Mr. Crenshaw [continuing]. Do global emissions go up or do 
they go down?
    Mr. Mills. They go up. And they have been going up. In 
fact, we already know that the IEA has pointed out that the 
pursuit of greater mineral supplies for green energies is 
leading to higher energy use per unit of mineral produced and 
higher emissions. We are just exporting emissions.
    Mr. Crenshaw. Well, I am out of time. We could do this all 
day. Thank you, Mr. Mills.
    Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I yield back.
    Ms. Castor. Rep. Casten, you are up next. You are 
recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    I am sitting here listening, and I have to be honest, I am 
just getting sad. We have real problems, the rest of the world 
is dealing with problems, and we are just having this 
conversation across party lines about fictions. If for the last 
30 years one major political party had been screaming from the 
rooftop that two plus two equals five, two plus two would still 
equal four. And yet here we are.
    So, you know, I am in this lonely position as an devout 
free market environmentalist. And the reality--which I can't 
believe I even have to say this--is, what the private sector 
does is it finds a place to build low-cost stuff where they can 
sell it at a higher price.
    And it has been a tremendous success since we deregulated 
our markets that the private sector did exactly that. It built 
all this low cost generation. The days of coal fired power are 
over because it is an economic dog. We don't have oil fired 
peakers anymore to any significant degree in the system because 
they are economic dogs. The simple cycle gas turbines are gone, 
the steam side gas turbines. That has been wonderful for 
consumers because it has all been squeezed out by stuff that is 
both cleaner and cheaper.
    But it does create real problems. And we should be working 
on a bipartisan basis to break those real problems. Because we 
now are at a point where 40 percent of the U.S. power grid is 
being served--on a kilowatt hour basis, is being served by 
sources that have effectively no marginal operating cost, about 
half from renewables, half from nuclear. I am saying nuclear 
has no marginal operating cost because the fuel is more like a 
capital cost there. But it is creating this situation where 
wholesale markets are basically broke in this country.
    We have lots of zero marginal cost generation, 40 percent 
of the whole market, that is a price taker, in a market that 
was designed to clear where supply and demand balance out. And 
so now we have markets that are going into negative prices for 
long periods, where it is confusing structures.
    And this is a fixable problem. And it is a wonderful 
problem. We have caused huge value to flow to consumers. But 
the value is not flowing to investors. We are seeing in places 
like Illinois and Ohio where we have had political scandals 
because people are trying to say, can we get taxpayers to bail 
out the nuclear plants because ratepayers just aren't giving 
enough money to pay for them?
    And so my question--and I will start with you, Ms. 
Hamilton, but I hope we have time for Ms. Sutley as well.
    What kind of wholesale market reforms do we need to make 
sure that in a grid that is increasingly dominated by very low 
cost, sometimes zero-cost generation sources, we still have the 
incentives in place that are necessary to build the generation 
and the transmission to bring those to load?
    Because our problem is not that power prices are too high; 
it is that they are too low.
    Ms. Hamilton. Thank you so much, Mr. Casten. And, unlike 
you, I am happy, not sad, because I see so many solutions out 
there, and I think it is completely doable. And I am also very 
much about markets and about, you know, free enterprise and 
making sure that you set up the right signals.
    So the good news is FERC does have Order 2222, which is 
starting to be implemented right now, to try to bring in 
customer sited resources to actually be compensated for the 
value that they bring to the grid.
    I think, as you mentioned, internalizing externalities like 
greenhouse gas emissions, like resilience, making sure that it 
is valued and that that value is then passed along in the just 
and reasonable rates and market products that FERC then 
oversees.
    So making sure that we actually set up all of those signals 
is incredibly important. And FERC is the perfect agency to do 
that because they build the record. They take evidence that is 
real and that they get from all kinds of stakeholders, and then 
they sift through the evidence, and they make decisions based 
on what is right for the customer.
    And I think we are in a really good place right now, 
because I think we have those solutions. I think the private 
sector wants to come to the table, and the private sector wants 
nothing more than to deploy them and be compensated for what 
they can build.
    Mr. Casten. Well, I am delighted to hear you say that, 
because, as you know, my Energy PRICE Act would actually direct 
FERC to do exactly that.
    Ms. Hamilton. Exactly.
    Mr. Casten. Because they have got this issue: How are we 
going to deploy the right generation to get the incentives?
    Ms. Sutley, any comments you want to add to that?
    Ms. Sutley. Yeah, just a couple of things.
    First of all, because we are a California utility, we 
actually do have to consider the price of carbon in our 
dispatch order, as well as basically paying for the carbon that 
is imbedded in any of our wholesale transactions. We are not 
FERC jurisdictional for our wholesale transactions.
    The second that I would mention is, while we are not a 
member of the California ISO and we are not FERC 
jurisdictional, we do participate in a couple of the markets 
that have been established by the California ISO to address 
exactly the problem that you have mentioned. So we are 
participating in both the energy and balance market and the 
energy day ahead market. So, when that low-cost renewable or 
negative-price renewables are available, there is now a market 
in the West to take advantage of that. And we are glad to be a 
part of it.
    Thank you.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you.
    And I see I am out of time. I yield back.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. Casten.
    Next, Ranking Member Graves, you are recognized for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Graves. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Mr. Casten, I think the concern is that folks have been out 
there declaring two plus two equals five, then legislating on 
the false narrative, which is even more concerning.
    Mr. Mills, I wanted to ask you: Dan Brouillette, the former 
Energy Secretary, made a comment. He said, ``America's energy 
and economic security, and therefore its national security, 
depends upon this vital flow of uninterrupted power. Modern 
civilization rests on the foundation that a resilient and 
secure electrical grid provides.''
    But you recently wrote in an article, California Governor 
Gavin Newsom issued emergency orders to procure more natural 
gas-fired electricity capacity to avoid blackouts. And in a 
possible sign of more such moves to come, earlier in the 
summer, California's electric grid operator 'stole' electricity 
that Arizona utilities had purchased that was in transit from 
Oregon.''
    Can you expand on that a little bit and just briefly 
summarize what happened there?
    Mr. Mills. I was----
    Mr. Graves. And perhaps the implication on California's 
reliability to the grid?
    Mr. Mills. Thank you, Congressman. And I hope I used air 
quotes, as they say, over the word ``stole'' because----
    Mr. Graves. Yes, you did.
    Mr. Mills [continuing]. They were legally entitled to usurp 
the power that was in transit from hydro dams north of 
California to Arizona, which were contracted by the Arizona 
utility. I think those contracts will be written differently in 
the future by the two counter parties, recognizing that those 
clauses exist.
    Look, California is an interesting state. You know, it 
imports, on average, over the year 30 percent of its 
electricity, according to the Cal ISO. So it is very dependent 
on the grid in the region for the availability of dispatchable 
power.
    So the challenge in both transmitting power, whether it is 
from a hydro dam, which can be dispatched as long as you don't 
have a drought--you could dispatch power from a hydro dam, from 
a coal plant, from a gas plant, even from a nuclear plant. You 
can dispatch power from a battery.
    But to keep lights on, the feature of the grid that is 
really important--and this is what California was dealing 
with--is they needed power at that particular moment that was 
coming across their lines contracted elsewhere, so they took 
it.
    Arizona was able to survive the loss of that power, and 
they were paid for it, because they had access to other power 
which was dispatchable, which is sort of a key point I am 
making.
    I happen to agree with Congressman Casten. We really are in 
desperate need for restructuring how we look at the electric 
grids, because marginal cost power does disrupt things, but 
recognizing how you price dispatchable power is also critical. 
We haven't done that either.
    Mr. Graves. Thank you. Thank you.
    Chair Sutley, nice to see you again. I worked with you in 
Louisiana, and I still run into Mike Boots every once in a 
while. I hope you are doing well.
    I have a question. I know that the Los Angeles Department 
of Water and Power owns and imports its electricity from 
Intermountain Power Station in Delta, Utah. In total, 62 
percent of Los Angeles' electricity comes from natural gas, 
nuclear, and coal. The coal plant has been L.A.'s single 
largest power source for about three decades, supplying one-
third of the city's electricity----between one-fifth and one-
third of the city's supply of electricity.
    Now, your city has set a goal of 100 percent carbon free by 
2035, but 27 percent of Los Angeles' power currently comes from 
natural gas. Looking at some of the high cost of electricity in 
Los Angeles already, what kind of costs are you going to thrust 
on your payers by forcing this conversion by 2035 to 100 
percent carbon free?
    Ms. Sutley. Thank you, Ranking Member Graves. And nice to 
see you too.
    Well, first of all, with respect to the Intermountain Power 
Plant, it has served Los Angeles well for 30 years or more, but 
it is going to close in 2025. The original plan was to replace 
it with a smaller natural gas combustion combined cycle plant. 
And we have the contracts in place for combustion turbines that 
will burn up to 30 percent green hydrogen on the--or hydrogen 
on the day that they are turned on. So we expect Intermountain 
Power to continue to play an important role, just in a 
different way.
    But----
    Mr. Graves. But have you all run price models looking at 
the additional costs that your consumers will be impacted by?
    Ms. Sutley. So, as part of the ``LA100'' study, the NREL 
did look at costs, and this is going to require significant 
investment.
    They also pointed out that it was possible and probably 
advisable to ensure that we are investing in electrification of 
end users, because that will increase electricity sales and 
increase the number of customers' kilowatt hours that those 
costs are spread over. So that has a double benefit for our 
customers, both in terms of reduced air pollution but also in 
terms of mitigation of rate impacts.
    So, right now, we are going through the financial analysis 
for our rates. We have not had a base rate increase in a number 
of years, and we are looking at that right now. But we continue 
to meet all our financial metrics and are looking at ways to 
ensure that we can do this transition in an affordable way.
    Thank you for the question.
    Mr. Graves. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    And, Madam Chair, if you don't mind, I want to clarify 
something earlier. I heard you all raise concerns about 
comments made by Mrs. Miller, and I did want to just be very 
clear for the record: She did not say that anyone was anti-
American. We went back and listened. She clearly stated that 
she was advocating for policies that were anti-American energy 
policies, so, in other words, anti-domestic energy production. 
And I wanted to be clear that----
    Ms. Castor. Hey, we are all about domestic energy in this 
hearing today, so----
    Mr. Graves. Okay. I just wanted to be clear that nobody was 
called anti-American and that she did clearly say anti American 
energy. So I just wanted to clarify that to make sure that 
there was no ill will among committee members.
    Ms. Castor. All right. Thank you----
    Mr. Graves. Thank you.
    Ms. Castor [continuing]. Ranking Member Graves.
    Next, we will go to Rep. Neguse.
    And I have to say, Rep. Neguse, we are still thinking about 
all of your neighbors, that the wildfires that swept through 
the Boulder area are still very fresh in everyone's minds. And 
you are recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Neguse. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, first, for 
holding this important and timely hearing on ensuring the 
reliability and the resiliency of our electric grid, and also 
for your very kind words and, of course, the words that I have 
heard from colleagues on both sides of the aisle over the 
course of the last few months as we have dealt with a very 
difficult series of fires here in our community. I certainly 
appreciate it, as does my community.
    And as you noted, Chairwoman Castor, my district in 
Colorado has experienced some of the most devastating wildfires 
in the history of our state, all over the course of the last 15 
months, from the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome Fires in 
2020 that were the first and second largest fires in state 
history, to the most recent Marshall Fire that destroyed more 
than 1,000 homes and became the most destructive fire in our 
state's history.
    And many of you traveled to Colorado for the field hearing 
that we held in Boulder over 2 years ago, pre-pandemic, and 
during that hearing had an opportunity to visit these same 
communities that have now been besieged by wildfires. So many 
homes destroyed in the blaze that occurred on December 30th, 
which is far later than what would be typically considered fire 
season.
    And as we have frequently discussed in this committee, 
climate change is only increasing the severity and the 
frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters like 
wildfires and, as I said, has caused I think all of us, 
collectively, to reconsider what we previously considered to be 
fire season. It clearly now goes all year long here in Colorado 
and across the Rocky Mountain West.
    And we have to ensure that our infrastructure is prepared 
for these events, which is why today's hearing is certainly so 
critical for me.
    It is also why we introduced with Senator Wyden last year 
the Disaster Safe Power Grid Act. I was glad to see some of the 
investments that we called for in that bill included in the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or the bipartisan 
infrastructure law, to ensure our electric grid infrastructure 
is prepared to withstand future disasters and wildfires. And I 
appreciate the conversation about the particular benefits of 
that bill that Chair Castor noted and articulated earlier 
during the course of today's hearing.
    I want to talk about a particular issue that is certainly 
percolating here in our community as a byproduct of the 
Marshall Fire and the rebuilding process that we are now deeply 
engaged in. It is important that we support efforts to build 
back better in the wake of disasters like those that my 
district experienced, and we are working hard on those efforts 
right now, particularly in the wake of the Marshall Fire.
    Ms. Hamilton, you have talked a bit about this during the 
course of the hearing but also in your written testimony, about 
the importance of directly investing in physical structures, 
such as homes and buildings, to reduce the risk of damage 
during a natural disaster.
    I wonder if you might be able to expound a bit on whether 
you think the Federal Government should provide incentives for 
homeowners to rebuild zero or lower-emission homes with 
electric appliances and equipment after disasters and how you 
believe that might help fight the climate crisis.
    Ms. Hamilton. Absolutely. That is such a great question, 
because often everything stems from the home, and, you know, 
what do we need to make those resilient? So making sure that 
the insulation is strong, that the roofing is strong.
    In fact, there is an organization in Florida called the 
Solar Energy Loan Fund that has found that, if they harden the 
roof, it reduces--this is in the case of hurricane, but it 
could certainly happen with any natural disaster--if they 
harden the roof, they are able to put solar on, reduce 
insurance costs that then pay for the solar.
    This can happen in communities all over in very different 
ways. In Louisiana, the company PosiGen does, first, energy 
audits and then installs solar, so that immediately you can 
start seeing the benefits of reduced energy costs, while making 
sure that you have that power--if you install solar and you 
have a backup battery, you will have the power there in case of 
any kind of fire.
    But, even more importantly, Mr. Neguse, is we need to plan. 
We need visibility. We need technologies that allow us to 
understand when something is going to happen, whether that is 
on the transmission side or the distribution side, and be able 
to react in a resilient way and plan for these instances.
    So maybe not everybody is going to be able to withstand an 
instance like this, but maybe you can have community centers--
microgrids that allow communities to continue running really 
critical facilities for neighborhoods so that there is 
someplace to go in case of an event like this.
    Mr. Neguse. Well, your insights are certainly very helpful. 
And our office is very interested in pursuing this further and 
potentially introducing legislation on the same, in terms of 
Federal rebates that might be brought to bear for consumers.
    And I see that I am running out of time. Dr. Wayland, I 
would just say I very much appreciated your testimony, in 
particular the smart technologies that you described that can 
predict problems on transmission lines before they can start 
wildfires.
    We recently had a wildfire in the northern part of my 
district, far smaller, but in Estes Park, that was caused in 
part by a downed power line. And it is clear that those smart 
technologies are crucial for my communities, for communities 
across the State of Colorado and, indeed, across the Rocky 
Mountain West, as wildfires become more pervasive here. So I 
look forward to continuing to work on that issue as well.
    And, with that, I yield back the balance of my time, Madam 
Chair.
    Ms. Castor. Thank you, Rep. Neguse.
    And thanks to all of our witnesses for your outstanding 
testimony today.
    I am going to go to the Ranking Member, if he wants to make 
a unanimous consent request.
    Mr. Graves, Rep. Graves, do you have any documents----
    Mr. Graves. Yes, ma'am.
    Ms. Castor [continuing]. For the record?
    Mr. Graves. I have two documents.
    Number one is a EIA report titled ``Oil fired generators 
helped meet electric demand in New England this January.'' And 
the second one is ``Big but affordable effort needed for 
America to reach net-zero emissions by 2050,'' which is a 
Princeton study, and just talking about two of the issues that 
I cited earlier.
    So I would ask unanimous consent that those be included in 
the record.
    Ms. Castor. All right. Without objection.
    [The information follows:]

                       Submissions for the Record

                      Representative Garret Graves

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                           February 15, 2022

ATTACHMENT: Brown, M. Tyson, ``Oil-fired generators helped meet 
        electric demand in New England this January,'' U.S. Energy 
        Information Administration (EIA), 2022, 10 February.
This report is retained in the committee files and available at:
        https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=51238
ATTACHMENT: : E. Larson, C. Greig, J. Jenkins, E. Mayfield, A. Pascale, 
        C. Zhang, J. Drossman, R. Williams, S. Pacala, R. Socolow, EJ 
        Baik, R. Birdsey, R. Duke, R. Jones, B. Haley, E. Leslie, K. 
        Paustian, and A. Swan, Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, 
        Infrastructure, and Impacts, Final report, Princeton 
        University, Princeton, NJ, 29 October 2021.
This report is retained in the committee files and available at:
        https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/the-report

    Ms. Castor. And, without objection, I would like to enter 
into the record a February 2022 report from Grid Strategies 
titled ``The One Year Anniversary of Winter Storm Uri: Lessons 
Learned and the Continued Need for Large Scale Transmission''; 
two, a July 2021 report from the American Council on Renewable 
Energy and the Macro Grid Initiative titled ``Transmission 
Makes the Power System Resilient to Extreme Weather''; and, 
three, a February 2022 report from Environment America titled 
``Rooftop Solar and the 2021 Texas Power Crisis: Exploring 
Small Scale Solar's Potential to Improve Grid Resilience During 
a Deep Freeze Event.''
    [The information follows:]

                       Submissions for the Record

                      Representative Kathy Castor

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                           February 15, 2022

ATTACHMENT: Goggin, M. and Schneider, J., The One-Year Anniversary of 
        Winter Storm Uri: Lessons Learned and the Continued Need for 
        Large-Scale Transmission, Grid Strategies, 2022, 13 February.
This report is retained in the committee files and available at:
        https://gridprogress.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/the-one-year-
        anniversary-of-winter-storm-uri-lessons-learned-and-the-
        continued-need-for-large-scale-
        transmission.pdf
ATTACHMENT: Goggin, M., Transmission Makes the Power System Resilient 
        to Extreme Weather, Grid Strategies, American Council on 
        Renewable Energy (ACORE), and the Macro Grid Initiative, 2021 
        July.
This report is retained in the committee files and available at:
        https://acore.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/GS_Resilient-
        Transmission_proof.pdf
ATTACHMENT: Searson, E., Dutzik, T., and Huxley-Reicher, B., Rooftop 
        Solar and the 2021 Texas Power Crisis: Exploring Small-Scale 
        Solar's Potential to Improve Grid Resilience During a Deep 
        Freeze Event, Environment America Research & Policy Center and 
        the Frontier Group, 2022 February.
This report is retained in the committee files and available at:
        https://environmentamericacenter.org/sites/environment/files/
        reports/
        Rooftop%20solar%20and%20the%202021%20Texas%20power%20crisis.pdf

    Ms. Castor. You know, this was a very important hearing. 
And I think we again have to let the American people know that 
we hear you. We are overwhelmed, watching these climate fueled 
disasters, whether it is the deadly winter storm in Texas or 
floods in the Midwest, like Tennessee,--or I see Rep. 
Bonamici--the deadly heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, the 
wildfires everywhere, and we are doing something about it.
    Thankfully, this bipartisan infrastructure law gives us new 
resources to work with the Biden administration to make our 
grid more reliable and resilient. And if we can now work to 
expand clean energy and reduce pollution, create jobs, and 
lower costs for consumers, that is what we aim to do here.
    So thank you all for participating in this hearing.
    And the committee hearing is adjourned.
    Thank you.
    [Whereupon, at 4:35 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

                 United States House of Representatives

                 Select Committee on the Climate Crisis

                      Hearing on February 15, 2022

                        ``Keeping the Lights on:

            Strategies for Grid Resilience and Reliability''

                 Responses to Questions for the Record

                       The Honorable Nancy Sutley

  Senior Assistant General Manager of External and Regulatory Affairs

                      Chief Sustainability Officer

                Los Angeles Department of Water & Power

                       the honorable kathy castor
    1.  From your perspective at LADWP, could you please describe the 
costs of inaction on climate change? How would capital investments now 
to help transition to 100% clean energy by 2035 achieve greater 
benefits for your service territory as compared to the status quo?

    The negative impacts of climate change include, but are not limited 
to, the ability of LADWP to maintain resource adequacy, rising 
temperatures increasing customer electricity demand, accelerated 
degradation of critical transmission/distribution equipment resulting 
in more frequent outages, and our ability to serve load during 
transmission outages which may become more frequent due to wildfires. 
The cost of inaction on climate change would be the continued adverse 
health effects on the citizens of Los Angeles from PM2.5 and NOx 
emissions due to a lack of investment in significantly decarbonizing 
the transportation sector. Climate change is also affecting water 
supply in Los Angeles--we are experiencing more frequent and longer 
drought cycles.
    These impacts led to action by state and local government entities 
and the investment in the Los Angeles 100% Renewable Study (LA100) 
completed in March 2021, in partnership with the National Renewable 
Energy Laboratory (NREL). The LA100 Study analyzed and quantified the 
capital investments necessary for transitioning to 100% carbon free by 
2035 to achieve greater benefits for LADWP's service territory, 
relative to the status quo to meet the requirements of California 
Senate Bill 100 and avoid these costs of inaction.\1\ As discussed in 
my testimony, the LA100 Study evaluated multiple pathways and costs to 
achieve a 100% renewable electricity supply. The study considered 
electrifying key end uses while maintaining a high degree of 
reliability, quantified the reductions in GHG emissions contributing to 
climate change and local air quality and resulting health impacts. It 
also evaluated the economic and employment impacts to our community.
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    \1\ https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/los-angeles-100-percent-
renewable-study.html
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    Through a zero-carbon electricity grid, LADWP will help spur 
decarbonization efforts across multiple end users, including the 
transportation and building sectors. Significant capital investments to 
enable LADWP's vision of becoming a carbon free utility by 2035 will 
yield several benefits, including, but not limited to, reducing 
greenhouse gas emissions, improving local air quality, and providing 
clean electricity to fuel transportation and buildings.

    2.  The United States is blessed with affordable and abundant 
renewable energy resources, but they are often located far away from 
densely populated cities. Upgrading and expanding our electric grid 
could help ensure that every American can access clean energy. The 
Biden Administration has already launched an initiative to use existing 
rights-of-way to site transmission to make this easier. In your 
testimony, you mentioned the need for transmission investments.

                a.  How would Federal investments to upgrade and expand 
                transmission help LADWP improve electric grid 
                reliability and resilience as you transition to 100% 
                clean energy?

    Federal investment can assist in bringing renewable resources to 
load centers. Renewable energy resources, for the most part, are 
resource dependent and location specific. Federal investments would 
help meet the need to expand transmission system to access low-cost 
renewable energy resources. To transition to 100% renewable energy 
resources, LADWP will consider two critical elements as part of its 
strategic transmission plan:

          Siting a variety of resources in diverse regions to 
        ensure reliability during unfavorable weather conditions.
          Funding for multiple transmission corridors to 
        increase operational flexibility and to minimize the risks 
        caused by system failure, wildfires, and other unforeseen 
        events.

    As such, using Federal investments would enable LADWP to meet those 
two elements by upgrading existing transmission corridors making the 
system more efficient and reliable. It will also create an opportunity 
for increased economic, environmental, and consumer benefits as we 
thrive toward 100% clean energy.

                b.  How would upgrading and expanding the electric grid 
                help consumers save money on electric bills?

    As a publicly owned utility, our focus is on delivering reliable, 
cost-efficient electricity while also transitioning the generation mix 
to decarbonized resources. Upgrading and expanding the electric grid on 
various levels--transmission, sub-transmission, and distribution--
increases access and delivery of low-cost renewables and energy storage 
resources outside of LADWP's service territory, and provides access to 
customer-side, distributed energy resource options for customers to 
save money on their bills (e.g. local solar, demand response, and 
energy efficiency).
    Bolstering the electric grid to support widespread adoption of 
transportation and building electrification also translates to overall 
customer cost savings by increasing electricity sales that can cover 
more of the fixed costs to support the delivery of electricity 
resulting in lower electricity rates.
    To meet the growing need, LADWP must upgrade at least ten (10) 
major internal transmission lines with the LA Basin over the next 10 
years, expand the in-service ratings of several existing lines, and 
coordinate with other utilities and private developers to obtain access 
to renewable and storage resources. To date, LADWP has worked with 
developers and successfully entered into power purchase agreements for 
some of the largest and most cost-effective renewable energy and energy 
storage projects in the country.

                c.  How would the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 
                initiative to use existing rights-of-way facilitate 
                transmission development without compromising 
                environmental protections?

    The use of existing transmission infrastructure to pivot from 
fossil fuel generation to renewable energy integration will be vital in 
reaching the 100% clean energy goals. Implementation of the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law (P.L. 117-58, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) aims to 
accelerate building and upgrading thousands of miles of transmission 
lines to improve reliability, reduce energy costs and facilitate the 
expansion of clean energy. LADWP has initiated that process with such 
programs as the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) through the upgrade 
of the associated High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Southern 
Transmission System (STS). This upgrade is required due to the IPP 
generation facility transitioning from large base-load coal units to 
green hydrogen/natural gas generating units, allowing greater 
integration with variable renewable energy in the Utah area and 
transmitted to the greater Los Angeles area.
    The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law's ability to make funds, grants, 
and investment assistance available to support these conversions, in 
addition to assisting in streamlining the permitting process, will move 
the resiliency and reliability of transmission systems at a much 
quicker pace. Additionally, with some of these resources, we hope that 
the Power Marketing Agencies will upgrade their transmission systems.

    3.  Energy efficiency is a critically important near-term strategy 
because it can help Americans save money on their household energy 
bills and on their transportation fuels as well as reduce carbon 
pollution. In your testimony, you highlighted the Comprehensive 
Multifamily Retrofit program for deep energy savings for residents 
living in multifamily units. Could you please help us understand how 
energy efficiency also helps improve grid reliability and resilience to 
power interruptions and other disruptive events?

    We agree, energy efficiency (EE) saves customers money on their 
electric bills and helps manage the peaks and base load generation.
    LADWP anticipates that the electrification of the transportation 
sector will grow demand and EE is a cost-effective way to balance the 
system. With careful planning & targeted EE efforts, these anticipated 
effects may be mitigated. The visual below demonstrates how EE may 
counter the effects of Building Electrification (BE) load growth in the 
residential sector and interactions of various layers of Distributed 
Energy Resources (DER) to the distribution system. Specifically, these 
graphs demonstrate that additive properties of EE & DR in load 
constrained areas yield beneficial results. The avoidance of 
overloading the system capacity and avoidance of grid interruptions 
provides for a more reliable and resilient grid.

                  PEV Charging Loads (weekday/weekend)
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

Source: CEC & NREL

    Furthermore, EE efforts, in the way of incentives, outreach, 
education and community partnerships, raise awareness and accelerate 
consumer adoption of new technologies that enable connected demand 
responsive/flexible load appliances and devices within the household. 
For example, the introduction of economic incentives for Smart 
Thermostats resulted in increased adoption rates. Demand Response (DR) 
programs provide the ability to reduce demand during system wide high pe
ak periods.
    EE is a fundamental part of LADWP's DER strategy and will continue 
to be innovated/optimized over time to maximize its benefits to 
customers and the utility in its efforts to increase reliability of its 
grid services.

    4.  In your testimony, you referenced a grid resilience project at 
the Green Meadows Recreation Center in South Los Angeles that provided 
solar panels, energy storage, and EV charging in a disadvantaged 
community. In your view, how would the EV charging investments in the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law help achieve LADWP goals?

    The programs funded or created in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 
will help LADWP meet decarbonization goals, strengthen equity 
initiatives and reduce transportation-related emissions. More details 
on these goals are:

          Federal investments--including investments in clean 
        energy and energy efficiency, clean transit, and pollution 
        reduction--help LADWP reduce carbon and other tailpipe 
        emissions, improving air quality for the entire region.
          The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will help 
        accelerate the adoption of and confidence in electric vehicles, 
        including for those who cannot reliably charge at home

    Additional resources, through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, 
help support the development of convenient, accessible, reliable, and 
equitable EV charging.

          The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law helps achieve LADWP 
        goals by further reaching the needs of historically 
        marginalized and underserved communities within our service 
        territory.
          Federal funding can help bring opportunities for 
        innovative financial and technological solutions to increase 
        access to home charging in multi-family residences and 
        community-based charging solutions in underserved areas, 
        including disadvantaged communities. Federal funding helps 
        achieve quantifiable improvements in EV adoption, charging 
        access, reliability, and consumer confidence in EVs.

    5.  In your testimony, you discussed Federal financing tools for 
clean energy and resilience investments. Could you please describe how 
the Federal government can encourage more private sector investment in 
electricity infrastructure that is clean, reliable, and resilient?

    LADWP supports efforts to develop legislation to preserve tax-
exempt financing (i.e., the exclusion of interest for state and 
municipal bonds from taxable income) and the restoration of the ability 
to issue tax-exempt advance refunding bonds. Advance refunding is an 
important tool for municipal utilities to lower borrowing costs 
associated with infrastructure development, which results in lower 
electric rates in the communities that we serve. On the customer asset 
side, providing funding or tax incentives for manufactures to develop 
vehicles, trucks, and potentially electrify existing trainlines to 
transport people and goods would help customers adopt and adapt to 
having transportation assets, normally powered by gasoline, change to 
electricity.
    One other area discussed in the past is expanding the utilization 
of large hydroelectric plants, such as Hoover Dam, to create a pump 
storage system that allows for additional clean dispatchable energy. 
While the engineering to create the system can be accomplished several 
ways, there is a lack of water that comes down the Colorado River into 
Lake Mead that presents a significant challenge. If the Federal 
government was able to capture the storm water east of the Colorado 
River that ends up going out to the ocean and direct it into the 
Colorado River, increasing clean energy from Hoover Dam could be 
feasible.

    6.  How would American companies benefit from the Section 48C 
incentive to manufacture climate solutions in this country?

    Some critical power-related components are not manufactured in the 
U.S., forcing utilities, including LADWP, to rely on imported 
components when they are making investments in their power 
infrastructure. Limited availability and increased prices of these 
foreign-sourced components can cause delays to utility modernization 
projects resulting in increased costs to ratepayers. Incentivizing the 
domestic production of advanced electric grid, energy storage, fuel 
cell equipment, as well as renewable energy and energy efficient 
equipment helps secure a resilient power grid at lower costs to 
ratepayers. It can also address the need for high-skilled jobs here at 
home. These benefits extend beyond the electric grid to manufacturing 
of advanced light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles and components that 
will be powered by the electric grid. These incentives help reduce 
risks that would result from reliance on foreign components, while 
making American components more cost competitive.

    7.  Could you please describe the state of California's efforts to 
improve grid resilience? How could Congress complement these efforts?

    California's utilities, grid operators, and communities face 
heightened risks from climate change, most prominently due to 
increasingly frequent and destructive wildfires, as well as threats 
like extreme heat events. These impacts jeopardize the state's energy 
infrastructure, prompting a robust effort to improve the resiliency of 
the electrical grid. A range of technologies and programs have been 
promoted to increase clean energy integration, grid reliability and 
community resilience in the face of these climate change-related risks. 
These solutions include microgrids, distributed renewable generation, 
energy storage, building energy management systems, building 
performance and load flexibility and vehicle-grid integration.
    California regulators such as the California Public Utilities 
Commission (CPUC), the California Energy Commission (CEC) and 
legislators have implemented programs to support resiliency 
technologies such as the deployment for microgrids and battery storage, 
a Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP), required wildfire 
mitigation plans, focus on lower-income communities that face 
particular barriers to energy resilience and Title 24 building energy 
efficiency standards requiring new residential construction to include 
rooftop or community solar installations.
    LADWP has utilized these state programs to make the portions of the 
grid we manage and maintain more resilient. We propose Congress can 
complement California's efforts with the following:

           Establish a reliability standard, within the Federal 
        Power Act that addresses resiliency related to extreme weather 
        events;
           Create a program through the Department of Energy 
        (DOE) to advise and be a resource for states and local 
        utilities on ways to improve the resiliency of their electrical 
        grids; making funds, grants, and investment assistance 
        available to support resiliency projects;
           Fund and prioritize emerging grid and community 
        resilience technologies and pilot projects; and,
           Publish a Department of Energy report that provides 
        recommendations on how to minimize planned electric power 
        outages due to extreme weather conditions.

    8.  High-voltage direct current transmission lines could help 
connect transmission interconnections and transmission regions, which 
would allow more Americans to access clean energy. What Federal 
investments could ensure that these HDVC transmission lines are 
themselves resilient to the unavoidable impacts of climate change?

    LADWP is the only utility in the Western grid that operates two 
High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) links to import energy from remote 
locations to load centers. Those HVDC systems were built based on 
technologies from the early 1980s. Over the years, HVDC systems have 
significantly improved due to research and development of emerging 
technologies. New HVDC systems are robust, reliable, and better suited 
for transmitting renewable energy resources.
    For those reasons, LADWP is highly interested in adding additional 
HVDC in its transmission system to access remote and low-cost renewable 
energy. To ensure that new HVDC systems are resilient to the 
unavoidable impacts of climate change, the following investments should 
be considered:

           Weatherization of HVDC systems to weather 
        extremities such as induced-climate change extended-heat wave
           Redundant devices such as thyristors in the series 
        string composing a HVDC valve, so that thyristor failures can 
        be replaced in timely manner
           Double pole HVDC system which provides a high level 
        of reliability simply because the failure of one pole does not 
        affect the operation of the other pole
           Adequate overload rating on DC conductors to ensure 
        that the pre-contingency power level can be maintained even 
        with permanent outage of one pole

    9.  Why is it important for the federal government to invest in 
recycling and reuse of critical minerals that are important inputs to 
batteries and other clean energy technologies? For instance, the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $7 billion in critical mineral 
supply chains, including a $140 million program recently announced by 
the Department of Energy to develop a first-of-a-kind refinery to 
extract rare earth elements from coal ash waste. How could these 
efforts complement new mining and processing domestically and around 
the world?

    We are encouraged by efforts such as California's Lithium Valley 
Commission to produce, protect, recycle and reuse critical minerals.

    10.  In your view, could you please describe how California can 
maintain grid reliability even as the state and the Western part of the 
country transition to a clean energy economy? What role would 
strategies like expanding transmission, investing in grid-scale energy 
storage, and expanding the use of distributed energy resources play?

    Expanding transmission, investing in grid-scale energy storage, 
maintaining firm capacity near the load center, and expanding the use 
of distributed energy resources, in combination, all contribute to 
LADWP reaching its goal of a 100% clean energy future. All LA100 
scenarios were evaluated to ensure that LADWP can balance demand for 
electricity with supply, even after failures of transmission and 
generation equipment or other extreme events occur. While wind and 
solar technologies provide a large fraction of the energy needs, all 
scenarios rely heavily on storage with less than 12 hours of duration, 
demand response, renewably derived fuel like green hydrogen, to provide 
sufficient operational flexibility and operating reserves as required 
by NERC/WECC operating standards. As LADWP expands its resource mix to 
100% clean energy by expanding transmission and renewable energy 
further from the load center, it must also maintain firm capacity near 
its load center (˜300 hours of duration) in the face of extreme 
events such as wildfires, or consecutive days with low renewable 
production.
                      the honorable garret graves
    1.  In our hearing, you acknowledged that Los Angeles' goal to 
become 100 percent carbon-free by 2035 will ``require significant 
investment.'' You also indicated that Los Angeles Department of Water 
and Power is currently conducting financial analysis of those plans. 
Further, the NREL report that you cite in your testimony states, ``the 
estimated total cumulative costs of new investments needed to achieve 
the 100% target across the suite of scenarios explored range from $57 
billion to $87 billion (in 2019 dollars) depending on the scenario and 
load projection.'' \2\ Even this astronomical cost projection is not 
all inclusive. NREL excluded some critical elements such as: future 
operating costs for the distribution grid; distribution upgrade costs 
beyond equipment and labor, including land acquisition costs for 
substation expansion; new substations; or circuit reconfiguration. And 
costs associated with customer programs, for example, to support energy 
efficiency or encourage demand response.
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    \2\ https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79444-ES.pdf

          Can you say for certain that Los Angeles' plans to 
        restructure its power grid between now and 2035--a grid that 
        currently relies on 27% of its power from natural gas \3\--
        won't result in rate increases for your customers?
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    \3\ https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/ladwp/aboutus/a-power/a-p-
factandfigures;
jsessionid=QMggvdfRX3jhfs1KrXgFdDmWKn3k822QWJkyhlfg1njs1sLrvZlN!19010123
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    To determine the rate impacts, LADWP is currently determining rate 
options through the upcoming 2022 Strategic Long-Term Resource Plan 
(SLTRP). The LA100 Study indicated that 100 percent renewable pathways 
could be implemented cost effectively and largely in-line with 
inflation. This determination relies on aggressive transportation and 
building electrification growth, sufficient to support investment costs 
through increased retail sales, which we are well on the path to 
implement. LADWP's mission is to provide our customers and the 
communities we serve with safe, reliable, and cost-effective water and 
power in a customer-focused and environmentally responsible manner and 
we must balance these multiple objectives while giving consideration to 
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cost.

           If it will result in increased costs to consumers, 
        has that been communicated to the citizens of Los Angeles?

    Through the LA100 Study and through 2022 SLTRP Advisory Group 
process, LADWP has consistently communicated its plan development, 
which ultimately will provide the total power system investment cost 
and rate impacts in the near term, through 2045. Consistent with its 
planning practices, LADWP also intends to hold public outreach 
workshops in mid-2022 to further communicate the costs and benefits to 
customers as part of the SLTRP. LADWP has also launched the LA100 
Equity Strategies Initiative, which is a stakeholder-driven effort to 
identify community driven, energy-just outcomes, particularly for those 
in disadvantaged communities, as LADWP transitions to 100% clean 
energy.
    LADWP rate setting is a public process. LADWP must consult with 
LA's neighborhood councils representing more than 100 communities 
within Los Angeles. The Board of Water and Power Commissioners 
considers any rate actions, which then go to Los Angeles City Council 
and ultimately to the Mayor of Los Angeles for final approval. Rate 
setting must meet the requirements of Los Angeles City Charter, as well 
as criteria in the California Constitution regarding local government 
revenue.

    2.  In your written testimony, you stated, ``Through the remainder 
of this decade, Los Angeles' goals include providing an energy mix that 
is 80 percent renewable and 97 percent carbon-free resources by 2030 on 
the way to a 100 percent clean energy grid.'' According to the 
Intermountain Power Agency's website, net generating capacity will be 
840 megawatts.\4\ The website also states that, ``the new natural gas 
generating units will be designed to utilize 30 percent hydrogen fuel 
at start-up, (in 2025) transitioning to 100 percent hydrogen fuel by 
2045 as technology improves.'' \5\ Finally, the National Renewable 
Energy Laboratory (NREL) study you mention in your testimony states, 
``These aspects of the SB100 scenario allow for 10%-15% of power 
generation to be derived from natural gas. As a result, this scenario 
allows some of the existing natural gas plants to stay active in 
2045.'' \6\ Today, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power depends 
upon 62% of its electricity needs from reliable sources, such as 
natural gas and coal.\7\ Note that over 25% of your current production 
is met by coal powered generation coming from the Intermountain plant 
in Utah. It seems that you will need to continue to use fossil fuels 
well past the 2035 date you stated.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ https://www.ipautah.com/ipp-renewed/
    \5\ Ibid.
    \6\ https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79444-ES.pdf
    \7\ https://www.ladwp.com/ladwp/faces/ladwp/aboutus/a-power/a-p-
factandfigures;
jsessionid=QMggvdfRX3jhfs1KrXgFdDmWKn3k822QWJkyhlfg1njs1sLrvZlN!19010123
32?_
afrWindowId=null&_afrLoop=478600879122470&_afrWindowMode=0&_
adf.ctrl-state=1aplkups2b_59#%40%3F_afrWindowId%3Dnull%26_
afrLoop%3D478600879122470%26_afrWindowMode%3D0%26_
adf.ctrl-state%3Dfm29dp575_4

           Can you explain how Los Angeles will be 100 percent 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        carbon free by 2035?

    The City of Los Angeles has set ambitious goals to transform its 
energy supply. LADWP partnered with the National Renewable Energy 
Laboratory (NREL) on the LA100 Study, a first-of-its-kind objective, 
highly detailed, rigorous, and science-based study to analyze potential 
pathways the community can take to achieve a 100% clean energy future. 
While 3 of the 4 key scenarios identified shows LADWP reaching 100% 
clean energy by 2045, the Early & No Biofuels scenario outlined a 
pathway to reach the 100% carbon-free goal 10 years sooner by 2035. 
This scenario was evaluated under moderate and high load 
electrification, included no natural gas generation or biofuels, and 
allowed for use of existing nuclear resources and upgrades to 
transmission.
    LADWP has amended the long-term power sales agreement to stop 
taking coal power from the Intermountain Power Project (IPP) no later 
than 2027, as required by California Senate Bill 1368, and has plans to 
accelerate that date to no later than 2025. IPP will be converted from 
a 1,800 MW coal-fired power plant to an 840 MW combined cycle gas 
turbine capable of using a blend of natural gas and 30% green hydrogen 
upon commissioning in 2025. The combined cycle gas turbine will then be 
converted and will operate on 100% green hydrogen when the technology 
is available. In parallel, LADWP will be procuring the renewable 
resources and will facilitate the purchase of electrolyzers and fuel 
storage to support green hydrogen at IPP. The IPP Operating Agent is 
working closely with the turbine manufacturer and they have optimistic 
hydrogen glidepaths for significantly increasing the hydrogen 
capability in the 2030s timeframe. The technology maturity must move in 
lock step in order for LADWP to achieve its 100 percent carbon free 
goal by 2035.
    LADWP will build upon the LA100 Study outcomes, and is assessing 
the implementation feasibility of achieving 100% carbon free by 2035. 
To that end, the 2022 SLTRP will be expanded to address implementation 
feasibility, assess technology innovation, and include an Integrated 
Human Resources Plan to help achieve its goal.
                     the honorable veronica escobar
    1.  How can local governments work with utilities to advance 
environmental justice and how can the Federal government support that?

    LADWP works to coordinate, build partnerships, and collaborate with 
local, state, and federal government agencies to streamline and 
overcome opposition, legal challenges and hurdles that may prohibit 
LADWP's ability to advance environmental justice through traditional 
mechanisms.
    In addition, funding for power programs in the form of loans, 
grants, incentives, cooperatives, agreements, and/or credit allocations 
could vastly improve LADWP's ability to target funding of its programs 
towards disadvantaged communities.
    LADWP has also launched the LA100 Equity Strategies Initiative, 
which is a stakeholder-driven effort to identify community driven, 
energy-just outcomes, particularly for those in disadvantaged 
communities, as LADWP transitions to 100% clean energy. We expect the 
results of this study to be finalized by the end of 2023.

                        Questions for the Record

                           Dr. Karen Wayland

                        Chief Executive Officer

                           GridWise Alliance

                       the honorable kathy castor
    1.  The United States is blessed with affordable and abundant 
renewable energy resources, but they are often located far away from 
densely populated cities. Upgrading and expanding our electric grid 
could help ensure that every American can access clean energy. The 
Biden Administration has already launched an initiative to use existing 
rights-of-way to site transmission to make this easier.

                a.  How would upgrading and expanding the electric grid 
                help your members improve electric grid reliability and 
                resilience as we transition to a clean energy economy?

    The electric grid has been providing reliable and affordable 
electricity for over 100 years. However, the grid was designed for one-
way flow of electricity from centralized generating units through the 
transmission and distribution systems to the customer. With the 
incorporation of distributed energy resources and highly digitized 
technologies, the grid now must accommodate two-way flows of energy and 
information. Upgrading and expanding the grid is critical to ensure 
more secure, resilient and efficient delivery of a necessary service.
    To balance electricity supply and demand, especially as more 
renewable energy comes on-line, the grid must have system flexibility, 
which can be provided by a mix of supply- and demand-side options, 
including flexible conventional generation, curtailment of renewable 
generation, new transmission, and more responsive loads.\1\ Grid 
technologies like controls, sensors, storage, data analytics and 
software-as-service (SAS) can provide flexibility by improving 
visibility of the system for grid operators, helping to quickly 
rebalance the system with autonomous controls, and facilitating the 
aggregation of distributed energy resources to serve as assets to grid 
operations. These technologies help integrate utility-scale and 
distributed renewables, can relieve transmission constraints and reduce 
the need for peak generation. These flexibility technologies also build 
resilience by providing back up power, automatically rerouting power 
around damaged lines, and self-healing grid damage.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/64764.pdf

        b.  How would upgrading and expanding the electric grid help 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        consumers save money on electric bills?

    Upgrading and expanding the grid allows for more effective and 
efficient delivery of electricity. These efficiencies are passed on to 
consumers. Modern grid technologies also significantly improve 
resilience to severe weather disruptions, which then reduces the number 
and duration of outages and speeds recovery. Outages have human and 
dollar costs for consumers, so grid modernization investments that 
improve resilience will save consumers money, not only on their 
electric bills. Most utilities in the United States have adopted energy 
efficiency programs as part of the services they provide but more needs 
to be done in the form of energy education. Most consumers have no idea 
how they use, generate and store energy. Technologies like Advanced 
Meter Infrastructure (AMI) can provide better transparency and 
education for consumers, but must be supported and enabled by the 
regulatory entities.

        c.  How would the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the 
        initiative to use existing rights-of-way facilitate 
        transmission dev

    elopment without compromising environmental protections?The 
GridWise Alliance has not studied the impacts of rights-of-way policies 
in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law or how developing new transmission 
in these rights-of-way would be treated under state or federal 
environmental statutes.

    2.  Energy efficiency is a critically important near-term strategy 
because it can help Americans save money on their household energy 
bills and on their transportation fuels as well as reduce carbon 
pollution. Could you please help us understand how energy efficiency 
also helps improve grid reliability and resilience to power 
interruptions and other disruptive events?

    Buildings consume 76% of electricity generated in the United 
States.\2\ IIJA includes significant funding for weatherization and 
energy efficiency improvements for federal, residential, and commercial 
buildings through updated building codes, funding for building 
retrofits, state energy grants, and other policy levers. Improving the 
efficiency of the nation's building stock will enhance resilience to 
energy disruptions in addition to saving energy. Well-insulated 
buildings reduce heating and cooling load during periods of high 
electricity demand associated with extreme weather and keep occupants 
more comfortable during power outages. Focusing resources for 
weatherization on underserved and low-income communities is critical to 
ensure that those populations do not suffer disproportionately during 
energy disruptions. IIJA funding will result in the weatherization and 
retrofitting of millions of public and private buildings across the 
country.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ U.S. Department of Energy. ``Quadrennial Technology Review, 
Chapter 5: Increasing 
Efficiency of Building Systems and Technologies.''
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/03/f34/qtr-2015-
chapter5.pdf, accessed March 22, 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    In my testimony I provide a dramatic example of how energy 
efficiency at the household level improves grid reliability as well as 
the consumer experience. GridWise member Bandera Electric Cooperative 
(BEC) in Texas has deployed technology to analyze energy use at the 
appliance level, allowing granular visibility into how the grid 
functioned during and after Winter Storm Uri, the 2021 freeze and 
described how households were affected in a paper entitled, ``What was 
happening inside Texas homes during the February 2021 freeze?'' \3\ In 
this paper and a submission to the Public Utility Commission of Texas 
(PUCT, Docket 52373), BEC described the impact of energy efficiency on 
grid reliability and affordability. Average home power draw was almost 
500% higher and average HVAC power demand 620% higher during the period 
of February 11-20 compared to February 1, 2021. However, the kWh/sqft 
of homes monitored by Apolloware varied by a factor of 21, meaning some 
homes were more cold-sensitive and used more energy the colder the 
outside temperatures relative to other homes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ https://www.ideasmiths.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/
BEC_TX_FREEZE_HOMES_APW_
20220212_v2.pdf
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Energy efficiency is good for the grid and consumers. Through 
adoption of technologies where consumers can see their energy usage in 
real time you are providing them actionable information to conserve and 
reduce energy. This is the first step in education and awareness. 
Numerous technical papers and research shows that consumers who are 
aware of the energy usage in real time save about 22% on their energy 
bills. This is accomplished by changing behavior. In Texas following 
Winter Storm Yuri, BEC saw firsthand how providing consumers 
information during the event dramatically changed their behavior. 
Technologies exist today that if adopted and utilized would reduce the 
number of power interruptions during disruptive events. This is how 
energy efficiency technologies can reduce power interruptions, reduce 
energy costs and thereby improve grid resiliency and reliability.
    While the weather in Texas on Feb 3-6 of 2022 was not as severe as 
2021, Bandera experienced only 10 outages and was able to utilize 
energy analytics to provide better transparency of real time energy 
usage to its customers. In its submission to the PUCT in November 2021, 
BEC concluded that ``Having granular individual data tied to 
substation, feeder and phase is an important aspect of understanding 
energy use tied to weather . . . Having behind the meter visibility and 
transparency would help ERCOT with better grid planning and more 
importantly better understanding of how to minimize black-outs through 
the development of an intelligent demand response program based on 
fleet wide monitoring and control of HVAC, Water Heaters and Pool pump 
devices ties to wholesale market prices. If this type of program had 
been in place during Winter Storm Uri the impacts would have been 
minimal. With the right pricing signals (utilities) could incentivize 
voluntary load reductions thereby avoiding MANDATORY rolling 
blackouts.''
    BEC's CEO, William Hetherington, concluded in the PUCT filing, ``We 
have the technology to operate an intelligent grid down to the 
appliance level, but we need energy efficiency programs and 
individualized demand response programs that tie directly to market 
pricing to keep the loss of power voluntary. If these programs had been 
in place last February, I believe that Voluntary load reductions would 
have been adequate to keep the grid for rolling blackouts on a 
statewide basis.''

    3.  Could you please describe how deploying more electric vehicles 
helps improve grid reliability and resilience to climate impacts? How 
can EVs serve as a resource to a modernized, resilient grid?

    The GridWise Alliance recently published a report entitled, ``Near-
Term Grid Investments for Integrating Electric Vehicle Charging 
Infrastructure.'' \4\ The report describes grid services that electric 
vehicles can provide when fully integrated, from peak shaving to 
balancing to emergency power supply (See Table 1.)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ https://gridwise.org/wp-
content/uploads/2022/02/
GWA_22_NearTermGridInvestmentsEVChargingInfra_Final.pdf

[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]


    Our report notes that ``To enable these additional benefits, 
investments in hardening, upgrading, and modernizing the grid will be 
needed to ensure a safe, secure, reliable, and affordable electricity 
system. In this brief, we focus on investments that would be necessary 
to accommodate an initial exponential EV share increase. While we 
expect these near-term investments to include those that support 
managed charging and time-of-use pricing programs, they may not yet 
enable EVs to support aggregated grid services. It is important that 
any near-term grid-side investments are ``no-regrets'' investments that 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
allow for and support the increasing integration of EVs.''

    4.  How do your members think about public-private partnerships in 
the context of upgrading the electric grid?

    Our members support public-private partnerships in the context of 
upgrading the electric grid. For example, the GridWise Alliance 
recommendations for grid investments in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 
included cost-share programs for improving grid resilience and 
flexibility where private dollars would be leveraged by federal 
funding.

    5.  In your testimony, you mentioned the successes of the Section 
48C Manufacturing Tax Credit when it was included in the 2009 Recovery 
Act. How would a tax credit for domestic manufacturing of grid 
technologies help your members?

    Section 48C Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit in the 2009 American 
Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) originally provided a 30 percent 
investment tax credit to 183 domestic clean energy manufacturing 
facilities valued at $2.3 billion and was extended to provide an 
additional $150 million in 2013. The tax credit helped build a U.S. 
manufacturing capacity and supported significant growth in U.S. 
exports. Almost three times as many companies submitted applications 
for the 48C tax credit as were approved by DOE, demonstrating 
significant interest by the clean energy industry in investing in 
domestic manufacturing. Qualifying manufactured clean energy products 
in the statute include electric grid equipment to support the 
transmission and distribution of electricity, which would include 
technologies manufactured, sold, purchased and deployed by GridWise 
Alliance members.

    6.  High-voltage direct current transmission lines could help 
connect transmission interconnections and transmission regions, which 
would allow more Americans to access clean energy. What Federal 
investments could ensure that these HDVC transmission lines are 
themselves resilient to the unavoidable impacts of climate change?

    The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law includes two programs that will 
catalyze investments in grid resilience:

                  Preventing Outages And Enhancing The 
                Resilience Of The Electric Grid. This funding will be 
                administered by the new Grid Infrastructure office 
                created during DOE's recent reorganization. IIJA 
                divides the $5 billion funding into two grant 
                programs--one at DOE and the other to states and 
                tribes--to support utility resilience investments. The 
                DOE grants will carve out 30% for small utilities 
                (annual sales less than 4 million MWh), and the state 
                carve out will be based on a percentage of customers 
                served by small utilities.
                  Electric Grid Reliability and Resilience 
                Research, Development, and Demonstration. This $6 
                billion program, which will be administered by DOE's 
                new Clean Energy Demonstration Office, will provide 
                grants to demonstrate innovative approaches to 
                enhancing resilience across the transmission and 
                distribution systems. Congress included a carve out for 
                rural and remote areas of $1 billion.

    Both programs could support improving the resilience of existing 
HVDC transmission lines. However, given the limited mileage of HVDC 
transmission in the United States, resilience demonstration funding is 
the more likely funding stream for exploring how to make HVDC lines 
more resilient to climate change.

    7.  Why is it important for the federal government to invest in 
recycling and reuse of critical minerals that are important inputs to 
batteries and other clean energy technologies? For instance, the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $7 billion in critical mineral 
supply chains, including a $140 million program recently announced by 
the Department of Energy to develop a first-of-a-kind refinery to 
extract rare earth elements from coal ash waste. How could these 
efforts complement new mining and processing domestically and around 
the world?

    The GridWise Alliance recently responded to a Department of Energy 
Request for Information (RFI) on supply chain issues.\5\ In our 
submission, we note the importance of recycling critical minerals used 
in batteries and other grid technologies:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \5\ https://
gridwise.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/
GridWiseAlliance_EnergySectorSupplyChain_DOERFI.pdf

          ``Whether directly connecting to the grid as a resource, 
        being paired with home solar panels to support system 
        operation, or connecting to the grid as the engine in a 
        electric vehicle, the quantity of energy storage on the 
        electric grid is increasing year over year. Lithium-ion (li-
        ion) batteries are a dominant energy storage technology today. 
        A primary vulnerability of this technology is battery cell 
        manufacturing and a strategic opportunity could lie in second 
        battery life manufacturing (recycling) in the U.S. In short 
        order, thousands of li-ion batteries from both electric 
        vehicles and other industries will be reaching their end of 
        life. Investment in the research of technology and production 
        methods is needed to understand optimal ways to reuse the 
        materials in batteries with minimal pollution. Beyond li-ion 
        batteries, there are a variety of other energy storage 
        technologies both in use and under development. Other energy 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
        storage technologies include:

                  other batteries (using different 
                electrochemical technologies),
                  hydrogen and its various transport/storage 
                mediums (such as ammonia),
                  thermal,
                  compressed air, and
                  pumped hydro.

        For most of these technologies, the greatest supply chain 
        vulnerability lies in the mining and refining of rare earth 
        elements and critical minerals.''
                     the honorable veronica escobar
    1.  Can you please talk a little more on how investing in an aging 
transmission system can benefit states like Texas, and why it is 
important that local governments take advantage of federal funding that 
would advance grid resiliency.

    GridWise Alliance member Bandera Electric Cooperative notes that as 
a transmission owner in Texas, the ERCOT model has numerous benefits, 
but it also has flaws. One of the flaws is the process of how 
transmission projects are reviewed and prioritized in Texas. By 
investing in more transmission you are improving the grid capacity. One 
of the contributing factors to inadequate supply during Winter Storm 
Uri was the capacity constraints on the transmission grid. Most of the 
resources are in west Texas and most of the load is in east Texas and 
therefore a robust transmission grid is vital to avoiding future power 
interruptions due to extreme events.

                        Questions for the Record

                               Mark Mills

                             Senior Fellow

                          Manhattan Institute

                      the honorable garret graves
    1.  You have stated in ``Consider the implications just for 
California. If the rest of the nation switches to a solar/wind grid, 
California won't be able to count on neighboring power plants to make 
up for losses during regional dips in wind and sunlight availability.'' 
\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ https://www.city-journal.org/california-switch-to-primarily-
solar-and-wind-powered-grid-is-dead-end

                  Can you explain what you mean and why this is 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                important?

    California imports roughly 30% of its electricity from adjoining 
states. If there are wind/solar `droughts' across the region, CA 
residents can (and have) counted on those (non-wind/solar) imports from 
conventional power plants in the neighboring states to keep the lights 
on. When, or if, all the neighboring states also have wind/solar as 
primary sources of electricity, the lights wil go out when there is a 
large regional wind/solar `drought'--as happened in northern Europe 
this past fall, and as it did over the entire mid-West of the US for 10 
days in July 2021, and as meteorological records show, happens 
frequently over entire continental areas.

    2.  You have spoken about the scale and magnitude of the materials 
we need for a ``green'' power system.

                  Can you speak to our existing regulatory 
                regime and the United States' ability to meet this 
                increasing demand for critical minerals?

    The challenges with, and opposition to, opening new mines and 
mineral processing in America has been well documented by federal, 
state and private entities and frequently addressed by Congress over 
the decades. In general, new mines take more than two decades from 
concept to opening; if they can be opened at all. The current 
Administration, for example, recently cancelled new mines in both 
Minnesota and Alaska, even in the face of escalating mineral demands 
and imports, and prices.

    3.  In order to have a true impact on global emissions, we need to 
work toward technology that is affordable and exportable. Developing 
nations need sources of inexpensive, secure, and reliable sources of 
energy to develop their economies--especially as global energy demand 
is expected to increase nearly 50% by 2050.

                  What technologies do you see that the U.S. 
                has an advantage and can become exportable in the next 
                5-10 years?

    On the fuel supply side of the equation, the U.S. is the world's 
biggest natural gas and oil producer and could expand its ``clean'' 
capabilities to produce and export more of both. On the energy 
consumption side, many U.S. firms and entrepreneurs have developed 
radical improvements in combustion engine efficiency; facilitating and 
exporting such technologies would be a faster and lower cost means to 
reducing global fuel use and thus emissions.

                  What challenges exist to the deployment of 
                these technologies--within and outside of the United 
                States?

    It is perhaps obvious that there is not a favorable political and 
policy environment to support, in any fashion, the development of 
technologies that lead to more efficient production and use of 
hydrocarbons.

    4.  Do you think President Biden's Paris Climate Commitment to 
reduce GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 is achievable?

    No. It is both structurally--in engineering and science terms--and 
economically unachievable. The only path to such a radical reduction in 
emissions would be through a collapse in economic growth and 
prosperity.

                        Questions for the Record

                           Katherine Hamilton

                       Chair, 38 North Solutions

         Chair, Global Future Council on Clean Electrification

                          World Economic Forum

                       the honorable kathy castor
    1.  The United States is blessed with affordable and abundant 
renewable energy resources, but they are often located far away from 
densely populated cities. Upgrading and expanding our electric grid 
could help ensure that every American can access clean energy. The 
Biden Administration has already launched an initiative to use existing 
rights-of-way to site transmission to make this easier.

                a.  How would upgrading and expanding the electric grid 
                improve electric grid reliability and resilience as we 
                transition to a clean energy economy?

    Building high capacity, high voltage, and long-distance 
transmission lines underground along existing transportation corridors 
to connect abundant and affordable renewable energy to demand centers 
will improve both electric grid reliability and resilience. Such 
transmission facilities will enable wind and solar development where it 
is most abundant and cost-effective and from areas otherwise 
constrained by lack of access to transmission. These interstate and 
often interregional transmission facilities will help avoid blackouts 
and allow renewable energy resource-sharing among regions. For example, 
underground transmission cable installation along railroad rights-of-
way provides a climate resilient lifeline between states, regions, and 
energy markets to stabilizes the grid, ensuring weather-related events 
have minimal impacts. Taking advantage of opportunities to develop 
high-capacity underground transmission will help ensure power 
reliability as the clean energy transition accelerates. The Biden 
Administration announced the Building a Better Grid initiative that 
will be solving for multiple challenges at once. From an infrastructure 
standpoint, the U.S. needs to expand transmission by 60% by 2030 and 
perhaps triple it by 2050.\1\ Funding in the Bipartisan Infrastructure 
Bill will enable transmission build-out that in turn is foundational 
for achieving the Administration's goal of 100% clean electricity by 
2035. Grid Strategies' analysis of Winter Storm Uri's impact on Texas 
one year after Winter Storm Uri makes the case for resilience through 
better transmission planning and investment.\2\ As an example of a 
state taking decisive action to tie transmission build-out to 
resilience, the California Independent System Operator recently 
approved 23 transmission projects totaling nearly $3B that are expected 
to increase resilience in the state.\3\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\ https://www.environmentalleader.com/2022/01/doe-launches-
initiative-to-upgrade-nations-electric-grid/
    \2\ https://gridprogress.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/the-one-year-
anniversary-of-winter-storm-uri-lessons-learned-and-the-continued-need-
for-large-scale-transmission.pdf
    \3\ https://www.pv-tech.org/caiso-approves-us2-9bn-of-transmission-
projects-to-enhance-reliability/

                b.  How would upgrading and expanding the electric grid 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                help consumers save money on electric bills?

    Expanding the power grid will unlock otherwise inaccessible high 
quality and low-cost renewable energy resources that can benefit 
consumers. Providing much needed export paths to market for such 
resources will directly help consumers save money on electric bills. 
Access to such affordable resources will be increasingly important as 
more aspects of our economy are electrified, including homes and 
transportation. It is estimated that for every $1 spent on 
transmission, $3 of savings are achieved by consumers.\4\ PJM, the 
largest energy market in the world, runs over 84,000 miles of 
transmission and estimates that transmission lines that link PJM zones 
together allow them to share capacity and leverage load diversity, 
reducing the need for additional generation by up to $3.78 billion 
annually. New transmission projects in the works could save $100 
million in the first four years of commercial operations.\5\ In late 
2020, Local Solar for All, the Coalition for Community Solar Access, 
Vote Solar, and Vibrant Clean Energy released a road map for the lowest 
cost grid. Their modeling shows that local distributed solar plus 
storage could save customers $473B by 2050, while unlocking the full 
potential of utility scale wind and solar.\6\ Stepping back to look at 
the entire U.S. electricity sector, if it were to be fueled entirely by 
clean energy, consumers would avoid using 437 million tons of coal,\7\ 
11.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas,\8\ 72 million gallons of 
oil,\9\ and avoid approximately $107 billion in costs used to purchase 
these fuels (at 2021 prices) each year. Transitioning to a cleaner grid 
should save consumers on their electricity bills.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ https://gridprogress.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/the-one-year-
anniversary-of-winter-storm-uri-lessons-learned-and-the-continued-need-
for-large-scale-transmission.pdf
    \5\ https://pjm.com/-/media/library/reports-notices/special-
reports/2019/the-benefits-of-the-pjm-transmission-system.ashx?la=en
    \6\ https://
www.vibrantcleanenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/
LocalSolarRoadmap_FINAL.pdf
    \7\ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/coal/use-of-coal.php
    \8\ https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=50&t=8#:˜:text=
In%202020%2C%20the%20United%20States,(Tcf)%20of%20natural%20gas
    \9\ https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=33&t=6#:˜:text=
EIA%20uses%20product%20supplied%20to,day%20over%20consumption%20in%20202
0

    2.  How would the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the initiative 
to use existing rights-of-way facilitate transmission development 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
without compromising environmental protections?

    Pernicious siting and permitting issues often impede the deployment 
of overhead interregional transmission lines. Such projects typically 
take ten or more years to develop, assuming they can be built at all 
given landowner opposition, environmental impacts, among other 
barriers. In contrast, installing high voltage transmission lines 
safely underground along existing railroad rights-of-way manages the 
typical impediments to long distance transmission development. By 
protecting landowners, avoiding eminent domain, and eliminating visual 
impacts, underground installation along existing transportation 
corridors simplifies and expedites permitting, allowing the project to 
be built in half the time of traditional overhead transmission projects 
while avoiding nearly all environmental impacts associated with major 
linear infrastructure development. This underground rail co-location 
development approach can use horizontal directional drilling to avoid 
any sensitive habitats, ecosystems, or waterways, further ensuring 
environmental protections. There are several programs within the BIL 
that provide support for using existing transmission rights of way. One 
project example is that of SOO Green HVDC (High Voltage Direct Current) 
Link, which would follow existing rail and highways rights of way to 
bury HVDC lines connecting wind resources in Iowa to load centers in 
Chicago. Because the rights of way were already developed by rail and 
roadways, burying cable along the same path would have minimal 
environmental impact.\10\ Another example would be using overhead 
transmission technologies, such as high-ampacity low sag lines and 
HVDC, as well as MVDC (Medium Voltage Direct Current), that can move 
more power than conventional Alternating Current transmission lines 
within existing rights of way with less or no additional impact on the 
environment. Other new technologies include superconductors that could 
move five-times the amount of power over long-distances in the same 
space as conventional overhead transmission with shorter towers, a 
narrower right of way, and far less environmental impact.\11\ Research 
funds in the BIF would help accelerate the development of this 
technology with significant benefit to the electric grid, while 
reducing impact on the environment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \10\ https://www.soogreenrr.com
    \11\ See technology being developed by VEIR: https://veir.com

    3.  Energy efficiency is a critically important near-term strategy 
because it can help Americans save money on their household energy 
bills and on their transportation fuels as well as reduce carbon 
pollution. In your testimony, you also highlighted the energy 
efficiency investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 
referenced the Solar Energy and Loan Fund from my home state of 
Florida. Could you please help us understand how energy efficiency also 
helps improve grid reliability and resilience to power interruptions 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
and other disruptive events?

    The Department of Energy's Better Buildings program has developed 
case studies and other resources for communities and consumers who want 
to deploy energy efficiency technologies to increase resilience. Energy 
efficiency alone can allow for passive survivability during a disaster, 
while also providing reduced disruption from demand spikes, lower costs 
for energy, greater comfort, and healthier air quality during normal 
grid operations. By including onsite generation like solar power and 
storage, customers can continue electric service during a disruptive 
event.\12\ Many providers of renewable energy resources first install 
energy efficiency measures to maximize the savings from the solar 
resource. For example, before installing rooftop solar, PosiGen, a 
Louisiana-based rooftop solar company that focuses on low-income 
communities, conducts an energy audit and installs energy efficiency 
measures to ensure bill savings from the solar system are achieved and 
protected.\13\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \12\ https://betterbuildingssolutioncenter.energy.gov/resilience/
about
    \13\ https://www.posigen.com

    4.  In your testimony, you highlighted that the EV charging 
investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are important for grid 
resilience. You also cited a study from the American Council for an 
Energy-Efficient Economy which concluded that increased electrification 
of vehicles and buildings paired with energy efficiency would increase 
grid reliability. Could you please describe how deploying more EVs and 
distributed energy resources (DERs) helps improve grid reliability? How 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
can EVs and DERs serve as resources to a modernized grid?

    A recent study by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory looked 
at how a distribution system operator (DSO) along with active customer 
engagement (Transactive Energy) could coordinate a variety of flexible 
assets such as electric vehicles (EVs) and distributed energy resources 
(DERs) to reduce load, lower energy prices, and lessen needed 
infrastructure.\14\ The grid is constantly working to maintain balance 
between supply and demand; an overbalance of either or disruption to 
delivery lines can cause the entire system to falter. DERs, when 
properly incentivized and constructed, improve grid reliability by 
giving more options for grid operators to manage that supply and 
demand. In PJM alone, DERs account for between 15-25% of demand 
response. EVs have the promise of similarly serving as flexible demand. 
A future grid would ideally be able to take advantage of these mobile 
services by allowing EV-to-Grid operations where EVs can charge or 
discharge where needed to support the grid. California is experimenting 
now with using EVs to power homes as electricity demand and renewable 
energy both increase.\15\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \14\ https://
www.pnnl.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/EED_1574_BROCH_DSOT-
ExecSumm_v11.pdf
    \15\ https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2022/03/18/
california-s-vehicle-to-grid-experiments-offer-a-glimpse-of-the-future

    5.  In your testimony, you noted that additional climate 
investments like the clean energy and energy storage tax credits and 
the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will help encourage more private 
sector investment in climate solutions. Could you please help us 
understand how Federal investments can unlock private sector capital, 
which is a much bigger market? What are some examples of public private 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
partnerships?

    The goal of the federal government should be to send market signals 
that organize the nation around clear goals--in this case the goal of 
reducing our nation's impact on the climate--and to fill gaps that the 
private sector is unable to fill. In the case of the Greenhouse Gas 
Reduction Fund, we know that last year state green banks drove nearly 
$2B in investment and in total have caused $9B in total investment, 
leveraging private capital three to one. While 42 states, the District 
of Columbia, and Puerto Rico all have active or nascent green banks, a 
national entity would capitalize and supercharge this state activity. 
Many of these state programs do not have enough state funding to 
leverage with that of the private sector; this national fund would 
ensure those state entities are able to run their own entities while 
also financing projects of broad national importance.
    Another way in which policy can unlock private sector capital is 
through tax credits with direct pay provisions. The current regime 
forces project developers to work through financial middlemen in a 
supply constrained tax equity market to monetize the tax credit for 
renewable energy. The legal cost of this is prohibitive for many 
distributed energy projects which have a capital expenditure of under 
$1 million and is even more difficult for residential projects, 
especially for those customers who do not have a tax burden at all and 
would not be able to take advantage of an investment tax credit. As Jon 
Powers, President of CleanCapital states in a recent article in PV 
magazine, ``to say this creates a major bottleneck in clean energy 
investment and deployment is an understatement. At a time when the 
opportunity for the energy transition is greatest, two thirds of wind 
projects set to being construction this year are still seeking tax 
equity financing, along with more than half of large-scale solar 
projects. These delays hold America back from its potential as a global 
clean energy leader.'' \16\ Smaller projects face an even more 
difficult path to monetization. And yet, despite these numbers, solar 
has grown 52% annually since enactment of the ITC in 2006.\17\ While 
solar and other renewables would expand exponentially with a more 
efficient direct pay option, even this constrained ITC has already made 
a significant impact in encouraging private sector investments in 
climate solutions. This construct also creates opportunity for not-
taxed entities like municipalities and tribes to better extract value 
from the incentive.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \16\ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2022/02/28/clean-energy-tax-
credit-reform-is-our-last-best-chance-for-a-net-zero-future/
    \17\ https://www.seia.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/SEIA-ITC-
Factsheet-2021-Jan.pdf

    6.  How would American companies benefit from the Section 48C 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
incentive to manufacture climate solutions in this country?

    According to the National Association of Manufacturers, 
manufacturing jobs have one of the highest multiplier effects of any 
industry\18\ Modeling done by Data for Progress concluded that federal 
investments of $8 billion through 48C would create nearly 140,000 
direct and indirect jobs nationwide over the next several years, and 
would add over $27 billion to our Gross Domestic Product (GDP).\19\ The 
think tank Third Way, in collaboration with Industrial Economics, Inc., 
found in their modeling that for every $1 billion issued annually 
through a new 48C credit program, $3.6 billion in GDP would be added 
and roughly 8,000 direct jobs created across the country, a number that 
would reach 23,000 annually with indirect supply chain and ``induced 
jobs.'' \20\ Not only manufacturers would benefit--the entire ecosystem 
will. For example, underground HVDC transmission cable is not currently 
manufactured in the U.S. Creating incentives for cable manufacturing 
will thus impact the speed and cost of transmission development. 
Another example is in hydropower, a zero-emission resource. Small 
turbines--between 5-30 megawatts--are not manufactured in the U.S. 
Based on the U.S. DOE Hydropower Vision, 13GW zero emission hydropower 
could be added to the clean energy mix by simply upgrading existing 
plants and adding power at existing dams.\21\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \18\ https://www.nam.org/facts-about-manufacturing/
    \19\ https://www.dataforprogress.org/memos/the-cepp-amplifies-the-
jobs-impacts-of-the-48c-
tax-credit
    \20\ https://www.thirdway.org/memo/manufacturing-the-future-of-
clean-energy-with-48c
    \21\ https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2018/02/f49/
Hydropower-Vision-021518.pdf

    7.  High-voltage direct current transmission lines could help 
connect transmission interconnections and transmission regions, which 
would allow more Americans to access clean energy. What Federal 
investments could ensure that these HDVC transmission lines are 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
themselves resilient to the unavoidable impacts of climate change?

    Direct current lines do not have same sensitivity to higher ambient 
temperatures as AC lines since they do not generate heat within the 
line, so in the case of extreme temperatures, DC lines will perform 
better.
    Investments should also be made in sensor-based Dynamic Line Rating 
(DLR) technology that provide transmission owners and grid operators 
with improved situational awareness and real-time visibility, 
increasing the resilience of the system overall. Real-time sensors 
equip grid operators with data on the performance of their transmission 
lines, helping to optimize safety and reliability of the transmission 
grid. Conductor asset health reports provide valuable information used 
for prioritizing maintenance activities and efficiently dedicating 
resources. DLRs can also unlock greater grid flexibility, enabling 
operators to accommodate shifting loads and reduce interconnection 
queues while also improving reliability in N-1 scenarios.

    8.  Why is it important for the federal government to invest in 
recycling and reuse of critical minerals that are important inputs to 
batteries and other clean energy technologies? For instance, the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law invests $7 billion in critical mineral 
supply chains, including a $140 million program recently announced by 
the Department of Energy to develop a first-of-a-kind refinery to 
extract rare earth elements from coal ash waste. How could these 
efforts complement new mining and processing domestically and around 
the world?

    Many of the materials essential for Lithium-Ion Batteries (LIBs) 
are not found in the U.S., making it vital that the U.S. invests in 
minerals processing and a supportive trade policy with nations that 
have these natural resources. Nickel, for example, is an essential 
element for today's batteries. Most of the nickel used for the LIB 
industry today comes from mature Western and Japanese nickel companies 
making nickel powder, briquette and nickel sulphate. There is currently 
no nickel mining and/or processing of nickel salts for the battery 
industry in the U.S. and today's nickel price does not support 
investment in new mines and processing facilities. Given that Indonesia 
and Philippines are the key countries for nickel deposits, U.S. 
refiners will most likely have to rely on growth of new feed coming 
from these countries in the coming years, with smaller amounts from new 
mines in Australia, New Caledonia, and Brazil.
    Lithium is of course another essential element for LIBs. Most 
lithium comes from brine resources in South America and rock resources 
in Australia. The U.S. currently has one active lithium mine, 
Albemarle's Silverpeak, a small brine-based lithium carbonate 
production in Nevada. Additionally, North Carolina hosts two conversion 
assets from carbonate to hydroxide from both Livent and Albemarle in 
addition to a halted spodumene mine at Kings Mountain. The U.S. also 
has a diverse lithium junior company community that is exploring 
geothermal and clay to more conventional lithium resources like brine 
and spodumene.
    Cobalt is still an important element used in the cathode for most 
LIBs, especially those used for electric vehicles. The U.S. does not 
have any significant domestic sources of cobalt, nor does it have 
cobalt refiners. Cobalt is not mined on its own but is rather most 
commonly a by-product from copper or nickel mining. Over 60% of the 
global cobalt supply originates from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
    Furthermore, cobalt refining is predominantly a China-based 
business. One company--Umicore--is an exception to the Chinese cobalt 
refining dominance, operating the only significant non-Chinese cobalt 
refining operations in Kokkola, Finland and Olen, Belgium that is used 
to supply western nations.\22\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \22\ https://csm.umicore.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    For the U.S. to meet its needs for these metals and an advanced 
energy economy, we should focus on working with trusted allies to 
increase its access to supply. Additionally, the U.S. can invest in the 
low-cost, low-emission technologies needed to process battery raw 
materials, ideally using resources found in the U.S. to convert them 
into a form used in LIBs. This could help support the development of a 
market for the precursor materials which require these raw materials 
and are in turn used to produce cathodes for LIBs.
    To further mitigate risk for the U.S. market, the Department of 
Energy and other U.S. policymakers could create a policy framework that 
incentivizes domestic manufacturers along the battery supply chain. 
Refining materials and manufacturing cells within U.S. borders would 
mitigate a great deal of supply chain risk for this growing domestic 
industry. The North American LIB supply chain could be incentivized 
through a revised regional approach. Currently, there are no incentives 
to locally produce components (i.e., cathode active materials) used in 
LIB production. A regional agreement in North America could motivate 
important regional supply production investment, mitigating domestic 
national security risk, while promoting increased collaboration with 
allies such as Canada which has important raw material resources.
    Taking steps that result in the growth of a robust U.S. electric 
vehicle market will help to reduce investment risk and uncertainty for 
LIB supply chain participants who are considering establishing 
manufacturing in the U.S. In addition, this market certainty would 
foster an environment in which critical materials recyclers, such as 
Umicore which operates a battery recycling plant in Belgium,\23\ would 
want to site their plants here in the U.S. closer to the EV and battery 
manufacturing ecosystem.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \23\ https://www.umicore.com/en/newsroom/news/new-generation-li-
ion-battery-recycling-
technologies-and-announces-award-with-acc/

    9.  How can we help industries with expertise in legacy fossil fuel 
technologies become partners in the transition to a clean energy 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
economy?

    While it might seem counterintuitive, it is critical to engage oil, 
gas, and fossil fuel companies in energy transition efforts if we want 
to make our 2050 climate goals. Given that the next 10-20 years will be 
crucial in preventing the worst impacts of climate change, we must work 
with the fossil fuel industry to reduce their emissions as they 
continue to be a sizable part of our energy mix.
    As an example of the incumbent fossil fuel industry stepping up to 
scale a low carbon future, Greentown Labs in Houston, TX, has been 
collaborating with oil and gas companies since their founding. Shell 
and Chevron were some of the Lab's earliest partners and both helped 
Greentown expand nationally. These corporate partners understand and 
can provide the scale needed to deploy energy transition solutions; 
existing fossil fuel companies have the capital, talent, and 
operational capacity to bring new technologies to scale within the 
looming climate timeframe. Hydrogen and CCUS/carbontech are two of the 
most promising solutions to decarbonize power generation as well as two 
of the fastest growing sectors of climate tech. Greentown Labs is 
currently running two programs in partnership with industry partners: 
the Low Carbon Hydrogen Accelerator \24\ and the Carbon to Value 
Initiative.\25\ With both initiatives, corporate partners like Shell, 
NRG, Fluor, and ConEdison leverages company expertise and incubation 
services to drive an innovation ecosystem for commercializing climate 
mitigating technologies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \24\ https://greentownlabs.com/lcha/
    \25\ https://www.c2vinitiative.com

    10.  What types of Federal investments would increase equity and 
access to clean energy while also enhancing grid resilience and 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
reliability?

    To ensure programs and federal investments are equitable and allow 
access by all Americans, we must be intentional in our policy 
development. We cannot assume that by using the word ``equity'' that it 
will then happen. A coalition of private sector companies, 
environmental and civil rights groups collaborated to develop a roadmap 
that would ensure equity is included through federal climate 
policy.\26\ These policies include direct pay provisions in the tax 
code, bonus credits for low and middle income communities, and, 
crucially, funding for state, local, and tribal governments to fund 
existing and new distributed and community solar programs to ensure 
that at least 50% of incentives support underserved communities, 
communities of color, indigenous communities, rural, and low to 
moderate income households. All of these policies not only expand 
access to clean energy, but also increase resilience inherent in those 
technologies.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \26\ https://static1.squarespace.com/static/
5f4637895cfc8d77860d0dbc/
t/607de3e8885bd43ae87deded/1618863082445/
Building+Back+Better_+A+Roadmap+to+
Expand+Solar+Access+for+All+-+FINAL.pdf

    11.  While the Investment Tax Credit has been helpful in driving 
down the costs of solar energy, there are still additional barriers to 
deployment at the scale required by the climate crisis. Could you 
please describe the scale of solar deployment we need and describe some 
of the remaining barriers? How could extension of the Investment Tax 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Credit help? What other Federal policies would be helpful?

    The Investment Tax Credit was momentous for the solar industry, and 
yet more is needed to address, for example, consumers who rent their 
homes or who live in multi-family housing, communities that are in low- 
and middle-income areas, and those who live in areas historically 
adversely impacted by extractive or polluting industries. Direct pay, 
bonus credits, and interconnection tax credits as well as complementary 
credits for energy storage, microgrids, and transmission will all 
create the market signals for an ecosystem of U.S. investment in clean 
energy. For solar specifically, the Solar Energy Industries Association 
has set a goal of 100 GW (30%) by 2030; \27\ the Coalition for 
Community Solar Access has set a goal of 20 GW by 2025 for community 
solar.\28\ These goals align with the Biden Administration and indicate 
a commitment by industry to deploy apace once policy certainty is in 
place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \27\ https://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-decade-american-
renewable-
energy-manufacturing
    \28\ https://www.communitysolaraccess.org/community-solar-industry-
commits-to-develop-20-gw-of-capacity-by-2025-in-alignment-with-u-s-
department-of-energy-goals/

    12.  In your view, could you please describe the types of Federal 
policies that would enable the country to meet President Biden's goal 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
of reducing economy-wide emissions by 50% by 2030?

    Federal policy will be an important part of achieving 50% emissions 
reduction by 2030. Policies that can enable that goal include a 
combination of tax incentives, grant programs, rebates, appliance 
standards, building codes, emissions regulation, and consistent 
research and development to foster and seed ideas for the future energy 
transition. The Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released a 
report and action plan with many of those policy recommendations \29\ 
and the Build Back Better Act \30\ in concert with the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure Law will send the appropriate market signals to the 
private sector that clean energy transition investments will create 
jobs, reduce risk from climate change, lower costs, and increase 
resilience.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \29\ https://climatecrisis.house.gov/report
    \30\ https://climatecrisis.house.gov/sites/climatecrisis.house.gov/
files/
Climate%20Investments%20In%20The%20Build%20Back%20Better%20Act%20Fact%20
Sheet%
2011-19.pdf

    13.  From your work on global decarbonization, could you please 
describe the kinds of technologies that are most beneficial to 
developing countries to help them meet their climate and economic 
development goals? How would renewable energy and electric vehicles 
help developing countries leapfrog over legacy fossil fuel 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
technologies?

    Many people in mature markets have an impression that developing 
economies simply need a solar panel to serve a light bulb and perhaps a 
sewing machine or a refrigerator. To be clear, those technologies can 
be life changing for girls and women to study and gain economic 
independence.\31\ Emerging economies, however, need more than just 
solar panels, and most of the issues facing these economies are not 
technology related. According to Blackrock, emerging economies will 
need $1T in investment for the zero emission transition, not because of 
technology issues but because of political, legal, regulatory, and 
macroeconomic risk.\32\ Another report from IEA and the World Economic 
Forum discusses financing opportunities in emerging markets for energy 
efficiency, electrification, clean power, and emissions-intensive 
sectors.\33\ The issue in all of these analyses is not about technology 
solutions but about financing and policy structures that can reduce 
risk and accelerate deployment.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \31\ Companies like Solar Sister have made an enormous difference 
in the lives of women in Sub-Saharan Africa: 
https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/sustainable-energy-all-
empowering-women
    \32\ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/
emerging-markets-need-1-trln-year-get-net-zero-blackrock-2021-10-14/
    \33\ https://www.iea.org/reports/financing-clean-energy-
transitions-in-emerging-and-developing-
economies?utm_content=buffer7259e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter-
ieabirol&utm_campaign=buffer
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                      the honorable garret graves
    1.  In your testimony you state that transmission ties could have 
helped bring power from states like Alabama and Louisiana to Texas in 
the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri to ultimately reduce recovery time. 
You blamed a lack of investment in transmission as why this didn't 
happen. In our hearing, you stated that ``there are plenty of ways to 
get transmission built.'' I agree that we need to make smart 
investments to deploy innovative technologies, but all the money in the 
world won't overcome the other barriers to deployment of these 
technologies, particularly for projects that cross state lines.

                a.  How many federal agencies are involved in the 
                permitting process for projects like this, and how many 
                permits would these projects need?

    The number of agencies involved in permitting will vary based on 
the technology and application. Energy projects are not materially 
different from developing any infrastructure policy in the approvals 
needed to proceed.

                b.  Do you think the currently regulatory barriers that 
                are in place--that often delay projects like the ones 
                you reference by 7-10 years--should be reformed to 
                allow for faster deployment?

    Based on my experience, the regulatory barriers that exist today 
are often caused by a lack of adjustment in regulation to include new 
technologies with new characteristics that were not contemplated at the 
time of the original regulation. It is helpful when federal agencies 
set up processes or platforms to help developers track progress and 
approvals for projects.

                c.  Your testimony references ``market signals''--would 
                one of those signals be a permitting process that 
                provides certainty to developers and utilities alike to 
                attract investment and actually get things built?

    Certainty is crucial for investment. In fact, many investors are 
sitting on the sidelines today awaiting passage of the reconciliation 
package for exactly that reason. Developers and utilities must plan 
several years ahead, so understanding how the policy landscape will 
look over the next decade is of utmost importance. I am party to 
several Integrated Resource Planning proceedings throughout multiple 
states, including Louisiana, and know it is very difficult for 
utilities to model and plan long term without an understanding of 
policies that will be in place that can impact their supply and demand 
side resources.

    2.  The Princeton University study that I cited in our hearing 
found that in order to meet net zero by 2050, ``high voltage 
transmission capacity expands ˜60% by 2030 and triples by 2050. . 
. total capital invested in transmission is $330 billion through 2030 
and $2.2 trillion by 2050.'' \34\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \34\ Pg. 108: Princeton%20NZA%20FINAL%20REPORT%20(29Oct2021)%20(4)

                a.  Do you think this massive expansion of capacity and 
                the needed capital investment will increase costs for 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                utilities and therefore increase rates for consumers?

    While there is a need to expand transmission investments, that 
investment does not necessarily translate into higher costs for 
consumers. Based on the report by Grid Strategies that I cited in my 
testimony, for each gigawatt of transmission capacity, more than $100 
million of consumer savings can be generated during an extreme weather 
event. An Investment Tax Credit for transmission could spur $37B in new 
transmission deployment, resulting in $75B in customer savings.\35\ In 
addition, there are low-cost solutions with Grid Enhancing Technologies 
(GETs) like Dynamic Line Ratings that can maximize capacity for 
renewables integration. A recent study by The Brattle Group found that 
GETs can double the amount of renewable energy integrated onto the 
grid, and deliver $5B in consumer cost savings nationally, with a 
payback of under six months.\36\ Importantly, these technologies can be 
deployed in weeks or months, and at a unit cost of less than 5% of 
traditional projects. To minimize the potential cost impacts of future 
infrastructure development, technology solutions that can enable 
additional capacity with existing infrastructure at a fraction of the 
cost of traditional transmission line construction projects and without 
requiring a time-consuming permitting process could be prioritized.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \35\ https://gridprogress.files.wordpress.com/2022/02/the-one-year-
anniversary-of-winter-storm-uri-lessons-learned-and-the-continued-need-
for-large-scale-transmission.pdf
    \36\ https://watt-transmission.org/unlocking-the-queue/

                b.  Have you seen any strategic plans laying out how to 
                specifically achieve the amount of expanded capacity 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                that is needed to achieve these goals?

    Many analysts have considered how to achieve a future of zero 
carbon emissions. One example is Energy Systems Integration Group that 
has focused on the grid and found that the cheapest solutions to the 
transition are coordinated transmission and distributed energy 
planning. Their modeling team found that ``when clean electricity is 
not a target, the savings materialize immediately and reach to over 
$300 billion cumulatively by 2050. When clean electricity is mandated, 
the savings are less in the early years (through 2030), but expand 
rapidly to over $470 billion by 2050.'' \37\ Barclay's released a five 
pillar approach to zero emissions that lays out the need for ending 
waste, increasing electrification, reinvigorating bioenergy, investing 
in hydrogen, and sequestering carbon.\38\ There are no zero emission 
scenarios that promote the increase of the use of fossil fuels and even 
given the current situation in Ukraine, the International Energy Agency 
(which has proposed a scenario to move to net zero by 2050) \39\ has 
proposed an acceleration of electrification and renewable energy 
deployment to reduce EU's reliance on Russian natural gas.\40\ S&P 
Global found that climate change could have huge financial costs for 
corporations and almost 80 percent of the S&P Global 1200, which 
includes the world's largest companies, will be exposed to moderate-to-
high physical risks from climate change by 2050.\41\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \37\ https://www.esig.energy/coordinated-deployments-of-
transmission-and-distribution-scale-
resources-provide-the-lowest-cost-electricity/
    \38\ https://www.cib.barclays/our-insights/Emission-impossible-
closing-in-on-net-zero.html?cid=paidsearch-
textads_google_google_themes_decarbonization_us_
research_net-
zero_phrase_892853615478&gclid==CjwKCAjwiuuRBhBvEiwAFXKaNJVM7KvTLbEBW2zg
-RLx1B8uDv6y6GHMINRBwZcyHJbKgVw-
bzKYeBoCFfcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
    \39\ https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-model/net-zero-
emissions-by-2050-scenario-nze
    \40\ https://www.iea.org/reports/a-10-point-plan-to-reduce-the-
european-unions-reliance-on-
russian-natural-gas
    \41\ https://www.greenbiz.com/article/state-net-zero-now

    3.  In your testimony you stated that ``One of the most important 
market tools is in the tax code. Access to tax credits will drive down 
the cost of energy storage of all types, opening up new markets in 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
dozens of States.''

                a.  How long has the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) been 
                in place for?

    The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58) created a 30 percent 
ITC for residential and commercial solar energy systems that applied to 
projects placed in service between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 
2007. The Solar Energy Industries Association has been tracking the 
credit and the growth it has spurred in the sector.\42\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \42\ https://www.seia.org/initiatives/solar-investment-tax-credit-
itc

                b.  What percentage of the nation's power is generated 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                by solar energy?

    Based on the Energy Information Administration and the Federal 
Energy Regulatory Commission, renewable energy resources provide 25.81% 
of total U.S. available installed generating capacity, more than coal, 
which generates 18.49% and three times more than nuclear power, at 
8.29%.--a share significantly greater than that of coal (18.49%) and 
more than three times that of nuclear power (8.29%). More information 
is available in the References Page. Of the total renewable energy 
resources installed, solar energy, including utility scale and 
distributed solar, makes up 98.2 Gigawatts, or roughly 3%. Solar 
resources are projected to grow to 20% by 2050.\43\ \44\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \43\ https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=50357
    \44\ https://www.environmentalleader.com/2022/03/us-renewables-
accounted-for-81-of-new-
generating-capacity-in-2021-says-sun-day-campaign/

                c.  At what point do you believe we need to allow the 
                free market to work and ensure that technologies can 
                stand on their own two feet, rather than perpetually 
                subsidizing a technology that hasn't been widely 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
                adopted in the market?

    A 2021 International Monetary Fund report found that in 2021 fossil 
fuels--oil, natural gas and coal--were globally subsidized at $5.9 
trillion, $660 billion of that in the U.S.\45\ One could argue that 
those incentives are provided to proven technologies in long-profitable 
sectors. What is called the ``free market'' is a set of market 
signals--in part from states and the federal government--that encourage 
or discourage investment in certain sectors based on prioritization of 
attributes and characteristics of those resources. Because of the 
global and U.S. commitment to greenhouse gas reduction, it would follow 
that policy would send signals to the market to incentivize deployment 
of zero emission technologies.
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    \45\ https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/
Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-
Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004

                  Additional References (EIA and FERC)

    ``Energy Infrastructure Update for December 2021'' was released by 
FERC on March 8, 2022.
https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-december-2021. 
See in particular the tables ``New Generation In-Service (New Build and 
Expansion),'' ``Total Available Installed Generating Capacity,'' and 
``Generation Capacity Additions and Retirements.''
    ``Energy Infrastructure Update for December 2020'' report by FERC.
https://cms.ferc.gov/media/energy-infrastructure-update-december-2020
    ``Short-Term Energy Outlook'' released by EIA on March 8, 2022 
includes 2021 data for wind, utility-scale solar, and distributed 
solar.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/electricity.php
    ``Electric Power Monthly'' report by EIA released on February 25, 
2022, ``Total Electric Power Industry Summary Statistics, Year-to-Date 
2021 and 2020.''
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/
epm_table_grapher.php?t=table_es1b

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