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


                                                         S. Hrg. 117-87

                   EXAMINING THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF
               ELECTRIFYING AMERICA'S HOMES AND BUILDINGS

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                        JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

                                 OF THE

                     CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

                               __________

          Printed for the use of the Joint Economic Committee
          
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        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
        
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
45-853                     WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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                        JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE

    [Created pursuant to Sec. 5(a) of Public Law 304, 79th Congress]

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES             SENATE
Donald S. Beyer Jr., Virginia,       Martin Heinrich, New Mexico, Vice 
    Chairman                             Chairman
David Trone, Maryland                Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota
Joyce Beatty, Ohio                   Margaret Wood Hassan, New 
Mark Pocan, Wisconsin                    Hampshire
Scott Peters, California             Mark Kelly, Arizona
Sharice L. Davids, Kansas            Raphael G. Warnock, Georgia
David Schweikert, Arizona            Mike Lee, Utah, Ranking Member
Jaime Herrera Beutler, Washington    Tom Cotton, Arkansas
Jodey C. Arrington, Texas            Rob Portman, Ohio
Ron Estes, Kansas                    Bill Cassidy, M.D., Louisiana
                                     Ted Cruz, Texas

                  Tamara L. Fucile, Executive Director
            Vanessa Brown Calder, Republican Staff Director
                  Colleen J. Healy, Financial Director
                            
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                     Opening Statements of Members

Hon. Martin Heinrich, Vice Chairman, a U.S. Senator from New 
  Mexico.........................................................     1
Hon. Mike Lee, Ranking Member, a U.S. Senator from Utah..........     3

                               Witnesses

Mr. Ari Matusiak, Chief Executive Officer, Rewiring America, San 
  Diego, CA......................................................     6
Dr. Leah Stokes, Associate Professor of Political Science, 
  University of California, Santa Barbara, CA....................     7
Mr. Donnel Baird, Founder and CEO, BlocPower LLC, Brooklyn, NY...     9
Dr. Eli Dourado, Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Growth 
  and Opportunity at Utah State University, Logan, UT............    11

                       Submissions for the Record

Prepared statement of Hon. Donald Beyer Jr., Chairman, a U.S. 
  Representative from the Commonwealth of Virginia...............    36
Prepared statement of Hon. Martin Heinrich, Vice Chairman, a U.S. 
  Senator from New Mexico........................................    37
Prepared statement of Hon. Mike Lee, Ranking Member, a U.S. 
  Senator from Utah..............................................    38
Prepared statement of Mr. Ari Matusiak, Chief Executive Officer, 
  Rewiring America, San Diego, CA................................    40
Prepared statement of Dr. Leah Stokes, Associate Professor of 
  Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA.    44
Prepared statement of Mr. Donnel Baird, Founder and CEO, 
  BlocPower LLC, Brooklyn, NY....................................    50
Prepared statement of Dr. Eli Dourado, Senior Research Fellow at 
  the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, 
  Logan, UT......................................................    52
Response from Mr. Ari Matusiak to Question for the Record 
  Submitted by Representative Peters.............................    56
Response from Mr. Ari Matusiak to Question for the Record 
  Submitted by Representative Herrera Beutler....................    57
Response from Dr. Leah Stokes to Question for the Record 
  Submitted by Representative Peters.............................    57
Response from Dr. Leah Stokes to Question for the Record 
  Submitted by Representative Herrera Beutler....................    58
Response from Mr. Donnel Baird to Question for the Record 
  Submitted by Representative Herrera Beutler....................    58
Response from Dr. Eli Dourado to Questions for the Record 
  Submitted by Representative Herrera Beutler....................    58
Article links for the Record Submitted by Representative 
  Schweikert.....................................................    60
Letter dated September 27, 2021 from Rewiring America Submitted 
  by Senator Heinrich............................................    61

 
                    EXAMINING THE ECONOMIC BENEFITS
                       OF ELECTRIFYING AMERICA'S
                          HOMES AND BUILDINGS

                              ----------                              


                     WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

                    United States Congress,
                          Joint Economic Committee,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:32 p.m., 
in Room 216, Hart Senate Office Building, Vice Chairman, Martin 
Heinrich, presiding.
    Representatives present: Beyer, Herrera Beutler, Arrington, 
Schweikert, Estes, Trone, Peters, and Beatty.
    Senators present: Heinrich, Lee, Kelly, Hassan, Klobuchar, 
Cruz, and Cassidy.
    Staff present: Tiffany Angulo, Vanessa Brown Calder, Ron 
Donado, Ryan Ethington, Tamara Fucile, Devin Gould, Colleen 
Healy, Ismael Cid-Martinez, Adam Michel, Alexander Schunk, Nita 
Somasundaram, Jackie Varas, Emily Volk, Brian Wemple, and 
Michael Madowitz.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF MARTIN HEINRICH, VICE CHAIRMAN, A U.S. 
                    SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO

    Vice Chairman Heinrich. This meeting will come to order. I 
want to thank Chairman Beyer in particular for allowing me to 
hold this hearing today to highlight what I see as one of the 
shortest actions that we need to take right now to confront the 
climate crisis and to advance stronger, stable and broadly 
shared economic growth.
    And thank you to our witnesses here today who are leading 
experts in the growing movement for widespread electrification. 
The fact is that if we ever want to address our contributions 
to our climate problem we need to find sustainable and cost-
effective substitutes for all of the devices and machines that 
we use today that combust fossil fuels.
    And it's not just our gas-powered cars and trucks. We're 
also burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon pollution from 
our hot water heaters, our furnaces, our ovens and stoves. In 
addition to the climate impacts researchers are finding that 
burning fossil fuels in our homes, including methane or natural 
gas as it's commonly called, is really bad for our health.
    This is particularly the case if someone in your family has 
asthma or other respiratory conditions. Even if you are 
properly ventilating your fossil combustion devices, the 
particulate matter in the exhaust from your gas range stove 
likely includes unhealthy of harmful chemicals like nitrogen 
dioxide, carbon monoxide and even formaldehyde.
    But the good news is that there are already better electric 
alternatives for each of these fossil burning machines in our 
homes. Each of these electric substitutes can help reduce our 
climate pollution and create savings on our energy bills.
    Just last month I invited Secretary of Energy Jennifer 
Granholm to visit New Mexico. During her visit we met with 
homeowners in Albuquerque's International District neighborhood 
who are participating in an exciting demonstration project that 
is helping families install energy efficient and electric water 
heaters and air source heat pumps in their homes.
    Tammy Fiebelkorn from the Southwest Energy Efficiency 
Project told us that installing these new appliances is 
reducing the burden of energy costs for these low-income 
families. As she put it the project is ``fighting climate 
change while also making sure that the benefits of that fight 
make it to our front line and our disadvantaged communities.''
    That's exactly right. These new electric appliances will be 
much more efficient than the fossil fuel machines that they are 
replacing, and that could mean significant savings for these 
families on their monthly utility bills. Those savings can make 
an enormous difference for a family that's living paycheck to 
paycheck.
    And importantly for our climate, all of these electrified 
machines can be powered by all the new clean and carbon 
pollution free electricity that we will generate in our new 
clean energy economy. This is how we can power our long-term 
economy recovery, and save families money by solving our 
pressing climate challenge. This is how we build back better.
    We need to get to a place where each time a family sits 
around the kitchen table to figure out how to replace a broken 
furnace or stove or water heater, they choose to and can afford 
to install an electric machine. That's exactly why I introduced 
the Zero Emissions Homes Act to establish a point of sale 
rebates program for these new electric appliances.
    Through this type of Federal investment we can make all of 
the long-term economic and health benefits of electrification 
affordable and accessible to all Americans. We have a once in a 
generation opportunity to make transformative investments in 
our energy economy.
    Investments that will protect our planet, help keep our 
communities healthy, and promote shared prosperity. We simply 
don't have any more time to waste in meeting our responsibility 
on climate. Widespread electrification is one of the surest 
strategies we can pursue to finally take actions that meet the 
scale of this challenge.
    I'd like to now turn things over to Ranking Member Lee for 
his opening comments.
    [The prepared statement of Vice Chairman Heinrich appears 
in the Submissions for the Record on page 37.]

 OPENING STATEMENT OF MIKE LEE, RANKING MEMBER, A U.S. SENATOR 
                           FROM UTAH

    Senator Lee. Thanks so much Mr. Chairman. Our country needs 
to modernize the way we generate, transmit and distribute 
electricity. Over the last year devastating blackouts have 
harmed communities across the country from New York to 
California to Texas. The U.S. electric grid has at times proven 
inadequate for the needs of American families. However, the 
answer is not to spend billions of Federal taxpayer dollars to 
electrify every American home and business, and just as 
importantly, the answer is not to fundamentally alter the 
Federal policy to regulate energy in its generation and in its 
consumption.
    Instead we need to unshackle American industry so that new 
and diverse energy sources can help create a more resilient 
energy future for America. It was not that long ago that 
American innovation unleashed the shale revolution, driving 
down natural gas prices and providing a cleaner energy option 
for homes and businesses.
    We need a similar revolution if we want to modernize our 
electric grid. To clear a path for continued energy innovation 
we must reform existing regulatory policies that stand in the 
way of investors and discourage entrepreneurs. If we want to 
move our energy infrastructure into the future, we need to 
address environmental review.
    When President Nixon signed the National Environmental 
Policy Act, or NEPA into law, it was meant to require agencies 
to consider the environmental consequences of their actions. 
NEPA is generally implicated when projects use Federal funds, 
or when they touch Federal lands which many energy projects do.
    Now 50 years later this seemingly commonsense requirement 
has transformed into a process that requires an average of four 
and a half years, and sometimes two decades or even more of 
paperwork and litigation. The NEPA process frequently 
discourages and prevents critical energy infrastructure 
projects from being built.
    The delays might be worth it if NEPA protected the 
environment, but environmental review is strictly procedural 
meaning that it doesn't actually privilege environmental 
protection. This means that paperwork and lawyers' fees are the 
most consistent result of the NEPA process.
    Federal agencies can find that the action under 
consideration imposes environmental harm, and then 
theoretically decide to approve the agency anyway 
notwithstanding those problems.
    The process even delays projects with clear environmental 
benefits. Without reform NEPA leaves countless energy 
infrastructure projects in a state of bureaucratic limbo, 
sidelining workers, stunting innovative new technologies, and 
leaving communities across the country to wait for Washington 
to approve their future.
    That's unacceptable, it's why I've introduced the UNSHACKLE 
Act. This suite of bills reforms the NEPA process so that 
Federal agencies are better empowered to carry out the law's 
original intent, while also making our Nation's infrastructure 
projects affordable again.
    The UNSHACKLE Act would require agencies to finish their 
environmental assessments faster, allow them to reuse paperwork 
that they've already generated and limit duplicative work at 
State and Federal levels. It would apply a two year deadline 
for the completion of the entire NEPA process, provide fair 
legal parameters around project reviews, and allow states to 
handle NEPA review within their own borders.
    Now these reforms shouldn't be partisan in nature. They're 
designed to achieve something that we can all agree on, that is 
more efficient, effective, Federal permitting for environmental 
projects. Ultimately the best energy future is one that allows 
the American people to innovate. Americans have made great 
strides pursuing breakthroughs in energy extraction production, 
and technological innovations in wind, solar, hydroelectric and 
other renewable forms of energy in the face of heavy-handed 
government control.
    Removing existing regulatory burdens will allow Americans 
to build a more sustainable future. The ability to build and 
build more quickly will help make the U.S. electric grid more 
robust, resilient and reduce the frequency of outages, it will 
become cleaner, more affordable and more reliable power to 
American families and communities will be provided.
    As we rebuild after the pandemic we must liberate our 
energy sector. We must reduce regulatory barriers to developing 
nuclear, hydro, geothermal and other forms of energy. These 
technologies can be an important part of a competitive energy 
sector and a diverse energy future. So let's get government out 
of the way and allow Americans to do what they do best. 
Reforming policies that get in the way of modernizing our 
energy infrastructure will boost economic prospects for 
American families, improve the environment, and enable us to 
build a better America.
    I'm hopeful that today's hearing will convince us of the 
urgent need to achieve that very goal, thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Senator Lee appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 38.]
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. We have four witnesses here to 
share their expertise today. Our first witness will be Mr. Ari 
Matusiak, the CEO of Rewiring America, a non-profit that aims 
to electrify everything starting with the 121 million U.S. 
households that make the decisions accounting for 42 percent of 
U.S. energy related carbon emissions.
    Rewiring America's mission is to revitalize the U.S. 
economy and tackle the climate crisis through a detailed policy 
agenda, including low-cost financing, and targeted regulatory 
and code interventions to cut the cost of energy efficient 
measures like solar panels and electrify each American home.
    Mr. Matusiak is also a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of 
Purpose Venture Group, a social impact advisory firm, an 
incubator that builds community-centered ventures focused on 
combating climate and economic inequality. He served in the 
Obama White House as a Special Assistant to the President and 
Director of Private Sector Engagement where his focus was on 
economic policy related to jobs and competitiveness.
    He has a bachelors degree in political science from Brown 
University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.
    Our second witness will be Dr. Leah Stokes. She is an 
Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and 
is affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science and 
Management in the Environmental Studies Department at the 
University of California, Santa Barbara.
    Her research areas include energy, climate, and 
environmental politics, with a particular focus on renewable 
energy. Her academic work has been published in some of the top 
publications in her field, including Nature Energy, Energy 
Policy and the American Political Science Review.
    In 2020 Dr. Stokes published a book titled, Short 
Circuiting Policy, which examines clean energy policies to 
understand why states are not on track to address the climate 
crisis and how fossil fuel companies and electricity providers 
have put profit above progress by promoting climate denial and 
delay.
    Dr. Stokes has a PhD in public policy from MIT and master's 
degrees from MIT's Political Science Department, and the School 
of International and Public Affairs, and the Earth Institute at 
Columbia University.
    She has a bachelors degree in psychology and eStation 
studies from the University of Toronto.
    Our third witness will be Mr. Donnel Baird, a green 
entrepreneur who is the CEO of BlocPower which he launched as a 
startup in 2012. BlocPower markets, finances, and installs 
solar and energy efficient technology in homes and buildings 
across 15 U.S. cities where it trains and hires local 
vulnerable populations for jobs including installing smart low-
cost sensors and thermostats, and retrofitting large heating 
and cooling systems.
    Mr. Baird aims to replace heating and cooling systems that 
run on fossil fuels with greener and more efficient 
alternatives such as electric heat pumps and solar panels. 
BlocPower's completed energy projects in over 1,000 buildings 
in the New York area helping clients from small businesses to 
non-profits save 20 to 40 percent on their energy bills each 
year.
    BlocPower secured investments and partnerships with Fortune 
500 companies like Goldman Sachs and Apple, and Mr. Baird was 
selected as a 2020 Dial Fellow by the Emerson Collective.
    Mr. Baird obtained his BA from Duke University and his MBA 
from Columbia Business School in 2013.
    Our fourth witness will be Dr. Eli Dourado. Dr. Dourado is 
a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Growth and 
Opportunity at Utah State University. His area of focus are on 
the new technology and innovation needed to drive large 
increases in economic growth including the expedition of 
infrastructure deployment and the elimination of barriers for 
entrepreneurs.
    Dr. Dourado has worked on a wide range of technology policy 
issues including aviation, internet governance, and crypto 
currency. Dr. Dourado previously worked as a senior researcher 
at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, as Director 
of its Technology Policy Program.
    Dr. Dourado has served as an advisor to the State 
Department on International Telecommunications Matters, and as 
an Economist at the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He has a BA in 
Economics and Political Science from Furman University and a 
PhD in Economics from George Mason University.
    The Committee will recognize each witness for five minutes 
to provide remarks. Mr. Matusiak let's begin with your 
testimony and then we'll continue in the order of 
introductions. Mr. Matusiak the floor is all yours.

    STATEMENT OF MR. ARI MATUSIAK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, 
                REWIRING AMERICA, SAN DIEGO, CA

    Mr. Matusiak. Thank you. Vice Chairman Heinrich thank you, 
Ranking Member Lee, other distinguished members of the 
Committee. Thank you for having me in for shining a spotlight 
on household and building electrification, the most central 
path for Americans to take to cut climate change emission sin 
half by 2030, and to zero them out before 2050.
    I am CEO of the non-profit Rewiring America, founded just 
over 1 year ago. Our co-founder Saul Griffith was hired by the 
U.S. Government to map the energy sector down to .1 percent 
fidelity on both the supply and the demand side. The upshot, 
the roughly 100 quads of energy we generate and consume as a 
country each year will produce about 90 percent of our 
emissions.
    When it comes to reducing emissions much attention has been 
paid to the supply side as we work to decarbonize our energy 
supply. The conversation on the demand side has been largely 
focused on replacing combustion engine vehicles with electric 
ones.
    But the residential housing sector is another and very 
large part of the demand side. If we are cleaning our grid, we 
must also clean all of the machines that use it. We cannot get 
to zero emissions by any date unless we do, and that means that 
building decarbonization is the great unmet need in our climate 
policy.
    Indeed at Rewiring America we calculate that over 40 
percent of energy related emissions in the U.S. exist as a 
result of decisions made around the kitchen table, what we 
drive, how we eat and cool our homes, how we heat our water, 
how we cook our food, how we dry our clothes.
    There are 121 million households in American. In order to 
get to zero emissions by 2050 we calculate America must replace 
or install one billion machines across all of those households 
in that timeframe. The timeframe is important because these 
machines last for a long time, 10 to 25 years on average.
    Put it this way, every time an opportunity is missed to 
install an efficient, electric machine, we put further pressure 
on hitting our 2050 target, every machine counts. For us, that 
is an affirming and optimistic prognosis because if those one 
billion machines represent about 40 percent of our emissions as 
a country, 65 percent if you include small businesses, then we 
can develop a plan for addressing them, one efficient electric 
machine at a time.
    We don't need to wait on any moonshot technology--it all 
already exists. We don't need to ask Americans to sacrifice or 
change their lifestyles to survive. We can define our climate 
strategy in a way that benefits every American directly and 
immediately.
    Those one billion machines also represent an enormous 
economic opportunity for America, because if we need all these 
efficient electric machines, so to does the rest of the world. 
According to our modeling, replacing carbon-dependent 
appliances increases household discretionary income, creates 
local jobs that cannot be automated or off-shored, and reduces 
the health costs of burning fossil fuels in our homes.
    That's a triple win, on top of the fourth win of helping 
the emissions. Here are the numbers. At least 85 percent of 
households in the U.S., 103 million could save 37.3 billion 
dollars a year on energy bills if they were using modern 
electrified furnaces or water heaters instead of their current 
machines.
    Of the households in the U.S. that would save by 
electrifying, 44 percent of them are low to moderate income. 
Each year they could save an average of $377.00, and we 
estimate that by 2030 that number could go up to $2,500.00. 
Outside of these direct pocketbook benefits to Americans, and 
especially low and moderate income Americans, electrification 
would create 462,000 installation jobs in the U.S. that can't 
be automated or off-shored.
    In addition, it would further generate another 80,000 
manufacturing jobs and 800,000 indirect and induced jobs. And 
on the healthcare front which has boomeranging effects into our 
economy, electrifying household appliances with address the 42 
percent increased risks of children experiencing asthma systems 
associated with gas stoves, and the 15,500 premature deaths in 
the U.S. that come from outdoor air pollution from buildings.
    Those are a lot of numbers. The point is this. If the 
upfront costs were the same, we think Americans would choose to 
electrify their households every single time an appliance fails 
and needs to be replaced. In not installing these machines, 
these households would be locking in emissions for one to two 
decades or more because of the brand new carbon dependent 
machines that would be installed instead.
    This is a machine-by-machine plan that puts us on a path to 
zero emissions. It's an optimistic plan that carries with it a 
moral and economic imperative for action. Because not only is 
it the right answer for our planet, it also does right by 
Americans and their families today.
    By the numbers there is simply no greater opportunity for 
the Congress to unlock another American century of economic 
expansion and prosperity than by investing in the 
electrification of our economy, starting with the American 
household. It is time to understand our households as the 
keystone of our climate infrastructure.
    Encouraging these invested power to make real the 
opportunity before us, and to continue to use your bully pulpit 
to educate Americans about the role we can all play in 
realizing our shared future and potential. Thank you Mr. Vice 
Chairman and to all the members of the committee.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Matusiak appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 40.]
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Dr. Stokes.

STATEMENT OF DR. LEAH STOKES, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL 
      SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA BARBARA, CA

    Dr. Stokes. Vice Chairman Heinrich, Ranking Member Lee, and 
Distinguished Members of the Joint Economic Committee good 
afternoon. For more than three decades scientists like me have 
come before Congress to warn lawmakers like you that climate 
change poses a dire risk to our economy.
    Those warnings have now come to pass. Last year the United 
States experienced 22 separate billion dollar climate and 
weather disasters, which cost us nearly half a trillion 
dollars. That is the economic cost of inaction on climate 
change, and it is growing every year.
    You already know the broad contours of what I am going to 
say. Congress must act now to cut carbon pollution by reducing 
our dependence on fossil fuels. Americans have asked you to do 
this for years through phone calls, letters and testimony. I'm 
urging you to listen, not just to me and to other scientists, 
but to the American people and act now on the climate crisis.
    We must cut carbon pollution by 45 percent 2030 to have a 
chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees. President Biden has 
a plan to do that, but we need Congress to act on that plan and 
pass his Build Back Better agenda. This includes investing in 
building electrification.
    Our homes are our safe places. Yet scientists are 
uncovering that burning fossil gas in buildings is dangerous to 
our health. Children living in a home with a gas stove have a 
42 percent chance--increased chance of having asthma. Even when 
a gas stove or other gas appliance is turned off, it is still 
leaking, and that gas contains carcinogens like Benzene which 
cause cancer.
    Thankfully we've got the solutions to remove pollution from 
our homes. We can use electric technologies like induction 
stoves and heat pumps. Clean electricity combined with 
electrification could cut three-quarters of our carbon 
pollution.
    To accelerate building electrification, Congress must make 
key investments now. The goal should be to have clean 
appliances be the default choice for all Americans. Zero 
emission appliance rebates are crucial for making clean 
technologies accessible to all Americans. These investments 
will catalyze the market, creating lower costs through 
innovation.
    They will also help to avoid locking in current pollution 
as appliances installed today may still be operating in the 
2040s. This is also smart economic policy because it will avoid 
creating stranded costs. Additional dollars should also flow to 
the weatherization assistance program, to tax credits, and to 
grants for domestic manufacturing of clean appliances.
    Congress should also invest in clean electricity through 
both tax credits for power producers, and grants for utilities 
that increase their share of clean power. Cleaner electricity 
will help building electrification deliver even greater 
benefits. All of these investments will be multiplied many 
times over by growing the economy, and they'll pay themselves 
back. Through aggressive Federal Government investments in 
building electrification we could create one million jobs this 
decade.
    And many of these jobs cannot be taken overseas. If you 
want to have a heat pump in your home, you actually have to 
have an American worker install that in your home. These 
Federal investments are also crucial to reducing inequality and 
healthcare costs.
    Clean buildings are important for all us, but they're 
particularly important for people of color who are exposed to 
higher levels of indoor air pollution. Federal investments can 
also cut energy bills with Congress's help more than 100 
million American households could save money by installing 
these modern electric appliances.
    So cleaning up the American economy is a win/win. It 
creates jobs, it saves Americans money, it advances equality, 
and it keeps the United States competitive globally. So the 
climate solutions are ready. The question is speed. To deploy 
these clean technologies fast enough we need Congress's help.
    You can act now to catalyze the market creating millions of 
jobs and saving everyday Americans money. I'd like to close by 
sharing something personal. I have two newborn babies that are 
two months old at home right now, and I have left them to come 
here and speak with all of you because I know the urgency of 
this moment. I'm here not just to speak on behalf of my newborn 
children, but on behalf of all the children in the United 
States.
    I'm also here to speak on behalf of young people who are 
deeply fearful about what their future holds. And quite 
frankly, I'm here to speak on behalf of all of us because we 
are already seeing what climate change is doing to the places 
and the people we cherish most.
    This is a pivotal moment in history. The world is watching. 
Either Congress will pass a bold climate investment package 
this fall, or we will lose the last best opportunity we have 
and wait another decade. We don't have anymore decades left to 
waste to act on the climate crisis, thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Stokes appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 44.]
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Mr. Baird.

STATEMENT OF MR. DONNEL BAIRD, FOUNDER AND CEO, BLOCPOWER LLC, 
                          BROOKLYN, NY

    Mr. Baird. Good afternoon. Is this on? Great. Greetings to 
all the members of this Distinguished Committee. My name is 
Donnel Baird. I grew up in a Brooklyn apartment building that 
did not have a working heating system. Like many of our 
neighbors in Brooklyn, mostly immigrant families, we heated our 
apartment with a gas oven, and so every night we would turn on 
the gas burner, open up the oven door and that was kind of how 
we heat everything.
    My dad was a mechanical engineer, so we knew that the oven 
produced carbon monoxide and other toxins, and was not safe, so 
we opened up all the windows every night to clear the air. You 
don't need to be an engineer, or the CEO of a clean tech 
startup to know that releasing toxic gasses into your family's 
bedrooms is bad for public health, and that leaving windows 
open to mitigate the impact is a waste of resources.
    I founded my climate tech startup BlocPower to help address 
the energy issues my family struggled with growing up. 
Households account for 42 percent of U.S. carbon emissions, and 
BlocPower is focused on greening buildings, replacing old, 
antiquated, fossil fuel energy systems with all electric 
technology.
    Our business case is simple. We install clean, zero 
emission technology in older buildings that waste fossil fuels 
all over the country. We make money because the technology 
saves so much money to the building owner that we are able to 
make investments and amortize other health measures into 
transactions with that save so much money that we can finance 
all of this.
    We are able to turn a profit and leave households spending 
less on energy than they were before by utilizing these 
technologies. In the process we dramatically lower building's 
carbon emissions. We make them healthier and more comfortable.
    In essence, we're creating both jobs and healthier 
buildings, and healthier communities while delivering financial 
and economic impact. We've completed upgrades in over 1,200 
buildings, apartment buildings, schools, houses of worship, 
townhomes, single family buildings in New York City's poorest 
neighborhoods, impacting tens of thousands of families.
    And we've built software to analyze the impact of these 
technologies on over 120 million buildings across America. I'll 
never forget one of our first projects in the Bronx when we 
were called in to convert an aging school building following a 
tragedy. The building had been burning fossil fuels in its 
basement to power the facility however, the building's 
ventilation system was set up improperly.
    As a result air pollution from the fossil fuel system in 
the basement was being pumped into the cafeteria every single 
day contributing to chronic asthma amongst all the school 
children. The school nurse had 70 different zip lock bags with 
pieces of tape with all of the four-year-old's names on it to 
figure out which inhaler went to which child.
    It was so poor that one day a four-year-old had an asthma 
attack and needed to go to the emergency room and later died. 
We know this is not an isolated incident. Our schools and our 
homes across this country need and deserve electrification. 
Electric buildings are better buildings.
    The problems of dirty fuels and buildings are fixable. We 
know electric building technology works. In Brooklyn, new 
buildings under construction often include heat pumps. We have 
installed systems in hundreds of buildings throughout New York 
City and now coast to coast.
    We have the ability to bring the same incredible electric 
heating technology, both the software and the hardware, to the 
challenges of heating and cooling in buildings. These are real 
benefits to families, and aggregated across America these 
benefits to our economy are massive.
    But I want to point out that the markets have spoken. The 
private sector has spoken and endorsed better building 
electrification technology. All electric, carbon, low carbon, 
healthy buildings are being embraced by Apple, Microsoft, 
Google, Goldman Sachs, the American Family Life Insurance 
Company, Salesforce, the New York State Government and energy 
giant Exelon. And I know this because we partner with all of 
them and they've invested in our company to electrify 
American's building stock.
    The government has a key role to play to ensure that the 
benefits of all electric buildings are accessible to all 
Americans. Rebates will help to reduce the upfront costs. Today 
we raise five private dollars for ever single government dollar 
that is invested.
    In addition, expanding lending authority through the 
Department of Energy's Loan Program Office could provide 
significant new capital to grid electrification across the U.S. 
We can make our houses smart, and all electric, and responsive 
to a modern cyber secure smart grid so that we can protect 
ourselves from climate disasters.
    America can and should lead the world in innovation, 
manufacturing and the workforce to convert our real estate 
stock. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Baird appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 50.]
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Dr. Dourado.

  STATEMENT OF DR. ELI DOURADO, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW AT THE 
  CENTER FOR GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY AT UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, 
                           LOGAN, UT

    Dr. Dourado. Thank you Vice Chairman Heinrich, Ranking 
Member Lee, and Members of the Committee for the opportunity to 
testify today. My name is Eli Dourado, and I am a Senior 
Research Fellow at the Center for Growth and Opportunity at 
Utah State University.
    I study the technologies that could bring about 
transformative economic growth and the obstacles they face. 
Climate change is a technology problem. New technologies are 
our only realistic hope to significantly reduce carbon 
emissions. The way to address climate change is not to 
deindustrialize society and go back to a less prosperous past. 
It is to charge boldly into the future.
    On that, I believe we all strongly agree. There's a slogan 
that represents one vision of this future. Electrify 
everything. Like all slogans it oversimplifies. I'd like to use 
this opportunity to raise some nuance and offer some additional 
solutions that will make us more likely to achieve our 
decarbonization goals.
    First we must be realistic about the necessary electrical 
system upgrades. Electrifying heating makes financial sense for 
many, but not all individual homeowners, but even if heat pumps 
make individual economic sense, they may not make collective 
economic sense until upgrades are available for our electric 
grid and generation capacity.
    Mass adoption of electric heat pumps, particularly in the 
coldest parts of the country where they are least efficient 
will flip the time of peak electricity demand from summer to 
winter. Since our current system is only built to the capacity 
of the summer peak without new capacity the coldest winter days 
would be met with rolling blackouts at exactly the time we most 
need reliable energy.
    Heating is a safety critical service. People die if the 
heating goes out. If we want to rely exclusively on electricity 
for heating we must invest not only in additional capacity to 
meet peak demand, but also in grid hardening, like placing 
wires underground where they can't be downed by falling trees.
    Which brings me to my next point. We must make it easier to 
build. If we're going to do so much building, new peak load 
power plants, undergrounding of wires, new long distance 
transmission lines, and new wind and solar farms, it is worth 
first addressing the excessive costs of building new 
infrastructure in this country.
    Among the chief culprits are laws that give project 
deponents a way to slow or stop the permitting and siting 
process. Laws intended to support environmental justice, like 
the National Environmental Policy Act, have instead been 
weaponized by nimbies or competitors to slow progress.
    Research from the Brookings Institution found that 
interstate highway construction costs tripled between the 1960s 
and the 1980s. The researchers dated the inflection point to 
the early 1970s which they noted was precisely when NEPA took 
effect.
    By lengthening and adding risk to the permitting process, 
NEPA makes financing large capital intensive projects less 
attractive. Sometimes propose new subsidies for long distance 
transmission projects to overcome this obstacle, while 
subsidies for these projects may be desirable in isolation, it 
is unwise to spend taxpayer money to overcome a permitting 
obstacle that Congress created and has the tools to fix.
    Congress should first remove the permitting obstacles, and 
then consider whether new subsidies are still necessary. Even 
if they are still necessary, they would return a much higher 
value for the taxpayer with the permitting obstacles removed.
    The country would also greatly benefit from new zero carbon 
baseload power plants, either nuclear or geothermal. To 
accommodate all of this building, we need a thorough going 
permitting reform of the kind that has been proposed in the 
UNSHACKLE Act.
    Third, we should avoid picking winners and losers. A 
downside of a strong policy focus on electric heat pumps or 
anything else is that it puts politicians in the role of 
picking the winning technology. If left to compete on a level 
playing field, a range of other possible solutions, including 
non-electric options, could help to decarbonize heating.
    Some possibilities include district heating and high 
quality offsets from genuine carbon removal projects, instead 
of selecting one technology decarbonize heating on its own, 
Congress should achieve its goals with technology neutral 
policies.
    Finally, the committee should recognize that the economic 
benefits of addressing climate change will not come from jobs, 
but from cheap and abundant clean energy. Consider electric 
vehicles. Electric vehicles have many advantages over 
combustion vehicles, but one of them is that they have fewer 
moving parts and therefore require less maintenance expense.
    This reduction in maintenance requirements will translate 
to thousands of mechanic jobs being destroyed. Should we oppose 
electric vehicles, underscore? Of course not. The economic 
opportunity from addressing climate change comes from 
rethinking energy, not from creating jobs.
    If we could repeat the stunning cost reductions we have 
observed in wind and solar energy in firm dense technologies 
like advanced nuclear and advanced geothermal, we could double 
or triple per capita primary energy use that would truly make 
the economy boom.
    I once again thank the committee for the opportunity to 
testify, and I look forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Dourado appears in the 
Submissions for the Record on page 52.]
    Chairman Beyer [presiding]. Thank you very much. Let me now 
recognize the Ranking Member from the State of Utah Senator Lee 
for his questions. Thank you.
    Senator Lee. Thank you very much. Dr. Dourado I'd like to 
start with you if that's okay, and I appreciated your testimony 
and your insights that were very helpful. Now you've written a 
little bit about the promise of geothermal energy based on the 
fact that it's clean, it's cheap, and it's an abundant energy 
source, but suggested that in many ways poor policy on the 
books now could be standing in the way of our capitalizing on 
that, and benefiting from geothermal energy.
    The most favorable conditions for geothermal power happen 
to be found in the western United States where coincidentally 
the Federal Government happens to control a very significant 
portion of all the land. Now can you tell us specifically how 
Federal policy could help make geothermal electricity 
generation more competitive, and thus more of a reality?
    Dr. Dourado. Yes, Senator, thank you for the question. As 
you noted the most near term resources for geothermal are all 
in the west and overlap significantly with Federal lands. And 
geothermal has a very strong learning by doing component. 
Bringing technology--reporting it from the oil and gas sector, 
people leaving the oil and gas sector and just started the new 
geothermal advanced geothermal sector.
    They need experience and practice, and that process of 
delivering power is what's going to drive the cost down and 
make it available eventually everywhere in the country, not 
just where the resources are located.
    On Federal lands to get a permit to drill, whether it's an 
oil and gas well, or a geothermal well, you need permission 
from the Bureau of Land Management, and because the oil and gas 
industry has so much influence in Washington they were able to 
get a categorical exclusion from NEPA review, they only have to 
do you know a two week approval process to get their wells 
approved.
    Whereas a geothermal well, it takes about two years to get 
an approval from the Bureau of Land Management. So I think a 
very promising policy would be to extend the exclusion that 
currently exists, under the exact same conditions that exist 
for oil and gas and you know just make them available for 
geothermal as well, and that would I think radially increase 
access to progress in geothermal energy in the coming you know 
years, within this decade.
    Senator Lee. So let me get this straight. We've given more 
favorable NEPA regulatory treatment to oil and gas drilling on 
Federal lands, than we have to geothermal drilling on Federal 
land?
    Dr. Dourado. That's exactly correct Senator.
    Senator Lee. Geothermal sources are effectively renewable, 
they're not emitting things. They're not emitting carbon into 
the atmosphere. They're not polluting the atmosphere. The same 
cannot be said of oil and gas drilling. Is that correct? So why 
would that make any sense? What plausible defensible public 
policy justification could there be for treating oil and gas 
drilling more favorably than we treat geothermal drilling?
    Dr. Dourado. I don't think there's any good reason for it 
Senator. Geothermal is a renewable technology, but it's also a 
vast existing reservoir, so actually the amount of geothermal 
energy that exists is 40 times greater than all fossil fuel 
energy, and all fissionable material combined.
    So it's just a massive resource. It would power our economy 
for the next billion years, and it makes no sense that it is 
disfavored relative to oil and gas.
    Senator Lee. Thank you. That's very informative. Dr. 
Stokes, I want to talk to you for a moment. I take it you've 
been involved in the development of the clean energy, clean 
electricity performance program. And as you know the CEPP 
requires significant renewable solar development.
    One study produced by Princeton University suggests that 
land equivalent to the size of the State of West Virginia could 
be necessary for solar deployment in a full zero emissions 
transmission. Do you know about how many acres of Federal land 
you'd anticipate would be needed to realize the development of 
CEPP?
    Dr. Stokes. Well I would say that actually clean energy 
sources would be eligible under that program, not just solar, 
and of course solar can also be put on rooftops and other 
buildings, so it doesn't necessarily require a lot of land.
    Senator Lee. Sure, sure, there are other sources that could 
be included within it.
    Dr. Stokes. That are included yes.
    Senator Lee. And one of those is wind. Now the same 
Princeton University study suggests that an area equivalent to 
the acreage of Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, and 
Arkansas may be needed for wind turbines to reach zero 
emissions. All of those states combined.
    So how many acres of Federal land do you think would be 
needed?
    Dr. Stokes. Well you don't have to develop renewables on 
Federal land. It's of course an option. And I think there may 
be some you know good reasons for doing it in some places. You 
can also do it offshore. In the case of offshore wind you can 
do geothermal, as Dr. Dourado's been talking about.
    You can do carbon capture and sequestration, nuclear 
energy. The clean electricity performance program is a 
technology neutral approach, so it does not require the 
building of renewables on Federal lands.
    Senator Lee. By the way one of the dirtiest, one of the 
biggest emitters as I understand it, one of the dirtier sources 
of pollution happens to be heating oil, would you agree with 
that?
    Dr. Stokes. Heating oil, yes.
    Senator Lee. Are there efforts underway to ban that? Is 
that part of your initiative?
    Dr. Stokes. I'm not trying to ban anything, and I don't 
really have an initiative so to speak. I know there are efforts 
in New York City for example, to try to clean up heating oil in 
that city as that's been used for many decades in New York 
City. So heating oil does have significant health impacts at 
the building level as well as carbon pollution impacts as well.
    Senator Lee. I see my time's expired. Thank you.
    Chairman Beyer. Mr. Senator we thank you very much. Let me 
begin with just the formal Chairman's statement which is I'm so 
pleased that you're here this afternoon, and I really want to 
thank my friend and colleague, Vice Chairman Heinrich, for 
bringing us together for this important discussion.
    Climate change is a threat not only to our planet, but also 
to the health of our economy, so we need to look at the 
multitudes of solutions, including electrification technology. 
So in the interest of time I just want to submit my opening 
statement for the record and move right to some questions.
    Mr. Matusiak, I was fascinated by all of your statistics, 
the 37.3 billion dollars a year savings, the 463,000 
installation jobs created, 15,000 premature deaths--not 
happening. You didn't do the other side of it which are the 
jobs that go away in the gas industry, or the coal miners, 
something like that.
    Do you have any sense when you netted out what the impact 
on economic growth would be from electrifying our economy? What 
GDP, what the increments of GDP growth might be?
    Mr. Matusiak. Well thank you Chairman, it's wonderful being 
with you today and for the opportunity. By our analysis there 
are over the course of the next 20 years, 25 years, an 
opportunity to create 25 million jobs in the electrification of 
the economy.
    Five million durable, sustainable jobs over that timeframe, 
and we will look at the transition of jobs across different 
sectors. There is a significant opportunity to retrain and to 
put people to work doing things that they are accustomed to 
doing. So for example, if we're talking about installing water 
heaters and furnaces, if they are electric they are heat pumps, 
and that is part of a transition of opportunity--of economic 
opportunity.
    But the upshot here is that the electrification of the 
economy unlocks a massive opportunity. It is a massive 
opportunity in job creation. It's a massive opportunity in 
localized job creation, and it's a massive opportunity in 
economic catalyst in terms of--as an economic catalyst in terms 
of the money that flows through the economy when you start to 
stack the incremental jobs that are created, the incremental 
savings that households realize, the lower costs to communities 
when it comes to healthcare costs and all the rest.
    And we have an opportunity to put a lot more money to work 
in the economy which creates a lot more jobs as you well know. 
And so for us the electrification strategy is not just a 
climate imperative, a moral imperative, frankly the path at 
which we get to zero emissions. It was the win/win/win strategy 
whereby we create the jobs that power us into the next century 
of economic prosperity as a country, and allow us to maintain 
our economic position as not just a leader in terms of our 
standard for the world, but in terms of the machines that we 
are producing and making and exporting to the other countries 
that will certainly need them as well.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you very much. Dr. Stokes you sort of 
made the public health case for the electrification of 
buildings in that kids in homes using gas stoves are at a 42 
percent greater risk of having asthmas. Can you expand on that? 
Is this something that OSHA should be doing, or national 
building permit standards?
    Dr. Stokes. Well there are actually discussions that gas 
appliances should come with warnings for citizens and for 
Americans that they pose health and safety risks, serve 
consumer reports, could for example put a sticker on these 
appliances warning people that you know they could increase the 
risk of asthma, that they can be involved in emitting 
carcinogens into your home.
    That there are significant health risks to these 
appliances, and it's interesting because we've lived with them 
in our homes for a long time. We sort of celebrated them as 
this wonderful innovation, but what scientists are uncovering 
right now with research that's ongoing is that there's a really 
big health side effect to burning gas in our homes. And so I 
think that the American people as they learn more and more 
about the science are going to realize that they haven't fully 
understood the health implications of having this in their 
homes, and it's possible that the American government could be 
doing more to help inform Americans about the risks of having 
gas in their homes.
    Chairman Beyer. Great thank you very much. Dr. Dourado you 
talked about the misuse of NEPA, and people weaponizing it and 
the like, and that the rise of the citizen voice. Is there 
something wrong with having a citizen voice in this process, 
especially when you look back at all the times when citizens 
had no voice?
    Dr. Dourado. You know Senator, Mr. Chairman I believe 
democracy is very important and I think it's most important at 
election time. And I think in many other decisions I think it's 
better if we let the wheels of government turn without 
involving every member of the community that might have an 
objection to a project.
    We need to let projects go forward if we want to build in 
this country.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you very much for that perspective. 
My time is up. I will now recognize my friend from Arizona, Mr. 
Schweikert.
    Representative Schweikert. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have a 
couple things here. It was interesting Senator Lee actually 
asked one of the things that's actually--and look I'm a 
westerner, I've actually never seen fuel oil heating, but I've 
seen the data on it and it's absolutely unhealthy, it's filthy. 
I'm almost surprised that the reaction from all witnesses 
wasn't absolutely you know if natural gas appliance needs 
labeling of this and that, the others need to be pulled out 
immediately.
    So I'm just a little surprised by that. Mr. is it Dourado, 
what's the best way to pronounce it, the doctor from Utah.
    Dr. Dourado. Dourado.
    Representative Schweikert. I'm sorry. I have to learn to 
actually wear glasses. I actually want to walk through one of 
my personal fixations, and I care a lot about this because 
being from the desert southwest we have the largest nuclear 
power plant in the country, but we also have tremendous 
photovoltaic and actually some decent hydroelectric.
    Are you familiar with the SunZia power line? In the middle 
of New Mexico is one of the greatest wind assets in the United 
States. And California functionally contracted for this 
wonderful wind generated asset. We're approaching 20 years to 
move the power line to get it permitted because it crosses a 
number of jurisdictions.
    Oddly enough the real problem had been the government 
jurisdictions. So in some ways it becomes actually a fraudulent 
narrative here when we say we want to exploit our wind assets, 
and then without the same breath my friends, and I don't care 
what side of the aisle you're on, don't also articulate saying 
we need major NEPA reform to actually move the power generated 
from those wind assets. And help me understand.
    Because this is one it crosses through Arizona, hits the 
Palo Verdi hub as you probably know if you specialize in 
electricity and then would move to the L.A. basin. But 
seriously, you talk to the investors on this and today they say 
we wouldn't do this again. You know something that was going to 
take six, seven years, now is approaching 20 years.
    How common do you run into this? What would you do in NEPA 
reform?
    Dr. Dourado. You know I talk to a lot of companies 
including hard tech startups that run into NEPA issues all the 
time. It is ubiquitous throughout the economy that you know at 
various times you need Federal Government approval for 
something, and that brings in NEPA--some sort of NEPA review.
    A lot of times it isn't an environmental impact statement. 
I think the Federal Government only finalizes about 200 
environment impact statements a year, but they do about 12,000 
environmental assessments per year. And each of these is 
hundreds of pages long, you know, sometimes thousands of pages 
of appendices, it takes multiple years, and it just adds a 
tremendous entirely procedural burden on a lot of projects.
    So I think it's a very significant obstacle to building in 
this country.
    Representative Schweikert. And I wasn't going to burden 
everyone. We have a whole binder of little charts of 
photovoltaic projects, actually even some power coming out of 
Earth Energy, and you can't move the lines. One other one just, 
have you seen the charts that talk about over the next few 
years carbon emissions, predicted greenhouse emissions in the 
United States are going to go up.
    And a lot of it is because we are about to remove much of 
our baseload nuclear off the grid, and by removing that 
baseload nuclear you know our generation base is truly 
impaired. What is your understanding on that dataset?
    Dr. Dourado. I think that's generally correct, and you know 
as an example New York City just closed down one of its nuclear 
facilities saying it would be replaced with renewable energy, 
and it was replaced with fossil fuels, so it was fossil fuels 
that made up the load that was missing from the shutdown 
nuclear plant.
    So I think it's important to not only keep open our 
existing nuclear plants, but to figure out what we can do on 
nuclear licensing to make it more cost effective to the nuclear 
clients including advanced small modular reactors that are the 
next generation of nuclear facilities.
    Representative Schweikert. Thank you. Mr. Chairman if 
you'll give me time I'm going to submit for the record some 
articles about technology of extraction of uranium from sea 
water as well as an article from a Noble Prize Laureate 
physicist talking about the use of hyper pulse lasers to break 
down spent nuclear materials as making it inert, and the fact 
that we may be at the time where if we truly embrace technology 
we may have the virtual cycle upon that and with that I yield 
back.
    [Article links submitted by Representative Schweikert 
appear in the Submissions for the Record on page 60.]
    Vice Chairman Heinrich [presiding]. Without objection those 
will be added to the record. I appreciate my friend from the 
House bringing up the issue of SunZia, I would just point out 
as someone who has been deeply involved in that project for 
most of that period that it's actually the state based Public 
Regulatory Commission and the former Governor who objected to 
SunZia.
    They actually had a final environmental impact statement 
and the record of the decision, so I don't think NEPA is to 
blame there. I think what we probably need is Federal backstop 
authority for transmission planning, something which is 
included in the bipartisan infrastructure package and will 
facilitate much more transmission in this country.
    Mr. Baird, I want to ask you, your firm is doing this every 
day. Can you talk a little bit from that perspective. Have your 
clients seen health impacts, positive health impacts from these 
changes?
    Mr. Baird. Thank you, Senator. We are working with MIT as 
well as Columbia Mailman School of Public Health to measure air 
quality and asthma impact across the population in New York 
City, to measure the impacts on air quality and reductions in 
air pollution from electrifying buildings.
    And they are significant. They are so significant that the 
New York State government has opened an R&D exploration of the 
reduced impact on Medicaid and Medicare costs because of 
reduced emergency room visitation due to chronic asthma. The 
hospital systems in New York they know which apartment 
buildings overproduce chronic asthmatics.
    They can give you a list of six or 700 apartment buildings 
in the Bronx which has the highest asthma rates in America, and 
they can say these are the apartment buildings in the Bronx 
that are overproducing asthma even relative to other folks in 
the Bronx.
    And if we can green and electrify those buildings we do 
dramatically reduce indoor air pollution caused by burning 
fossil fuels. There's 5,000 buildings in the Bronx that burn 
oil in their basements for heat and for hot water which means 
it burns every single day, as whether it's summer or winter 
there does need to be oil burned for hot water, cooking, and 
showering.
    And so we do believe that there are multiple academic 
multi-year studies that will indicate that a reduction in air 
pollution will have a dramatically positive impact on asthma. 
This is going to end up being like lead sir, gas and oil in 
buildings. It's going to be like lead.
    We're going to look back on it five years from now and say 
what were thinking? How could we subject our children, the next 
generation to these toxins.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Would you characterize I think one 
of the words I've heard is deindustrialization, characterize 
your buildings and what the residents of these buildings start 
with and end with, and would you characterize them as more or 
less advanced technological, et cetera.
    Mr. Baird. We characterize our buildings and our processes. 
We want to turn old, antiquated, fossil fuel wasting, unhealthy 
you know systems in basements where no one wants to go, and no 
one wants to breathe.
    We want to turn that building into a Tesla. Just like a 
Tesla is modern. It's all electric. It has the best software in 
the world. We can now do that to buildings. That's what a heat 
pump actually allows us to do is to modernize buildings and 
bring them from the 1950s or 1960s into 2021, or even 2030.
    We are bringing low income residents and school children 
who attend schools in the Bronx into the future by giving them 
the most modern technology that is available, and it is the 
opposite of deindustrialization. It is using all of the 
innovation and machine learning and hardware and software from 
Silicon Valley which funds my company, and we are bringing that 
to bear in our neglected real estate sector across America to 
move them into the modern era and make people healthier and 
safer.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. So let's get to the hard questions. 
Which ones of you actually own an induction stove? Because I 
think that's the elephant in the room. So for Dr. Stokes or Mr. 
Baird, I have to admit my own bias in thinking that oh how can 
I cook without gas until I cooked with an induction stove.
    So tell me about that contrast because everything else I 
think are things that people are going to naturally gravitate 
toward the obviously more efficient, more advanced heat pump 
solutions, but with natural gas we did such a good job 
convincing ourselves that it was the right way to cook, tell me 
about that.
    Dr. Stokes. Yes, there's been a marketing campaign for a 
long time to sell gas to the American people, and you know we 
believe cooking with gas that it is the better way to cook. But 
what we're realizing is that we're not asking people to go back 
to the electric coils which we can all agree are terrible, we 
are asking people to go to as Donnel would put it, the Tesla of 
their stoves right?
    Induction stoves are safer. They don't heat up. They 
basically use magnets to transfer to other surfaces the heat, 
and so they're safer, and of course they're not emitting these 
toxins into homes like the carcinogens that we've talked about, 
particular matter, things that cause asthma.
    I honestly think the American people don't know in some 
ways all the risks of gas stoves in their homes and how much 
the technology has come ahead. And what we've got to do is make 
that technology the same cost as putting in a new gas stove, 
make it affordable, and that's where Congress can really help 
out with those zero emissions appliance rebates.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Thank you. My time is expired, but 
I'm going to hopefully stick around for a second panel if I 
can. Congressman Estes and then we'll have Congressman Peters 
after him.
    Representative Estes. Well thank you Mr. Chairman and thank 
you to all our witnesses for being here today. You know before 
the COVID-19 pandemic our economy had taken off thanks in part 
to policies that valued America's energy independence. And 
today as we try to recapture that economic boom that we saw 
before the pandemic, I worry that many companies who fought 
hard to stay afloat during COVID will ultimately fail with the 
rising tide of government mandates that make everything more 
expensive for them including energy.
    And the higher cost to power small businesses and homes 
will negatively affect both consumers as well as the family 
budget. The fact that nearly 80 percent of all U.S. energy 
comes from gas, oil and coal with wind and solar accounting for 
roughly 10 percent, so before we look at maybe what could be 
called unrealistic plans to remove fossil fuels completely from 
the U.S. economy, we should look at how do we focus on getting 
more efficient across the spectrum.
    And we certainly don't need special tax credits to 
subsidize electric vehicles for millionaires to ride in 
California, particularly when my middle class folks in Kansas 
have to pay for that write off on the Tesla.
    So I'm a big advocate of an all of the above energy 
strategy that prioritizes American energy independent, embraces 
the spectrum of fossil fuels and renewable energy and doesn't 
necessary focus on Washington picking winners and losers 
through these big subsidies.
    On the other side it looks a lot like an anything but 
strategy that demonizes fossil fuels and clean energy like 
nuclear. An everything but policy is bad for our economy and 
environment. We've seen the fracking and natural gas have 
reduced natural greenhouse gas emissions more than any other 
technology in the past two decades, and innovation in that 
sector were driven entirely by the private sector, not by some 
top down government mandates.
    Dr. Dourado research has shown that lower income households 
spend more of their budget on energy bills. For example a 2015 
report found that households with less than $30,000.00 annually 
in income spend 23 percent of their after tax income on energy, 
while households making over 50 percent annually spent just 7 
percent of their after tax income on energy.
    How do higher energy costs impact lower income families?
    Dr. Dourado. Thank you Representative Estes. That is 
correct that poorer families spend a higher percentage of their 
budget on energy, and I think because energy is a necessity, 
and this is true across the board of almost all necessities 
that they affect the poorest the most.
    I think it's extremely important that we focus on 
increasing productivity growth in our energy sector, and use 
the opportunity afforded through conversations like this to 
drive progress in our energy system across the board including 
next generation technologies like advanced nuclear and advanced 
geothermal.
    I think that productivity will you know disproportionately 
help the poorest Americans.
    Representative Estes. Thank you. Also, Dr. Dourado you 
noted in your writing that the current structure of Federal 
subsidies for clean energy generation significantly favors some 
forms of power over others. Senator Lee talked earlier about on 
Federal lands gas being favored over geothermal. But isn't it 
also true that solar power is favored over geothermal?
    And how does that uneven nature of government subsidies 
affect clean energy production in the United States, and 
wouldn't a more neutral approach spur greater creation of what 
could ultimately be cheaper forms of energy for the future?
    Dr. Dourado. I think it would be an excellent idea to take 
a very close look at the permitting that we do on all forms of 
energy on Federal land, and see you know what is the maximum 
scope for processes like categorical exclusions that would 
simplify permitting for you know for solar and for geothermal, 
and for anything else that we might want to do.
    So I think maximizing use of you know both legislative or 
administrative categorical solutions with that regard to the 
energy selected I think would be very good for productivity.
    Representative Estes. Thank you. You know one of the 
things, and I'm about to run out of time, but one of the things 
that I noted as we looked ahead at energy production is that 
some of the renewables, the most likely ones we've talked about 
today in terms of wind and solar are the least productive in 
terms of being efficient.
    And so we need to make sure that as we look to the future 
that we can have a total generating capacity that provide our 
electric needs into the future, so thank you Mr. Chairman and 
I'll yield back.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Representative Peters.
    Representative Peters. Thank you Senator Vice Chairman 
Heinrich for holding this important hearing. Also for 
mentioning the backstop authority for interstate high voltage 
transmission which we worked on together, and I hope we can 
pass that out of the House next week.
    It's great to be joined by climate advocates, 
electrification experts, and even a fellow San Diegan in Mr. 
Matusiak, good to see you on this side of the country. And 
before I start I just want to say too to Mr. Schweikert. Count 
me in on the people who want to deal with NEPA in the context 
of climate action.
    We have a very short time to get to where we need to, and I 
think we really have to look hard at the paperwork we put the 
people through particularly for things that are explicitly 
environmentally beneficial and I would love to work with you on 
cutting down the time of that.
    Mr. Matusiak I'm interested in the scale of this project. 
This is a tremendously ambitious idea. Can you tell me kind of 
what you mean by electrifying everything? What does that mean 
in terms of time and cost and resources? And then I'm going to 
ask you kind of if you were us, how would you set up a program 
in terms of funding and incentives that would get us there?
    Mr. Matusiak. Well thank you Congressman Peters. It's nice 
to see you here in Washington, and hopefully get to see you on 
the other side of the country too.
    Representative Peters. The better side.
    Mr. Matusiak. Where it's less humid and you know nicer 
weather. I would just say a couple of things. I think for us 
the conversation about electrifying everything is just a math 
question. How do we get to zero emissions and how do we do that 
as quickly as possible?
    It's really electrifying almost everything. It's really 
focusing on our energy emissions, and our energy use in the 
country accounts for 90 percent of emissions. So by 
transitioning and electrifying the economy a few things happen. 
The first thing that happens is that we actually cut in half 
the amount of energy that we use as a country because the 
reality is that electric machines are much more efficient than 
non-electric ones.
    It turns out that the heat pumps that we're talking about 
today for people's homes are three times more efficient than 
the machines that they would replace. They are more efficient 
and they cost less to operate than any other kind of machine on 
the market.
    So once we start electrifying the economy on our supply 
side, we have an opportunity actually lower the amount of 
energy, reduce the amount of energy we use as a country because 
it turns out that electrification is the efficiency. But where 
we focus, and where we had spent a lot of time thinking about 
is the demand side of the question.
    Because when you electrify the supply side, when you 
decarbonize our supply, you still have machines on the other 
end that have to use the power that we are producing. And the 
opportunity that we have is to start thinking about the 
American households as the keystone of our infrastructure 
because every single one of those households as we go forward 
in the future, will have cars in the garage with batteries 
between the wheels.
    They can have heat pumps in their homes that actually also 
serve as batteries, and each of those homes become a way for us 
to better balance the grid, to have better resilience, and to 
actually save Americans a lot of money so that they can plow it 
back into the economy.
    Representative Peters. Just to make sure that we get to 
where I need to go is I understand that from the perspective of 
new construction, it's relatively easy to understand. What 
would you do to accomplish the retrofit of existing buildings?
    Mr. Matusiak. By our analysis most of American homes in the 
United States will save money on their bills if the front end 
costs of these machines, these efficient electric heat pump 
machines are the same as the ones that the would be replacing. 
And so really, Senator Heinrich has introduced a bill for 
rebates to lower the front end costs of these machines to make 
them the same as the ones that they would replace.
    We are convinced that Americans will choose those options 
if they are given the opportunity. And in addition to the 
rebates that we've talked about in terms of lowering the front 
end costs I would add two other things.
    The first is low cost financing because these machines last 
a very long time, 10 years, 15 years, 20, 25 years. We can 
amortize the costs over a long period of time to further reduce 
the monthly cost to the American homeowner. The second thing 
that I would add on top of the rebates is actually goes to 
regulation.
    We can lower the cost to the American consumer by making it 
easier for these machines to be installed, and ensuring that we 
have American workers who are trained to do that.
    Representative Peters. I'm going to run out of time. I 
guess the other thing for us to look at as we go forward is one 
of the issues with the deployment of solar for instance is that 
people who have the upfront money to put those in are somewhat 
advantages, and it ends up with people that can't afford the 
upfront costs subsidizing the others. And I would like to make 
sure that we come up with a way to ensure that that doesn't 
happen in this instance. And Mr. Chairman the San Diegans have 
used up my five minutes.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Senator Cruz.
    Senator Cruz. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Welcome to each of 
the witnesses. The advocates of the Green New Deal like to 
pitch their proposals in high sounding rhetoric, but the 
reality of their proposals are that they would do four things.
    They would hurt the poor. They would hurt the working 
class. They would give special benefits and subsidies to the 
rich, and they would hurt the environment. The advocates of the 
Green New Deal like to pretend that they follow the science, 
that the laws of supply and demand somehow don't apply to them.
    And they pretend that by spending trillions of dollars 
we're saving money. In a country that is blessed with vast 
natural resources we should be paying a fraction of the price 
for electricity and gasoline, but because of bad policies at 
the local, State and Federal level, Californians pay on average 
twice as much per kilowatt for electricity and a dollar more 
per gallon of gas, as people in Texas and most of the country.
    And if you want to understand the Green New Deal it is to 
bring the failed energy policies of California to force them on 
the rest of the country. And for anyone who might pause to say 
well what's so wrong with that you could look no further than a 
census report released this month, September 2021 that 
concluded out of 50 states which state has the highest level of 
poverty.
    The answer is of course the State of California as it was 
the year before, as it was the year before, as it was the year 
before. California according to the Census Bureau's latest 
calculation 15.4 percent of California residents lived in 
poverty from 2018 to 2020. There's only one place in the United 
States that exceeds the poverty level for California, and that 
is the place we find ourselves right now the District of 
Columbia.
    The District of Columbia has the highest poverty level 
California has the second. Now what do those two jurisdictions 
share in common? They are governed exclusively by Democrats. 
They are governed by policies that drive up the costs of 
working class people, of low income people, and at the same 
time give generous subsidies to millionaires, so the proposals 
we had before sort of force Americans to shift from the gas 
furnace to a heat pump.
    They are to force Americans to shift from their car or 
truck in their driveway to a much higher priced electric 
vehicle, to give them no choice in the matter. But not only 
that in doing so to hurt the environment. Right now a 
significant percentage of electricity is produced by coal-fired 
plants.
    As a very practical step if you are shifting from a gas to 
an electric vehicle in a jurisdiction where your electricity is 
coming from coal, you are moving to a dirtier and more 
environmentally damaging way of travel. It's also worth noting 
that of every country on earth there's one country that has 
reduced CO2 more than any other country, and that is 
the country we are in right now the United States of America.
    The United States of America has reduced CO2 
emissions steadily. They peaked in 2007 and they have been 
steadily declining ever since. Right now today we emit the same 
amount of CO2 as we did in the early 1990s, and even 
less methane, despite having a population of 60 million more. 
Now why is that?
    The principle driver of our steady reduction in 
CO2 is the substitution of natural gas for coal 
production in electricity. If the advocates of the Green New 
Deal actually believed their rhetoric that reducing 
CO2 was a good thing, they wouldn't fight tooth and 
nail to kill natural gas production, to kill natural gas 
pipelines to shut it down.
    Mr. Matusiak, your biography says that you are a Managing 
Partner of an advisory firm focused on addressing climate 
change and economic inequality. Suppose that the 
electrification policy you've testified about today were to be 
implemented fully and entirely, what would be the temperature 
affect by the year 2100 using the EPA's own climate model?
    Mr. Matusiak. Thank you Senator Cruz. I haven't done that 
calculation on the back of this testimony, but what I would say 
is that if we were going to fully implement the climate policy 
we're talking about today we would be ensuring on a voluntary 
basis that homeowners all across the country, households all 
across the country would be able to elect to purchase a heat 
pump water heater, a space heater, inductive stove.
    Senator Cruz. Sir if you haven't done the research on what 
the climate benefit would be from the policies you're 
advocating using the EPA's own model I'll tell you what they 
would be according to the EPA's own model in 2100, so 80 years 
from now global temperature would be lowered by 0.173 degrees 
Celsius.
    And in exchange for that you would impose trillions of 
dollars of costs on African-Americans, on Hispanics, on low 
income Americans, and you would drive up poverty across the 
country. It's difficult to ascertain why that's good for this 
country.
    Mr. Matusiak. So I would just respond by saying a couple 
things. The first is that 40 percent of our emissions come from 
decisions made around the kitchen table in the households all 
across America.
    The effect of the policy that we are talking about here 
today is to drive 40 percent of those emissions down to zero. 
The component piece of that with respect to America's 
contribution to global emissions would be the 40 percent of 
America's contribution to global emissions.
    Senator Cruz. Do you dispute the EPA number?
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. The gentleman's time has expired.
    Mr. Matusiak. The effects on American households would be 
to put money back into the pockets of American families because 
the reality is that people are paying way too much on their 
energy bills, and those energy bills as was stated earlier by 
one of your colleagues are in elastic. People have to----
    Senator Cruz. Do you dispute----
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Thank you for your patience Mr. 
Matusiak. Congressman Trone has been----
    Senator Cruz. Don't want him to answer that one?
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. I would be happy to let him answer 
that.
    Senator Cruz. Good. I would welcome. Do you dispute the EPA 
number?
    Mr. Matusiak. I didn't hear the question I'm sorry.
    Senator Cruz. Do you dispute the EPA number that the effect 
of all these proposals by the year 2100 would be to decrease 
global temperature by 0.173 degrees Celsius?
    Mr. Matusiak. What I know is what we are stacking in terms 
of emissions as a country. And what I know is what our North 
Star needs to be, and our North Star needs to be to get to 
zero. And the only way to get to zero is to electrify as many 
of the things as we can in this economy thank you.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Congressman Trone thanks for your 
patience.
    Representative Trone. Mr. Chairman would it be okay if I 
asked a few questions rather than give a partisan speech?
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. It would.
    Representative Trone. That'd be great. Let's do it then. 
Mr. Baird your testimony discussed some of the incredible work 
that BlocPower LLC's been doing in solar energy efficient 
technology, and you also highlighted how your company employs 
people in vulnerable populations. One of my top priorities in 
Congress is criminal justice reform. I'm very passionate about 
connecting justice impacted individuals with the resources to 
build back a better life.
    How do you think the transition to the greener energy 
technology will impact the job market for disadvantaged folks 
like our justice impacted individuals?
    Mr. Baird. Thank you sir for the question. I sit on the 
board of the New York Federal Reserve Bank back in New York. 
And one of the things we look at is construction data. And 
across the country our ability to build new buildings, retrofit 
existing buildings, and do construction across America is 
impacted by the fact that folks from our generation--me and Dr. 
Stokes, we don't necessarily want to go work for our baby 
boomer parents plumbing company it turns out.
    We want to be on YouTube as an influencer. And so there is 
a shortage of highly skilled construction workers across 
America that is impacting our economic productivity. We think 
there's a massive opportunity here in front of all of us to 
train and to employ into economically and environmentally 
productive work--jobs, returning citizens to install heat 
pumps, to assess buildings in need of furnace upgrades or 
replacements to keep our kids healthy at home and in school.
    And in New York City we are actually partnering with the 
city government. Right now we're hiring 1,500 young adults who 
are at risk of gun violence as defined by the District Attorney 
in all five boroughs. These folks have witnessed gun violence, 
they've been impacted by gun violence in high crime, low income 
neighborhoods in New York City.
    And so we're hiring hundreds and hundreds of these young 
people. We're training them in cutting edge software out of 
Silicon Valley. How do you build a 3-D model of a building with 
a three dimensional camera on top of your construction hat, so 
that not only can they participate in the current construction 
economy, but they can participate in innovating and leading and 
ensuring that American construction workers are at the 
forefront of innovation.
    Representative Trone. I think that's fantastic Mr. Baird, 
and my company has hired over 500 returning citizens and it's 
good we can do good business, and do right by other folks too.
    Mr. Baird. They work harder in fact sir as I'm sure you 
know because when you find the right folks they are indeed very 
focused and ready to work in a way that other folks may not be.
    Representative Trone. And we have a better retention rate.
    Mr. Baird. Correct.
    Representative Trone. Mr. Matusiak if we could jump over. 
This administration has put back the Build Back Better Plan to 
invest in the American people and our economy. It's vital this 
plan works to ensure individuals have access to technology 
that's safe for them and the planet.
    The President's plan is an opportunity to lay out the 
groundwork for long term change. How can we ensure these 
investments through Build Back Better can be targeted to help 
address disparities we have in electrification.
    Mr. Matusiak. Thank you Congressman. Wonderful question. 
The reality is we have to be aware of the price disparities 
that face American households when it comes to not just the 
energy burden of their current bills, but also what it's going 
to mean for them to electrify.
    One of the things Senator Heinrich has done through his 
legislation is introduce a bill that would recognize those 
disparities by putting increased dollars in the form of 
consumer point of sale rebates to low and moderate income 
households as compared to those who are not.
    Those are the kinds of approaches we need to take. We need 
to be eyes open to the costs associated with the transition, 
enabling low and moderate income families who frankly have the 
most to gain from the transition by electrifying their homes, 
and enabling them to participate in that transition, and making 
sure as a matter of public policy that we are putting the thumb 
on the scale and investing and enabling them to do so.
    Representative Trone. Mr. Chairman thank you I yield back.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Representative Arrington.
    Representative Arrington. Mr. Chairman thank you and thank 
you panelists. I'm from Texas. I share some of my colleagues 
sentiments if not all of them, and I understand that there are 
good intention folk on both sides of this issue with respect to 
the electrification of our country and our power systems.
    And I don't judge or impugn the motives of those who want 
to do it. I think it's all in the way we approach it, and I 
think the way my colleagues are approaching it on the Democrat 
side is just too extreme, it's too radical, it's too abrupt, 
it's going to be too costly.
    It's not balanced with respect to what we need to continue 
to grow our economy, not just for the opportunities and the 
prosperity for America, but vis-a-vis our adversaries and our 
competitors. We need to look at questions fundamentally that I 
think are inconclusive like the human activity, industrial 
activities, contribution to overall relative to the ebb and 
flow of our carbon and greenhouse gas emissions.
    I think we need to make decisions also with respect to the 
United States contribution, again relative to the rest of the 
world including China and other much larger polluters, and much 
bigger problems.
    So I'm just very concerned about what I think is 
ideologically driven. I really do. Like I said I think a lot of 
this is inconclusive. We have been blessed with fossil fuels. 
And there's not hardly a thing in this room, including the 
microphone, our smart phones, the glasses that Dr. Dourado's 
wearing, our clothes, medical devices that don't have 
hydrocarbon component parts.
    Actually 90 percent of the products that we use have some 
petrol chemical element to them. And the natural gas shale 
revolution has been a gift to the United States, and again not 
just our quality of lives, but for consumers to have affordable 
ways to heat and cool their home and get to and from work, to 
give us a competitive advantage to China who does not share our 
values.
    And to give us energy independence. It's been remarkable. 
And I'm concerned Mr. Chairman, about the hostility. And I hear 
it from my Ways and Means colleagues, with all due respect to 
Mr. Beyer, he made mention at a hearing that we were going to 
burn up the planet. I don't think that's right.
    I think we need to manage emissions. We need to steward our 
environment, but we've got to be smart about this. I don't have 
a prepared speech here, and I'm not going to try to rail on 
anybody in particular. I just think it's a fool's errand to try 
to radically transform the greatest economy in the world and 
have this in a way that picks winners and losers.
    I mean if you're going to accelerate technology by battery 
story and the production, sustainability, reliability of 
renewables, at least let the market drive it, and let's have 
technology neutral government intervention, so that we can make 
sure the right technologies are being brought to bear to get us 
where we're going.
    I think we're way too focused on the clean and the 
reduction, and it's very de minimis in terms of our global 
contribution. You can take away all of transportation and it's 
going to be really a 1 percent, 2 percent reduction globally. 
Why not be rational and smart in the heat of emotional debates 
on both side? Have an all the above approach.
    I generate--I say I, my district generates more wind energy 
than any district in the country, three times California. But 
I'm also on top of the largest oil base in the world. And we 
coexist peacefully, and we are transitioning I think 
responsibly. So you know I should have a question here I know, 
but I'm very concerned about the path we're on.
    I think it's extremely irresponsible. I think there's a lot 
of radical climate alarmist and ideologues driving this, and I 
think it's going to ruin the greatest economy in the world. And 
China is going to pounce on us, and they're just waiting for us 
to trip up. But I have to say I've seen the enemy and the enemy 
is us.
    Let's work together on an all the above in a smart and 
logical and responsible transition. That would be my plea to my 
colleagues, and I'm sorry I went over time. I had some 
questions, but I will yield back because I've expired--at least 
my time has.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Representative Beatty.
    Representative Beatty. Thank you Mr. Chairman, to my 
colleagues and to all of our witnesses. Clearly, we have 
different opinions that you've heard today. I guess that could 
be the beauty of having testimony, winners and losers, radical.
    Sorry my colleague from Texas left because Mr. Chairman I 
wanted to remind him about talking about those failures of 
energy policies in other states. I think it was earlier this 
year that his home State of Texas had a colossal failure of its 
electric grid, and it led to blackouts and price gouging for 
electricity costs, and this happened because they refused to 
make the investments necessary to harden their grid, while my 
colleagues Democrats are trying to Build Back Better in the 
budget reconciliation.
    But he might not have remembered that because I think maybe 
he was on vacation somewhere. But with that to the witnesses, 
Mr. Baird, as Chair of the House Financial Services Diversity 
and Inclusion Subcommittee, I have routinely sought ways for 
more venture capital investments to find its way to minority- 
and women-owned companies.
    According to the business database Crunchbase, women-led 
startups receive roughly 2.3 percent of venture capital 
investments in 2020, and another study found that black-owned 
startups only received around 2.9 percent of venture capitals 
in 2019.
    Can you tell me as an African-American male who founded a 
very successful startup and secured venture capital investments 
from one of the largest venture capital firms in the country, 
can you discuss your experience in securing venture capital 
investment, or any thoughts that you may have on how to 
increase the minority-owned startups receiving venture capital?
    Mr. Baird. Thank you for the question Congresswoman, and 
for your leadership on financial services. When starting our 
company we met with 200 venture capitalists back to back to 
back. Everyone told us no for a variety of reasons. The real 
reason was they weren't quite comfortable with the risk that 
our company, and perhaps my profile as a founder signified.
    Early stage venture capital investing is like dating it 
turns out. There actually are non-verbal communications, and 
were you part of this fraternity or sorority and these things 
really matter at the stage of investment before a company has 
proven itself in the marketplace, before it has customers, 
before it has revenue, before it has traction.
    And early stage investor is taking a bet on the founder and 
you often--too often find according to the statistics that you 
outlined that since most venture capitalists are men they too 
often are not comfortable investing in women and will say 
things like, ``Oh well, that's interesting. Let me ask my wife 
if this is a good company for me to invest in.''
    So that is a problem. For me we were very fortunate to win 
a clean energy contract for two and a half million dollars from 
the U.S. Department of Energy. It was competitively bid. We bid 
and competed against some of the largest engineering firms in 
America, but the Department of Energy at that time was 
responsive to innovation, and to technology and software, and 
worked with us collaboratively--in fact bent over backwards.
    Once we won the contract to help us access the capital, the 
legal services, the accounting services that we needed to 
further qualify to actually begin the contract. I think there's 
a major opportunity when we look at HUD. You don't see that 
kind of small business innovation budget at HUD in the same way 
as you do at the Department of Defense, Department of 
Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Energy.
    And so I think it is important to look into what are the 
ways that we can fund innovation out of HUD. We hosted the EPA 
Administrator Michael Regan in the Bronx to visit one of our 
schools that we've electrified on Monday.
    And he suggested an interagency working group with himself, 
the Secretary of Energy, and Secretary Fudge at HUD to begin to 
look at how BIPOC climate tech startups could work together to 
partner with the Federal Government to deliver the climate type 
solutions that our communities need, particular with respect to 
the infrastructure spending that's coming down.
    How do we prepare communities that have been historically 
disenfranchised to access the capital that they are entitled 
to?
    Representative Beatty. Thank you, thank you Mr. Chairman.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Senator Klobuchar.
    Senator Klobuchar. Well very good thank you Mr. Chair, 
thank you Vice Chair as well as Senator Lee for this hearing. 
I'm going to start with the exciting world of appliances, or as 
I call it building a fridge to the next century.
    Okay. So one example of this is that we have a co-op. We 
have a lot of electrical co-ops in our state, the highest 
number per capita of any state, interesting electric co-ops. 
And it's a different scale of development of course of energy 
innovation. But one called the Steele-Waseca Co-op, developed a 
program where customers who purchased a solar panel would 
receive a free water heater with a demand control switch.
    And they showed me all these people purchased solar panels 
not for their farms, actually they were outside of the--right 
outside of the co-op, but then they got this water heater. So 
Mr. Matusiak, Dr. Stokes, can you comment on ways to speed up 
the deployment of cleaner appliances, not just water heaters, 
anything. Senator Hogan and I actually end up doing a bill on 
this, but that's another story, so go ahead.
    Mr. Matusiak. Well, Senator Klobuchar thank you so much for 
the question. It's an honor to have that conversation with you. 
Just if you ever look at your water heater in your house you 
might see that yellow sticker that tells you how much the 
yearly energy costs are and just to give you a window into 
maybe that sticker, and what it could say.
    A conventional gas water heater has a yearly energy cost of 
$293.00. High efficiency gas $271.00. A modern heat pump 
electric water heater $104.00. There's a reason why the co-op 
in your state is giving free heat pump water heaters out with 
the solar panels.
    It is because once you start electrifying one thing in the 
house it becomes easier to electrify other things in the house 
and the savings stack on top of one another. And so for us what 
is really critical is that we get started. Every single day in 
Minnesota and across the country water heaters are failing, 
furnaces are failing, people are changing out stovetops.
    Appliances have useful lives, then they come up and they 
need to be swapped out. And homeowners are not actually experts 
when it comes to water heaters and furnaces. I have yet to meet 
a single American or anybody that I have talked to who has said 
I can't wait for that new model water heater to come out next 
year because I'm absolutely upgrading, that's not how it works.
    And so therefore, what needs to happen is that the front 
end cost of these machines need to be at the same level as the 
ones that they would otherwise have a choice to buy. If they 
are, the savings will be apparent, the benefits will be 
apparent, and our firm belief is that American families will 
vote with their wallets and bring the climate benefits along 
with them.
    Senator Klobuchar. Okay. Do you want to just quick add 
anything to that Dr. Stokes?
    Dr. Stokes. Sure. I would just like to elevate the work of 
Vice Chairman Heinrich with his Zero Emissions Home Act which 
may be slightly renamed, that is working on rebates for 
Americans so that it is more affordable to get these 
appliances.
    Senator Klobuchar. Exactly.
    Dr. Stokes. Yes that's what we really need in Build Back 
Better Plan.
    Senator Klobuchar. Okay very good. Mr. Baird one of the 
things we also have found challenging is non-profits and making 
sure that a lot of them are in older buildings, and then 
they've got limited resources that they want to do for whatever 
their work is, or the churches, the synagogues, mosques, and 
another bill we did actually did something with that to make it 
easier for non-profits, and actually it's included, it's in the 
bipartisan infrastructure bill.
    Talk about how we can make that easier and why that's a 
good idea, and then I have one last quick question for you Dr. 
Dourado, so if you could keep it to 30 seconds Mr. Baird.
    Mr. Baird. Thank you Senator Klobuchar. I'll give you an 
example of a church in Westchester, New York. We reduced their 
greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent, 7-0, which was great 
for all the millennials and Gen Zers to encourage them to 
attend services because their church was addressing the climate 
crisis which is important for their generation.
    But we also saved them $25,000.00 a year which they were 
able to reinvest in you know raises for Sunday school teachers 
and other items. Using the rebates that Dr. Stokes spoke about 
are very important to helping all Americans access the benefits 
of clean energy technology.
    Senator Klobuchar. Okay. You did it in 30 seconds. It was 
impressive. Dr. Dourado you talked about in your testimony 
diversified carbon free energy resources, streamlined 
permitting. We've got about 75 million in the bipartisan 
infrastructure bill for states to establish their own 
permitting programs and giving Federal agencies the direction 
to evaluate, and look at permitting timelines. I'm especially 
obsessed with this with the pandemic and how things got 
disrupted and then trying to get things done and approved.
    I think if anything it's gotten worse. Can you--over the 
last two years. Can you speak to the importance of streamlining 
and investing in efficient permitting?
    Dr. Dourado. Yes Senator. I think it's critical and I think 
in particular it creates a lot of value even if we are going to 
do subsidies. I think combining it, subsidies with streamlined 
permitting returns higher value to the taxpayer because you're 
not just subsidizing people to go through this painful 
permitting process that often has not very much point, so I 
think adds a lot of value.
    Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks Mr. Chair 
and Mr. Vice Chair.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Thank you Senator. There's interest 
in folks in doing a second round. If it's okay with everyone 
I'd like to suggest that the second round be limited to three 
minutes, and I'll stick around as long as I possibly can. 
Chairman Beyer.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you Senator very much. With respect 
to my friend from Texas who is really my friend. I just want to 
quote from August 9, IPCCC at the U.N. quoted 14,000 different 
studies. They said that changes in climate today have little 
parallel in human history. The last decade is quite likely the 
hottest the planet has been in the 125,000 years. The world's 
glaciers are melting and receding at a rate unprecedented in at 
least the last 2,000 years.
    Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have not been this 
high in at least 2 million years. Ocean levels have risen 8 
inches on average over the past century, and the rate of 
increase has doubled since 2006. Heatwaves have become 
significantly hotter since 1950 and last longer in much of the 
world.
    Bursts of extreme heat in the ocean which can kill fish, 
sea birds and coral reefs have doubled in frequency since the 
1980s, and I believe we have just come through the hottest 
summer on record. I'm going to stick with burning up the 
planet.
    By the way I wish that were not true. I mean nothing would 
thrill me more than science to come through and say we 
misunderstood climate change, but for the moment I think I'm 
going to stick with the 14,000 studies.
    Mr. Baird, tell us about the business model. Can you really 
make a profit and have homes save energy and save costs? What's 
their payback, how many years?
    Mr. Baird. Thank you for the question sir. We have a credit 
line with Goldman Sachs for 50 million dollars. We did 36 
months of extensive financial due diligence with the team at 
Goldman Sachs in order to answer your question. The Goldman 
folks, they are interested in environmental sustainability, but 
they are more interested in profit.
    And they invested this capital with our company because 
were able to demonstrate that on a unit economics basis per 
building, we were able to generate significant savings. A 70 
percent reduction in energy usage dramatically lowers energy 
costs so significantly that you can use those savings as part 
of your financial underwriting.
    So if you're spending $50,000.00 per year on energy right 
now and that baseline cost comes down to $25,000.00. You now 
have $25,000.00 worth of savings which you can use as part of 
your financial payback. For large heat pump projects in New 
York City we see paybacks within 7 to 15 years, and we think 
that a financial product--we and Goldman believe that you can 
kind of almost create like a green mortgage where a rebate from 
the utility company, or from the Federal Government would be 
used, almost like a credit enhancement, or an FDIC guarantee at 
the end of that 15 year term.
    Chairman Beyer. Thank you Mr. Baird very much.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Representative Arrington.
    Representative Arrington. Thank you. I'm looking at Steve 
Koonin's book. He was an Obama Administration Senior Official 
at Department of Energy. It says hurricanes and tornadoes are 
becoming more fierce. Climate change will be an economic 
disaster, surging sea levels.
    He said you've heard all of these presented as fact, but 
according to science all these statements are profoundly 
misleading. And he goes on to say that these are not 
definitive, they're unsettled--that's the name of his book. So 
I get it. It's sincere. I'm not going to question again your 
motive.
    I think the reality is when you look at for example just 
the combustion engine, and just the transportation. Our 
transportation systems driven by hydrocarbon fuels contributes 
4 percent globally to the greenhouse gas emissions.
    If you put everybody in an electric vehicle you're probably 
not going to be able to accomplish this goal on planes and 
trains all the way, but you just do the electric vehicles. And 
you have your charging stations. You've got to get electricity 
somewhere. By the time you get to netting out the emissions 
from charging the cars it's 1 percent. It's less than 1 
percent.
    And we're going to try to subsidize the entire electric 
vehicle industry and put everybody in an electric car, the math 
doesn't work to your point. It's a math problem at that point. 
I mean we could do it, but we're 28 trillion in debt. We're not 
paying any of this.
    And look I'm going to say the Republicans are just as 
guilty in not paying for stuff. That's the biggest threat to 
our country, not climate change. I'd say obesity is a bigger 
threat to our country, and the disease states that follow. I'd 
say opioid epidemic is a bigger threat. It's more immediate. 
I'd say inflation is a bigger concern to most Americans.
    But I'll get to a question because I think you get the 
point about where I sit and stand on this issue. And I'd like 
to be objective about it, but on this whole electrification and 
the data that I went through on how much we would actually 
reduce our carbon footprint relative to the global pollution, 
Dr. Dourado what's the smartest way to get us to the goal of a 
reduction in carbon emission if that's your thing, and maybe 
it's wise to manage that down as we already are and lead the 
world.
    How do we accelerate that so that we're not subsidizing 
things that don't get us there most efficiently and effectively 
for the goal, for the taxpayer, for the economy, and for all 
the other things quite frankly that don't get much 
consideration? Clean gets all the love, but reliability and 
affordability ought to be in the mix don't you think, and can 
you answer that question it's very broad.
    And thank you again Mr. Chairman for the additional 
questions and Mr. Beyer is my friend and I respect his 
position.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. And next time I'll bring a bag of 
question marks for all of our folks to. Go ahead.
    Dr. Dourado. Yes Congressman as I testified I believe like 
the way to do it is through technology, which I am gratified 
that we are talking about technology today. I think but I think 
it's a wide range of technologies include next generation, 
nuclear and geothermal.
    I think to really advance the whole suite of technologies 
that we'll need to reduce our carbon emissions we need to take 
a very close look at permitting, and make it easier to build in 
this country, build all kinds of new infrastructure across the 
board. And use sort of technology neutral policies to get us 
there.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. Thank you. I think I want to talk a 
little bit about math because comparing us to the rest of the 
world in our missions does miss the point that we are I believe 
the second biggest emitter in the world today after China, but 
we're also the largest historical emitter, so we put a lot of 
this stuff in the atmosphere in the first place and got us to 
where we are today in terms of parts per million in that 
atmosphere.
    Now my friend from Texas, not Congressman Arrington, but 
the other friend from Texas who was here for a little while 
said that if you plug an electric vehicle into a coal-fired 
power plant it's dirtier than a gas vehicle. That math doesn't 
work, and it doesn't work because an internal combustion engine 
is only about 30 to 35 percent efficient.
    Whereas an electric motor is well over 90 percent efficient 
in most applications. So even if you plug into a power plant 
that's not true. But if you plug in in Texas where so much of 
their power comes from wind it gets even cleaner. So I do think 
the math here matters.
    And one of the most fascinating things that I learned from 
the work that Rewiring has done, and the work that Saul 
Griffith has done on primary energy is the realization that if 
we electrify we can actually cut our primary energy in half. 
Mr. Matusiak can you elaborate on that, and explain why that 
is.
    Mr. Matusiak. Yes thank you Senator Heinrich. The shorthand 
is electrification is the efficiency because as you just said 
electric motors are three times more efficient than fossil 
fuels ones. Just for clarification, cars represent 15 percent 
of the U.S. emissions, 12 percent of our energy emissions, but 
the important point is that every single one of the machines 
that we're talking about is an appreciating climate asset 
because you're talking about the demand side where people are 
buying things, holding on to them for 10, 15, 20, 25 years, 
while the grid is getting cleaner and cheaper.
    And so when it comes to Senator your question about why 
electrification enables us to save so much energy in the end, 
it is because of the technology embedded in these machines, and 
what they enable us to do. One other additional point that I 
would just make which is important, is that every single one--
most of these machines, we're talking about the heat pumps and 
the cars, are also part of the grid.
    They go to the resilience of our whole grid because we are 
starting to put aspects of the grid's storage in garages and in 
basements across 121 million households in the U.S. That helps 
us manage load over the day. It helps us respond if there is 
ever a failure like there was in Texas, or like there was after 
Hurricane Ida.
    And it enables us to ensure that we have households who can 
maintain power and work and persist with their day to day 
activities when there is a grid failure. You can't do that if 
you have a battery in your garage, and a gas-fired furnace in 
your basement. The two things need to talk to each other.
    Vice Chairman Heinrich. But if you have an F150 and the 
lights go out, you can run you can even plug in your house, and 
that's what today was all about. I want to thank Chairman Beyer 
for scheduling this hearing and for participating.
    I want to thank all of our members who came and 
participated today, and I want to thank our witnesses. The 
record is going to stay open for three business days and with 
that this hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon the hearing adjourned at 4:21 p.m.]

                       SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

         Prepared statement of Hon. Donald Beyer Jr., Chairman,
                        Joint Economic Committee
    Mr. Vice Chairman,
    Climate change is a threat not only to our planet and our health 
but also to our economy. It is a crisis that becomes more deadly and 
costly every year. Just this past month, we witnessed catastrophic 
weather events from fires in the West to hurricanes in the South to 
flooding in the Northeast--events that devastated communities. But it 
isn't just homes in the path of this extreme weather that are 
susceptible to the negative consequences of climate change. We know 
that every American household feels its effects, and that low-income 
families and marginalized communities are disproportionately impacted.
    To limit global warming and the expensive and life-threatening 
extreme weather events that come with it, we, as a Nation, must act now 
to aggressively move toward a zero-carbon economy. To achieve our 
climate goals, we must look at a multitude of solutions.
    Electrifying homes and buildings is an important component of 
addressing the existential threat of climate change. The benefits of 
electrification go beyond the environmental and health benefits of 
lower global temperatures. Electric devices are safer and cheaper to 
operate than alternatives. These technologies help reduce residential 
energy costs, which boosts household disposable income--a boon to local 
businesses across the country--and improves public health outcomes.
    Unfortunately, the upfront cost of investing in residential 
electrification technologies and appliances can be a significant 
obstacle for many families. Economic barriers and a lack of financing 
options may stand between homeowners and long-term investments in 
lower-cost electric appliances. We know that many households lack the 
financial capacity to spend upfront on improvements that will generate 
future savings. Research tells us that more than 1/3 of American 
families would struggle to afford a $400 emergency, and most of these 
upgrades are precisely that type of emergency.
    Another challenge consumers face in investing in residential 
electrification is that many older homes and buildings in the United 
States were not built to accommodate complete household 
electrification. Older housing stock often requires building upgrades 
to handle modern electric devices. Additionally, the ideal time to 
upgrade to the latest technology is often when an in-service device 
fails; however, coordinating more involved upgrades takes time that 
owners may not have when a furnace dies on a freezing winter evening. 
Furthermore, many of the skilled trade workers who install household 
appliances lack the time and resources to become trained on new 
technologies, creating additional supply chain barriers.
    A number of market failures also stand in the way of broad adoption 
of electrification technologies. For example, landlords and 
homebuilders, who purchase many of the appliances families use, do not 
pay the operating costs of these units or breathe the air they operate 
in, creating incentives to underinvest in technology, safety and 
efficiency.
    Market failures disproportionately impact low-income households, 
which spend the largest share of rent on utilities. This is 
particularly true in rural areas where many houses are connected to the 
electric grid, but are forced to pay high heating bills because HVAC 
systems have locked them into using high-cost fuels like propane or 
oil-fired heat. This mismatch can be even more acute with manufactured 
and mobile homes, a key source of affordable housing. Mobile homes use 
more energy per square foot than traditional construction and often 
rely on high-cost fuels, especially in rural settings.
    Well-designed policies can help overcome a number of economic 
barriers and market failures that stand in the way of the adoption of 
electrification technologies.
    This is why I, along with my colleague Rep. Earl Blumenauer of 
Oregon, recently introduced the Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings 
Act, which helps building owners with the costs of installing energy-
efficient technology. Electrifying buildings puts businesses in a 
position to leverage investments in clean electricity into reduced 
emissions and lower energy bills. We must make these opportunities 
available to families and residential building owners as well.
    We must also implement policies that make it easier for all 
families to upgrade to the latest zero-emissions technology to ensure 
that the gains from building electrification are broadly shared. 
Policies, such as point of sale rebates, would help families capitalize 
on opportunities to replace outdated and inefficient appliances, save 
money on energy bills and live in safer homes with less indoor 
pollution.
    The scale of the challenges our planet is facing as a result of 
climate change is great. We must take this opportunity to deploy every 
tool at our disposal to meet the moment. Investments in electrification 
technologies can--and should--be part of that solution.
                               __________
       Prepared statement of Hon. Martin Heinrich, Vice Chairman,
                        Joint Economic Committee
    This hearing will come to order.
    Thank you, Chairman Beyer, for joining me to hold this hearing 
today to highlight what I see as one of the surest actions that we need 
to take right now to confront the climate crisis and to advance 
stronger, stable, and broadly shared economic growth.
    And thank you to the witnesses here today who are leading experts 
in the growing movement for widespread electrification.
    The fact is that if we ever want to address our contributions to 
our climate problem, we need to find sustainable and cost-effective 
substitutes for all the machines we use today that burn fossil fuels.
    And it's not just our gas-powered cars and trucks.
    We are also burning fossil fuels and emitting carbon pollution from 
our hot water heaters, furnaces, clothes dryers, ovens, and stoves.
    In addition to the climate impacts, researchers are finding that 
burning fossil fuels in our homes, including methane--otherwise known 
as ``natural'' gas--or home heating oil, is really bad for our health.
    This is particularly the case if someone in your family has asthma 
or other respiratory conditions.
    Even if you are properly ventilating your fossil combustion 
devices, the particulate matter in the exhaust from your gas-range 
stove likely includes unhealthy levels of harmful chemicals like 
nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and even formaldehyde.
    But the good news is that there are already better electric 
alternatives for each of these fossil-burning machines in our homes.
    Each of these electric substitutes can help reduce our climate 
pollution and create savings on our energy bills.
    Just last month, I invited Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm to 
visit New Mexico.
    During her visit, we met with homeowners in Albuquerque's 
International District neighborhood who are participating in an 
exciting demonstration project that is helping families install energy 
efficient and electric water heaters and air-source heat pumps in their 
homes.
    Tammy Fiebelkorn, from the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project, 
told us that installing these new appliances is reducing the burden of 
energy costs for low-income families.
    As she put it, the project is ``fighting climate change while also 
making sure that the benefits of that fight make it to our frontline 
and disadvantaged communities.''
    That's exactly right.
    These new electric appliances will be much more efficient than the 
fossil fuel-powered machines they are replacing.
    And that means significant savings for these families on their 
monthly utility bills.
    Those savings can make an enormous difference for a family living 
paycheck to paycheck.
    And, importantly for our climate, all of these electrified machines 
can be powered by all the new clean and carbon pollution-free 
electricity that we will generate in our new clean energy economy.
    This is how we can power our long-term economic recovery and save 
families money by solving our pressing climate challenge.
    This is how we can build back better.
    We need to get to a place where every time a family sits around a 
kitchen table to figure out how to replace a broken furnace, stove, or 
water heater, they choose to and can afford to install an electric 
machine.
    That's why I introduced the Zero-Emissions Homes Act to establish a 
point-of-sale rebates program for these new electric appliances.
    Through this type of Federal investment, we can make all of the 
long-term economic and health benefits of electrification affordable 
and accessible to all Americans.
    We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make transformative 
investments in our energy economy--investments that will protect our 
planet, help keep our communities healthy, and promote shared 
prosperity.
    We simply don't have any more time to waste in meeting our 
responsibility on climate.
    Widespread electrification is one of the surest strategies we can 
pursue to finally take actions that meet the scale of this challenge.
                               __________
          Prepared statement of Hon. Mike Lee, Ranking Member,
                        Joint Economic Committee
    Our country needs to modernize the way we generate, transmit, and 
distribute electricity. Over the last year, devastating blackouts have 
harmed communities across the country, from New York to California to 
Texas. The U.S. electric grid has at times proven inadequate for the 
needs of American families.
    However, the answer is not to spend billions of Federal taxpayer 
dollars to electrify every American home and business, and just as 
importantly the answer is not to fundamentally alter Federal policy to 
regulate energy generation and consumption. Instead, we need to 
unshackle American industry so that new and diverse energy sources can 
help create a more resilient energy future.
    It was not that long ago that American innovation unleashed the 
shale revolution, driving down natural gas prices and providing a 
cleaner energy option for homes and businesses. We need a similar 
revolution if we want to modernize our electric grid.
    To clear a path for continued energy innovation, we must reform 
existing regulatory policies that stand in the way of investors and 
discourage entrepreneurs. If we want to move our energy infrastructure 
into the future, we need to address environmental review.
    When President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act--
or NEPA--into law, it was meant to require agencies to consider the 
environmental consequences of their actions. NEPA is generally 
implicated when projects use Federal funds or touch Federal lands, 
which many energy projects do.
    Fifty years later, this seemingly commonsense requirement has 
transformed into a process that requires an average of four and a half 
years--and sometimes almost two decades--of paperwork and litigation. 
The NEPA process frequently discourages and prevents critical energy 
infrastructure projects from being built.
    The delays might be worth it if NEPA protected the environment. But 
environmental review is strictly procedural, meaning that it doesn't 
actually privilege environmental protection.
    This means that paperwork and lawyers' fees are the most consistent 
result of the NEPA process. Federal agencies can find that the action 
under consideration imposes environmental harm and then theoretically 
decide to approve the project anyway. The process even delays projects 
with clear environmental benefits.
    Without reform, NEPA leaves countless energy infrastructure 
projects in a state of bureaucratic limbo, sidelining workers, stunting 
innovative new technologies, and leaving communities across the country 
to wait for Washington to approve their future.
    That's unacceptable, and it's why I've introduced the UNSHACKLE 
Act. This suite of bills reforms the NEPA process so that Federal 
agencies are better empowered to carry out the law's original intent, 
while also making our Nation's infrastructure projects affordable 
again.
    The UNSHACKLE Act would require agencies to finish environmental 
assessments faster, allow them to reuse paperwork, and limit 
duplicative work at State and Federal levels. It would apply a two-year 
deadline for completion of the entire NEPA process, provide fair legal 
parameters around project reviews, and allow states to handle NEPA 
review within their own borders.
    These reforms shouldn't be a partisan issue. They are designed to 
achieve something that we all can agree on--more efficient, effective 
Federal permitting for infrastructure projects.
    Ultimately, the best energy future is one that allows the American 
people to innovate. Americans have made great strides pursuing 
breakthroughs in energy extraction, production, and technological 
innovations in wind, solar, hydro-electric, and other renewable forms 
of energy in the face of heavy-handed government control. Removing 
existing regulatory burdens will allow Americans to build a more 
sustainable future.
    The ability to build, and build more quickly, will help make the 
U.S. electric grid more robust, resilient, and reduce the frequency of 
outages. It will provide cleaner, more affordable, more reliable power 
to American families and communities.
    As we rebuild after the pandemic, we must liberate our energy 
sector. We must reduce regulatory barriers to developing nuclear, 
hydro, geothermal, and other forms of energy. These technologies can be 
an important part of a competitive energy sector and a diverse energy 
future.
    Let's get government out of the way and allow Americans to do what 
they do best. Reforming policies that get in the way of modernizing our 
energy infrastructure will boost economic prospects for American 
families, improve the environment, and enable us to build a better 
America. I am hopeful that today's hearing will convince us of the 
urgent need to achieve that goal.
    Thank you.
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
Response from Mr. Ari Matusiak to Question for the Record submitted by 
                         Representative Peters
    Mr. Matusiak, there are concerns about the clean energy industry 
not sufficiently providing union jobs. How is the electrification 
industry advancing union jobs and how can our programs better support 
U.S. workers? I am specifically interested in apprenticeship 
opportunities and local hiring opportunities in this sector.
    First, thank you for your timely question on the economic 
opportunity that electrification offers to U.S. workers. The 
electrification industry, or market, is nascent, providing an important 
window to shape its development with the American people--and American 
workers--at its center. To that end, designing programs that both 
catalyze the market and support local good-paying jobs is critical. 
Rewiring America estimates that one billion machines need to be 
replaced and installed to fully electrify our residential sector. \1\ 
This will require U.S. workers in every segment of the market, from 
manufacturing to installation to sales. Indeed, according to our 
analysis, a wholesale commitment to electrification will create 25 
million net jobs over the next 15 years with five million new jobs 
sustained by 2050. \2\ By 1) investing in high-quality training and 
placement programs, 2) enabling contractor companies to train and hire 
U.S. workers, and 3) incentivizing domestic manufacture and assembly of 
the machines necessary to electrify, the U.S. Congress can ensure that 
the U.S. provides the opportunity for local jobs in every zip code 
while prioritizing U.S. leadership and competitiveness on the global 
market.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\  See Rewiring America's ``One Billion Machines'' report by Saul 
Griffith, PhD and Sam Calisch, PhD, June 2021.
    \2\  See Rewiring America's ``Mobilizing for a Zero Carbon America: 
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs, and More Jobs; A Jobs and Employment Study Report'' 
by Saul Griffith, PhD, Sam Calisch, PhD, and Alex Laskey, July 2020.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Household electrification depends on the mobilization of local U.S. 
workers who will provide the contracting, installing, rewiring, and 
maintenance of and for the machines that heat and cool our homes, heat 
our water, cook our food, and dry our clothes. These jobs are 
impossible to be offshored or automated, thus necessitating a skilled 
workforce available in every state, county, and zip code. \3\ The 
inherent need for the broad distribution of these jobs creates an 
opportunity to train and place local workers in the predominantly small 
businesses that will offer these services to communities across the 
country. Apprenticeships play a natural role here as workers transition 
from their training into their newfound roles. Congress can fund such 
job creation programs through grant programs, as it is currently 
considering both in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 
reconciliation legislation, which together comprise the President's 
Build Back Better Agenda.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \3\ See Rewiring America and the Coalition for Green Capital's 
Rewiring Communities: A Plan to Accelerate Climate Action and 
Environmental Justice by Investing in Household Electrification at the 
Local Level report by Adam Zurofsky, Jeffrey Schub, John Rhodes, Tony 
Curnes, and Sam Calisch, PhD, May 2021.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Contractor companies exist throughout the country and will have to 
scale up their capacity to meet the needs for an accelerated household 
electrification drive. This also applies to union-hiring businesses 
that mainly service multifamily buildings. Incentives via tax breaks or 
direct grants can be used by these companies to hire workers, including 
apprentices, and provide for their training. By providing such support, 
Congress can enable these small businesses and larger entities to bring 
on new workers with good-paying wages.
    Lastly, the job opportunities electrification will create are not 
limited to highly localized jobs for the installation of the electric 
machines--these machines must also be made, assembled, and distributed 
across the country. By supporting manufacturers to assemble, produce, 
and stock the machines domestically, America can bolster its 
manufacturing capacity. In doing so, new good-paying union jobs will be 
created, while also ensuring U.S. competitiveness on the global market, 
critically, as demand for these modern electric machines dramatically 
increases. And as these machines are used in mission-critical and 
public-health situations (e.g. cold rooms, protecting against extreme 
heat or cold), having these machines within our shores also bolsters 
U.S. resiliency. Manufacturers and distributors can be encouraged to 
build domestic facilities via incentives in the forms of tax credits 
and direct grants.
    In sum, the electrification market is poised for a once-in-a-
generation expansion both domestically and internationally. U.S. 
workers should lead the way in the making, transporting, selling, and 
installing of the machines required. The opportunity for the creation 
of local good-paying jobs, including apprenticeships and union labor, 
is ours to bolster. Congress has within its power the ability to fund 
important incentives that will support each segment in the market to 
train, place, and hire this new workforce, 25 million strong.
                               __________
Response from Mr. Ari Matusiak to Question for the Record submitted by 
                     Representative Herrera Beutler
    We continue to hear of moving the U.S. toward zero emission 
electricity. As a member of the Conservative Climate Caucus, I think 
preserving our economy and environment do not have to be mutually 
exclusive goals. In Washington State hydropower accounts for roughly 70 
percent of clean energy across the state. There is even a 1300 Megawatt 
(MW), 20 hour Goldendale pumped storage project in my district that 
would provide more than 3,000 jobs.
      What role do the witnesses see pumped storage and 
hydropower playing in the path to more renewable energy not only in 
Washington State, but across the Nation?
    Thank you for your question. At Rewiring America, we agree that 
preserving our economy and environment are not mutually exclusive 
goals. Indeed, with thoughtful policy, these two goals can each work to 
support the other, fueling a zero-emissions today and tomorrow.
    During the hearing, the fact that the United States is blessed with 
abundant natural resources was accurately raised. One state where this 
is particularly true is Washington State that has significant 
hydropower resources. By utilizing pumped storage, hydropower and other 
renewable energy generation sources can be used to fully supply the 
state's energy needs and, potentially, to supply other states as well. 
Indeed, renewable energy resources, when paired with storage, can solve 
any reliability issues, providing clean energy and resilience to 
communities across America.
    If electrification is the path that will carry our Nation to a 
zero-emission future, electric appliances and machines can be seen as 
the bridge between clean electricity supply and energy demand. As our 
energy supply increasingly goes toward the generation of electricity, 
we also need to ensure that the machines they would power are installed 
and ready to go. The more households that are connected to fossil fuel 
infrastructure through their everyday appliances, the harder it will be 
to transition away from fossil fuels. Further, because these machines 
have long useful lives with an upper range of a few decades, not 
replacing these machines with clean electric options jeopardizes our 
ability to reach our climate goals. Specifically, our analysis makes 
clear that the electrification of the one billion small machines in 
Americans' homes is necessary for the U.S. to reach zero emissions by 
2050. This trajectory is in line with what the science unequivocally 
tells us is necessary if we are to avert the worst consequences from 
climate change. Thus, while these machines may serve everyday functions 
(keeping our homes warm or cool, heating our water, cooking our food, 
drying our clothes, and driving us to work), their impact is 
significant. Through electrification, these machines can be a part of 
the solution, supporting the vast renewable resources powering the 
grid.
                               __________
 Response from Dr. Leah Stokes to Question for the Record submitted by 
                         Representative Peters
    Dr. Stokes, there are concerns about the clean energy industry not 
sufficiently providing union jobs. How is the electrification industry 
advancing union jobs and how can our programs better support U.S. 
workers? I am specifically interested in apprenticeship opportunities 
and local hiring opportunities in this sector.
    It's critical that we see higher unionization rates in the clean 
energy economy. In the power sector, one important policy change is 
allowing the tax credits (ITC and PTC) to include a ``direct pay'' 
mechanism. Since many utilities do not have significant amounts of 
Federal tax liability (or in some cases any), this makes it difficult 
for them to develop clean energy projects. If utilities are able to 
develop more clean energy projects, it is likely that there will be 
higher unionization rates in the sector as utilities tend to work with 
unionized labor more than independent power producers.
    In building electrification, the Federal Government could create a 
manufacturing grant program that supports companies that create 
American made products, including with unionized labor.
                               __________
 Response from Dr. Leah Stokes to Question for the Record submitted by 
                     Representative Herrera Beutler
    We continue to hear of moving the U.S. toward zero emission 
electricity. As a member of the Conservative Climate Caucus, I think 
preserving our economy and environment do not have to be mutually 
exclusive goals. In Washington State hydropower accounts for roughly 70 
percent of clean energy across the state. There is even a 1300 Megawatt 
(MW), 20 hour Goldendale pumped storage project in my district that 
would provide more than 3,000 jobs.
      What role do the witnesses see pumped storage and 
hydropower playing in the path to more renewable energy not only in 
Washington State, but across the Nation?
    Hydropower is a crucial resource in our clean energy electricity 
mix because it can match the output of other renewable energy sources, 
like wind and solar. The same is true of pumped storage. That being 
said, we have already developed the vast amount of hydropower resources 
available in the United States. If all the unused, potential hydropower 
resources were built out in the United States, they would only supply 
an additional 5 percentage points of clean power. For this reason, a 
broader array of clean energy technologies must be pursed alongside 
hydropower if we aim to clean up our electricity sector this decade. 
Pumped storage may prove an important solution as the electricity 
system balances higher levels of intermittent resources.
                               __________
Response from Mr. Donnel Baird to Question for the Record submitted by 
                     Representative Herrera Beutler
    We continue to hear of moving the U.S. toward zero emission 
electricity. As a member of the Conservative Climate Caucus, I think 
preserving our economy and environment do not have to be mutually 
exclusive goals. In Washington State hydropower accounts for roughly 70 
percent of clean energy across the state. There is even a 1300 Megawatt 
(MW), 20 hour Goldendale pumped storage project in my district that 
would provide more than 3,000 jobs.
      What role do the witnesses see pumped storage and 
hydropower playing in the path to more renewable energy not only in 
Washington State, but across the Nation?
    Thank you so very much for your extraordinary leadership. We salute 
the courage with which you represent your district, not only with 
regard to your membership in the Conservative Climate Caucus, who's 
work we would be happy to support in any way that's helpful, but all 
the courage you displayed on behalf of parents of young children 
everywhere and Americans who cherish democracy everywhere.
    We agree with you, and with Washington State: Hydroelectric power 
and storage MUST play a larger and larger role in our energy ecosystem.
    In particular, we have been excited to learn of advances in micro-
hydro electric power technology, where micro-hydro turbines are able to 
generate electricity with minimal disruption to natural ecosystems and 
waterways. Natel Energy is a wonderful example of micro-hydro electric 
power technology, and I'd be happy to arrange a briefing for your team 
about micro-hydro power and storage if helpful.
                               __________
Response from Dr. Eli Dourado to Questions for the Record submitted by 
                     Representative Herrera Beutler
    1. Last Congress my bill, the Better Energy Technology Act (Best 
Act) which was later signed into law, set clear goals for technology 
development in energy storage. In my home state of WA, Pacific 
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been a leader for the 
Department of Energy and DOE is moving forward on the design and 
construction of the Grid Storage Launchpad right in Washington State 
which will further cement our region's leadership in the energy storage 
development.
      Dr. Dourado, could you talk about the importance of 
modernizing the grid and how grid storage could lead to a more secure 
energy future?
    The electricity grid must be designed to meet several requirements 
at the same time. First, it must have adequate capacity to serve all 
customers at the moment of peak annual demand. Second, it must be 
designed to be reliable in the event of natural disasters such as 
storms and earthquakes. Third, it must be capable of keeping the supply 
and demand of electricity in perfect balance at every moment of every 
day.
    It's this third requirement that implicates grid storage. If we 
switch a significant fraction of our generation capacity to 
intermittent sources like wind and solar, it is vital that we pair it 
with adequate storage capacity to enable shifting the supply of 
electricity to when it is demanded. That storage could come from 
batteries, pumped hydro, compressed air storage, hydrogen production, 
and possibly other sources. Additionally, more dynamic electricity 
pricing would be a good way of economizing on the storage needed, since 
momentarily high prices could induce some customers to shift their 
electricity consumption to times when prices were lower.
    2. We continue to hear of moving the U.S. toward zero emission 
electricity. As a member of the Conservative Climate Caucus, I think 
preserving our economy and environment do not have to be mutually 
exclusive goals. In Washington State hydropower accounts for roughly 70 
percent of clean energy across the state. There is even a 1300 Megawatt 
(MW), 20 hour Goldendale pumped storage project in my district that 
would provide more than 3,000 jobs.
      What role do the witnesses see pumped storage and 
hydropower playing in the path to more renewable energy not only in 
Washington State, but across the Nation?
    Hydropower accounts for about 6-7 percent of the electricity 
generated in the United States. With full development of the country's 
hydropower resources, it's possible that it could reach 10-11 percent 
of generation capacity, before accounting for increases in total 
generation needed for the transition to electric vehicles and other 
forms of electrification. Additional firm, dispatchable electricity 
generation, of the kind that hydropower provides, helps the grid 
accommodate additional intermittent sources, like solar and wind 
energy. Hydropower, then, is not only renewable in its own right, it 
helps facilitate the addition of other renewable sources to the energy 
mix.
    Pumped storage has several advantages over batteries. It is able to 
cycle deeply every day without degradation. Pumped storage can also 
last much longer than today's batteries. The challenge is in properly 
siting pumped storage facilities, especially considering potential 
damage to river ecosystems. But since the battery supply chain is 
likely to be pushed to its maximum merely to meet demand for electric 
vehicles, it's hard to imagine a future where wind and solar are a 
large part of our energy supply and pumped storage does not play a 
significant role.
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