[Senate Hearing 117-476]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                        S. Hrg. 117-476

                    OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES IN
                 DEPLOYING INNOVATIVE BATTERY AND NON-
                BATTERY TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENERGY STORAGE

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

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

                               __________
                               
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               COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

                JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia, Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington           JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont             MIKE LEE, Utah
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          STEVE DAINES, Montana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine            JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
MARK KELLY, Arizona                  BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado       CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
                                     ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas

                      Renae Black, Staff Director
                      Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
                 Adam Berry, Professional Staff Member
                Zahava Urecki, Professional Staff Member
             Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
              Matthew H. Leggett, Republican Chief Counsel
           Jake McCurdy, Republican Professional Staff Member
                            
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from West 
  Virginia.......................................................     1
Barrasso, Hon. John, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from 
  Wyoming........................................................     3
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa, a U.S. Senator from Alaska.................    11

                               WITNESSES

Hemstreet, Tim, Managing Director for Renewable Energy 
  Development, PacifiCorp........................................     4
Nelson, Spencer, Managing Director, Research and New Initiatives, 
  ClearPath......................................................    11
Wiley, Ted, President and Chief Operating Officer, Form Energy...    25

          ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

Ambri, Inc.:
    Statement for the Record.....................................    59
Barrasso, Hon. John:
    Opening Statement............................................     3
    Wall Street Journal editorial entitled ``California's Tesla 
      Battery Fire: A Reminder That Solar and Wind Power Aren't 
      Cost or Risk Free''........................................    34
Hemstreet, Tim:
    Opening Statement............................................     4
    Written Testimony............................................     7
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
    Opening Statement............................................     1
Murkowski, Hon. Lisa:
    Introductory Statement.......................................    11
Nelson, Spencer:
    Opening Statement............................................    11
    Written Testimony............................................    14
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................    58
Renewable Thermal Collaborative:
    Letter for the Record........................................    63
Rondo Energy Inc.:
    Statement for the Record.....................................    66
Wiley, Ted:
    Opening Statement............................................    25
    Written Testimony............................................    27

 
 OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES IN DEPLOYING INNOVATIVE BATTERY AND NON-
                BATTERY TECHNOLOGIES FOR ENERGY STORAGE

                              ----------                              


                      THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2022

                                       U.S. Senate,
                 Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in 
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joe Manchin 
III, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III, 
                U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA

    The Chairman. The Committee will come to order.
    Before we get started, I want to take a moment to say 
thanks to Adam Berry who is staffing me today. Adam, stand up. 
I'm sorry to say that Adam is going to be leaving the Committee 
at the end of this week for a different mountain state. He is 
going home to the state of Colorado. Adam came to the Energy 
Committee as a research assistant in 2019. He was promoted to 
professional staff, handling energy efficiency, hydropower, and 
energy storage. Adam has done an unbelievable job. He was 
instrumental in advancing significant investments in these 
areas in the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill and the Inflation 
Reduction Act, and I thank him for his hard work. So Adam, job 
well done. Thank you.
    [Applause.]
    The Chairman. Today's hearing focuses on energy storage, 
one of the game-changing technologies that is increasingly 
critical in our effort to address climate change without 
sacrificing reliability of the electric grid. I want to welcome 
all the witnesses and thank them for being here today for this 
conversation. Today, we will discuss the opportunities and 
challenges in employing an innovative battery, and ways in 
which our recent investments in advancing this technology are 
paying off for Americans with new jobs to support the industry 
we are committed to growing here at home. Now, unlike many 
other energy technologies, energy storage can be provided by an 
increasingly diverse set of technologies, although pumped 
storage hydro and lithium-ion have dominated the field to date. 
When it comes to storage, there has rightly been a focus on the 
supply chain, particularly for lithium-ion batteries that power 
electric vehicles and phones in our pockets and many other 
modern technologies.
    While we have benefited from the use of this important 
battery chemistry, the fact that China is responsible for 75 
percent of global lithium-ion battery production, including 60 
percent of the world's cathode production and 80 percent of the 
world's anode production, should give everyone pause. That is 
why I was proud to champion the Inflation Reduction Act, which 
incentivized the on-shoring of the entire battery supply chain 
from the production and processing of raw materials to the 
battery pack assembly and everything in between. And we should 
also be focused on how we limit our use of these minerals in 
the first place, which is why I am thrilled West Virginia will 
be home to Sparkz's new cobalt-free lithium-ion battery 
manufacturing facility. This facility is bringing 350 jobs to 
Taylor County, a welcome investment for the community. And 
while lithium-ion batteries will certainly continue to play an 
important role in the storage conversation, they are not 
necessarily the best chemistry for every application.
    As we have learned with the battery supply chain, it is 
unwise to put all of our eggs in one basket with one singular 
battery chemistry. We have so many options, from solid-state 
batteries to non-battery technologies like compressed air, 
molten salt, and gravity-based storage, and of course, we have 
metal-air batteries like Mr. Wiley's company Form Energy is 
working on. In fact, Form Energy is making 100-hour batteries 
with an innovative ion oxidation approach. Finally, a reason to 
like rust. So that is why we are here today, to hear from our 
witnesses about those innovative approaches to battery and non-
battery storage that do not have as many domestic supply 
challenges.
    Congress has super-charged investment in storage over the 
last few years, beginning with the Energy Act of 2020. I also 
want to note that one of our witnesses today, Spencer Nelson, 
was instrumental in putting that piece of legislation together 
as a member of Senator Murkowski's Energy Committee staff, and 
we are thrilled to have you back. The Energy Act provided $355 
million in authorization for long-duration storage, 
demonstration, and pilot programs, many of which were 
championed by Senator King and Senator Heinrich and other 
members on this Committee that were later funded in full by the 
bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Along with 
funding for the Energy Act demonstration projects, the IIJ also 
included over $6 billion for research, development, 
demonstration, and deployment of battery processing, 
manufacturing, and recycling for both mobile and grid-scale 
storage applications. These bills, coupled with the Inflation 
Reduction Act, a new energy storage investment tax credit, a 
new battery production tax credit, and the addition of battery 
storage to the 25D residential tax credit, will help to 
commercialize innovative storage solutions and make them more 
accessible to the consumers. And we will ensure that these 
investments will be targeted to communities that need them 
most. The Inflation Reduction Act provides incentives for 
projects that locate in energy communities and included my 48C 
tax credit, which will invest $10 billion to retool, expand, 
and build new facilities that make or recycle energy-related 
products, including storage technologies in the United States. 
Additionally, $4 billion was set aside specifically for use in 
communities that have seen coal mines close and coal power 
plants shuttered over the past decade. This funding can help to 
continue traditional fossil states' roles as energy powerhouses 
long into the future.
    With that, I want to thank, again, the witnesses for being 
with us today. I look forward to hearing from you all and the 
discussion we will have. I am going to turn to Ranking Member 
Barrasso for his opening remarks.

  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO, U.S. SENATOR FROM 
                            WYOMING

    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chairman. 
Thanks for holding this very important hearing today. We are 
grateful for the witnesses.
    Energy storage is the ability, as we know, to retain energy 
when electricity production is high and then that energy can be 
used when electricity production is low. Wind and solar are 
weather-dependent technologies. If we are going to continue to 
add these technologies to the grid, energy storage is going to 
be critical for maintaining electric reliability. It is going 
to require more affordable and longer-duration storage 
technologies than we have right now. The only current long-
duration, commercially available solution is pumped storage 
hydropower. Pumped storage involves pumping water to upper 
elevations when electricity production is high. The water is 
then released to produce hydropower when electricity production 
is low. Depending on the size of the reservoir, pumped storage 
can provide electricity for up to 16 hours. Today, pumped 
storage accounts for about 93 percent of all our utility-scale 
energy storage in this country. PacifiCorp, who is represented 
in our hearing today, has proposed 11 new pumped storage 
projects throughout the West.
    There are also other technologies that show great potential 
for the near future. One of PacifCorp's subsidiaries plans to 
build TerraPower's first Natrium reactor in my home state of 
Wyoming. This is an advanced nuclear reactor that will produce 
enough electricity to power over a third of a million homes. It 
will include liquid salt tanks that will be able to store 
enough energy to produce additional electricity to power more 
than 150,000 homes for over five hours. Now, many utilities are 
investing in large arrays of lithium-ion batteries, similar to 
those used in today's electric vehicles. Others are investing 
in battery technologies with alternative materials. It is 
important to focus on the resources and efforts on deploying 
readily available, long-duration storage technologies. It is 
especially important that we invest in technologies that do not 
depend on supply chains controlled by our adversaries, like 
Russia and China. So I am pleased that TerraPower has committed 
to not use any Russian uranium to fuel its advanced reactor.
    When it comes to lithium-ion batteries, we are heavily 
dependent on China. Lithium-ion batteries use large amounts of 
copper, nickel, lithium, manganese, graphite, and rare earth 
minerals and we rely on China for the overwhelming majority of 
all of these minerals. Focusing on developing pumped storage 
hydropower and thermal storage solutions, like the Natrium 
reactor, can help reduce this supply-chain risk. Broadening our 
priorities beyond lithium-ion batteries can also help address 
costs. According to the World Bank, pumped storage hydropower 
costs between $106 and $200 per kilowatt-hour. This is 
significantly cheaper than lithium-ion batteries, which cost 
between $393 and $580 per kilowatt-hour. So 70 to 80 percent of 
the cost of lithium-ion batteries is directly tied to the raw 
materials. If we do not increase mining and processing here in 
the United States, the cost of these batteries is only going to 
increase as the demand increases. Since taking office, the 
Biden Administration has only made it more difficult to access 
American minerals. Last year, it canceled leases for a mine 
that contains 95 percent of our nation's nickel, 88 percent of 
our nation's cobalt, and 34 percent of our nation's copper. We 
cannot allow President Biden's hostility to mining to turn 
energy storage into another part of his made-in-China green 
energy policy.
    So I want to thank all the witnesses for joining us today 
and look forward to your testimony.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    I would like to welcome our panel of witnesses. We have 
with us, Mr. Tim Hemstreet, Managing Director of Renewable 
Energy Development at PacifiCorp. We have next, Mr. Spencer 
Nelson, Managing Director of Research and New Initiatives at 
ClearPath. And finally, we have Mr. Ted Wiley, President and 
Chief Operating Officer of Form Energy.
    Now, to hear from you all, we are going to start with Mr. 
Hemstreet for your opening statement.

  STATEMENT OF TIM HEMSTREET, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR RENEWABLE 
                 ENERGY DEVELOPMENT, PACIFICORP

    Mr. Hemstreet. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, and members of 
the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before 
you today. This hearing is important for the customers and 
communities throughout the West who drive our business. 
PacifiCorp is an electric utility that serves approximately 1.9 
million customers in communities across Utah, Wyoming, and 
Idaho as Rocky Mountain Power, and Oregon, California, and 
Washington as Pacific Power. PacifiCorp owns more than 11,600 
megawatts of hydropower, coal, gas, wind, solar, and geothermal 
resources with 40 percent of that capacity located in Wyoming. 
PacifiCorp is also the single largest owner and operator of 
transmission facilities in the West, and our system is 
expanding with construction of our Gateway South transmission 
project recently started in Wyoming. PacifiCorp can safely be 
described as an all-of-the-above energy company. We are a proud 
member of the Berkshire Hathaway energy family of businesses, 
but our customers, located predominately in rural areas of the 
West, know us as their local power company.
    I have the responsibility to plan and develop renewable 
generation assets to serve our customers so that we can safely, 
reliably, and affordably meet their energy needs. PacifiCorp is 
seeing incredible growth in the amount of renewable generation 
we are bringing online. In 2020, PacifiCorp completed an 
expansion of its transmission system in eastern Wyoming, 
improving reliability and accessing cost-effective wind energy 
resources, doubling our own wind fleet in the process. We 
anticipate bringing an additional 12,000 megawatts of new 
renewable generation to serve our customers online over the 
next 20 years.
    PacifiCorp is also looking at other generation resources to 
meet customer needs and has partnered in the development of 
TerraPower's Natrium advanced nuclear reactor proposed to be 
located at our retiring Naughton coal facility in Kemmerer, 
Wyoming. An important attribute of this technology is its 
molten salt energy storage capability. Because renewable wind 
and solar resources are not dispatchable, we also need to add 
substantial amounts of energy storage to ensure we can balance 
intermittent renewable generation with real-time customer 
energy needs. This calls for the addition of 5,500 megawatts of 
energy storage over the same 20-year period.
    For the purposes of my testimony, I would like to focus on 
opportunities and challenges related to the deployment of 
pumped storage hydropower. PacifiCorp is adding solar and 
storage resources and we also anticipate adding a significant 
amount of stand-alone batteries in the coming years to meet 
short-duration energy storage needs. Pumped storage hydropower 
can play an important role that is unique by meeting the need 
for long-duration, proven, commercially available energy 
storage. Pumped storage hydropower can maintain grid 
reliability by providing spinning reserves and quickly ramping 
to balance energy supply and demand, allowing us to better 
integrate renewable resources cost-effectively. Pumped storage 
can also provide important ancillary services to the grid, 
including voltage and frequency support, inertia, and black 
start capabilities that enhance reliability and resiliency. By 
storing renewable energy during times of abundant supply, 
pumped storage can also help optimize the use of scarce 
transmission resources.
    An important attribute of pumped storage is the ability of 
the technology to be deployed at scale with proposals for 
pumped storage projects before FERC that range up to thousands 
of megawatts in capacity. Additionally, hydropower projects 
have long asset lives. The average age of PacifiCorp's hydro 
units is 90 years. Finally, pumped storage projects can be 
developed with secure supply chains sourced domestically or 
with strategic partners. For these reasons, PacifiCorp is 
currently evaluating how we can incorporate pumped storage 
capabilities at our existing hydroelectric projects. We are 
also evaluating the feasibility of new pumped storage projects 
across our system, and in October of last year, we filed 11 
preliminary permit applications with FERC in support of that 
effort. Four of these potential projects are located in Utah, 
three in Wyoming, two in Oregon, and one each in Idaho and 
Washington.
    Despite the benefits that pumped storage hydropower 
provides, there are challenges to its development, including 
high up-front costs and long development timelines. Congress 
has taken a step in providing incentives to technology-neutral 
energy storage resources, and this will be helpful in solving 
some of the cost challenges faced by pumped storage. 
Development of a pumped storage project usually requires a 
license from FERC, and the licensing process for hydropower 
projects is highly complex and time consuming. A FERC licensing 
proceeding usually takes between seven to ten years to 
complete. Applicants must undertake extensive resource studies 
and coordinate with various federal and state agencies with 
different mandates to inform FERC's licensing decisions, 
resulting in a lengthy process that adds uncertainty to the 
development of these important projects. The need for 
improvements to the FERC licensing process is acknowledged by a 
diverse range of parties with varying interests in licensing 
decisions.
    Recently, representatives of the hydropower industry, 
Native American tribes, and environmental stakeholders agreed 
upon consensus recommendations to Congress around a package of 
reforms to the Federal Power Act. Significantly, these reforms 
will provide for a three-year, start-to-finish licensing 
process for certain pumped storage projects. The Uncommon 
Dialogue licensing reforms are a step in the right direction, 
and additional steps could be taken to allow FERC to issue 
licenses in a more timely manner using existing agency 
authorities. It is important that Congress and federal agencies 
take steps to streamline the permit process for these projects. 
Failing to do so will make it more difficult for the private 
sector to commit the substantial resources needed to develop 
these projects so they can play a role in meeting our common 
goal of ensuring a safe and reliable energy system that fosters 
the economic growth of our communities.
    Finally, pumped storage technology innovation is also an 
active area. Many opportunities for innovation are being 
pursued by the hydropower industry with respect to new and 
adaptations of existing pumped storage facilities, and 
increased application to pumped storage technology will surely 
spawn improvements in the future. I want to thank you again for 
the opportunity to participate in this hearing. PacifiCorp and 
Berkshire Hathaway Energy look forward to working with you 
further on these important issues. Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Hemstreet follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Before we go to Mr. Nelson, I am going to 
turn it over to a former boss of yours. She wants to make sure 
you do it and do it right.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Senator Murkowski.

  INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT OF HON. LISA MURKOWSKI, U.S. SENATOR 
                          FROM ALASKA

    Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 
Barrasso, thank you. Thank you for the hearing this morning.
    I know that we always try to have very strong and 
distinguished witnesses before our Committee, but when I looked 
at today's list, I knew I had to be here at the outset. And I 
am grateful to all of our witnesses, but I do want to just take 
a moment to welcome a former member of our Committee here. 
Spencer Nelson was with us for a period of time here on the 
Committee, but you may remember he was kind of the guy behind 
the scenes who did everything. He was my Swiss Army Knife when 
it came to the Energy Act that we were able to pass in 2020. We 
had a little bit of a skeletal crew at that time, but there was 
nothing that we put in front of Spencer or nothing that Spencer 
identified as ``we need to get on this'' that he did not pick 
up and handle and handle in a way that the next morning we were 
moving beyond that problem and on to the next.
    So Spencer, it is good to have you back here in Dirksen 
366. Know that we miss you. We miss your expertise, but 
congratulations on testifying before the Committee. This is the 
first time, but hopefully it is not going to be the last. 
Spencer is now the Managing Director for Research and New 
Initiatives at ClearPath. He is doing a great job over there, 
but you were an incredible asset to this Committee and we thank 
you for that.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now, Mr. Nelson.

 STATEMENT OF SPENCER NELSON, MANAGING DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND 
                   NEW INITIATIVES, CLEARPATH

    Mr. Nelson. Thank you so much for that kind introduction, 
Senator. It was a true pleasure to work with this Committee and 
all the wonderful members and staff and it is, you know, 
something I will never forget, and we accomplished so much. And 
also, thank you to Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member Barrasso 
for the opportunity to testify today. Today I am going to cover 
four key topics. First, the valuable role of energy storage on 
the grid. Second, the limits of lithium-ion. Third, alternative 
energy storage technologies, and fourth, how to build on this 
Committee's wins over the past three years, of which there are 
many.
    American grid operators face immense challenges as power 
use changes and emissions decline. The need for more 
electricity generation, along with new grid-scale energy 
storage solutions to maximize reliability, affordability, and 
clean energy has never been more urgent. Look, energy storage 
is not new to the grid. The first pumped hydro plants were 
built a century ago and have provided regular load shifting for 
baseload power generation ever since. Recently, lithium-ion 
batteries have been the primary new grid-scale storage. Lithium 
battery costs have fallen 90 percent since 2010 and are now 20 
percent of total energy storage in the U.S. There are clear 
benefits from this growth. During the recent heat wave in 
California, batteries provided more than three gigawatts of 
power during peak demand, ultimately avoiding major blackouts.
    But it is not all good news. While lithium-ion batteries 
are helpful for the grid, many rely on critical minerals that 
are not readily available in the U.S. The vast majority of 
manufacturing comes from China, which controls two-thirds of 
lithium pre-processing facilities, as well as 77 percent of 
manufacturing capacity worldwide. We need to find a way to 
onshore the entire battery supply chain, from critical minerals 
production all the way to battery manufacturing. Global demand 
for critical minerals in batteries is expected to skyrocket by 
up to 1,200 percent by 2030. Now, lithium-ion batteries are 
also tied to electric vehicles. So, as EV demand increases, so 
does the price of lithium. Prices for lithium have increased 
from $5,000 a ton to $70,000 a ton in just two years. So we 
ultimately need to innovate away from technologies that rely on 
critical minerals to begin with. For lithium-ion batteries, 
that means moving away from cathode designs that use nickel, 
currently controlled by Russia, and cobalt, which exploits 
child labor in the Congo.
    Geopolitical and cost concerns are driving a transition to 
grid-scale lithium-iron-phosphate batteries that use fewer 
critical minerals, but unfortunately, this shift does not solve 
the broader problem of Chinese control of global lithium supply 
chains. As the share of renewable energy on the grid grows to 
as much as 40 percent by 2050 or more, reliability will 
increasingly depend on whether the wind is blowing or the sun 
is shining. And if the weather doesn't cooperate, long-duration 
storage is the best way to provide hours or days of energy 
capacity. Lithium-ion batteries are fundamentally impractical 
for this long-duration storage. They will help shift daily 
demand, but will not solve the seasonality problem that could 
occur with increased use of renewables. We should invest in 
non-lithium technologies that can provide 100 hours of storage 
or more.
    Several categories of energy storage, like thermal, 
chemical, and mechanical, could provide affordable long-
duration storage. For thermal energy storage, a great example 
is TerraPower's Natrium nuclear reactor being developed in 
Senator Barrasso's home State of Wyoming. That reactor will use 
molten salt storage to allow operation at full capacity while 
also ramping electricity output up and down. Other innovative 
solutions include flow batteries, hydrogen storage, and metal-
air batteries, like those being developed by Form Energy. 
Batteries that use earth-abundant minerals can be long-duration 
and keep costs low. Additionally, mechanical, long-duration 
storage technologies, like pumped hydro, currently represent 80 
percent of total energy storage on the grid and should be 
further expanded.
    Finally, I would like to highlight the many bipartisan 
actions underway from the Department of Energy and this 
Committee to support energy storage. DOE has worked to reduce 
the cost of energy storage with the Trump Administration's 
Energy Storage Grand Challenge and its successor program, the 
Long-Duration Storage Shot. The current goal of Storage Shot 
would reduce the cost of long-duration storage 90 percent by 
2035. Meanwhile, this Committee has catalyzed energy storage 
policy through landmark laws like the Energy Act of 2020, which 
included the bipartisan BEST Act that many of you worked on, 
that comprehensively reauthorized energy storage R&D with new 
demonstration programs that were later funded by the 
infrastructure law. At this point, DOE has not released funding 
opportunities for the storage demo programs, and the Committee 
should push for swift action. The Committee should also focus 
on identifying alternative sources of critical minerals and 
making it easier to develop them in the United States. We are 
not on track to meet our clean energy goals unless we make it 
easier to build cleaner, faster. Domestic processing and 
manufacturing facilities are a priority, and removing barriers 
to their development is a must.
    Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. ClearPath 
is eager to assist the Committee in developing policies to 
support innovative energy storage technologies.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Nelson follows:]
    
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    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Mr. Wiley.

STATEMENT OF TED WILEY, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, 
                          FORM ENERGY

    Mr. Wiley. Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, and 
distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for inviting 
me to testify on behalf of Form Energy at today's hearing to 
examine opportunities and challenges in deploying innovative 
battery technologies for energy storage. I am Ted Wiley. I am 
one of the co-founders, the President and Chief Operating 
Officer at Form Energy, and I am joined here today by my 
colleague, Nidhi Thaker, who heads our Policy and Regulatory 
Affairs. We are representing about 300 people across the 
country. Headquartered in Massachusetts, we have operations in 
California and Pennsylvania.
    Today, many battery technologies on the market can only 
provide, at most, four to six hours of energy storage at full 
rated power. While this is adequate for some circumstances, 
recent severe weather events, ranging from heat waves to cold 
snaps to thousand-year rains, have hamstrung our electric grid. 
And as has been demonstrated over the last few years, we are 
increasingly reliant on vulnerable supply chains to meet our 
energy needs. To meet supply chain challenges and run the grid 
reliably and affordably, we need domestically manufactured 
energy storage technologies that are capable of cost-
effectively storing electricity for multiple days during 
extended periods of extreme weather, grid outages, or low 
renewable generation. When we started Form Energy, we conducted 
a broad review of the available technologies and have 
reinvented and optimized the iron-air battery for the electric 
grid. Our breakthrough, low-cost, multi-day energy storage 
systems will be made in America and help ensure a reliable 
electric grid year-round.
    As the Chairman and others on this Committee have 
highlighted, we cannot be overreliant on any single country to 
meet our energy needs. We need to strive for energy 
independence. The active components of our iron-air battery 
system are some of the safest, cheapest, and most abundant 
materials on the planet--low-cost iron, water, and air. In 
fact, every material in the battery is readily available here 
in the United States as well as at a global scale with 
opportunities for high recyclability at end of use. Our 
technology is based on research that was supported by the 
Department of Energy in the 1970's and is designed to drive 
down energy costs for American consumers. In fact, at scale, we 
will be able to store energy for less than a tenth the cost of 
lithium-ion battery technology.
    The basic principle of operation in our battery is 
reversible rusting. You heard that right. While discharging, 
the battery breathes in oxygen from the air and converts iron 
metal to rust. When charging, electrical current converts that 
rust back into iron and the battery breathes out oxygen. This 
reversible rusting process allows our technology to deliver the 
100-hour duration required to safely make solar and wind 
reliable year-round, anywhere in the country, with no risk of 
thermal runaway. When we started the company five years ago, me 
and my five co-founders had a vision to develop multi-day 
energy storage that would unlock the power of extremely low-
cost renewable energy to transform the electric grid. Over the 
last five years, through rigorous R&D product engineering, we 
now have an iron-air battery product that is ready to scale.
    We are grateful for the support and effort from this 
Committee, and in particular, Chairman Manchin, for making the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, as well as the 
Inflation Reduction Act, a reality. These unprecedented 
investments by Congress position our country's clean energy 
innovation ecosystem for success and ensure that we can more 
effectively and efficiently leverage private-sector investment 
with smart, whole-of-government policies to support the energy 
transition reliably and affordably. Lithium-ion battery 
technology was invented in a lab in the early 80s and took 
decades to achieve gigawatt-scale production. With the support 
of these new laws, companies like Form Energy will be able to 
scale in years, not decades, which is the time frame needed to 
meet our country's energy goals: enhancing grid resilience and 
security, increasing grid reliability and safety, creating 
good-paying jobs and economically benefiting local communities, 
and ensuring that the inventions that secure our energy future 
are built right here in the United States. Right now, Form 
Energy is in the final stages of selecting a site for our first 
full-scale battery production factory, in America, east of the 
Mississippi River.
    As we look to our future, when we are receiving hundreds of 
thousands of tons of iron every year by rail or by barge and 
turning it into electrodes for batteries, there are only a few 
places in the United States that make sense to build batteries 
like that because the infrastructure and the know-how is 
already there. Those are our historic coal and steel 
communities. Communities that sit on a river. Communities that 
have rail access. Communities that know how to make great 
things out of iron and have always been leaders in American 
energy production and innovation. We expect to announce the 
location of our first full-scale battery manufacturing facility 
in the coming months and look forward to being an integral part 
of that local community where we will create good-paying, 
permanent jobs that grow our team by hundreds, and will build 
cost-effective, safe batteries for the American clean energy 
future, and we look forward to keeping that factory humming for 
years to come.
    Thank you again, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, 
and distinguished members of the Committee for your time. I 
look forward to answering any questions that you might have.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Wiley follows:]
   
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    The Chairman. Let me thank all three of you for your 
testimonies, it was quite enlightening. Really quick, I just 
have a couple things to evaluate.
    The Inflation Reduction Act basically had a lot of 
incentives for production tax credits, incentive tax credits, 
things of that sort. I think, Mr. Wiley, you just touched on 
some of those, but Mr. Nelson, you can probably look at it from 
a standpoint of the whole industry, what is going and how it 
might invigorate and accelerate. And I would like for you, if 
you can, touch on that, those credits, if not for those credits 
would this come to fruition? Would it have been much slower 
coming, when you said decades versus years? And next of all, 
the permitting. We are in a permitting process right now--of 
evaluation. Do we need to change the permitting process in the 
United States of America to bring our energy to market quicker 
and more cost-effectively than what it is today? If you can 
give me just a little evaluation on that?
    Mr. Hemstreet, you want to start on that, if you can, how 
it is affecting you?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Sure, thank you, Chairman.
    Certainly, for pumped storage, the ITC and the IRA for 
technology-neutral storage is key. We have never had a storage 
ITC before. And so, for pumped storage, it is absolutely 
critical for allowing us to cost-effectively deploy those 
projects. So that is something the hydropower industry has long 
sought. It is very important for us to be able to finally put 
on and have incentives that allow us to build storage to back 
up all the renewables that we have been constructing for the 
past two decades. So from a perspective of pumped storage, yes, 
the ITC for storage is very critical.
    What the challenge is now is that, given the acceleration 
in the renewable build that we see, we are now faced with a 
challenge in terms of getting these projects built as fast as, 
you know, the incentives. The incentives are now available to 
build them, but we really have a very difficult and challenging 
permitting pipeline to bring them, you know, into fruition in 
the time needed to----
    The Chairman. So you have a ten-year window, but basically 
the way the permitting process works now, unless we accelerate 
that or revamp that, you are not going to come in that window?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Yes, I think, I mean, for licensing projects 
today, it takes seven to ten years. And so, if we are going to 
take that long to license a project and four years to construct 
a project, you know, that is a multi-decade, at times, process, 
and that, from my perspective, will not be soon enough when 
projects of this sort will be needed.
    The Chairman. I got you.
    Mr. Wiley--and then I am going to come back, Mr. Nelson, 
for you to give an evaluation of the whole market, as far as 
energy market.
    Mr. Wiley. So on the topic of going faster, I think, 
absolutely. And I did say that lithium-ion took about 30 years 
to go from, you know, batteries in a lab in Arizona to, you 
know, in camcorders and eventually electric vehicles. We have 
been at it for five years and we think we can be at gigawatt 
scale in another five years. You know, that is going to shave 
20 years off of the timeline. The mechanism there and the way 
that this happens is, you know, we have created certainty for a 
decade in the----
    The Chairman. Do the tax credits give you the opportunity 
to do that, to accelerate that?
    Mr. Wiley. That's right. The tax credits are critically 
important to catalyzing investor capital and giving us 
certainty that we can do what we need to in the market and they 
allow us to go to scale faster----
    The Chairman. How about on permitting? Does permitting 
effect you all in your type of a business?
    Mr. Wiley. I think on the topic of permitting, Form Energy 
supports Congressional action that would help clean energy 
companies across the country develop operations and scale in 
the United States. And we further support legislative action 
that ensures the benefits of the Infrastructure Law and the 
Inflation Reduction Act are fully implemented and leveraged. It 
is going to be important to do permitting reform.
    The Chairman. Mr. Nelson, as the oversight there, what do 
you see in the whole arena?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, you know, from our perspective, the most 
important thing is that all policy is technically feasible, 
that it is economically realistic, and also that it is 
politically sustainable. Bipartisanship is really crucial for 
that. There has been a lot of really good bipartisan energy 
storage policy over the last few years, and you need something 
at each step of the chain, from basic R&D, applied R&D, 
demonstrations and market signals, and you are going to need 
pieces of all of that to get there. And it is really important, 
that bipartisanship piece, so that it stays politically durable 
and we are not spending a bunch of time fighting about, you 
know, repealing things along the way. Ultimately, no one policy 
is going to be enough. We are going to have to have all of 
these policies to be able to have a strong and reliable grid.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Mr. Wiley, in your testimony, you always played a major 
role in providing this country with the energy it needs and 
what you are trying to do. We have the Sparkz zero-cobalt 
battery manufacturing facility coming into Bridgeport, as you 
know, and that is going to change a lot. The states like mine 
and Senator Barrasso's, being major energy states, have a 
certain attraction, because we have been in this business and 
you are giving some opportunities there and people are ready to 
go, like you said. So, siting, you know, it is a big thing, but 
as we transition in this country to the energy that we must 
have and the energy we would like to have, if those two could 
intersect then some of the people can do both, that is a 
transition where we leave nobody behind.
    So as you are looking, and I understand in your testimony 
you said that you are looking in communities that have that 
opportunity, availability, and the experience. Are you finding 
those characteristics in energy, basically, in energy states 
that have been heavy lifters?
    Mr. Wiley. That is exactly right, Senator Manchin. When we 
went out, we started with a nationwide search and we started 
with the footprint that we were looking for and the skill sets 
that we were looking for. And as I mentioned, we need hundreds 
of thousands of tons of iron to flow into a site and turn into 
batteries and the infrastructure that we need to do that is the 
same kind of infrastructure that has serviced things like steel 
plants and coal plants around the country. The workers that we 
need to take iron and transform it into a battery are the same 
kind of workers that have been building the infrastructure that 
made America for the last, you know, several decades. So we 
found that there is a really strong overlap where the rail and 
the river flow in together and the workers and the skill sets 
are already there in those energy communities. And we are 
really excited about what we found. We are about a month and a 
half away from making a major announcement on where we will put 
our factory.
    The Chairman. We are all awaiting that decision.
    Senator Barrasso.
    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Hemstreet, so PacifiCorp recently submitted nearly a 
dozen applications for preliminary permits to develop pumped 
storage hydropower. These applications are now pending before 
the FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. These 
include three sites in my home State of Wyoming as well as 
sites in Idaho, Senator Risch's State, Senator Lee's home State 
of Utah, Oregon, Washington State. Why are you pursuing the 
development of pumped storage hydropower?
    Mr. Hemstreet. We see pumped storage hydropower as being 
very valuable from the perspective of maintaining grid 
reliability. We are very familiar with our hydropower fleet 
that provides us the ability to do that today and have flexible 
capacity, and that has been an important way that we have been 
able to integrate the renewable resources we brought online. So 
it is important for us, as we see more renewables coming 
online, that we do have resources that also are available and 
dependable when the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't 
shining, and pumped storage can play that role, particularly in 
your state, Senator. We happen to make a lot of wind in eastern 
Wyoming, and are building a lot of new transmission, but yet, 
we are still transmission-constrained in that part of your 
state. And so, pumped storage, we think, can also play a role 
in making sure that the transmission we are building is 
optimized so that we are getting the most value out of the 
renewable resources we are putting there.
    Senator Barrasso. So you submitted these proposals nearly a 
year ago. Can you please speak to the timeline of the licensing 
process of FERC?
    Mr. Hemstreet. The licensing process for projects is 
typically on the order of seven to ten years. And so, for that 
reason----
    Senator Barrasso. Seven to ten years, and you are a year 
into the process?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Correct.
    Senator Barrasso. Okay.
    Mr. Hemstreet. And so, for that reason, it is really 
important that we do see some reform in the licensing process 
and we are very lucky that a lot of folks on all sides of these 
issues have done really important work to advance a set of 
reforms to the Federal Power Act that would let us do that in a 
consensus way. And that is really exciting.
    Senator Barrasso. And last year, PacifiCorp, along with its 
subsidiary Rocky Mountain Power and TerraPower announced they 
are going to build this first Natrium reactor in my home State 
of Wyoming. The advanced nuclear reactor is going to provide 
345 megawatts of power. It is going to include a liquid salt-
based energy storage system which is capable of increasing the 
reactor's output to 500 megawatts for over five hours. What 
kind of benefits will this storage system bring to the electric 
grid in Wyoming and to our neighboring states?
    Mr. Hemstreet. What it will do, Senator, it is a source of 
energy, pure energy, flat out, it has a very high-capacity 
factor. It is intended to run at 345 megawatts, 24/7. So that 
is going to produce needed energy for your state as well as 
neighboring states, and the ability of that molten salt energy 
storage to ramp and meet load means that it will be available 
when we are either not seeing renewable resources produce or 
when we are seeing customer demands increase. And so that is 
really important.
    Senator Barrasso. So how does this storage system compare 
to other energy storage technologies?
    Mr. Hemstreet. In one sense, what is attractive about this 
energy source is it is inherent in the design of that project. 
So rather than kind of a bolt-on afterthought, it is really 
just inherent in the way that entire plant is designed to make 
sure it can flexibly meet customer demands.
    Senator Barrasso. Next, I want to ask all three of you to 
comment. So this is today's Wall Street Journal--``California's 
Tesla Battery Fire''--editorial in today's Wall Street Journal. 
It explains that Tuesday, two days ago, a Tesla battery at a 
utility storage site caught fire. It triggered the shutdown of 
the state's scenic coastal highway in California and had 
warnings to local residents to shelter in place, told them not 
to use air purification systems, air conditioning and what 
other. It goes on to say that lithium-ion battery fires are 
notoriously hard to extinguish because they burn at extremely 
high temperatures and they produce dangerous fumes. So I would 
like each of you to discuss some of the public safety concerns 
associated with using lithium-ion batteries for energy storage.
    Mr. Hemstreet. I will start, Senator.
    You know, I am really not familiar with, you know, the 
public safety aspects of that, but what I would say is that we 
know, as an all-of-the-above energy company, we want resource 
diversification, you know, in all the things that we do--we 
want wind, we want solar, we want geothermal. We will see 
batteries but we also think it is important to have diverse 
sources of storage and pumped storage hydropower can provide 
some of that diversity that we think we need.
    Senator Barrasso. Mr. Nelson.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, thank you for the question.
    So ultimately, the flammable properties of lithium-ion 
batteries are due to the high power density, and you do not 
need to use those for grid-scale storage, necessarily. The 
reason we use them is because they are quite cheap because we 
have scaled them up for electric vehicles and for consumer 
electronics. I think it is really important that we begin to 
find ways to lower the cost of alternative sources, at least 
for grid-scale storage. That is helpful for large-scale 
deployment. It is also helpful for, you know, increasing grid 
reliability and reducing our reliance on other countries.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
    And Mr. Wiley.
    Mr. Wiley. Yes, to further Mr. Nelson's comments, when we 
started the process of designing the battery chemistry that we 
are developing--iron-air--we looked closely at over 100 
different chemistries, and one of the criteria was safety. In 
particular, not using any flammable materials and then 
developing a chemical reaction that doesn't have any pathway to 
thermal runaway, where the reaction itself is self-heating. So 
these batteries that we are developing are water based. They 
have a salt in the water, which is an alkaline salt, and there 
is no pathway to thermal runaway. And in fact, it is not 
flammable.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
    And Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit to the record, 
without objection, this California Tesla battery article from 
the Wall Street Journal.
    The Chairman. Without objection.
    [The editorial referred to follows:]
   
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    Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman.
    It's a good thing gasoline is not flammable.
    Senator Barrasso. That would be bad. They had to close down 
the whole highway in California. It was awful. And tell people 
not to use their heating and cooling systems.
    Senator Heinrich. Let me talk to you about the IRA for a 
minute, for each of you, whoever wants to jump in. Talk to us 
for a couple minutes about the importance of setting tax policy 
incentives that are long-term and durable as opposed to year-
by-year-by-year. How important was it that the incentives in 
the Inflation Reduction Act were decadal and send a consistent 
signal over time?
    Mr. Wiley. So thank you, Senator Heinrich, for the 
question.
    As a company that has spent the last five years in the R&D 
phase and is just at the base of the hill, looking up and 
thinking about scaling up manufacturing, we are going to go 
from 300 to 1,000 people working at the company over the next 
three years, and we are going to make major investments in a 
manufacturing plant, in a sales force to go take those 
batteries into the world. And having an incentive that is only 
going to last as long as it would take us to just get started 
on the manufacturing is not enough to catalyze the kind of 
investment we need to go do that. To go hire those 700 more 
people and to build, you know, 800,000 square feet of factory, 
and buy all of that iron and other materials to build the 
batteries. So having that ten-year incentive with a sunset is 
exactly the kind of scale we need to jump-start the effort and 
give our investors and our partners confidence that we are 
going to be there and that we are going to be able to deliver. 
Also, to give us confidence, internally, to commit ourselves 
with our full effort and faith to do this here in the United 
States.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes, I really look at the IRA, not just 
as a clean energy bill, but as industrial policy. And that is 
something we have pretended we did not need in the United 
States for a long time, but we desperately do need to be able 
to compete with our near-peer competitors around the world, 
like China.
    For each of you, what advice would you have for Treasury as 
they begin to write rules to implement the 45X Battery 
Manufacturing Credit, 48C, the Advanced Manufacturing Credit, 
even 25D, the Residential Clean Energy Credit? What do you want 
to see in those, as Treasury makes those things real?
    Mr. Hemstreet. I will take that question from the 
perspective, at least, of pumped storage. I think what is going 
to be important is having certainty that all aspects of a 
pumped storage project, you know, the water empowerment, the 
water conveyance, the turbine, the generator, the pump, all of 
those aspects of getting a project online are considered part 
of that energy storage facility, and that will be important for 
what that tax credit means to us as it reduces the cost for our 
customers. And so, having that certainty that as we make 
investment decisions, we know what that customer impact is 
going to be with that tax credit. That is very important.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes.
    Mr. Nelson. I would generally say that it is important to 
have strong private-sector engagement for the implementation of 
any law. We have seen, you know, prior implementation of tax 
credits. If they go poorly, then they can lead to rescissions 
or claw-backs of tax credits. So it is important to have strong 
private-sector engagement, generally.
    Senator Heinrich. Transparency and predictability.
    Mr. Nelson. Transparency is very important.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes.
    Mr. Wiley. And to add to what my colleagues have said, 
Senator Heinrich, we would like to see as broad of an 
interpretation as possible to fit as many technologies as 
possible into the bills or into the laws and allow them to 
scale. And in particular, we are looking for clear definitions 
of critical aspects of the credits. Clear definitions of, you 
know, for example, what an apprenticeship program is and, you 
know, clear definitions of what the domestic content standards 
mean.
    Senator Heinrich. I got you.
    Mr. Wiley. And across the board, the more that those 
definitions are clear and implementable, the better. And 
frankly, the faster that we receive that clear guidance, we 
will have a better----
    Senator Heinrich. I am going to run out of time, but I want 
to ask you one more question about your partnership with 
Georgia Power. Talk a little bit about the scale of that and 
then also, just how you worked with Georgia Power and the 
software of the modeling tools that you used and how those 
differentiate from traditional tools, like capacity-expansion 
models that are not going to be as useful in the future.
    Mr. Wiley. Georgia Power has a partnership with a large IT 
company, and they are looking to bring in new, 24/7 carbon-free 
electricity to power a data center, and they were looking out 
in the market for a solution and asking what kind of storage 
could help us do this? And we had been engaged with them for 
over four years in early discussions, and then as they came to 
us with the ask, we used our proprietary software, which is, as 
you mentioned, a capacity-expansion tool, that is a grid 
planning tool that was redesigned for a renewable energy 
future. So typical tools look at four representative days 
throughout the year. Our software looks at all of the hours of 
all the days of the year, 8,760 hours a year, to help think 
about what if the grid was powered by renewables. What kind of 
battery would you need to have 24 by 7 energy, when you need 
it, exactly when you need it, no matter what the power source 
is? The project itself will be about a 1,500 megawatt-hour 
battery that is going to do just that. It is going to show that 
a data center can use locally sourced, renewable energy to 
power it all the hours of the day, all of the days of the year.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Cassidy.
    Senator Cassidy. Hey, thank you very much.
    Mr. Hemstreet, the capital requirements to build this sort 
of hydro and to maintain it, as well as the kind of energy loss 
required to use some of your electrons to transport the water 
to the top--what does that do to your cost per kilowatt-hour of 
a wind farm, for example, if you add that cost, not just upon 
the turbine, but also that which has to inherently be attached 
to it in order to help with the intermittency?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Yes, I think, certainly the efficiency of 
these types of projects, as with any storage project, there are 
going to be losses, you know, on the inside, going up and going 
back down. So we see efficiency at about 81 percent, or 70 to 
80 percent. So there is an energy loss, of course, in any form 
of storage. So that increases costs, of course because we are 
not able to capture every----
    Senator Cassidy. So, if you will, it increases the cost of 
energy by roughly 20 percent before you get to the capital 
requirements, correct?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Right. I mean, you are going to have to see 
that much of a spread in terms of the price on the whole.
    Senator Cassidy. And then, how much is the capital cost 
going to add to it, presuming that you have to pay for the 
capital cost with the price you charge for the electricity?
    Mr. Hemstreet. The cost of these projects is typically on 
the order of between $3,000 to $4,500 a KW today. So the high 
capital cost has been an impediment for pumped storage.
    Senator Cassidy. And so, again, when people speak about how 
cheap wind can be once installed, but if you amortize the 
expense and if you take the diminution and the energy 
efficiency, what does it do to the business model, absent a tax 
credit or whatever?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Well, we know that these types of resources 
are going to be important for meeting, reliably, in terms of 
the macroeconomics of, you know, all these resource decisions, 
you know, in totality, you know, it is not really something I 
am super familiar with.
    Senator Cassidy. Sounds great. I am going to move on, not 
to be rude, but just because I have limited time and maybe we 
will do a QFR to allow you to research it.
    Mr. Nelson, hey, man, you are like the objective guy here. 
Is lithium going to crowd out what Mr. Wiley is talking about? 
I mean, like it's going to fill up the room and like, by the 
way, Mr. Wiley, I look forward to our announcement in 
Louisiana--spoiler alert--we've got the river, we've got the 
railroad, we've got use. We've been handling steel and iron for 
a long time. So I look forward to that ribbon-cutting, thank 
you very much, sir.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cassidy. East of the Mississippi River, St. James 
Parish, perfect. I have a 200-acre site for you.
    Mr. Nelson, is the kind of, you know--``oh my gosh, it's 
going to crowd out because everything is lithium''--going to 
encroach upon their ability to get market share?
    Mr. Nelson. You know, there definitely is a history of 
technology lock-in we can see in a variety of different 
sectors. You can think about the QWERTY keyboard, for example. 
There is no particular reason why we use a QWERTY keyboard, it 
was the one that became the dominant technology. That certainly 
could happen with lithium-ion.
    Senator Cassidy. That is more of a standard than it is a 
product, though.
    Mr. Nelson. No, there is no reason we have to use QWERTY 
keyboards.
    Senator Cassidy. I get that, but.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes.
    Senator Cassidy. I don't want to waste time on that.
    Mr. Nelson. Well, the same thing could happen with lithium-
ion, which is why the Department of Energy's programs to 
support demonstrations of new technologies to give those a 
chance are so important. Investors are not going to be pouring 
a huge amount of money into big manufacturing projects unless 
they have relative certainty that the product is going to work 
at scale and you know, I would love Ted to also weigh in here, 
but that is why it is important for, you know, governments to 
engage in private-public partnerships to help get those 
technologies going so you can have that proof of concept and 
then the private sector can come in and scale technologies up.
    Senator Cassidy. Okay, then I will ask you this, but the 
others can be--and I have limited time, which is why I am not 
going to you on this, Mr. Wiley.
    Let me ask about--I understand that there is an issue with 
storage related as well to the interconnection. Can you get the 
grid to kind of accept this battery influx when you may have 
limited capacity on your power lines? I am probably not 
explaining it well, but you are nodding your head as if you 
know what I am saying. Can you speak about that obstacle, if 
you will, to getting it into the grid?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, the interconnection queue, all new energy 
generation projects have to go through a process where they do 
an analysis to see what the impact will be. It is definitely a 
big challenge. It varies a lot on a regional basis. Right now, 
the average time for new generators to connect to the grid is 
3.7 years. That has been increasing over time. In some places 
like California, the average time is eight years that you wait 
in the queue to know whether or not you can connect----
    Senator Cassidy. So California, which is attempting to go 
to all electric vehicles by 2035, therefore needs to expand and 
wants to get rid of fossil, so it needs this capacity, it takes 
eight years.
    Mr. Nelson. On average, just waiting to know how much it is 
going to cost, yes.
    Senator Cassidy. And then how much longer to develop and 
deploy?
    Mr. Nelson. Well, then it will take another two or three 
years after that for the construction and operation startup. 
And right now, there are 421 gigawatts of battery storage in 
the queue nationwide, but half of that is tied with renewables 
and we are probably only going to be able to build about 20 
percent of that in the end, unless we work on the 
interconnection queue. FERC is working on this. There was a 
unanimous notice of proposed rulemaking they sent out a few 
weeks ago. So I am, you know, happy to see that there is 
bipartisan action on this, but it is absolutely a crucial, 
crucial problem. We are going to be putting out a paper on 
this. I will send it to your office.
    Senator Cassidy. To be clear, it is not just a queue, but 
it is also the transmission capacity, how they can absorb the 
generation from that which is occurring as well, and so, you 
not only have to permit this, you have to permit the increase 
in generation capacity.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, that is correct, sir.
    Senator Cassidy. So just to, you may not want to take this, 
if I may have 15 more seconds. It seems unrealistic that 
California is going to have both the storage and the 
transmission in order to go to an all-electric new car fleet in 
2035, and you just give us timelines that would push, 
optimistically, those at the front of the queue into somewhere 
between 2032 and 2034. Do you think it is reasonable that 
California will have the capacity to address all their new 
electric vehicles by 2035?
    Mr. Nelson. Is that one for me?
    Senator Cassidy. Yes.
    Mr. Nelson. I think it will be a challenge, and permitting 
reform will be really essential for accelerating development of 
clean energy in California.
    Senator Cassidy. That's kind of a dodge, but I will give it 
to you.
    Mr. Nelson. Well, it will be a huge challenge. They have a 
lot of state-specific regulatory requirements that slow down 
the development of new--CEQA, the California Environmental 
Quality Act, is a big issue. So right now, they are not on 
track to hit those goals.
    Senator Cassidy. Yes, that's----
    Mr. Nelson. Which is partially why they are keeping Diablo 
Canyon online, things like that.
    Senator Cassidy. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Senator Hirono.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank the 
panelists for your testimony.
    For Mr. Nelson, Hawaii not only faces some of the highest 
gas prices in the country, currently $5.27 cents per gallon, 
but our state also relies on oil for most of its electricity, 
and Hawaii has set an ambitious standard of 100 percent 
renewable power by 2045. We have reached nearly 40 percent 
renewable power, but families and businesses in Hawaii have had 
to watch their power bills go up with the global price of oil. 
Energy storage will be a critical part of our transition to 
renewable power. How can some of the energy storage 
technologies you discussed in your testimony help Hawaii meet 
its goal?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, thank you for that question, Senator 
Hirono.
    I think long-duration energy storage is particularly 
important for Hawaii, especially considering its 100 percent 
renewable goal. You know, if you are trying to reach low 
emissions with a lot of renewables, you either need to greatly 
overbuild your renewable capacity to have enough extra 
generation when there is not enough sun, or you have enough 
storage capacity that you can then save up for those periods. 
Considering the land use constraints in Hawaii, I think long-
duration will be really critical. I think some of the best 
would be some of the metal-air batteries or flow batteries that 
can take up a relatively small amount of land, but can provide 
long-duration storage.
    Senator Hirono. So that leads me to Mr. Wiley. Your 
testimony was really interesting and you are about to make a 
big announcement in siting a factory where you will produce 
these batteries. So does that mean that you have reached your 
goal of batteries with 100 hours of storage?
    Mr. Wiley. We have, Senator. We have built over 3,000 
batteries in our labs in Berkeley, California and Somerville, 
Massachusetts and the design is proven and we are ready to 
scale now to the manufacturing phase.
    Senator Hirono. The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute at the 
University of Hawaii conducts tests of batteries to assess the 
durability of batteries in a warm island climate. Would your 
batteries work in Hawaii?
    Mr. Wiley. Absolutely, Senator.
    Senator Hirono. Have you tested your batteries at the 
Natural Institute?
    Mr. Wiley. We haven't, but we are entering a phase where we 
need to identify third-party locations for testing and start 
that process.
    Senator Hirono. I hope that you do that, yes, I hope you 
come to Hawaii. I know you are being pitched all over the place 
in this Committee today.
    Mr. Nelson, earlier this week, we saw the tremendous damage 
that Puerto Ricans are suffering from Hurricane Fiona, 
including an island-wide power outage for more than 3.2 million 
Americans. As an island state, Hawaii is also vulnerable to 
severe weather, and one solution on this challenge is the 
construction of microgrids, which can disconnect from the power 
grid when needed and then quickly restore power after storms. 
The Department of Energy's Energy Transition Initiative program 
is supporting Hawaiian Electric, which is the state's largest 
utility in evaluating which communities may benefit from 
establishing microgrids.
    What role can advanced storage technologies play in 
building microgrids and otherwise increasing resilience to 
storms in places like Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Alaska, that are 
separated from the mainland?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, thank you for the question, Senator 
Hirono. I worked on the Energy Transitions Initiative when I 
worked for Senator Murkowski. It is a critical program for 
Hawaii, Alaska, and also Maine. You know, I think microgrids 
can be an essential way to back up power, provide resilience in 
the case of extreme weather, allow systems to be islanded. I 
think it is really critical for infrastructure like 
firefighting and emergency response systems, to have islanding 
and microgrid capabilities. And on the topic of energy storage, 
it is particularly important for black start capabilities. So 
in the event of a blackout, it can get the grid going much 
faster, and that is probably one of its best applications.
    Senator Hirono. So since states like Hawaii, Alaska, and I 
think you mentioned Maine.
    Mr. Nelson. Uh-huh.
    Senator Hirono. Are we moving fast enough in promoting 
microgrids or whatever we need to do to enable microgrids to be 
utilized in states like ours?
    Mr. Nelson. Sure, well, in Alaska, almost all the 
communities by number are already isolated microgrids. I think 
for Hawaii and Maine, there is always a lot more you can do to 
implement the latest technology for grid energy.
    Senator Hirono. Such as?
    Mr. Nelson. Hmm?
    Senator Hirono. Such as? What more things can we do?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, so, you can implement better demand 
management systems. Grid reliability behind the meter storage 
is also going to be really important. So making sure that those 
critical facilities do have independent battery systems as well 
as, potentially, diesel generators, and I think there is more 
that I can also provide through the record.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Murkowski.
    Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I have several questions to just follow on to Senator 
Hirono. So thank you for that, particularly the emphasis on 
microgrids. And Spencer, I feel like you know the situation in 
Alaska all too well. You know that we are leading the country, 
probably the world in many ways, when it comes to microgrids. 
And so, we are looking at this whole aspect of storage and what 
that means for greater flexibility. We had some very severe 
storms this past weekend that impacted about a thousand miles 
of coastline. Communities were without power, fortunately, for 
a very brief period of time, which is good. But it speaks to 
this issue of resilience and why storage is so key within these 
islanded systems. You have to have--whether it is that restart, 
that cold start, your black start, or what you can do to help 
with surge and storms.
    So this concept of how long we need the storage to be, and 
I appreciate what you are doing, Mr. Wiley, in pushing this 
out. One hundred hours--quite significant if you are in a storm 
that moves in and out, you know, maybe you only need that four 
hours. But a question to probably both of you here--how long is 
long enough, or does it just depend?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes. Thank you for that question.
    I saw the tragic photos from Newtok and Hooper Bay and it 
is really sad what has happened. I think it really depends on 
the situation of what your next best alternative is, right? So 
how long is it going to take to, typically, to be able to 
restore power when you are in such an isolated area, right? So 
what is your next best alternative?
    Senator Murkowski. So, in Newtok, our next best alternative 
is the diesel generator.
    Mr. Nelson. Right.
    Senator Murkowski. And you are paying $11 a gallon----
    Mr. Nelson. Yes.
    Senator Murkowski [continuing]. For your fuel, and the fuel 
tanker is still sitting outside of Nome because they cannot 
deliver, you don't have many options. So what do you do then?
    Mr. Nelson. Right, yes, so in that case you would want a 
longer duration storage technology that could be much cheaper, 
or, honestly, at that point, you are going to want to have 
something like a microreactor, a nuclear microreactor, 
something that is much more reliable and dependable that is not 
going to be as weather-dependent, but there are options, and 
you know, Ted can talk to this as well, that could be much 
longer. Of course, some of those technologies are going to be 
quite large. So the actual ability for you to build a very 
large, 100-hour system in Newtok, considering the semi-
permafrost issues, I think that would be quite a challenge and 
I think it would be better to look at maybe some of the nuclear 
microreactor options for some of those isolated communities in 
the YK Delta.
    Senator Murkowski. It is a small scale----
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, yes.
    Senator Murkowski [continuing]. That we deal with, as you 
know.
    Mr. Wiley, I would like you to speak to, not only how long 
is long enough, but also you mentioned that your battery 
storage likes hot or warmer weather, well, we don't necessarily 
have that. We are interested in how it does in colder weather. 
There is some testing that has been going on as it relates to 
EV buses and how it holds charge in cold weather. So we are 
interested in the storage in a cold weather environment as 
well. So if you could hit on both of those?
    Mr. Wiley. Okay, thank you for the question, Senator 
Murkowski.
    The question of how long is long enough, that is one of the 
core questions that got our company started. I mean, that is 
probably our favorite question at Form Energy. And when we 
started asking it, as founders, five years ago, our initial 
reaction was that this is such a complicated question that you 
need software to answer it because it varies by location. We 
needed to understand how much renewable energy is there, of 
what type, what are the other grid assets that are available, 
to Spencer's point, so what is the mix? And then, we do a 
really complex simulation based on that, those local resources, 
and we looked all across the country. We looked in Alaska. We 
looked in Massachusetts. We looked in Arizona. We looked in 
California. We looked in Hawaii and said, how long is long 
enough by location? And the answer was that it depends, and 100 
hours solves most of the opportunities for grid transition in 
most places. It solves the problem something like 98 percent of 
the time. One hundred hours covers these atypical weather 
events where you get a week without wind, like in Winter Storm 
Uri that came up and down the middle of the U.S.
    The question about cold temperature--the very first 
customer we signed is Great River Energy in Minnesota, and the 
reason that they signed up with us, for our first project, is 
because of the polar vortex event that they experienced where 
temperatures dropped to negative 40, negative 50 degrees below 
zero. And so, in fact, we are designing the batteries for a 
Minnesota or Alaska winter at base line. That is the first 
design criteria that we used when we were developing batteries. 
So we would be happy to bring our batteries up to your great 
state.
    Senator Murkowski. Good. We look forward to that.
    Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Barrasso, I think it has been 
important as we are talking about the great application for 
storage and where this is going to take us, but what Spencer 
has outlined in response to Senator Cassidy's question, I 
think, was really, really key. I had no idea that this timeline 
that we are looking at--eight years, to not build it out, but 
just to get that cost determination as to how it is going to be 
integrated into the system and then another couple years there. 
So when we are thinking about how this all knits together in 
this great transition and all that we are doing, we have some 
reality checks in front of us. This whole issue of permitting 
and what that means, but this reality of the queue is very 
interesting. I would like to understand a little bit more of 
that.
    And then, the other thing that Mr. Nelson highlighted in 
his testimony was critical minerals, something that the three 
of us--this entire Committee--has been working on and focused 
on, and our reality--we know that the stats out there don't 
lie. We are not producing enough, certainly in this country to 
meet the demand for lithium, to meet the demand for all of 
these other critical minerals that are going to be required for 
this holy grail that is going to be storage. And so, we are 
working hard to do more on critical minerals. We need to be 
doing more on permitting. We need to be moving faster, smarter, 
better because right now, things are not lining up with the 
goals that are being set out there and our ability to reach 
them, regardless of how fast we are moving.
    So thank you for this hearing. I think it was really 
important.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator King.
    Senator King. Well, I want to congratulate you, Mr. 
Chairman, because I do not think you intended it this way, but 
this has been an hour-long infomercial for your permitting 
reform bill.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. People on the front line, they are 
experiencing----
    Senator King. Well, and following up on Senator Murkowski's 
point, we cannot get there without permitting reform. It is 
just as simple as that. And those who are interested----
    The Chairman. I think we all know that and we all are 
just----
    Senator King. Well, we know that, but I am not sure, but 
there are people, I mean, we have to understand that in order 
to get to a clean energy future, we have to rationalize and 
correct the deficiencies in the permitting or we will never get 
there because we are going to need to permit transmission. We 
are going to need to permit pumped storage projects. We are 
going to need to permit mining operations. And so, you cannot 
be for electric vehicles and be against lithium mining in the 
U.S. I mean, we just have to resolve that. And I think that is 
a very important point.
    I could not believe it, the seven to ten years. What I say 
to people when they tell me that something is going to take 
years is that Eisenhower retook Europe in 11 months. Don't tell 
me it is going take ten years. That is ridiculous. And Mr. 
Chairman, I hope we are going to really make some serious 
inroads into that. Deadlines, meaningful deadlines, 
coordination of agency consideration, and conclusions within a 
reasonable period of time. Otherwise, we will never get there. 
We will simply not get to the clean energy future that we 
desire.
    Mr. Wiley, I have never had a witness come who has a ready-
made theme song for their company. One of the great rock and 
roll albums of all time is ``Rust Never Sleeps'', Neil Young 
and Crazy Horse, before you were born, perhaps, but----
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Oh, boy.
    Senator King. You got it.
    Senator Barrasso. Better to burn out than to rust away----
    Senator King. There it is, yes.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator King. Rust never sleeps.
    I have to tell you, your testimony was so stunning it was 
almost too good to be true. You are talking about drastically 
lower cost, much safer, no foreign materials. What is the 
disadvantage of what you are proposing? Because if there aren't 
any, you are going to change the world.
    Mr. Wiley. Thank you for the question, Senator King, and 
thank you for the advice on the song. I will look into it.
    Senator King. 1979, Neil Young.
    Mr. Wiley. Every technology decision has tradeoffs and we 
are going to need more than just iron-air batteries to 
transform the grid. For us----
    Senator King. Does an iron-air battery have the 100-hour 
capacity you mentioned as the golden requirement?
    Mr. Wiley. That is exactly right, Senator King. Iron-air 
batteries that we are developing are 100-hour batteries. And 
the tradeoff that we made, like the tradeoff that we bet the 
company on when we started was, a tenth of the cost for half 
the efficiency. And that really is at the core of it. We are 
looking at it and saying, you take less efficiency for 
radically lower cost.
    Senator King. Define efficiency as it applies in this case.
    Mr. Wiley. For batteries, efficiency is how much energy you 
get out for how much energy you put in.
    Senator King. Okay, so you would have to charge it with 
more energy to get energy out than you would on a lithium-ion?
    Mr. Wiley. That's right.
    Senator King. But the presumption here is that there is 
excess energy during peak times or that there could be if the 
sufficient resources were developed, whether it is wind, solar, 
or something else. Now what would be the efficiency of a 
lithium-ion?
    Mr. Wiley. A lithium-ion battery is about 95 percent 
efficiency at the sell level and we will be about 50 percent 
efficient at the sell level--or at the plant level, just under 
it. And the modeling exercise that I described to Senator 
Murkowski really delivered that insight. If you can get to 
radically lower cost in a future that is highly renewable where 
we have overbuilt renewables in order to have it when we need 
it, there is a tremendous amount of energy that is arriving 
that needs to be shifted, and the right tradeoff to make, if 
you can make it, is trade capital cost for efficiency.
    Senator King. Well, I will certainly look forward to 
following the progress of this product because it is a very 
exciting one.
    On the permitting reform, again, I think deadlines are 
important. And the other piece is domestic supply chain. I met 
yesterday with two heads of state from European countries. We 
have in front of us the all-time example of how dangerous it is 
to rely on other countries for critical supplies. I mean, 
Europe is facing a really huge challenge this winter because of 
their reliance on Russia. And you look back and you say, why, 
what were they thinking? I don't want to be in that position 
ten years from now saying, what were they thinking about 
getting critical minerals from China that power our country.
    Mr. Nelson, am I right about that? I mean, it just seems to 
me this is a--we not only can see the problem, we can see the 
real impact of it right before our eyes this winter in Europe.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, I mean, the more that our future energy 
system relies on other countries, the less control we have over 
it. We have certainly seen that our increase in oil and gas 
production has put us in a very strong position in terms of 
global energy production because we are now a net producer of 
oil and gas, and that has been helpful. I think we can also be 
a net producer of energy storage technologies and all types of 
clean energy technologies as well.
    Senator King. Final question, though. Don't we have 
substantial lithium supplies in this country if we are willing 
to mine them?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, that is correct. There's a couple 
different ways. There are some lithium deposits in Nevada, 
which Senator Cortez Masto knows more about than I do. There 
are also really interesting opportunities to co-produce lithium 
with geothermal energy in the Salton Sea, which is something 
that was included in some of the work that you did on the 
Energy Act of 2020 as well. And there is a significant amount 
of lithium opportunity in Southern California.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Senator Daines.
    Senator Daines. Senator Barrasso, thank you.
    I saw my good friend, Senator King, talking about what is 
happening in Europe as an example of what not to do in this 
energy crisis, which is, I think, a grave warning on two 
fronts. I agree with Senator King, it is on overreliance on 
adversaries for energy, but also, I would add to that, it was 
scaling back a diverse energy portfolio to exclusively rely on 
intermittent energy sources to ensure we begin with a balanced 
energy portfolio, as the Germans went off and shut down coal 
and nuclear. Germany, recently, just had to pass emergency 
legislation in early August. And I met with some of the members 
of the Bundestag on a couple of occasions, but they had to do 
that to keep its coal plants burning because they passed laws 
that didn't allow them to burn coal, just to keep the lights 
on, keep people warm this winter.
    Europe may begin to ration energy because this green 
ideology has dominated their energy policy and the European 
economy is on the brink of a disaster as electricity prices 
have surged more than 300 percent. And I think this is the end 
result when an ideology, and policy that follows an ideology 
runs faster than on-the-ground reality. I met with another head 
of state of Europe here recently, who has a better energy 
portfolio and was questioning what was going on in places like 
Germany and around other places in Europe, and he said this to 
me--he said, Senator, a vision without an action plan is a 
hallucination. And sadly, now, many are going to be suffering 
this winter. Frankly, if the Biden Administration had its way, 
that would be the future of American energy. This is one of the 
key battles we face right now on policy going forward--to what 
do we do here to ensure that we have balanced energy. And I am 
not opposed to renewables. We have wonderful wind capacity in 
Montana, a lot of hydro, of course, and we have solar. So we 
are the Big Sky Country. But we should be expanding our energy 
portfolio with these renewables, not replacing baseload power 
until you can solve the storage problem and the intermittent 
nature of some of the renewables. That's why I think all-of-
the-above is really, really important and has severe 
consequences if you get it wrong.
    The Gordon Butte pumped storage project as a hydro project 
is a perfect example how Montana is leading in all-of-the-above 
solutions. Gordon Butte has a closed-loop hydropower system 
that will store and produce enough energy to help balance the 
increases in intermittent wind and solar energy coming online 
in Montana. And this project will be for generations in our 
state.
    Mr. Nelson, how are closed-loop hydropower projects like 
Gordon Butte bolstering our energy storage capacities and 
enhancing existing grids?
    Mr. Nelson. Thank you for that question, Senator Daines, 
and thanks for your leadership on the Senate Western Caucus.
    You know, pumped storage hydro has a huge benefit, not just 
for renewables, but also for baseload resources. It can allow 
baseload resources to operate at a high capacity, even when 
demand is low, by instead charging up pumped storage systems. 
So they are an integral part of our energy system and have been 
for a long time.
    Senator Daines. I want to jump--thank you for that because 
that is a great example of baseload power with these hydropower 
systems. I want to talk about critical minerals for a moment. 
Clearly, it has been talked about a bit, but it ties right back 
to battery supply. The United States is import-dependent on 
China for 31 of the 50 minerals designated as critical by USGS. 
As we move forward with more renewable sources of energy, 
China, indeed, could become the OPEC of the future for 
renewable energy in terms of having a constraint, to constrain 
the supply chain and our ability to keep energy storage supply 
chains moving forward. Right now, countries that utilize slave 
labor have far lower environmental standards than the United 
States. Meanwhile, we have these radical environmental groups 
and the Ninth Circuit Court. The Ninth Circuit Court, who has 
litigation to tie up domestic mining of the materials needed 
for responsible, renewable energy development.
    We have talked on this Committee, we had a mine in Montana, 
a copper mine--for 37 years been trying to permit it--37 years, 
going through multiple EISs and then they hold us up in the 
Ninth Circuit Court with the Endangered Species Act. These 
delays are a threat to national security. They hurt our 
economy. And they hold back the future of renewable energy 
technology.
    Mr. Nelson, what steps need to be taken for the United 
States to begin to close that critical mineral gap with China? 
As Senator King mentioned, we have some critical mineral 
capacity here in America, but we just can't always get to it.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, thank you for that question.
    You know, there are a number of different steps that we 
should be looking at. Of course, China mostly controls a lot of 
the processing and recycling facilities. They do not have a lot 
of direct production of many of the critical minerals. So one 
thing we can do is make sure that we are producing those here 
in the United States and having partnerships with allied 
countries like Canada and Australia to basically eliminate a 
lot of those initial sources that they control, and also making 
it easier to build those processing facilities here in the 
United States. So that means improving environmental 
permitting. It means improving exploration and leasing for 
production of various critical minerals. And it also means, you 
know, trying to innovate away from needing those to begin with. 
There are opportunities to develop new cathodes for batteries 
that use fewer critical minerals today, and there are companies 
that are working on that, and we should try to make that 
easier.
    Senator Daines. Mr. Chairman, I just have a closing comment 
here and then I will be done. I am over time, but for Mr. 
Hemstreet, I know PacifiCorp owns interest in Colstrip Units 3 
and 4 and produces 1,480 megawatts of electricity for western 
states. It is critical that Colstrip continues operation long 
after 2025. We have seen what has happened in Germany. We need 
to be very, very careful with baseload power. I just would 
encourage you to work with Montanans to ensure that the 
continued operation and maintenance of Colstrip occurs. It is 
vital to the local community there, but importantly, the 
stability of the grid. I hope that politics does not get in the 
way of supporting hardworking Montanans with affordable, 
reliable energy. So thank you.
    Mr. Hemstreet. Thank you, Senator.
    The Chairman [presiding]. Mr. Hemstreet made a really 
important point on how important it was for permitting reform 
because of what they are doing and the jobs they are bringing 
to Montana and all the work they have done out West in Wyoming 
and we appreciate that very much.
    Senator Daines. Thank you, Senator Manchin.
    The Chairman. We have Senator Cortez Masto.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I so 
appreciate, gentlemen on the panel, the discussion today. And 
thank you for the shout-out for Nevada, because I do agree, we 
need to really source these critical minerals for the future 
around clean energy. But let me talk to you about, and let me 
just say, I do support an all-of-the-above approach to the 
question of storage supply. We have discussed in this Committee 
the lithium-ion battery needs and opportunities, hearing 
directly from Redwood Materials out of Nevada, and I can say 
there are others that are like Redwood, which is the American 
Battery Technology Company. They are both in Nevada and they 
are just two examples of why, really, Nevada is an innovation 
state. They are just what the U.S. critical mineral supply 
chain needs--American companies with the scientific expertise 
to accelerate both responsible mining of Nevada's unique 
critical mineral deposits as well as recycling spent batteries 
to ensure none of these minerals are wasted.
    So I am going to open this up to the panel. Can each of you 
talk about where we see the intersection of both standard and 
emerging energy storage technologies working together? And I 
guess what I am looking for is examples where we can continue 
to develop the ion battery domestic resources as well as 
explore these innovative technologies and corporations so that 
they are not competitors. And maybe, Mr. Nelson, we can start 
with you.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, absolutely. Thanks for that question and 
thanks for your leadership on this Committee. I think, you 
know, much as we want a variety of different generation 
resources that provide different value--from renewables to 
dispatchable or nuclear, natural gas with carbon capture--all 
types of clean energy sources. There can also be a variety of 
different roles for energy storage technologies as well. 
Lithium-ion's high power density and quick discharge capacity 
means that it can be really good for quickly responding to 
sudden power fluctuation changes or voltage regulation. 
Meanwhile, other technologies that are longer duration are 
going to be more important for when there is a seasonality 
problem. So they really are quite complementary.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Mr. Wiley.
    Mr. Wiley. Yes, I would just add to the point that Spencer 
made, and sort of tie back to a question that Senator King 
asked. He said, what is the tradeoff with iron-air batteries, 
in particular?
    Our modeling, when we look at grids, almost always shows 
that when we are talking about batteries providing storage to 
increasing renewable grids, that a combination of iron-air and 
lithium-ion is most optimized. It provides the lowest cost 
system for users and the lowest rates to ratepayers. So our 
view is that it is going to take both. The lithium-ion is 
really driving the kind of stuff that happens inside the day--
shifting energy from 3:00 in the afternoon when the sun is, you 
know, at the highest point until the evening, and then the 
long-duration storage provides things that happen over weeks or 
months or seasons.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Mr. Hemstreet.
    Mr. Hemstreet. I would echo the comments around resource 
diversity. We serve our customers with an integrated system 
across six states with generation in ten different states. Each 
of those areas has very unique transmission constraints. You 
have proximity to load and other issues that make different 
types of storage attractive in short duration and long-
duration. Those opportunities will become apparent, I guess, as 
we move ahead in terms of what type of storage will be 
necessary to make sure we can maintain reliability for our 
customers.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    And then, let me talk about workforce. I am curious--for 
the panel--again, what steps do we need to be taking in order 
to ensure that there is a capable workforce that is ready to 
deploy to energy storage technologies now and as they mature? 
Should we be thinking about this in Congress? What should we be 
doing to ensure that the workforce is ready and trained and 
moving forward in the direction that this new technology is 
taking us?
    Mr. Wiley. Thank you for that question, Senator Cortez 
Masto.
    That is a question that is top-of-mind for us right now as 
we think about selecting the site and building our first 
factory. I mentioned earlier that that factory is likely going 
to be at the location of a former steel plant or former coal 
plant that is, you know, located on a river with rail and in a 
community that has been building, you know, the stuff of that 
former plant for decades. Unfortunately, while there is a 
history of building the kinds of things we need, a lot of the 
people have left those communities, and so, I think one thing 
we are going to need is support in bringing the people back. 
The infrastructure is still there, but we need to retrain the 
workforce. We need workforce retraining programs that reach 
into our community colleges, reach into our high schools, and 
reach into the local college systems to help train the next 
generation of manufacturing workforce and engineers and 
designers that are going to help us scale this industry.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Or even reskilling the existing 
workforce, right?
    Mr. Wiley. Absolutely. To the extent that the existing 
workforce is there, it would be tremendously valuable to 
reskill the existing workforce.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Sure. Okay.
    Anyone else? I know my time is running out.
    Mr. Hemstreet. Sure. Certainly, in the utility industry we 
have seen, you know, an aging workforce, and that has been the 
challenge that we have been looking at, you know, for as long 
as I have been in the industry myself. And so, seeing that 
happen, we know we need to work with our communities foremost, 
labor unions, vocational schools, universities, and really 
expose young people to the opportunities that are available in 
the energy industry and the critical role that our energy 
system plays in serving our customers and powering our 
communities. So I think building that awareness and working 
closely with folks that are on the forefront of the next 
generation and showing them what opportunities are available 
will be important as we move ahead.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Senator Hickenlooper. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, he 
snuck in again.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Senator Hoeven.
    Senator Hickenlooper. I yield to the----
    Senator Hoeven. I will defer to one of them while I am 
looking for my questions.
    The Chairman. Okay.
    Senator Hickenlooper.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Senator Hoeven.
    So I will start with Mr. Nelson. And we have heard a number 
of facets of this permitting gridlock that I think you all have 
spoken to in one way or another. Do you know, has anyone 
actually tried to quantify what that cost comes out to be as we 
try to do the follow-through on the great transition? The costs 
of taking so long have to be enormous.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, I have seen some estimates. It is very 
difficult to estimate because, of course, if it doesn't happen 
then, you know, that could be a huge, huge cost for a project 
that just does not happen at all. I have also seen some 
estimates, for example, one for geothermal that finds that the 
fact that you have to go through NEPA up to six times to build 
a geothermal plant on public lands adds, you know, another 15 
percent just from the financing costs, not to mention 
everything else. So it is quite high.
    Senator Hickenlooper. It would be interesting to pull all 
those together as best we could.
    Mr. Hemstreet, these various new technologies that help 
increase renewable energy and storage that you all are 
discussing, they are being integrated into the grid as we go 
through this great transition. This is such a critical part of 
the transition and yet, it is so complex, as I think all three 
of you have said. I think we need to ensure that while we are 
incorporating these changes, we keep in mind those three 
inherent, ultimate truths: that our energy system has to be 
inexpensive, reliable, and clean, which, given the complexity, 
is going to become increasingly hard. Is there anything DOE can 
do to assist utilities or grid operators or state regulators--
can you supply computer modeling, for instance, to help take 
some of the complexity out and make sure we get the most bang 
for our buck?
    Mr. Hemstreet. You know, DOE has been very important and 
played a very important role in researching the importance of 
storage on the grid and providing a better awareness among 
policymakers and state regulators around the importance of 
storage and the benefits that that can provide to a reliable 
energy system. So we certainly support that work continuing. 
Advanced modeling of all storage technologies and the benefits 
they provide is really important because we do not often see 
the value of those attributes directly. And so, it is important 
that we build awareness of the value of those types of things 
so we can convey that to our stakeholders.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Right. And I think that modeling, I 
am assuming--you could just nod or shake your heads, and maybe 
it wouldn't be in the record in that case, but--you all agree 
that this issue around permitting should be a national 
priority, is that----
    Mr. Hemstreet. Yes, I do.
    Senator Hickenlooper. You could imagine you are sitting in 
the exit row on an airplane so you can answer with a voice, you 
know, in the exit row, when they ask if you are capable of 
getting out of the exit row, you cannot just nod your head. So 
do you all think that it is a national priority?
    Mr. Hemstreet. I do, Senator.
    Mr. Nelson. Expedited permitting is important.
    Mr. Wiley. Yes, I do as well, Senator.
    Senator Hickenlooper. So as we do that modeling, I think 
for each of you, that to make sure that those concerns get 
inserted and maybe the costs--that the modeling can demonstrate 
what the cost is of adding to one or another aspect of this, 
obviously, as I said, is a very complex integration.
    Dr. Wiley, there have been recent federal, state, and 
private-sector pushes to encourage all the research and 
development in storage and deployment, obviously, that you have 
been working on. There is always that valley of death, right, 
between the research and the commercialization, which it looks 
like you are just coming out of that valley and quite healthy. 
How could all of these efforts from federal, state, and private 
sectors be aligned to ensure that we don't lose the innovation 
and technology in that process of coming through the valley of 
death? Does that make sense?
    Mr. Wiley. It does. And I wish I could say that we are 
coming out of it. I would say we are in it, and the fine work 
of this Committee and, you know, the U.S. Government, is 
helping us cross with the Inflation Reduction Act, with the 
Infrastructure bill, you know, and to abstract that a little 
bit, new technology for the energy industry takes usually 
decades and it needs help every step of the way, from 
fundamental science research to applied science research, 
taking breakthroughs and turning them into products. And then, 
we are at the next step in that process, which is scaling a 
product from something that scientists and engineers can build 
one or two of, in a lab, by hand, to something that trained 
technicians can build millions of in a factory.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Right.
    Mr. Wiley. And you know, in that case, we are competing 
against things that are already scaled up, that are already 
being made by the millions and already can make best use of the 
factory and labor. They have gone down the cost curve already. 
But we should not confuse what something costs at its 
beginning----
    Senator Hickenlooper. Right.
    Mr. Wiley [continuing]. With what it could cost in the end. 
Solar power panels, for example, were, you know, more than ten 
times what they cost today 10 years ago. They were 100 times 
what they cost today 20 years ago. And so, you know, if we 
looked 20 years ago and said, this is 100 times as expensive as 
a coal plant or a gas plant, we would have, you know, we would 
have closed the books and gone home. Now it is a fifth the cost 
of a coal plant or a gas plant to generate electricity from a 
solar panel. And so, I think we need to be looking to the 
future and saying, what is the potential of these technologies 
and then providing assistance every step of the way, especially 
to ones that advantage us as a country and help us, you know, 
be independent and be able to do what we need to do.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Absolutely, and I agree completely 
that we need to find the ways to look at how we get to scale 
more quickly once we make that decision that this is something 
that needs support. And I look forward to seeing your progress 
as you go forward and begin scaling up your innovations.
    Thank you. I yield back to the Chair.
    The Chairman. That's so generous.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Senator Hoeven.
    Senator Hoeven. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
    So one of the issues we have right now with the electric 
grid is not having enough baseload, which is why states like 
mine are working very hard to decarbonize coal. We have three 
projects right now going on to do that. Two are coal-fired 
electric plants. Another is actually a plant that converts coal 
to synthetic natural gas. So we are working on capturing the 
CO2 and putting it down a hole with some of the 
tools that this Committee has put in place, some of the front-
end funding for the equipment that has to go onto the plants to 
retrofit them, loan guarantees to help them, you know, finance 
the improvements and then 45Q because, well, it is 
technologically viable, we have to make it commercially viable.
    But we are now at the point where with these tools and good 
state partnership with industry, our companies now are moving 
ahead and doing it so that we keep that long-term baseload. 
Without it, the grid is not stable. So I am going to start with 
Mr. Hemstreet and ask each of you, we are talking batteries 
today. Explain to me how the advances in batteries--what 
advances and in what time frame are going to actually, no 
kidding, help us stabilize this grid at a time when everybody 
wants more electricity? I mean, I get a kick out of, you know, 
everybody is talking about more electricity, whether it is for 
their cars or their computers or for data mining or anything 
else, but where is that 24/7, no kidding, electricity coming 
from? We are working on it. I just described. I want to hear 
how batteries, and in what time frame, and what way are going 
to get us to better grid stability.
    Mr. Hemstreet. Well, I will start with that. I think 
batteries, certainly, as you say, are going to be critical for 
allowing us to maintain the stability of the grid as we have 
higher and higher penetration of renewable resources. So, and 
actually, a critical component of this energy transition will 
be storage that makes us able to balance out intermittent 
renewables. In addition to that, you know, as I mentioned----
    Senator Hoeven. But that is general. I am asking what 
batteries, who is developing them, and in what timeline and 
what capacity?
    Mr. Hemstreet. Yes, I think, certainly, Mr. Wiley can help 
on the battery side. You know, I know we are just starting to 
deploy batteries as part of solar and storage projects and 
stand-alone batteries. Those are lithium-ion batteries, but we 
see, you know, we are open to all different types of 
technologies. And I am not particularly well-versed in exactly 
what type of batteries will be deployed over time or what will 
be the successful technology that wins the competitive race to 
serve our customers. But I do know that storage is going to be 
important, and long-duration storage, in particular.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, thank you for the question, Senator, and 
your leadership on carbon capture.
    There is a lot of money that was appropriated through the 
Energy Act of 2020 as energy storage demonstration programs 
that could be going out today for energy storage demos, and the 
DOE has not yet put out funding opportunities for those. It is 
over $500 million. And I think that those demos would be coming 
on in maybe four or five years from now. So I think there is a 
huge opportunity there. There are a number of different 
companies that might be applying for that funding, like Form 
Energy. There is also Malta, which is developing molten salt 
storage, or Antora, which is also developing a thermal 
technology. There are also opportunities to use underground 
pumped hydro with a company called Quidnet. There are a variety 
of different companies that are developing these, and they are 
probably more on the scale of four to five years, which is why 
it is so important that we, you know, keep our dispatchable 
technologies online today and try to make those cleaner 
through, you know, carbon capture retrofits, like with Project 
Tundra, et cetera.
    Mr. Wiley. Yes, thank you for the question, Senator Hoeven.
    I had mentioned earlier, we are developing an iron-air 
battery, and an iron-air battery can use all domestic content. 
Today, we are 300 people in three locations across the country. 
In three years, we aim to have launched and scaled our first 
500 megawatt, 5,000 megawatt-hours per-year, or excuse me, 
50,000 megawatt-hours per-year production facility.
    Senator Hoeven. What time frame? I'm sorry.
    Mr. Wiley. Three years.
    Senator Hoeven. To start building it?
    Mr. Wiley. To be operational.
    Senator Hoeven. Operational.
    Mr. Wiley. And producing 50,000 megawatt-hours per-year. 
And that would not have been possible without the Inflation 
Reduction Act to be able to catalyze the capital to make those 
investments and to proceed with that speed.
    There are companies making the announcements for new 
battery factories all over the country right now, mostly for 
transportation, lithium-ion transportation. Today, there are 
about 60 gigawatt-hours, you know, of battery manufacturing in 
the United States. I believe that there is about a terawatt-
hour, you know, just about 20 times what there is today, 
expected to be online by the end of the decade, primarily 
allocated to transportation.
    The companies like us that are----
    Senator Hoeven. But, yes, that doesn't stabilize the grid. 
You are talking about transportation. I am talking about 
stabilizing the grid.
    Mr. Wiley. That's right.
    Senator Hoeven. If I could, because I am, thank you, but 
Mr. Nelson, under pumped hydro, real quick. How does that work? 
You said underground pumped hydro.
    Mr. Nelson. Oh, yes, so you can imagine that you can inject 
water underground and pressurize it and then you let it back 
out to, yes.
    Senator Hoeven. Oh, pressure, got it. Thank you.
    Thank you, gentlemen, I appreciate it.
    Thank you, Mr. Chair.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Hyde-Smith.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to 
the three of you for being here today.
    My first question is for Mr. Nelson. It is no surprise that 
we, as a Congress, should be looking at a diverse portfolio 
when it comes to energy storage and how that storage affects 
our electricity grid, just as, which was mentioned previously, 
across-the-board technology advancements to increase storage 
reveal greater efficiency in many types of power systems 
assets. In Mississippi, action is being taken to develop a 
clean hydrogen hub incorporating renewable hydrogen production, 
long-duration geologic energy storage, and multiple industry 
end-users. Mr. Nelson, what are your views on the role of 
hydrogen in energy storage, and what benefits can we expect?
    Mr. Nelson. Thank you for that question, Senator. Hydrogen 
is a really unique chemical in that it can be used for energy 
storage. It can also be used directly as an input. You can use 
it with fuel cells, for a variety of different things. 
Specifically, for the Mississippi project, it could be used for 
100 percent electricity or when electricity is over-produced. 
It is, you know, it is really kind of a Swiss Army Knife 
molecule, and it can be stored for a very, very long period of 
time, and there are several projects underway to better store 
hydrogen for long-duration use.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Okay, and no matter what substance 
these are given to, long-duration storage and other clean 
energy resources deployment simply will not happen unless 
electricity markets send the right signals for businesses to 
invest----
    Mr. Nelson. Correct.
    Senator Hyde-Smith [continuing]. In these resources. So 
given that the electricity markets in this country vary by 
region, is any particular market structure or region more 
favorable to the rapid deployment of innovative energy 
technologies?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, so it depends on the type of technology, 
but I would say that in the short-term, until market structures 
are really available to send signals for long-duration 
capacity, probably some of the more regulated markets in the 
West and in the Southeast will be best able to deploy long-
duration storage technologies because those utilities can make 
those investment decisions, but it is also going to vary based 
on the public utility commissions in those states.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. And we all know how the energy storage 
technology advancements could affect the deployment of utility-
scale and distributed storage as well as what implications this 
could have on future power systems, infrastructure investments, 
and operations, but explain how energy storage advancements can 
enable us to maximize the value of existing infrastructure.
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, thank you for that question.
    So essentially, you know, when there is an imbalance in 
supply and demand, you either need to, you know, cut your 
supply or cut your demand, right? So what energy storage can do 
is, it can absorb extra supply when demand is low and then, it 
can supply that back when demand is high. So it can increase 
the utilization of any kind of asset on an equal footing, 
whether that is a baseload dispatchable power plant, or whether 
that is a more variable renewable energy source. So it is 
really helpful for maximizing the value of the grid.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Okay. And let's talk about critical 
minerals, and if you could discuss what critical minerals are 
currently experiencing an evident shortage on a global scale, 
and how the availability of those minerals are necessary for 
investments when developing new energy storage and other clean 
energy technologies.
    Mr. Nelson. Sure, thank you for that question.
    At least for today's lithium-ion batteries, there are a 
number that are quite essential. Those include lithium, 
graphite, cobalt, nickel, and all of those are likely going to 
have a large increase in demand. The total demand increase for 
clean energy technologies between now and 2030 will be 
somewhere between 7 times and 12 times as much as the demand is 
today.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. And how do we address those demands?
    Mr. Nelson. Yes, so we need to make it easier to build 
those facilities here, so, produce critical minerals in the 
United States. Also make it easier to build processing 
facilities, but also make sure that we are not overly reliant 
on those technologies unless they are absolutely necessary. 
Those types of batteries are really great for transportation or 
consumer electronics when you need a lot of power density. They 
are not as essential for the grid, and there are other great 
options, like pumped storage hydro or like, you know, metal-air 
batteries that can provide the duration of storage that is 
necessary at a low cost, even if it doesn't have the same power 
density.
    Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you very much.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is expired.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator, I appreciate it.
    I just want to thank all of you again. I think you can tell 
from the questions you received and the concerns people have, 
we are going through a transition. We all know that, and we are 
going through a political transition of understanding we have 
to have energy that is going to be able to meet the needs of 
this country so we can be energy-independent and be able to 
help our allies around the world who are starving right now for 
energy. So it is going take Democrats and Republicans working 
as Americans, not retreating to their proverbial sides. I 
really believe all of your testimony has helped all of us 
understand the need we have, but I just appreciate it more than 
you know, and with that, members will have until the close of 
business tomorrow to submit additional questions for the 
record.
    Again, thank you. Meeting adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:52 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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