[Senate Hearing 118-85]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-85
BEYOND THE BREAKING POINT:
THE FISCAL CONSEQUENCES OF
CLIMATE CHANGE INFRASTRUCTURE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
July 26, 2023
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-232 WASHINGTON : 2023
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COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island, Chairman
PATTY MURRAY, Washington CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
RON WYDEN, Oregon MIKE CRAPO, Idaho
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont RON JOHNSON, Wisconsin
MARK R. WARNER, Virginia MITT ROMNEY, Utah
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
TIM KAINE, Virginia MIKE BRAUN, Indiana
CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland JOHN KENNEDY, Louisiana
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico RICK SCOTT, Florida
ALEX PADILLA, California MIKE LEE, Utah
Dan Dudis, Majority Staff Director
Kolan Davis, Republican Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Mallory B. Nersesian, Chief Clerk
Alexander C. Scioscia, Hearing Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2023
OPENING STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Chairman............................. 1
Prepared Statement........................................... 36
Senator Charles E. Grassley, Ranking Member...................... 3
Prepared Statement........................................... 38
STATEMENTS BY COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Senator Tim Kaine................................................ 19
Senator Ron Johnson.............................................. 21
Senator Alex Padilla............................................. 23
Senator Mike Braun............................................... 25
Senator Ben Ray Lujan............................................ 28
Senator Jeff Merkley............................................. 30
Senator John Kennedy............................................. 31
WITNESSES
The Honorable John Bel Edwards, Governor, Louisiana.............. 6
Prepared Statement........................................... 41
The Honorable Susan F. Tierney, Ph.D., Senior Advisor, Analysis
Group.......................................................... 8
Prepared Statement........................................... 47
Dr. Jesse M. Keenan, Favrot II Associate Professor of Sustainable
Real Estate and Urban Planning, Tulane University.............. 9
Prepared Statement........................................... 58
Mrs. Lina Apsey, President and CEO, ITC Holdings Corp............ 11
Prepared Statement........................................... 67
Mr. Alexander Herrgott, President and CEO, The Permitting
Institute...................................................... 13
Prepared Statement........................................... 73
APPENDIX
Responses to post-hearing questions for the Record
Hon. Edwards................................................. 84
Hon. Tierney................................................. 85
Dr. Keenan................................................... 88
Mrs. Apsey................................................... 90
Mr. Herrgott................................................. 97
BEYOND THE BREAKING POINT:
THE FISCAL CONSEQUENCES OF
CLIMATE CHANGE INFRASTRUCTURE
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2023
Committee on the Budget,
U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 9:44 a.m.,
in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Sheldon Whitehouse,
Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Whitehouse, Merkley, Kaine, Lujan,
Padilla, Grassley, Johnson, Marshall, Braun, Kennedy, and R.
Scott.
Also present: Democratic staff: Dan Dudis, Majority Staff
Director; Kara Allen, Senior Energy and Climate Advisor, Energy
Lead; Matt Bolden, Climate Policy Advisor.
Republican staff: Chris Conlin, Deputy Staff Director;
Krisann Pearce, General Counsel; Jordan Pakula, Professional
Staff Member.
Witnesses:
The Honorable John Bel Edwards, Governor, Louisiana
The Honorable Susan F. Tierney, Ph.D., Senior Advisor,
Analysis Group
Dr. Jesse M. Keenan, Favrot II Associate Professor of
Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning, Tulane University
Mrs. Linda Apsey, President And CEO, ITC Holdings Corp.
Mr. Alexander Herrgott, President And CEO, The Permitting
Institute
OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN WHITEHOUSE \1\
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\1\ Prepared statement of Chairman Whitehouse appears in the
appendix on page 36.
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Chairman Whitehouse. Good morning everybody. I'm happy to
call this hearing to order. I recognize my Ranking Member,
Chuck Grassley, and members of the Committee. Thank our
witnesses for being here, particularly Governor John Bel
Edwards of Louisiana. It's a great honor having you with us.
And welcome everyone to the tenth in our series on the
enormous economic dangers of climate change for the federal
budget. In the last month we've seen the hottest temperatures
ever recorded. Louisiana, I think, probably knows something
about that. But Phoenix set a record for the most consecutive
days above 110 degrees.
Smoke from unprecedented Canadian wildfires has blanketed
huge swaths of the United States. Storms in Vermont, New York
and Pennsylvania have triggered deadly flooding, and the worst
drought in the Midwest in over a decade is threatening corn and
soybean production and pushing up consumer prices.
Climate change brings climate danger, climate risk, and
climate inflation. And this is only the beginning.
Today we examine the climate costs to infrastructure.
Infrastructure is the foundation of our economy. Drinking water
and sewage systems, roads, bridges, railways, irrigation, flood
levees, waterways, power plants, dams, transmission lines, all
enable our society to run.
In addition to development and financing costs, each of
these systems has maintenance and operating costs. Increased
temperatures, higher sea levels, and greater variability in
precipitation translate into shorter asset lifespans and higher
ongoing expenses.
In Texas, Oregon and Utah, intense heat is buckling
roadways. In Chicago, Seattle, and other major cities, bridges
are being doused with water to keep heat from warping the
metal. Coastal areas suffer erosion, salt water intrusion and
flooding. 7,500 miles of East Coast roadway is in high tide
flood zones.
And more than 60,000 miles of roads and bridges are
vulnerable to extreme storm damage. Just the direct damage to
roads is estimated to cost nearly $20 billion each year, not
counting the associated depression of economic activity.
Our power grids are seeing record breaking demand, and
reduced power efficiency, as well as added sea level rise risks
where infrastructure, especially thermal power plants, is
located along the coast.
Extreme weather is responsible for 78 percent of the major
disruptions to our power system. Since 2015, the frequency of
major blackouts has doubled. In an average year power outages
caused by extreme weather events have cost the U.S. up to $44
billion, in years with record breaking storms like 2008's
Hurricane Ike, power outage costs soared to $99 billion.
And last year extreme drought in the Midwest dropped water
levels in the Mississippi River so low that the barges got
stuck. Nearly all U.S. agricultural exports, and more than 75
percent of the world's exports of feed grains and soybeans come
from the Mississippi River basin, and the lack of water caused
shipping delays, higher costs to find alternative transport,
and reduced local economic activity. More climate inflation.
Both the accumulating shifts in normal weather, and the
sudden catastrophes are putting economic stress on states,
counties, municipalities and the federal government, as well as
rate payers and taxpayers.
Economics find that major hurricanes, for instance, reduce
local government's revenues by 7.2 percent in the decade
following a hurricane and are associated with a 13 percent drop
in public works expenditures. We have heard repeated testimony
that climate economic and physical hazards intersect. Today we
will hear that infrastructure systems are also interdependent.
The failure in one system will cascade across other
sectors. For instance, Louisiana's power outages after
Hurricane Ian, cascaded into wastewater failures at pumping
stations, spilling millions of gallons of waste into local
bodies of water. Already, we don't invest enough in our
infrastructure.
The power sector is a prime example. Congestion in our
electric transmission system cost an estimated 20.8 billion
last year alone. The price of congestion.
Before passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the
American Society of Civil Engineers estimated our
infrastructure funding gap at $10.3 trillion, and would cost 3
million jobs by 2039, even without the additional burdens of
climate change.
Climate change presents two public policy imperatives.
First, we must zero out emissions by 2050 to avoid even worse
dangers for our planet, and human way of life. And second, we
must withstand the warming and weather we are already
experiencing that is locked in.
A low carbon economy will require thousands of miles of
transmission lines, new zero carbon sources of power
generation, much more high speed rail, new hydrogen and CO2
pipelines, facilities for critical minerals and more. I
appreciate very much that Ranking Member Grassley has invited
an expert on permitting to testify today, as figuring out how
to build out this infrastructure quickly and equitably will be
a key challenge of the next few decades.
Similarly, if we don't want to have to spend tens of
billions of dollars rebuilding and re-rebuilding roads,
buildings, sewage systems, levees and other infrastructure
damaged by climate related extreme weather, we're going to have
to figure out how to build smarter and better.
The good news is that these investments to bolster our
infrastructure create jobs, promote economic growth and are
cost-effective. Many states recognize this value. Louisiana's
legislature passed all four of its coastal master plans
unanimously.
Let me close by recognizing Ranking Member Grassley for
Iowa's leadership on wind power.
64 percent of Iowa's energy production now comes from wind,
a new record for the state, and I believe a record among states
for the country. We will need the kind of leadership of Iowa on
wind power, or Louisiana on coastal resiliency if we are to
tackle the climate danger before it's too late.
Repeatedly, this Committee has heard expert testimony about
the massive economic and fiscal costs of dawdling. Those
dangers are clear and present. I hope that the message is
getting through. This is real. And Senator Grassley now.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR GRASSLEY \2\
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\2\ Prepared statement of Senator Grassley appears in the appendix
on page 38.
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Senator Grassley. Before I begin my opening statement, I
want to go back to a discussion that we had in this Committee
at the last hearing that was a climate hearing. On your side of
the aisle it was touted a September 2021 International Monetary
Fund (IMF) working paper on fossil fuel subsidies. This paper
supposedly bolsters the view that climate catastrophe is on the
horizon.
You explicitly called it peer reviewed in order to support
the case. On page 2 of that paper in question reads quote,
``IMF working papers describe research in progress by the
authors, and are published to elicit comments, and to encourage
debate. The views expressed in the IMF working papers are those
of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of
the IMF, its executive board, or IMF management.''
Dr. Roger Pielke, a non-partisan climate scientist who has
testified at the invitation of both Democrats and Republicans,
provided further insight on this study in response to a
question for the record. I asked him within that question for
the record if a meeting between the IMF Director and democratic
Senators has any bearing on whether an IMF working paper is
peer reviewed.
He responded, ``The IMF working paper would be properly
called a pre-print in the scientific community. That is not the
equivalent of a peer review paper.'' And then further quoting,
``Any single peer reviewed paper is typically a small
contribution to knowledge of particular copy. Most papers offer
less than that.''
He then further followed up by saying, ``Peer reviewed
literature provides an ample resource for those who might wish
to cherry pick those individual articles that might seem to
offer the best support for their preferred position. This may
be useful in political advocacy, or posturing, but it does not
offer a reliable route to effective analysis that might inform
policy.''
If the Committee is to continue focusing on climate change
it's important that we listen to the non-partisan scientists,
rather than speculate with international bureaucrats. Now on to
my opening statement.
Chairman Whitehouse. May I respond to that just briefly.
Senator Grassley. Yes, you sure can.
Chairman Whitehouse. Because we actually had the President
of the IMF in for a briefing to the Budget Committee. Every
member was invited. No member on your side chose to attend. The
President walked through how this worked, and she said that the
methodology of that IMF report is in fact peer reviewed, but
because it is done repeatedly, they don't peer review each
individual report.
But she confirmed that the methodology is in fact, peer
reviewed. And second, she made very clear that the IMF does
endorse and support and stand behind those reports. So if
sadly, nobody was there to see her say that, but that is what
she said, and please go ahead with the rest of your statement.
Senator Grassley. Okay. Our nation is over $32 trillion in
debt, yet this Committee is holding the 11th hearing on climate
change. President Biden is on television bragging about his
economic performance when Americans can't afford groceries and
gasoline.
Our spending is out of control, and the democrats haven't
written a budget in the past two years. As I've said many
times, climate change is a topic very worthy of discussion. I'm
the father of the wind energy tax credit, as you said about
Iowa getting so much of our electricity from wind.
I fought for renewable energy long before climate change
became such a political popular topic. Democrats called this
hearing to discuss the physical impact of climate change on the
infrastructure. I imagine we'll hear some expensive estimates
and alarming anecdotes about the impact of severe weather
events on infrastructure.
But there isn't a single expert in this room who is
qualified as a climate scientist who attribute those estimates
and anecdotes expressly to climate change. However, several
panelists are more than capable of discussing major policy
issues like our broken federal permitting system, which
continues to impede critical infrastructure projects.
These projects would make our infrastructure more resilient
to weather, stronger for everyday use, and would reduce
emissions, but environmental permitting delays, caused by
environmental groups and their friends in Congress, continue to
drive up federal infrastructure spending along with the energy
bills and taxes of our constituents.
This is why I'm excited to welcome Mrs. Apsey, she's
President and CEO of ITC Holdings, the largest independent
electricity transmission company in the United States. ITC
operates more than 6,600 circuit miles of transmission lines in
Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri.
As the head of a company that actually is building
infrastructure. Mrs. Apsey will highlight the real reasons why
our electric grid is in peril, and why we are unable to
complete transmission projects like the Cardinal-Hickory Creek
One in Dubuque County, Iowa.
Her testimony is one that my friends on the other side of
the aisle simply don't want to hear, while accusing the fossil
fuel industry of corruption, and accusing those they disagree
with of criminal activity.
They've supported astronomical, unrealistic electric
vehicles and renewable energy goals. But they're unwilling to
support reform to environmental legislation like the National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and the Clean Water Act, which
impede the construction of the same infrastructure necessary to
even attempt to meet those goals.
A few experts understand this better than Mr. Herrgott,
President and CEO of the Permitting Institute. He worked to
limit permitting delays for infrastructure projects while at
the White House, where he served as both Executive Director of
the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, and
Director of Infrastructure at the Council of Environmental
Quality.
Mr. Herrgott will show us that the democrat's grand visions
of renewable energy are just that unless they reverse the
course on their disastrous permitting positions. From Iowa to
Rhode Island, our nation's roads, bridges, waterways and energy
infrastructure are essential to America's economy, trade and
vitality.
I'm sure all of us here, as well as those Senators on the
Environment and Public Works (EPW) and Energy and Natural
Resource Committees can agree that we can work together to
craft legislation to improve our national infrastructure in
order to reduce our ballooning national debt. Thank you.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much, Senator Grassley.
I am very pleased to have a distinguished panel of five
reputable and serious witnesses before us today. First is the
56th Governor of the State of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards. As I
noted in my opening remarks, Louisiana, under the Governor's
leadership is acting to address the pervasive and serious
challenge that climate change presents to infrastructure,
particularly along its highly vulnerable coastlines.
Thank you Governor Edwards, for taking time to join us
today. Your presence underscores the importance of our hearing.
Our second witness is the Hon. Dr. Susan Tierney. Dr. Tierney
is a Senior Advisor with the Analysis Group, an economic,
financial and strategic consulting company. Previously, she
served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S.
Department of Energy.
In Massachusetts, she was the Secretary of Environmental
Affairs, Commissioner at the Department of Public Utilities,
and Director of the State's Energy Facility Siting Council. Our
third witness is Dr. Jesse Keenan, an Associate Professor of
Sustainable Real Estate and Urban Planning at Tulane
University. That makes two Louisianans here. We're doing
strong.
His research focuses on the intersection of climate change
adaptation and the built environment, including aspects of
design engineering, regulation planning and financing. He also
serves as a Senior Economist with the U.S. Army Corp of
Engineers Research and Development Centers Environmental Lab.
Following Dr. Keenan is Mrs. Linda Apsey, the President and
CEO of ITC Holding Corp, the largest independent electricity
transmission company in the U.S. Its regulated subsidies
include ITC Transmission, Michigan Electric Transmission
Company, ITC Midwest, and ITC Great Plains, through which it
owns and operates high-voltage transmission infrastructure in
Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and
Oklahoma, with development underway in Wisconsin.
Our final witness is Alex Herrgott, President and CEO of
the Permitting Institute, which focuses on accelerating
investment in infrastructure of all types. During the prior
administration Mr. Herrgott served as Executive Director of the
Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, and as
Associate Director for Infrastructure at the Council on
Environmental Quality. Thank you all for joining us today.
Governor, the floor is yours to deliver your opening
remarks. Everyone's complete statement will be made a matter of
record, so please honor the five minute rule.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN BEL EDWARDS, GOVERNOR,
LOUISIANA \3\
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\3\ Prepared statement of Hon. Edwards appears in the appendix on
page 41.
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Governor Edwards. Good morning and thank you, Chairman
Whitehouse and Ranking Member Grassley, and all the members. I
appreciate the opportunity to testify today, and I know there
are a lot of coastal champions on this Committee, and I
appreciate each and every one of you, and that includes Senator
Kennedy.
As Governor of Louisiana, I have devoted considerable time
to one of the most pressing issues of our day, and that is
climate change. As you will see from my full written statement,
there are many lessons for Louisiana to share with this
Committee. And we don't pretend that we've mastered this
subject matter, and that we get it all right, but we have
learned an awful lot of lessons, and I think we're doing some
good work.
We've experienced significant devastation in our recent
history from hurricanes, floods, sea level rise, subsidence,
coastal land lost, habitat degradation and extreme heat.
Because we've been tested more than anywhere else in the
country, Louisiana has gone to great lengths to increase the
resilience of our communities, our economy and our eco system.
Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the state crafted,
and the legislature unanimously approved the first
comprehensive master plan for a sustainable coast in 2007.
Since then we've updated the plan three more times, most
recently this May. The Coastal Master Plan is a $50 billion, 50
year roadmap that prioritizes our investments in coastal
infrastructure. The plan reflects the best available science,
accounting for changes on the ground and forecasting what is at
risk in our future.
It recommends major investments in levee protection, home
elevations, and ecosystem restoration. Importantly, if our
coastal master plan is fully implemented, we could have less at
risk in 50 years than we do today. The plan also shows how
unacceptable a future without action could be, as we would lose
thousands of square miles of land and increase Louisiana's
annual risk by close to $25 billion.
To put that in perspective, our state general fund is less
than $12 billion on an annual basis. Of course, Louisiana is
already building infrastructure to mitigate climate risk and
increase resilience. Our experience proves that such
investments do in fact pay off.
The $14.5 billion federal and state investment in the
Greater New Orleans Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction
System was put to that test by Hurricanes Issac, Barry, Zeta
and most recently, and the most powerful of all those
Hurricane, Ida.
The system works, and it's saved federal treasury billions
of dollars in recovery expenses. Louisiana Highway 1 is another
example. We're elevating a 19 mile stretch of two lane Highway
22--I'm sorry, of Highway 22 feet above the marsh to avoid
increasingly frequent flooding.
This road is the vital evacuation route. It's also an
essential transportation link to the nation's energy sector to
Port Fourchon, which more than 90 percent of all of the Gulf of
Mexico oil and gas production and exploration is actually
serviced out of that port, and each day the highway is closed
it costs the U.S. about $46 billion in lost energy production,
and $528 million in forgone domestic product.
Now this is an $850 million project, and that's expensive,
but it pales in comparison to the cost of inaction. We're also
addressing the direct impact our residents experienced from
climate risk through a widespread effort of home elevations and
voluntary buyouts in repetitive flood areas.
We recently completed the relocation of the Isle de Jean
Charles Native American community to a more resilient housing,
in a more sustainable part of Terrebonne Parish. We're working
with the Army Corps of Engineers on a $300 million elevation
program in southwest Louisiana, and we're conducting seven
other buyout programs across the state through our watershed
initiative.
By proactively moving residents out of harm's way we can
sustain communities, increase equity for disadvantaged
residents, lower insurance premiums, and restore the natural
function of the flood plains. These projects all require
partnership with the federal government.
And funding from both state and federal sources because we
need greater partnerships, and increased funding to construct
more resilient infrastructure. And I commend the Chairman and
other members who have cosponsored the Reinvesting in Shoreline
Economics and Ecosystems (RISEE) Act. By sharing energy revenue
with impacted coastal states, RISEE will enable those states to
make proactive investments to combat challenges from the
changing climate, which would save the American people and the
federal government money in the long run.
We are an energy state. No doubt about that. In 2020 I
created the Climate Initiative Task Force to develop a Climate
Action Plan, achieving buying into substantial Community and
stakeholder engagement, 15 months, 49 public hearings, and the
input of 150 stakeholders, where we unanimously adopted a plan
to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
This is the only such plan in the Gulf South, but we're
already seeing results. Since adoption in 2022, the Climate
Action Plan has attracted more than $26 billion in low carbon
economic development to the State of Louisiana, and it also
guided our pursuit of Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
(IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding.
And Mr. Chairman, again, I'm happy to be here and I look
forward to answering the questions from the Committee.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much Governor, I turn
now to Dr. Tierney.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE SUSAN F. TIERNEY, PH.D., SENIOR
ADVISOR, ANALYSIS GROUP \4\
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\4\ Prepared statement of Hon. Tierney appears in the appendix on
page 47.
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Dr. Tierney. Good morning Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking
Member Grassley, and members of the Committee. Thank you so
much for inviting me to testify this morning, and I have two
main points. First, as we have just heard, the nation's energy
infrastructure is already being adversely impacted by the
changing climate.
Second, given the nation's dependence on well-functioning
energy infrastructure, this is leading to great suffering, both
directly by increasing costs, disrupting heating and cooling,
and indirectly by disrupting electricity services and causing
energy prices to spike.
Given the Budget Committee's jurisdiction, I focus today on
describing these circumstances rather than the solutions.
Everyday the news highlights the many ways in which our country
is being hit by extreme weather. These circumstances are not
surprising, but they are challenging.
For example, in December 2022, Winter Storm Elliott across
the country took out power to hundreds of thousands of
Americans. A fourth of PJM's generating capacity was out of
operations across a 13 state region in the area between Chicago
and the Mid-Atlantic states. Most of that was gas-fired power
plants, accounting for 70 percent of the outages due to
equipment and fuel problems.
Texas, in February 2021, Winter Storm Uri brought extreme,
severe cold and ice, electricity prices spiked to 100 times
their normal levels, leaving many consumers with unbearable
electricity bills. Over 246 people died, financial losses
ranged from 80 to 130 billion.
In 2019 in Northern California, the utilities proactive
electricity shutoffs during high wildfire risk conditions
impacted over 1 million customers and cost $2 billion.
Hurricane Katrina in August 2005, one-third of domestic
U.S. production, one-sixth of domestic U.S. natural gas
production, and nearly 10 percent of the nation's refining
capacity was offline.
An estimated 4.5 million customers in Louisiana and
Mississippi lost electrical power. U.S. oil and gas prices were
double their normal levels for months, and it raised the
national cost of natural gas on the order of $50 billion in the
10 months after the storm.
Even a decade ago, the Department of Energy estimated that
power outages due to severe weather cost the nation between $24
and $44 billion a year, that's adjusted for inflation. Such
effects of the changing climate were detailed in the energy
chapters of the most recent national climate assessment.
For example, and I'm quoting here, ``The reliability,
security and resilience of the energy system underpins
virtually every sector of the U.S. economy. The nation's energy
system is already affected by extreme weather events. Due to
the changing climate the energy system is projected to be
increasingly threatened by more frequent, longer lasting power
outages, affecting critical energy infrastructure, and creating
fuel shortages.
Widespread energy disruptions can take weeks to fully
resolve at sizeable economic cost. The petroleum, natural gas
and electrical infrastructure along the east and Gulf Coasts
are at extreme increased risk of damage.'' This is from the
2018 assessment still.
``This vulnerable infrastructure serves other parts of the
country, so regional disruptions are projected to have national
long-lived implications.'' Now the upcoming fifth national
climate assessment will surely point to the worsening
conditions on energy infrastructure, and on disadvantaged
communities across the country.
In closing, I encourage Congress to act swiftly to address
the emissions that are the root cause of climate change, and
its adverse impacts on American infrastructure and citizens.
Thank you very much.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much. Dr. Keenan,
please proceed.
STATEMENT OF DR. JESSE M. KEENAN, FAVROT II ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
OF SUSTAINABLE REAL ESTATE AND URBAN PLANNING, TULANE
UNIVERSITY \5\
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\5\ Prepared statement of Dr. Keenan appears in the appendix on
page 58.
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Dr. Keenan. Chairman Whitehouse, Ranking Member Grassley,
Members of the Committee. In my remarks today I'd like to
outline how climate attributed physical impacts impose
increasingly burdensome financial capital and operational costs
for taxpayers, consumers, and infrastructure providers.
The United States is facing increased electricity
production costs in order of $50 billion a year by 2050. This
figure does include increase costs for cooling buildings,
charging cars, increased demand for water recycling. Pumping
drinking water farther distances, water desalination, and
increased agricultural irrigation.
Additional costs for extreme weather like hurricanes and
wildfires are among a wide variety of direct costs that will
continue to be passed on to utility ratepayers. As a resident
of New Orleans, my own electric utility only a few years ago
just removed a bill surcharge for post-Hurricane Katrina, 13
years after the fact.
And the transportation sector, physical impacts have been
widely observed from everything from extreme heatwaves to flood
events, compromising roads, tarmacs and rail lines, as well as
pipelines. Annual direct damages for roads and rail impacts are
estimated to be under just 20 billion dollars a year by 2050.
Increased operation and maintenance expenses for paving and
resurfacing the roads is estimated to be approximately 19
billion at the end of this decade, a year.
None of these cost estimates and projections account for
the indirect cost for increased logistic cost, fuel cost, delay
costs, and lost economic output. For instance, when the water
is too high, or too low in the Mississippi River, boat traffic
delays have ripple effects on domestic and international food
and grain markets.
Within the water and wastewater sectors, annualized urban
drainage infrastructure damages are estimated to be
approximately 4 billion by 2050, with an additional 2 billion
in costs associated with impairments to existing public water
systems.
This latter figure does not count for the untold costs of
adaptations to address water scarcity challenges facing the
western United States, where with reduced irrigation,
additional groundwater mining, and increased reservoir storage
capacity posing significant additional costs.
Most importantly, infrastructure is getting more expensive
because the municipal bond market is beginning to price climate
risk. When the infrastructure providers issue general
obligation bonds, investors are concern that a degraded tax
base may impact the fiscal stability of the issuer over the
term of the bond.
This default risk is amplified for revenue bonds. For
instance, if a toll road is washed out in the event of a
climate event, then the payment of that bond may be compromised
for as long as those tolls are not being paid. Recent research
has highlighted that after disasters local governments are more
likely to issue these revenue bonds, and that post-disaster
issuances are paying higher comparative yields.
Increases in capital costs may also be attributed to
increased construction costs for incorporating engineering
resilience within assets. For instance, a flood mitigation
system may have to build a higher levee with greater pumping
capacity to accommodate future projected precipitation, storm
surge and sea level rise design standards.
Operations and maintenance costs, O&M form climate impacts
are perhaps one of the most immediate cost burdens for
infrastructure providers. Additional costs for things like
greater energy expenses for pumping storm water, more storm
water that is, are all drags on the financial balance sheet of
providers, and increasingly cost burden to ratepayers.
Unfortunately, the United States is grossly behind in the
codification of climate sensitive design and engineering
standards, and on the lifecycle cost accounting for evaluating
the total cost of climate impairments over the useful life of
these assets. As this country embarks on a new era of
infrastructure investment, we have to ask ourselves some
difficult questions.
Are we designing today's infrastructure to hail to
tomorrow's load and environmental demand? In high risk zones,
that is high-risk impact zones, where will we invest, and where
will we disinvest in infrastructure? And finally, are we
accounting and budgeting for the anticipated increased costs
and operational expenses?
Proper fiscal stewardship in the face of climate impacts
will require stakeholders to work together to provide
transparency and accountability. A failure to recognize and
account for these costs will not only undermine the reliability
of our infrastructure it will undermine our global economic
competitiveness. Thank you for the opportunity to testify, and
I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much. Ms. Apsey.
STATEMENT OF LINDA APSEY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, ITC HOLDINGS CORP
\6\
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\6\ Prepared statement of Mrs. Apsey appears in the appendix on
page 67.
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Mrs. Apsey. Great. Thank you, and good morning Chair
Whitehouse, Ranking Member Grassley, and distinguished members
of the Committee. I am Linda Apsey, president and CEO of ITC
Holdings Corp, the nation's largest independent transmission
company. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
Next month marks the 20th anniversary of the northeast
blackout that left 50 million people in the dark. It was the
largest blackout in North American history, and a sobering
reminder of how vulnerable our nation's energy security can be
when we fail to adequately invest in transmission
infrastructure.
The investment we make in transmission, as well as the
regulatory and policy environment our leaders create, will
determine the success of our energy future. I assure you there
are measures we can take to get there however we must act with
the same urgency and vigor that our industry and government
leaders did 20 years ago.
Now more than ever the health of our nation's economy
depends on reliable and affordable access to electricity. For
the rolling farmlands of eastern Iowa to the busy streets of
Detroit, millions of people depend on ITC to operate the grid
safely and reliably. However, building transmission can take up
to a decade if not more, a pace nowhere near fast enough to
meet the administration's clean energy goals.
It's imperative that we examine changes to ensure that
investment in transmission is predictable, timely and cost-
effective in order to realize the benefits of a modern
transmission grid. While ITC has made significant investments
in our transmission grid over the past 20 years, we are only as
strong as our weakest link.
The transmission grid is a highly interconnected network of
high voltage lines that moves power within our states across
state lines, across vast regions, and over international
borders. The demands on our grid, and impacts on weather events
are ever increasing, putting increased strain on an already
fragile grid. The American Society for Civil Engineers gives
our energy grid a C minus, hardly an acceptable grade for
today's needs, far less our future.
Our Midwest geography is no stranger to the severe weather
that is impacting infrastructure all over the country. Our
regions frequently experience ice storms, wind storms,
flooding, and other natural disasters of increasing severity.
In 2020, Iowa experienced a devastating derecho storm causing
widespread power outages. It was the equivalent of a 40 mile
wide tornado steamrolling across 200 miles of the state.
Since that time, Iowa has experienced two additional
derechos that have caused damage to electrical infrastructure.
These storms, along with the recent extended heatwaves across
much of the U.S. demonstrate the importance of a resilient and
reliable grid. To promote needed investment, more needs to be
done to address how we plan, how we pay for, and how we permit
transmission.
To begin, policymakers should adopt transmission planning
policies that capture and account for the full range of
transmission benefits, not just the narrow definition of
benefits that transmission is evaluated on today. Doing so will
help to realize highly valuable regional transmission projects.
Policymakers should also establish more robust
interregional transmission planning standards, which can drive
reliability and resilience across regions, particularly during
severe weather conditions. And in addition, policymakers should
continue to focus on streamlining permitting approval processes
at both the state and federal level.
Recently Congress made progress by passing federal
permitting reforms, but more needs to be done to decrease the
amount of time it takes to obtain permits for major
transmission lines, and minimize the potential for multiple
lawsuits and litigation.
For example, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator's
(MISO) Cardinal-Hickory Creek Project, 102 mile transmission
line from Dubuque, Iowa to Dane County, Wisconsin, is the last
remaining project to be constructed in MISO's Multi-Value
Project (MVP) portfolio from 2011. These projects were designed
to deliver renewable energy to meet state renewable energy
standards, provide access to lower cost generation, and enhance
grid reliability.
Over 100 renewable generation projects are awaiting
completion of the Cardinal-Hickory Project in order to
interconnect to the grid, resulting in hundreds of millions of
dollars in lost energy savings to customers. However, the
project has been plagued by costly delays and permitting
challenges due to the 1.3 miles that crosses federal land.
The federal government and project owners recently won a
major decision from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals that
clears the way for the federal agencies to make their final
decisions on the project. We stand ready to complete and
energize the line, however this is contingent on expeditious
federal action review.
The ability to effectively and efficiently make needed
investments in our transmission grid will determine whether we
can achieve our critical economic security and energy goals.
Thank you again for the opportunity to testify before the
Committee, and I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you very much. Our final witness
is Mr. Herrgott.
STATEMENT OF ALEXANDER HERRGOTT, PRESIDENT AND CEO, THE
PERMITTING INSTITUTE \7\
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\7\ Prepared statement of Mr. Herrgott appears in the appendix on
page 73.
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Mr. Herrgott. Chairman Whitehouse and Ranking Member
Grassley, my name is Alex Herrgott, and I'm President of the
Permitting Institute (TPI), and the former and first appointed
Executive Director of the Federal Permitting Improvement
Steering Council.
TPI is a federal and state focused, non-partisan, non-
profit serving as an authoritative voice on permitting, and a
trusted expert resource in education partner for federal and
state policymakers and regulators.
Our diverse membership collectively support a common goal
of accelerating infrastructure across all sectors. TPI members
and staff speak from experience that comes from writing the
laws in Congress, then developing projects, financing them,
permitting them, siting them and interacting with the
government officials for implementing a myriad of laws,
regulations and guidelines that determine where, how and when a
project gets built.
The reality is that every project that turns dirt,
regardless of the sector that you care about, encounters
habitat, alters landscape, creates unavoidable interactions
with nature triggering hundreds of reviews and regulations that
govern infrastructure permits at the federal, state and local
level.
As the Chairman knows all too well, or as you can see from
the chart is that infrastructure permitting is carried out by
13 agencies operating under the authority of dozens of
statutes, some of which are more than 100 years old. The result
is a permitting process mired with excessive delays and
litigation risk that stifles investment.
Now the Energy Act of 2020, the bipartisan Infrastructure
Law, Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors
(CHIPS) Act, IRA, they provide an unprecedented funding for our
nation's critical infrastructure. However, the omission of
significant permitting reforms in this legislation is
undermining one of the largest single federal investments in
infrastructure since the depression.
While Congress has agreed on modest process reforms to
achieve greater coordination efficiency, these service level
process changes have only served as band-aids and are not the
necessary surgical cure.
To be clear, interagency coordination and transparency,
dashboards, executive orders, White House permitting action
plans, and a strengthened federal permitting improvement
steering council are very much needed, however they're not the
sufficient step to reduce the hundreds of billions of dollars
in costs associated with infrastructure permitting across all
sectors.
Even with the subset of reforms in the Fiscal
Responsibility Act, just recently in the debt limit deal, would
represent the most significant legislative changes to NEPA in
40 years. In practice, developers will still experience most of
the same obstacles and avoidable process delays that have
plagued this system for decades.
Truly impactful legislation will have to move beyond macro
level NEPA changes, and untangle the web of confusion of
uncertainties in this chart. The challenges and costs inflicted
by our broken permitting system do not discriminate by sector.
Whether it was three years on the Mid-Barataria Coastal
Restoration Project, or as the Chairman knows all too well,
with offshore wind.
In the last two years the Federal Permitting Improvements
Hearing Council executive directors received and approved more
than 17 requests from lead permitting agencies to extend the
completion date for at least 10 offshore wind projects on the
dashboard, creating an additional 10 years that was not
anticipated at the beginning of the permitting timetable.
This is not unique to offshore wind. It's for traditional
fossil fuel, broadband, water, you name it. The problem is
getting worse not better at a time when we can least afford it.
No one wins under the current system, not the companies on the
frontlines of transitioning the U.S. harnessing technology for
greener energy generation and storage, not the environment, and
not the majority of Americans that will bear the brunt of these
increased energy environment costs.
On average, private developers reported that 20 to 30
percent of total project costs is wasted on delays. All these
costs are ultimately passed on to citizens, either through
taxes, tolls, or increased rates and usage fees. It's not all
bad news. We're seeing glimpses of what sound reform can do,
and there's an opportunity for lawmakers to build and expand on
the reforms enacted over the last decade.
But in order to do that the process must be transparent. At
present, outside of the Federal Permitting Council, some small
issues at the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC), and the Department of
Transportation (DOT) projects trapped under one federal
decision under the IIJA there is no central repository in real
time tracking on the inventory and status of projects
navigating their way through the federal agencies.
The lack of process transparency allows for gamesmanship of
two year timelines, and the lack of publicly available data
prevents stakeholder engagement, and our ability to accurately
diagnose the problem. We don't need to hide the problems. This
is not a republican or a democrat issue, it is a process issue
we can fix.
The beauty of transparency is that the facts now drive this
debate, not hyperbole and posturing. The reality is that the
last significant study of NEPA timelines was completed by the
Council of Environmental Quality more than five years ago.
Where's that study?
While it can be convenient to blame the faceless
bureaucrats for delays and process problems as someone who
worked alongside the hardworking pioneers of the Federal
Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC) dashboard, and
the thousands of dedicated project managers across the
interagency process, I encourage Congress to refrain from such
rhetoric. Instead I challenge you to help me and others make
public service the desired pathway by recognizing the talents
required, and the contributions of these agency professionals
that make towards advancing America's infrastructure goals.
TPI believes the majority of republics and democrats in
Congress, make for a faster, more transparent, predictable and
accountable permitting process. But we first must collectively
acknowledge that the modernization of what have often been
called bedrock environmental laws will absolutely be required.
Despite bipartisan agreement that the country's permitting
process is broken, skepticism over the motivations behind the
new legislative reform proposals, and the outside stakeholders,
each prioritizing their narrow interest, and the fear of what a
negotiated compromise may look like at the end of a conference
or of a bill, it is uninhibited additional reforms.
However, I remain cautiously optimistic that reform is
achievable. From our vantage point at TPI, we see staff on both
side of the aisle, and from all centers coming to us with the
same challenge with the old version of a proposed solution.
By providing technical assistance, and connecting members
and stakeholders with that shared interest, we at TPI are
working to help build a bridge required for comprehensive
reform that eliminates obstacles for all American
infrastructure development, not just the one that you care
about.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward for answering
your questions.
Chairman Whitehouse. Well thank you Mr. Herrgott, and
congratulations on a truly heroic effort to pack the maximum
number of words into your five minute window. That was
impressively done, and also thank you for your reference to
offshore wind, which will take me to Governor Edwards.
First of all thank you for your positive mention, and for
your support for the RISEE Act. This will provide revenues to
coastal states like yours. It will expand offshore wind,
particularly in the Gulf. It will add the construction and
manufacturing jobs associated with offshore wind, and provide
an economic hedge for the Gulf states against carbon bubble
risk to state and local revenues.
So I'm really grateful for your support. Tell me a little
bit about what is happening along the Louisiana coast right
now. What are you looking at?
Governor Edwards. With respect to wind or more broadly?
Chairman Whitehouse. With respect to coastal risk, coastal
harms.
Governor Edwards. Yes, sir. Well, you know, we are
particularly challenged in Louisiana, and have been for a long
time. We've lost 2,000 square miles of land since 1930.
Inaction going forward with sea level rise alone we would lose
another 3,000 square miles over the next 50 years, of course
inaction is not----
Chairman Whitehouse. A grand total of 5,000 square miles?
Governor Edwards. Yes, sir. But inaction is not an option,
and in fact that's not what we're doing. We have the country's
most robust plan for coastal restoration and protection. We are
investing mildly for a state our size. In 2007 when we came up
with a plan that says $50 billion over 50 years, there was
nothing magical about it, we just couldn't imagine we would
ever have more than a billion dollars a year.
And we said okay, what would we do? We are actually on
track. Last year we spent $1.3 billion in our coast. This year
will be 1.6 billion, and critically important is the RISEE Act
because we constitutionally dedicate all of our federal
offshore revenue for all gas production to our coast.
And we, unlike interior states, we're lending at 37.5
percent, not 50 percent. Capped at $375 million, and then it's
shared among 4 states. So the RISEE Act would address that, but
more importantly for us, or at least significantly it would be,
create a revenue sharing around wind, which would be critically
important for Louisiana because we are going to develop wind.
There's a lease sale going to happen next month off the
coast of Louisiana by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management
(BOEM), but also we have five companies that are interested in
state water wind development as well. So that's critically
important. And Mr. Chairman, one of the things we have to start
planning for is in 2031 the Deepwater Horizon oil spill damages
that are funding the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion for
example at almost $3 billion.
Those funds go away. We really want to replace that to the
extent that we can, at least, with wind energy revenue. So
we've got a lot going on on our coast, and like other states,
you know, we've got 40 percent of our people live in South
Louisiana now, and it's such a huge part of our economy. It's a
special place for the country, not just for Louisiana.
But we have a real sense of urgency about what we're doing,
and I know you've been down there to see it. And I invite all
the Committee members to come and see what we're doing in
Louisiana. I'm proud of our efforts, and I've traveled to the
Netherlands and other places.
What we're doing in Louisiana it is on scale with anything
happening anywhere in the world right now.
Chairman Whitehouse. The infrastructure costs that you're
bearing to adapt to and protect against climate change and sea
level rise, I assume that the federal government is a partner
in that, and some of those costs revert back to the federal
government. What is the scale of the state and federal
investment that you look forward to?
Governor Edwards. Well first of all the federal government
has been a tremendous partner. If you just go back to Hurricane
Katrina, with the failure of the federal levees around New
Orleans, which really caused the enormous death and damage.
There's been $14.5 billion of investment now. We have our share
of that, and we're certainly needing that.
But that was borne by and large through the generosity of
people all over the country, hugely important. The Corps of
Engineers is engaged in 10 projects all over the State of
Louisiana, primarily in the south along the coast, along the
river there that will have tremendous impact.
So yes, there's tremendous investment, but it is literally
in the billions of dollars. These are not small investments.
But one of the things that I would like to point out, and they
are paying off. Hurricane Ida hit southeast Louisiana in 2021,
it was stronger than Hurricane Katrina, and a very similar
trajectory when it hit the state.
Very little damage compared to Hurricane Katrina, and so
those were costs saved, and I'm sitting here not just because
of what's happened since I've been Governor, but I firmly
believe that the storm events are going to be more frequent,
and they're going to be more severe, and therefore the cost
savings will be more frequent, and they will be greater over
time.
Another example of this is that Corps authorized a
protection project from Morganza to the Gulf. Hurricane Rita in
2005, a nine foot storm surge in this area inundated 11,000
structures. The work that we did, Hurricane Barry, same area, 9
foot of storm surge, 11 structures. 11,000 versus 11. It costs
a lot, but the savings accrue for a very long time.
Now we're having a challenge getting FEMA to recognize all
that work, and have it reflected in the Risk Rating 2.0
premiums for the National Flood Insurance Program, that's
another thing. But we know that these investments pay off over
time, and they produce savings. And it's just it's so good for
the economy, and otherwise.
Chairman Whitehouse. So big investments could be wise
investments. My time has expired. Let me yield to Senator
Grassley. I will have some questions for the record for the
other witnesses, and there is time to turn around those
answers, so please be ready for those questions for the record
when they come in, and please respond timely. Senator Grassley.
Senator Grassley. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of
you for your testimony. I'm going to start out with Mrs. Apsey.
President Biden's goal of making 50 percent of all new vehicles
electric by 2030, and shifting to 100 percent carbon pollution
free electricity by 2035, most people believe that these goals
are impossible to meet.
Americans don't want and can't seem to afford the dramatic
shift to expensive electric vehicles, and a 79 percent fossil
fuel energy mix can't change overnight. So to you, let's take a
moment to talk about the grid. Does the United States currently
have the infrastructure in place to even come close to
achieving Biden's renewable goals?
Mrs. Apsey. Great. Thank you for the question. From a
transmission infrastructure perspective, transmission serves
multiple needs, access to the grid, reliability, resiliency,
security, and ultimately obviously allowing electric vehicles,
or the electrification of our economy.
However, our grid is not in a state even today to meet the
current stresses on our grid, as we've talked about. And given
the timeline to build the time it takes to plan a transmission
project, to the time we actually put a transmission line into
service, on average if all goes well, it takes seven years.
I gave you an example of a project that has taken at least
12 years. So the challenge, I think from a transmission
infrastructure perspective, is that while the utility sector
has made significant strides in decarbonizing, there's I think
we've gotten to probably about almost 50 percent, you know,
reduction in carbon. So the remaining distance is the hardest
to go.
Senator Grassley. I think you've answered that question
well. You mentioned the Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission
project from its delays because of environmental reviews. Why
hasn't 10 years been enough time to complete that project?
Who's to blame in that regard?
Mrs. Apsey. Well the project faces litigation from both
local groups and national environmental groups that sought to
litigate the portion of the project across federal wildlife
refuge. That was the 1.3 miles, and so it's been tied up in
multiple court venues, and at the same time, you know, we've
been urging the federal agencies to continue to do the work so
that when we received the outcome of the court ruling we could
be in a position to expeditiously move forward with the
remaining construction on the project.
At this time, we are still you know, we are still awaiting
the federal action--federal agencies to take action on the
remaining permits. While we're hopeful that we can now move to
quick action, you know, we're somewhat at the hands of the
federal agencies.
Senator Grassley. Mr. Herrgott, Biden has prioritized
preferred green energy projects by government subsidies, and
concerted regulatory effort to end fossil fuels, however just
like fossil fuel projects, renewable projects face years of
permitting delays.
Why shouldn't permitting reform be at the top list of
Anyone who's concerned about climate change? And during your
time at the administration, did you notice any renewable energy
project delays stemming from democrat inaction?
Mr. Herrgott. Thank you for that question, Senator. You
know, I'm often perplexed at the situation we find ourselves in
on the permitting debate. This isn't like gun control or social
issues, or social security, or the science of climate change.
This is an apolitical science based issue, and we are using
the process as a rhetorical tool to stop the projects that you
don't like. It's not an effective way in which to adjudicate
which projects go where. And what we are seeing with comments
that are coming from my friends in the administration that I
work with when they say we don't have a problem with NEPA, 95
percent of all NEPA reviews end up in a categorical exclusion.
That is misleading, right?
The reality is that most of those projects that are being
talked about are smaller, lower level projects at the
Department of Transportation, and do not take into account
these large scale energy projects.
Which is why when the administration--we had to put our
finger on the scale on wind and several other projects to get
the Department of Interior to accelerate the time of doing
these regional Environmental Impact Statements (EIS). And I
think that what often we find in this situation is that we
stopped treating capital being put at risk to build all
infrastructure as partners, and we started to look at them as
adversaries.
And I think that there's going to be a tremendous move to
make this issue a truly bipartisan issue because of the $10
trillion of investment in infrastructure right now. $4 trillion
is renewable energy, and on average it is suffering about a 7
to 10 year delay. This is no longer a republican issue, and I'm
almost surprised in many ways that republicans pitch permitting
reform, as it should be coming from the other side.
Senator Grassley. Governor, I'll have a question for you in
writing if you please respond to it. I yield.
Chairman Whitehouse. Next, just for the information to my
colleagues, first Senator Kaine, Senator Johnson, Senator
Padilla, and Senator Braun. And for the record I have not given
up hope on bipartisan permitting reform.
My Streamlining Interstate Transmission and Electricity
(SITE) bill on electric transmission is in the Environmental
Public Works Committee, and has been in Chairman Carper's
package, and we are finalizing the Offshore Wind bill, which we
hope will be very bipartisan, and hope very much that we can
get our Committees to pass significant bipartisan permitting
legislation that I hope will make all the witnesses happy.
Senator Kaine.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR KAINE
Senator Kaine. Thanks to our witnesses. It's great to be
together with you. Virginia is a state that has very
significant climate challenges. We have 5,000 miles of
shoreline on the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay, Hampton Roads
1.7 million people, it's often listed next to second to New
Orleans as the community in the United States, at least in the
eastern part of the United States most jeopardized by sea level
rise.
And in Appalachia where the topography of these narrow
hollows with streams at the bottom of them often lead to really
significant storm events that wipe out infrastructure, wipe out
people's homes. Interestingly, the rainfall in Appalachia on an
annual basis isn't changing, it's just that it's coming much
more episodically and violently, which poses real risks to
infrastructure.
So on this hearing on infrastructure, I'm kind of focused
on three kinds of infrastructure in Virginia. First, climate
affects the existing infrastructure road, the main road into
the Norfolk Naval Base, our bridges. And when there's damage to
that infrastructure we've got to rebuild.
Second in order to deal with some of our climate risks,
Governor Bel Edwards, I'm a big admirer of what you've done,
and we're making a lot of resiliency investments in the same
way that Louisiana has, so that sea level rise doesn't affect
communities as much. But those resilience investments are
infrastructure projects that have their own permitting
requirements.
And finally, Virginia is really finally embracing kind of
clean energy with offshore wind, significant solar deployment,
which requires its own infrastructure, particularly in the
transmission space. I am very excited about the commitments
that we have made.
The American Rescue Plan, by putting money into state and
local governments. A lot of that one time money was used for
infrastructure projects. That's great. The Infrastructure Bill,
the CHIPS Bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act, but I've got
two worries about our commitment to infrastructure.
One, is who is going to build it? I think we have some
significant workforce challenges that we have to grapple with.
On manufacturing, who's going to make it with an unemployment
rate that's so low we need to do a lot on the workforce side,
but the second is the permitting side. And I wanted to ask your
opinions about this, if witnesses have opinions, and maybe Mr.
Herrgott I would suspend you might have looked at this more
closely than others.
When we were talking about the Inflation Reduction Act last
summer there was a proposed 90 page permitting reform bill, and
85 pages of it was permitting reform, and then five pages of it
was saying but Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) doesn't have to
apply, doesn't have to go through any of this reform.
I opposed the five pages at the end because I thought if
we're going to fix our permitting process, then let everybody
meet the standards. The will of my colleagues was to the
contrary, so that MVP had a green light. That's water under the
bridge. But I'm curious, did you analysis, just kind of from a
starting standpoint, that 85 page permitting reform proposal?
Some elements of it were included in the debt ceiling deal,
but I think sort of modest elements were included. Just from a
starting standpoint, I've been a little surprised, not on the
Committees, that that effort hasn't come back before us because
like you, I think many democrats want to do permitting reform.
There is an ENR hearing going on right now on permitting
reform issues, but did you look at that 85 page permitting
reform proposal, and how would you grade it? What was good?
What was bad? What wasn't in there that should be there?
Mr. Herrgott. Well, it's important to keep in mind that in
the IIJA ability, EPW many of those reforms are codified on the
DOT side. The fact that that just wasn't a rubber stamp coming
out of Congress is remarkable to me, but the importance is that
we're tinkering around the edges.
Creating deadlines allows for gamesmanship on the front
end, on deemed approves. It might get you sooner to a no rather
than a yes. Creating page limits, a 400 page, or a 500 page EIS
is not the reason why projects are getting delayed two to four
to five to six years.
Those are helpful process changes. We need those, but that
is because we are unwilling to acknowledge that we're going to
have to open up the Clean Water Act, written 50 years ago, 30
years before the internet. We're going to have to open up the
Marine Mammal Protection Act.
We're going to have to open up these legacy bedrock
environmental statutes. And in the political climate right now
in the House and the Senate, I don't blame either side for
seeing ghosts and what the intentions are on both sides, but
the fact remains that the shared pain on both sides means that
when I look at that bill, I go this is great.
This is going to solve a good amount of interagency
coordination issues. I hope it doesn't absolve the urgency and
the imperative of us going deeper, and actually fixing the
problem, so I wanted it, but I also want it next year, and the
year after that, and the year after that because the reality
here is even the fights about making a project take two years.
And that being objected to is interesting to me considering
that we now have AI, and natural language processing, and
technology that can help us arrive at the objective standard
for qualified project managers to make some objective decisions
on projects, which is why even in the coastal Virginia offshore
wind projects the six month delay that just occurred two months
ago is frustrating to me.
Just because National Fishery Service, Fish and Wildlife
and the Corps can't get on the same page. That has nothing to
do with the environmental laws interagency coordination. They
have natural conflicts between their laws that forced them to
delay the project. It has nothing to do with environmental
protection or justice, or any of that. It's pure conflict.
Senator Kaine. So I take your assessment of the 85 bill as
helpful, but not sufficient. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Herrgott. I get paid by the word. I apologize.
Chairman Whitehouse. Senator Johnson?
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOHNSON
Senator Johnson. Thank you Mr. Chairman. It seems to me
that the overall question we ought to be asking is with limited
resources, and we have limited resources, what's the best way
to spend them? To make sure that we have a reliable grid? To
make sure that we can mitigate against weather or climate
change events, and mitigate the problem of hurricanes and
tornados and floods, that type of thing?
One thing we can do is stop building in flood zones,
account for the external costs, the externalities when it comes
to, you know, building expensive properties on the coastal
regions. Don't expect the federal government to come in and you
know, bail you out. So there's some common sense things we can
do there.
I'll ask Dr. Tierney and Dr. Keenan. Do you guys know how
much we've spent in total trying to mitigate climate change
globally?
Dr. Tierney. I don't have that number at my fingertips, but
I would be happy to follow-up with you.
Senator Johnson. I'd like to hear that. We did have one
witness from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) who said
there's a pretty good estimate, about 5 trillion dollars. In
the Inflation Reduction Act, the green energy component of that
was Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cost was about 400
billion, but Goldman Sachs said it's closer to about 1.2
trillion with a T.
Throughout these hearings we keep talking about different
costs, you know, a couple of tens of billions here, 20 billion
there, 50 billion there. We're talking $1,200 billion. I have
no idea where that money is going to be spent. If it's going to
be spent to mitigate climate change, I would argue it's
probably going to be misspent because I don't think there's
anything we can really do to hold back the tides.
If we've already spent $5 trillion and people are still,
you know, hair on fire concerned that we're going to--the world
is going to end in 12 years, it's not. You know, Governor Bel
Edwards, you were talking about the success you're having in
Louisiana is mitigation efforts, correct?
I mean wouldn't you like a more certain portion of that
$1.2 trillion to use to mitigate against hurricanes as opposed
to $1.2 trillion spent on wind, solar, I don't know how cost
effective those things are going to be, what that's going to
do. And I'll ask later Ms. Apsey how does that affect the grid,
but Governor Bel Edwards?
Governor Edwards. Well I guess I have a difference of
opinion with you, Senator. Louisiana is the most adversely
affected state when it comes to climate change, and we produce
more CO2 per capita than just about any other state in the
nation. And I think we need to be acting on both fronts.
Senator Johnson. Do you think China or India are going to
give up fossil fuels?
Governor Edwards. You know, I'm not sure what they will do,
Senator. I was taught to lead by example and from the front.
Senator Johnson. Sure. But 80 percent of our power is
generated by fossil fuels, and we actually had a majority
witness say that that's not going to change either, so again
we're just----
Governor Edwards. I'm not an enemy of fossil fuels. We've
been a fossil fuel state for over 100 years. But it's clear to
me if we're going to be an energy state in the next 50 years,
we're going to embrace the transition. We will reduce our
reliance on fossil fuels, increase our reliance on clean energy
such as wind.
Senator Johnson. I just think that's just not recognizing
reality, or economic reality. Let me just ask you.
Dr. Tierney. 40 percent of our power is from non-carbon
emitting.
Senator Johnson. Ms. Apsey, I want to ask you. To what
extent does the wind power, solar power, what does that do in
terms of grid reliability?
Ms. Apsey. Wind and power does provide certain benefits to
the transmission grid. It's available at times other units are
not available. Look, the transmission grid, the concept is
right, is if you have it available across a broad regional
interregional infrastructure, when you don't have capacity or
availability in one location, it's available somewhere else.
You need the transmission infrastructure in order to
transport the electrons to where it needs to go. We see
benefits from wind and solar. There are times when wind and
solar is not available. The sun is not shining, the wind is not
blowing. You know, just no different than you know, we need gas
plants. We need diversity.
We need optionality. Ultimately, diversity and optionality
from a long-term perspective is going to be the best mechanism
for our long-term energy security.
Senator Johnson. One of my concerns when I was Chairman of
Homeland Security was the threat of Electromagnetic Pulse
(EMP). I realize it's a low probability, but highly
catastrophic. But even Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD),
and I've been trying to get studies. I've been trying to get
information, strategies in terms of what we need to do.
Now from my standpoint, one of the most common sense things
to do would be to actually purchase and put in place large
power transformers. Couldn't even get that in the current
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Apparently there's
some study that was part of the Infrastructure Bill, but
there's no end date.
We did talk to one transformer company. Probably about
30,000 large power transformers would cost about $60 to $90
billion to produce those and have them in place. Would that
make sense from your standpoint, Ms. Apsey because we would not
be able to replace those power transformers in the event of
either an EMP or a GMD event, correct?
Ms. Apsey. There is a certain limited inventory of spare
transformers across the country, certainly we have agreements
with our neighboring utilities, should indeed there be such an
event that we need a transformer. Look, this country was built
with many different voltage levels, so while I may have a
certain transformer specification, my neighbor may have a
different one.
The other real issue from a transformer perspective is
there's no domestic manufacturing of high voltage transformers
in this country. We depend on the supply from other nations to
supply our high voltage electric transformers.
Senator Johnson. So that is a huge vulnerability, I guess
what I'm arguing with limited resources, I would much rather
see us spend $60 to $90 billion to purchase those now, put
those in place offline in case you have one of those high
catastrophic events, but we're not doing that.
I mean it's unfortunate because we're again, trying to hold
back the tides, spending $1.2 trillion is just not going to
work. Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Whitehouse. Senator Padilla, particularly grateful
that Senator Padilla is here given the infrastructure issues
California is facing after the climate driven wildfires and its
effect on transmission. Thank you very much Senator Padilla.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR PADILLA
Senator Padilla. Thank you Mr. Chair, don't go stealing my
intro. In many ways I do refer to California as Exhibit A on
the climate crisis for the reasons Chairman Whitehouse just
mentioned, and so many more.
So I want to begin with that maybe, you know that
California is the bell weather for the climate crisis, whether
it's feeling and responding to the immediate impacts of extreme
heat on our most vulnerable, flooding, and what it means for
drinking water and agricultural production.
The impact of fire and smoke on communities, let alone
other agricultural products. We just have to respond to short-
term impacts, but prepare for long-term impacts of our changing
climate. And just last week the New York Times asked to what
many referred to as the trillion gallon question. Not the
million dollar question, the trillion gallon question, what
happens if California's dams fail as a result of extreme
weather?
If recent disasters are an indicator we can predict into
loss of life from property, it's damaged critical
infrastructure, and vital public facilities, valuable
agricultural land, is that going to be taken out of production,
let alone disruptions to California's water supply, and more.
So the better question, I think the more responsible question
is what kind of investments are needed to prevent such
catastrophic events, and reduce the impact on communities.
Governor Edwards, I appreciate your comments about the
impacts of both the queue shocks like hurricanes and flooding,
as well as chronic stressors like sea level rise and extreme
heat. So you know better than anybody does the buck stop with
you.
We have an opportunity to try to get ahead of it through
front end investments. Can you talk a little bit more about the
proactive adaptation measures that have been taken, and the
related research and innovation efforts in this space?
Governor Edwards. Thank you, Senator for the question. I am
very happy to talk about it because some of the most generous
and significant transformative investments anywhere in the
country have happened in Louisiana because of the generosity
largely of the federal government and taxpayers all over the
country, and we are certainly thankful.
And of course, we have our non-federal share that we
contribute towards that. But in instance after instance, it's
making a positive impact, and these upfront investments while
very costly, they save an awful lot of money on the back end
because we are not having to go back and rebuild communities,
and have housing programs and so forth that we had to have
before.
This can be demonstrated with the Hurricane Storm Damage
Risk Reduction System, a $14.5 billion investment in the
greater New Orleans area. The 2021 storm, Ida, was stronger
than Katrina. But because we had this new system we had nowhere
near the damages.
For example, other systems have greatly reduced. I think
you may not have been here, but with the protection systems put
in place along the coast they were authorized by the Corps. We
actually reduced the number of structures inundated with water
from 11,000 with a 9 foot surge in that area in 2005 to 11 in
2019.
So these investments absolutely work, and they save money
over the long run, not just in rebuilding costs, but you have
less interruption. When Hurricane Ida hit for example, 15
percent of the nation's refining capacity was offline, 50
percent of the state's refining capacity, but 15 percent.
If you can reduce the frequency of those events and the
duration of those events, you save an awful lot of money, and
you avoid a lot of losses and costs to the economy as well.
Senator Padilla. It's the old adage, an ounce of prevention
is with a pound of cure.
Governor Edwards. Yes, sir.
Senator Padilla. And so being smart and strategic with
those funds and investments do pay a huge dividend, not if, but
when if major disasters happen, and I appreciate you pointing
to examples of the foresight of not just rebuilding to what
was, but rebuilding to new, better, safer, standards.
Governor Edwards. Based on conditions you expect to see in
20 or 30 years.
Senator Padilla. Exactly.
Governor Edwards. With a 1.5 foot to 2.5 feet of sea level
rise for example.
Senator Padilla. A couple of other things. I did want to
note, I know the Chairman asked you about coastal erosion, that
was an area I was going to bring up, but for the record do want
to highlight the specific challenges in what is referred to in
Southern California as below sand corridor.
The coastal area between San Diego and San Luis Obispo,
which crosses Orange County, Los Angeles County, Ventura
County, impacts infrastructure along the way. It's not just
communities and homes and businesses, but important rail line,
second busiest rail region, second only to the northeast
corridor, so an important one I think that the country should
be concerned about.
Lastly, as my time is up, I do want to just ask Dr. Keenan
a quick question about how long-term drought and extreme heat
contribute to the speed and deterioration, or changes in wear
and tear of critical infrastructure, specifically water
infrastructure, knowing that not just in California, but
throughout the west, water supply, reliability and
affordability is so keen.
Dr. Keenan. Thank you Senator for that question, and I had
the privilege of serving the people of California previously,
and advising them on matters of climate, and this is certainly
and indeed a challenge to water infrastructure in California.
I'll highlight a couple of things, and there's a wonderful
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) report through
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on this particular
issue that I would draw a reference to.
One, when we have high and low water levels, that has
impacts on the cycling of the equipment, particularly low
levels, because when it rains it pours, right? And the problem
is either too much or not enough water. But when we have
drought conditions we have equipment that's not being properly
cycled and maintained.
For instance, so you need to use it to maintain it in many
ways. Also, we lose bio mass right? Grass, trees, they dry up,
and we get more sedimentation. That sedimentation clogs
filters, it clogs pumps, it creates a number of different
problems, and finally we rely more on surface water for
drinking water irrigation and the like as opposed to
groundwater.
And as we move to surface water we begin to take on more of
that sedimentation, so there's systematic hydrological impacts
there. And with that surface water, we also have to pull out
all the pollution that comes from storm water for instance. So,
we're getting hit at multiple levels of the system that impairs
not only the quantity of moving water, but the quality of
moving water.
Senator Padilla. Thank you. And then Mr. Chair just in
closing with Governor Edwards, it is Governor Edwards correct?
I think I've heard Governor Bel Edwards by some of my
colleagues around the hearing. You deserve the respect of the
property recognition. Thank you Mr. Chair.
Governor Edwards. Thank you.
Chairman Whitehouse. Senator Braun.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR BRAUN
Senator Braun. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I come from Indiana,
and ran a business for 37 years, logistics and distribution.
It's been a big benefit to get engaged in conversations like
this. Our company was so small for so long, you had duties to
where you did everything in that business.
For instance, CFO, CEO wasn't even a term that we used
until maybe 20 years ago, and I did it for 37. It was a
blessing to have that practical kind of experience, especially
when you get into a discussion here in the Budget Committee,
and we're talking about climate.
I view it as an issue that we definitely need to be engaged
in on our side of the aisle, and starting the climate caucus
here. When they attempted to do that for many years. It is
valid. Conservatives need to be involved with it, from young
conservatives to farmers who are at the leading edge of what
might be a foot from evangelicals to Catholics.
But then it gets down to the rubber meeting the road
because if I wasn't really good at finance 101, I would have
never succeeded at that business in the long run. Here we are,
the biggest business in the world, and we do not do budgets
anymore. We haven't done one that we've adhered to in 20-some
years.
We've got these big sweeping issues that the country looks
to us to be at least civil in the discussion, and then maybe
come with some stuff that works. I don't think borrowing now a
trillion and a half, soon to be two trillion a year is a good
business plan. Governor, you'd get run out of town with that
approach in your own state.
We got to do better. Since it's a budget hearing, I
generally start there. Now I want to pivot to climate, which is
a complicated discussion. My side of the aisle when I got here
you mentioned climate you'd clear the room. You mentioned
things like tax pricing and so forth, then you're going to get
the mysterious text have you gone to the dark side, stuff like
that.
We've come a ways there, but still we're in the context of
all solutions generally wanting to be crafted here, but we're
in the worst place we've ever been as a country to really do
it. And I would suggest that, Governor, many people that run
budgets live within your means, that we should maybe be doing
more of that in places where we can get things done.
And you pay for it, and you don't borrow from future
generations. And I'll give you an example in my home state. Too
late that on the bottom end of one had an endangered mussel,
okay?
You had to make sure water flow was going to keep them
alive. Well, as a consequence it through a couple drought
years, drained the lakes by ten feet, and the big stakeholders
were not necessarily the mussels.
Not even the utility that had a small hydroelectric
presence, and believe me, they wish they didn't have it on that
lake. FERC and Fish and Wildlife. Can you imagine what that
discussion was like in trying to actually have people that live
there, the businesses that lived around those lakes as the main
stakeholders.
They had been wrestling for ten years with that confluence
of issues. Well, we heard about it. I'm a main street
entrepreneur that knows how to get from here to there, and in a
little over a year we solved it. And the way we had to solve it
was not by relying on this place, or even the various interests
working it out. We had to step in as a Senate office.
And it was a very--it took a little over a year, a year and
a half to get it to the finish line, but they've been wrestling
with it ten years. So I think the point I'm making here is a
lot of what we need to do related to this discussion permitting
and so forth, probably is going to have to be enabled more
through the dynamics of what worked in this country.
And that's not doing it from this place, directing from the
top down. Maybe if you'd start doing things where you're
creating more results. You can't do everything there, and a lot
of times these things get tangled up with the process in
general. Ten years working on a simple thing where mussels were
a concern of a conservationist.
Well we've got a different flow rate that was more than
what the Fish and Wildlife Service wanted to do. FERC really
was kind of an issue that complicated more than enabled. Fish
and Wildlife Service wanted to maybe get some resolution, and
we helped the people that had the most skin in the game.
So I'm going to ask you Mr. Herrgott, what do we do in
terms of taking the complexity of these issues and maybe trying
to do them in ways that are a little more entrepreneurial, get
the job done, navigate through the federal morass and actually
start producing more results where we don't have over burdening
regulations, and we quit borrowing money from future
generations for whatever your interest might be here.
Mr. Herrgott. Two quick things. First, there are always
going to be conflicts between the natural environment and the
human activity, and it's a balance. There's always tradeoffs.
Our inability to recognize that we have to make risk based
decisions, and that there will be take on species, and there
will be impacts on the environment, but we can mitigate those.
That's why we have the environmental review process we do.
They're not rhetorical tools to stop projects or increase
costs. The second is there's a disconnect between what people
are paying for their utilities and their services and how they
got there.
When I asked 2,000 state legislators what the unit of
measure is for electricity, water, gas, they don't even know
what the unit of measure is, let alone how much it costs, or
how much of that is attributable to permitting delays, or
litigation, or costs of restarts and penalty fees.
Without that connection, without that recognition of a
holistic approach of what it takes, we're always going to be at
loggerheads with each other, but people with their own
constituencies.
If I'm Nature Conservancy and I don't like hydro. I'm gonna
stop this, because I don't like one element of the project. And
as a result because we haven't figured it out up here, we allow
all of the siloed unique constituencies that everyone looks out
for to command the air space.
Senator Braun. Thank you. Good answer. And if I have the
latitude for one other quick question.
Chairman Whitehouse. Keep it quick because we have another
Senator waiting.
Senator Braun. Yes. I understand that. This was Monticello,
Indiana, Lake Freeman by the way, a very rural area. And my
next question is for the Governor. What have you done in your
own state that would cut to the chase, solve some of these
issues where we know that you get it done more quickly, than
oftentimes from here the top down? Do you have an example or
two that you'd want to cite?
Governor Edwards. Well I've got one that Mr. Herrgott was
involved in. The largest ecosystem restoration project in our
state's history. One of the largest in the country. And
certainly the largest sediment diversion project ever
undertaken is the Mid-Barataria Project in the Lower
Mississippi River.
The estimates initially were that that was going to be 12
to 15 years of permitting, potentially followed by litigation
and so forth. Well five years ago we got started and next month
we're going to break ground. It was on the dashboard. It
received attention and it was transparent.
He helped usher it through the process. We had a lot of
coordination among the federal agencies. And so, I'm just going
to--I believe in permitting reform too, by the way. I co-
chaired an effort with the National Governor's Association with
Spencer Cox, the Governor of Utah. It is very bipartisan. Every
Governor in the country is concerned about this.
It just simply takes too long now to do anything. But this
is an example of how things can work, and so let's do more of
what works, and less of what doesn't work.
Senator Braun. Touche, kudos. Thank you.
Chairman Whitehouse. Senator Lujan.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR LUJAN
Senator Lujan. Good morning and thank you Mr. Chairman and
Ranking Member, thank you both for holding this hearing. Dr.
Tierney, thank you for being here, every one of you thank you
for being here as well. Governor Edwards, honored to see you as
well, sir.
Dr. Tierney, among the many important roles that you have
held I see that you served as Assistant Secretary for Policy at
the Department of Energy. In that role and other roles that
you've held in the energy sector I assume you, like me, you
tend to recognize the important role of our National Labs, not
just for the country, but for benefits around the world.
And as you know, New Mexico is important to two important
national labs, with Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia
National Laboratory. Dr. Tierney, my question is can you share
with the Committee some of the ways that our National Labs help
protect our nation's critical infrastructure?
Dr. Tierney. Thank you for that great question, and I'm
really happy to talk about the great national laboratory
network that we have in the United States. Of course you
mentioned the two in New Mexico. They are probably very well
known for their contributions to the nation's national
security, but they also have done tremendous work on energy
infrastructure issues.
I think in particular of Sandia's work on cybersecurity,
and making sure the nation's energy infrastructure is more
resilient, as well as capable of withstanding attacks that are
predictable, going to happen, happen all the time on the
nation's electric infrastructure for example.
Sandia is a great example of that. North of New Mexico in
Colorado is the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. I had the
honor of serving as their external advisory committee chair.
They do tremendous work on analyzing the potential benefits of
a regional electric system where there are better
interconnections between the region, allowing for much greater
diversity of electric demand and electric supply.
I could on and on, but the nation's labs are truly jewels.
They're supported by Congress and appropriations through the
Department of Energy's many offices is critical to the nation's
infrastructure.
Senator Lujan. I appreciate that. Well I'm going to ask you
to go on, Dr. Tierney with my next question, which is related
to our national labs. But do you agree that finding solutions
to climate change, such as designing climate resilient
infrastructure is a responsibility that we should invest in at
our national labs, given the material science, the planning,
the modeling of oceans.
And it turns out for the national security missions of
these labs, they need to know what's happening, and where the
wind blows for obvious reasons. But can you talk about that a
little bit.
Dr. Tierney. Sure. The R and D capabilities of the labs
that span quite basic science on material's strength and
capacity to withstand different stresses, all the way to
deployment of infrastructure and all along that supply chain is
extremely important. The labs are very well known for their
basic science work, again on high energy physics.
But on practical infrastructure issues, the materials work
in analytics that are done make their way eventually into
private industry, into the hands of companies that are actually
putting infrastructure on the ground. So I didn't know this
question was coming, and I love hitting it because they are
truly essential to the nation's energy security and national
security.
Senator Lujan. I appreciate that, Dr. Tierney. Now Dr.
Keenan, I appreciate that you included in your testimony, and I
quote, ``The southwest U.S. faces upwards of $1.4 trillion in
lost gross domestic product (GDP) between 2022 and 2050 due to
risks and costs of projected water scarcity challenges.''
Senator Padilla was asking you many questions in this
particular area, talked about climate smart technology,
precision agriculture, soil erosion reduction that can result
in some of these practices, minimizing fertilizer applications.
If we had more modern infrastructure, precision agriculture.
What that means as well to contributing to reduction with
some of the devastation we see with climate as well. There's
many efforts that many of us have been working on together, but
Dr. Keenan, yes or no, in order to avoid the $1.4 trillion
impact in the southwest economy, do you agree that we urgently
need to provide rural America with the tools and technology to
adopt to climate change progression?
Dr. Keenan. Yes.
Senator Lujan. I appreciate that. There's some other
questions I have. One, a few Governor Edwards that I'll submit
for you as well, but Mr. Chairman I want to be mindful of the
time as well, and so I'm going to yield back, but I'll submit
the rest into the record. I really appreciate you all being
here, all the things that you do day in and day out. Thank you
all.
Chairman Whitehouse. Thank you. Mr. Herrgott has set the
record for rapidity. Dr. Keenan has just set the record for
brevity. Senator Merkley.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR MERKLEY
Senator Merkley. Well thank you Mr. Chairman, and thank you
all for your testimony. I was thinking about an event last year
where I'm at National Reagan Airport, and the pilot announced
that we can't take off because it's too hot out. And our fuel
load to get to Oregon means we may end up in a river if we try
to take off.
And so we had to wait for an hour and a half to unload gas
or jet fuel off the plane, and then we had to land in Chicago
to refuel to get to Oregon. And I had heard about this sort of
thing happening in Phoenix, where 110 degrees and with the heat
the air gets thinner, you don't have as much lift.
But in Washington, D.C. I had never heard of this. Just on
that particular issue, and I think I'm directing this to you
Dr. Keenan, are we seeing that heat is driving a problem with
runways being too short? And is there a whole transportation
infrastructure expansion that has to happen for jets to get off
the ground?
Dr. Keenan. Yes. We're seeing this at different types of
fleets if you will, both cargo and domestic passenger fleets,
particularly larger planes, transcontinental and overseas
flights are limited, their payload and fuel capacity.
And this is at the surface level, but also at different
levels of the atmosphere that are creating essentially stronger
headwinds or steering currents that burn more fuel in flight as
well.
This is a challenge not just for our domestic economy in
infrastructure, it's also a challenge in terms of national
security in the military because we are going to have to expand
airfields and the length of airfields really throughout our
system. So it's a challenge.
It's a challenge that the aviation industry is addressing
by some measure in terms of efficiency, fuels, fleet design, et
cetera, et cetera, but at its core we are going to have to
extend the length of runways somewhere in the order of 20
percent the extension of the current lengths across the airport
system.
Senator Merkley. Thank you. I think that's a piece many
Americans would be surprised about. I want to turn to you,
Governor Edwards. Thank you for joining us. The issues in my
state from climate chaos are different than your state. In my
state the forests are burning, the snowpack in the cascades has
lost 240 inches over the last 90 years.
And everything, the drought is affecting ranchers and
farmers, the pine beetles, it's almost apocalyptic set of
plagues. But I believe in your state it's more about
hurricanes, rising sea levels, coastal erosion. Is that a fair
way to describe it?
Governor Edwards. Yes, sir. That's fair, but we are
impacted by things that wouldn't be intuitively obvious. So for
example, because of the draught in Iowa and elsewhere, we have
a low river. That's allowing saltwater to come in from the Gulf
and compromise drinking water for communities in Louisiana who
have always taken their drinking water out of the river.
And so we're having to do emergency work with the state and
the parishes, but also working with the Corps of Engineers, and
we really appreciate their help. In order to build sills, in
order to stop the saltwater and so forth. So it is a myriad of
things, and things that happen in one part of the country
actually have a cascading effect in other parts of the country.
Senator Merkley. All right. Just for the drinking water
challenge, are you looking at billions of dollars of
infrastructure changes?
Governor Edwards. No sir. It's not that expensive now.
Obviously, if this becomes something that repeats itself too
frequently, obviously a more permanent solution would have to
be found. It's happened before, but it last happened just a
couple of years ago, so if we see this happening more
frequently, then we're going to have to do something that would
be more expensive, yes sir.
Senator Merkley. And then I believe I've seen stories about
your coastal lands eroding. Are there investments in adaptation
that you're trying to, if you will, hold the ocean back, or we
just say no, we can't. It's impossible. I thought I saw islands
being created more--artificial islands, barriers and so forth?
Governor Edwards. Yes, sir. Yeah. We're having tremendous
success with our coastal restoration protection program, and it
is a science based program.
And we are investing a minimum of a billion dollars a year.
And it's ecosystem restoration. And by the way when you restore
ecosystems you provide storm surge buffer, and you actually
protect populations and infrastructure, so it's actually
protection.
But we also have projects that are designed primarily for
protection. But we're having success, and we believe that if we
can implement our program as we envision it today, we will have
less risk in 50 years than we do today, even with the climate
change happening, the sea level rise between I think 1.8 and
2.5 feet over the next 50 years, which is kind of the low and
the medium estimate.
Senator Merkley. And in that ecosystem restoration you're
creating artificial or manmade barrier islands, and is that
expensive?
Governor Edwards. Oh yes, sir. It is very expensive, and we
are creating and for the most part we're restoring the islands
where they were and so forth. It is expensive, but it helps
because that too dissipates the storm surge, and it provides
buffer. It also provides the habitat, for example, the brown
pelicans.
You may have seen--what you saw was probably the Queen Bess
Island, but the brown pelican happens to be our state bird, and
the areas where it would nest were greatly reduced. Within a
few weeks of us finishing the island the birds were back. And
so, it serves a lot of purposes, but primarily that was done
for protection.
Senator Merkley. Well I have plenty more I could ask, but
my time is up. Thank you very much.
Chairman Whitehouse. And the witnesses are willing to take
questions for the record. Before I recognize Senator Kennedy,
let me just point out that that makes three Louisianans in the
room, so who knows how this ends up. Senator Kennedy.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR KENNEDY
Senator Kennedy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome Governor.
Professor Keenan, you teach at Tulane?
Dr. Keenan. Yes sir, I do. I have that privilege.
Senator Kennedy. And you have your own website,
Keenanclimate.com.
Dr. Keenan. Yes sir, I do.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. And you describe yourself on your
website as a globally recognized thought leader. Is that
correct?
Dr. Keenan. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. And you give paid speeches do you?
Dr. Keenan. On occasion I do.
Senator Kennedy. Do you have your own agent I believe
according to your website, Lee Bureau?
Dr. Keenan. This is correct.
Senator Kennedy. And how much do you charge per speech?
Dr. Keenan. It varies, depending on the audience, the
amount of preparation work that goes, and the amount of follow
through.
Senator Kennedy. In the last paid speech you gave how much
did you receive?
Dr. Keenan. I would have to follow-up.
Senator Kennedy. You don't remember?
Dr. Keenan. I do not.
Senator Kennedy. Do you keep--do you give that money to
Tulane?
Dr. Keenan. I do not.
Senator Kennedy. You keep it?
Dr. Keenan. Yes. This is outside of my capacity as a
professor.
Senator Kennedy. Right. Right.
Dr. Keenan. As is, Senator.
Senator Kennedy. Now you recently sent a letter--you
recently joined a lot of other academics. You signed a letter
demanding that elite institutions and universities stop
accepting money from fossil fuel companies. Is that correct?
Dr. Keenan. This is correct.
Senator Kennedy. Do you consider Tulane an elite
university?
Dr. Keenan. I would like to think that we have a high
standard of excellence in our education and our research.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Well the Murphy family of Murphy
Oil, and the Dimming family of Murphy Oil, have recently given
Tulane 25 million dollars. Have you called on Tulane to give
that money back?
Dr. Keenan. Well, it's not they didn't give that money to
the department or school that I work in.
Senator Kennedy. Have you called on Tulane to give that
money back, or you think that's okay for them to keep it?
Dr. Keenan. It's their prerogative, not mine.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. But yet you just signed a letter
saying that all elite universities should refuse fossil fuel
money. Did you put a footnote in there saying except my own?
Dr. Keenan. Well what I'd like to say, Senator, is that I
believe it raises a conflict of interest for those that
research climate change, that are supported by the fossil fuel
industry.
Senator Kennedy. Yeah, but then why don't you ask Tulane to
give the 25 million dollars back?
Dr. Keenan. Well I think in the context if that money were
to be used to support climate research, information,
disinformation, or whatever it may be, that that may be an
appropriate conflict of interest, but I think in the context
for which----
Senator Kennedy. You don't see the hypocrisy here?
Dr. Keenan. It is hypocrisy in those that may read and
interpret it as such.
Senator Kennedy. Maybe it's like Washington if there
weren't double standards there wouldn't be standards at all.
Let me ask you this. You also participated in another article
here calling, criticizing Houston for building new buildings
and McMansions. And you said--I'm going to read your quote. I
don't want to misquote you, Professor.
``That means we have to change our consumer preference. You
could have a super-efficient, energy-efficient, mega mansion in
Houston or the suburbs, but it's still a McMansion. You're
still overconsuming space.'' Did you say that?
Dr. Keenan. Yes, sir. That's based on work as a member of
the IPCC. Our research suggested that reducing our footprint in
terms of total spatial footprint would have significant impacts
in the decarbonization of the built environment.
Senator Kennedy. And so, you're saying that people should
live in smaller houses because larger houses contribute to
CO2 emissions?
Dr. Keenan. 100 percent, Senator.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. Well recently Tulane finished the
Commons. It was 77,000 square feet. $55 million. Recently
Tulane finished the Goldring Woldenberg Business Complex, $35
million to complete. 92,000 square feet. Boy that's a
McMansion.
Mussafer Hall, 23,000 square feet. Paul Hall, 36,000 square
feet, Richardson Hall, 50,000 square feet. Housing
redevelopment phase I, 230,000 square feet at Tulane. Have you
called upon Tulane to stop these buildings?
Dr. Keenan. Sir, the habitable space within those units are
roughly the size of the conference room back there and indeed
quite small.
Senator Kennedy. But the contribute to----
Dr. Keenan. Everything that we do sir.
Senator Kennedy. Does the Commons contribute more to
climate change than a mansion in Houston? You are pretty quick
to criticize the people of Houston for wanting to build, you
thought McMansions, but you don't criticize your own
university?
Dr. Keenan. I don't find that to be equivocal comparison
between space meant for students who must reside at a
university.
Senator Kennedy. You don't see the hypocrisy in that?
Dr. Keenan. It is your finding and interpretation, sir.
Senator Kennedy. But you don't see the irony of hypocrisy.
Dr. Keenan. I'm going to go ahead and say no.
Senator Kennedy. Okay. I kind of gathered that would be
your answer. Governor, good to see you. You live in a big
house, don't you?
Governor Edwards. Currently I do. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. How big is the Governor's mansion?
Governor Edwards. I don't know the square footage, but it's
large, and it's 60 years old this year. You ought to come by
and see the good work.
Senator Kennedy. I need to get by. Well the professor from
Tulane doesn't like that. Let me ask you, do you think it's
fair? Look, John Bel, we get 37.5 percent of offshore royalties
under GOMESA.
New Mexico gets 50 percent share from the federal
government for God sakes, Wyoming gets 50 percent. North Dakota
gets 50 percent. We get 37.5 percent, and we've got to share it
with four other states.
Governor Edwards. And it's capped at 375 million that we
get to share no matter. Yes.
Senator Kennedy. Yes. And that just sucks.
Governor Edwards. I don't think it's fair, and 90 percent
of all Gulf oil and gas exploration and production activities
are served out of Port Fourchon. So we bear the brunt of the
infrastructure necessary to make all of that happen, but we're
not sharing the way the other states share.
And it's one of the reasons I think the members of this
Committee while you were out, for the one's that cosponsored
the RISEE Act because it is incredibly important for a state
like Louisiana. And we constitutionally dedicate every dollar
we get as you know to the coast.
Senator Kennedy. All we're asking is to be treated like
everybody else, aren't we?
Governor Edwards. Yes, sir.
Senator Kennedy. And we have a solution don't we?
Governor Edwards. We do.
Senator Kennedy. And it's called RISEE Act. Tell us about
the RISEE Act.
Governor Edwards. Well it's a wonderful piece of
legislation that we are obviously hoping that you pass, not
only for the benefits that you just mentioned, but currently
there's no revenue sharing mechanism in place in federal law
with respect to wind.
We'll have the first offshore wind lease sale next month.
And so this is a very real thing for us, especially as we look
at the loss of the BP Horizon fines that they've been paying,
in fact Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion, $2.9 billion paid for
with BP dollars, but those go away in 2031.
We really need to replace that revenue, and wind energy
gives us an opportunity, but we need that structure in place,
and I appreciate your work on that.
Senator Kennedy. Well to be blunt, we've proven we can use
the money well. And we put our own money up, and it is patently
unfair that other states get a larger share, a much larger
share than Louisiana. And I think the RISEE Act, which will
also help our wind industry as Senator Whitehouse knows, we're
working together on, is long overdue, and I appreciate you
coming up here to talk about that bill.
And I was in Judiciary, that's why I was late. And the
Chairman has been very generous with me. Thank you Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Whitehouse. Not a problem, Senator Kennedy. We're
glad to have you here with your Governor present. And I would
note that your colleague, Senator Cassidy is also an extremely
energetic and lively proponent of the RISEE Bill.
And we continue to work together, Governor, with your
delegation to try to make sure that we can get this bill passed
through ENR, with the support of your former gubernatorial
colleague, now Senator Manchin, and we're continuing to make
progress.
With that, let me say that the questions for the record
that need to be filed must be in by noon tomorrow, and if the
witnesses would be kind enough to respond to any questions for
the record you may receive within seven days we would
appreciate it. I want to thank the Ranking Member for a
particularly good panel, and a particularly helpful hearing.
And offer my particular gratitude to Governor Edwards whose
schedule I know is enormously busy, and who has come a long way
to be here. We're extremely grateful to you, sir. With that the
hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:31 a.m. Wednesday, July 26, 2023, the
hearing was adjourned.]
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