[House Hearing, 119 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LEADING THE CHARGE:
OPPORTUNITIES TO STRENGTHEN AMERICA'S
ENERGY RELIABILITY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, ENERGY POLICY, AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
U.S.HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 26, 2025
__________
Serial No. 119-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
58-999 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman
Jim Jordan, Ohio Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia,
Mike Turner, Ohio Ranking Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Gary Palmer, Alabama Ro Khanna, California
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Pete Sessions, Texas Shontel Brown, Ohio
Andy Biggs, Arizona Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Nancy Mace, South Carolina Robert Garcia, California
Pat Fallon, Texas Maxwell Frost, Florida
Byron Donalds, Florida Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Greg Casar, Texas
William Timmons, South Carolina Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Tim Burchett, Tennessee Emily Randall, Washington
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Suhas Subramanyam, Virginia
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Yassamin Ansari, Arizona
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida Wesley Bell, Missouri
Nick Langworthy, New York Lateefah Simon, California
Eric Burlison, Missouri Dave Min, California
Eli Crane, Arizona Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Brian Jack, Georgia Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
John McGuire, Virginia
Brandon Gill, Texas
------
Mark Marin, Staff Director
James Rust, Deputy Staff Director
Mitch Benzine, General Counsel
Kim Waskowsky, Senior Professional Staff Member
Daniel Flores, Senior Counsel
Kyle Martin, Counsel
Mallory Cogar, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5074
Jamie Smith, Minority Staff Director
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
------
Subcommittee On Economic Growth, Energy Policy, And Regulatory Affairs
Eric Burlison, Missouri, Chairman
Gary Palmer, Alabama Maxwell Frost, Florida, Ranking
Clay Higgins, Louisiana Minority Member
Byron Donalds, Florida Yassamin Ansari, Arizona
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Dave Min, California
Lauren Boebert, Colorado Ro Khanna, California
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on February 26, 2025................................ 1
Witnesses
----------
Alex Epstein, President and Founder, Center for Industrial
Progress
Oral Statement................................................... 5
Mandy Gunasekara, Former Chief of Staff, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency
Oral Statement................................................... 7
Alex Herrgott, President and CEO, The Permitting Institute
Oral Statement................................................... 9
Dr. Rachel Cleetus (Minority Witness), Policy Director, Climate
and Energy Program, Union of Concerned Scientists
Oral Statement................................................... 11
Written opening statements and bios are available on the U.S.
House of Representatives Document Repository at:
docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
* Article, Yale, ``How China Became the World's Leader on
Renewable Energy''; submitted by Rep. Frost.
* Article, New york Times, ``Trump's Clean Energy Rollbacks
Could Derail Factory Boom''; submitted by Rep. Frost.
The documents listed are available at: docs.house.gov.
LEADING THE CHARGE:
OPPORTUNITIES TO STRENGTHEN AMERICA'S
ENERGY RELIABILITY
----------
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
U.S. House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy
Policy, and Regulatory Affairs
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:34 a.m., in
room 2247, Rayburn Office Building, Hon. Eric Burlison,
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Burlison, Palmer, Higgins, Perry,
Boebert, Frost, Ansari, Min, and Khanna.
Mr. Burlison. The Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy
Policy and Regulatory Affairs will come to order. I just want
to welcome everyone to the hearing. Without objection, the
Chair may declare a recess at any time. I recognize myself for
the purpose of making an opening statement.
Welcome to the first hearing of the Subcommittee on
Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs for the
119th Congress.
It is a personal honor to serve as the Chairman of this
Committee and I look forward to working with Ranking Member
Frost and my colleagues on this Subcommittee over the course of
this Congress as we tackle urgent problems facing the American
people.
Today's hearing topic concerns every district across the
country: the state of America's energy reliability. Power
demand is expected to grow dramatically, if not exponentially,
in the coming years as new manufacturing facilities and data
centers are built throughout the country.
With the new demand comes a lot of questions. Where will
this additional power come from? Are we doing enough to create
more power generation and transmission?
If we are not, are we setting our power grid up to crash?
What will all this mean for the American people and how can
they be assured that energy bills will not continue to rise?
New innovation, particularly in the field of nuclear
energy, offers promising solutions but it is often thwarted
from reaching its full potential due to regulatory and
permitting challenges imposed by this government.
Reliable and trusted sources of power generation such as
natural gas and coal are still fighting against regulatory
obstacles created by the previous Administration. Burdensome
regulations have been the silent killer of economic growth and
prosperity in our country and have lasting implications for
U.S. industries, particularly the power sector.
The Biden EPA power plant rule will, if left in place,
force premature retirement of existing power plants across the
country without providing a clear path forward for bringing new
power generation online.
Last Congress I introduced the Reliable Grid Act of 2024 to
address this issue and ensure that Americans everywhere have
access to affordable, reliable energy supplies.
Under the Trump Administration, significant steps are
already being taken to revitalize our Nation's energy sector.
Recent executive actions seek to expand oil and gas production,
reverse previous limitations, and unleash our energy
independence.
These initiatives, coupled with an ongoing regulatory
reforms to alleviate unnecessary burdens on energy development,
are poised to modernize our power generation and transmission
infrastructure, ensuring reliable and affordable energy supply
for all Americans.
Over the course of this Congress I hope that this
Subcommittee can shed light on where reforms are needed and
bring forth practical and hopeful bipartisan solutions to
better serve the American people.
I look forward to our conversation here today, and with
that I yield to Ranking Member Frost for his opening statement.
Mr. Frost. Thank you so much, Chairman Burlison, and thank
you to the witnesses for being here this morning.
As someone who grew up experiencing increasingly frequent
hurricanes and power outages it is so important for our
Subcommittee to work on the issue of energy reliability and I
look forward to that.
My constituents and many of our constituents are in danger
because of the power outages after extreme weather. They cost
families thousands of dollars in wasted food, medicine, create
mold, mildew damage and it is deadly.
I introduced the bipartisan Energy Storage for Resilient
Homes Act so Floridians and folks across the country can
install home energy storage batteries as part of FEMA's
disaster mitigation support.
Proper energy storage combined with clean energy means
reliable electricity. One meta-analysis of 11 studies shows
that we can match energy supply and demand under any conditions
with a 70 to 90 percent clean energy grid.
Promoting clean energy is a key part of promoting reliable
energy and it has also been a huge benefit to the American
economy.
The support for clean energy that was found in the
Inflation Reduction Act, including the home energy rebate
programs, helped our energy supply while also lowering bills
and taxes for financially burdened families upgrading our
appliances and protecting our homes from extreme weather.
Despite those benefits, unfortunately, President Trump has
now frozen a lot of this funding. The law lowered emissions,
employed half a million Americans, and boosted American
manufacturing while shrinking costs for families.
From hurricanes to droughts, the climate crisis is here and
it is our patriotic duty to do everything we can to reverse it
and right now our government is stuck in a vicious cycle of
working to produce more fossil fuels which then increases pay
at big oil companies, which then worsens the climate collapse.
Then the government continues to subsidize the fossil fuels and
then we produce more fossil fuels.
But, unfortunately, we have not seen these costs go down
for working families and I do think we need to break this
cycle.
One of President Trump's first executive orders called
Unleashing American Energy is supposedly aimed at restoring
American prosperity through affordable and reliable energy.
However, the methodology is extremely weak.
First, we continue to say that we are going to be imposing
tariffs on goods from Canada including crude oil but the U.S.
is heavily reliant on Canadian oil because most of the oil
produced here is not compatible with our refineries and
vehicles.
Tariffs levied on Canada will increase energy prices for
Americans. And it is not just energy. Higher energy costs make
it more expensive to transport nearly all goods and materials
across the country.
So, from clothing to food the cost of energy is important
in every single thing.
Second, a key component of the executive order is ending
the use of the social cost of carbon measured in Federal
policy-making.
This measure enables agencies to accurately account for all
the cost of carbon-based fossil fuels and ensure companies are
doing that the companies that are doing the polluting are
paying for the cost of the pollution.
I just want to paint a picture of why it is so important to
use the social cost of carbon measure. Let us say a new gas-
fired power plant is built in the historic town of Eatonville,
Florida, which is in my district.
A family that lives a few miles away will not see a penny
of that company's profits but they will have to pay more when
their kids get asthma or the parents have lung cancer.
And as the increased carbon emissions cause climate change
they are at greater risk of a hurricane destroying their home
or natural disasters, which also means that they will face
higher insurance premiums if they can get insurance at all.
This might just be a hypothetical but it is already the
reality for thousands of Floridians and millions across the
country. I am looking forward to a lot of bipartisanship on
this committee, though, in terms of many different things.
The Chair and I met. We talked a lot about housing and
homeowners insurance and a lot of different issues that matters
to everybody up here on the dais.
The last thing I want to talk about real quick is a
campaign promise that we are going to work at keeping track of.
On the campaign trail President Trump promised that, quote,
``Under my Administration we will be slashing energy and
electricity prices by half within 12 months and at maximum 18
months,'' end quote.
It is a pretty hefty promise. It seems unlikely but we are
going to be counting to make sure that we can hold the
President accountable to this campaign promise because we would
love to see energy costs for people at home go down, and it is
so important that people understand that just because the price
of energy and electricity is going down does not guarantee that
those savings will be passed along to consumers and working
families.
And so, we will be keeping track of that throughout the
year. We have got 509 days left and we will see how that goes.
The solution to how we can lower costs and protect our
planet is right in front of our faces. It is clean renewable
energy. But I am here to talk about the future and what we can
accomplish.
So, thank you, and I yield back.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you, Ranking Member Frost.
I am excited to introduce our distinguished panel of
witnesses today. I would like to first welcome Alex Epstein who
is an author as well as the President and Founder of a think
tank called Center for Industrial Progress.
Next we have Mandy Gunasekara who is also an author and
previously served as a Chief of Staff at the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency during the first Trump Administration.
And next we have Alex Herrgott who is the Founder and
President of the Permitting Institute. Alex previously served
on the White House Council for Environmental Quality, the
Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, and in
multiple roles on Capitol Hill.
Last, we have Dr. Rachel Cleetus who serves as the Policy
Director within the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of
Concerned Scientists.
I want to thank each and every one of our witnesses for
being here today and I look forward to hearing your testimony.
Pursuant to rule 9(g) the witnesses will stand and raise
their right hand.
Do you solemnly swear to affirm that the testimony that you
are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth so help you God?
[Witnesses answer in the affirmative.]
Mr. Burlison. Let the record show that the witnesses
answered in the affirmative.
All right. I am going to recognize you now for your opening
statements. We appreciate you being here today, and let me
remind the witnesses that we have read your written statement
and it will appear in the full in the record.
Please limit your oral statements to 5 minutes. As a
reminder, please press the button on the microphone in front of
you so that it is on. I think you all know how to do that.
And when it comes to the lights, after 4 minutes the light
will turn yellow. When the red light comes on it is time to
wrap up your conversation.
I now recognize Mr. Epstein for his opening statement.
STATEMENT OF ALEX EPSTEIN
PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER
CENTER FOR INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS
Mr. Epstein. Thank you.
America is in an electricity crisis so shortages are now
routine throughout the U.S., and if we do not start increasing
reliable generation very quickly our grid will get crushed,
especially by the demands of AI.
The first step in solving the crisis is to understand it
and at root our electricity crisis is very simple. We are
artificially restricting the supply of reliable electricity and
we are artificially increasing the demand for reliable
electricity.
So, let us start off with artificially restricting the
supply. The government does this in three core ways: by
destroying reliable power plants, by delaying them, and by
defunding them, and there are five very specific policies that
need to be changed in this regard.
So, one is the is, rather, the near criminalization of
nuclear. It needs to be decriminalized. So, in the 1970s we had
clean, safe nuclear power become affordable and it quickly grew
to about 20 percent of American power, and it was still in its
early stages, so it had the potential to become far more
affordable and plentiful.
But we had crushing irrational regulation that made nuclear
expensive or even impossible to build. So, we need Congress and
the Administration to unleash nuclear energy from these
irrational, pseudoscientific regulations and in my testimony I
have dozens of these things, but I will just give you some
examples for each policy.
And for nuclear the most important thing is the NRC,
hopefully, with help of Congress needs to reject what is called
the linear no threshold model of danger, which is a totally
pseudoscientific model that falsely assumes that there is no
safe dose of radiation when there absolutely is and it needs to
replace it with a scientific, what is called threshold based
model.
So, this will remove the number-one barrier to safe and
affordable nuclear energy in America. So, unleashing nuclear is
crucial but it is a medium to long-term solution.
The thing we need to do most urgently is to stop the
policies that are destroying, delaying, and defunding the
fossil fuel power plants that are our only means of getting
reliable electricity on a large scale.
We are hearing that, you know, you can replace them with
unreliable solar and wind. Feel free to ask me about that, but
that has proven to be very false in practice.
So, we have four shutdowns of fossil fuel plants. The EPA
keeps passing rules. Others do this but the EPA in particular
keeps passing rules that shut down coal plants and prevent new
natural gas plants and fundamentally what EPA needs to do
properly is cost benefit analysis including when it is doing
policies that attack our grid.
It needs to recognize that shutting down the grid or
ruining the grid has a near infinite cost and it is not doing
that in its calculations.
No. 1 concrete thing is it needs to rescind the GHG
standards for power plants, which effectively ban existing coal
plants and prevent new gas plants in a world where we have much
more demand. So, it is just a totally insane policy.
No. 3 is onerous permitting policies, and I know one of the
witnesses is focusing on that so I will just say a little bit
about that, because we are we are shutting down and preventing
fossil fuel power plants, but we are also delaying them by
having all these requirements to our already onerous permitting
process.
So, things like making each power plant, this relates to
the social cost of carbon which I think is intellectually a
scam so I am happy to talk about that, but you make each little
power plant say, what are your GHG emissions? And it is totally
ridiculous because it makes no difference globally and yet you
are delaying things for years on the basis of this. So, we need
to get rid of that.
We need to severely reform NEPA. Many other things in my
written testimony.
No. 4, and this relates to this issue of defunding reliable
power plants, we need to have market rules that value
reliability. Right now, we have market rules that devalue
reliability.
So, what the government does is with electricity markets
they are not free markets. They are these constructs that the
government creates, and they have this crazy feature, which is
they have no price penalty for unreliability, which no other
market has.
And so, what this does is this allows unreliable solar and
wind to take money away from reliable plants. So, we need to
reform that. I have some ideas about that in my written
testimony.
And on top of that, we need to get rid of these subsidies
for unreliable power. So, not only do we not have a price
penalty but on top of that we actually reward unreliable power
by giving them special subsidies.
So, we are actually paying extra for unreliable power. It
is just totally insane, and it is part of the reason why we
have a crisis.
So, we need to get rid of those subsidies. So, we need to
get rid of, I believe, all the IRA subsidies but in particular
what are called the clean electricity ones that dramatically
favor unreliable solar and wind.
Those are the most deadly ones that Congress needs to
eliminate immediately, whether it is through reconciliation or
something else.
And then finally, on top of all this restriction of the
supply, we are artificially increasing demand through forced
electrification so things like forced EVs, forced heat pumps.
Again, when we have a shortage of supply, and we have a lot of
organic demand from AI, it is absolutely insane and
unconscionable to mandate new demand from EVs and from heat
pumps that people do not want and are not willing to pay for on
a free market.
So, as I said at the outset, our crisis is simple. We are
artificially restricting supply. We are artificially increasing
demand. The solution is fundamentally simple: unleash supply,
end forced electrification, end forced demand. In practice,
this requires a lot of very little steps, so I have dozens of
these in my testimony.
And very happy to be here and I am grateful for the
opportunity to help in any way I can because we want to go
right now from electricity crisis to electricity abundance, and
we can do it, but it is going to take some very dramatic
actions.
Thank you.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you, Mr. Epstein.
I now recognize Ms. Gunasekara for her opening statement. I
hope I got your name right.
STATEMENT OF MANDY GUNASEKARA
FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF
U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
Ms. Gunasekara. You did. You did. Quite well.
Chairman Burlison, Ranking Member Frost, Members of the
Subcommittee, it really is wonderful to be here with you all. I
appreciate the invitation today to discuss the opportunity to
create a future of energy abundance, improved reliability, and
lower energy costs to the benefit of American families.
The Subcommittee's efforts to create this future of
abundance--it is critical to economic growth, grid stability,
as well as stabilizing everyday cost.
Over the last 4 years Americans had to suffer the
consequences of an Administration that sought to constrain
traditional energy development, mainly coal, oil, and natural
gas that still provide 80 percent of our daily energy needs,
and force second rate technologies onto the American people.
I have testified to this before, and I think it is worth
repeating that many of the policies put forward in the last
Administration were fundamentally against American energy
development and they made the necessities of life a financial
burden.
We must not continue these same policy mistakes. For
example, from January 1921 throughout the following 4 years
Americans saw energy prices skyrocket. From heating oil to
electricity, natural gas, they all became untenable and as a
result one in six American families have been behind on their
utility bills for many, many years.
The cost of average households rose around $10,000,
significantly straining budgets, and low income Americans also
struggled in especially critical ways. In some cases, they
would choose to go without food, medical care, or prescriptions
simply to make ends meet because of this rising cost of energy.
Now, these hardships, among many others, are why energy
policy was a key focus of the recent election. There is a
critical need for reliable, affordable energy and we know how
to deliver this need in the United States better than any other
country.
President Trump understands this as do the majority of the
American people that have entrusted him to once again deliver
on the promise of American energy dominance and support the
America first policies necessary to actually achieve it.
This includes addressing aging infrastructure that led to
inefficiencies and increased outages throughout the country.
Alex was talking about--Epstein, I should say Herrgott and
Epstein--but he was talking about this.
Well, while this issue--it certainly has received a lot of
attention, especially in this House--the policies aimed at
addressing it have missed the mark.
Rolling brownouts and blackouts have become much more
common across America. In 2023 the North American Electric
Reliability Corporation, one of the agencies responsible for
assessing reliability in this country, listed, quote, ``energy
policy as a leading risk to electric reliability'' for the
first time.
Commonly cited were policies that shifted resources away
from investing and upgrading existing infrastructure and toward
fruitless net zero goals and Green New Deal policies.
The most recent 2024 report reiterated these same issues,
characterizing many energy regions at, quote, ``high risk'' of
resource adequacy shortfalls over the next decade.
Now, the good news, I would say, is that Congress can shift
energy policy back toward what will actually work. They can cut
unnecessary red tape, streamline the permitting process,
address a growing energy imbalance that has been the result of
an overreliance and forced shift toward renewables like wind
and solar while fast tracking the closure of base load
generation from coal, natural gas, and even nuclear.
Now, in my written testimony I listed out a number of
policy recommendations. I would like to highlight just a few
that I think are important to discuss with regard to today's
hearing.
One is accepting the reality that fossil fuels provide the
bulk of energy that we use every day, and that energy use is
expected to grow for a variety of reasons. Instead of working
to ban or constrain their use we should support efforts to make
them cleaner and more efficient, not shut them down.
Also, protect the foundation of the grid. What I am
referring to is ensuring base load energy, which is the most
important in terms of stabilization and cost, that we protect
those.
Policy leaders must consider a way, or I would suggest they
consider ways, to account for the value of base load energy
especially with onsite fuel storage that can withstand supply
chain disruptions we know are inevitable in this space at some
point.
Also, ensure that grid reliability or resiliency standards
are technology neutral, so grid operators and engineers have
the flexibility to plan for and respond to major swings in
demand that, again, we know are inevitable in this space.
Establishing balanced environmental standards; there is a
lot of work already ongoing at the U.S. EPA but ensuring that
standards are based on proven, not prospective timelines, they
take cost in consideration and have flexible timelines for
compliance.
Also--I think this is really important and something that
is often overlooked--prioritizing mining in America.
Incentivize domestic manufacturing of all energy technologies
and the domestic mining of minerals that go into these
technologies.
I think approving the Twin Metals Mine in northeastern
Minnesota would be a very important and effective good first
step. Also being open to new innovative technologies.
One that I talk a lot about is the role of bitcoin miners
in stabilizing grids. There is a lot of opportunities and new
innovations, and considering those would be very important.
Again, I thank you for your attention to this important
policy. I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I look
forward to your questions.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you, Ms. Gunasekara.
I now recognize Mr. Herrgott for his opening statement.
STATEMENT OF ALEX HERRGOTT
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND PRESIDENT
THE PERMITTING INSTITUTE
Mr. Herrgott. Good morning.
Chairman Burlison, Ranking Member Frost, my name is Alex
Herrgott, and I am President of the Permitting Institute. Since
2021, TPI has operated as a nonpartisan nonprofit trade
association.
Our members and partners constitute the largest developers
in the United States who all collectively support the common
goal of accelerating infrastructure improvement across all
sectors: conventional, renewable energy, transportation, water,
pipelines, mining, manufacturing, ports, water, broadband.
We believe the uncertainties of election cycles, divisive
permitting policy battles, and the prioritization of
infrastructure sectors and energy sources are, largely,
unnecessary distractions.
These distractions put hundreds of billions of dollars in
current private sector investment at constant risk of lengthy
delays and project abandonment, driving up energy and household
good costs and ultimately weakening our global competitiveness.
This situation is unsustainable for all Americans
regardless of political affiliation. There is hundreds of
billions of private sector investment that remains on the
sidelines and mayors and Governors who are committing billions
of taxpayer revenue 20 years out in the future.
The inconvenient truth is that for nearly a decade
Congress' legislative efforts to address this problem have
fallen short. Opponents of more aggressive changes to
permitting laws often fail to recognize that every project that
disturbs the earth, impacts habitats, or alters landscapes
creates unavoidable interactions with nature.
It does not matter if it is offshore wind, transmission,
wind, solar, hydrogen. It all falls under the same 60
environmental laws that we cannot get out of our own way on.
These interactions trigger reviews under the hundreds of
laws and regulations governing infrastructure permits at the
Federal, state, and local levels.
Over the last decade, Congress has reached consensus on
various process reforms aimed at achieving greater coordination
and efficiency but has left untouched the statutory provisions,
some over 100 years old.
These temporary fixes fail to address the underlying
issues. One of the major issues are transparency. In 2025
President Biden's Council of Environmental Quality released a
report claiming it reduced the median time for agencies to
complete environmental review statements from 3.1 to 2.4 years.
The Administration touted that this is a 23 percent improvement
over Trump's first term.
However, this is just not accurate. My members must have
missed the memo on that because the problem is getting worse,
not better.
Typically, TPR refrains from engaging in debates about the
appropriate size and scope of Federal infrastructure
initiatives.
However, given the trillions in unprecedented debt spending
that have already been incurred obligating future generations
of American taxpayers to rebuild our infrastructure only to
rebuild it again with their own money 30, 40 years from now,
not addressing permitting amounts to legislative malpractice.
Our broken system allows agencies to sit on applications
for years and decades in cases with no certainty of eventual
project approval or any response at all.
TPI does not claim that Federal agencies owe project
developers yes, but we owe them an answer in an appropriate
amount of time. Once in the process, developers, even today,
find themselves in the dark, uncertain of where their projects
stand along the concurrent permitting pathways with various
Federal agencies.
Over the past several years some Federal agencies have
developed new informal and formal policies, partly due to the
requirements for 2-year average timelines. These policies front
load biological, cultural, and historical survey requirements
before the formal review process begins, pushing the official
starting point even further into the future. See my comments
earlier about CEQ's manipulation of the statistical relevance
of the data.
Even with the recent Federal funding more than 95 percent
of major U.S. investments in energy are entirely supported by
the private sector. Infrastructure investors require
predictability, yet they are often treated as adversaries in
conflict with Federal regulators rather than partners in
rebuilding the Nation.
We cannot get out of our own way. Without a systematic
shift in how we address permitting in the United States Federal
and state courts will increasingly take on the role of
interpreting appropriate application of administrative and
procedural roles and rendering science-based decisions on
behalf of the agencies.
This cannot be the way forward. Congress must address both
permitting process reform and litigation reform. While
necessary litigation reform is necessary, without the
underlying permitting reform we are only addressing the symptom
and not the root cause.
Despite a bipartisan desire to tackle these existential
issues, pressure from vocal stakeholders on both sides and a
political tendency to avoid risk perpetuates the status quo,
leaving lawmakers searching for superficial fixes.
With a load growth that for the last 20 years has been 1
percent year over year and is about to jump to 20 percent,
there is going to be plenty of blame going around in the House
and the Senate.
The blame is going to metastasize. Yet, at the very core of
it is the issue that we can fix now before the issue becomes
untenable. Both Republicans and Democrats support large-scale
energy projects including transmission, wind, natural gas,
solar, critical minerals, hydro, carbon capture, and hydrogen.
Energy shortages, price instability, and supply constraints
and increased construction costs contribute to the human,
environmental, and financial costs of these delays.
With each passing month the window for solutions continues
to shrink and the cost of living in America rises. Despite
these challenges, I am optimistic that we can make progress
this year and in the years to come.
There are glimmers of hope as the proverbial strange
bedfellows find common cause. Before looking at the actions of
President Trump and the executive orders as something that is
to be scoffed at, we must look at the fact that we need to
break down the system and change the paradigm and rebuild it in
a rational way and the way in which the real world actually
works, not relying on laws that were written more than 100
years ago, many 30 years before the internet, to govern the way
that we build infrastructure and put billions and billions into
a system that does not serve American purposes.
A project development cycle of 7 to 10 years is simply too
long. By working together, we can advance permanent reforms to
build a 21st century infrastructure that safeguards
communities, protects the cultural resources, and creates jobs
and brings prosperity to every corner of America.
Thank you. I look forward to questions.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you.
I now recognize Dr. Cleetus for her opening statement.
STATEMENT OF RACHEL CLEETUS
POLICY DIRECTOR
CLIMATE AND ENERGY PROGRAM
UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
Ms. Cleetus. Good morning.
Thank you so much, Chairman Burlison, Ranking Member Frost,
and Members of the Subcommittee for holding this hearing.
My name is Rachel Cleetus. I am the Policy Director for the
Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned
Scientists. We are a nonpartisan science advocacy organization.
I want to leave you with three things today. One is that
our transition of our electric system to one that is
modernized, more flexible, with more renewables and storage is
the best way to protect consumer costs as well as safeguard
health, make sure that we are competitive on the global stage,
and that we are innovating as we go along. There are tremendous
economic and health benefits from this transition.
No. 2, doubling down on fossil fuels is harmful. It is
taking us in exactly the wrong direction and actually there is
ample evidence that natural gas price volatility is one of the
factors driving increased electricity prices as well as
reliability concerns in the power grid.
And No. 3, in 2025 we should not ask any American to choose
between their health and prosperity. We can have both and we
should have both, and here is how we can do it. Ramping up
renewable energy, energy efficiency and storage, investing in a
modernized, more resilient electric grid will help cut power
bills, they will boost business opportunities, and improve
public health.
Meanwhile, if we double down on fossil fuels all we are
doing is serving to promote the profits of fossil fuel
companies at the expense of the American public.
Renewable energy is now the dominant source of new power
generation capacity because, frankly, in many parts of the
country it is the cheapest source, and we can bring it online
quickly.
Last year renewables and battery storage accounted for 94
percent of all new large-scale capacity with solar and battery
storage leading the charge. In 2025 and 2026 solar generation
is--we are going to get about 25 percent of our electricity
generation from renewables and solar generation is expected to
jump 45 percent between 2024 and 2026.
The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act provide critical funding to accelerate
this clean energy transition, and it is benefiting communities
across the country in red states and blue states.
It is helping expand access to clean, affordable energy,
building domestic manufacturing and supply chains, creating
good paying jobs and helping limit pollution from fossil fuels.
In the last year U.S. investments in clean technologies
reached $272 billion. That is crucial to keeping our businesses
competitive in a world where greener products are increasingly
in demand.
The current Administration's actions to claw back or freeze
this funding is, frankly, unfathomable. It is creating a
disruption and market uncertainty for businesses that are
trying to lean into opportunities right now.
It is going to cede leadership on technology advancement,
it is going to cut jobs, and ultimately it is going to harm
electric reliability and increase energy costs.
Trying to boost fossil fuels and turn back the clock--that
is the exact opposite direction. We are a nation that embraces
modernizing. We are a nation that embraces innovation.
Let us embrace the future and not get stuck in the past. A
rush to further expand LNG exports is only going to exacerbate
price risk to consumers. Recent extreme weather events
underscore that gas power plants face significant reliability
concerns with many catastrophic failures occurring during
winter.
Worsening heat waves, wildfires, drought are also putting
pressure on the grid, and what we find is that hybrid systems
that couple renewable energy with storage provide significant
grid reliability services.
For example, during the heat domes that we saw last year
and the year before in the Texas grid it was solar plus storage
that helped save the day.
The power sector does need to plan for increased demand but
the way to do that is manage and plan the demand growth to
align with expansion of clean energy.
We already are at record fossil fuel highs, whether it
comes to oil or LNG. There is no problem in terms of expansion
of fossil fuels, unfortunately, even as the climate crisis
worsens.
What we need to do is unleash clean renewable power, the
transmission to go with it, and energy efficiency. The grid is
desperately in need of upgrades and expansion. It has got a C-
grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers.
During extreme weather and climate events we have seen
power outages that affect millions, cost billions of dollars in
damages. We do need to quickly expand investments in a
resilient transmission system built for the future climate
conditions that scientists are telling us are going to worsen.
We can integrate higher levels of renewables, provide
reliability benefits, reduce bills, reduce pollution.
Modernizing the power sector also provides opportunities to
clean up air, water, and soil pollution.
That is a critical factor that communities around the
country are depending on us for, especially communities that
are overburdened by pollution today.
We need to target investments in those communities so that
they too can reap the benefits of a more affordable, cleaner
modern energy system.
Burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of human-caused
climate change which is already exerting a fearsome toll around
the country. We can sharply cut heat trapping emissions while
delivering billions of dollars in consumer energy savings and
public health benefits.
So, modernizing and cleaning up the power sector is vital
for the economy, for us to compete globally, and it is the best
way to protect reliability and consumers' pocketbooks.
Thank you.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you. I now recognize myself for 5
minutes of questions.
Mr. Epstein, in my home state of Missouri we rely
predominantly on coal for electricity generation. The previous
Administration's proposed regulation on power plants would lead
to the premature closure of fossil fuel-fired power plants
across the country including Missouri.
And I will tell you, I had a sobering moment during winter
storm Yuri when we had 2 weeks of negative, you know, double
digit temperature and we were hearing about reliability
problems.
They were warning of brownouts. They were warning that they
may have to shut down power and our the heating of our own
personal home was barely keeping up, and I will tell you,
looking out the window of my backyard and seeing that we had a
coal-fired power plant that was going I was thankful to God
that we had that at that time.
Unfortunately, some people died in winter storm Yuri, a
hundred and fifty people. So, this is very sobering. It is very
real.
My question is how should Congress and the new Trump
Administration address misguided regulations to ensure that
Americans in every district have access to affordable, reliable
electricity supplies and never face having to freeze to death
in modern America.
Mr. Epstein. I mean, first of all, they really--and in
particular let us focus on EPA--they really need to recognize
what you are saying, which is that a reliable grid is an
existential thing for human life, including human health.
I think, you know, we heard an example about like, oh, what
if you put a natural gas plant and it is going to harm people's
health. That is pseudoscience. Natural gas burns incredibly
cleanly.
But what does harm people's health is not having a reliable
natural gas plant. Imagine not having reliable natural gas in
Florida, not having coal in Missouri.
Like these, you know, cold is the number-one cause of
climate-related death, despite people are afraid of warming.
Like, the EPA when it is doing cost benefit analyses, which it
needs to do more of and Congress should make it do more of, it
needs to factor in the reliability of the grid as a crucial
factor.
And one thing I know you and I have talked about is there
should just be a pause on any kind of new action that
potentially threatens the reliability of the grid until the
electricity crisis is resolved because the electricity crisis
is a health crisis that far dwarfs any negative side effects of
fossil fuels.
Mr. Burlison. And with new power demands coming, you know,
you mentioned the AI data centers and all of that--what can we
do now to prepare and to ramp up quickly?
Mr. Epstein. I mean, I was just sighing because I am, like,
listen to people like me 10 years ago. I mean, it is annoying
because it was so obvious that shutting down reliable power
plants in a world that well could need more reliable
electricity was just a disaster.
So, I think what you need to look at is what are the near-
term things you can do. I think the most near-term thing you
can do, which I did not cover in my testimony, is you want to
see how do we increase the already existing capacity of coal
plants and natural gas plants which, particularly with the coal
plants, is being drastically underutilized due to a lot of
irrational emissions regulations.
Like, rather, coal and gas have real capacity. Solar and
wind have fake capacity. It is not a capacity if you can go to
near zero at any given time when the weather changes.
So, you need to increase the utilization of our real
capacity, and happy to share more details on how to do that.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you.
Ms. Gunasekara, as the Chief, you know, the former Chief of
Staff of EPA, you had a unique perspective on how Federal
agencies work or do not work. When thinking about the role of
the Federal Government and how it has an encouraging economic
growth how do the regulations stand in the way of that economic
growth?
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes, I think what we saw in the last
Administration was putting their thumb on the scale against
traditional energy resources, coal, oil and natural gas, that,
again, provide the bulk of our daily energy needs and then also
provide that important base load generation that I referenced
earlier. When you have over-regulation it increases costs, it
increases litigation opportunities, and that equates to
uncertainty throughout various industries that are necessary
for us to live out our daily modern life.
So, really paring back various regulations that have either
skewed from EPA's actual mission, which is to protect the
environment, improve efficiencies, not put certain businesses
out of business, to get away from that, to comport with the law
and ensure that there is stability and certainty going forward
for those that want to make the investments we need to meet
this future growth in energy demand.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you.
And, Mr. Herrgott, what recommendations do you have to
address the problems in the current permitting system and what
is at stake if we do not?
Mr. Herrgott. As an example, as much as the IRA is touted
as a marquee accomplishment of the last Administration there
were 195 new regulations.
Forty-five gigs of wind, solar transmission, and others
that would have provided for the green energy revolution are
either abandoned or will never get built.
So, the reality is when capital is put at risk we remove
the obstacles and build it well within a year. We can do that.
Countries far greener than ours in Europe do it in half the
time that we do it without any compromises to environmental or
social or cultural protections.
We are in the modern age. We are relying on 50-year-old
rules on how we build infrastructure and if we continue on this
pathway of not realizing that there is a balance between human
activity and the natural environment.
If you want a car you are going to need a road. If you want
to turn on your lights you are going to need a transmission
line.
If you are not going to build the renewable energy you need
to rely on the other stuff. At some point, there is--
electricity is not a public good. At some point it has to get
built and the government is not going to build it. The private
sector is.
We have got to remove the hurdles and we also need to look
at opportunities to potentially outsource engineering and
architecture firms to address the significant backload of
projects that are moving through the system with a Federal
workforce that is not capable to deal with the complexity of
the projects of today.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you.
I now recognize Mr. Frost for 5 minutes of questions.
Mr. Frost. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Herrgott, how can home solar and home energy storage
contribute to Americans' energy needs and grid resilience?
Mr. Herrgott. So, it can play a role as an intermittent
source to offset the cost of energy or to provide at some
points a payback of distributed generation back to the
utilities.
But on average--but on average--it is not going to make a
dramatic difference in particular with the 20 percent load
growth that we are going to see year over year.
It almost becomes a least economical way to put the solar
panels on a house with the transmission that would then have to
reverse back into the utility.
There is a far better way to address if the goal is for
zero carbon emission projects. There is a far more efficient
way to do it. We have to stop pretending that these things that
are of a smaller scale are somehow going to address a larger
problem.
Mr. Frost. And how can energy resilience programs for
single family homes contribute to people keeping their lights
on during extreme weather?
This is, you know, this is a big deal in the state of
Florida as well and part of the reason why it is a pretty
bipartisan issue. We have seen on home rooftop solar and people
wanting to become energy independent within their own home.
Mr. Herrgott. So, the cost of energy is oftentimes and the
cost of these 20 to 30 percent it takes to build a project is
often passed down to the rate payer.
It becomes this intangible cost that is spread over many
rate payers, so we do not see that the kilowatt per hour goes
up a half a cent a year or half a cent a month.
Because we are not transparent about how that project
actually gets from generation to the house the cost increase is
because--you know, to give you an example, there were five to
six large-scale renewable transmission lines that were almost
permitted at the end of the Trump Administration, and I can--
Cardinal-Hickory Creek, 10 West, and many others that still
took another 3 to 4 years.
If we cannot build the infrastructure, if we cannot build
the new KV lines to get from 115 to 230 to 530 that actually
reduce cost and efficiencies, then what are we doing here?
Mr. Frost. Dr. Cleetus, as the only economist among our
witnesses today, how confident are you in Trump's promise to
cut energy costs in half in the next 500 days?
Ms. Cleetus. If that promise is predicated on what we have
seen in the last month I fear not at all. That promise will not
be met and, unfortunately, in the interim many people around
the country are going to suffer from higher energy costs, lost
jobs, businesses suffering from uncertainty in the marketplace.
This is actually really taking the economy in the wrong
direction. So, I hope there will be a reversal of some of those
early day announcements.
Mr. Frost. Yes. And I want to get an idea of how abandoning
our clean energy future will actually mean higher bills for
folks. I mean, No. 1, there is nothing worse for your banking
health than completely losing your job and a lot of these
executive orders are aiming to abandon clean energy investments
and projects.
I actually, you know, agree with what Mr. Herrgott said as
well in terms of if we have already made this investment to
begin something when we abandon it, you know, I would say we
are misusing a lot of taxpayer money and we are not going in
the direction we need to go into.
But abandoning these clean energy investment means that
Americans are going to lose their jobs, and I have spoken with
trades, really around the country but especially in my
district, people who are at work right now because of these
investments we have made.
How could that harm America's clean energy leadership,
moving forward?
Ms. Cleetus. The reality is we are on the cusp of what
could have been an incredible evolution and we can still
capture that bright future if we continue to make these
investments.
The Inflation Reduction Act has only been a couple of years
into implementation and already we have seen hundreds of
thousands of jobs, so many manufacturing facilities in the
southeast, all around the country.
That is an incredible opportunity for the communities that
live there and that is why there is bipartisan support. We have
seen letters sent to the Speaker from the Republican side as
well saying, please do not stop these investments because they
are helping drive jobs and innovation.
When we look at the world of the future, it is moving
toward a clean energy world. The U.S. should be at the
forefront of that technological revolution. Let us not cut
ourselves out.
Mr. Frost. What states would be mostly impacted?
Ms. Cleetus. Well, if we look at the states that are
getting the investments right now, they are places like
Alabama. They are places like Kentucky.
They are places in the southeast that are getting they are
getting on a percentage basis a much greater amount of these
investments. They have built battery plants. They have built EV
manufacturing.
So, these clean energy jobs are everywhere in the country
but some parts of the country had been lagging and they are now
getting a chance to take advantage of this incredible
opportunity.
Mr. Frost. Yes, I appreciate you bringing it up. I mean,
and globally, you know, in terms of being a global player we
get most of our energy from oil and part of the purpose of
moving toward this new green economy and clean energy, of
course, is cutting emissions because of the climate crisis but
also having more diversity in our energy mix, which is
important for resiliency as well and lowering costs.
So, thank you so much. I yield back.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you. I now recognize the gentleman from
Alabama, Mr. Palmer for 5 minutes.
Mr. Palmer. In regard to the cost of renewables versus
hydrocarbon resources, I just want to point out that the
Economist magazine reported that between November 2022 and
February 2023 they estimate there were 140,000-plus excess
winter deaths because these people just could not afford to
adequately heat their homes, and as Mr. Epstein pointed out
there are more people who die from cold-related illnesses than
from heat.
So, while there are people out there that are trying to
save the planet with misguided energy policies that undermine
our national security China is working every day to dominate
the planet.
Mr. Epstein, can we compete with China in the development
and utilization of artificial intelligence with renewable power
only?
Mr. Epstein. I mean, with renewable power only we cannot
compete with Ghana.
Mr. Palmer. Would you agree that we are in a technology
arms race with China for dominance in AI and quantum computing?
Mr. Epstein. Yes. I mean, it is so--it is just so scary
because--you know, I was writing my book ``Fossil Future'' in,
like, 2020 and this was just so clearly going to happen. So, I
had a section on AI, you know, way back then and it is just--
this is clearly an existential thing.
I am going to use these technologies so much in my own work
already and they are just so driven by the ability to have on
demand cheap power, to the point where Larry Fink, who is the
leader of this disastrous net zero movement, has publicly said
at the World Economic Forum that we need more natural gas and
that solar and wind will not cut it. Even that guy is admitting
this.
So, we need to wake up and live in reality and it is a
scary reality if we do not dramatically change our practices.
Mr. Palmer. People should read the book Henry Kissinger,
Eric Schmidt, and I forget the other guy's name wrote
``Genesis'' about the race for dominance in artificial
intelligence, and the bottom line is is that it is going to
require enormous amounts of power, and while China is building
some renewables, they are really focused on hydrocarbon coal-
based power generation.
They are building it at an unprecedented pace, and they are
also advancing in small modular nuclear where we are not, and
this is the existential threat to the United States. It is also
a threat to our economy.
Ms. Gunasekara, would you agree with that?
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes, I would, and I would say one of the
biggest issues with China's approach versus the U.S. is the
coal plants that they are building are not using pollution
control equipment that our coal facilities have been using for
decades.
So, while we stand by and sign pieces of paper with them,
pretending like they are going to do something to lower their
emissions, they continue on this trajectory, build these plants
that actually ship particulate matter and things along those
lines over to places like California that continue to struggle
with meeting air quality standards from the early 2000s as a
result.
Mr. Palmer. Yes. I worked for two international engineering
companies. I worked for Combustion Engineering and their
environmental systems and we were leading in making major
advances in air pollution control for coal-fired, for natural
gas.
But China is not the least bit confused about what the
objective is. I think ensuring that we maximize our access to
high energy density, and that is what we are talking about when
we are talking about hydrocarbon and nuclear resources for
power generation is not just an economic issue. It is a
national security issue, and would you agree with that?
Mr. Epstein. Yes. I mean, so if you look at national
security what does national security depend on? It depends
above all on having an extremely robust economy that can
produce weapons when necessary, that can keep people alive when
necessary. That is No. 1.
The other, No. 2, is it relies on mobility. World War I and
World War II were noncoincidentally won by the side with the
most oil, and perhaps No. 3 is going to be intelligence or
augmented intelligence.
So, all of these things totally depend on unleashing energy
and I believe in all forms of energy being free to compete. But
the idea that we are going to restrict fossil fuels and
subsidize things that cannot compete on their own and that is
going to be anything but a disaster has been proven false.
Mr. Palmer. The world is waking up to this.
Mr. Epstein. Yes, and just everyone here needs to wake up
to this today. Like, the arguments I am hearing, like, I heard
these in, you know, 2013 when people were claiming Germany was
going to be success story.
Mr. Palmer. Yes.
Mr. Epstein. I was right back then but it is obvious now.
Mr. Palmer. Well, I had a conversation with Eric Schmidt
about his book and he has gone the same direction that Mr. Fink
went. He now says full-blown, full speed ahead on hydrocarbon
and nuclear.
The bottom line is that our economic and national security
are inseparably linked and dependent on reliable, affordable,
and sufficient power to meet our needs and to compete with
China.
I yield back.
Mr. Burlison. I now recognize the gentleman from
California, Mr. Khanna, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Gunasekara, welcome back to the Committee. You are the
author of the book ``You All Are Fired,'' correct?
Ms. Gunasekara. ``Y'all Fired.''
Mr. Khanna. ``Y'all Fired.'' I will not get the
pronunciation perfect. And when you testified before our
committee last September you said, if I remember, you supported
Project 2025's calls to fire thousands of Federal workers,
correct?
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes.
Mr. Khanna. And it looks like your wishes are coming true,
correct?
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes. Certainly, some of the policies that I
have suggested in the past seem to be being implemented in this
Administration.
Mr. Khanna. Do you support the firing of the 2,400 Veteran
Affairs employees, many of whom were doctors, nurses and
veterans themselves, that have taken place?
Ms. Gunasekara. Again, I think that if people are in roles
that do not substantially contribute to fulfilling the mission
of the stated agency that from a taxpayer resource perspective
those jobs should not continue to exist.
Mr. Khanna. I understand your general view but in terms of
the specifics I am sure you follow them. Do you support the
firings that have taken place at the Veterans Affairs
Department?
Ms. Gunasekara. I think the view that many of the firings
that have taken place are from what I just described, that it
is looking at roles and are they meaningfully contributing to
fulfilling the agency's relative mission and if they are not
then those people fall away.
Mr. Khanna. And so, you support them or I am just trying to
understand.
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes, I do. I support the structural changes
of this Administration. I think it is long overdue. It is
actually a breath of fresh air.
Mr. Khanna. Several of the veterans who have been fired
said that they were doing incredibly meaningful work helping
veterans who are struggling with depression. One of them
yesterday talked about how he was in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I just want to make sure I understand your position. So,
there are 2,400 veterans who have been fired. You support that.
What do you think of firing the Agriculture Department
workers who are trying to combat the bird flu crisis? Do you
support that, or do you think that was a mistake?
Ms. Gunasekara. Again, I think all of these structural
changes are long overdue. There are many roles throughout the
Federal Government that are duplicative and do not meaningfully
advance related missions. And so, I think----
Mr. Khanna. I appreciate the general point that--I even
recommend people read your book because I think it is being
implemented. But do you support the specifics of the firings of
people who were involved with the bird flu or not?
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes, I entrust, or I trust, the people who
are making these decisions looking at structural reform.
Mr. Khanna. So, you support that. How about the 350 workers
who at the Department of Energy were tasked with safeguarding
our nuclear weapons. Do you support those firings, or do you
think those were unnecessary or do you believe those were
redundant workers?
Ms. Gunasekara. I think in many of those instances those
are redundant roles, and there are still people that remain
fulfilling those key initiatives in every single agency whether
it is protecting veterans, whether it is ensuring the safe----
Mr. Khanna. I appreciate your time. I appreciate two things
about you. One, your straightforwardness about what you
testified to, your willingness to testify before Congress.
I have said that, you know, Elon Musk and DOGE should come
and be as straightforward because you are basically telling the
American public that you support the firing of the 2,400 people
at the Veterans Department, you support the firing of the 350
employees who are there to protect bird flu.
You see many of them as redundant. You support the firing
of the people there to protect our nuclear safety because you
see them as redundant, and at least you are being transparent.
Now, do you know if the employees who have been fired so
far, the Federal employees, do you have an estimate of how many
of them are veterans? I am not trying to trick you. I can give
you the number.
Ms. Gunasekara. I do not know the number offhand.
Mr. Khanna. Thirty percent of the Federal employees who
have been fired are veterans. Do you think we should give
special consideration not to be firing veterans or do you think
if someone is a veteran it should not matter?
Ms. Gunasekara. I think that there is--I mean, for anyone
in the Federal Government that has lost their job--that there
are lots of opportunities in the private sector.
Mr. Khanna. Do you think there should be special protection
or special consideration not to fire veterans, people who have
gone to Iraq, Afghanistan, worn our uniform or do you think
they should be treated like anyone else?
Ms. Gunasekara. I think that anyone working in the Federal
Government should be treated equally. Again, it is----
Mr. Khanna. Well, we just disagree. My view is that if
someone has been a veteran who served our uniform, I think
that, just like we have certain programs to help them get jobs,
I think we should take extra care to make sure that we are not
firing them.
Have you heard of the Valentine's Day Massacre?
Ms. Gunasekara. I have but please remind me.
Mr. Khanna. That is what--well, that is what the Federal
employees, including the veterans, are calling it. Many of them
got a note on Valentine's Day that they were going to be fired
on Valentine's Day without any prior communication.
If that happened, do you agree that that is the wrong way
just from a human level of firing people, just giving them a
note on Valentine's Day without any conversation?
Ms. Gunasekara. I think there is a lot of people on
Valentine's Day that struggle to make ends meet because this
Administration and the last--or the last Administration overly
focused on hiring and expanding the Federal Government to
Mr. Khanna. So, you are fine with people getting a note on
Valentine's Day, all of them, telling them that they are fired?
Ms. Gunasekara. I think when it makes sense for them to get
some notice--I mean, I think there is all sorts of ways to
develop sob stories for people who have been on the receiving
end of an overgrown overbloated Federal Government. But you do
not think about all of the rest of the people in the country
that have been struggling to make ends meet because when you
over-emphasize the growth of the Federal Government you deter
the development and opportunities in the private sector.
Mr. Khanna. Well, I would just encourage you to listen to
some of these stories because they were doing incredibly
important work. They were high performers. They were fired
without any notice, and I am asking for consideration for
President Trump to reinstate them, especially our veterans.
Thank you.
Mr. Frost. Mr. Chair?
Mr. Burlison. Yes?
Mr. Frost. I would like to seek unanimous consent to enter
two things into the record.
One is a Yale article and study that says how China became
the world's leader on renewable energy. The other one is a New
York Times article entitled, ``Why Trump's clean energy
rollbacks could derail a factory boom.''
Mr. Burlison. Both articles will be submitted without
objection.
I now recognize the lady from Colorado, Ms. Boebert for 5
minutes.
Ms. Boebert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Ms. Gunasekara, I just want to commend you so much.
Thank you for giving such straightforward answers.
I was not hearing of the outcries from my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle when our Keystone XL pipeliners were
laid off, when my district was regulated into poverty when oil
and gas was pushed out by over regulation and Green New Deal
policies.
I did not hear the outcry for veterans or service members
who were discharged from the military because they refused to
take a trial vaccine that was not, that we did not know the
effects of.
I did not hear the outcry for small businesses that went
under and were not able to reopen. Many, many, many, many
people lost their jobs over poor regulations and over
regulations.
So, thank you so much for giving clear and concise answers.
We do have an overgrown and bloated government, and DOGE is
absolutely exposing that and all of the waste, fraud, or theft,
and abuse that is taking place with our American tax dollars.
So, sorry I do not have a question for you but I wanted to
just say thank you so much for being here and for your
expertise.
Mr. Epstein, we have heard a lot today about bird flu that,
obviously, that was under Joe Biden and his decision. We have
heard about the Green New Deal.
We heard that America needs to lead on green new energy,
really, this green new scam and we kind of cannot when we are
dependent on China and we are getting, you know, our solar
panels from them and they are using coal-fired energy to create
their own energy, and we are kind of left suffering.
Mr. Epstein--Epstein, sorry--are there any myths that you
have heard today in this hearing room that you would like to
address such as, frankly, some of the BS that I have heard from
colleagues here and even one of our witnesses?
Mr. Epstein. So, yes, let me just take--you know, what I
think is the overall myth is this idea that we need to impose
dramatic restrictions on fossil fuels and give dramatic
subsidies to unreliable solar and wind as well as other
uncompetitive forms of energy in order to prevent a climate
crisis/compete with China. That is sort of the overall thing.
So, just to break it down quickly, I do not know why we
have not learned from every other industry that has ever
existed but the way you get the best, cheapest, most reliable
product is you leave people free to compete.
You do not restrict the things that work and subsidize the
things that do not. But we are magically pretending an energy
that somehow works. I mean, imagine you outlawed iPhone and
Android and just let random people with unreliable phones
produce phones and you subsidized them.
It makes no sense. The laws of economics apply here just as
well as anywhere else.
In terms of averting an alleged climate crisis, I have
documented human beings are so resilient from climate that we
are safer than ever from climate. Our resilience is rooted in
fossil fuels.
So, if we restrict fossil fuels we make ourselves less
resilient. We will reverse what has been an incredible decline
in climate-related disaster deaths.
So, one, is there is no climate crisis that, to avert. But
then No. 2 is by screwing up American energy you do nothing to
reduce global emissions because the emissions just get
offshored to China and to more competitive economies, which
brings me to China and do we need to compete with them in
renewables, and Ranking Member Frost mentioned a certain,
quote/unquote, study from Yale about this.
And the issue is China is the leader, is becoming the
leader in fossil fuels and one of their leading uses of fossil
fuels is to produce overpriced, unreliable energy
infrastructure that they sell to us and that we are incredibly
dependent upon.
So, the whole thing is wrong and what we need is very
simple. We just need energy freedom. So, we need the freedom
for all forms of energy to compete.
I think somebody mentioned we need technology neutral
standards for our grid. That is very important. We do not want
to favor or disfavor any form of energy.
But if we do that, given current economic realities, that
is going to mean a lot of fossil fuels here and around the
world and overall, that is really good for people because a
world with a lot of energy can handle any climate but a world
without much energy cannot handle any climate or really
anything else.
Thank you.
Ms. Boebert. Mr. Epstein, I want to give you the last 30
seconds or so to talk about the EPA, as you mentioned in your
testimony, just things that they need to rescind and do better
with in this new Administration.
We have Administrator Lee Zeldin now at the EPA and I think
he will do a fantastic job and, hopefully, he has read your
books ``The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,'' ``Fossil Future.''
Hopefully, he has your Alex AI app. I think that is a great
tool for energy information and it is actually reliable kind of
like the fossil fuel energy that we are discussing today.
So, if you want to use these last seconds--oh, I used most
of them. I am sorry.
Mr. Epstein. Yes. Well, fortunately, it is in my testimony.
The quick things I would just say are we need to be objective
about the benefits of any of these restrictions, which are
generally overblown, and you need to be very realistic about
the costs which are usually underestimated.
And Yes, check out AlexEpstein.AI. Free to use for everyone
and you could just use it dynamically and learn a lot about
this testimony topic.
Thank you.
Ms. Boebert. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you. I now recognize the gentlelady
from Arizona, Ms. Ansari.
Ms. Ansari. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would like to thank our
witnesses for being here today.
I am proud to represent Arizona's Third congressional
District, a community of families who have been hit very hard
by the cost of rising energy at a time of rapidly increasing
energy demand. It is absolutely imperative that we bring down
costs and deliver economic security for Americans.
However, I want to be clear. The cost-of-living crisis is
not happening because of some imaginary war on oil and gas. The
United States is already producing more oil and gas than ever,
more than any country in history. Instead of doubling down on
fossil fuels we need to prioritize a transition to clean,
affordable, American-made energy.
Unlike fossil fuels, which we have seen in recent years,
are subject to volatile global markets and price swings. Clean
energy provides long-term stability and allows working families
to adequately budget for energy costs.
There has been a lot of talk from my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle about the need to protect and advance
national security. The gravest existential threat to our
national security is climate change.
It is laughable, frankly, to hear you say that the climate
crisis does not exist. I like to agree with the 99 percent----
Mr. Epstein. Ask me a question and I will explain.
Ms. Ansari. No, I do not need to hear more explanation on
lies. So, it is actually the U.S. military establishment in the
1970s that first sounded the alarm on climate change and said
that climate change is a threat multiplier to our national
security.
We have also heard from you about that we should not favor
any type of energy, and I do agree with that, but I am
wondering why our current President has suspended new Federal
offshore wind, saying, ``We are not going to do the wind
thing,'' quote, ``big, ugly windmills. They ruin your
neighborhood.''
So, it is just the concept of saying that we should not be
going after any one form of energy while our President is doing
the exact opposite
Mr. Epstein. I am not the President. I do not agree with
that policy.
Ms. Ansari. So, I am talking about the actions of this
Administration.
Mr. Epstein. Well, that specific one I think was incorrect
but most of them are good.
Ms. Ansari. I did not ask you a question, sir. I am sorry,
I did not ask you a question.
Mr. Epstein. OK. I thought you were addressing me.
Ms. Ansari. So, on the Phoenix city council I was proud to
pass the city's ambitious climate action plan unanimously,
start one of the most ambitious fleet transition plans in the
country, all with Republican support.
These initiatives were made possible by legislation such as
the Inflation Reduction Act which delivered historic levels of
investment in clean energy. Arizona has gained over 18,000
clean energy jobs and nearly $12 billion in private investment
related to the IRA.
So, with that, I would like to turn to my questions to Dr.
Cleetus. Thank you again for being here.
Dr. Cleetus, are we seeing other states benefit from
investment in clean energy and what are things that states can
do to increase their potential for economic growth?
Ms. Cleetus. We are seeing the benefits of clean energy all
across the country. We have got more than 3 million clean
energy jobs already and the Inflation Reduction Act alone has
created hundreds of thousands of jobs.
We have seen these benefits, especially in the Southeast
but in every state: Nevada, Kentucky, Georgia, Florida. We have
seen an incredible growth in manufacturing and jobs in this
country.
Now, the opportunity we have is to accelerate that
transition, give people even more access to clean energy. We
should not be prioritizing the interests of fossil fuel
companies and their profits over the interests of the American
consumers and the American people.
So, doubling down on fossil fuels, that only serves the
fossil fuel industry, so, of course, they are spreading
disinformation and misinformation about the climate science.
They have been obstructing action on climate change for
decades now but their own scientists were the ones decades ago
who said very clearly that burning fossil fuels will drive
worsening climate change and we are living in that reality
right now.
Ms. Ansari. Thank you so much. I could not agree more.
Can you tell us a little bit more what would divestment or
taking certain energy options off of the table mean for states
like Arizona where 61 percent of energy jobs are clean energy
jobs?
Ms. Cleetus. You know, in states like Arizona it is a
twofold benefit because not only is it helping deliver clean
renewable energy, it is also helping address some of the
challenges we face from extreme weather events like heat waves.
Arizona has suffered from incredible intense heat waves
that have the clear fingerprints of climate change on them, and
in those conditions solar plus storage is really delivering
around the country, also in Texas. Many states have seen this.
When you have these extreme pressures on the grid what can
you bring online quickly and deliver reliably is not natural
gas. It is solar plus storage, again and again, and the data
show it.
Ms. Ansari. And finally, my colleagues across the aisle
frequently claim that clean or renewable energy is less
reliable than energy powered by fossil fuels despite numerous
studies showing that fossil fuel-fired plants are becoming
increasingly unreliable.
Dr. Cleetus, can you comment on the reliability of clean
energy versus fossil fuels?
Ms. Cleetus. The clean energy flexible modern system that
we are talking about right now is one where you couple
renewables with storage. You build transmission so that you
have a distributed grid.
You have the opportunity for both micro grids, local
generation, as well as long-distance transmission, which we
should be building more of. This is the flexible system of the
future instead of getting stuck in this antiquated notion of
base load.
Meanwhile, we have coal-fired power plants that are
retiring because of market factors. Why do we want to put a
thumb on the scale and leave consumers saddled with billions of
dollars to keep these outdated polluting plants online?
And let us be very clear. Who is paying the costs? We are
in health costs. Those costs are not costs that companies are
taking into account. They are being socialized to all of us,
the asthma, the heart ailments, the lung ailments, the deaths
from cancer. That is the consequence of burning fossil fuels.
Ms. Ansari. Thank you so much. I yield back.
Mr. Higgins. [Presiding.] The gentlelady yields. I
recognize myself for 5 minutes for questioning.
It has been clear through the course of modern history that
economic prosperity is directly related to the availability of
affordable, abundant, transportable energy product, and across
the world where economic prosperity moves forward, built upon a
cornerstone of affordable, reliable, transportable, abundant
energy product then the environment is cleansed in an
economically enriched community. The air gets cleaner. The
water gets cleaner. The land gets cleaner.
So, if our goal is to have a cleaner, more stable
environment for our planet then we should embrace the supply of
energy product that most clearly reflects those key principles
of as clean as possible but abundant and affordable and
transportable.
So, if the energy product comes out of the gate as
unaffordable and not abundant and unreliable then it does not
meet the criteria. So, this is where my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle have contention.
None of us, none of us disagree with our responsibility to
preserve our planet. We have a mandate since the dawn of man to
nurture and care for our planet and the creatures thereof and
we take this responsibility very seriously.
But I would ask the young lady, Ms. Gunasekara, regarding
the mission statement of the EPA--you are a former employee of
the EPA, correct?
Ms. Gunasekara. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. And how would you describe in a sentence what
is the mission statement of the EPA?
Ms. Gunasekara. To protect public health and the
environment.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you very much.
So, to protect the public health and the environment
worldwide is an aspiration, but the mission statement of the
Environmental Protection Agency is to protect the environment
of the United States, correct?
And we accept the role as the world's energy leader both in
consumption and production and in technology that is shared
with the entire world.
So, regarding permitting, Mr. Herrgott, what would happen
if permitting at the Federal level was streamlined to allow for
more aggressive introduction of clean, affordable, reliable,
transportable energy product in the United States and
worldwide. What would happen in those communities?
Mr. Herrgott. So, to make a point--and I know my friends in
the press know that I live in the numbers--more wind and solar
was built under the Trump Administration than the entire Biden
Administration and the last 3 years of the Obama
Administration.
We have to look at the facts. All right. The facts are not
hyperbole. More than 50 percent of Oklahoma, my home state, or
my--I am from Arizona originally, but I worked for Senator
Inhofe, who Mandy and I both worked, who we miss greatly, was
always a fan of let us make the level playing field for
everyone. Remove the obstacles----
Mr. Higgins. Respectfully, I have been to Oklahoma. I have
toured that grid. I am familiar with it, and I am asking you
what would happen if Congress streamlines the permit, and the
executive branch streamlines the permitting process for
investors that are standing by to invest in clean----
Mr. Herrgott. We would see a 20 to 30 percent reduction in
project cost, an immediate reduction in the futures market,
reduced electricity prices and we
Mr. Higgins. Thank you. So, we are talking about hundreds
of billions of dollars. Am I correct?
Mr. Herrgott. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. And we all concur that economic prosperity is
a cornerstone of a clean environment. So, if this is our goal
then, worldwide, we should support the American energy
industry.
Mr. Epstein, you referenced nuclear and I am going to leave
with this question here as my time is expiring, and I hope you
answer it.
You referenced nuclear in the 1970s and how it was not
allowed to emerge fully, that government restrictions sort of
stopped the full emergence of nuclear power and I think you
made an interesting point there. You stated that we are
artificially restricting supply while we are artificially
increasing demand.
So if we, if Congress were to allow the full manifestation
of the American energy industry what would happen to the supply
of that energy product and therefore the expense of that energy
product?
Mr. Epstein. I mean, if you truly unleash it--and, again, I
give a few dozen things in my written testimony and if people
go to EnergyTalkingPoints.com we have, like, 110 new proposals,
112--you know, it would just be the greatest increase in
prosperity.
I mean, you might actually have a shot for new electricity,
reducing the price by 50 percent. But it really requires
dramatic things.
With nuclear in particular that is really important and I
should say, by the way, the number-one organization probably
that ruined nuclear was the Union of Concerned Scientists,
which we have a witness from today that they deserve a special
place in blame.
Mr. Higgins. I thank the gentleman and my time has long
expired. So, out of respect for my colleagues I am going to
close my questioning and move to the gentleman Mr. Min,
Representative Min from California. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Min. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
And I see that we are on the Oversight Committee. We are
exploring oversight. That seems to be a topic we are, largely
ignoring, but I will get back to that in a moment.
A lot of discussion around energy policy and climate change
and so I guess my question is for each of you, do you have a
degree in science?
Let us start with you, Mr. Epstein, a Ph.D., master's?
Mr. Epstein. No. Believe it or not, you can be a self-
taught expert.
Mr. Min. Yes or no. Yes or no question, sir.
Mr. Epstein. It is not quite a valid question.
Mr. Min. Ms. Gunasekara, do you have a degree in science?
Ms. Gunasekara. No.
Mr. Min. Mr. Herrgott, a degree in science, undergrad, MBA
or master's?
Mr. Herrgott. No, but I am a nerd.
Mr. Min. OK. How about yourself, Doctor? I guess you are a
scientist. What was your degree in?
Ms. Cleetus. Economics. Social science.
Mr. Epstein. That is not a science.
Mr. Min. You are not a climate scientist then?
Ms. Cleetus. Not a climate scientist, a social scientist.
Mr. Min. OK. Interesting. So, I am not a scientist either.
I am a lawyer. I am self-taught as well, but I work with a lot
of scientists at UC Irvine.
I have talked to a lot of scientists around climate, around
oceans, and our atmosphere and I think there is clearly a
consensus that the burning of fossil fuels by emitting carbon
into our atmosphere is causing dramatic changes in our
environment.
The science on this is fairly undisputed at this point
other than a handful of people on the extremes. I think every
credible scientist agrees with this.
We are seeing effects of this right now. Extreme weather
events, 140-degree temperatures in India last year, highest
ever in recorded history.
And the thing is I think if we listen to the scientists--I
know scientists are a little out of style today--that in a
hundred years we are going to look back and say that the
weather today the temperatures were uniquely cool and the
weather patterns were uniquely benign.
And so, I will just make an observation that I think we
have a moral imperative to think about the future that we are
creating for our children, grandchildren, and beyond.
I will also say that, you know, I know there is a lot of
talk about economics here but that we should be thinking about
the external costs, negative externalities of burning fossil
fuels.
That is something that we know is not factored into the
cost of oil. When we pay for gas at the gas pump, we are not
paying for the cost that these impose over time on our society,
and I think these costs are conservatively estimated in the
tens of trillions of dollars to our society.
But I want to take this back to the question of oversight
because last May Donald Trump famously held a meeting with oil
executives that was organized by the person that then became
the Secretary of Interior where he publicly stated that he
would slash regulations on the oil industry if they donated $1
billion to his campaign.
At the time, my kids were asking me, is this not a bribe?
It looks like a bribe when somebody running for office promises
to do something in exchange for a contribution. I said it does
look like a bribe. I do not know how to describe this.
The oil industry, of course, responded with hundreds of
millions of dollars in donations both directly to Trump's
campaign as well as through different Super PACs and other
vehicles that were created by Citizens United and now, of
course, we have congressional Republicans pushing forward an
agenda to try to deregulate oil.
Now, I have had thousands of constituents call my office to
say we need to stop this. This is bribery. This is House
Republicans pushing pay to play policies.
I have a question to you and I guess I will direct this to
Dr--I am sorry, I missed your name--Dr. Cleetus.
Ms. Cleetus. Dr. Cleetus. Thank you.
Mr. Min. What, how am I supposed to respond to my kids? How
am I supposed to respond to my constituents who say that this
is institutionalized bribery, that there is no oversight
happening right now of this carrying out of pay to play
policies?
Ms. Cleetus. You know, it is really disturbing to see the
Administration's appointees, many of whom are directly
connected to the fossil fuel industry or are climate science
deniers.
As you said, the science is nonpartisan. It is universally
accepted that human-caused climate change is being driven by
burning fossil fuels. As an economist, I can tell you it is
already having a significant impact on the U.S. economy.
You just need to look at the insurance crisis, the pending
crisis to real estate that is exposed to extreme weather and
climate-related events, the labor productivity impacts of
extreme heat waves. The economic fingerprints of climate change
are also clear.
So, in this context----
Mr. Min. And I know--just reclaiming my time--sorry to
interrupt, Doctor. I would just point out that there are lots
of jobs being created around the world right now and is it the
case that China and Germany and other countries are investing
heavily in clean energy right now?
Ms. Cleetus. They are.
Mr. Min. And do you see that as the future of, say, jobs
and innovation?
Ms. Cleetus. It absolutely is.
Mr. Min. So, we are moving away from that and this happens
to follow a promise made by then-candidate Trump to slash
regulations on oil in exchange for $1 billion and I just want
to make that point because a lot of folks out there are
questioning why we are doing this in the aftermath of Donald
Trump making that promise, and there is no oversight of that
promise.
There was none last year, there is none right now, of what
looks very blatantly like it is a criminal activity of
promising something in return for a campaign contribution,
which we all know is illegal.
If I did that I would rightly be charged. But there was no
oversight. There continues to be no oversight over that
particular exchange.
With that, I yield back.
Mr. Burlison. [Presiding.] Thank you.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Perry is recognized.
Mr. Perry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And I am not a scientist either and I do not even talk to a
lot of scientists, but I took science and so for Mr. Epstein,
is science consensus? Because I never was taught that. So, I am
just looking for what is science consensus?
Mr. Epstein. Actually, consensus has a value in science.
Ultimately, it is about who can prove the truth. But I know my
representative Dave Min is leaving right now but maybe he will
listen to this later.
I live in Laguna Beach. I am one of his constituents, too.
So, what you really need is you need science combined with
other fields.
So, to determine if we have a climate crisis you need to
know climate science, adaptation, economics, et cetera, and if
you look at the macro data, we are safer than ever from climate
disasters and the No. 1 climate related killer is cold.
So, we are not in a warming crisis, even though we are I
believe changing climate. Climate change does not equal climate
catastrophe and that is ultimately an issue of philosophy and
methodology, not an issue of science.
Mr. Perry. So, and is there proof? They always talk about
the proof. There is proof that the use of traditional fuels is
costing and they come up, he said trillions of dollars as a
conservative estimate. Is there any empirical data to support
that claim whatsoever?
Mr. Epstein. He said yes. I am going to ask my
representative for a meeting soon to tell him some stuff on,
share some facts about this. He said, conservatively it is tens
of trillions, I think, a year. OK. So, the global economy is
$100 trillion so we are just losing, like, a third of our
wealth.
So, what is actually happening is cheap energy is driving
incredible well being, increases in life expectancy,
resiliency, et cetera, et cetera, and the externalities point
the positive externalities far, far outweigh the negative
externalities, which is why every metric of human life is
getting better.
People who focus on negative externalities are what I call
fossil fuel benefit deniers. Happy to give Dr. Cleetus,
Representative Min, anyone else, a copy of my book ``Fossil
Future.''
Chapter four in particular explains the pseudoscience of
only looking at negative externalities. So, the positive
externalities are amazing. The overall impacts are amazingly
positive and will continue to be so.
Mr. Perry. So, this might get a little wonky, but if you
could make it simple for people like me and everybody else that
is not a scientist.
We are living in, I think, the second lowest atmospheric
carbon content in Earth's history. Not in man's history, but in
Earth's history. I think we are in the second lowest point of
atmospheric carbon in the Earth's history.
Can you discuss what the effects--first of all, is carbon
pollution or is it, like, plant food? Is carbon pollution and
how did the effects--I am from Pennsylvania and in Pennsylvania
we talk about a thing called RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas
Initiative.
Can you discuss the effects of how that initiative would--
what these effects would be on the energy market on prices and
availability of energy?
Mr. Epstein. Sure. So, when you are talking about a low
point of carbon it is all depending on your time scale because
if you took it year by year we were at a high point in CO2 in
the atmosphere for the last 150 years.
But if you look at a scale, like, 100 million years it is a
different kind of thing. So, in general, compared to the
Earth's history we are at a low point and we have had mammals
and our descendants and stuff like that exist at much higher
levels of CO2 and thrive.
My argument is we can thrive at almost any conceivable
level of CO2 that has existed. We can thrive at a wide variety
of temperatures. The only concern is just are you, is the rate
of change so much that you are just changing the infrastructure
too quickly.
Unfortunately, with sea levels, which would be the biggest
concern, they are currently rising at one foot a century and
extreme projections are three feet a century. So, we just do
not have any catastrophically disruptive rate of change.
So, this idea that change equals catastrophe is an anti-
human idea that denies our ability to adapt and master our
surroundings and also just treats anything we cause as bad
because we caused it.
Now, in terms of how this manifests in RGGI and other
policies, basically, RGGI is a dressed-up carbon tax, right? It
means you are forcing people to pay more money for electricity
in particular. That involves CO2.
So, what you do is you take the cheapest form of
electricity, which is not being out competed. You make it more
expensive that means energy is more expensive. That means
everything is more expensive. That means your region is less
able to compete.
And if I may, just I want to make one comment about the
jobs because that is the only thing I have not refuted yet. It
is a total trash argument that this is creating all these
miraculous jobs.
It is not creating any net new jobs. It is creating welfare
work. It is creating jobs that are uneconomic, uncompetitive.
To follow Milton Friedman, why do we not just pay a bunch of
people to scoop dirt with spoons out of the ground? That will
create jobs, too.
What we want is productive jobs and the way we get
productive jobs is we liberate the economy so that we get the
most productive jobs possible.
So, this does not create any new good jobs. It is creating
a bunch of welfare work and Congress should send a signal to
all the subsidy seekers that, hey, it is not safe to create
fake businesses based on subsidies.
We want real businesses. So, if we take the subsidies away
that is a great lesson to the American economy to not be
subsidy seekers and to be real value creators.
Mr. Perry. I yield the balance.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you. I now recognize Ranking Member
Frost for his closing remarks.
Mr. Frost. Thank you so much. Thank you for, thank you to
everyone for being here today.
Look, I think we have heard a lot of interesting opinions
throughout this hearing but what we know to be true is that we
are facing a devastating climate crisis. It is not
hypothetical.
It is also not something I have read about but it is
something I have experienced being in the state of Florida.
And, look, I think the topic of this hearing is important--
energy reliability and resilience--but I got to say that having
a Project 2025 author and then having a guy that I would say is
pretty much a conspiracy theorist calling climate change a hoax
and----
Mr. Epstein. I did not say that.
Mr. Frost [continuing]. False and pseudoscience. I did not
ask you a question.
Mr. Epstein. But you did tell a lie about me.
Mr. Frost. I did not ask you a question.
Calling climate change pseudoscience despite the scientific
consensus being that the climate crisis is real and we are
impacting it, I think, is not helpful for the topic of this
hearing.
And so, you know, I hope as we move forward we can have, I
definitely learned a lot from our other two witnesses. I do
think that there is room for bipartisanship on resiliency but,
unfortunately, I think a lot of this hearing was spent
listening to baseless opinions that are not based on scientific
fact or from any real experts on that.
And I do think that is important that as we look at the
actions of this Administration we hold in line, No. 1, the
promise that the President made to American families across the
country that our costs would come down we do not think that is
going to happen, and No. 2, the fact that we have already begun
marching toward this new green economy that is going to create
tons of good-paying jobs, that is going to help us protect our
planet, that is going to help spur business across the country,
especially a lot of small businesses in my district in Orlando,
and completely reversing that is a waste of taxpayer money.
I agree that there is ways that we can do this in a better
way but completely abandoning this for political purposes, I
think, is the wrong thing to do.
And to put the cherry on the top, the reason is to
completely continue to put more money into big polluters, and
as we know their profits are at an all-time high and our costs
are high.
And so, you know, my hope is as we continue here we can
really dig into bipartisan solutions and stay away from
conspiracy theories and climate denying.
Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Burlison. Thank you. I now recognize myself for closing
remarks.
I just want to say thank you very much for our expert
witnesses for coming today. I believe that we had a robust
debate on policy. I am glad that we stuck to the debate.
This hearing has helped identify tangible ways in which
Congress and the Trump Administration can promote strong,
reliable and inexpensive energy for the American people.
The previous Administration left the American people on the
edge of an energy cliff, and power shortfalls are a very real
possibility if we do not address the many issues impacting our
power generation and electric grid.
In 2023, the North American Electric Reliability
Corporation's annual risk assessment included energy policy as
one of the leading threats to electric reliability for the
first time ever.
The 2024 assessment found that many regions of the country
had a likelihood of experiencing resource adequacy shortfalls
in the coming years.
This is not something to take lightly and there are a
growing number of threats that need to be tackled quickly in
the coming years. Just yesterday Chile experienced a massive
power blackout due to a transmission line failure, leaving
millions of its citizens in the dark and disrupting critical
infrastructure and functions for daily life.
Events of this size and scale are alarming because they
remind us that this can happen anywhere. Grid operators have
sounded the alarms for years of what is to come and if we do
not address the challenges impacting both power generation and
our aging transmission infrastructure.
We already know what works and overreaching government must
get out of the way when it comes to energy policy and
regulations. For far too long red tape and permitting hurdles
have strangled the American energy sector and the
infrastructure that supports this industry.
The Trump Administration understands the importance of
letting the private sector lead and has already begun removing
some of the unnecessary barriers to unleash new investment.
Power demand is increasing. As the AI race and AI dominance
spawns new demand for data centers across the country the need
for cheap, reliable energy will only grow.
We can match that need and provide even more power
generation through reforming regulations for the power sector
including nuclear power, which is one of the cleanest forms of
power available.
Congress and the new Administration can take advantage of
the abundant resources our Nation possesses, utilizing reliable
fuel sources to keep the lights on while we develop new,
innovative solutions that we can rely on in the future.
And once again, I want to thank each and every one of our
witnesses for being here today, for their insights in important
issues.
And with that, without objection all Members will have five
legislative days within which to submit materials to this and
to submit additional written questions for the witnesses, which
will be forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
If there is no further business, without objection the
Subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:04 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]