[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AMERICAN ENERGY EXPANSION: STRENGTHENING ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND
NATIONAL SECURITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JANUARY 31, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-1
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Published for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce
govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
energycommerce.house.gov
_______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
51-279 PDF WASHINGTON : 2024
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
Chair
MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio Ranking Member
BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky ANNA G. ESHOO, California
H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio DORIS O. MATSUI, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana KATHY CASTOR, Florida
RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland
TIM WALBERG, Michigan PAUL TONKO, New York
EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina TONY CARDENAS, California
GARY J. PALMER, Alabama RAUL RUIZ, California
NEAL P. DUNN, Florida SCOTT H. PETERS, California
JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan
DEBBBIE LESKO, Arizona MARC A. VEASEY, Texas
GREG PENCE, Indiana ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire
DAN CRENSHAW, Texas ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California
KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota, Vice LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware
Chair DARREN SOTO, Florida
RANDY K. WEBER, Sr., Texas ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia KIM SCHRIER, Washington
TROY BALDERSON, Ohio LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
RUSS FULCHER, Idaho LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
AUGUST PFLUGER, Texas
DIANA HARSHBARGER, Tennessee
MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS, Iowa
KAT CAMMACK, Florida
JAY OBERNOLTE, California
------
Professional Staff
NATE HODSON, Staff Director
SARAH BURKE, Deputy Staff Director
TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Representative in Congress from
the State of Washington, opening statement..................... 2
Prepared statement........................................... 4
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the
State of New Jersey, opening statement......................... 7
Prepared statement........................................... 9
Hon. Jeff Duncan, a Representative in Congress from the State of
South Carolina, opening statement.............................. 11
Prepared statement........................................... 13
Hon. Diana DeGette, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Colorado, opening statement................................. 16
Prepared statement........................................... 18
Hon. Bill Johnson, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Ohio, opening statement........................................ 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Hon. Paul Tonko, a Representative in Congress from the State of
New York, opening statement.................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 27
Witnesses
Paul M. Dabbar, Former Under Secretary of Energy................. 30
Prepared statement........................................... 32
Answers to submitted questions............................... 210
Donna Jackson, Director of Membership Development, Project 21,
National Center for Public Policy Research..................... 35
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Ana Unruh Cohen, Ph.D., Former Majority Staff Director, House
Select Comittee on the Climate Crisis.......................... 40
Prepared statement........................................... 42
Robert McNally, President, Rapidan Energy Group.................. 53
Prepared statement........................................... 55
Answers to submitted questions............................... 223
Submitted Material
Inclusion of the following was approved by unanimous consent.
Letter of January 30, 2023, from Paul N. Cicio, President and
CEO, Industrial Energy Consumers of America, to Mrs. Rodgers
and Mr. Pallone................................................ 142
Letter of January 31, 2023, from Anne Bradbury, CEO, American
Exploration and Production Council, to Mrs. Rodgers and Mr.
Pallone........................................................ 146
Statement of Michelle Bloodworth, President and CEO, America's
Power, January 31, 2023........................................ 148
Statement of the Forum for American Leadership, ``Creating an
Arsenal of Energy: How to Bolster U.S. Energy Security and Aid
our Allies Confronting Authoritarian Aggression,'' April 1,
2022........................................................... 153
Statement of the Forum for American Leadership, ``Blueprint for a
Serious and Sound Climate Policy,'' April 18, 2022............. 157
Statement of the Forum for American Leadership, ``Eight Necessary
Steps to defend U.S. Critical Energy Infrastructure from Cyber
Attacks,'' October 2, 2021..................................... 163
Statement of the Forum for American Leadership, ``Congress is Key
to Restoring Realism in U.S. Energy Policy,'' September 28,
2022........................................................... 167
Statement of the Forum for American Leadership, ``Setting U.S.
Climate Policy Straight: Recommendations for the 118th
Congress,'' December 5, 2022................................... 171
Statement of the Forum for American Leadership, ``Restoring U.S.
Energy Security: Recommendations for the 118th Congress,''
December 5, 2022............................................... 173
Report of the Department of Energy, ``Restoring America's
Competitive Nuclear Energy Advantage: A strategy to assure U.S.
national security,'' 2020\1\
Report of the Center on Global Energy Policy, School of
International and Public Affairs, Columbia University,
``Reducing Russian Involvement in Western Nuclear Power
Markets,'' by Dr. Matt Bowen and the Honorable Paul Dabbar, May
2022........................................................... 175
Article of January 20, 2023, ``Russia's state nuclear company
aids war effort, leading to calls for sanctions,'' by Catherine
Belton, The Washington Post.................................... 192
Article, ``Ukraine war to accelerate shift away from fossil
fuels--BP,'' by Carlos Anchondo, Politico, January 31, 2023.... 197
Report, ``Energy Justice and Climate Change: Key Concepts for
Public Health,'' American Public Health Association............ 199
Report, ``Improving Equity Outcomes for New Federal Investments
in Clean Energy Infrastructure,'' Bipartisan Policy Center,
July 2022...................................................... 202
Article of January 30, 2023, ``China invests $546B in clean
energy, far surpassing U.S.,'' by Sara Schonhardt, E&E News.... 208
----------
\1\ The report has been retained in committee files and is available at
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/20230131/115356/HHRG-118-IF00-
20230131-SD014.pdf.
AMERICAN ENERGY EXPANSION: STRENGTHENING ECONOMIC, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND
NATIONAL SECURITY
----------
TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2023
House of Representatives,
Committee on Energy and Commerce,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:02 a.m., in the
John D. Dingell Room 2123, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers (chair of the committee) presiding.
Members present: Representatives Rodgers, Burgess, Latta,
Guthrie, Griffith, Bilirakis, Johnson, Bucshon, Hudson,
Walberg, Carter, Duncan, Palmer, Dunn, Curtis, Lesko, Crenshaw,
Joyce, Armstrong, Weber, Allen, Baldersen, Fulcher, Pfluger,
Harshbarger, Miller-Meeks, Cammack, Obernolte, Pallone (ranking
member), Eshoo, DeGette, Schakowsky, Matsui, Castor, Sarbanes,
Tonko, Clarke, Cardenas, Ruiz, Peters, Dingell, Veasey, Kuster,
Kelly, Barragan, Blunt Rochester, Soto, Craig, Schrier, Trahan,
and Fletcher.
Staff present: Kate Arey, Content Manager and Digital
Assistant; Jolie Brochin, Clerk, Health; Sarah Burke, Deputy
Staff Director; Michael Cameron, Professional Staff Member,
Innovations, Data, and Commerce; Lauren Eriksen, Clerk,
Oversight and Investigations; Theresa Gambo, Financial and
Office Administrator; Jessica Herron, Clerk, Innovations, Data,
and Commerce; Nate Hodson, Staff Director; Tara Hupman, Chief
Counsel; Noah Jackson, Clerk, Communications and Technology;
Sean Kelly, Press Secretary; Peter Kielty, General Counsel;
Emily King, Member Services Director; Elise Krekorian,
Professional Staff Member, Energy; Giulia Leganski,
Professional Staff Member, Communications and Technology; Mary
Martin, Chief Counsel, Energy and Environment; Brandon Mooney,
Deputy Chief Counsel, Energy; Clare Paoletta, Professional
Staff Member, Health; Kaitlyn Peterson, Clerk, Energy and
Environment; Peter Spencer, Senior Professional Staff Member,
Energy; Michael Taggart, Policy Director; Hannah Anton,
Minority Staff Assistant; Waverly Gordon, Minority Deputy Staff
Director and General Counsel; Tiffany Guarascio, Minority Staff
Director; Anthony Gutierrez, Minority Professional Staff
Member; Caitlin Haberman, Minority Staff Director, Environment,
Manufacturing, and Critical Minerals; Perry Hamilton, Minority
Member Services and Outreach Manager; Kris Pittard, Minority
Professional Staff Member; Greg Pugh, Minority Staff Assistant;
Caroline Rinker, Minority Press Assistant; Kylea Rogers,
Minority Policy Analyst; Andrew Souvall, Minority Director of
Communications, Outreach, and Member Services; Medha Surampudy,
Minority Professional Staff Member; Rebecca Tomilchik, Minority
Junior Professional Staff Member; Isaac Velez, Minority Intern;
Tuley Wright, Minority Staff Director, Energy, Climate, and
Grid Security; and C.J. Young, Minority Deputy Communications
Director.
Mrs. Rodgers. The committee will come to order.
The Chair recognizes herself for 5 minutes for an opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON
Welcome to our first Energy and Commerce Committee meeting
hearing of the 118th Congress, especially to our new
subcommittee chairs: Jeff Duncan, who is our new chair of
Energy, Climate, and Grid Security Subcommittee, and Bill
Johnson, who will chair the Environment, Manufacturing, and
Critical Minerals Subcommittee.
Energy is foundational to every aspect of our lives.
Whether it is making energy more affordable and reliable,
securing our supply chains, beating China, protecting the
environment, addressing climate change, or putting energy
security back at the center of policy making, these should be
bipartisan goals, and we have already proven they can be over
the last few weeks.
One of our actions on the floor was passing H.R. 22, the
Protecting America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve from China
Act. And it passed with 113 Democrats voting for it. And then
just last week H.R. 21, the Strategic Production Response Act,
in another bipartisan vote to help ensure a vital energy asset
isn't drained for nonemergency political purposes.
These are just the beginning of a robust agenda to restore
American energy dominance. We need to be doing more to secure
and unleash American energy. Rush-to-green policies have had a
devastating effect in Europe. Countries are rationing energy,
switching back to coal-fired plants, and people are dying due
to a lack of heat and electricity. America doesn't have to
follow Europe down this path. Addressing emissions and
unleashing abundant, affordable, and reliable energy aren't
mutually exclusive.
In the last decade we have led the world in emissions
reduction while increasing the availability of affordable
energy through innovation. We did this while maintaining some
of the highest environmental and labor standards in the world,
and we must continue innovating and taking advantage of our
abundant natural resources and reducing emissions.
Natural gas is one of our greatest economic and strategic
resources. We cannot afford to shut it down. Instead, we must
expand production and continue building pipelines, the safest,
most reliable infrastructure to move it around the country, and
increase our capacity to export LNG to the rest of the world,
to reduce carbon emissions, and combat Russia and China's use
of energy to expand their authoritarian influence.
We also have an opportunity to achieve a new renaissance in
American nuclear technology and once again lead the world in
its development and deployment. But to be successful, we need
to rethink our restrictive regulatory approach and combat the
antiscience opposition to expanding nuclear energy. We need to
review the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's procedures and
practices to be sure it can efficiently license new and
advanced reactors.
Thankfully, we are close to finishing the Vogtle plant in
Georgia, but one new nuclear plant isn't enough. Ensuring safe
nuclear power is essential for ensuring American energy and
also for protecting the environment and addressing climate
change. And we can do this without inefficient, burdensome
regulations. Safety cannot be an excuse for doing nothing.
To reestablish American nuclear energy globally, we need to
approve and build new advanced reactors, establish a permanent
spent fuel repository, while exploring the potential for fuel
recycling, and establish a reliable domestic fuel industry that
supplies and enriches uranium and reduces our reliance on
Russia.
Across the board we need to update the regulatory landscape
to pave the way for energy sources and technologies of all
kinds: hydropower, nuclear, natural gas, and oil, hydrogen,
along with wind, solar, and batteries. Republicans support all
of these technologies, but we do not support picking winners
and losers through massive subsidies and rigging regulations to
favor certain industries.
Our energy solutions are climate solutions. We have a
responsibility to our generation and future generations for
cleaner water, air, and reduced emissions. Every energy
technology and source has a role to play, but we need to be
able to ensure that we are not becoming entirely dependent on
unreliable, intermittent energy sources that rely on Chinese
supply chains.
It is time to flip the switch and unleash American energy,
and this committee is at the very center of securing our global
leadership and making people's lives better.
I want to work with everyone, Republicans and Democrats, to
achieve these goals. These cannot continue to be partisan
issues. And my door is open to every member of this committee
who wants to lead on unleashing American energy.
[The prepared statement of Mrs. Rodgers follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Rodgers. And now I will recognize our full committee
ranking member, Mr. Pallone, for 5 minutes for his opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY
Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Chairwoman Rodgers.
And we just had our organizational meeting, and for those
in the public, we are very proud of the fact that we now have
the first woman chairperson of the Energy and Commerce
Committee in its long history that goes back to almost the
first days of the Republic.
So let me just make that announcement. I am sure all of you
recognize it, but I want to mention it again.
Now, I want to say that we are meeting for the committee's
first hearing of the 118th Congress. The first few weeks of any
Congress are an opportunity to lay out our priorities for the
next 2 years. But, unfortunately, the energy bills that
Republicans have brought to the floor this month have only
demonstrated just how misguided and misplaced their priorities
are.
Both bills that were mentioned by the chairwoman--the one
that dealt with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in China and
the one we just dealt with last week that dealt with the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve and said that we couldn't use it
unless we opened up more public lands on the same percentage
basis--they are both misguided because they limited this
administration--or it was an attempt to limit this
administration's ability to bring down gasoline prices at the
pump. And instead of moving towards clean energy, which is the
future and the only way that we are going to have less
dependence on dictators and have less volatility in the market,
it was an attempt to try to give more opportunities to Big Oil,
which, frankly, they don't even want, right.
I mean, we know that during this gasoline crisis that we
have had over the past year or so, this idea that somehow Big
Oil wanted to pump more, they wanted to pump the leases they
already had, was simply not the case. They wanted to keep the
price artificially high. That is another reason why they
opposed using the Strategic Petroleum Reserve: because it
brought prices down.
So all I am basically saying is, as we move towards an
energy transition, let's keep in mind that encouraging
renewables--as we did with the Inflation Reduction Act, as we
did with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law--this is the way to
go in the future.
I am certainly one of the key people that believes that we
have to use all sources of energy, whether it is nuclear,
hydropower, the other things that the chairwoman mentioned,
certainly all of the above. But the bottom line is that we are
going to be left behind if we don't move towards renewables and
encourage them the way we did with the Inflation Reduction Act.
Now, the chairwoman mentioned China. Now, make no mistake
that the rest of the world, including China, are already
embarked in a major transmission to clean energy. In fact,
China's investments in clean energy are so vast that the
International Energy Agency forecasts that over the next
several years 40 percent of solar and wind energy growth will
come from China alone. And yet Republicans consistently oppose
our efforts to catch up. If we don't move towards clean energy,
if we don't use the proceeds of and the credits and the other
incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act, we are going to be
left behind. And that is going to mean left behind in terms of
innovation, left behind in terms of the number of jobs that are
created. And the irony of it is that although most, if not all,
Republicans in the House voted against the Inflation Reduction
Act, that many of those credits are going to the very red
States and the industries in the very red States that want to
take advantage of it.
So this is not a Republican or Democratic issue. This is a
bipartisan issue. We need to move towards clean energy.
Madam Chair, I just wanted to mention that one of our
witnesses today is Dr. Unruh Cohen. I want to thank her for all
of her work as staff director for the Select Committee on the
Climate Crisis. I look forward to her testimony and the
testimony of all of the panel.
But I just wanted to take a moment to thank my long-time--
or our long-time--staff director of our Energy and Environment
policy team, Rick Kessler, who is retiring this week. After 25
years of dedicated service to Congress, of which 12 years was
spent with this committee, Rick has more than earned his
retirement.
Earlier in his career Rick also worked in my personal
office on energy and environmental issues. And last Congress,
Rick was instrumental in our work on the Inflation Reduction
Act, fighting to make sure meaningful climate investments,
including many provisions from our own Clean Future Act, were
included.
And during his tenure he was also instrumental in helping
us pass the Frank Lautenberg Chemical Safety Act, the Pipeline
Safety Act, legislation phasing down the use of dangerous HFCs,
and many, many more energy and environmental laws.
So he has been a devoted member of my team and our team,
always guiding us by a sincere desire to improve people's
lives. And I am personally grateful for his many years of
service, wish him nothing but the best in the future.
And with that, I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Rodgers. All the best, Rick.
The Chair recognizes Energy, Climate, and Grid Security
Subcommittee Chair Duncan for 5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF DUNCAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Mr. Duncan. Thanks for recognizing me.
I first want to start by saying congratulations on holding
your first hearing as chair of the Energy and Commerce
Committee. You have been a champion of expanding all forms of
American energy, and I looked forward to working with you and
the rest of the committee to deliver affordable and reliable
energy to all Americans.
I look forward to also getting to know my colleagues on the
subcommittee on both sides of the aisle and trying to find
common ground that we can work on to move America forward.
I also want to thank all the Democrat Members that voted
for the SPR last week. It was a true bipartisan bill that voted
out of the floor, and thank you for that.
I want to thank the four witnesses that have attended the
hearing today. I look forward to your insights on the state of
American energy.
America became the global leader in crude oil and natural
gas production while also leading the world in emission
reductions. We did this by encouraging the entrepreneurial
spirit in the private sector. The shale evolution is a perfect
example of this. It is estimated that shale evolution saved
U.S. consumers $203 billion annually. That breaks down to about
$2,500 per family of four. It also lowered energy-related
greenhouse gas emissions by 527 million metric tons per year,
the most in the world. American energy production and emissions
reduction are not mutually exclusive.
Unfortunately, Democrats and President Biden's regressive
energy agenda takes a whole-of-government approach to phase out
the oil and gas industry, and that is just wrong. Their agenda
discourages investment, and the top-down aggressive regulatory
approach seeks to create government-controlled economy and
energy sectors.
Republicans on Energy and Commerce have solutions to
reverse the Democrats' regressive energy agenda. It starts with
unleashing all forms of American energy by creating a
regulatory structure that encourages investment and innovation
to bring all forms of energy online.
Energy is the foundation of our economy, and it impacts
every aspect of American life. High energy prices hit low-
income and middle-class Americans the hardest. According to the
EIA, one-third of American households struggle to pay their
energy bills. One in five households have to forego basic human
necessities like food and medicine in order to keep the lights
on and heat their homes. The Democrats rush-to-green policies
are making energy unaffordable for American families. High
energy increases the price of everything and contributes to
rising inflation.
Our policies put the American consumer first so they don't
have to decide between putting food on the table or keeping the
lights on.
Ensuring we not only have affordable energy but also
reliable energy is critical. There is no question a secure and
resilient power grid is necessary for national security and a
strong economy.
For these reasons, our energy grid is an attractive target
for our adversaries. Pipelines, refineries, and other energy
infrastructure are also extremely vulnerable to attack. Our
policies must prioritize strengthening and hardening our grid
and energy infrastructure. Energy security is national
security, and our ability to export plays an important role in
this.
Since Congress lifted the crude oil export ban in 2015, we
have seen the benefits of free trade and open markets in the
energy sector. When America is the world leader in energy
production, the world is a safer place. There is no doubt about
that.
We can and should export to energy-dependent countries who
rely on corrupt nations. We have seen how Putin has used energy
as a political weapon to keep this stranglehold over Europe.
The best way to decrease the leverage of OPEC and Russia and
the best weapon against Putin is a more aggressive U.S. energy
production policy.
Nuclear energy also plays a critical role in energy
security. Exporting our nuclear technologies gives us the
ability to set global nuclear norms. Many of our adversaries
recognize this and are prioritizing building up their nuclear
sector. It is time the United States takes a hard look at the
regulatory obstacles that stand in the way of nuclear
advancement in this country.
Republicans have solutions to bring more nuclear on line by
addressing inefficiencies in the permitting process while also
maintaining our global gold standard in nuclear safety.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides
of the aisle to bring more nuclear on line so that we can once
again be a global leader.
The ranking member mentioned China. There is no doubt that
China is adding wind and solar and other renewables to their
energy matrix. They are also building a heck of a lot of coal-
fired power plants, fossil fuel generation, mining rare earths
that they need for all the technology, which is very
detrimental to the environment.
So we have got to address those issues. China will be a big
part of that addressing.
And I want to thank Chair Rodgers for holding this timely
hearing. It is time to flip the switch, unleash American energy
production, and achieve American energy dominance. I look
forward to the hearing and from our witnesses.
And with that, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Duncan follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Rodgers. The Chair recognizes Ranking Member DeGette
for 5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DeGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO
Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. It is really
fun to say that.
And I want to say one of the things that makes the Energy
and Commerce Committee so unique is not just our vast
jurisdiction but the willingness of Members to work together in
a bipartisan way to get things done for the American people.
I have had the honor of serving on this storied committee
since I was a freshman Member of Congress. As the chair of the
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee for the past 4 years,
I am proud of the work that we did to hold the oil and gas
industries accountable for the high gas prices last year and to
help move our country forward.
In just the past 4 years, the full committee has passed
legislation to strengthen our energy infrastructure, accelerate
the deployment of new clean energy technologies, and help
reduce the harmful emissions that are driving the climate
crisis.
Thanks to those efforts, we have put our Nation on course
to becoming truly energy independent and no longer dependent on
the global oil market, which is the goal. And so I am hoping
this hearing doesn't indicate that the majority is looking for
ways to turn back the clock on that progress.
I was disturbed that the majority memo that I read didn't
mention renewable energy sources one single time and instead
doubled down on, frankly, outdated policies advocating
increased fossil fuel production which will impede U.S. energy
independence and make us more--ironically make us more
dependent on an unstable international market. And that is
because oil and gas is an international market, and so if we
produce for here, it just goes into the international market.
We have all heard the slogans ``drill, baby, drill,''
``energy dominance,'' and now ``energy expansion,'' but don't
be fooled. These policies will not expand our potential for new
renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, and that will
only increase our dependence on oil and gas. So that will
weaken our economic, environmental, and national security in
the process. They are nothing more than a giveaway to the oil
industry to further pad their profits.
Now, like Ranking Member Pallone, I was dismayed by the
early energy bills considered on the floor. Just last week
Congress considered H.R. 21, a bill that would open up our
public lands to oil and gas exploitation and limit the
President's ability to respond to future energy emergencies
through the SPRO. We have seen this all-out push to expand oil
and gas drilling before, and it just doesn't work.
Last February the United States produced more than 11
million barrels of oil per day, one of the highest levels of
crude oil production in U.S. history. But when Vladimir Putin
launched his war of aggression in Ukraine, the price of
gasoline skyrocketed. And we as a nation were immediately
reminded of how reliant we continue to be on a global commodity
that is subject to disruptions of international markets.
The only way to secure our economic prosperity, our
environment, and our national security is to break the
addiction to oil as soon as possible. And so to do that, we
must transition to clean energy technologies.
Now, I think that we could work across the aisle on this. I
think that we could work together on supporting the research
that we need to advance new clean energy technologies that will
both make us energy independent and help us reach our Nation's
climate goals.
I think--I am sorry that my colleagues didn't support the
CHIPS and Science Act that has made investments in our energy
and science agencies. But I will also say I do think--and I am
looking forward to working with Chair Duncan and with our
friends on the other side of the aisle. We have already talked.
And I do think that we can find bipartisan ways to both reduce
our dependence on the international oil market and also to
develop clean energy that will address the climate crises.
But what we have to do, Madam Chair, in my opinion, we have
to stop retreating to our corners and seeing everything as a
zero sum game for whatever side. The markets and the utility
companies and others have realized this. They have been moving
to clean energy sources as fast as they can, and they need our
help to be able to have the research and development to be able
to make this secure, to make the grid secure, and to make the
sources so that we can transition to a clean energy economy, be
independent, and also address the climate crisis.
So I look forward to working with you and with this
committee. I am excited about it. But we have to really hold
out the branch and not talking about just drilling.
With that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Ms. DeGette follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mrs. Rodgers. The Chair recognizes subcommittee chair for
Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Minerals, Subcommittee
Chair Johnson, for 5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. BILL JOHNSON, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OHIO
Mr. Johnson. Thank you, Madam Chair.
I too want to congratulate you for being selected as the
chair of the best committee in the House of Representatives,
the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and for holding your
first full committee hearing as chair and making it about such
a vital issue, ``American Energy Expansion: Strengthening
Economic, Environmental, and National Security,'' and I too
look forward to working with you and our Members on both sides
of the aisle to do the right things.
I agree that it is time for all members of our committee to
get to work to come up with solutions to the major problems
driving inflation in our country, a staggering inflation which
threatens to lower all Americans' standard of living and make
us less secure.
Just over 2 years ago, America was energy dominant for the
first time in 70 years. We were the largest energy producer in
the world, and fuel for our homes and automobiles was
affordable for working Americans. Unfortunately, the President
and the Democrat majorities in the last Congress decided to
wage an all-out legislative regulatory and public relations
campaign to suppress that energy dominance, leading to
skyrocketing and unaffordable gasoline, natural gas, and
electricity prices for many Americans. Not just that, but
rather than relying on superior American innovation and
ingenuity to solve emission issues--which we have demonstrated,
by the way, we are clearly able to do--this campaign against
American energy and energy workers is attempting to cancel
proven, increasingly cleaner forms of existing energy resources
in favor of only a few forms of weather-dependent energy
sources. And that has very serious negative economic and
national security implications.
Put simply, energy security is national security. We have
heard it said over and over again, and it is true. It takes
energy to produce raw materials, to manufacture products, to
produce farm products, like produce, eggs and poultry, and pork
and beef, to get those products to market.
In fact, energy is at the center of everything. Americans
have seen firsthand--they are living it--that limiting domestic
energy production and cheapening the value of the dollar
through reckless Federal spending is a textbook way to drive
inflation higher. We can do better. We must do better.
Now, I am not reflexively opposed to some of the Democrats'
solutions being proposed, like, for example, greater renewal
deployment in our country, but where I struggle is with the
practical implementation of these policies and plans, the cost
and potentially negative impacts on the quality of life for
American consumers.
We can't just take what sounds good in townhalls and
wealthier coastal or metropolitan areas and suggest that folks
in less wealthy, more rural areas just jump in line and do it
as well. If we want viable, sustainable energy solutions that
make all Americans secure, that appreciates the diversity of
our landscapes and doesn't rely on premature aspirational
technologies or the availability of mineral supplies from
foreign countries being available, then it is time to turn the
page on the current national energy strategy, or a lack
thereof, particularly since it is one that makes us more
dependent on nations that hate us.
To illustrate the point, I ask my colleagues to consider a
recent report in the Washington Post. It suggested senior U.S.
military officials are predicting and preparing for war within
1 to 5 years with China, the very country we depend on for the
critical minerals required for many of the rush-to-green
solutions. This is why we need to maximize the production of
clean, reliable, affordable American energy and the associated
critical minerals right here at home, along with improving the
permitting process so investors aren't deterred by government-
imposed barriers and uncertainty for new energy infrastructure
projects.
And, friends, it is time to get serious about making
rolling blackouts on our energy grid a thing of the past and
lowering gasoline prices with increased American domestic
production, rather than being dependent on artificial market
interventions by the White House.
More domestic supply is necessary to meet these challenges,
and we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that draining our
Strategic Petroleum Reserve assets is a recipe for success. We
produce energy better, safer, and cleaner than any other place
in the world. These facts used to be a source of national
strength and pride, not to mention American international
diplomacy.
Let me conclude with a hearty welcome to our witnesses
today. I appreciate that you are here, and I look forward to
you sharing your experiences with us.
With that, Madam Chair, thank you for yielding to me. I
yield back the balance--well, I have exceeded my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:]
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Mrs. Rodgers. The Chair recognizes Ranking Member Tonko for
5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL TONKO, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair.
And first let me congratulate you on your great achievement
and Chair Johnson for his taking on leadership of the
Environment Subcommittee.
I have had the privilege of working with the two previous
Republican leaders of the subcommittee, Representatives John
Shimkus and David McKinley. During that time we certainly had
our disagreements, but we also found issues where we could go
beyond partisanship and work together for the benefit of our
constituents' public health and indeed the environment.
So whether it is drinking water, brownfields, harmful air
pollution, or the many other issues under the subcommittee's
jurisdiction, I do hope we will be able to find policies where
we can work together. And as we begin to consider how our
Nation can improve our energy security, foster innovation, and
become the global leader in the energy economy of the future, I
believe there have been great strides made by Congress in the
past several years.
In the 116th and 117th Congresses, this committee played an
instrumental role in the development and enactment of several
historic energy and environmental laws, including the Energy
Act of 2020, the AIM Act to phase down hydrofluorocarbons, the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation
Reduction Act.
The IIJA included $62 billion for DOE clean energy
investments, including programs that will make our electric
grid smarter and more resilient, build a domestic battery
manufacturing and recycling supply chain, and support the
development of cutting-edge industries through hydrogen and DAC
hubs.
The IRA built upon that down payment with nearly $317
billion in funding for DOE, EPA clean energy programs, and
expansion and extension of a wide range of tax incentives and
other climate and clean energy investments. These efforts took
our long-term national energy security seriously, positioning
the United States to become the leader in many of the energy
technologies and supply chains that will come to dominate the
global energy system over the next several decades.
And we are already starting to witness the benefits of this
long-term commitment to a clean energy future. More and more
private-sector companies are making plans to manufacture and
deploy clean-energy technologies across our country. Electric
vehicles, semiconductors, solar components, batteries, offshore
wind turbines, and electrolyzers are all part of this growing
effort to create new industries right here at home.
It has been estimated that the IRA could result in 9
million jobs over the next decade, and many investments will
support the deployment of affordable clean-energy solutions
resulting in major savings for American consumers.
These economic and job-creation benefits are, of course,
only part of the story. There will also be a significant
reduction of pollution, which will mean fewer hospital visits
and missed days of school and work. Reducing climate and
traditional pollution will make us a healthier and more
productive society as we continue to fight to avoid the worst
potential consequences of global climate change.
But we do know that, even after the IRA and the IIJA, there
is still much more work to be done. So, as we consider how to
best build upon these historic bills, I would caution that
creating loopholes in our Nation's environmental laws for the
benefit of polluting industries will not improve our long-term
national energy security.
On the contrary, our environmental laws can be a driver of
innovation, complementing the investments we have already made
to support the development and deployment of next-generation
technologies.
I do want to welcome a great public servant to the
committee, Dr. Ana Unruh Cohen, who can advise us on how to
build upon the progress of the past 4 years. Dr. Unruh Cohen
and former Select Committee Chair Kathy Castor played a
critical role in the climate and clean-energy successes of the
117th Congress. I can think of no one better to help us
understand where we have come from, what we have achieved, and
what is left to do to transition our Nation and our planet to a
more just and sustainable energy system.
Thank you, Dr. Unruh Cohen, for joining us today.
And, Madam Chair, I want to thank you for making this our
first hearing of the new Congress. The American people should
know more about the work that has been done to make our country
less reliant on economically volatile and polluting industries.
And soon we will be able to provide more information to our
constituents and local businesses about how to take advantage
of the generous tax credits and rebates in the IRA.
So I look forward to having many more opportunities to
share that information with the public in the months ahead.
Earlier our past chair, Frank Pallone, acknowledged Rick
Kessler for the great work he has done with this committee and
certainly with the subcommittee that I chaired.
Rick, I thank you for an outstanding bit of professionalism
that you brought to this committee. I thank you for the hard
work, the passion, and the success that we have all enjoyed.
God bless you as you go forward with your new career
opportunities.
And with that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Tonko follows:]
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Mrs. Rodgers. Our first witness is the Honorable Paul
Dabbar, former--well, he was Under Secretary of the Department
of Energy.
And you are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENTS OF PAUL M. DABBAR, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY OF ENERGY;
DONNA JACKSON, DIRECTOR OF MEMBERSHIP DEVELOPMENT, PROJECT 21,
NATIONAL CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH; ANA UNRUH COHEN,
Ph.D., FORMER MAJORITY STAFF DIRECTOR, HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE
ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS; AND ROBERT McNALLY, PRESIDENT, RAPIDAN
ENERGY GROUP
STATEMENT OF PAUL M. DABBAR
Mr. Dabbar. Chair McMorris Rodgers, Ranking Member Pallone,
and members of the committee, I am honored to be again before
this committee. I was with the chair last in Washington State a
couple of years ago as we were making good environmental
progress adjacent to her district.
Not so long ago, under the leadership of Secretaries Perry,
Brouillette, the U.S. became the undisputed dominant country in
energy. When I was Under Secretary in 2017, crude oil exports
jumped from zero to 1 million barrels a day. We were amazed by
the jump.
By 2019, exports had jumped to 3 million barrels a day.
That year, for the first time since the 1950s, we went from the
largest energy importer in the world to a net energy exporter.
The Jimmy Carter founding mission for DOE had finally been
achieved, and the U.S. became the undisputed dominant country
in energy. We became the number-one producer of crude oil in
the world, increasing from a low of 4.8 million barrels a day
to 12.9, a monumental jump. We became the number-one global
producer of natural gas. We became the marginal producer and
the global price setter of crude oil, taking the crown from
OPEC.
We extended our lead as a top country in the discovery of
new energy technologies, including solar, lithium ion
chemistry, and new drilling technologies. We were a solid
manufacturer, including for turbines, nuclear, electric
vehicles, and drilling.
We allowed the country to build, whether it was wind,
batteries, LNG, or pipelines. This resulted in energy price
deflation, and the U.S. led the world in the reduction of tons
of emissions. No other country came close to that combination--
production, technology, and manufacturing--not China, not
Russia, and not Saudi Arabia.
This dramatic turn in energy posture not only created
economic growth and security, it produced a new foreign policy
playing field, and we were no longer at the bidding of a
cartel.
This allowed us to take the lead in stabilizing the global
energy markets when COVID hit. We were so strong that the 2020
OPEC production agreement was announced from the White House.
That was energy dominance.
We did this by concurrently focusing on all-the-above
energy policies, increasing all-the-above energy supply,
strengthening energy national security and diplomatic posture,
producing energy price deflation, and reducing emissions.
This shift happened for three reasons: U.S. energy
technology innovation, government policies that encouraged all-
the-above energy supply, and investment by the private markets.
The trigger was a vast amount of energy innovation
technologies. Much of which is now being deployed did not exist
20 years ago. Then this committee, in a bipartisan and after
many years of negotiations, passed several acts that made a big
difference. Those E&C compromises I can summarize as, ``If you
give me my pro supply policies, I will give you your pro supply
policies.'' But this balanced approach has taken a detour, and
we are now back to asking Riyadh, Caracas, and Tehran for their
help.
Here are the steps the committee can take to establish an
energy dominance: Require agencies such as Interior, EPA, and
FERC to permit, license, and approve all-the-above energy
types. FERC needs significant legislative reform, including a
reform of the Federal Power Act and the Natural Gas Act, to
make them do their statutory obligation to ensure that there is
enough energy supply. They need to be required to approve
transmission projects for all types of energy, and they need to
radically overall ISO rules that encourage baseload that is
being shut down faster than intermittent is being built.
Capital providers needs to be pushed so that investment
criteria is not all about ESG and that they should also care
about prices, reliability, national security, and supply chain
versus supporting energy production moving overseas, the
autocratic regimes, including one using slave labor. That does
not seem very ESG to me.
And we need to continue to support discovery, science, and
innovation, a leading strength of America.
Our moment of energy dominance was a culmination of many
factors: innovation, all-the-above pro-supply set of policies,
markets willing to invest, and strong energy diplomacy.
As we confront the challenges of the energy markets today,
we do well to remember the ingredients that made us so
successful not so long ago.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Dabbar follows:]
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Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you.
Thank you for your testimony.
Our next witness is Ms. Donna Jackson with the National
Center for Public Policy Research, Project 21.
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF DONNA JACKSON
Ms. Jackson. Chair Rodgers, Ranking Member Pallone, and
members of this committee, I thank you for allowing me to
testify today. My name is Donna Jackson. I am the director of
membership development for Project 21, a Black leadership
network of the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Project 21 is one of the oldest and largest Black
conservative think tanks in the country. Our hundreds of
members come from all walks of life, from small business
owners, law enforcement, healthcare workers, teachers, energy
industry workers, clergy, healthcare workers, both professional
and nonprofessional. Most of us are not career activists,
lawyers, or lobbyists, and more than a few of us actually live
in the communities that we hope to improve.
I applaud this committee for kicking off a new session of
Congress by looking at increasing domestic energy supply and
reducing energy costs. Needless to say, these costs are tough
enough on the middle class, but they are even tougher on folks
struggling to reach the middle class. In fact, they are
actually harder than you may think.
The U.S. Energy and Information Administration had some
very useful statistics. It talked about the problems that
Americans have in paying their energy bills. One-third struggle
to pay their energy bills. A fifth of them have to forego
necessities. But, of course, these numbers are double, nearly
double for minority communities. And this report was actually a
couple of years old. So added inflation makes it even that much
harder.
But perhaps even more damaging is their immediate
difficulty of paying for sky-high energy bills, making it from
paycheck to paycheck, and the long-term barriers to upward
mobility and achieving a piece of the American dream. In so
many ways, it is painful and unaffordable. Domestic energy is
part of the ticket out of poverty. And we have so much of it,
so much of it.
For example, we see the entrepreneur spirit of the Black
community. In many Black-owned businesses, small-owned
businesses, these businesses are struggling and failing under
the weight of high energy costs. And they also have regulatory
compliances that they barely can afford. And it is
disproportionately impacting small businesses that really want
to make it in this country.
It all adds up to a regressive tax on those seeking to
better themselves, their families, and their communities by
owning and operating their own businesses.
Unaffordable energy means less--means the individuals have
less to spend on necessities. The industrial employment has
historically led to the emergence of a vibrant Black middle
class. But what we are seeing is these energy costs are
destroying these high-paying gateway jobs for low-income and
minority communities. And we have very few options to earn
money to be able to make it into the middle class.
The energy industry itself represents a very reliable
source of well-paying jobs for people that don't have the
options of being able to participate in the keyboard industry.
And, yet, we are destroying those options for these individuals
who have the American spirit, who want to do better, want to be
self-reliant and not dependent on government assistance. We
should not be making minority and low-income individuals an
afterthought in saving this planet. Their lives matter. Our
lives matter.
And I applaud you that you are considering the fact of the
hardships that unaffordable energy poses to people like me who
have self-esteem, self-respect, and we want to be a part of
this great American experience.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Jackson follows:]
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Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you for your testimony.
Next we will hear from Dr. Ana Unruh Cohen, former majority
staff director of the U.S. House Select Committee on Climate.
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ANA UNRUH COHEN, Ph.D.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Good morning, Chair Rodgers, Ranking
Member Pallone, and the members of the committee.
I am Ana Unruh Cohen, and I most recently served as a
majority staff director for the Select Committee on the Climate
Crisis.
For a climate scientist turned congressional staffer, it
will be hard to stop serving as staff director for the select
committee during the last 4 years under the leadership of
Representative Kathy Castor and with other members of this
committee while Congress passed the most consequential climate
and clean energy laws in U.S. history.
The last 4 years have underscored how energy, climate, and
economic security are tied together. Between the economic
impact of prevaccine COVID lockdowns, ongoing supply-chain
disruptions, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and extreme weather
events, it has become clearer than ever that the United States
needs to invest in building an energy economy that meets the
needs of the 21st century. To thrive we will need affordable
energy that addresses the climate crisis, improves public
health, and reduces our reliance on volatile global powers and
their resources.
The legislation enacted in the 116th and 117th Congresses,
especially the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the
Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act, make
critical down payments on achieving those goals. We are already
seeing the benefits of these laws accrue across America.
Since the enactment of the IRA in August of 2022, almost
$90 billion in clean energy projects have been announced,
initiating new economic development opportunities across the
country, and we will see even more in the coming years.
The need for the clean energy transition is clear and
growing in urgency. The United States faced $35 billion extreme
weather in climate-related disasters in 2021 and 2022, with a
cumulative price tag of more than $180 billion in direct
economic losses alone.
Other countries around the world have faced devastating
heatwaves, droughts, and floods in recent years. Without
comprehensive climate action, the science points toward
continued disasters with regional, national, and global
consequences.
The climate crisis and need for energy security will
require governments at all levels to increase their engagement
on energy and climate policies, to realize the potential
created by the news laws, and to use the available tools to
ease impacts on family when new climate and energy challenges
arise.
Congress, and especially this committee, will need to
understand and respond to the increasingly dynamic global
energy landscape to maintain U.S. global leadership and
competitiveness.
Successful energy and climate legislation must meet the
test of cutting climate pollution guided by science, reducing
energy costs on families, advancing equity and justice, and
creating good, family-sustaining jobs. As this committee takes
up energy and climate legislation, Members should evaluate the
bills with these metrics in mind, just as we did at the select
committee and working with the standing committees in the 116th
and 117th Congress. My written testimony summarizes many of the
accomplishments of those laws.
My testimony also summarizes the current global energy
investment landscape as countries ramp up climate action. But
climate considerations are not the only driving force behind
increased interests in clean energy. Just yesterday BP's chief
global economist pointed to the Russian invasion as a reason
that countries are seeking to increase access to domestically
produced energy, most of which he said will likely come from
renewables and other nonfossil fuels.
As we have heard, China is leading that clean energy race,
and we must catch up. They may be out front now, but the United
States can close the gap to power America in ways that improve
our global competitiveness and help solve the climate crisis.
American ingenuity is our superpower. Giving up on a
technological competition is not the American way. Instead, we
need energy and climate solutions that meet the needs of the
21st century, and we need them now.
I will close on a personal note. Many of you who know me
from DC may not know that I was born and raised in Corpus
Christi, Texas, or that my dad spent his career in the chemical
industry, and my brother currently works in safety operations
for oil and gas.
I am well acquainted with the challenges that communities
face in balancing energy production and public health, and I
know we can do it in a way that--find a way forward for a clean
energy future that works for everyone and doesn't pit public
health against economic security.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Unruh Cohen follows:]
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Mrs. Rodgers. My favorite line is ``American ingenuity is
our superpower.''
Next let's turn to our final witness, Mr. Robert McNally,
president of Rapidan Energy Group.
You are recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT McNALLY
Mr. McNally. Chair Rodgers, Ranking Member Pallone,
distinguished members of the committee, I am Bob McNally,
president of Rapidan Energy Group. With the exception of 2\1/2\
years in the Peace Corps and 2 years working for President
Bush, I've been an analyst, historian, and a student of energy
markets policy and geopolitics.
I would like to briefly summarize my view on where we are
headed in oil prices and touch on some energy prices.
Let me start with the good news. For the best part of the
last 20 years, OPEC is no longer controlling the global oil
market. Let me tell you the bad news. For the best part of the
last 20 years, OPEC is no longer controlling the global oil
market. That is why we have seen the return of Space Mountain
price volatility. It is paradoxical, but true: When the oil
market does not have a successful, durable manager like OPEC
or, before it, the Texas Railroad Commission, oil prices wildly
gyrate in boom-and-bust cycles that hurt our economy, national
security, and environment.
What to expect in the future as you do your work: More of
what we have seen in the past. Oil prices are going to gyrate
between 5- to 7-year boom phases when they go up and bust
phases when they go down. In the late summer of 2021, we exited
a bust phase, lower oil prices, and we are in the foothills of
multiyear boom cycle.
President Putin's decision to invade Ukraine hit fast
forward on this boom cycle last year, as we saw with $5
gasoline, but oil prices quickly retreated when all the Russian
supply we thought we were going to lose did not go offline.
Now, the shale boom is a huge economic and security
benefit, but it will not insulate our consumers from oil price
volatility. Therefore, we cannot retreat into energy
isolationism. We must work with allies to support domestic
energy production and support infrastructure, bolster free
trade, maintain ample stockpiles, and prevent adversaries from
holding the world hostage to economy-reckoning disruptions.
As we enter this new multiyear boom phase, it is all the
more important that we resist or correct policy mistakes. These
include old ones, like 1970-era ideas of windfall profits taxes
or restricting exports. Look, on the windfall profits taxes,
they are going to--profits are going to go up during booms and
down during busts. Seizure of them by the Government will only
worsen supply and increase prices later.
Restricting energy exports will not lower pump prices at
all--I mean, for any meaningful period of time, if at all, for
our consumers. Longer term it will raise them. Restrict export,
you get less supply. Less supply, you get higher prices.
Moreover, restricting the exports now would help Putin, help
Iran, and hurt our allies.
Newer errors to resist or correct include an overall shift
unfortunate from all-the-above to keep it in the ground. As we
enter a boom cycle and face geopolitical risk, it is critical
the capital flow back to fossil fuel production, refining, and
infrastructure. Fossil fuel is 82 percent of our primary energy
supply; oil alone, 31 percent; renewables--they are great--7
percent.
Policies that delay or impede the return of capital
expenditure to fossil energy will only tighten supply/demand
balances further and punish consumers with even higher energy
prices.
So the Strategic Petroleum Reserve cries out for course
correction, Members of Congress. At 372 million barrels, the
reserve is down by about a half, the lowest in 40 years, due to
recent emergency and nonemergency sales.
Now, the energy gyrations after Russia's invasion of
Ukraine illustrate the folly of frittering away our emergency
supplies. To their credit, President Trump--excuse me--
President Biden and the Congress agreed to cancel 140 million
barrels of planned energy sales, and it signaled an interest in
refilling. And, Chair Rodgers, you shepherded a bill that will
also impose restrictions.
Finally--and this is often overlooked but very important as
you begin your work--I would like to highlight for the
committee's attention an overlooked but crucial area for
improvement. A large gap has opened between increasingly
unrealistic energy transition targets on the one hand and
objective and timely analyses to require to assess their costs
and likelihood on the other.
President Biden and some Members of Congress have called
for outlawing the use of natural gas and coal and electricity
by 2035. That is 60 percent of our generation. It is astounding
there has been no cost estimate by EIA of this proposal.
Meanwhile, under political pressure, the EIA has ceased
providing a policy-neutral reference case scenario and adopted
a peak rosy demand scenario. On that basis they have called for
no new investment in oil and gas in the world. I can't think of
anything more catastrophic for energy than that.
Now, to conclude, our country is blessed with enormous
energy resources. The sweats and the smarts exhibited every day
by our intrepid energy-sector workers underwrite our standard
of living. Perilous market and geopolitical conditions may
loom, and policy risks certainly abound. But if you leverage
and if we leverage realism, pragmatism, and innovation, we can
protect our economy, security, and environment.
I wish you and your committee success.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McNally follows:]
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Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you for your testimony.
I will begin the questioning and recognize myself for 5
minutes.
Restoring American energy dominance and putting security at
the center of our energy policy should be the top priority, and
we should be sure that our policies don't put Americans and our
allies at strategic disadvantage to geopolitical adversaries
like China.
The Biden administration's national security strategy
released in October mentions climate more than 60 times. It
talks about, quote, ``an urgent need to accelerate the
transition away from fossil fuels.'' By contrast, the Chinese
President's annual report to the National Congress of the CCP a
few weeks later only mentions climate twice and warns a gradual
withdrawal from traditional energy must be based upon safe,
reliable replacements. He talks about less restrictions on
fossil fuels. There seems to be a mismatch of priorities here.
Mr. Dabbar, your testimony makes the point that as a
dominant energy producer with an all-of-the-above mindset,
America strengthened its national security, lowered prices, and
helped drive down carbon emissions. The developing world will
continue to demand affordable traditional energy for the next
several decades.
So does it make sense for the United States to accede its
energy dominance in traditional energy to China?
Mr. Dabbar. Thank you, Chairwoman, for the question.
I would like to make the point that China is absolutely not
the benchmark for clean energy. Some people like to point out
about how much they manufacture. They produce more emissions
than the whole OECD combined, and we lead the world in the
reduction of tons of emissions, and China is increasing by 3
times per year than we are cutting. These are just numbers;
right. These are just facts.
And by far--I wrote a paper at Columbia I published last
week. Fifty-seven percent of all the Btu's in China from all
energy uses is from coal, and it is going up. It is going up.
And so China is not the benchmark, right? They do manufacture
some things well, but they are not the benchmark. I wish
everyone kind of just knew--knew kind of the fact pattern on
that.
U.S. leadership for energy allows us flexibility around
prices, as we were hearing earlier. And as many people here who
are veterans, there are less people in the way than when I was
younger when I was in the military and allows flexibility that
did not exist, and it allows us, from a security point of view,
to support our allies, which if we hadn't been building what we
have been building in Texas and elsewhere, we would not be in
the place today to help our friends.
Mrs. Rodgers. Would you speak briefly about how we make
sure that we can export our energy and technological
innovations like advanced nuclear to developing countries
rather than having China and Russia increase their influence?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Chair, as Congressman Tonko pointed out,
the U.S. leads the way in energy innovation. We need to do
better at manufacturing. We are not bad at it, but we can do
better. But almost everything that is out there in the world
was invented in America. The lithium ion battery chemistry was
funded by DOE and the National Science Foundation. I was there
when we won the Nobel Prize for the lithium ion battery.
Drilling technologies, we lead the world in drilling
technologies. Solar, thanks to Secretary Chu and DOE, drove
down those costs.
So the important part is about how do we take--we need to
continue to support innovation. We lead the world on that, and
we need to figure out how to take some of those and continue to
build on our leadership to export.
Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you.
I would like to turn to Ms. Jackson.
And you make a very compelling point about energy
affordability. You know, just a recent review of the Energy
Information Administration data shows that residential
electricity price is up 24 percent since January 2021,
industrial rates up over 30 percent.
Would you just talk briefly about why lowering energy
prices is so important to the communities that you work with?
Ms. Jackson. You know, minority communities are already at
the low end of the spectrum in terms of resources and finances.
The average income for Black Americans is $48,000 a year. They
are basically living on about $3,700 a year. They don't have
that much extra money to be able to spend on unaffordable
energy. It disproportionately impacts their standard of living.
We are experiencing the largest decrease in the standard of
living that we have ever experienced in my lifetime. We are
struggling to be able to pay our bills, and be able to go to
work. We are struggling to be able to buy food. We are
struggling to buy shoes for our kids, clothing. We don't have
any extra money left over for even necessities--not luxury
items--necessities.
And we want home ownership, but we can't save any money. We
want to be able to start our own businesses, but we can't save
any money.
Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson. Every week we are in a negative deficit.
Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you. Thank you.
Pleased to yield to the ranking member of the full
committee, Mr. Pallone, 5 minutes.
Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Chairwoman Rodgers. I appreciate
the opportunity to speak about energy expansion and security
today. However, as I alluded to in my opening statement, I
reject the premise that fossil fuels are the key to expanding
our energy security here in the 21st century.
So Dr. Unruh Cohen, in your testimony you highlighted some
of the actions that Congress took during the 116th, 117th
Congress and that President Biden took last year to enhance our
energy security, particularly through the Energy Act of 2020,
the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and
Science Act, and of course the Inflation Reduction Act, all of
which this committee played important roles in developing.
So let me ask you, could you speak about how the
investments we made in our electric grid in the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law and the hundreds of billions of dollars of
investments we made in the Inflation Reduction Act will enhance
our energy security by speeding the energy transition?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question. Enhancing and
expanding the grid is one of the most critical aspects to
transitioning to a clean energy economy, reducing pollution
from the electricity sector, which then has knock-on effects
for other sectors. And so, in both the infrastructure bill and
in Inflation Reduction Act, we had critical programs to invest
in the resilience of the grid and the expansion of the grid,
and I think we have it--those will come to fruition soon.
We are already seeing some good signs on building more
transmission as well as using the existing footprint to
replace, to upgrade with the technology so that we can carry
more electricity and electrons on the given footprint.
Mr. Pallone. Well, thank you. Now, I also suspect we will
hear quite a bit today about the so-called benefits of dirty
sources of energy, but even from a pure energy security
perspective, fossil fuels come with plenty of costs. So would
you talk about how some of the vulnerabilities of the fossil
fuel-based economy, both as it relates to our dependence on
petro dictators as well as closed to consumers, and could you
talk about the risks we would face to our energy security if
some of the critical investments included in the IRA were
rolled back?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. That is a big question, but yes. As oil
and methane are now international markets, so as we stay
dependent on them here in the United States, the demand and use
of them around the world as well as either geopolitical attacks
or disasters that impact the delivery have repercussions on
both the price and, therefore, our U.S. economy.
In the United States, we have a few States that are oil and
gas producers, and they see that benefit in their economy. Most
of the States are actually consumers, and so, as we see
volatility in price, that has a negative consequence on
everybody's economic outlook.
So we have to keep that connection in mind, and as I said
in my oral testimony and in my written testimony, the future is
moving to reducing the use of fossil fuels, ramping up clean
energy fuels. That enhances our domestic energy security, it
helps improve public health, and as we are seeing, it means
more economic development and jobs in the United States.
And all of that movement is underscored by especially the
infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Mr. Pallone. I know you have only a minute left, but I
wanted you to--you mentioned with regard to the Select
Committee on Climate, and, you know, actions that Congress
could take to build on the work of the BIF and the IRA towards
a more clean energy economy. What are some of the things this
committee should be focusing on in this Congress in that
regard? You have got 45 seconds.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. OK. Well, I have three that I will try and
get through. One, I think there does need to be more focus on
grid enhancement. Actually, Senator Manchin's proposal had some
language on the grid that I think Energy and Commerce staff
also liked, to help deploy more things, deal with cost
allocations. So I think that is something the committee should
look at.
Workforce issues are incredibly important, and I know in
the last Congress, this committee, along with Education and
Labor, worked on some very important legislation going towards
the energy workforce. I think that needs to be a focus.
And finally, the consequences of the climate crisis are
here. Adaptation and resilience has to be a focus of every
committee that has some jurisdiction. EPA has some important
programs there that fall under the jurisdiction of the Energy
and Commerce Committee.
Mr. Pallone. Thank you. Madam Chair, that sounds like some
bipartisan things we could work on.
Mrs. Rodgers. For sure.
Mr. Pallone. Thank you.
Mrs. Rodgers. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio,
Mr. Latta.
Mr. Latta. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, for holding
today's hearing, and also congratulations to you on your first
hearing today, and look forward to working with you to get
energy to the forefront here in the United States.
I also want to thank our witnesses for being with us today,
and your testimony. It is always important to have you here so
we can get your views out.
But if I could start with my questions. Secretary Dabbar,
in your testimony, on page 3 you said about reestablishing
energy dominance here in the United States, but I want to point
and to hone in on one of your sentences. You state, ``And they
need to radically overhaul ISO rules to encourage baseload
power that is being shut down faster than new intermittent
plants are being built.''
I come from Ohio. You know, what we do, we make things. We
have major manufacturing in my district and across the State.
That means, when I am talking about steel, when I am talking
about float glass, and I am talking about our Central Foundry
over in Defiance, and I think about all the different things
that we have, we have to have massive amounts of power.
In 2014, we had a polar vortex that went across the
Midwest, and every power plant in the State was up and running,
that we did not have one blackout or brownout because every one
of those power stations was up.
I think it is important to point out about baseload power.
Can we get baseload power--and I am--we are for all-of-the-
above energy strategies we fought for as Republicans in 2008.
But my question is, when it comes to baseload and peaking--and
I think that is a problem that a lot of people don't
understand--but where is that limit where we have to be at to
make sure that we can make sure that these lights come on every
day and those plants go on every day with baseload capacity?
Mr. Dabbar. So I am a big fan of wind and solar, and they
are great at low costs on kind of a spot basis. They are the
worst technologies when it comes to availability and
intermittency. OK. So these are just kind of technology kind of
fact patterns. And what has happened with ISOs is that they
have become kind of Rube Goldberg kind of contraptions that
they used to be when many people here were part of initial
setting up ISOs about free markets, about having market
clearing prices, and have transparency.
In reality, what has happened, RPS standards, production
tax credits, all these different things have made these
constructs incredibly fragile and encouraged baseload from
being shut down in New York. They shut down good, well-running
nuclear power plants to replace it with intermittent.
And many areas of this country, more power plants are being
shut down than are being built, and that is just a fact. That
is just kind of numbers.
And so at the end of the day, the ISOs, under the Federal
Power Act, under the authority of FERC, are allowing an
increased vulnerability in the power markets year after year,
and I strongly think that FERC needs some more guidance from
this committee on increasing the reliability before it tends in
the wrong direction.
Mr. Latta. Let me go on here. You talk about nuclear. I
think it is also important to bring this up, because I know
that I am working with Senator Barrasso over in the Senate to
advocate for policies that build our domestic needs through
industry because it is so important. And I think it is
important, one of the questions I have got is, how critical is
it the United States builds up its nuclear fuels infrastructure
in this country?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congressman, I wrote a paper about this and
an article in The Hill. There's portions of nuclear fuel
fabrication that are fine, such as making fuel rods, but I
think, as many people here know, the U.S. is significantly
exposed to Russia in terms of uranium enrichment.
Forty-seven percent of all the uranium enriched services,
that are a key component to making nuclear fuel, is from
Russia. It makes OPEC seeming like a minor component of crude.
And I know there has been a lot of discussion about how to
incentivize enrichment being rebuilt in this country when DOE
and Sentra shut down the last enrichment plant in Kentucky. The
U.S. has had no ability. And as a side point, the U.S. has lost
its ability to make high enriched uranium for the nuclear
weapons program. Most people have no idea that we have lost the
capability of making new nuclear material for weapons. And that
is all related to this topic.
I think this Congress should take a look at how to
incentivize bringing it back from Russia.
Mr. Latta. Well, and again, because again, when you think
about with Russia, what is going on today and our dependence on
them, it is critical for this country to get out there and make
sure that we got a nuclear fuel security program that we can
rely on.
But I want to thank our witnesses, and Mr. Chairman, I
yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Duncan [presiding]. I thank the gentleman. The Chair
will now go to Ms. Eshoo.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank each
one of the witnesses. I have to tell you that I am having a
little bit of a tough time figuring out what you are for,
really what you are for. I hear a mix of, you know, ``Woe is
us. We were in great shape, we are not anymore.'' Some are for
a mixed portfolio of energy sources.
If you were to sum up in a sentence, starting with--I don't
have my glasses on--Mr. Dabbar, what is it that you want the
Congress to do relative to energy? Is it displacement of other
sources of energy? Are you saying that we should, you know,
pursue more oil? One sentence, what is your top line to the
Congress of the United States today?
Mr. Dabbar. I think in one sentence, Congresswoman, I think
properly incentivizing and authorizing all forms of energy that
support producing emissions concurrently with that is the right
general set of policies to do.
Ms. Eshoo. What does that mean, though? What does that
mean? Are you--I mean, if you are promoting oil and that there
be more oil exploration, just say it so that, you know, it is
clear, and then it is up to Members to decide how that--I think
that we have to have a mixed portfolio. I think that countries
around the world, including the United States, are in big
trouble, given what emissions have caused us.
We know that we have to have energy to operate, but it is a
matter of, you know, what it is. So if it is oil, say so, so
that it is clear, because otherwise it sounds like, to me, kind
of a convention of just--generally speaking, a convention of
energy suppliers having a discussion.
Do you want to redo your one sentence, or are you sticking
with it?
Mr. Dabbar. I would make one comment, Congresswoman, that a
colleague of mine at Columbia made a point that there's a
difference between supply and demand. And as long as there's a
demand for an energy type, so as long as we are still having
internal combustion engines for a period of time--maybe long,
maybe short, you can have that debate--it is better for America
to produce that oil. Saudi Arabia right now intends----
Ms. Eshoo. Well, your colleague over here said the good
news is that OPEC is not in charge of the bubble or whatever
anymore. So you don't see--I don't think--well, whatever. It is
a difference of opinion of witnesses here.
How about the gentleman at the end, what is your one
sentence?
Mr. McNally. Congressman Eshoo, so my one sentence would
be: Go back to all of the above. Federal policy in the last 2
years has shifted from bipartisan all of the above to anti-
fossil fuels. Keystone Pipeline decision, call to end Federal
leasing, the ban on gas and coal electricity----
Ms. Eshoo. That is a long sentence. OK. Because my time is
running out.
Doctor?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Congresswoman, I would say what Congress
needs to evaluate their actions on is getting America and the
world to a net-zero-carbon-pollution economy. So you need to
evaluate everything that is coming through here of whether that
will help advance that goal in the United States or us working
with partners.
It may not mean the total end of fossil fuel, but it will
be a managed transition to achieve that goal.
Ms. Eshoo. Ms. Jackson?
Ms. Jackson. Yes. I am for letting the markets decide what
energy sources we should use. If you prop up an energy
industry----
Ms. Eshoo. OK, one sentence, that is one sentence. Thank
you.
Ms. Jackson. Well, if you subsidize something, then of
course they will produce more of that.
Ms. Eshoo. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you, everyone.
Mr. Duncan. The gentlelady yields back. The Chair will now
go to Mr. Guthrie from Kentucky.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you very much. I think someone said more
power plants are being shut down now than being built. You
know, the concern with that is, on December 23rd, when we were
all wondering if we were going to get home for Christmas
because of all the snow is coming in and the ice coming in, the
storms coming in, are planes going to fly, you know, all that
tension, and are we going to pass a bill or not. And then you
get a phone call from my wife saying, guess what, we were out
of power.
So in Kentucky, where I represent, I represent the Paradise
plant that John Prine's parents are from, that area, that
finally shut down the coal plant after that song has been
around for a long time.
But we are having rolling blackouts in Kentucky, December
23rd and December 24th. So my constituents experienced that.
So, Mr. McNally, according to the Energy Information
Administration, carbon emissions from coal from the United
States is 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions. And yet, we
are shutting down coal plants, where people are not able to
have heat on the coldest days of the year.
So my question for you: Can you talk more about
implications for policymakers of, like, the International
Energy Agency? They provide forecasts that do not include
accurate baseload power needs.
And also let me just go to my second question for you. What
information are expert statistical and energy information
agencies like EIA and IEA not providing us, and do you think
this--these forecasts gloss over the factors that should be
considered, like grid reliability?
Mr. McNally. Thank you, Congressman Guthrie, for that
question. And if I could have added a comma and a sentence or a
phrase to my sentence, it would have been: ``and get objective
and timely data so you can do your work.''
Indeed, one of the main reasons we need to have IEA,
especially, return to what we call business as usual or a
reference case scenario, is, you can't do a cost-benefit
analysis without one.
When folks refuse to put a forecast out saying, Look,
here's the future if we just freeze policies in place--they
don't do that--then you cannot assess the cost and benefits of
different policies to maintain adequate electricity supply for
your constituents while we are trying to decarbonize, which is
important.
So we have to insist that the International Energy Agency
go back to providing the tool you need to evaluate policy.
On the EIA side, they are ably led by Joe DeCarolis, and
they are a wonderful resource for this country. However, they
have been AWOL in terms of providing you with objective, honest
forecasts of the implications of the policies that are being
pursued by this administration, or proposed. That is simply
unacceptable.
We ought not be afraid of science and analysis and
forecast, but you are literally flying blind at this time.
Mr. Guthrie. OK, thanks.
And, Mr. Dabbar, a lot of times when I hear people back
home, these questions they will ask me, let's say we do what--I
think California has electric-only vehicles by 2035. If that
was to come to pass for the country, something to that nature,
you are dismissing--you have some environmental issues you are
trying to address, but you create so many other implications
and issues.
People ask me, what am I going to do with the batteries
once they are used? The rare earth minerals, I think we left 3
trillion in Afghanistan when we pulled out in that chaotic
decision the Biden administration did. I think the Chinese were
waiting to move in. I mean, so what are the implications of--I
know we are trying to decarbonize, but what are the other
implications of some of the decisions coming from things like
the Green New Deal, the IRA, other things such as that?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes. So one of the things I always find very
problematic is arbitrarily picking technologies by legislators.
The technology market moves much faster than the legislative
process. I will give you an example. I just wrote a paper in
The Hill in which I pointed out that California has looked at
banning all internal combustion engines.
But in Congresswoman Kelly's district, they figured out how
to manufacture negative carbon gasoline, that when you burn it,
it is net zero, OK, so a technology-neutral option, and
something interesting coming out of Illinois. Rather than
saying everything has to be electric vehicles, why not let
innovation drive the--you know, the opportunities that we have
in front of us had not been invented.
And so, I think there's a lot of great examples that we
should have a technology-neutral policy and let us kind of
drive to the future based on that.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. And just about a half-minute that I
have left, what are some lessons learned from Europe and their
decisions in their carbon fight? What's some good lessons?
Maybe you or Mr. McNally can answer.
Mr. McNally. Don't become dependent on Russia or any other
adversary for your critical supplies of energy, a lesson we
ought to take heart, as we have heard with regard to China.
Mr. Guthrie. Thank you. And you hear people say that is the
reason we need to do all the wind and solar because--we can be
independent ourselves and still have fossil fuels in this
country. We lost that independence.
So my time is expired, and I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair will now recognize the ranking member of the
Energy, Climate, and Grid Security Subcommittee, someone I look
forward to working with in this Congress, Ms. DeGette, for 5
minutes.
Ms. DeGette. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr.
Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to submit an article from
Energy Wire entitled ``Ukraine War to Accelerate Shift Away
from Fossil Fuels.''
Mr. Duncan. Without objection.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. DeGette. Thank you. This article reports that BP's own
annual energy outlook acknowledges that, quote, ``The increased
importance placed on energy security as a result of the Russia-
Ukraine war leads over time to a shift away from fossil fuels
toward locally produced nonfossil fuels, accelerating the
energy transition,'' end quote.
And so this hearing is about discussing the strength of our
economic, environmental, and national security. In other words,
its energy independence.
Now, as I mentioned in my opening statement, my colleagues
have put together--put forward policies and ideas that suggest
that they think energy independence hinges on increased
domestic development of oil and gas resources. But as I said,
energy independence can only happen with a rapid transition to
clean energy.
And so, Dr. Unruh Cohen, first of all, I want to thank you
for your work on the select committee. And I also want to thank
my colleague Kathy Castor for her wonderful work on that
committee too.
In your expert opinion, will increasing oil and gas
production help protect the American public from the volatility
of the global oil market, and if not, why not?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Increased U.S. production will not
necessarily protect American consumers from volatile energy
prices because we are still connected to the international
market, and so if something a world away causes production to
go out in Saudi Arabia and we have a price spike, then that
passes through our entire economy.
Ms. DeGette. Even if the oil and gas is produced here?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. That is correct.
Ms. DeGette. OK. Now, will increasing oil and gas
production reduce the cost of extreme weather and climate-
related disasters?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. It will not.
Ms. DeGette. And will increasing oil and gas production
ensure that our economy, the U.S. economy, is thriving?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. It will not.
Ms. DeGette. Will increasing oil and gas production mean
that the United States no longer imports crude oil from
countries like Saudi Arabia?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Most likely not.
Ms. DeGette. OK. So if increased oil and gas production
won't protect consumers for price shocks, from the increasing
cost of natural disasters, from the boom-and-bust oil economy,
and it won't make us energy independent, what do we need to do,
very briefly, to achieve energy independence, and how do we
need to get there?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I think our goal should be energy
security, which means relying on clean energy produced here in
the United States and working with our allies around the world.
And there is a whole host of technologies that will help us do
that, and we will see an acceleration in those based on the
laws that have recently been signed.
Ms. DeGette. Now, you are not suggesting that tomorrow we
would have to stop using oil and gas, but you are saying we
would need to----
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Correct.
Ms. DeGette [continuing]. Have a transition? Is that right?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. We need a managed transition. That is what
we need for our economy, that is what we need for our energy
workers, that is what we need for our communities that depend
on energy for their tax base. That is why we had so many things
in the Inflation Reduction Act to help those communities and
those workers transition.
Ms. DeGette. Great. Thank you.
And speaking of those communities, Ms. Jackson, I wanted to
just talk to you for a minute because in my congressional
district, I have a lot of low-income communities that are also
environmentally very vulnerable.
And I have a neighborhood, Globeville-Elyria-Swansea, which
is just downwind from an oil--from a gas plant, from a gas
refinery. And they have had terrible, terrible environmental
problems there: lead in their soil, terrible asthma increases,
all kinds of other problems.
So I wanted to ask you the question. I know you advocate
for low energy costs, and I agree with that, because those
people have a hard time paying for their energy in the winter.
I agree with that, but wouldn't you love to see an economy
where we could both reduce those environmental impacts on low-
income communities and also have low energy prices? That would
be a yes or no answer.
Ms. Jackson. That would be a yes with stipulations.
Ms. DeGette. OK. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentlelady, and I need to apologize
to the gentleman from Kentucky for not recognizing him as the
chairman of the Health Subcommittee, so welcome to that and
good luck.
I now want to go to the chair of the Oversight and
Investigations Subcommittee, Mr. Griffith, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Dabbar, Inflation Reduction Act, we have heard about
that, and we have heard about trying to, you know, do all this
stuff in America, and one of the stipulations in that Act, when
they were doing all the Green New Deal-type stuff inside of
what was supposed to be the Inflation Reduction Act, was that
we would do it in America, we are going to do it in the United
States.
So I have got a couple of questions in that regard, and
that is, one, recently the DOE awarded a $200 million grant to
battery maker Microvast even after the company told the
Securities and Exchange Commission that they were heavily
dependent upon policies made by the Chinese Communist Party's
apparatus in China.
Do our DOE officials do a decent job of vetting these, or
do they just plain just fill them out, and if they have got an
address in Texas, that is good enough?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman, I can't exactly define what
DOE did on the Microvast award, but as you correctly said, the
company itself told the Securities and Exchange Commission it
was a Chinese-controlled entity and that it did not meet
American accounting standards.
And the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking at
delisting them from the United States. Even though technically
it was legally incorporated here, the vast majority of the
operations were in China, by their own admission, and with the
SEC.
It is--I think it was the intent of the Inflation Reduction
Act and the Infrastructure Act to strengthen American
companies, and to--for those battery technologies, amongst
others, get us away from China, and that is a bit of a question
on why they decided to see that.
Mr. Griffith. So you would think that was a bad decision by
DOE, to give them $200 million?
Mr. Dabbar. I think that there are plenty of other
companies--there are plenty of battery companies, and I am not
certain why awarding it to someone who self-admits that they
are a Chinese-controlled entity, they could probably--there's
probably other ones in the United States to support.
Mr. Griffith. Let me ask you about Contemporary Amperex
Technology Company Limited. Now, this is a Chinese battery
manufacturer and also attempting to get both Virginia money and
Federal money, made a deal with Ford, and in that deal, Ford
would own the physical plant but the Chinese company would have
all the technology. They would control all the technology and
all the actual manufacturing. Is that really a way to bring
American, green technology into the forefront, or are all we
are doing is becoming a colony of China when it comes to
battery technology, when we take our taxpayer dollars and give
it to the Chinese, even if they have a Ford nameplate on the
outside of the factory?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, yes, Congressman. It appears that Ford and
the largest Chinese battery manufacturer, the largest one in
the world, CATL, decided to structure legally to get around the
Inflation Reduction Act American requirements, by having Ford
front them, but it was really going to be a CATL plant.
I applaud the Governor of Virginia to turn that down. But
whether it is this committee or Ways and Means, I would hope
that someone would write a letter to Treasury as they look at
writing the letter--sorry--the Tax Code underneath the
Inflation Reduction Act and make certain that lawyers--no
disrespect to lawyers, I am a nuclear engineer--don't come up
with all these options that legally get around the Treasury
rules but allow Chinese companies to get a greater foothold in
the United States. Hopefully, that is quite bipartisan.
Mr. Griffith. Well, I hope they will be bipartisan, and I
can assure you that we will continue to do oversight from this
committee. Hopefully other committees will do as well.
With the remaining time that I have left, I would be remiss
if I didn't give Ms. Jackson some time. If you could expound on
how late and missed electric bill payments, in light of the
fact that the rates are going up for everybody in the country,
including poor folks, how the late and missed electric bill
payments compound the negativity on families living paycheck to
paycheck?
Ms. Jackson. Well, we are not living paycheck to paycheck.
We are living paycheck to Wednesday, and then we are borrowing
money for people to be able to last us to the end of the week.
So the impact is devastating.
This is the deal. Here is the situation. We should be
making sure--our community shouldn't be an afterthought. And
so, when you are sitting down there thinking about how you are
going to work with energy, we should also be considering the
cost.
Mr. Griffith. And the cost for the poor families in
particular?
Ms. Jackson. Yes, yes.
Mr. Griffith. Thank you very much. My time is up. I yield
back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentleman. The Chair will now go to
Ms. Matsui for 5 minutes.
Ms. Matsui. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the
witnesses for being here today.
Transportation is one of the most polluting sectors of our
economy. Emissions from gas and diesel engines are directly
responsible for the premature deaths of 17,000 to 20,000
Americans per year, and that doesn't even take into account the
much larger impact of vehicle emissions as one of the leading
causes of climate change.
And that is why I have been a long-standing champion of
stronger vehicle emissions rules and stronger fuel economy
standards, and why I lead yearly appropriations efforts
supporting clean transportation across different agencies.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, what are the health benefits of clean
transportation, especially with regard to frontline
communities?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
The public health benefits of switching to cleaner
transportation, transit, other ways to get around the country
and our communities, is huge.
So much--so many communities are impacted by NOx, smog,
particulate matters, black carbon, that come from both on-road
and off-road fuel use that we can--significantly decreasing
those leads to immediate health benefits, both for asthma in
kids and elderly.
I mean, we are even at the point where we have identified
some of those pollutants can cross the placental boundary in
women, and so, you know, babies still in their mother's womb
are being impacted by air pollution.
Ms. Matsui. Thank you. In 2021, I co-led the Medium and
Heavy Duty Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Act, which would
fund EV charging equipment for medium- and heavy-duty vehicle
fleets. This would help State and local governments and
municipal service providers and trucking companies electrify
their fleets.
The Inflation Reduction Act expands the 30(c) Alternative
Fuel Refueling Property Tax Credit to help governments,
businesses, and individuals buy and install EV charging
stations.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, what will the EV charging infrastructure
look like in America in 5 years, given the incentives in the
Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Well, as Yogi Berra is said to have said,
it is hard to make predictions, especially about the future,
but what I am confident in saying is, things will look totally
different. The investments from both the infrastructure bill
and the Inflation Reduction Act are really going to mean a huge
expansion and improvement in our charging structures across the
country.
You know, we are going to see a huge increase in electric
school buses, which is going to be incredibly beneficial to the
budgets as well as the health of school districts all across
the country.
And, you know, I think we will be in a position where
people will feel very comfortable traveling, you know, going on
the great American road trip in their electric vehicle.
Ms. Matsui. OK. Thank you. California leads the country in
rooftop solar capacity with more than 8 million California
homes benefiting from the cheapest source of energy known to
man.
I am a strong supporter of rooftop solar and proud to
champion expanding the 25D Residential Clean Energy Tax Credit
in the Inflation Reduction Act. When we talk about grid
resilience, it is important to remember that many homes in
Florida and Puerto Rico with rooftop solar did not lose power
even after they were battered by powerful hurricanes.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, what role does rooftop solar have in the
clean energy transition, and how can it help make our electric
grid more resilient?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for that really important
question. Rooftop solar has incredible benefits, both to save
consumers money on their electric bills and build back
neighborhood resilience. I think, you know, increasingly, we
will see neighborhoods with rooftop solars developing
microgrids, so that when those--and additional placement of
power, of PV and batteries, other things that critical schools,
fire stations, those types of places in our community, so that
when disaster does happen, there is still a power source, there
is a place where people can come to get electricity and do the
things they need in the aftermath of disaster.
Ms. Matsui. OK. Thank you. I am running out of time, so
thank you very much for your testimony. I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentlelady and now will go to the
subcommittee chair for Innovation, Data, and Commerce, Mr.
Bilirakis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I
appreciate it. Congratulations on your subcommittee
chairmanship as well.
Since the Biden administration came into office, Americans
have been faced with a persisting energy crisis. We are in the
midst of unprecedented increases in costs of living, and I
continue to hear from my constituents on a daily basis
regarding how difficult it is to make ends meet. I want to
highlight one in particular, if I may.
Patricia is an 84-year-old constituent who lives in Hudson,
Florida, in Pasco County, with her 62-year-old disabled
daughter. They live on an extremely strict, fixed income. Their
electric bill has gone up an average of $50 per month in the
past year despite the fact that they do not use central heat or
air conditioning in their home--and you know what it is like
not to have air conditioning, particularly in the State of
Florida.
So, when coupled with other inflationary increases in the
price of food and medicine, this mother-daughter senior duo has
been pushed to the brink of financial hardship.
Sadly, many of my constituents have similar stories to
Patricia, and very clearly, from Mrs. Jackson's testimony, the
most vulnerable Americans are disproportionately affected.
The United States needs energy policies that make energy
more affordable for Americans, not more expensive. That is the
bottom line.
Particularly, I want to focus on improving the permitting
process for pipelines and expanding pipeline infrastructure.
I mentioned that this stat, I mentioned it earlier in the
roundtable that we had last week, but according to the American
Petroleum Institute, Florida will face a 42 percent market--
higher market-forward prices for natural gas in the average
this calendar year.
One of the main factors contributing to these higher costs
is a lack of adequate pipeline infrastructure. Mr. Dabbar, can
you please talk a bit about how delays in pipeline permitting,
like for the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the canceled Atlantic
Coast Pipeline, impact the ability for these projects to be
completed or even deter the undertaking of these projects in
the first place?
And, again, what recommendations do you have to help
expedite pipeline infrastructure for the American Southeast?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So when a company comes along
and wants to build a pipeline or a transmission line, they
estimate how much it is going to cost, and how long it is going
to take to start building, and how long it is going to take to
build. There's two things that have really exploded the
challenges around that.
One is that the extended approval processes--when people
come up with a project cost and the approvals take a very long
time, those project costs, because of inflation, become
uneconomic.
And we are seeing that, for example, in Massachusetts,
actually, with offshore wind right now. They proposed a
contract, the approvals have taken so long, and then the
inflation topic is on top of it, all of a sudden the offshore
wind projects, they withdraw them because they don't make
economic sense anymore.
So the combination of inflation, plus very, very long
approval processes are really impeding any sort of construction
in this country today.
Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you.
Another question for Mr. Dabbar: In addition to addressing
delays on the agency's side, is there anything we can do in
Congress to reduce the delays brought about by the courts?
Mr. Dabbar. Congressman, I am not--never written a law from
scratch like everyone here has, but I do think that the Federal
Power Act and the Natural Gas Act are not definitive enough to
make FERC approve and meet their statutory obligation to
deliver energy, of any type. Everything is getting held back.
So I do--I would recommend that this committee take a look
at how to facilitate, and maybe things such as time stops, time
clocks, the maximum amount of time to review. That is not to
say yes or no. It is just, put a timeline on, so it doesn't
take 10 years for a 10-mile road.
Mr. Bilirakis. Very good. Thank you.
I yield back, Mr. Chair. Appreciate it.
Mr. Duncan. Yes, I thank the gentleman. The Chair will now
go to Ms. Castor for 5 minutes.
Ms. Castor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, thank you for returning so soon to help us
focus on policies that will help America build greater energy
security and policies to help solve the urgent climate crisis.
While it is disappointing that Republicans in Congress have
dismantled the Climate Committee, I have incredible pride in
the progress that our committee and the Democratic-led Congress
made for America. Talking about lower-cost clean energy,
creating good-paying jobs, and building healthier, more
resilient communities. We could not have accomplished all that
we accomplished without your leadership and expertise, so thank
you very much.
You know, at the outset of the creation of the Climate
Committee, we convened and did broad outreach to people all
across the country: business, labor, faith leaders, scientists,
farmers, entrepreneurs, and Members on a bipartisan basis.
It culminated in this ``Solving the Climate Crisis Action
Plan'' that made 715 policy recommendations to help solve the
climate crisis. And I am so proud to report that, as of today,
438 of our policy recommendations were passed in the House of
Representatives, and 314 were passed into law.
The report was described as the most detailed and well-
thought-out plan for addressing the climate crisis that has
ever been part of U.S. politics, an extraordinary synthesis of
expertise from social and scientific fields.
What that did is, it really culminated in a lot of the new
law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest clean energy and
climate investment in U.S. history, the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law that will help make communities more
resilient and electrify transportation, the CHIPS and Science
Act that will empower industries to lead the clean energy
transition.
And I love the stat that you cited in your testimony. In
the 9 months since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed,
companies have announced more than $90 billion into clean
energy investment.
So these are magnets now for capital, investing in our
workers, in our communities, and in the clean energy future.
And though the Climate Committee ended with the last
Congress, our fight has to continue. And I want to highlight to
everyone--I am going to send this around to their offices--we
did a year-end report that highlights key accomplishments and
then additional opportunities, because there are so many more
opportunities that we have got to focus on.
Meanwhile, the last 8 years have been the hottest on the
planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in their
recent assessment, made clear that the next few years are
critical to limit warming. Thankfully, progress begets
progress, and with our accomplishments, we are poised now to
move now to significant implementation.
You answered a question from--to Rep. Eshoo about the most
important is to focus on net zero, getting to net zero, as soon
as possible. So go into a little more detail on the most
important steps of implementation on how we get there to reach
our climate goals and reduce climate pollution.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thanks for the question. And, you know,
one of the good news, just going back to some of the permitting
discussion in the Inflation Reduction Act, we also had nearly
$1 billion set aside to agencies to help them do these analyses
and get the projects permitted that we need to get permitted.
So I think that is one of the first things that we need to
see. We need to see that implementation on the ground. We need
to see--we need to build the EV infrastructure. We need to
upgrade and expand our transmission infrastructure and using
the programs that we passed in the infrastructure and the
Inflation Reduction Act.
We also need to see the partnership with States and local
communities and business organizations, because much of what we
passed in the Inflation Reduction Act are--there's tax credits,
there's other programs and initiatives that are going to help
States do even more.
So I think it will be really important for Congress to work
with the Biden administration to see those implementation--the
implementation of those two laws in particular come to
fruition.
Ms. Castor. We really are at an exciting pivot point, and
thank you again, and I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair will now go to the chairman of the Subcommittee
on Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Minerals, my friend
from Ohio, Mr. Johnson, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Johnson. Thank you. You know, today it is clear from
our testimony that America needs a course correction on our
national energy strategy, because the current strategy simply
is not working.
In fact, it is increasingly evident that we don't really
have a national energy strategy at all. A change in direction
must be made. Republicans on this committee have the plans and
the legislative proposals to do just that.
It has already been said, energy security is national
security. That goes for us here in America and for the rest of
the world.
Other countries are thinking about this. Look at China. Do
you think they cornered the market on rare earths and critical
minerals by accident? Do you think it never occurred to them
that in a time of great power competition, this would give them
the upper hand?
I will get back to that in a moment, but right now America
is in a similar spot with natural gas. Global demand is
booming, and demand will remain high for decades to come. We
have plenty for use here at home and to export abroad. Natural
gas can and should be our global power differentiator. We
should want the world to rely more on us for natural gas, not
the other way around.
So first, Mr. McNally, I appreciated your recommendations
in your testimony making changes to the Natural Gas Act, to cut
the red tape surrounding LNG exports. I have got legislation
that would do that.
Can you explain to our committee, when we are leading in
exporting energy resources around the globe, and even though it
certainly supports jobs and investment here at home, how is it
that that also improves America's geopolitical position abroad?
Mr. McNally. Thank you for that question, Congressman
Johnson.
Nothing less than making the United States an arsenal of
energy, as we were an arsenal of democracy under President
Roosevelt during World War II. We are the world's largest
natural gas producer. This year we are going to be the biggest
exporter, and two-thirds of our exports have been flowing to
our beleaguered allies in Europe facing the largest war since
World War II on the continent there.
And we are beating the Qataris, the Norwegians, the
Azerbaijanis put together. And, you know, Winston Churchill
said, you know, security and energy comes from diversity,
diversity alone. And thank God our allies, both in Europe and
in Asia, in Japan and South Korea, they know they can rely on
the United States as an arsenal of energy, an ample source of
energy imports, especially when they face our geopolitical
rivals.
So it is hard to overstate when you look at history, when
you look at our current predicament and the outlook, how
important being an arsenal of energy, keeping domestic
production strong, and policies favoring exports alive.
Mr. Johnson. Well, continuing with you, Mr. McNally, back
to critical minerals and rare earths, I mean, it is hard to
believe our military relies on China for this stuff. We need to
scale up domestic production rapidly, and if you read the
reports, I do believe America can do this safer and cleaner
than anywhere else that it is currently being done.
Can you go a bit further into how environmental regulations
could be improved or changed to allow this to happen here in
the United States?
Mr. McNally. Thank you, Congressman. Congress might want to
consider establishing a National Stockpile for critical
minerals, and tax credits and other incentives to produce it
here at home. And we might want to think about restricting the
dependence, at least at some point in the future. It may be
hard to go cold turkey, but in the coming years, to require
that we get off of Chinese sources for our critical minerals
and so forth.
So I think there is a variety of things I think you and
others have been thinking of doing. Frankly, it is really just
common sense, and I think you should pursue that course and
will. Thank you.
Mr. Johnson. In a final kind of statement here, you know, I
have heard it mentioned several times, you know, to get to
these bipartisan solutions, one of the things we have to do is
not go into our respective corners on this important issue.
And words matter. And I think one of the things that if we
could just come to an agreement, the word ``transition''
doesn't mean what a lot of people out in America thinks that it
does, right?
The Biden administration uses the word ``transition'' to
talk about getting rid of fossil fuels. That is a negative way
to use that term. I mean, we can walk and chew gum at the same
time. We can increase market-driven innovation on renewables
without throwing out the bath water and destroying the three-
legged triad of oil and gas, coal, and nuclear that provide the
resilience, the reliability, the affordability, and the
sustainability to our electric grid.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Sarbanes for 5
minutes.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Unruh Cohen, I want to talk a little bit about the
profits of the oil and gas companies, which, to be very candid,
drive me insane. So we have seen, through 2021 and 2022,
ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, made a record-breaking combined
profit that is anticipated to be well over $200 billion.
They were also getting taxpayer subsidies during this time.
I will come back to that in a moment.
We also have information today that Chevron announced $36
billion of profit, and Exxon this morning announced a profit of
$56 billion.
Some of our colleagues on the other side suggest that, you
know, this is a necessary evil, it is what has to be done to
fund research and production and so forth on the part of that
industry.
But then you look at how they are using these profits, and
we see that Chevron announced that it would be spending $75
billion to buy back its own shares, and only investing $12
million into its business to increase production.
And, of course, these profits we have seen over the last
few years have come at the expense of ordinary citizens out
there being gouged at the pump. So it is clear that, at a
minimum, taxpayer subsidies to that industry don't make any
sense given the profits they are posting. Would you agree with
that?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes, I would, Mr. Sarbanes.
Mr. Sarbanes. And to the extent the Government is going to
provide investments, aren't the investments that are reflected
in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act, in clean energy, in building out our future
there--aren't those the kinds of investments that make a lot
more sense?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes, Mr. Sarbanes, that is correct. And in
our work in the select committee, you know, we argued that we
should be aligning our tax code and our investments to drive
the U.S. economy to this net-zero-carbon pollution.
Mr. Sarbanes. I mean, look, it makes--there is something to
be gained by going back and looking historically. The United
States wanted to establish its fossil fuel industry, at one
point, as premier in the world, and so the Government stepped
up as a partner to try to drive that kind of innovation, and it
was a very successful partnership.
Now we have the opportunity to go create a clean energy
future, again, lead globally. That is what we are trying to do
with the pieces of legislation that we passed.
But the model is really no different. It is just this
mature, successful, very profitable fossil-fuel industry is no
longer in need of support. If anything, we should be looking at
ways to suss out what about their profit-making enterprise is
fair to the American consumer and what is unfair, and how we
can look to different kinds of investments to stand up this
other set of opportunities.
But before we run out of time, just speculate with me on
why the industry can't seem to free itself of this alternative
reality. I would think that with the profits they are raking
in, they would want to step into that clean energy future,
using all of their assets and leverage and exercise leadership
globally, establish themselves as real players in that arena.
But for some reason their reflex, their instinct, is to
keep doubling down on the old way of doing things. What is the
problem there? What is the difficulty with the frame of
thinking?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Well, I think as you look at oil
companies, you know, you really need to examine whether they
want to be oil companies or whether they want to be energy
companies, because we need energy companies in the 21st
century, and that may be a whole range of things. And even if
they are saying they want to be energy companies and that may
mean they are diversifying their portfolio, then next you have
to look, as you mentioned, at where they are putting their
money. Is it just a little token piece of investment in other
renewables or other technologies, or, you know, are they making
a significant shift.
Mr. Sarbanes. Thanks very much.
Yield back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentleman.
And the Chair will now recognize the gentleman from the
crossroads of America, the great State of Indiana, Mr. Bucshon.
Dr. Bucshon.
Mr. Bucshon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My constituents in southwest Indiana need access to
reliable, affordable, environmentally sustainable energy. Look,
all of us want to breathe clean air, we want clean water to
drink, and we want clean land to utilize and enjoy in the
future. That is kind of universal, right?
You know, but when out visiting energy stakeholders
recently, someone explained the current idealogically driven
efforts to replace all of the fossil fuel generation with wind
and solar in this way--and I am paraphrasing--basically said,
``This is a battle between politics and science and physics,
and I can tell you which one will win out.'' And I think what
he meant by that is, we need to start looking at the facts and
get away from the idealogy.
And in that vein, I mean, Dr. Cohen, I just want to ask you
a yes-or-no question quickly: Does the U.S. Government own any
gasoline stations in America?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Did you say gasoline, gas stations?
Mr. Bucshon. Yes. Like you go to pump your gas, does the
U.S. Government own any of them?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Well, I assume DOE has some fueling----
Mr. Bucshon. Did we build them? The answer to that question
is no. And so I just don't see why the U.S. taxpayer should be
funding EV charging stations across the country. Look, I
support EVs. But why should we be doing that? Because--we are
doing that because the market won't bear it. The free market at
this point in our country won't bear it. If it in the future
does, I am all in. Let the private sector----
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Well, the U.S. Government has certainly
engaged----
Mr. Bucshon. I didn't ask you a question. I didn't ask you
a question.
So every point you make on energy issues in this hearing
depends on massive Federal Government subsidies and not the
free market. So I just wanted to point that out. I mean, we
have a disagreement, I think, between our two sides here:
Believers in the free market and let, you know, technology,
wherever it goes, all the above, or massively subsidize green
energy at the expense of energy security and national security
and cost.
So, Mr. Dabbar, I will ask you this question: Do you
believe that current investors in the energy sector are
primarily motivated--by what? Politics, physics, science? I
mean, if they are looking to invest, where--and what are the
pressures being put on them by politics?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congressman, they are still primarily
focused on profit. That is excellent for America.
Mr. Bucshon. Of course.
Mr. Dabbar. But there is pressure from investors around ESG
because of, you know, people who feel like that they need to do
a certain shift, and they do certainly get that pressure.
Mr. Bucshon. Of course they do.
And what do you think--same question, Mr. McNally.
Do you have any comments on that?
Mr. McNally. I would agree with my colleague. It is profit
return on capital.
Mr. Bucshon. Right.
Mr. McNally. And I would just point out----
Mr. Bucshon. Yes. I mean--but I will
just give you my view. But we are using idealogical
politics to try to divide--to direct investment in a free
market capitalist system, and that is a huge mistake. Let the
system work.
Mr. Dabbar, again, you mentioned in your testimony that
FERC needs to radically overhaul ISO rules to facilitate
increased baseload power.
What should we do?
Mr. Dabbar. The markets that right now try to support
baseload, the capacity markets, don't work, and more power
plants are being shut down than are being built. I think that
FERC needs to come up with new rules that specifically require
either the ISOs or maybe even going back to the utilities, like
in the old days, where they have an obligation to serve. Right
now there is no obligation to serve, and that is the challenge
in the markets right now. The individual power plant owners
don't have an obligation to serve, and the wires companies
don't have an obligation to serve other than keeping their
wires up. But supply itself, where it used to be the individual
utility had a, quote, ``obligation to serve,'' meaning to
actually make the power, have power plants, that has been
pushed out to the ISOs, and they are not incentivizing power to
actually be built.
Mr. Bucshon. Thank you for that answer.
I just want to point out someone--one of you mentioned we
shouldn't be using China as a benchmark, and let me just
partially tell you why. I mean, since 2021, they are building
33 gigawatts of coal-fired power generation, 3 times more than
the rest of the world combined. They are building 14 new power
plants since 2021 in their own country, and here--listen to
this--but they will finish another 27 abroad. They are driving
this worldwide. Of course, it is true they are trying to expand
the renewables also, no doubt.
Currently there's about 1,118 coal-fired power plants in
China, 225 in the United States. So I just want to concur with
that testimony that they are not our benchmark. And, first of
all--the other thing is we are our benchmark. We should be the
benchmark driving the global energy economy.
I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentleman.
The Chair will now go to Mr. Tonko for 5 minutes.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And before I get into my questions, Dr. Unruh Cohen, I
believe you wanted to respond to the last exchange that you
had.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Just--thank you for that, Mr. Tonko. Just
a couple of points.
You know, the physics that Democrats have been concerned
about are the physics of climate change, and we have known
since 1856, in experiments that happened in Seneca Falls, New
York, by Eunice Foote, that putting carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere warms things up.
Secondly, the Government is totally involved in many ways
in subsidizing transportation, whether it is the hundreds--you
know, the centuries-long oil subsidies, biofuel subsidies, you
know, we are involved, the U.S. Government, for many years
building highways. We are involved in transportation. This is
nothing new.
Mr. Tonko. OK. Thank you.
And, Ms. Jackson, I agree totally that we need to be
focused on energy affordability and advancing solutions to
reduce low-income Americans' energy burdens. It is a must.
In 2015, though, I would acknowledge that one in three
households reported experiencing energy insecurity, and one in
five reported reducing or foregoing necessities, such as food
or medicine, to pay an energy bill. Eleven percent of
households reported keeping their home at an unhealthy or
unsafe temperature. So this is not a new challenge.
We have and have had real problems with energy
affordability in our country, but we also have very important
programs, programs that can help alleviate these burdens, like
LIHEAP and DOE's Weatherization Assistance Program.
So, Dr. Unruh Cohen, the select committee's report
recommended significant support for DOE's Weatherization
Assistance Program. Can you explain why we should be providing
upfront funding to low-income families to support cost-
effective energy retrofits of their homes?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes, absolutely. Thank you for that
question.
Weatherization is one of the most important things we can
help low-income families deal with. The incentives for renters
sometimes precludes, you know, upgrading on energy efficiency.
And so instead of seeing their energy bills skyrocket, with
insulation, with that weatherization, they can stay warmer in
the winter and cooler in the summer and reduce their energy use
and, thus, their energy bills and insulate them also from the
volatility of electricity markets.
On a personal note, my mother benefited from this program
in Colorado, and it has meant a warmer house for her as she has
seen some deadly cold weather there in Colorado Springs lately.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
And in the 117th Congress the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
provided some $3.5 billion for the Weatherization Assistance
Program. This funding will do a lot of good. Households
receiving weatherization assistance save on average of $372
each year on their energy bills. These are real savings and
make a huge difference for families struggling to pay their
utility bills. And there are other modest changes we can make
to the program to improve it further, like allowing more
funding to go to each household to account for the increased
cost of construction materials and to allow service providers
to train and retrain a qualified workforce.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, I mentioned the Weatherization Assistance
Program funding in the IIJA, but are there ways that the
Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce energy costs for
Americans?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes, there is a whole host of additional
things in the Inflation Reduction Act that will help homeowners
be able to purchase more efficient appliances. We will see more
money flowing to State programs that help provide rebates and
upfront--you know, cutting the costs upfront as people are
purchasing those appliances, as well as just the overall
advancement of adding more clean electricity. People will see
just a general reduction in electricity costs.
My written testimony quotes some of the analyses that have
been done on the Inflation Reduction Act that gives us some
sense of the benefits to come.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
And, Mr. Dabbar, based on your testimony, you seem very
proud of the work you did at the Department of Energy to
support the development of innovative energy technologies. You
mentioned breakthroughs in battery chemistry, solar
technologies, and nuclear energy.
Can you explain what you see as the role of the Federal
agencies like DOE to partner with the private sector and
academia to support emerging energy industries?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. As we have talked in the past
about Brookhaven and elsewhere around the country, new energy
technologies, we lead the world, in New York and elsewhere. And
one thing I want to point out is that the beyond lithium ion
chemistries--lithium ion is great, great American invention,
Nobel Prize, say it again--but there are many other
technologies in the battery space that can outperform
potentially lithium ion, and that will reduce some critical
mineral requirements and imports from elsewhere around the
world and actually have them perform even better. And the
support by this Congress, many labs, DOE is leading the way to
even more innovation on that front.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
And with that, I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentleman from New York.
And now I will go to the Tar Heel State, North Carolina,
Mr. Hudson for 5 minutes.
Mr. Hudson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just say, you are doing an excellent job. You look
good with that gavel in your hands.
It is really an honor for me to serve on this committee
again this Congress. You know, our committee has a long history
of coming together to produce bipartisan solutions, and I look
forward to continuing to work with all of my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle in the coming Congress.
And I want to thank our witnesses for your time today and
for the excellent testimony you have provided.
For the last 2 years, the Biden administration has failed
to take meaningful steps to address energy production. Energy
prices have surged to historic highs because of this, and all
of our constituents have been paying the price. This winter has
been extremely difficult for my constituents, particularly
those on fixed income. Bad energy policy and the rising energy
prices and the disruptions of supply that result from that
disproportionately impact working families and lower-income
communities.
And, Ms. Jackson, I appreciate your testimony to that
effect. And I would like to extend you an opportunity to answer
the question earlier about LIHEAP and affordability for lower
income, if you would like to expand on your answer.
Ms. Jackson. Yes. I wanted to piggyback on her.
You were talking about weatherization programs. The problem
with minority communities is that they don't own their homes.
What they want is homeownership, and we have climate policies
that restrict that because it makes the building materials and
the cost of building new homes so expensive that the price
creates artificial scarcity and pushes them out of the
marketplace.
The other thing is when you talk about electric vehicles,
when you create a mandate on electric vehicles, basically what
you are doing is excluding Black people from being able to own
a private vehicle, which is very much needed so they can be
able to get jobs that are outside of their communities, because
most of those jobs don't exist where they are.
So weatherization benefits, of course, the landlord who
owns the home. Subsidies for solar panels benefits who? The
landlords who own those homes. We are renters, the majority of
us, and creating higher energy costs is increasingly keeping us
out of homeownership.
Mr. Hudson. Thank you for that answer.
Changing the direction a little bit, last month two power
substations in Moore County, North Carolina, were targeted with
vandalism, causing a multiday loss of power for nearly 45,000
residents. Besides not having heat during the coldest part of
the year, residents of Southern Pines and the surrounding
communities lost thousands of dollars as a result of spoiled
food and medicine, lost wages for workers and income for
business owners, disrupted transportation, and created a lack
of accessibility and essential services.
Now, I am proud of my neighbors for the way our community
rose up and took care of one another, but this was a tough
time.
And just 2 weeks ago another substation was intentionally
vandalized in neighboring Randolph County.
Disruptions to our energy supply are dangerous. They are
costly, and they are unacceptable, especially when more than
one-third of U.S. households reported skipping or reducing
expenses like medicine or food in order to pay their energy
bill in the first place.
I am looking forward to working with my colleagues to find
solutions for these problems and hear from stakeholders on how
we can address grid security.
I will start with you, Mr. Dabbar. How do energy
disruptions caused by a vulnerable grid impact our national
security?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congressman, it is a high degree of worry.
When we were at the department instead of the office, the CESER
office--there is a significant amount of equipment that is
produced overseas, including we found from China that they
could easily have backdoors. Because as Mr. McNally has pointed
out, energy is just in time. There is very little storage in
electricity. There's some, but it is incredibly minor compared
to demand. It is fragile. The system is very fragile because it
is very just in time.
And so small disruptions of the electrical grid can have a
massive impact. And the importance of building software, hard
support, it is an amazing vulnerability for the country.
Mr. Hudson. Well, thank you.
Mr. McNally, we have got 30 seconds left. Do you want to
chime in there?
Mr. McNally. Congressman, as a new resident of Southern
Pines, I was directly impacted by that outage. I was also
directly impacted by the brazen Russian-based attack on the
Colonial Pipeline. It is astounding we have not spent more
attention on that. That was the largest foreign attack on our
energy sector ever. The closest we came is when the Japanese
forgot to bomb the tanks at Pearl Harbor, would have set back
World War II a few years. That was the closest risk. They hit
us. They cut that vital artery that serves airports, major
airports, and military bases. We are not deterring
sufficiently. And I think we have some recommendations or we
have put in the testimony how to improve--how we manage the
next attack. I don't think it was well managed at all, sir.
Thank you.
Mr. Hudson. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I see I am out of time, but with your
indulgence I will submit in writing questions for our witnesses
on sort of what they see as the role of the Department of
Energy and the Congress in working towards this goal of grid
security.
Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Members are reminded they can submit questions
to witnesses in writing.
The Chair will now go to Ms. Clarke for 5 minutes.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and to our
ranking member, Mr. Pallone, for holding this important hearing
today.
Let me also add my voice in congratulating Chairwoman
Rodgers on being appointed as chair of this historic committee.
That said, I am deeply disappointed with the majority's
failure to explicitly include any reference to environmental
justice, racial or economic disparities, or inequality in their
document organizing the jurisdiction of this committee.
I remain steadfast in my commitment to environmental
justice and protecting the most vulnerable of our citizens. The
exclusion of a clear commitment to environmental justice
demonstrates a complete disregard for the historic
marginalization and unjust systems exacerbated by our country's
dependence on fossil fuels.
The impacts of the climate crisis, including climate
disasters like historic heatwaves, hurricanes, and flooding,
disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable among us,
historically marginalized communities of color, those living
with medical conditions that require electricity, older people,
communities where there are language barriers, pregnant women,
and children.
Far too often outdated energy sources, like dirty peaker
plants--power plants which spew twice as much carbon dioxide
and 20 times as much nitrogen oxides than regular power
plants--are most often located in low-income and communities of
color. Democrats understand that our country cannot continue to
invest in sources of energy that exacerbate environmental
injustices, pollute our communities, and rely on marks
dominated by foreign dictators.
That is why we passed the Inflation Reduction Act which,
invested a historic $369 billion in clean energy made in
America and bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. This bill,
which not a single Republican in the House voted for, included
provisions to lower energy costs, electrify homes, and so every
American, not just the wealthiest, can be part of the
transition to the clean energy community.
This transition must be both just and inclusive, which is
why we have to look back as well as forward to remediate past
injustices.
I want to thank all of our witnesses for joining us today.
My first question is to Dr. Unruh Cohen. Can you expand on
the intersections between climate change and racial injustice?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you, Congresswoman Clarke, for that
important question.
You know, unfortunately, the climate crisis hits the most
vulnerable, and that tends to be poorer communities,
communities of color, because, you know, they have had to
develop in that lower-lying area, places that are flood prone
on the coast, not to mention our Tribal communities in
particular.
So time after time we see those communities and people who
are least able to adapt really being hit. I mean, what we saw
in the U.S. Virgin Islands and in Puerto Rico now on multiple
times, I mean, it just illustrates within our own country the
challenges that we face.
And then when you look globally, you know, you see
countries that have contributed just a minimal amount to the
warming that we have experienced feeling the huge impact from
the, you know, warming that we have already seen.
Ms. Clarke. So as natural disasters caused by climate
change continue to increase in frequency and severity, we must
invest in resilience in low-income communities and communities
of color so that our homes and critical infrastructure are
prepared for when the next superstorm, wildfire, flood, or
heatwave strikes.
That is why I have partnered with my colleague
Congresswoman Barragan to introduce the Energy Resilient
Communities Act in the last Congress.
So, Dr. Unruh Cohen, could you explain the role of
distributed energy sources, like microgrids powered by
renewable energy, in building out our Nation's resilience to
climate change disasters?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes. As I said earlier that, you know,
rooftop solar and other--in microgrids in a normal day
contribute, help lower costs for the electricity. When disaster
strikes, they can be isolated from the grid and continue to be
able to provide power and electricity to communities as they
are confronting, you know, some terrible times.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to ask for unanimous consent to
submit this report from the American Public Health Association
entitled ``Energy Justice and Climate Change: Key Concepts for
Public Health'' into the record.
Mr. Duncan. Without objection.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. Clarke. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentlelady.
The Chair will now go to Michigan. It must be cold up
there. It is also known as the Mitten State. Mr. Wahlberg for 5
minutes.
Mr. Wahlberg. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Three degrees this
morning.
I appreciate the panel being here today. I wish we had more
time to talk about some reality issues as well, and I
appreciate the reality that has been brought.
Recently utilities in my State have announced--and in my
district--that they will be closing some of our coal power
plants even faster than initially planned. While I support
cleaning up our environment and diversifying our power supply,
we need to ensure that it is done intelligently, that it does
not come at the expense of reliability, cost, or jobs. And did
I say reliability?
In some areas the coal plants are being replaced by clean
natural gas, which has cleaned up the world, or at least
cleaned up our country, and could clean up the world if we
allowed it to take place and pushed it. In others, wind and
solar will take up the mantle. This summer there were already
capacity shortfall concerns in the region. I don't know if you
have ever been to Michigan in January, but I worry that solar
and wind just won't cut it.
Mr. McNally, companies seem to be in a race to transition
to green energy. Meanwhile, demands for energy is growing,
especially with the Biden administration's push for EV adoption
and electrification. And I am not sure these companies even
believe in this race, but they lack the courage to stand up to
the--I guess my issue--the green religion.
How is this transition impacting reliability across the
country? And should we expect concerns about the brownouts and
blackouts to grow?
Mr. McNally. Thank you, Congressman.
May I suggest there is an absence of just core knowledge.
If you think from Moses until Harriet Tubman, five millennia,
the fastest a human being could travel on land was a horse. And
the reason we transitioned from horses to cars and planes was
not a PCORS policy. It wasn't central planning. It was a human
innovation to solve kind of cravings we had. Actually,
illumination is where oil started.
And so we have to be very wary when we try to think that
government central planning can effectuate a rapid and quick
energy transition. The truth is energy transitions happen very
rarely, very slowly, and due to innovation and so forth. And we
see government get involved, you have unintended consequences.
The earliest version of the corporate average fuel economy
programs, the National Academy of Sciences determined about 20
years ago it was inadvertently killing people by forcing
automakers to downsize and downward deplete. We had an
inadvertent, kind of a human cost. We were trading blood for
oil out of a well-intentioned policy to conserve oil.
So my recommendation, sir, would be that everyone--all of
us, me included--study the oil history and energy history, have
humility, learn the facts, learn about energy transitions, and
be very careful when calling for sweeping government
intervention in energy markets that sustain our quality of
life.
Mr. Wahlberg. ``I am from the Government. I am here to help
you,'' right?
Fermi and Cook nuclear plants are in my district, one on
Lake Michigan, one on Lake Erie. The last nuclear reactor we
built in the U.S. came on line in 2016, and it took 40 years to
get it from conception to operation. Meanwhile, China is now
the world's fastest expanding nuclear power producer. We need
to reevaluate our country's approach to this technology.
Mr. Dabbar, the cost and timeline to jump through all of
the regulatory hoops seems to discourage investment in new
traditional nuclear reactors. I get that. How can small modular
reactors reshape U.S. investment in nuclear power, or can they?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congressman, in theory, small nuclear SMRs
are similar to the Navy reactors. I ran a Navy reactor. They
are built on time and on budget. It is much more likely that,
if something is contained, can be produced in a central
factory, it is going to be on time and on budget.
That is not good enough. I ran the environmental program at
DOE. I ran a very large nuclear business. It was not on time
and on budget for a long time. When we left, it was back on
time and on budget. People didn't believe that could happen.
And so part of it is good technology, but part of it is
culture, transparency, and running projects well. And that is
a--I am going to do a forum on that at Columbia on how to make
certain we are able to do that in nuclear going forward.
Mr. Wahlberg. I wish you good success.
And with that, I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. I thank the gentleman.
Members are advised votes are going to be called about
1:30. We will try to get to two more, one on each side.
Mr. Cardenas from California is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. Cardenas. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I grew up with freeways and power plants surrounding my
community. As a child I remember not being able to go outside
and play because of smog alerts. That was normal for us back
then. It has improved because of government responsibility,
both State, local, Federal, et cetera. That is the responsible
way that government should be involved in trying to manage what
is good for the American people, not just consider it to be a
laissez-faire, let the markets take care of it themselves.
By the way, the oil industry in America is very subsidized,
so it is not necessarily a free market system, hasn't been for
a long time and isn't today.
Since I was a kid, science has shown that realities of
climate change have worsened. The fact is that communities like
mine have felt the brunt of climate change intimately because
we have been on the frontlines unjustly paying the price for
the--and also for the power plants on all sides of my--excuse
me--on my side of town, but not on the other side of town,
while certain companies and oil companies get richer.
Unfortunately, my Republican colleagues are beholden to the
special interests of the fossil fuel industry and continue to
fight for the expansion of oil, gas, and coal. Expanding our
Nation's dependency on fossil fuels doesn't strengthen our
economy or national security or our response to climate change.
It hurts our economy and burdens the American people unjustly.
Democrats understand that, when we don't prioritize our
climate and health, it hurts the American people and leads to
higher prices in energy, at the gas pump. It makes our national
situation vulnerable to our adversaries and, once more, it has
devastating long-term effects.
That is why both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the
Inflation Reduction Act included critical investments in clean
energy infrastructure and grid resilience.
In your testimony, Dr. Cohen, you referred to the IPCC's
sixth assessment report being a Code Red for humanity. And I
note that the damages that stem from the climate crisis will
disproportionately harm disadvantaged communities.
Can you elaborate on why it is necessary to prioritize
equity and justice if we truly want to void the worst
devastation?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for that question, Congressman.
And, you know, I think it goes back to your childhood
experience. Until we had government standards and safeguards
for public health, you know, communities like you, kids like
you were growing up, you know, surrounded by smog and other
things.
Mr. McNally made a point about horsepower, and I think it
would just be important for this committee to remember that the
U.S. automobile industry was still using whale oil as a
lubricant until we banned the import of it in 1971.
So there are important reasons for the Government to
intervene, and equity and addressing environmental injustice is
a criminal one right now. We spent a lot of time on the select
committee thinking and recommending we integrate that. I think
we are in a place where we have turned that corner, and every
climate and energy bill really needs to have that environmental
justice and equity lens.
The Biden administration is moving forward on that with
their Justice40, and I think, you know, Congress needs to
continue to support those type of programs.
Mr. Cardenas. When was the EPA created? Wasn't it early
1970s?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. It was, yes, in the 1970s. Yes.
Mr. Cardenas. And has the EPA been a good impact on
improvement of our environment in our country, or is it
something that maybe should have never come about?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I think the EPA and its mission to protect
public health and welfare has been incredibly critical to our
economic development. We have seen the U.S. have phenomenal
economic growth since the 1970s, as well as cuts in air and
water pollution. We need to do more as we learn more, but we
can absolutely protect every American's health even while we
grow our economy.
Mr. Cardenas. One of my colleagues talked about foreign
attacks, but yet at the same time, I think they called it the
Freeze that happened in Texas. And that turned out to be not
only deadly but also, beyond that, long-term shocking for
families that were paying hundreds of dollars a month for their
energy bills and then found themselves at $5,000 and $10,000 or
more in energy bills.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes.
Mr. Cardenas. Was that an attack from another country, or
was that Mother Nature?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. That was extreme cold and the natural gas
industry in Texas not being prepared for it.
Mr. Cardenas. Or not being regulated very well either?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I think they could do better, speaking as
a native Texan.
Mr. Cardenas. OK. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I yield back.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you to the gentleman.
The Chair will now go to the Peach State, even though we
grow more peaches than you do in my district, Mr. Carter from
Georgia, 5 minutes.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I want to take this opportunity to begin with to
congratulate the Chairwoman, and I am excited about what is
ahead for us on this committee in the next 2 years, in this
session, and I want to congratulate her.
I also want to congratulate her on the choice for the first
full hearing that we have. What better bipartisan subject could
we have than American energy? And I think, you know, we all
agree that we want America to be a positive energy leader in
the world. So kudos on choosing this, and it is extremely
important.
Mr. Dabbar, you mentioned the fact that we want to return
to American energy dominance and that it is very important. And
this would require allowing America to unleash all of our
energy potential, and we are certainly not doing that at this
point.
When we talk about energy security globally, we have got to
be talking about reliability. It is paramount. We understand
that. And I think that is probably why we haven't heard more
about global power relying on solar or wind, because they are
just not reliable at this point. But nuclear is, because it is
baseload. It is 24/7. It is clean. It is everything we want.
And, you know, it is exciting to think about the future as
far as the innovations go, the advancements that we have seen
in fusion, permitting SMRs. We just talked about SMRs. I am
excited about that, and I think people should be excited about
it.
But let me ask you this: In the context of global energy
security, when we are talking about global energy security, how
important is it for us to have a domestic--a robust domestic
nuclear energy to compete with adversaries like China and
Russia around the world?
Mr. Dabbar. So our energy costs have been the lowest,
amongst the lowest in the world, including in electricity. That
is a great sucking sound of industry, and we are seeing the
opposite of that in Germany at the moment, right: high-risk
energy policies, high prices. Their industry is moving out, and
it is great. They are moving to America. It is actually a big
strength of what we have as a result of all of that.
And so that is--energy security drives the economy, drives
us as a nation. It is also about us in the world. Once again, I
am making reference to all the veterans here. We fought a lot
of wars. A lot of wars were around energy. The whole Kuwait War
was, frankly, about them invading and about energy.
And our ability--and with all due respect, when we move
from 4.8 million barrels a day of crude oil to 12.9, we came
off--if you just look at the numbers, we came off of energy
risk from OPEC. That is just numbers. We imported less from
OPEC. We are less exposed to OPEC. And the energy prices were
set in the Permian Basin for the world, and that is actually
something driving innovation, driving costs down. That allowed
us to have flexibility that is incredible.
Mr. Carter. Good. And thank you for that.
And I read with interest your--the article that you
coauthored in The Hill about what is at risk due to Russia's
nuclear power dominance. And, you know, it was interesting. It
was also alarming, alarming that, you know, we have got to
address this with our allies, and it is something we have got
to work together with our allies.
You also mentioned about Europe just then. I had the
opportunity to go to Europe with the Conservative Climate
Caucus, and what we witnessed there is a situation where they
have allowed their policies to get ahead of their innovation.
They are shutting down nuclear plants and relying on wind and
solar when they are not ready for it yet, when--we all want to
go to renewables. We all want to do that, but we have got to do
it in such a way that we don't allow our policies to get ahead
of our innovation, and that is exactly what they have done.
But, again, the points that you bring up in this article
that you coauthored, I am--they are alarming, and I appreciate
you bringing it too.
I want to go quickly to Ms. Jackson.
Ms. Jackson, you bring up some great points, and I had the
opportunity to read an article that you wrote as well about the
minority exploitation game called environmental justice. And
you mentioned in there about Ford Motor Company and about how
they have $60 billion for--in the IRA, there was $60 billion
for environmental justice programs about the size of Ford
Motors who employs over 200,000 people.
You know, all of this money that we put into the IRA--or
was put into the IRA--I am not saying we, but was put in the
IRA, it could have been used for better ways. Can you give us
an example?
Ms. Jackson. Yes, absolutely. You know. The biggest
injustice of environmental justice is poverty and the fact that
we are using environmental justice money to--that is going to
lobbyists and never going into the community to create economic
stability. It is not creating any business districts, not
industrial parks, nothing that is going to improve the lives of
those individuals.
That money was equivalent to 2,000--the Tulsa Black Wall
Streets, we could have built 2,000 Black Wall Streets for the
equivalent of that environmental justice money. In other words,
we wouldn't be having a conversation about poverty right now
because all of our Black communities would be thriving. But,
instead, we are going to get a few retrofits, a few windows,
and nothing is going to change about the economic condition.
Mr. Carter. Thank you. Thank you for that.
And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Duncan. Thank you.
I apologize for the Members and the witnesses, but votes
have been called on the floor, so we are going to recess until
10 minutes after the close of the second vote. There are two
votes. The witnesses can take care of business, and we will be
back 10 minutes after the close of the second vote.
And the committee stands in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. Duncan. All right. The subcommittee will come back to
order.
In the order of things, Dr. Ruiz is next from California, 5
minutes.
Dr. Ruiz. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to focus today on the question of reliability. As an
emergency medicine physician, I know how important reliable
electricity is for powering critical medical equipment and
preventing lifesaving medicine from spoiling. And one of the
best ways to increase reliability, expand our Nation's power
grid, and move towards a carbon-free energy system is to
dramatically increase the battery storage capacity on our
Nation's grids.
Lithium batteries are a critical component of electrical
vehicles, but they are also an obvious solution to securing our
clean energy future, while also providing the grid reliability
that we need. In fact, batteries are already being used to
increase reliability on the power grid.
In my district, California's 25th District, the Crimson
Energy Storage in Blythe is currently the second largest energy
storage project in the world, constructed by union labor,
including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers,
I believe also the Teamsters, powering vital medical equipment,
electric vehicles, and so much more.
Our country needs more batteries and more batteries storage
projects like this. Batteries need lithium, and lithium is
found at the Salton Sea in Imperial Valley, California. In my
district the Salton Sea has a massive supply of raw materials
that can power a clean energy future. The Salton Sea has the
fifth largest deposit of lithium in the world, and it has the
potential to supply the lithium needed not only for electric
vehicles but also the batteries that can make our electric
grids resilient.
Lithium Valley, as we like to call it back home, is the key
to unlock our clean energy future, cement the U.S.'s
leadership, secure our energy independence, strengthen our
battery supply chain, and protect our national security.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, in your testimony you mention that China
has a head start on the rest of the world in clean energy. I am
sure you know that the head start includes both the chemical
supply of lithium and the manufacturing of lithium batteries.
In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, the United
States is eighth in lithium production in the world, and China
has 60 percent of the lithium refining capacity in the world.
Can you talk about the effects of the United States lagging
in producing a lithium supply and in manufacturing batteries?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question, Dr. Ruiz.
And let me just underscore the importance of reliability
first and say, you know, wind and solar availability is
predictable. And so when you couple that with battery
resources, we start to have a full spectrum 24/7, our
opportunity to provide electricity to the grid from renewables.
To do that, you are right, we need more lithium. And I
know, you know, there are projects in Salton Sea and around the
country that are, you know, getting their permits, moving
forward, getting investments. And I think, you know, the
investments that we see in the Infrastructure Act and in the
Inflation Reduction Act are going to drive that further.
The additional good news when it comes to the grid is we
actually can take--when an EV has used their batteries and they
are no longer great for that, you can put them in ways and use
them on the grid.
Dr. Ruiz. Yes.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. So there is a lot of energy that----
Dr. Ruiz. So in terms of China--us importing the majority
of batteries, et cetera, lithium from other countries, we all
know too well that it is dangerous when our Nation is dependent
on foreign supply chains, because if a foreign country decides
to block exports or favor its own domestic companies for
whatever geopolitical reasons, our clean energy revolution is
stopped dead in its track.
That means we need strong domestic supply chains that start
in communities like in the Imperial Valley. That means making
sure companies don't simply come in, extract community
resources, and turn it into batteries elsewhere. And that means
that those jobs are filled by local workers, and those benefits
come home to our communities.
All of this is more important than ever to ensure that the
benefits of this lithium goes back to the Salton Sea, which
could become a worse environmental disaster with reduced waters
flowing from the Colorado River and the exposed playa putting
fine particular dust in the air that can affect people's lungs,
blood, et cetera.
So the Inflation Reduction Act will help us build a strong
supply chain for a clean energy future here at home.
In what ways do you expect recently passed legislation like
the IRA to strengthen our domestic supply chains and encourage
domestic manufacturing of batteries in the U.S.?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I think we are already seeing the results
of that. I mean, of that $90 billion in investment that I
mentioned in my testimony, a lot of that is electric vehicles.
I think we just had one today that maybe I didn't get to
incorporate. So almost every day there is a new announcement.
Mr. Duncan. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize myself for 5 minutes.
I want to thank the panelists for being here. It has been
very informative.
I approach energy in two broad categories: transportation
fuels, which is fossil fuels and electricity for EVs, and then
baseload power generation. And in baseload power generation,
you have nuclear power, which can't be ramped up and ramped
down very quickly or easily, so it remains constant.
And then you have renewables as part of that energy metrics
as they mix everything for transmission. Renewables come on
line when the sun comes up or the wind is blowing. It could be
a climatic event that makes solar go offline or they can see it
starting to climb, or it might be the sun setting.
And so when that happens, they have got to fill the gap to
make sure that the baseload power is constant for our
consumers. That is our constituents' homes, that is
manufacturing, that is municipalities.
And so what works in that gap-filling area is called hydro,
if it is available, and natural gas. And so we have got to make
sure that natural gas is a big part of that. And what I hear
from a lot of my utilities is that we have a pipeline issue in
this country, that our pipelines are about at capacity for the
amount of gas that is drawn off of it. And if we don't meet
that future demand, the gas isn't going to be available.
So I wish the infrastructure bill would have included more
gas pipeline permitting and projects, but unfortunately it
didn't. It focused a lot on EVs and charging stations and all
that.
And look, as Mr. Dabbar said, I like wind and solar. I
think it is groovy, and it ought to be part of the matrix,
absolutely. But I also know about what works to provide that
baseload power that our manufacturers need: always on, always
ready, always available 24/7, 365 baseload of power.
And right at Christmas Eve in South Carolina, even we just
about had a Texas event because of some of those situations
where wind and solar wasn't possible. Coal-fired power plants
take 3 days to crank up to thermal capacity to meet energy
needs. Natural gas is 30 minutes. So it has got to be a big
part of that.
Pipelines is the new word from ``The Graduate.'' It was
plastics in the movie ``The Graduate.'' It is pipelines today.
So I want to focus on nuclear. Nuclear energy must be a
part of our energy matrix moving forward. Unfortunately, other
countries are outpacing us. Adversaries like Russia and China
have continued to develop and invest in their nuclear
industries. In just the past few years, China has brought 21
reactors online--many of them are advanced reactor designs--and
31 plants are under construction.
In this country we have got to focus on advanced nuclear or
small modular reactors, thorium reactors, things that work,
things that could be walkaway safe.
Unfortunately, lack of development in U.S. industry is in
large part due to regulatory and licensing structure that
disincentivizes private-sector investment. I have got a piece
of legislation we filed last Congress we hope to reintroduce,
if we haven't already, that expedite the permitting process for
nuclear power plants. If you have got a proven design that
works, we can replicate that, do the geology, make sure that
there ares no things there with the earth and earthquakes and
other things, that it can be sited there, the water source
there for cooling, but replicate that in an expedited
permitting process. Let's gets nuclear power online as we
continue to look at SMRs and other advanced nuclear reactors.
I was glad to see an article this week that the first SMR
was actually permitted to come on line and start producing
energy as a test case. Once we see that it works--heck, it has
worked in the United States Navy for, what, 50, 60, 70 years--
it works. Modular reactors work.
So those are some of the things that I believe in.
Mr. Dabbar, we, of course, don't have a government-
controlled energy sector. We need to incentivize private-sector
investment. What are some of the high-level suggestions to
modernize the nuclear regulations of this country to invite
innovation, to invite growth, to encourage exports of nuclear
technology and lead, once again, this globe in nuclear energy?
Mr. Dabbar. So, as you pointed out, Congressman, the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission is extremely conservative, as you
know. You interview regulators all the time. Over the course of
time, they get more and more conservative because they don't
want anything overturned in the courts. And as a result, it is
drug out, you know, tremendously as a result of that kind of
increased view of, like, let's review it 10 times to Sunday.
So I think any sort of, you know, legislation that might
allow them to facilitate that, to make it--to get them focused,
I think that is important, because that's where we have ended
up.
The other thing that I think we should look at doing is
taking a look at some of the Federal power entities like WAPA,
like Bonneville, and so on, and take a look at them willing to
contract as like a first customer for some of these new
reactors. So I think any authorization for DOE or TVA or others
to be a first customer of those plants, I think that will
provide a big jolt for the industry.
Mr. Duncan. Yes, that is spot on. This committee will have
an RCN to talk about those things, ask some of these same
questions, also look at closing the fuel cycle and possibly
recycling of spent fuel at commercial reactors, because there
is a uranium concern and a fuel concern.
So my time has expired, so I will now go to Mr. Peters from
California.
Mr. Dabbar. Congressman, 5 seconds.
Mr. Duncan. Five seconds.
Mr. Dabbar. The Savannah River National Lab proposed to me
a recycling plant when I was Under Secretary, and I think you
should be talking to them about their idea, because it is
exactly what you just said.
Mr. Duncan. We are. And there are great sites like Hanford,
Idaho Flats, and others across the country that can play a part
in that.
Mr. Peters from California is recognized for 5.
Mr. Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Our path to true energy security is not to double down in
oil and gas. The oil embargo in the 1970s, the Gulf War in the
1990s, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2008 financial crisis,
COVID, Putin's war on Ukraine all contributed to a roller
coaster of harmful oil price volatility under both Republican
and Democratic Presidential leadership. It is essentially what
Mr. McNally testified to.
And despite the pain of these price fluctuations,
Republicans continue to propose the same false solution--more
oil and gas--and that will only lead to more price uncertainty
and pain as we have seen at the gas pump recently and as San
Diegoans are seeing on their natural gas bills today.
The solution long term is clean innovative energy
technologies, which are becoming cheaper than fossil fuels and
produce energy domestically without reliance on foreign
adversaries. It is not radical. It is smart. Even Texas takes
40 percent of its power from noncarbon sources, and it is not
because Texas is against oil and gas. It is because it is the
sensible thing to do.
I am proud that we provided significant funding in the
117th Congress to build this clean and more secure energy
future, but I want to talk today about the 118th Congress.
Something that we haven't talked about much today is speed,
because we can have all the money in the world, but we will
still fail if we don't act faster.
Look at high-voltage electric transmission lines. According
to research from Princeton, 80 percent of the projected
emissions reductions from the Inflation Reduction Act depend on
building transmission faster.
Berkeley Lab found that there are currently enough wind,
solar, and storage projects in the pipeline to power nearly 85
percent of our economy, but 80 percent of those projects could
be canceled due to insufficient transmission.
According to Jesse Jenkins at Princeton, the current power
grid took 150 years to build. To get to net-zero emissions by
2050, we have to triple in size in the next 30 years. That
means 200,000 miles of new transmission lines by the 2030s,
200,000. Over the last decade, we have built just 1,800 miles
per year because each one takes more than 10 years to
complete--and 7 of those 10 years, seven of those 10 years--are
just for planning and permitting.
Other countries are doing it just fine. According to the
Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, North America has built just
7 gigawatts interregional transmission. Less than half of that
is the U.S. So let's say we are about 3 or 4. South America is
22, Europe is 44, China is 260.
In the 1970s, our environmental priority was to stop dirty,
destructive projects. The National Environmental Policy Act, or
NEPA, was designed to require public input and to ensure
Federal agencies assess the environmental impacts of proposed
Federal projects and their alternatives before they made
decisions. And we have NEPA to thank for a great deal of
environmental presentation, but its implementation is
inevitably slow, with documents that are thousands of pages
long, reviews that take more than up to 4 years to complete,
and NEPA is also the most litigated environmental statute, with
lawsuits dragging on for more than a decade.
And the simple threat of litigation can prevent new
projects, including the climate action projects I have named.
We must build to beat our climate goals. Climate action is
about building things, not stopping things. To save the planet,
we must build transmission, utility-scale solar power,
passenger rail, hydrogen pipelines, direct-air carbon capture,
bike lanes, tons of in-fill housing. And, ironically, many of
the laws intended 50 years ago to protect the environment could
undermine our climate action.
Some claim that NEPA isn't the problem or that it can't be
touched. But as someone who has practiced law in this field, I
must say I don't believe we can sustain project-by-project
litigation on climate initiatives and still achieve climate
action with the time and the money that we have.
These excessive process requirements effectively inflict a
punitive tax on clean energy. And fixing laws to serve the
public good, that is our job. We can achieve high environmental
standards with less time.
NEPA was signed into law in 1970. One hundred sixty-five of
our congressional colleagues were not even yet born. We are as
far in time from 1970 as 1970 was from 1917. This is an old
law, folks. We are charged to update it for our times, and that
is OK, because it didn't come from Moses on tablets. It came
from people just like us who had IBM Selectric typewriters.
Excessive process is not the only climate challenge, but it
is one undeniably. And those of us committed to climate action
who say that it is the greatest threat we face, we are called
on to rethink cumbersome requirements that are decelerating
clean energy products.
To unlock a future that doesn't depend on greenhouse gas
energy, we have to update our environmental laws to make it
easier, not harder, to build. I encourage all of us to engage
in a constructive process with the White House, with the
communities of interest to come up with a real bipartisan
process to enact sensible permitting of forms, deliver energy
security and environmental protection for the American people.
I look forward to working with all of you on that, and I
yield back.
Mr. Johnson [presiding]. I thank the gentleman for yielding
back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Palmer from the great State of
Alabama for 5 minutes.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to start off by talking about how these Green New
Deal policies impact people. Right now there are about 2
billion people around the world who have little to no access to
reliable energy. And it reminds me of a quote from Thomas
Hobbes' book ``The Leviathan'' when he described life at that
time as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Just to give you an idea of what having access to reliable
energy means, the World Bank reported that since 1980, energy
consumption has doubled. It was half what it is today in 1980,
and extreme poverty was 4 times higher then than it is today.
Life expectancy because of China's expansion of their
energy grid--and, obviously, it is mostly coal-fired power
plants, but their life expectancy has increased by 10 years.
This is not just--I mean, I worked for two international
engineering companies. You are going to hear me repeat that
multiple times. I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to
generate power. I worked in everything from refuse energy to
aerospace, different projects. And I will just be honest with
you--and it is not just my opinion. There was a report from the
Electric Power and Research Institute that basically says that
this study shows clean electricity plus direct electrification
and efficiency are not sufficient themselves to choose net-zero
economywide emissions.
In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels,
hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of
fossil technologies, any of that is going to get us to net zero
by 2050. That is a Wall Street Journal article describing that
policy--that research paper.
Ms. Jackson, you and I have had this discussion before. I
grew up dirt poor. My dad had an eighth-grade education. He
built a house that I grew up in. He only finished what he could
pay for. Unlike the Federal Government, he didn't spend more
than he had. But we heated the house with a coal heater that
sat in the kitchen, and in the wintertime we slept under about
a foot of blankets that my mom and grandmother and great aunt
quilted.
What does it mean to people when they see their power bills
going through the roof and they are having to make decisions on
how much food they can afford to buy and still be able to
adequately heat or cool their home?
Ms. Jackson. You know, one of the things that we always
advocate for, because I hear a lot of people talking about
climate change policies, but I have never heard anybody talking
about actually how many degrees it is going to save.
If climate change policies are more harmful than what we
are trying to save, then we shouldn't be enacting it. One of
the things we advocate for is that you do an economic impact
study on the lives of the people that it is going to affect,
because the climate change policies right now are more harmful
for low-income and minority families than the climate change--
than what climate change is supposed to be doing.
Mr. Palmer. Well, we are hurting people.
Ms. Jackson. We are hurting real people. I get calls every
day from people that don't have my political lean, asking for
help, Black people, NAACP people, Urban League people, saying,
``We need help.'' They can't afford to pay these bills, but
nobody is listening.
Mr. Palmer. What gets me is, we keep hearing report after
report from Europe, from United Kingdom, about the number of
people dying as a result of excess winter deaths because they
can't adequately heat their homes in the wintertime.
We see that here as well. And people can't afford to heat
their homes adequately and still afford their medicine. It
really impacts people with respiratory disease, cardiovascular,
that sort of thing, and it is almost like my colleagues across
the aisle think this is collateral damage and it is acceptable
to achieve what clearly they are not going to achieve by 2050.
Ms. Jackson. Yes.
Mr. Palmer. So, Mr. McNally, I want to ask you, I want to
pivot now, China is building coal-fired plants all over the
world. There was a report came out last year, last fall, that
they had built 14 coal-fired plants. They are building out
infrastructure around the world, developing allies, and yet we
are going to make ourselves dependent on China for our energy
production. Does that make any sense to you?
Mr. McNally. Congressman Palmer, if there is one area,
perhaps, of bipartisan agreement, I think we are all clear-
eyed--or hopefully are--that China views energy and the
transition and dominance of both the power and the
transportation aspects of energy as a way to replace the United
States as the world's preeminent power. It is a militarized,
superpower strategy, and we ought to see it as such and build
our own clean energy here.
Mr. Palmer. Mr. Chairman, that time went by quick, but my
time is expired, so I yield back.
Mr. Johnson [presiding]. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from New
Hampshire, Ms. Kuster, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Kuster. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
Pallone, and our Energy and Environment subcommittee leaders
for holding this important hearing. I want to start by taking a
quick moment to congratulate Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers
on making history as the first woman to chair this great
committee.
While we may represent districts on opposite sides of the
country, our constituents rely on similar energy resources,
including hydropower, and that is why I look forward to working
with all of you to unlock the full potential of hydropower to
provide affordable, reliable, and clean energy to communities
from the Pacific Northwest to the Northeast.
It is important today to remind ourselves that Democrats
and Republicans share many of the same values when it comes to
our Nation's energy resources. We believe that all Americans
should have access to low-cost, reliable energy that does not
depend on foreign resources or foreign technologies.
While we may have our policy disagreements, if we focus on
these shared goals, I believe we can find enough common ground
to deliver on.
Last Congress, we passed historic legislation to invest in
our country's clean energy future and put the U.S. back on
track to lead the clean energy revolution.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, IIJA, included
approximately $800 million in investments in our Nation's dams,
including to upgrade our electrical grid for hydropower energy.
In his testimony, Mr. Dabbar spoke about the importance of
FERC prioritizing baseload energy, and I agree: Hydropower is
the baseload power that we need.
With black start capabilities, and the potential for
additional energy reserves through pumped hydropower storage
technologies, hydropower can provide additional resilience to
our energy grid.
I wanted to ask you, Dr. Unruh Cohen, can you speak to the
ability of clean energy resources and technologies such as
hydropower and hydropower storage, to bolster the resilience of
our grid as we transition to clean energy?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman,
and hydropower has been an incredibly important power source
for the history of our country. I mean, it was the first power
source for our industrial work up in the New England and the
Northeast. And it continues to be critical.
And I think the important thing to consider for this
committee, and especially looking at the investments that we
have made in dams over the past few Congresses, is the water
cycle is very sensitive to climatic change, and so that is--we
are going to see challenges to hydropower.
Unfortunately, our friends in the West are really seeing
that challenge now with the Colorado River level, but it
impacts in the Northeast too.
And so, in order to continue to provide that incredibly
important clean energy from hydropower and from pump storage,
we really need to look at the investments and make sure we are
maximizing the clean power that we are getting from our dams
around the country.
Ms. Kuster. Yes. And I just would add, this pumped hydro
storage, I was out in Mr. Curtis' district in Utah and meeting
with a company there that is interested in pumped hydro
storage, and how that can help with baseload and with peak and
how we manage that.
So my time is limited, but I will just say it is important
that this committee does not overlook the potential of our
Nation's hydropower resources to deliver abundant, reliable,
clean energy. It exists. We have 90,000 dams. Some of them can
be retrofitted with turbines.
So I remain committed to pursuing holistic and
comprehensive policies to bolster our hydropower-generating
capacity and to ensure our Nation's energy independence, and I
hope that will be on a bipartisan basis with our committee.
I stand ready and willing to work with each of my
colleagues here today to make good on these promises for the
American people, and, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentlewoman yields back, and I thank you.
The Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Dr.
Dunn for 5 minutes.
Mr. Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I saw an interesting fact
yesterday. The EIA projects a 50 percent increase in world
energy use by 2050. The U.S. should be the global leader in
innovative technologies to maximize efficient energy
production, be at the forefront of filling that demand.
Entrepreneurial spirit drives innovation, but overly
proscriptive policies from the Biden White House are drowning
American innovators with burdensome regulation. This puts our
economy and our national security at risk, as Mr. McNally
pointed out a few minutes ago.
This is why I will be focusing on combating the
administration's radical energy policies that destroy American
leadership in the energy space.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on policies
that will unleash American innovation and return America to the
forefront of energy production and unlock resources for future
generations.
I have to pause for a moment to say, Ms. Jackson, it is
great to see you again. We have talked a lot just recently. I
hope to see you in Tallahassee before too long, or your team at
least.
But a first question, Mr. McNally, I am going to give you
this question, and Mr. Dabbar, I would like you to answer after
him.
American innovation is driven first and foremost by ideas.
Those innovative ideas then must be supported by efficient
allocation of capital investment. This administration's
policies and the private-sector ESG ideology are stymieing
rational capital investments in the energy sector, specifically
oil and gas but also in renewables and in the nuclear field.
Capital allocators direct their investments to renewable
technologies because they are supported by favorable government
subsidies. Mr. McNally, do you feel that the current
administration's policies and the ESG investing are obstacles
to American innovation and development in energy?
Mr. McNally. I do. I think that the administration is
signaling that it doesn't want to see capital flow into oil and
gas production at a time, as I mentioned earlier, when we are
in the foothills of what I believe will be a multiyear boon
cycle where we are going to want every drop we can.
They are doing that on based on the idea that we need to
enforce disclosure, or raise the cost of capital based on
carbon and climate change and so forth. As I stated in some of
the papers I will be submitting with my testimony, we need a
sound and serious climate policy starting with depoliticized
science, cost-benefit analyses, legislation, not regulatory
rules and courts.
Well, we should do that first, and then, if as a result of
that, we need to start telling capital where to go and where to
deploy, maybe we consider it down the road. But that is----
Mr. Dunn. You got to be careful. You cautioned us on that
earlier, be careful how you ready-shoot-aim, right, thing.
Mr. Dabbar?
Mr. Dabbar. Dr. Dunn, I have always had a view that the
best place for Federal investment is in discovery and new
innovation that is too far away from cash flow for the venture
capital community and the corporate community to invest.
The private sector, luckily, in this country is still
vastly larger than the Federal Government, and the amount of
capital is widely available for things that can be applied. And
the better use for Federal money is where the private sector
doesn't see anything quite yet to invest in, and therefore
discovery, science, and innovation in new things is more
efficient for the Federal spending.
Mr. Dunn. OK. Very good. And on that subject, Mr. Dabbar, I
am going to ask you to spend the rest of this time opining on
what we can do to make America a global leader in the nuclear
energy technology. And this is a pointed question because we
have a large gathering of the nuclear industry this evening, so
take it away.
Mr. Dabbar. I think the advanced development reactor
program that was passed here a few years ago has really
triggered a lot. There is a lot of excitement within the
industry right now, and I think that is moving along very well.
So I think--I think Congress should be--has done a lot with
that. I think----
Mr. Dunn. Is there more we should do?
Mr. Dabbar. I think that trying to find--that the U.S.
system, trying to be maybe a first customer of some of that
power, and once again, I said a little bit earlier, maybe TVA
or WAPA or Bonneville should maybe look at being a first
customer for some of the power coming off of those plants.
Mr. Dunn. True. And we have talked about it, using DoD a
number of times.
Mr. Dabbar. Or DoD certainly.
Mr. Dunn. Yes. So I like these ideas. Thank you all, all
the panelists, for coming.
Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from Delaware, Ms.
Blunt Rochester, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Congratulations to all of the new Members and congratulations
to Chairwoman McMorris Rodgers, and thank you to all of our
witnesses.
I have been proud to support and vote for the Bipartisan
Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which made
historic investments in our clean energy future.
These investments not only help to expand domestic clean
energy, they also help to diversify our renewable energy
sources, which is a key to building a resilient and sustainable
clean energy system.
Before I start with my questions, I would also like to note
that I was pleased to see in the testimony of Ms. Jackson and
also hear from Dr. Unruh in her testimony a positive recitation
about former Energy Subcommittee Bobby Rush's, his work on
increasing diversity in the energy industry. This is really
important to me.
And while I was disappointed that we could not find
bipartisan support and agreement in the last Congress, I really
would love to see a compromise, and I am hopeful that in the
118th Congress we will focus on workforce and jobs.
As a former secretary of labor in Delaware and the former
CEO of the Urban League in Delaware, this issue is an
incredibly important one, and during this Congress I will
continue to work on that issue, starting on creating programs
within the Department of Energy to meet the workforce needs of
the energy sector, and also to further train and get more
people in the underrepresented communities into the energy
workforce.
It will lower the cost for those individuals that are in
communities that are underrepresented and communities of color,
and it will also increase opportunities and salaries. These are
jobs that are good-paying jobs.
I also want to address my questions mainly to you, Dr.
Unruh Cohen. We have heard a lot today about energy production,
but I also want to emphasize the importance of energy
efficiency, again, back to the lowering costs.
The global energy demand is only going to grow, and we need
to focus on initiatives that optimize energy. Can you discuss
the importance of energy efficiency when we think of things
like national security, our economy, and also public health?
Can you talk to us a little bit about the benefits?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you, Congresswoman, for that
question. You know, the most important piece of energy is that
what we don't use. So energy efficiency is actually our biggest
energy resource if you look at our history since, you know,
since the 1970s.
And it--energy efficiency is crucial for taking the edge
off of those bills, for making sure that households are not
making those hard decisions about paying their medical bills
versus their energy bills. It reduces the use of energies all
over, and so, you know, where we have pollution concerns, that
is going to lower that, and just the less energy we use, the
less dependent we then may be on international providers of
that energy.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you. Transitioning to clean
energy is not only necessary to protect human health and the
environment, but it is also an enormous opportunity to create a
more equitable economy.
Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to submit this report
titled ``Improving Equity Outcomes for New Federal Investments
in Clean Energy Infrastructure'' from the Bipartisan Policy
Center into the record.
Mr. Johnson. Without objection, so ordered.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Dr. Unruh Cohen, can you discuss how clean energy
investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the
Inflation Reduction Act will help build a more equitable
economy?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes. In both of those bills and through
the Biden administration's initiatives, you know, there is a
huge focus on making sure that communities that are building
out the clean energy, that those jobs are flowing there.
Earlier, we were talking about the weatherization program,
and one of the benefits there is not just to the people living
in the house being more comfortable, but also the job training
and getting, you know, skills--doing skilled training for those
workers.
I mentioned my mom benefited from that, and she loved
talking to the young men who were there doing the work and
learning about, you know, what--the skills they were building
up in their hopes for the jobs that they would have in the
future.
Ms. Blunt Rochester. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for the
time. I just want to add that I think this is an area where I
have seen young people, older people, people of color,
different communities come together and recognize that we have
got a lot of opportunity here, and so I hope as a committee we
take up this opportunity. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I yield
back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentlewoman yields back. The Chair now
recognizes the gentleman from Utah, Mr. Curtis, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Curtis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a delight to be
here. A little warning to my staff: I am not delivering the
remarks that we worked so hard to prepare, but rather my
impressions of being here for several hours with all of you
today.
I couldn't help but think if an alien was listening to us
today, they might conclude that those on my left hated fossil
fuels and would stop at nothing to stomp them out. Likewise,
they might surmise that those of us on the right want to go
crazy with fossil fuels and do nothing else.
To any alien friends that are listening, I have some good
news and some bad news. First the good news. Despite the
dialogue, there are many areas of agreement between those of us
on the right and the left.
Representative Peters has pointed out the need to deal with
NEPA reform and permitting reform. Representative Ruiz has
pointed out the rich natural resources--I have heard him talk
many times--in his district that we will desperately need.
Representative Duncan has addressed nuclear. Many of us
agree that nuclear is part of our future and that we can't have
a reliable, affordable, clean future without it.
We all like emerging technologies like hydrogen fusion and
better battery storage. We all agree, actually, that wind and
solar are important. We may not agree on the mix, but we all
agree that they are important. We all agree we don't want to
lose to China.
And, Ms. Cohen, we all agree energy efficiency is
important.
And, Ms. Jackson, I don't know anybody that would listen to
you and would disagree that we have to take into account those
who are least able to afford this.
And rather than ask you all, I will just take your nodding
heads in agreement that we are on the same page. This was a
list quickly put together by me. I am sure there is much more.
But now the bad news. We spend too much of our time in the
areas where we disagree. And for those of us on the right, we
feel there is too much misrepresentation of our position, and I
have no doubt my friends on the left would feel the same way.
I don't speak for either group, but let me say this: I
don't know anyone in my circle--and I represent oil and gas and
coal, I lead a group of almost 80 Republicans that talk about
climate--I don't know anyone in my circle who doesn't want to
leave a clean Earth better than we found it, who thinks it is
OK to leave something for our grandchildren not as good as we
found it. I don't know anyone who thinks that more pollution is
better than less pollution.
At the same time, those I hang around with think that it is
wrong to demonize fossil fuels and those that produce them. As
far as I know, all of us in this room are highly dependent on
fossil fuels.
I don't know any energy expert anywhere, right or left, who
won't tell you that we will be using fossil fuels in the year
2050.
I think this is the problem: We too often mistake fossil
fuels with emissions. We need to be clear. Do we hate fossil
fuels, or do we hate emissions?
I challenge my friends on the left to substitute their
anger with fossil fuels with that of emissions, and then I ask
this question: If fossil fuels can compete with other energy
sources in cleanliness, why do we insist that they die? Why do
we demonize the very people who have produced these for decades
and decades? Why can't they be viewed as part of the solution
and not the problem?
On my side, we see hypocrisy like posing in an electric
Hummer and bragging about it. The reality of it is, a gas Chevy
Malibu produces as much greenhouse gas emissions, lifecycle, as
an electric Chevy Hummer.
We see hypocrisy of shutting down Federal lands. My
district, seven of my counties are 90 percent federally owned,
and yet the President then goes to other countries, in many
cases our enemies, and asks them to produce more.
To my colleagues who express they don't understand our
approach, let me be clear: We believe we have been falsely told
that we must sacrifice affordability, reliability, and national
security so that we can be clean.
I believe we can have it all. I believe we can be energy
independent. I believe we can be reliable, affordable, and
clean.
Now, if we can get together and talk, I actually believe my
colleagues on the left believe the same thing. And in the tiny
30 seconds I have left, I don't know if any four of you want to
weigh in on that.
Ms. Cohen, you are the witness for the other side. Would
you like to take my last 20 seconds?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I will just add, Mr. Curtis, that in the
select committee, across the aisle, we actually would often
agree on the challenges that the country faced, and sometimes
we agreed, as you said, on the opportunities to solve those.
And other times, we had disagreements. And I encourage this
committee to, as you said, focus on the things maybe you agree.
Mr. Curtis. Thank you. Regrettably, I am out of time. I
would love to have you all share your thoughts, but I yield my
time.
Mr. Johnson. The gentleman yields back. The Chair now
recognizes Mr. Veasey from the State of Texas for 5 minutes.
Mr. Veasey. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and so glad
that we are holding this important hearing today, particularly
on energy security. I think that energy security, our
environment, the air that we breathe is something that we can
never, quite frankly, talk enough about.
And one of the things that have really been worrying me
lately is China. We know that China has been under very strict
COVID lockdown. They are probably going to, quote/unquote,
``reopen here'' sometime soon. And I was hoping that maybe Mr.
McNally could tell me what he thinks China reopening is going
to do as far as prices are concerned, what sort of upward surge
in prices might that impose on the American public?
Mr. McNally. Yes, sir. Congressman Veasey, thank you for
the question. That is my bread and butter. So oil prices, or
pump prices, have been in a tug of war between this Russian
disruption risk, which makes them go up, and this macroeconomic
weakness risk, which makes them go down.
China was on the macro weakness side until the end of last
year because, as you noted, they were in severe lockdowns,
their demand was depressed, and very importantly, China is a
big exporter of refined products like diesel and gasoline. That
helped gasoline prices get to $5 a barrel.
However, sir, to your question, as we come into this year,
President Xi has decided to let COVID run rampant, burn
through, so that by the second quarter we and most analysts
think that China will be recovering back to its pre-COVID
demand level. That means close to about 16 million barrels a
day.
The big chunk that has to come back is jet fuel if they let
their citizens start to fly. So that would, all else equal, put
upward pressure on prices. You have seen prices started to
rise.
Now we have to go back and look and see what happens with
Russia because, like the boy who cried wolf, we didn't see the
disruption last summer, but we might going forward.
So China's return has sort of switched sides in the tug of
war from being a downward price factor to being an upward price
factor, sir.
Mr. Veasey. Yes. And some reports are even saying that we
could get to about 101 million barrels a day, which would be a
record for the world.
And so one of the things that I have heard a lot from my
friends on the other side, on the majority side, is that we
need to unleash all of this energy that we have, and, you know,
I am proud to say that as a Texan, you know, we do a pretty
good job of unleashing.
Not only have we revolutionized things in the fracking
area, but we have also been one of the world leaders when it
comes to renewable energy. About 25 percent or so of ERCOT's
grid is renewable energy. So I think that we are doing it right
there.
But when I hear about unleashing American energy and being
energy independent, one area that continues to really hurt the
U.S. Congress and we haven't been able to find any sort of
compromise on is the issue of immigration.
And if you talk to people in the Permian Basin and you talk
to people that run the oil and gas companies, a lot of people
don't realize this, but the permits that ranchers use,
agriculture, the permits that hospitality use, those same
immigration permits are not the ones that are needed for people
to have temporary work visas in the oil and gas sector.
And so, when you talk to people in the oil and gas field,
you know, people that say, ``Hey, we need more swabbing units,
we need more rigs,'' guess what? You ain't unleashing a thing
unless you do something about immigration reform.
And so, when you hear people talk about being able to
unleash, you can't unleash anything if the dog don't have a
handler. So, please, can you please tell me, how are we going
to unleash all of this energy potential if the other side is
not willing to work with us on immigration reform and will
continue to use this as sort of a wedge between the American
people and offer absolutely no sort of solution?
Mr. McNally. Congressman, I will step around the land mine
of immigration and the border and so forth and just concur,
though, that when I hear the same thing from my clients
drilling in your State and others, that its input costs are
really high, and part of that is finding good people.We are
scouring Sri Lanka now. All over the world they are trying to
bring workers in, and steel tariffs have raised the cost of
steel and casing and so forth.
So there are real supply-side pressures that your
constituents are dealing with, my clients are dealing with, and
Congress ought to look across the board at how to alleviate
those. But I am going to steer clear of immigration, sir, if
you don't mind.
Mr. Veasey. Yes. And before I get ready to turn back over
my time, Mr. Chairman, I will just say that, if we really want
to address this issue and we really want to unleash, we better
do something about immigration reform because just saying
``unleash'' and not addressing immigration reform means
absolutely nothing.
Mr. Johnson. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from Arizona, Mrs.
Lesko, for 5 minutes.
Mrs. Lesko. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. I am really excited
to be on the Energy and Commerce Committee and on the Energy
Subcommittee and talking about energy, because it is vital to
every aspect of our lives.
I represent the Phoenix, Arizona, area and its suburbs. And
right outside of my district is the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant.
It is the largest power producer in the Nation for almost the
last 30 years.
Recently last year, Palo Verde Nuclear Plant in Arizona was
awarded funds from the Department of Energy to increase its
flexibility by creating hydrogen when selling to the grid isn't
economical.
My question, Mr. Dabbar: What more needs to happen to
increase the deployment of energy technology like hydrogen?
Mr. Dabbar. So we awarded the money around increasing
hydrogen production across the nuclear facilities. Hydrogen is
a storage vehicle. So if you think about it, the comparison,
you produce electricity and you can store it in chemical form,
or you can store it in gaseous form, in hydrogen. Or you can do
it in liquids, as I was talking about earlier. And so, hydrogen
has a great opportunity for an additional storage.
The other thing that is really exciting about hydrogen is
that some industrial uses cannot really use electricity, OK? So
the likelihood of electrifying certain industries is quite
poor, right, around certain things like steel and concrete.
So if you can take that electricity and put it into
something that can produce a much higher heat rate for that
manufacturing, it is going to create an opportunity for those
industrial to, quote, electrify, but it is electrified via
converting it to hydrogen.
Mrs. Lesko. Exciting. That is the one thing I like about
energy. A lot of new technology going on, exciting that I think
can solve a lot of our energy needs in America.
Mr. McNally, in your written and verbal testimony, you
recommended the establishment of a national commission on
energy transition realism, an expert nonpartisan commission of
renowned energy experts to advise government officials and
evaluate policy options for energy transmissions.
I love it. I think it is common sense. Sounds like a great
idea to me.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, the UNIPCC, in a report issued last year pointed out
that collectively the G20 members are not on track to meet
their goals under the Paris Climate Agreement.
The UNIPCC also states in its latest assessment that global
warming at the end of the century is estimated at 2.7 degrees
Celsius, not even close to the Paris Climate Agreement of 1.5
degrees.
The Biden administration is spending trillions of dollars
on solutions that are not working, according to the UNIPCC.
Don't you think it is time the administration has an honest
conversation on spending trillions of dollars on ideas that
according to the UNIPCC aren't working?
Mr. McNally. Thank you, Congressman Lesko. I certainly do.
I see a sound and serious climate policy as having a
foundation, like a house has a foundation, and the quality of
the foundation will determine whether the house is safe to
build in and live in and so forth.
And the foundation ought to be depoliticized transmission
of science to nonexperts like all of us. And the concern with
the IPCC reports, actually, and the summary for policymakers,
the SPM, is the folks who are decoding the complicated climate
science and explaining it to all of us are government
officials, and they don't have the rigorous peer review and
requirements to be transparent like you do in actual climate
science.
So I would respectfully suggest that perhaps your side of
the aisle--and make it very clear you embrace climate science.
The problem is not climate science, it is how it is transmitted
to the rest of us, because it is pretty complicated, in these
IPCC reports.
And let's have reforms to make sure it is honest, peer-
reviewed, and a good foundation upon which for us to debate
sound policies to address the problem.
Mrs. Lesko. Fantastic. And in the 13 seconds I have left,
thank you for being here once again and telling us--and
representing low-income communities and minority communities
and speaking up. Thank you. And I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentlewoman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Soto from Florida for 5
minutes.
Mr. Soto. Thank you, Chairman. There are a few elephants in
the room worth mentioning. The Washington Post reports today,
``Oil companies post record-smashing profits as gas prices
creep up.'' Record-smashing profits.
ExxonMobil: $55.7 billion in 2022, a record.
Chevron: $36.5 billion, 2022, another record.
Inflation, corporate greed, record profit, share buybacks--
something this committee needs to keep in mind as we are
navigating this.
Elephant number 2: Climate change demands our attention.
Intensifying hurricanes, massive floods, prolonged droughts,
rising seas, extreme heat, extreme cold. Climate is changing,
and it takes more than just saying the word ``climate'' or
delay, delay, delay, delay, delay to actually solve it.
The Inflation Reduction Act is now law. This committee
should join the President and the Senate in shepherding the
fair implementation of this landmark law, pursuing diversifying
our energy production with clean renewable energy.
Number 3: exporting oil abroad. There used to be a ban on
that, and now oil is being exported and Americans are paying
high prices at the pump. This isn't an America-first policy.
This is the exact opposite.
If you want to kick-start American energy dominance, we
should start by looking at the exports that just started just a
few years ago.
Under Secretary Dabbar, what do you think we should do
about record oil profits at the expense of the American people?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman, it is almost ironic that
when--a few years ago, when we were the energy dominant side on
the oil markets and the gas markets, that the oil and gas
companies were actually making very low profits, and the
biggest problems when that was going on, when we had so much
production, was that they were--the prices had been dropped so
much for the consumer.
And it is a funny dialogue, right, so that when we have
been supportive of export terminals and pipelines and so on,
that actually the oil and gas companies make less money and
consumers actually pay less money.
But when we put lots of restrictions on them and there's
lots of turmoil, prices go up and then emissions go up, right?
Emissions are because of coal plants coming online, especially
in Germany. So it is a funny dynamic around those different
issues.
Mr. Soto. Well, thanks. I appreciate you describing the
issue, but it would be helpful for some solutions on it.
Dr. Cohen, a key role for this committee is implementing
the $369 billion in incentives to boost renewable energy, boost
conservation. What are some of the things you think this
committee can do to help with that fair implementation?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question. We have talked
a lot about the importance of the grid, and both the
infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act have
important provisions to help improve the resilience of the grid
and expand it. I think that is an area that this committee can
give some really close attention to.
In addition, there are a number of other--we have also
talked about nuclear power, and both the Infrastructure Act and
the Inflation Reduction Act provide ways to keep our current
nuclear power--to support currently operating nuclear power
plants that are safe to operate. I think taking a look at that
will be important, so we keep that carbon-free emission coming.
And then, as we talked about, just the deployment, making
sure the deployment of wind, solar, the electric vehicle
infrastructure is happening.
Mr. Soto. Thank you so much, Dr. Cohen. I, like many on
this committee, agree it should be an all-of-the-above solution
and we should look at different sources of energy.
I hope the mistakes of the past with the Affordable Care
Act of trying to eliminate it for many, many years, only for it
to continue to be the law of the land--over 3 million
Floridians now get their care from there--that we learn from
those mistakes when we look at the Inflation Reduction Act
knowing that it is the law and will be the law for the
foreseeable future. And rather than trying to undermine it, we
should work together on maximizing it.
And under the Inflation Reduction Act, we do have
incentives for things like modular nuclear and carbon capture
in there. So for colleagues who are talking about it as if it
is all just renewable energy, that actually is false. There is
a great opportunity for us to work together to pursue these in
this committee, and I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentlemen yields back.
The Chair now recognizes Mr. Crenshaw from Texas for 5
minutes.
Mr. Crenshaw. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for hosting
this hearing. Thank you all for being here. You know, we heard
earlier that Republican priorities were misguided, and that was
a little shocking because I think our priorities are guided
quite well and are very clear, and they are this: Provide
energy to the American people that fits three criteria:
reliable, affordable, and clean.
I don't think that is very controversial. Reliability is
number one, of course, it has to be, because energy production
is pointless if it isn't reliable. A society cannot function if
it cannot keep the power on.
Affordability is second. Americans need to be able to
afford reliable energy without massive government subsidies so
they can drive to work, heat their homes, and benefit from a
thriving economy.
Third, Republicans want our energy to be clean, and yes, we
can have energy that is reliable, affordable, and clean. It is
possible.
Also worth noting that America's natural gas revolution is
the single largest factor in reducing America's carbon
emissions. Switching from coal to gas accounted for 61 percent
of emission reductions in the U.S. since 2005.
If we cared about global emission reduction, we might note
that the U.S. natural gas is 42 percent cleaner than Russian
natural gas, which is why Republicans advocate for more natural
gas exports to displace foreign coal, which, by the way,
accounts for about 50 percent of total global power emissions.
Seems that would be some pretty low-hanging fruit if carbon
emissions was actually the goal.
Also worth noting that Republicans are by far the strongest
supporters of nuclear energy, which is both reliable and 100
percent clean. Maybe our colleagues would join us in fixing the
outdated permitting process that makes a 4-year project last
for 15 years.
My Democrat colleagues mostly just want to talk about wind
and solar, which isn't reliable and only affordable if you
subsidize it. They say we can just build a bunch of batteries
to deal with the intermittency problem of renewables. They say
we can clear hundreds of square miles of land for solar and
wind farms and pay China to mine and process all of our
critical minerals so that we can pretend that we aren't
actually responsible for the environmental devastation of
Chinese mining practices and the enormous amount of emissions
that result from processing it all.
So my question to my colleagues is simple: If the goal is
actually reducing global emissions, then will you work with us
to improve our absurd environmental permitting regulations that
are choking off our ability to not only build pipelines, but
also build the solar and wind farms and battery backup systems
that you claim to care so much about?
I know some of them are, because my friend Scott Peters was
just talking about it. And surely my colleagues would find it
troubling that something like the Ten West Transmission Line,
whose groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Vice President
Harris last year, won't actually be online until 2025. The
planning actually started in 2016, just for a simple 125-mile
transmission line on public land. So that is nearly 10 years
from start to finish, nearly 4 years of which was just to get
the environmental impact statement approved.
We put a man on the moon in less time than that. Now, does
that seem like a healthy permitting and regulatory system to
anyone? Surely not.
It is not just transmission lines, it is critical minerals
too. In Nevada we couldn't build a lithium mine because of some
useless plant called Tiehm's buckwheat. I am not joking. You
can look it up.
In Oregon we can't mine for lithium because of a sage
grouse, which is basically just a fancy version of a chicken.
In Minnesota this administration halted the Twin Metals
Project over vague environmental concerns. Now, this mine would
have produced taconite iron ore, copper, nickel, cobalt, all of
which are needed for any renewable energy project.
My point is this: The false narrative that we can
transition smoothly to a wind-and-solar-only future is not
based on anything that resembles reality. It is a fantasy, and
it is a dangerous one that will quickly take us down the failed
energy scenario that we now see in Europe.
Wind and solar certainly have their place, but when energy
demand will increase by 50 percent over the next 50 years,
intermittent renewables will never, ever, ever be enough, and
it is time to let that fantasy go.
So am I promoting oil and gas? Yes, yes, I am. In fact the
quickest way to reduce global emissions would be to ensure that
our cleaner natural gas is displacing foreign, coal-fired power
plants. That single feat would have a larger impact on global
emissions than any other solution offered.
In fact, the industry thinks we could quadruple gas exports
in the next 10 years, if we let them. If that gas displaced
foreign coal, it would reduce emissions more than the combined
impact of doubling our wind capacity, installing solar panels
on every home, and electrifying every vehicle in the country.
So you want solutions for reducing global emissions, build
pipelines, build export terminals, lease the land for drilling,
and send some special trade reps to countries like India and
Indonesia to make a deal. That is a realistic solution, and it
is actually doable.
Reality has to guide our solutions for the future. We
cannot sacrifice energy reliability for radicalism. We must be
rational environmentalists, not radical environmentalists, and
we have to remember that the prosperity of the American people
depends upon reliable and affordable energy. And I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from Minnesota,
Ms. Craig, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Craig. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman.
I am going to focus my attention here this afternoon on our
Nation's biofuel sector and its role in strengthening economic,
environmental, and national security, and I am actually going
to ask you a question, so get ready.
As many of my colleagues know, I have been a champion on
the Energy and Commerce Committee for expanding and enhancing
this vital segment of our economy. For example, I was the first
Member of Congress to pass year-round E15 through the House in
the Lower Food and Fuel Cost Act last Congress, and I am eager
to work with Chair Rodgers to pass an E15 fix again this year.
We should take up and pass the Consumer and Fuel Retailer
Choice Act, which is bipartisan, bicameral legislation, that
would allow the year-round nationwide sale of ethanol blends
higher than 10 percent, helping to lower fuel prices and
improve stability and certainty in the U.S. fuel market.
This bill was supported by the largest unified group of
farming, biofuels, and oil companies to date, and I look
forward to reintroducing the proposal in this Congress again.
E15 creates opportunities for our family farmers, supports
economic growth in rural America, and lowers prices at the pump
for Minnesotans. With this sentiment in mind, I want to direct
a couple of questions to the panel for your thoughts and
observations on biofuels policy and where we go from here.
Mr. McNally, you recently spoke, I believe, at the National
Ethanol Conference about the future of liquid fuels and told
the group to keep the faith, because there is no evidence that
consumers or governments are on course to decarbonize as
rapidly as the consensus expects.
In a minute or so, I am hoping you can talk more about
those comments and why you predict American drivers will still
be filling up with home-grown biofuels for many years to come.
So why don't we go ahead and ask you to comment on that.
Mr. McNally. I will have to talk very quickly,
Congresswoman. Thank you very much for the question. The
consensus has decided to believe that liquids fuel demand--so
gasoline and ethanol, biofuels--is going to peak globally in
about 10 years. This is a very controversial, in my view
unjustified if perhaps attractive, vision.
If you believe that, that means demand for biofuels and
oil, because they go together, is going to plateau and go down.
In my view, that consensus is wishful thinking, and that demand
for energy is going to grow much stronger than that, including
liquid fuels, which means there will be a bigger pie for
gasoline and diesel, which biofuels complement.
Ms. Craig. Thank you so much.
And now, Dr. Cohen, the Select Committee on Climate Crisis
recommended that Congress and specifically this committee
develop a low-carbon fuel standard to build on the renewable
fuel standard.
I have been a cosponsor on the Next Generation Fuels Act,
which would gradually ramp up the use of home-grown ethanol at
gas stations across the country, making Americans less reliant
on foreign oil and less vulnerable to the anticompetitive
tactics of OPEC.
I am wondering if you can speak a little more about the
design of a low-carbon fuel standard and why the time is right
to begin this important work here on the Energy and Commerce
Committee.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
I actually was able to work on the 2007 energy bill where we
did the renewable fuel standard, which is now in need of
reauthorization. So the time is right for this committee to
take a hard look at our biofuels policy.
We recommended doing a low-carbon fuel standard. We have
seen that work for transportation fuels, the agriculture
community out in California. It would be a way to take the
holistic view about our liquid fuels and provide that signal
and that standard to move towards lower carbon fuels.
I agree with Mr. McNally, we are going to be using liquid
fuels. We invested in sustainable aviation fuels in the recent
laws, and so we need to provide the signals to producers so
that we are getting the type of transportation fuels we need to
meet the climate pollution reduction goals that we know we need
to achieve.
Ms. Craig. Well, I would just like to end by saying thank
you to all the panelists, I know it has been a long day for
you. And with that, Mr. Chair, I yield back.
Mr. Johnson. The gentlelady yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the vice chair of the Environment,
Manufacturing, and Critical Minerals Subcommittee, Dr. Joyce
from Pennsylvania, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all of the
witnesses for being here today. Realize that Energy and
Commerce, the first formal hearing that we are holding, is
directed to energy and how that unleashing of American energy
is so important.
As we begin the 118th Congress, this hearing is the first
chance for Energy and Commerce Republicans to begin tackling
the issues that are facing all American people. It is great to
be back together with my colleagues in one room to do the job
that our constituents sent us to Washington to do.
Our new Republican majority is ready to enact the
commitment to America. A core piece of that plan is to ensure
that our Nation has a robust and a reliable energy supply.
Let's be clear--and you have heard us say it repeatedly--energy
security is national security. Our physical and economic well-
being is tied to maintaining energy.
Ms. Jackson, your words resonated with me. You messaged to
us how important that energy sources at affordable prices are
to all Americans and how the high cost of energy is certainly
having more impact on lower socioeconomic Americans and how
that impact affects each individual American every day of the
week.
American policymakers in front of you have recognized that
reality, and it is why the Department of Energy was established
in 1977, in order to decrease our reliance on foreign
adversaries.
After years of energy development under both Republican and
Democrat Presidents, our Nation finally had achieved that goal.
But under the last administration, energy had superceded that
goal. We were an energy exporter. We were energy dominant--
energy dominant--supplying those necessary energy forms to our
friends and to our allies.
You know what, sadly, it is no longer true. The Biden
administration has waged a war on American energy industry by
creating restrictive and burdensome regulations that have left
us less secure and more exposed to bad actors.
It has focused on poor alternatives, like wind and solar,
instead of baseload power capacity, has made our grid less
reliable and less resilient. This becomes clear in my district
in Pennsylvania when I heard from constituents that they were
asked by their utility companies over the Christmas holidays to
conserve energy or risk outages.
I will tell you, it is shocking. It is shocking in the
State of Pennsylvania, where we have strong energy portfolios--
we have coal, we have natural gas, we have nuclear, and they
all play critical parts in the Commonwealth's electricity
supply.
Generations of Pennsylvanians have gone into coal mines to
power America, and new drilling technology has enabled an
explosion of natural gas production from the Marcellus Shale
industry.
It is unacceptable that in a State and in a nation as
blessed as we are with natural resources for our citizens to be
at risk of blackouts because of bad government policies.
Now is the time to abandon these failed policies and
unleash the reserves, the reserves that are under the feet of
my constituents in Pennsylvania.
With our new House majority, Republicans are ready to begin
implementing policies that will allow new leases for oil and
gas production, reform the permitting process for energy
infrastructure, and prevent burdensome government regulation to
reclaim American energy dominance.
My first question is for you, Mr. Dabbar. Can you speak on
how critical it is for grid reliability to have baseload power
capacity, and how does the closing of coal and natural gas
power plants in favor of renewables affect that grid
resilience?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. Until, you know, relative
recent past, during the last kind of 20 years, almost all the
power plants in the country were dispatchable, whether it was
hydro or gas or coal or nuclear. And the advent of wind and
solar, which are great at emissions, has increased instability
in the grid.
Lithium-ion is great, but it is only good at the edges on
the grid. It doesn't come close to having other peaking
sources.
Mr. Joyce. And how would--I am going to interrupt if I
may--how would government policies forcing electric vehicle
adoption further strain the grid?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So, obviously,
electrification overall, and EVs are certainly a big part of
it, are adding more demand. And what we are seeing is that, on
the supply side, more power plants are being shut down than are
being built, and the ones that are getting built are less
available.
So that's increasing risks in our system and as a result is
actually increasing prices. In New England the electricity
prices were a hundred percent on the energy side above where it
was a year ago.
Mr. Joyce. Thank you. I appreciate all of you being here,
and I yield.
Mr. Johnson. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlelady from Washington,
Ms. Schrier, for 5 minutes.
Ms. Schrier. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am delighted to be
back on this committee, and let me just also say that it is a
special privilege to work with my fellow Member from Washington
State, our new chairwoman of the committee.
You know, I agree with my Republican colleagues here that
high and volatile energy prices are a real problem. They are a
problem for my constituents, who, by the way, are still paying
in many areas over $4.50 a gallon for gas. Prices are coming
down, but they are not down enough.
My colleague, Mr. Soto, just talked about, he called it
``record-smashing profits'' once again by the oil and gas
industry, and so I would just like to continue to call out what
sure feels like price gouging. And that is why last Congress we
passed my bill, the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act,
through the House, and I hope we will take that up again.
I wanted to pivot to national security. I think Russia's
war on Ukraine has really highlighted and refocused our
attention on how tightly tied our energy independence is to our
national security, as we are watching what is happening in
Europe.
National security is not just geopolitical, though. It is
also security from the fire and the weather disasters that we
are experiencing more and more frequently all across this
country, and with that in mind, and also sort of conjuring up
what Mr. Curtis said, like, I think we can all agree that we
need to be bringing down emissions and we need to be
transitioning away from fossil fuels toward cleaner sources of
energy.
And I would add, Mr. McNally, you mentioned that even with
so much domestic production of gas and oil, we still have
extreme price volatility. And so, there's many reasons--energy
independence, where we need to transition, stability in energy
prices, pollution prevention, climate action, national
security. That all should make us want to redouble our efforts
here to move away from 20th century energy sources to the
energy sources of the future, and the U.S. needs to lead here,
not China.
We took tremendous action last Congress in really putting
in incentives, economic incentives, to boost innovation here,
hydrogen hubs, battery manufacturing. It really supercharged
research.
And by the way, I will also note that some of the things
that were in that bill, Ms. Jackson, would help individual
customers afford heat pumps and other innovations that will
help with energy efficiency and to bring down those monthly
bills.
I also note it is because of clean hydropower that
Chairwoman McMorris Rodgers and I pay some of the lowest
electricity costs in the Nation.
So I wanted to just ask, Dr. Cohen, in your testimony, back
to national security, you noted that China leads the globe
right now in clean energy investments. I think we all know that
this is not because they are great environmentalists. They are
doing it because that is where the future is, that is where the
money is.
Can you talk about why the United States needs to catch up,
surpass, and lead in this area?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
And just going back to your point on the consequences of
the climate change, I mean, the western wildfires, they don't
just stay in the West. Everybody, you know, has the health
impacts that come from that, from the burning of those forests.
But to your question about China, in 2022, you know, China
invested about $546 billion in clean energy transmission, and
the U.S. was a distant second at just $141 billion. That was
pre--that doesn't count what we just passed, so we expect that
to change very quickly.
But as a number of people have mentioned, increasingly
every country is looking for energy security, and so they are
looking at what can they do domestically, which means they
start looking at what can they produce from a renewable energy.
And we--I quoted it, Congresswoman DeGette quoted it. BP's
economist has said, you know, we are seeing that. And we have
seen a huge change in Europe in the face of them realizing they
can no longer rely on Russia for energy.
Ms. Schrier. Thank you.
And that is why we need to be doing the innovation that
this committee will do. We are at the crossroads right now
where we can't depend on China for those resources. We need to
do the mining, the recycling, and everything else that it will
take to invest in ourselves here at home.
Thank you. And I yield back.
Mr. Curtis [presiding]. The gentlewoman yields.
I recognize the gentleman, my colleague from North Dakota,
Mr. Armstrong.
Mr. Armstrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We need to level set and be honest about the use of energy
on the planet and its importance for economic growth and
national security. Next year, regardless of any policies pushed
by the Biden administration, the world will use more carbon
energy than it did this year, and the year after that and the
year after that.
In the United States this administration has taken a whole-
of-government approach to dissuade development. But in Europe
we are seeing a realignment accompanied by substantial long-
term investment in carbon energy as countries try to make up
for Russian supply chains. The Norwegian Energy Ministry has
proposed putting 92 new offshore oil and gas blocks on offer in
its next licensing route. And Spain has laid the groundwork to
become EU's national gas hub. They have the capacity to onboard
it. They just need to move it. Germany is building an
infrastructure to support up to 56 billion cubic meters of LNG
import capacity, roughly the same amount imported by pipe from
Russia in 2021.
Given the right regulatory environment, these investments
are for the long term. Despite past rhetoric, there is an
awakening in Europe that energy security is essential to
national security and economic growth.
And there are lessons to be learned from Europe, and if we
don't think the challenges there are relatable to the United
States, we only have to look to the Northeast, where natural
gas availability is threatened by an artificial supply crunch.
Like Continental Europe, natural gas is shipped in from
producing areas.
However, unlike countries such as Spain and Germany,
Northeastern States have yet to recognize the threat posed by
unreliable access to energy, despite warnings from grid
operators, industrial users, and utilities.
At nearly every opportunity, the permitting and
certification process for carbon energy infrastructure have
been mired in legal and regulatory entanglements. And worse yet
for my friends who support green energy, we have taught them
how to stop those projects as well.
You don't have to look any farther than the Northern Pass
Pipeline, which is trying to bring hydropower from Montreal to
Boston, and it cannot get built in any State on the Northeast
corridor. Do you know who shut it down? Indigenous Tribes in
Canada and the Sierra Club.
From the defeat of the Constitution Pipeline to the
cancellation of the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, years
of coordinated activists and environmental opposition have
prevented the construction of 1,000 miles of interstate
pipeline across the Northeast. Instead of expediting deployment
of the necessary infrastructure to move abundant energy
resources, Northeastern States, supported by an antagonist
Federal regulatory environment, have done everything in their
power to actually halt that development. Since day one, the
Biden administration has taken that playbook and applied it on
a national scale.
Last month, through an overly vague and expansive
definition of waters of the United States, the Biden
administration further empowered activist environmental
entities within States to abuse the Section 401 certification
process to stifle pipeline development for political reasons.
Now, only a few weeks later, a new guidance from the
Council on Environmental Quality will further muddy the waters
as agencies evaluate greenhouse gas emissions and climate
change when considering proposed actions under NEPA. Under this
latest proposal the Council on Environmental Quality is pushing
for agencies to use the NEPA process to link decisions with the
national climate change agenda, connecting NEPA reviews to
environmental justice, pushing arbitrary alternatives, and
providing a new pathway to consider both upstream and
downstream emissions.
While it remains to be seen how this new guidance will play
out, it almost certainly will further slow the development of
much-needed energy infrastructure projects and drive capital
away from the carbon energy resources.
Under Secretary Dabbar--and I appreciate what you said
about the lithium ion battery, because when we figure out a
better way to store electric energy, it will have as great of
an impact on our economy as the steam engine or the microchip.
The problem is that the lithium ion battery ain't it.
But in your testimony you talked about the need for reform
of FERC as part of the permitting and approval process. Can you
walk through how the activist capital, combined with FERC
straying from its statutory charge, has distorted the
marketplace for carbon energy infrastructure?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congressman. So, as you laid out, the
very, very long approval processes are effectively a tactic to
never build, right, for the people who are building. That is
what it is.
And, you know, in the last administration, actually, you
could see if you put a time stop, if you may remember. It was,
like, it is not a yes or a no, but it is you got to get it done
it in a certain period.
Mr. Armstrong. I called it an unreasonable amount of time.
Mr. Dabbar. And so I think some sort of--and Congressman
Peters talked about NEPA reform. I think one of the key things
that's holding up things from getting built is the incredible
long time period from the time that you--that someone, a
company tries to lay it out to the approval, plus the
inflation, right, the inflation makes projects with a long
delay undoable economically at the end of the day.
So I think some sort of time stop on a NEPA review, you
know, of the reform. That doesn't say it has to be built or it
is going to be approved or not approved. It is just do
something reasonable from a time period, I think, is good for
everything.
Mr. Armstrong. Thank you.
And I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentleman yields.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Massachusetts,
Mrs. Trahan.
Mrs. Trahan. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
So I don't think we can have a hearing about unleashing our
domestic energy supply and not mention the record profits the
big oil companies are about to announce from last year. Five
massive oil corporations are slated to earn a combined profit
of almost $200 billion.
These same companies sat here before this committee last
year, and they groveled for more drilling permits so that they
could lower prices. Apparently, they couldn't use any of those
profits to start drilling on the thousands of permits they
already have, and they couldn't allocate another dime to
restart the refineries that they shut down. But you bet they
used those products for stock buybacks, to inflate their share
price and make sure they got their multimillion-dollar bonuses.
Mr. Chair, I agree with you and members of your party that
we need to achieve energy independence. We need to stop relying
on the whims of OPEC, but we can't swap foreign oil oligarchs
for domestic oil barons. We can't trade Vladimir Putin for
ExxonMobil if they are going to keep doing the same thing,
influence the market to pad padding their profits while working
families pay the price.
Mr. Chair, the American people want lower energy costs and
a planet that their kids can inherit. To achieve that goal, me
must focus on sustainable alternatives, and we are close to
having one, in particular, that will change energy as we know
it.
Recent breakthroughs, including most recently at Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, have finally put fusion energy
within reach. Unlocking this virtually unlimited source of
clean energy will drive down costs for families struggling with
gas and oil prices. It will reduce our carbon footprint and
help ensure a healthy future of our planet for generations to
come. But it won't happen without building on the public- and
private-sector investments in research and development that
have gotten us to this point.
So, Dr. Unruh Cohen, first, thank you for your incredible
work over the last two Congresses.
In your testimony you mention that U.S. public-sector
investment in clean energy trails other countries, including
China. The Department of Energy is considering applications
from private fusion companies for $50 million in public/private
partnerships and a new milestone-based funding program that
would support building fusion pilot plants. But according to
the Fusion Industry Association, the funding opportunity
announcement was significantly oversubscribed with applications
requesting close to three times as much funding as was
allocated.
Can you just tell us why public investment in fusion energy
is so critical for accelerating the impact of existing private
investment in the United States?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes. Thank you for the question.
And I spent a lot of my career working for Ed Markey, both
in the House and the Senate. So I am very familiar with the
great clean energy technology in Massachusetts and the
companies that are spinning out from that, and fusion is one of
those. Obviously, you have got a great one there. And, you
know, the promise of fusion is amazing, and we have spent a lot
of important research, Federal research dollars going into
that. We have had these really exciting breakthroughs, and I
know, you know, we are on the cusp of being able to understand
the potential there more and, hopefully, move forward to
commercialization. I hadn't realized it had been
oversubscribed. I hope that is something that this committee
and the Appropriations Committee can work on to see if there
are more resources available for that.
Mrs. Trahan. Same--did you want to add to that?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congresswoman, probably one of the leading
fusion companies in the country or world is in or around your
district in Devens. I think that plant is going to--when it
comes on line in 2025 will well outperform what happened at
Livermore. They don't like to talk about how much, but I have a
pretty good idea.
I ran a fusion energy program for the country. We decided
when we were there to engage with the private sector where DOE
had not engaged with the private sector before. We had to, you
know, break a little glass on that.
I think the milestone program that we started, that we
started moving along needs to be expanded. And I know that some
of the proposals in Build Back Better had made that larger. I
would highly encourage that we take the momentum on technology,
innovation in particular, in your State and your district but
elsewhere, and I would recommend that everyone here look at
expanding that.
Mrs. Trahan. And I look forward to bipartisan work on that.
I mean, I will leave the committee with this. The Nuclear
Regulatory Commission recently released their options for
licensing and regulating fusion energy systems which highlights
the important safety and security benefits of fusion energy: No
high-level nuclear waste, no chance of a meltdown, no special
nuclear material like plutonium or uranium. But the paper also
leaves some regulatory ambiguity suggesting that future fusion
power plants may be regulated like fission, which is a very
different energy process.
So I look forward to making sure that we put the right
regulatory in place, environment in place so that we don't
stifle that innovation as it is coming to bear.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentlewoman yields.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Weber.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First I want to correct something that was said earlier by
Scott Peters. He said in Texas 40 percent of our power is
renewable. That is just not accurate. You go to EIA.gov, Energy
Information Administration, look at that, and Texas is 50
percent natural gas. It is 18 percent coal. Nuclear is 8
percent. And that is 76 percent. I am not good in math, but
that leaves about 24 percent: 20 of it is wind, and 4 percent
is solar.
So we appreciate renewables in Texas, we do. But the real
important fact is that the renewables cannot be the leading
actor. Renewables can be a supporting actor, but renewables
cannot be the leading actor. We found that out in Winter Storm
Uri.
You all talked about pipelines, Mr. Dabbar. I think it was
you and one of our Members. The Keystone Pipeline would have
come into my district over by Beaumont, Texas. It carries
830,000 barrels of oil a day. The Colonial Pipeline system that
you talked about carries about 3.1 million barrels of product a
day. The Keystone Pipeline is literally one-fourth of the
output what feeds the entire Southeastern part of the United
States. Why didn't the President come to Texas and beg us to
drill for more oil? It has been a real mystery to us.
Also, in my gulf coast district, I have Strategic Petroleum
Reserve. We house also about 59 percent, not quite 60 percent
of the SPR in my district. I have been watching it for a long
time. I served 4 years in the Texas House. I was on the
Environmental Energy Subcommittee, and I will tell you that--or
Environmental Reg Committee, and I will tell you that we paid a
lot of attention. Texas has 225,000 miles of pipeline. The
pipeline industry has a 99.925 percent safety rating. We can
move product safer than anybody else. We can store it in the
SPR. We can have it ready for emergency, not because the
President wants to bring down gas prices in an election year. I
mean, he is trying to help. Maybe he is storing classified
documents in his garage to keep from paying storage fees. I
don't know. He is just trying to help.
But I just want to go to you, if I can, Mr. McNally. You
made an interesting comment. You said an arsenal of energy is
what we need. That is a great term. You talked about the things
that we had--you talked about World War II attack, if I
remember correctly. Americans need to know what is important
and why we need to be energy dominant, energy independent. It
is energy. It is absolutely energy safety. It is domestic
safety. It is political safety. It is military safety. You
just--economic safety. You just can't express how important it
is.
For the President to draw down the SPR in an election year
is totally uncalled for. I am told you are an expert on the
SPR, and you sound like you are pretty knowledgeable about it.
So my question to you is, in your opinion--and you have
probably gone back and looked. I think the SPR capacity--it
depends on who you talk to--is about 714 million barrels, maybe
730, depends on who you are reading.
In your opinion, what is the proper use of the SPR? And
what is the history of it, if you know that far back?
Mr. McNally. Thank you, Congressman Weber.
Yes, I think we topped out at about 725 million barrels. It
is now down to about half that level. We are at a 40-year low,
so it hasn't been since 1983 that we have seen it this low.
And it is really unfortunate, because in a way, in my view,
it is a bipartisan mistake to start to sell off the SPR just to
pay sort of regular expenses in 2017. We did the same thing in
the mid-1990s, and I worked for President Bush after 9/11 when
we restocked the SPR at higher prices.
So we kind of went around the circle once before. I was
hoping we wouldn't have to do it again.
But, in addition to the mandatory nonemergency sales, which
I think are very unfortunate but starting to reverse, President
Biden, especially in November of 2021 before the Russian
invasion of Ukraine, used it purely for political reasons. I
mean, there was no disruption. The IEA wouldn't go along, and
he had to beg China, of all people, of all countries, to go
along with us.
And that is up there in the halls of infamy with the
decision by President Clinton September 2020, 2 months before
the election, to invite Al Gore to announce a release at that
time too.
So with the emergency release in March of last year, at
least we thought we were going to lose Russia. When it started
out, we had a real emergency, we thought. But within a couple
of months, we realized Russian supply wasn't going off. They
should have suspended the sales at that point.
So we have a mixed history with the SPR. Fortunately, some
Presidents have used it for purely political price control,
very limited, by my count twice. We have had, no kidding,
emergency releases. And I would again say the administration
probably took the right decision initially, because we thought
in March of 2022, the IEA said we are going to lose 3 million
barrels a day of Russian supply in April, like 2 weeks later.
Again, that wolf did not come into the village. We should have
suspended those sales, but we did not.
Thank you for the question.
Mr. Weber. I thank you for that.
And I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentleman from Texas yields.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Texas, Mrs.
Fletcher.
Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I join in welcoming our new Members and congratulating
Chairwoman McMorris Rodgers on her historic chairmanship.
And I am thanking our witnesses for being here today. It
has been a long day, but I have been here and appreciated your
testimony.
As we have heard throughout the day, our country leads in
energy production and innovation, and we lead in these areas
because of the work that is done in my district and surrounding
areas in Houston, ones where we touch every single segment of
the energy industry, from exploration and production,
transportation, transmission, marketing, technology, both
traditional and renewable.
And I am going to resist the congressional urge to spend 5
minutes talking about how great my district is, although it is,
but I want to share these data points because I think it really
helps underscore both the importance of the issues to me and
also the depth and breadth of knowledge of my constituents that
I bring to the work of this committee.
And it is with that in mind that I am glad to say I have
heard a lot of things I agree with today from our witnesses,
from my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but I have also
heard a few things I disagree with. And I can't go through all
of them here, but I am disappointed to hear some of the attacks
on the 117th Congress' energy policies rather than more ideas
about how we can work together to build on the historic
investments that we made in the last Congress.
And, you know, we have talked about some today especially
the focus on permitting issues that affects all sectors and
which I very much look forward to working on. But I do think it
is important to underscore that the Infrastructure Investment
and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act that we passed
last Congress are historic pieces of legislation that make
energy and infrastructure investments that further strengthen
American energy security and drive innovation for our energy
future.
At this moment we have an energy sector that is looking
stronger than ever, with the EIA expecting U.S. domestic oil
production to set a new record high this year of 12.4 million
barrels a day, which would surpass the previous record set in
2019. The red count is back up. It was 771 last week. Net
exports are also expected to rise, further strengthening our
energy security and, importantly, that of our allies. And this
is happening while we are working to meet growing global demand
for energy and reducing admissions.
The bottom line is that we need to do all of the things we
are doing and more, and we need a holistic approach. So I
really look forward to talking about what that is and how we
come together to do that on this committee this Congress.
But for today I want to focus my questions on one of the
programs that we passed in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law:
funding for the implementation and design of regional hydrogen
hubs. And through this program, Congress authorized the
development of multiple hydrogen hubs to advance the country's
clean hydrogen sector. And the Department of Energy will select
6 to 10 regions to establish these hydrogen hubs.
Mr. Crenshaw and I recently wrote a letter to Secretary
Granholm making the case, not surprisingly, for the Department
to select Houston as a location for a hydrogen hub under the
program.
So I want to direct my question first to Dr. Unruh Cohen.
In the interests of time, I am going to ask this, and I have a
quick follow-up if we can get to it. If not, I will submit it
to you for the record. But can you just talk a little bit about
how this program will enhance hydrogen technology deployment
and why Federal support is essential in emerging technological
sectors like hydrogen?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes. And I will sing Houston's praises in
the process because they are a great example of where industry,
academia, the local government have come together to identify
we need to take our strengths and talents in the industry and
expand that.
So I think you will be a good candidate for the hydrogen
hub. The program will drive these types of partnerships between
industry and the Federal Government to develop the new
technology. And hydrogen is critical for also all of the
petrochemical work that happens in the Houston area, because we
are going to need clean green hydrogen to help decarbonize some
of those processes so that we can, you know, benefit and have
clean chemicals coming out of our domestic plants.
Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you for that.
And with the time I have left, I do want--I may have to get
your question for the record, and if anyone else wants to
submit a response, I would appreciate that, because I think
while this investment is essential to jump starting the
technology, I worry there's still a lot of hurdles that
Congress needs to address before we can see widespread
adoption.
DOE's 2020 Hydrogen Program Plan identified rights-of-way
and permitting issues for hydrogen pipelines as challenges for
hydrogen delivery infrastructure. And I think there's still a
lot of unresolved questions regarding siting, political
Federal/State jurisdictional conflicts, and the regulation of
pipeline rates and terms of service that need to be resolved.
So with the 12 seconds I have left--oh, have I gone over?
Mr. Curtis. You are going the wrong direction.
Mrs. Fletcher. I am going the wrong direction. So with
that, that is my question. If you could respond to that for the
record, I would appreciate it.
And I will yield back the balance of my time that I have
gone over. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for indulging me.
Mr. Curtis. Yes. All right. Thank you. The gentlewoman from
Texas yields.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Allen.
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, you know, energy security is national security. We
have heard that over and over again. And when we were in the
last--the last time we were in the majority, we passed the
Congressional Review Act. And what it did was, you know, it
revised a lot of the regulations, updated a lot of regulations
around the oil and gas industry. And what we saw we couldn't
believe. We became energy dominant, and we had the power to
control the cost of a barrel of oil. That to me is maybe the
greatest power that you can experience. In fact, we drove it--
you know, market price was $30, $40 a barrel. We created an oil
war with $7 a barrel. And now we are, what, $90 to $100? It has
been over $100. And, Mr. McNally, you said it was going to
fluctuate even more than that.
But, in fact, we did this throughout the economy. And, Ms.
Jackson, everybody benefited. It was the greatest economy I've
ever seen in my lifetime. So there is no secret that President
Biden and his administration have declared a war on fossil
fuels. I mean, he said, ``There will be no more drilling.'' I
think that was a quote.
And so we see what has happened now. In fact, back in the
greatest economy, we had 1.26 percent inflation.
And so, you know, Mr. McNally, how could we unleash the oil
and gas industry and become energy dominant again? Is there a
secret sauce?
Mr. McNally. Did you mean me or Mr. Dabbar?
Mr. Allen. I mean to both, yes.
Mr. McNally. OK. Well, again, if I could rephrase my
attempt to answer Congressman Eshoo's very good question: Get
back to all of the above and get honest data and analysis. If
we can just do that, we will be in a much better place.
To his credit, President Obama--to his credit--helped get
rid of the crude oil export ban, which directly threatened the
shale oil boom, and recognized not only was that good for our
energy production, but helped us offset the loss of Iran, which
we were sanctioning and so forth. He understood that
transitions are multidecade affairs, and he, to his credit,
thought that gas was part of the clean energy future.
But as you have pointed out, we have moved to keep it in
the ground, to a war on fossil fuels, and that must end. And I
think, honestly, if we could just get back to where we were in
the last few Presidents, including President Trump, where it
was all of the above, we can unleash, you know, our energy
potential.
Mr. Allen. Mr. Dabbar?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congressman, it started with great
innovation by the Member of Texas. The Permian Basin cost year
by year was dropping because of innovation. That allowed us to
drive prices down globally as a result of that innovation. Then
the Federal system and the State systems allowed things to get
built to move that energy to where it needs to go----
Mr. Allen. So let me ask you this: Would it be fair to
assume that free market drives prices down, government
intervention drives prices up?
Mr. Dabbar. That is the irony of what we are seeing today.
Mr. Allen. OK. So we have got--so what we have done--I was
on the House Energy Action Team, and I met with a lot of--I was
a small business owner. I met with a lot of small business
owners who were in the business of drilling and refining. They
are out of business. They were driven out of business.
You know, if you have more demand than you have supply,
guess what? The price is going to go up. Now, obviously, if you
are one of the few companies remaining, you are going to
benefit from that.
Now, how do we reverse that? We have got to open up the
free markets, and then you will drive down prices. I mean, you
know, there is no secret to the way our economy works.
As far as--also, I wanted to ask you a quick question--I
have got about 45 seconds--about Russia being a leader in
exporting enriched fuel. And, of course, the strategy was to
urge for U.S. production of our own nuclear fuel. I have got
Vogtle 3 and 4 hopefully coming on line. We have got plenty of
electricity in Georgia. In fact, you are probably going to have
to bring your car to Georgia to charge it at some point in
time.
But can you give me a little background on that?
Mr. Dabbar. So Russia has almost half of the global
enrichment market. The biggest exposed company to that is the
United States. If Russia tomorrow decided to stop exporting
their enriched uranium to us over the course of a couple
refueling cycles, we might lose half of the fuel needed to run
the nuclear power plants. That is 20 percent of the country.
That is 10 percent of the power plants would be at risk of not
having fuel.
Mr. Allen. And I would hope that this Congress will do
something about that.
Thank you.
Thank you. And I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentleman yields.
The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from California, Ms.
Barragan.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When I received the Republican committee memo for today's
hearing, what stood out to me was the complete absence of the
need for U.S. energy policy to address climate change or
environmental justice. Not a word.
An effective U.S. energy policy must keep costs down,
create the jobs of the future, and reduce the fossil fuel
pollution that warms our planet and harms the public health of
many communities, including my own Latino community and
communities of color in my district.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, let me thank you. Thank you for your
tireless work in the last Congress with the select committee to
make sure that we were doing everything we could to save the
planet, addressing climate change, and doing the hard work of
the select committee.
Now, one important program from the Inflation Reduction Act
the Democrats passed is $3 billion for climate and
environmental justice block grants based off of my bill, the
Climate Justice Grants Act.
Can you tell us a little bit about how can this program
help to reduce energy costs and reduce pollution in communities
of color and other communities across the country?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman.
That is one of the most exciting programs in the Inflation
Reduction Act. That is going to provide funding to empower
communities, to look at the challenges that they are facing
when it comes to energy costs, climate costs.
You know, as we have heard from Ms. Jackson and others, you
know, there are challenges that constituents are facing. High
prices are, you know, problems for everybody.
And so this program is going to really empower communities
to figure out the solutions that work the best for them, to
help bring them affordable clean energy and respond to the
climate crisis consequences that they are seeing already in
their communities.
Ms. Barragan. Great. Thank you.
My next question is also for you. I want to talk a little
bit about geothermal, something that the chair and I are
working on together, and how we invest in geothermal. The
question is related to the Climate Crisis Action Plan that the
Select Committee on the Climate Crisis worked on, highlighted
the development of more geothermal energy as a building block
of growing American clean energy production.
Could you describe how increased development of geothermal
energy in California and elsewhere would enhance U.S. energy
security with 24/7 clean power?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes. Geothermal is tapping into the power
of the earth and what is all around us. California has been a
leader because of the particular geologic benefits and profile
in California. But as the technology has improved from
investment in DOE over the years, we are now at a place where
we are close to commercialization of energy supply in areas
that don't have quite the great resources that California and
other parts of the West have.
And so it will also--it will add to that need to provide
dispatchable power to have--to fill in at times that we need
it. And I think it is actually one of the most exciting
opportunities coming our way.
In addition, quickly, it also will use the skill set and
training of many members who are working--or workers in the oil
and gas industry right now. And so it provides an additional
opportunity for them to take their skills and help to continue
to provide this country with energy.
Ms. Barragan. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Chair, I would like to enter into the record a January
30 Climatewire article titled ``China Invests $546 Billion in
Clean Energy, Far Surpassing the U.S.'' This is China's 2022
investment.
Dr. Unruh Cohen, the Inflation Reduction Act passed by
Democrats includes $369 billion in clean energy and climate
programs. It is important to fight climate change and to
compete with China for the jobs and industries of the future.
More must be done to support clean energy.
What are the most important steps that the U.S. can take in
the next few years to keep pace with China on clean energy?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I think we are seeing it already. You
know, just since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we
have seen hundreds of announcements about bringing clean
technology manufacturing to the U.S. and expanding what we have
already. I had in my testimony, you know, nearly $90 billion in
projects, and that is private capital coming in, you know,
ready to partner and have that synergy with the Federal
Government investments.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you. Thank you for your responses.
And I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentlewoman from California has asked for a
document to be entered into the record. We are waiting for that
document. Peter, we will reserve that until the end of the
meeting.
Ms. Barragan. Thank you.
Mr. Curtis. Yes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio, Mr.
Balderson.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you all for being here today. I know it has been a
long day.
Mr. Dabbar, my first question is for you. It is no secret
that the shale revolution in the United States has brought
immense economic benefits. In Ohio, natural gas and oil
development contributes more than $50 billion to the State's
GDP and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs.
In addition to the economic benefits, we have also seen
clean environmental benefits from increased use of natural gas.
According to the Department of Energy, use of natural gas for
electric power production has led to a 57 percent reduction in
domestic emissions of airborne particles such as soot. This has
resulted in an estimated $17 billion in annual health benefits.
And in 2021, U.S. natural gas exports were the highest on
record, and the United States has been an annual net exporter
of natural gas since 2017.
Can you discuss the public health and environmental
benefits America has seen as a result of the shale revolution?
Mr. Dabbar. So, as you pointed out, the big shift from coal
to natural gas has had a big impact. Another thing that has
been kind of underreported--and, actually, this is kind of
efficiency when it comes to natural gas--the natural gas power
plants that you produce in your State, the combined cycle gas
plants, are about 50 percent more efficient than they were. And
so they are running on natural gas, and they are 50 percent
more efficient. That means it takes less BTUs, it takes less
energy to make the same amount of electricity, and it produces
50 percent less emissions.
So the emissions have been driven down in large part
because of your State, because of both the natural gas
production, but the turbine improvements. The combination of
those two has dramatically reduced emissions as a result.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you.
In followup to that, can you discuss the possible global
environment benefits in exporting our cleaner natural gas to
developing nations?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes. So the developing nations--if you go to
any international conference, you go to especially the African
nations, they are very upset today, OK, because they say that
the IMF and the World Bank and saying, like, ``You can't get
any money to build energy. You guys did it, but we are not
allowed.''
And it is pretty stark when you go out to these
international meetings and listen, in particular to the African
nations. Right now they burn coal being made by Chinese
companies, coal-fired power plants. They don't produce much
natural gas in China. They have to import.
So our ability to export natural gas to those countries and
do what we did in this country versus what the Chinese are
doing to the world is quite--it is quite obvious.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you.
When green-at-all-costs advocates in Europe shut off
nuclear and fossil fuel power generation years ago without
concern for their own baseload needs, they found themselves
beholden to the likes of Putin for oil and natural gas.
What has happened in Europe is certainly not a path my
constituents want our country to follow.
Mr. Dabbar, you referenced the problems facing Germany
earlier, and I would like to expand on that. Do you have
concerns that this administration is putting the cart before
the horse when it comes to the transition to renewables? That
is the first question.
And instead of picking winners and losers, why is it so
important this administration and Congress promote all forms of
energy production?
Mr. Dabbar. If you want to see the worst-case energy
policies is look at Germany. They decided to shut down nuclear
when it was perfectly safe because of what happened in Japan.
They decided to increase their risk with an autocrat in terms
of their energy exposure, and they expanded renewables where
Germany is not particularly sunny and it is hard to site
because it is a relatively crowded country.
I think one of the starkest things you can see on the
internet was when the former President was at the U.N. saying
to the Germans that they were going to be increasing their risk
of energy exposure to Russia and they better stop it. And there
was a picture of the Germans at the U.N. laughing at him. I
think we know where things actually turned out.
Mr. Balderson. Agree.
Mr. McNally, I would also like to hear your thoughts on how
we can ensure energy policies don't lead us into the same
situation much of Europe has found itself in.
You have 30 seconds. Thank you.
Mr. McNally. Yes. So, again, do not let China dominate the
supply lines for renewable power and electric vehicles should
those really take off in scale into the future. Maintain our
strategic stockpiles. Remain to become an arsenal of energy,
remain that. Stay open to exports. Keep diversity and global
energy and be at the center of it.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. Thank you. The gentleman from Ohio yields.
The Chair recognizes the very patient gentlewoman from
Illinois, Mrs. Schakowsky.
Mrs. Schakowsky. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
It is my own fault. You know, the rule is, if you miss the
gavel, then you go to the end of the line. I didn't realize
that. That wasn't true when we were in the pandemic.
Anyway, I am happy to be on the committee and happy to be
here today, and I am really looking forward to the rollout of
the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure and Jobs Act
because I think it is really going to make a difference. It is
going to make a difference to communities all over this
country, and it is going to make an unprecedented investment
into America's clean energy future, creating millions of good,
clean jobs and lowering the prices of people at home on their
energy, on their energy bills, and finally, really addressing
the climate crisis.
And I agree with a previous Democrat here saying that I
don't hear enough about that. You know, we have all--we should
put in the same level all of the energy options. This is an
existential issue right now dealing with the climate, and I am
so happy that we are going to be addressing that as well as
maintaining and I think even enhancing the economy of our
country.
One of the things that was in the bills that we passed
would be an investment in a historic $15 billion for the
removal of lead service lines, a problem in my community and in
so many communities where we are not drinking clean water
because of these lead service lines, but also billions of
dollars that are going to help communities that are most
affected: low-income communities, communities often most
populated by people of color.
But I also want to mention that over almost 100 years
Americans have been subsidizing the fossil fuel industry to the
tune, even today, of billions of dollars. And I think it is
important just to mention that, that somehow spending the
amount of money that we are on addressing the climate crisis is
certainly as important.
I wanted to--meant to ask Dr. Unruh Cohen the question
similar to the one that was asked earlier. We haven't rolled
out the kind of programs that are going to deal with
environmental justice communities, communities that are
suffering right now.
What are some of the important things that we are going to
be doing that will serve those communities and address the
absolute relevant issues that Ms. Jackson raised?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Thank you for the question.
And I think, you know, we are in a really exciting time. So
for, you know, the first--these were the first laws that we
really have been able to put money forward in specifically
environmental justice programs. The Biden administration is
focusing in its investments and has committed to fulfilling the
Justice40 so that we see these benefits flow to these
communities that have been underinvested in, that have
experienced, you know, the impact of pollution that comes from
fossil fuel development and refining.
Mrs. Schakowsky. Aren't there also workforce opportunity
benefits that might accrue?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Yes, absolutely. And I think we will see
as these clean energy programs roll out, there will be a focus
of developing jobs for people in the community and getting them
the training. You know, we talked about earlier workforce is a
place that I think we need to have more focus from the Congress
and this committee. And so I hope, while we will see some
improvement, that this committee can work on some of those
issues going forward.
Mrs. Schakowsky. Let me ask you this. Instead, it seems to
me in working to pass what I think is an effective legislation
that had to do--that was passed that had to do with--am I over?
I think I am.
Mr. Curtis. Yes, a minute over.
Mrs. Schakowsky. OK. I will write that and send it to you.
Thank you.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I look forward to it. Thank you.
Mrs. Schakowsky. I appreciate it.
And I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. I don't mean to be aggressive----
Mrs. Schakowsky. No, you're right.
Mr. Curtis [continuing]. But we are going to have to get
everybody in before votes.
So the gentlewoman yields.
The Chair calls on the gentleman, Mr. Fulcher, from Idaho.
Mr. Fulcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I just need to respond to a comment a few moments ago from
my friend from California that indicated that the United States
somehow needs to follow China's lead on clean energy
investment. And I just want to state for the record that, if
anyone believes that that is a model that we want to follow,
pay China a visit, and I think they may change their mind.
But on to my specific topic. This is going to be a question
for Mr. Dabbar. But it is in regard to geothermal energy. And
in my State, Idaho, we have been a little bit of a pioneer on
that front. There is--the first district heating system in the
country was in Boise, Idaho, in 1892, and we have got a very
good resource there. It is carbon free. It is baseload. And we
are a little bit familiar with it there, but it doesn't seem to
get a lot of attention.
And you made a comment, Mr. Dabbar, earlier today that
caught my ear that these--you need to be technology neutral, I
think was the term you used, when making decisions on these
sources and not some political idea and try to drive it with
subsidies.
And so, with that comment, I wanted to just get your
opinion. I have got a--I have had a bill that I have run for
several years called the Enhancing Geothermal Production on
Federal Lands Act that basically allows geothermal exploration
and production on Federal lands where there's already existing
leases, oil and gas leases.
It hasn't made it very far, but I wanted to just get your
opinion. Does this satisfy the tech neutral argument that you
laid out before? What are the opportunities and challenges for
geothermal in this country?
Mr. Dabbar. Congressman, I think expanding geothermal is
absolutely something that we should be looking at. And not
knowing every detail of the bill, I think facilitating lands
that are already being used for energy production that have the
geology already mapped out is going to drive down costs and
increase the likelihood of finding the right formation. And
further investment in driving down costs of geothermal
equipment, right, and the thermal efficiency, it gives great
baseload generation, right. It is great baseload generation
wherever it is at. And I would think any place that it is
available, we should be aggressively attacking that.
Mr. Fulcher. Thank you for that.
And I need to pivot and just utilize my time as best as
possible. I am going to shift, and I have a question for Mr.
McNally here.
It does go to the nuclear arena. And also in my State we
have the Idaho National Lab, and there is a lot of research
there with small modular reactors. And one of the arguments
that we hear is that, in addition to the efficiency of the
energy production, there could also be some upside when it
comes to grid security, specifically because we are threatened
with sabotage, we are threatened with cyber attacks on our
energy systems so much now.
By having an energy source that you can isolate--for
example, one reactor could potentially power the City of Boise,
Idaho. By isolating that and staying off ultimate connectivity
of an overall grid, that could help with a cybersecurity or
cyber attack threats.
Your comments on that? Is that true or is it false? Is it
benefited--is it a benefit to be isolated off the grid, or is
it a negative to do that?
Mr. McNally. Congressman Fulcher, on that question, that is
outside my area of expertise. I would defer to my panel mate,
Mr. Dabbar, if you might have a view on that. But that is
outside my area of expertise, I am afraid.
Mr. Fulcher. OK. Mr. Dabbar?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes. So I think nuclear power is absolutely
supportive of grid security. First of all, it is really hard to
penetrate a nuclear reactor in terms of security, and I think
that has a lot of value. And then, at the end of the day, the
availability of it is unparalleled in this system.
Mr. Fulcher. But the isolation of staying off of a greater
grid, do you think that is a good thing or a bad thing?
Mr. Dabbar. The ability to separate in times of any
challenges in the grade, including an attack, has great value.
Mr. Fulcher. OK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentleman yields.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Pfluger.
Mr. Pfluger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to thank the witnesses as well. Most of the
good questions have been asked today. Thank you all for being
here.
I represent the Permian Basin that has been mentioned
several times. This is literally the heartbeat of America's
energy. It is the heartbeat of the shale revolution. I am so
proud of the men and women in the Permian Basin, Midland and
Odessa and throughout that part of the country, that have
innovated to a point where we have literally helped raise a
billion people out of poverty throughout the world. We have
literally lowered the cost of living for every American family
to the tune of $2,500 per year. We have allowed this economy,
prior to January of 2021, to soar, to absolutely take off.
And I am trying to figure out right now, the discussion
about the climate crisis, what--who is saying that this is the
greatest threat we face with any sort of facts?
And, Mr. McNally, to your point, I want to see the analysis
here. I want to see the data. You all have made some incredible
points on that.
I go back to some of the campaign promises that the
President made. And I quote: ``We are going to get rid of
fossil fuels. There will be no more coal plants. We are going
to phase out fossil fuels.''
Those were three quotes that he made. I got to hand it to
him, he has done everything he possibly can with every tool to
assault the 2 million Texans who are in this industry who are,
like Dr. Cohen's family in Corpus Christi, who are doing the
things cleaner and more efficiently and better than anywhere
else on the planet. He has assaulted this industry in a way
that is directly attacking--and thank you, Ms. Jackson, for
your testimony today--the most vulnerable in our country.
I appreciate the regulatory and the permitting discussions.
Mr. Dabbar, if we continue with the policies that this
administration is pushing, what is our country going to look
like? What is our economy going to look like? What is our--you
know, we are expecting, what, 45 percent increase in demand
over the next 30 years in electricity. What are we going to
look like?
Mr. Dabbar. I think the key word you just mentioned there,
Congressman, is demand. So I think, no matter how you approach
this topic, as long as there is a demand for a product, then it
has to be supplied from someplace.
And taking aside all the other debates, if we are still
going to be needing petrochemicals to make this pen or to drive
some cars because they are not all electric vehicles, someone
has to provide it. I think we can all agree on that from both
sides.
And so, if it is not produced in Midland or Odessa, it is
going to be produced in Caracas or outside Tehran. So that is
it. That is it.
So if we restrict it because of ESG, if we restrict it
because of siting in this country, it will be produced
overseas. It will emit more. It will be more environmentally
hurtful for the world. It will be less jobs. It will be jobs in
Tehran, not jobs in Odessa. I think it is relatively
straightforward.
So even if you have this debate on this topic, you know,
about demand, you know, as long as the demand is there, you
know, for national security and the economy and the
environment, it is better to be produced in America than it is
in Russia or someplace else.
Mr. Pfluger. Yes. Right now in San Angelo, Texas, my
hometown, which is about 120 miles to the east of Midland/
Odessa, it is 27 degrees. It is snowing. There is no wind at
all, and the sun is not going to shine until Friday morning.
And it will be 27 degrees on Friday morning. I just looked at
the weather forecast.
I asked Mr. Kerry, the climate--I don't know what his
official position is. They call him the climate czar. But I
asked him if renewables provide baseload capacity. And I will
ask, Dr. Cohen, the same to you. We have a ton of wind energy.
In fact, we are so proud of the wind energy we have, which is
more than the State of California in my district.
Do renewables, whether it is solar or wind or another form
I am not familiar with, provide baseload capacity for my family
right now?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Renewables provide predictable electricity
for your family and families all across the country.
Mr. Pfluger. And predictable is, I think, not always
reliable.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Predictable means predictable. We know
when the sun will shine. We know when the wind will blow. Smart
grid operators can then provide--make the energy decisions they
need to keep the lights on.
I just happened to look at the Texas electricity map
yesterday, and I noticed there is a lot of stranded electricity
down in my part of the world. So if Texas could continue its
leadership in building transmission, they actually would be
able to free up some of that renewables that's blowing between
Corpus Christi and San Antonio and get it up to other parts of
the State.
Mr. Pfluger. It takes every form of energy, every amount of
energy, and every bit of energy to service the demands. I could
talk for another 10 minutes, but I don't have that much time.
I yield back.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Well, maybe we can talk again another
time.
Mr. Pfluger. But they won't let you. Thank you.
Mr. Curtis. The gentleman from Texas yields.
The Chair calls on the gentlewoman from Tennessee, Mrs.
Harshbarger.
Mrs. Harshbarger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you all for being here. You are tired. I am
tired. So I am going to make a couple of comments, and then I
will go to my question for Mr. Dabbar.
Ms. Jackson, I want you to know that I represent a rural
district with two distressed counties. The average median
income is 49,000, so I understand exactly. I get calls every
day from constituents--who I call my friends and family, by the
way--and they tell me, ``If I pay my power bill, I am going to
have to make decisions about, do I buy groceries or do I buy my
medication?''
So I want you to know I totally understand; OK.
And, Mr. McNally, your statement about foreign and domestic
actors beginning to attack our domestic energy infrastructure
has never been more evident than with the Colonial Pipeline
attack. I was on Homeland Security last Congress on the
Cybersecurity and Critical Infrastructure Subcommittee, and it
was very frightening to hear how that attack occurred and that
it could happen again.
And it hit me because I drive from my district in East
Tennessee all the way to Washington, DC, every weekend, and I
had to stop at every gas station along the way to make sure
that I had fuel just to come here and do my job. So that hit
home.
And you saying--I agree with you that Congress needs to be
better prepared for more cybersecurity attacks, and we need to
hold those bad actors accountable. That is a big deal.
And, Mr. Dabbar, your comments about Russia having the
largest overall HEU stockpile in the world and your statement
that the U.S. needs to work on our uranium enrichment
capabilities is on point.
And just so you know, I have nuclear fuel services in my
district, and I have talked to many of those people there, and
they absolutely understand the importance of this very issue,
why we need to do enriched uranium.
So with that said--and I will continue to talk to them, so
stay tuned--I agree that we absolutely need a higher baseload
of power because we have seen how fragile we are to these
disruptions.
And my question is this. I am from East Tennessee, the 1st
District, and just before Christmas, East Tennesseeans
experienced rolling blackouts after the Tennessee Valley
Authority was unable to meet those energy demands required to
heat your homes during Storm Elliott. We know that natural gas
facilities can come fully on line around 30 minutes and our
best option for wrapping up energy production in a pinch.
My question is this: How much additional investment in
natural gas will we need to combat these unexpected increases
in energy demands in the future?
Mr. Dabbar. So, Congresswoman, you know, TVA shut down
baseload just like other places have.
Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes, they did.
Mr. Dabbar. And that is the reason why I think you ran into
those problems, was that TVA was shutting down more plants.
They are coal plants. You can kind of understand it, but you
are going to need to replace them with something. You need to
replace them with something that can be dispatched.
Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes.
Mr. Dabbar. And natural gas is the obvious place to go,
subject to some of your nuclear power plants, which would be
wonderful for East Tennessee.
Mrs. Harshbarger. Yes.
Mr. Dabbar. So the gas pipelines in general are not there
to replace plants that used to be coal and rail and so on. So
things are getting more unreliable in the whole TVA area,
including in your region. That is the reality.
And if gas pipelines are not built, you are going to run
into that problem more and more. As your great economy grows--I
know East Tennessee well from being at DOE----
Mrs. Harshbarger. Oh, yes.
Mr. Dabbar [continuing]. You are going to have additional
problems because your economic growth is so strong.
Mrs. Harshbarger. You know, the scary thing was that they
didn't give notice--TVA didn't--to emergency management
services. The emergency broadcast systems went down because of
the rolling blackouts. There was equipment damage. We are
trying to track that too as we go along, to see how long they
were down, how much notice did they get, how much damage was
done monetarily, because there was one industry that lost $3.5
million just from the shutdown and had to work through the
weekend.
And I have a question, and anybody can answer this in the
amount of time I have left. You know, the American people tell
us, ``Come up here and work, do your job, and get results.''
But, like so many other projects, whether it be energy
production or highway improvements, they get stalled in the
NEPA process, and I guess my question is, What would a rerun of
NEPA look like, and how that would allow for us to build
natural gas production so that environmentalists can't stall
those projects into nonexistence? Anybody?
Mr. McNally. How about a bipartisan agreement to have
legally enforceable deadlines for NEPA decisions? Clean energy,
conventional energy, everything, just say you got a certain
amount of time, you got to get it done here, and you cut back
on the litigation risk that we have heard today, and it is for
all energies, all businesses and so forth. I sense maybe there
is bipartisan agreement behind that.
And then we might want to think about critical national
security infrastructure, where there you supersize it, you say,
``NEPA,'' you know, ``you got to go even faster.'' But I would
hope there is--I am sensing bipartisan agreement, we got to
improve permitting for all energy here.
Mrs. Harshbarger. Fantastic.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. Chairman, I would just underscore that the
Inflation Reduction Act had nearly $1 billion for agencies to
fund their permitting work.
Mr. Curtis [presiding]. Thank you. The gentlewoman yields.
Take us home, the gentlewoman from Iowa, Dr. Meeks.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you very much, Chair Curtis, and
thank you to all of our witnesses. Iowa is an energy State, so
that may surprise people. Usually I don't need this, but Iowa
is an energy State, and let me also say, unequivocally, that
all of us, I think, bipartisan agree that we want a cleaner,
healthier planet for our children and our grandchildren.
But we also want to be able to have an economy that can
compete in a global economic environment. Energy demand that I
learned at COP26 and COP27, to my surprise--I thought energy
demand was increasing--I was surprised to hear at COP26 and 27
that they thought energy demand is increasing. What I have yet
seen from this administration is a way to transition with
reducing emissions.
So let me tell you a little bit about Iowa. Iowa has 50
percent of its energy from renewables, so that is wind, solar,
biodiesel, ethanol, biomass, bio char, manure. We have this
entire slew, and up until 2 years ago, we also had nuclear. We
have an entire slew. Fifty-eight percent of our electricity is
generated by wind.
And we were told this year that we would potentially have
rolling blackouts. Why? Because we are an energy exporter. So
why should a State that generates massive amounts of renewable
energy be subject to rolling blackouts? And it is because there
is not enough energy production.
On average, it takes 6.5 years to prevent transmission
projects in this country. There are some examples of projects
taking over 10 years, and they are still not fully
transmitted--or permitted.
If we are serious about improving our grid security,
modernizing our grid infrastructure, and diversifying our
energy mix, we need permitting reform.
Last Congress, I introduced the Stay Off My Line Act, which
seeks to address some of these permitting challenges. And just
very briefly, if you can, because I have got a couple of
questions, what other steps can we take to improve our Nation's
permitting process when it comes to transmission?
So if you would, Mr. Dabbar, if you could take a swipe at
that.
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, Congresswoman. I keep coming back to the
time clock. People don't want to have things built and use the
time clock----
Mr. Curtis. Excuse me. Your microphone, please.
Mr. Dabbar. The time clock of approvals under NEPA is
basically preventing things from getting built. I think that is
the biggest thing that could get fixed.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you very much.
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I would add that, in Senator Manchin's
permitting legislation, the language that dealt with
transmission, I think, is a good place for this committee to
look about going forward.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you, Ms. Unruh Cohen, and you had
mentioned that earlier as well.
Iowa is also the Nation's largest fuel ethanol producer,
and it accounts for about one-fourth of U.S. fuel ethanol
production capacity. I have heard a lot from this
administration and from people about electrifying our
transportation sector.
So I want to bring up a little different source of energy
than what we have talked about throughout this 4 hours. I am
very supportive of ethanol-based aviation fuels or sustainable
aviation fuels. According to the Department of Energy,
replacing existing jet fuels with sustainable aviation fuels
has been recognized as an effective strategy to help the
aviation industry reduce greenhouse gas emissions, diversify
fuel supply, and enhance energy security.
The technology needed for SAF production already exists,
including ethanol-to-jet-conversion technologies. Compared to
petroleum jet fuels, sustainable aviation fuel produced from
today's corn ethanol offers a 15 percent lower carbon intensity
and, as we have heard, can even be carbon negative.
This is, in part, because the technology to produce ethanol
from corn is improved. In fact, lifecycle emissions of corn
ethanol have decreased by roughly a quarter in the past 15
years.
What sort of R&D incentives and coordinated efforts would
be needed to speed up the deployment of SAF in commercial
aviation? Mr. McNally?
Mr. McNally. I hate to--I learned a long time ago working
for President Bush, you either know the answer to the question
or you say, ``I don't know and I can find out.'' So I am going
to pass to any other of my colleagues who might have views on
SAF. It is not something in research and development.
Mr. Dabbar. We funded quite a bit of this at DOE, and as
you mentioned, it is a big area of focus. The conversion of
wind energy into sustainable aviation fuel, through a series of
chemistry steps, is completely doable. You can turn wind into
aviation fuel. And so--it takes a few steps of energy, and some
efficiency needs to be improved. But Iowa is in an excellent
position to help drive that innovation.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you very much. And I would agree
with our, you know, Ames Laboratory, with what we are doing in
the renewable space, and then also continued innovation in
nuclear fusion, as we have just seen some landmark things
occur, and then in hydrogen as well. I think we have a bright
future if we focus on where we have agreement and that we all
want a cleaner, healthier planet. Thank you.
Mr. Curtis. The gentlewoman yields, and the Chair calls on
the gentlewoman from Florida.
Mrs. Cammack. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to our
witnesses for being troupers. We are in hour 6 of this
committee. So thank you for your diligence, persistence, and
endurance.
But speaking of endurance, our economy needs some
endurance, and that can only be provided through a reliable,
domestic production of energy. So I am so excited this is our
first hearing, our first topic.
It goes without saying, I think, regardless if you are
Republican or Democrat, we are an energy economy. Everything
begins and ends with energy. So I am excited for all the
discussion that we have had today.
I am the author of the REINS Act, which seeks to rein in
the regulatory environment, which costs our economy $2 trillion
a year. You can look no further than the work that is being
done at DOE or at FERC, or others, where this has been an ever-
growing presence.
So I am going to go down the line. If you guys can keep
them short because I do have a follow-up question. To all our
witnesses, but I will start with you, Mr. McNally: Give me one
regulation that we can take off the books that would help
unleash domestic production of energy and bring down cost of
energy in America. Just one.
Mr. McNally. Take off a reform, it would be NEPA. NEPA is
the taproot of all the problems. Fix NEPA and you fix a whole
lot of things.
Mrs. Cammack. Dr. Cohen?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. I think we have talked about unleashing
some of the clean renewable energy that is tied up, and we need
more transmission for that.
Mrs. Cammack. What regulation specifically?
Dr. Unruh Cohen. That--I think FERC is doing some
rulemaking right now that will look at their regional planning,
and I think that improvement will bring a lot of new
transmission building----
Mrs. Cammack. OK.
Dr. Unruh Cohen [continuing]. To our country.
Mrs. Cammack. Thank you.
Ms. Jackson? Which, by the way, you have had remarkable
quotes today. I have actually written a number of them down, so
thank you for your testimony today.
Ms. Jackson. Well, I am going to say, and I don't know if I
have the regulation correct, but I would say, make the
permitting reform so that we can have more energy production.
It doesn't matter how many leases you have if you can't get the
permits. It is useless.
Mrs. Cammack. Certainty. Certainty in government, it is a
novel concept, I know.
Ms. Jackson. Yes.
Mr. Dabbar. I will also go with NEPA. I think we need to
clear out the litigation that has backed the standards that
have been built up, and only you could clear out all that.
Mrs. Cammack. Perfect. Thank you. And it goes right back to
you, Mr. Dabbar. We need to put energy security back at the
center of our energy policy, both for our international
security but also for our allies.
My question to you is an element of IP theft and China. You
were at the Department of Energy during the Thousand Talents
Program crackdown concerning Chinese researchers gaining access
to intellectual property and other sensitive security
information. And now you are also involved in a cutting-edge
quantum technology exploration.
What specifically can we do, should we do, to protect our
secrets and other sensitive information from the Chinese
Communist Party, and how will this effort benefit our own
technological development?
Mr. Dabbar. Well, with the spin out of Cal Tech, that a
certain Member here, I think, also may have went to earlier,
the reality is that the Chinese have a vast amount of effort
for stealing technologies from National Labs at ICOT.
When I showed up at DOE, there was a significant amount of
technology that was being appropriated legally because we had
no regulation on the interaction, but also at universities.
And so when I was at DOE, we rolled out four orders to
limit that, and I will give you one example of something that I
think should be applied to other areas in addition to DOE, is
that we banned grant money, the American taxpayer money, going
to university researchers who were also, at the same time,
talent program members for the Chinese Communist Party. We said
the American taxpayer money should not go to those people who
are also working for them.
Mrs. Cammack. Seems a little too commonsense, if you ask
me.
Mr. Dabbar. Yes.
Mrs. Cammack. And I am sorry I cut you off, but to that
point, I mean, you have the Thousand Talents Program, you have
the Confucius Institutes on college campuses. I mean, is there
something specifically a database that we are tracking, or is
it simply just not on the books, or has it been done by
Executive order on the connection between Thousand Talents and
issues of national security programs that we are working on?
Mr. Dabbar. Yes, it has basically been a few agencies that
have done it, and that is it. I would recommend that this
Congress take a look at the best practices for what has been
done at DOE and some others, at DoD, because at NSF, at NIST,
the Federal Reserve has Chinese----
Mrs. Cammack. Wow. I appreciate your feedback----
Mr. Curtis. The Chair greatly wants to excuse our
witnesses. If you can endure it, we have got one more, and the
Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.
Mr. Obernolte. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank all of our witnesses. You have done an amazing job. I
know it has been a very long day. For you, it is almost over. I
want to thank you for hanging in there with us.
Mr. Dabbar, you said something in your testimony that
really resonated with me when you highlighted the fact that we
are removing baseload generation from our grid at a much faster
rate than we are adding intermittent power sources.
And as I am sure you know, that is a particularly acute
problem in my home State of California. Because of that, we are
having a situation where there are times when the sun is
shining and the wind is blowing where we are having to pay
adjacent States to take our excess energy because we have so
much of it.
And then we have other times when we have brownouts, or we
have to ask people to curtail demand because we don't have
enough baseload. So the question for you is, What should be
done about that? You know, what do you think we ought to be
doing differently to solve that problem?
Mr. Dabbar. So, the only entity that is trying to pay
attention to this, and I think they are doing a poor job, is
the Cal ISO, and that is because FERC has allowed them to do
what they are doing on what you just described.
I think that FERC should be under the--that you all should
look at a reform of the Federal Power Act to guide FERC to
actually do their job to order the California ISO to
effectively set up efforts that would reinvigorate building of
baseload.
Mr. Obernolte. Right. I agree with you on the Federal side.
On the State side, I actually put the blame more with the
California State legislature, where I served for 6 years. I
think the folks at Cal ISO do their best but sometimes are
constrained by the State law that is imposed on them.
And that is one of the reasons why my constituents pay
twice as much for residential electricity as neighboring
States, three times as much for commercial electricity, four
times as much for industrial. You know, it really puts a hard,
heavy burden on the people in California.
Mr. Dabbar. Commissioner Bernie McNamee, former FERC
Commissioner, has written a couple papers about how these
layers of State, RPS standards, and tax incentives have turned
what was an efficient market model that was anticipated under
the Federal Power Act into very convoluted systems which does
exactly as you described, sir.
Mr. Obernolte. Right. So, you know, talking about baseload,
I wonder if we could have a discussion about what a potential
path forward would be. So, obviously, we are trying to rekindle
some interest in fusion energy--I am sorry--fission energy, but
there have been very promising developments in fusion energy.
And I know we had a question on this from my cochair on the
Fusion Caucus, Mrs. Trahan.
Could you talk about the future you see for fusion and
maybe your level of optimism that that could be part of the
solution to the problem?
Mr. Dabbar. So for a couple of decades, there was not much
innovation in the material science and other areas around
fusion. There was a lot of innovation in batteries and wind and
solar.
But as of about 5 or 6 years ago, there were some big jumps
in terms of innovation in fusion, in particular around material
science that allowed for the magnetic fields to get stronger,
that really makes the possibility of an add-out fusion
possible.
The NIFT announcement at Livermore was great, but that was
not made to be a power plant. That was dealing with the weapons
program. So it wasn't made to be a power plant. But I think
that there are a number of fusion companies, including in
Southern California, including in Northern California, as well
as Massachusetts, that are much farther down the road than even
NIFT at Lawrence Livermore.
I would recommend that, given all--fusion has all the
positives of all the other energy sources and literally almost
none of the negatives. And so, given the advances in
technology, I would recommend further, additional investment by
the country into this now kind of beginning-to-break-through
area.
Mr. Obernolte. Right. Yes, I agree with you. I think it has
the potential to really revolutionize this space and solve a
lot of these big, hairy, societal problems that we have been
grappling with. But I see I am out of time. I would ask you
another follow-up question about this, but let it suffice to
just say that I think it is going to require more than just
investment. We are going to have to take a look at some of the
regulatory framework that we have created that is appropriate
for fission but might not be appropriate for fusion. I think we
are going to have to amend the Atomic Energy Act to try and
create a framework that works and that really catalyzes the
growth of that industry.
But I want to thank you for your testimony. Thank you to
all of our witnesses. I really enjoyed the hearing today. I
yield back.
Mr. Curtis. The gentleman yields back. The witnesses have
made it, and I want you to know you were worth everything that
you were paid to be here today. And I am going to talk to the
committee about building in bathroom breaks in the future.
Thank you so much to our witnesses and to all of our Members.
Without objection, I would like to request the following
documents be entered into the record for today's hearings: a
letter concerning the lack of natural gas infrastructure from
Industrial Energy Consumers of America; a letter concerning
energy regulations and productions from the American
Exploration and Production Council; a statement concerning
regulations and baseload generation retirements from America's
Power; a paper entitled, ``Creating an Arsenal of Energy'' from
Forum for American Leadership; a paper entitled ``Blueprint for
Serious and Sound Climate Policy'' from the Forum for American
Leadership; a paper entitled ``Eight Necessary Steps to Defend
U.S. Critical Energy Infrastructure from Cyber Attacks'' from
the Forum for American Leadership; a paper entitled ``Congress
is Key to Restoring Realism in U.S. Energy Policy'' from the
Forum for American Leadership; a paper entitled ``Setting U.S.
Climate Policy Straight: Recommendations for the 118th
Congress'' from the Forum of American Leadership; a paper
entitled ``Restoring U.S. Energy Security: Recommendations for
the 118th Congress'' from the Forum for American Leadership--by
the way, the witnesses can leave--a report entitled ``Restoring
America's Competitive Nuclear Energy Advantage'' from the
Department of Energy; a report entitled ``Reducing Russian
Involvement in Western Nuclear Power Markets'' from Columbia
University Center on Global Energy Policy; an article entitled
``Russia's State Nuclear Company Aids War Effort, Leading to
Calls for Sanctions'' from The Washington Post; an article
entitled ``Ukraine War to Accelerate Shift Away from Fossil
Fuels'' from E&E News; a report entitled ``Energy, Justice, and
Climate, Change: Key Concepts for Public Health'' from the
American Public Health Association; and a report entitled
``Improving Equity Outcomes for New Federal Investments in
Clean Energy Infrastructure'' from the Bipartisan Policy
Committee; and finally, an article from Climatewire on China
clean energy investment.
[The information appears at the conclusion of the
hearing.\1\]
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\1\ The Department of Energy report has been retained in committee
files and is available at https://docs.house.gov/meetings/IF/IF00/
20230131/115356/HHRG-118-IF00-20230131-SD014.pdf.
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Mr. Curtis. I remind Members that they have 10 business
days to submit questions for the record, and I ask the
witnesses to respond to questions promptly. Members should
submit their questions by the close of business date, February
14th.
Without objection, the subcommittee is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:48 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
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