    [Senate Hearing 119-47]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                             S. Hrg. 119-47

                        MACGREGOR AND DANLY NOMINATIONS

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

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                                  COMMITTEE ON
                          ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                       to

    CONSIDER THE NOMINATIONS OF KATHARINE MACGREGOR TO BE DEPUTY SECRETARY
        OF THE INTERIOR AND JAMES DANLY TO BE DEPUTY SECRETARY OF ENERGY

                                   __________

                                 APRIL 2, 2025

                                   __________

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                           Printed for the use of the
                   Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

            Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov

                                    __________

                       U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    60-023                      WASHINGTON : 2026

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                   COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

                            MIKE LEE, Utah, Chairman
    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming               MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
    JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho                RON WYDEN, Oregon
    STEVE DAINES, Montana                MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
    TOM COTTON, Arkansas                 MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
    DAVID McCORMICK, Pennsylvania        ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine
    JAMES C. JUSTICE, West Virginia      CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada
    BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana              JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado
    CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi        ALEX PADILLA, California
    LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska               RUBEN GALLEGO, Arizona
    JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota

                      Wendy Baig, Majority Staff Director
                Patrick J. McCormick III, Majority Chief Counsel
                     Jasmine Hunt, Minority Staff Director
                     Sam E. Fowler, Minority Chief Counsel

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                               OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                       Page
    Lee, Hon. Mike, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from Utah............     1
    Heinrich, Hon. Martin, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from
      New Mexico.....................................................     2

                                   WITNESSES

    MacGregor, Hon. Katharine, nominated to be Deputy Secretary of
      the Interior...................................................     3
    Danly, Hon. James, nominated to be Deputy Secretary of Energy....     8

              ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

    Consumer Energy Alliance:
        Letter for the Record........................................    89
    Danly, Hon. James:
        Opening Statement............................................     8
        Written Testimony............................................    10
        Responses to Questions for the Record........................    69
    Heinrich, Hon. Martin:
        Opening Statement............................................     2
    Lee, Hon. Mike:
        Opening Statement............................................     1
    Louisiana Alligator Farmers and Ranchers Association and
      Louisiana Landowners Association:
        Letter for the Record........................................    91
    MacGregor, Hon. Katharine:
        Opening Statement............................................     3
        Written Testimony............................................     6
        Responses to Questions for the Record........................    49
    Patkotak, Josiah:
        Letter for the Record........................................    92
    Public Lands Council:
        Letter for the Record........................................    94
    Wigglesworth, Alex:
        Article entitled ``Park Rangers Battle Australians Seeking
          Rare Earth Minerals in Old Mojave Gold Mine'' published in
          the Los Angeles Times, February 28, 2025...................    96

                        MACGREGOR AND DANLY NOMINATIONS

                                  ----------

                            WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2, 2025

                                           U.S. Senate,
                     Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m. in
    Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Mike Lee,
    Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

                  OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MIKE LEE,
                         U.S. SENATOR FROM UTAH

        The Chairman. The Committee will come to order.
        Welcome to the Committee's third nomination hearing for
    this Congress, and this is an important one. This is a hearing
    involving two people who will help run the two departments that
    this Committee oversees. We will receive testimony from these
    two distinguished nominees for the offices of these two Deputy
    Secretary appointments, the Department of the Interior and the
    Department of Energy.
        Each of these nominees has previously been confirmed by the
    Senate after having been reported favorably out of this
    Committee. Each served honorably in their respective offices.
    The two individuals are, therefore, no strangers to this
    Committee--Katharine MacGregor, nominated to be the Deputy
    Secretary of the Department of the Interior, and James Danly,
    nominated to be Deputy Secretary of Energy. Both nominees
    deserve to be confirmed, and each has my strong support. I
    thank President Trump for sending these nominees to the Senate
    for confirmation. In both the Department of the Interior and
    the Department of Energy, the Deputy Secretary functions as
    sort of the chief operating officer, responsible for a lot of
    the day-to-day management and function of each of these
    departments, departments that involve a complex, sprawling
    series of agencies that directly affect the lives of 330
    million Americans.
        At Interior, the Deputy Secretary helps oversee nearly
    70,000 employees, a $14 billion budget, and it manages 500
    million acres--a staggering one-fifth of our nation's land, and
    it is roughly two-thirds of the sprawling 28 percent of the
    total landmass owned by the U.S. Government throughout our
    country. So this role requires supervising the development of
    all sorts of things and managing this entity. It involves being
    the largest supplier and manager of water in 17 states, of
    upholding trust responsibilities to 574 federally recognized
    American Indian tribes and Alaska Natives. Ms. MacGregor has
    done this work before, and she has done well in this position.
    In her previous tenure as Deputy Secretary, she oversaw efforts
    to ensure responsible domestic energy and mineral development
    on public lands and waters, reduced permitting time frames, and
    implemented the Department's COVID-19 operational response. She
    brings a wealth of private sector and public sector experience,
    including her most recent role at NextEra Energy, giving her a
    broad perspective on energy development, environmental
    protection, and regulatory reform.
        At the Department of Energy, the Deputy Secretary plays a
    similarly critical role. That Department is tasked with
    maintaining a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent,
    reducing the threat of nuclear proliferation, overseeing the
    United States energy supply, carrying out the environmental
    cleanup from the Cold War nuclear mission, and managing 17
    national laboratories. The Department literally keeps the
    lights on. We have seen Mr. Danly's work at the Federal Energy
    Regulatory Commission, both as General Counsel and later as
    Chairman and as a Commissioner, of course. We have read his
    dissents, his statements, and his warnings, particularly about
    the dangers of distorting markets and overreliance on
    intermittent sources of electric power. His legal and
    regulatory record demonstrates a consistent commitment to
    statutory interpretation grounded in the text of the law and a
    deep understanding of the grid's physical and economic
    realities. Beyond his professional credentials, Mr. Danly
    brings a record of service and sacrifice. As a former Army
    officer, he served two tours in Iraq and was awarded the Bronze
    Star and the Purple Heart.
        I look forward to hearing from both nominees today. Their
    roles are vital, their responsibilities immense, and the
    decisions that they make in these jobs will reverberate
    throughout the American West, and of course, the nation at
    large.
        With that, I now recognize Senator Heinrich for his opening
    statement.

              OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN HEINRICH,
                      U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO

        Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman, and welcome Ms.
    MacGregor and Mr. Danly.
        Before we get to Committee business, I do want to address
    the troubling reports that DOE is considering canceling or
    renegotiating existing funding contracts with companies, some
    of which are already under construction. As I wrote to
    Secretary Wright in a letter a week ago, I will remind Mr.
    Danly and Ms. MacGregor today, the decision to rescind these
    awards rests with Congress, not with the President and
    certainly not with the Elon Musk. However, even before these
    so-called kill lists were leaked, we already started seeing the
    economic impact of the Administration's reckless actions. It is
    estimated that more than 50,000 energy jobs have already been
    lost under Trump's watch. The Administration's actions are also
    constricting the fastest growing and most affordable power
    sources, just as demand from manufacturing and data center
    growth is surging. This means that energy costs will soar.
    Electricity prices are already on track to be the highest they
    have been since the 1990s, and terminating projects in the name
    of energy dominance is not only ludicrous, it will lead to
    higher energy costs directly for households. All of this is
    only the newest phase in the Administration's campaign of chaos
    in federal agencies and actions that are raising energy costs.
        Both the Interior and Energy Departments have been subject
    to whiplash in just the last two months. From illegally firing
    thousands of employees, only to be required by courts to rehire
    them, to announcements that agency buildings would be closed or
    sold, or maybe not, to freezing grant funds and canceling
    contracts in contravention of federal law only to see some
    unfrozen while others still remain inexplicably frozen. This
    has got to be about the least efficient way to run a
    government. For the Department of the Interior, all of this
    mismanagement has real on-the-ground impacts for people and
    communities. We have seen closed visitor centers and
    overflowing trash cans at parks, field offices that have
    shorter hours, and it is harder for people to reach front-line
    staff when they have questions. Small businesses are worried if
    their permits will get processed. Scientists are struggling to
    cover expenses because the Federal Government has backed out of
    contracts with them. Our public lands are the birthright of
    every single American; however, if something doesn't change,
    and soon, at the agencies that care for these public lands, we
    could lose that birthright.
        I have a number of questions today for both of these
    nominees for the Energy and the Interior Departments. Both
    Departments were created by statute. They were not created by
    the whim of the President. They do not exist at the President's
    pleasure. The laws they execute, the programs they administer,
    the funds they spend, were enacted, created, and appropriated
    by law by Congress. I will be looking for assurances from both
    nominees that they are committed to following the law. And I
    hope to hear how they will get these Departments returned back
    to a path of public service, back on track securing American
    leadership and competitiveness, and the responsible stewardship
    of our natural resources.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        The Chairman. Okay, let's now turn to our witnesses for
    their testimonies. Before your opening testimony, I would like
    to swear you both in. If you would both stand.
        Do you swear that the testimony that you are about to give
    to the Committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and
    nothing but the truth?
        [Witnesses sworn in]
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        All right, we will now have opening statements. We will
    hear first from Ms. MacGregor and then from Mr. Danly. And
    while you are speaking feel free to introduce any family that
    you have here with you.
        You may proceed, Ms. MacGregor.

     STATEMENT OF HON. KATHARINE MACGREGOR, NOMINATED TO BE DEPUTY
                       SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

        Ms. MacGregor. Thank you, Chairman Lee, Ranking Member
    Heinrich, and members of the Committee. I thought I had escaped
    DC, but as you all know, sometimes life presents you with
    different paths, and I am both honored and humbled that
    President Trump has once again nominated me for the position of
    Deputy Secretary of the Department of the Interior.
        As a true hockey family, we have packed the proverbial
    stands this morning, and I am blessed to be joined by my family
    and friends, including representatives of the 2004 University
    of Pennsylvania varsity women's crew team, members of the best
    women's hunting group this side of the Mississippi, my best
    Alaskan fishing and baking buddy, my favorite astronaut, and
    several individuals who have been amazing mentors to me in my
    professional career. Finally, and most importantly, I am joined
    by my parents, Jean and Peter MacGregor, my aunt and uncle,
    Sheila and Dick Sanford, and my brother Robert and his wife
    Michele. The three of us are the MacGregor hockey line on the
    Congressional hockey team.
        When I testified here over five years ago, I explained my
    focus to achieve balance in managing America's public lands,
    cultural treasures, and natural resources in order to advance
    the priorities of our President. I understand the deep personal
    connections that so many people have to the lands and resources
    managed by Interior. But in my work in Congress and at
    Interior, I also learned firsthand how the decisions we make in
    Washington impact American families and businesses far away
    from DC, sometimes for generations. I remember Senator King
    telling me a story about traveling with his grandchildren in an
    RV to visit some of our nation's parks, and it makes me smile
    because I absolutely remember picnics with my grandparents and
    cousins at Valley Forge National Park in Pennsylvania. These
    are the happy memories that make us smile even long after our
    loved ones have passed.
        But I also remember the tough stories of resource
    management plan delays impeding economic development in rural
    America or a woman denied justice simply because law
    enforcement could not reach her due to weather, and of course
    there was no road. For the last four years, I have been one of
    those people watching DC from afar, all while falling in love
    with Florida. From the dangerous beauty of the Everglades and
    the invasive species issues we face, the importance of being
    prepared for natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires,
    the incredible abundance of our offshore waters, the thrilling
    call of an Osceola turkey as you watch the world wake up from
    inside a hunting blind, or even just the stunning red-orange
    glow of Jupiter Lighthouse at sunset, which is managed by the
    BLM. But more importantly, in my time in the private sector, I
    have learned a lot. I have worked on environmental permitting
    and compliance for almost every type of energy infrastructure
    project around our great nation and have grown to appreciate
    the far-reaching consequences of decisions made in Washington,
    the durability of those decisions, and the timeliness of agency
    action.
        As we all know, if there is a federal nexus, there is a
    federal official somewhere saying yes or no, or in the worst
    case, just not responding. What I have concluded from outside
    of DC is that the American people, your constituents, deserve
    better. I cannot imagine any instance where it's just and right
    that someone wait over 30 years for the authority to build a
    road to connect their community to better services, over 20
    years for a habitat conservation plan, 15 years for a final
    resource management plan, or over a decade for a pastor in
    rural Arkansas to be able to continue to bury his deceased
    parishioners in their 100-year-old churchyard only because the
    land appraisal for a Congressionally authorized land exchange
    sat on someone's desk. It is simply unacceptable, and frankly,
    it breaks my heart. This is why so many rural Americans feel
    like their government has forgotten them.
        Don't get me wrong, I have heard really great stories too.
    I was so proud to learn that several of the cold case offices
    that we established under President Trump's initiative to
    address Missing and Murdered Native American and Alaska Native
    women and children had solved several cases after many years.
    Many of you on the dais helped us with this initiative. Sadly,
    these little victories seem too infrequent. We need to turn
    that around. Roads not built, cases left unsolved, appraisal
    backlogs, and obstacles to public hunting and fishing, these
    are the reasons I would like to return to Interior. I would
    like to come back to drive change and efficiency. And in doing
    so, I hope we can once again make a difference for the people
    who rely upon us to show up and do our jobs. I am honored to
    have met with many of you and learn about the many missions at
    Interior that are important to you, personally, and to your
    constituents. If confirmed, I will always keep the needs of the
    American people at the forefront of my mind. After all, it is
    they who are ultimately watching us here in DC and they are
    hoping for us to work together, consider their needs, and
    frankly, get things done in Washington.
        Thank you again for having me here today. I would be more
    than happy to take any questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. MacGregor follows:]
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

        Senator Cotton [presiding]. Thank you, Ms. MacGregor.
        Mr. Danly.

    STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES DANLY, NOMINATED TO BE DEPUTY SECRETARY
                               OF ENERGY

        Mr. Danly. Thank you, Chairman Lee, Ranking Member
    Heinrich, and members of the Committee. It is an honor to
    appear before you again today. I sit before you, humbly, as
    President Trump's nominee for Deputy Secretary of the
    Department of Energy.
        Before I get to my comments, I just want to recognize my
    family and friends. Behind me sits my wife, Frankie. The last
    time I appeared before the Committee, just like this time, my
    son, James, who is an active, talkative, rambunctious 10-year-
    old, is not in attendance, but he is watching the hearing, I am
    told, as it is happening. For both Frankie and James, I want to
    recognize the sacrifices that families of the people who serve
    in public service make. Those sacrifices are profound. So thank
    you both, Frankie and James, for your support and indulgence
    over the years that I have been in government and when I was in
    the Army, especially when I was in Iraq. I also have friends
    here, including colleagues from throughout my career, among
    them the lawyers who first taught me energy law, and my
    advisors from my time at the Commission.
        As the Committee is aware, the Department of Energy
    performs a number of critical functions. The national labs
    ensure that the United States is and remains at the cutting
    edge of science and technology. The Department is responsible
    for auditing and overseeing the weapons stockpile, it manages
    environmental cleanup at legacy waste sites, and it promotes
    the development and deployment of energy sources and
    infrastructure. I believe that my prior roles as general
    counsel, commissioner, and chairman at the Federal Energy
    Regulatory Commission give me a unique and important vantage
    point on how to achieve the President and the Secretary's
    shared vision of ensuring affordable, reliable, and secure
    energy for the American people.
        The utility and natural gas sectors, the subjects I
    regulated while at FERC, are a critical component to achieving
    those goals. Right now, we face profound challenges. Demand for
    energy is growing and we cannot face the difficulty in
    producing and delivering it to Americans to ensure the
    country's safety and prosperity without tackling a number of
    very difficult problems. There are also great opportunities.
    America is blessed with the most abundant energy in the world,
    we have the best technical minds to harness that potential, and
    we have a private sector that stands ready to invest capital,
    build infrastructure, and produce the energy that we
    desperately need. We stand on the brink of an energy
    renaissance in which we can replace growing energy scarcity--at
    home and abroad--with energy abundance for the United States
    and its allies, improving the lives of our citizens while
    ensuring our geostrategic position.
        There are a couple of subjects that I would just like to
    touch on before I finish.
        First, our energy problems and scarcity are driven, in
    large measure, by failure to develop needed infrastructure.
    America struggles to build things these days. We have an acute
    need to build all manner of infrastructure across the country,
    but the federal permitting regime has become an impediment to
    that development. Interminable delays, legal challenges that
    threaten the permits that are already issued, and a
    continuously changing regulatory landscape have come to chill
    investment. And the result of that is that projects take longer
    to build and are increasingly expensive, or worse than that,
    they never get built in the first place. It will be difficult
    to achieve our goals of ensuring affordable, reliable, and
    secure energy to the American people without tackling the
    problem of federal permitting.
        Second, and relatedly, we have an acute need for electric
    generation. The United States is experiencing unprecedented
    demand for electricity. And that demand is increasing at an
    accelerating rate. Data centers, AI, and reindustrialization
    have brought load onto the system at a speed that we have never
    been seen before. Maintaining our strategic position in the
    world absolutely requires that Americans have access to
    affordable, reliable, and secure energy in abundance. I have
    spent the better part of a decade directly regulating the
    energy markets and the reliability of the bulk electric system.
    I can report that we have systematically failed to compensate
    baseload generation in order to ensure the retention of
    existing assets and to incentivize the arrival of the new
    generators that we need to meet the growing demand. This
    challenge has to be solved.
        Third and finally, we need to recommit ourselves to
    America's preeminence as the world's leader in science and
    technology. The national labs, which are the crown jewel of the
    Department, have been the source of countless advances over the
    years, both in pure and applied science. These advances and
    discoveries have driven commercial development, spawned new
    industries, and ensured American prosperity. Recently, the
    national labs have made advances in quantum computing, nuclear
    reactors, and fundamental scientific research that promise a
    new era of science and engineering. We have to recommit to that
    mission to ensure that America continues to maintain its
    scientific and technological edge that the citizens of the
    United States have relied upon for so many decades.
        Again, Chairman Lee, Ranking Member Heinrich, and members
    of the Committee, I appreciate the opportunity to appear before
    you, and I look forward to your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Danly follows:]
        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0023.003

        [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T0023.004

        Senator Cotton. Thank you, Mr. Danly.
        I agree with all of what you said in your opening statement
    on the topics that most Americans will think about when they
    think about the Department of Energy--things like
    infrastructure and permitting reform and electricity power
    generation. I want to focus, though, on the last thing you
    mentioned there, the national labs, which overlaps with my work
    as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee. I think a lot of
    Americans probably don't appreciate that the Department of
    Energy is in charge of all these national labs that do
    exquisite research and do nuclear energy or quantum computing,
    artificial intelligence, and other things. I think they'd be
    shocked to know that last year 40,000 foreigners visited these
    national labs, and fully one-fifth of those--8,000--were from
    Russia and China. It doesn't seem to me like the smartest step
    to be letting Russian and Chinese scientists into our national
    labs.
        What do you think, Mr. Danly?
        Mr. Danly. Of course, Senator, I completely agree with
    that. And when you say that we are visited, we don't just mean
    passing through, we mean actually conducting science in close
    proximity to the scientists that are already working at the
    labs. The national labs are fundamental, not just to the
    research and science I mentioned a second ago, but they also
    have national security missions. And when I first learned about
    the number of adversarial nations' scientists that are at the
    national labs, I was so surprised by it that I thought at first
    I didn't hear correctly. It was shocking, the number. And it's
    not just a matter of losing the scientific and technical edge I
    talked about, it's also a matter of grave national security
    interests that has to be looked at and, if necessary, dealt
    with.
        Senator Cotton. I think most Americans would be shocked to
    know that one of every five foreign scientists visiting our
    national labs were from China and Russia. And also, though not
    in as large numbers, they come from places like Iran and Cuba
    and North Korea as well. Do you know how many American
    scientists get to go to Russia and China's equivalent of
    national labs?
        Mr. Danly. None.
        Senator Cotton. The answer would be zero. That does not
    seem to me to be reciprocal, to use a term that the President
    likes. That's why, on the Intelligence Committee, for years, it
    has been a matter of bipartisan concern that our national labs
    seem to allow these scientists, and they almost seem to compete
    to bring them in, because the decisions are made at the lab
    level, not at the level of what you might call the headquarters
    element of the Department of Energy, drawing on your own
    intelligence unit and the intelligence community more broadly.
    I have legislation to address this problem. I bet a lot of the
    problem, though, can be addressed by you and the Secretary.
        So can I get your commitment, Mr. Danly, that you will take
    a look at the legislation, you will see what needs to be done
    to address this threat, and do as much as you can with your
    existing authorities, once confirmed?
        Mr. Danly. Absolutely. If I should be lucky enough to be
    confirmed, I will work with you to deal with this problem.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you.
        The second topic I want to address, again, something that a
    lot of Americans probably don't think about when they think
    about the Department of Energy, is the National Nuclear
    Security Administration (NNSA), but it's about half of the
    Department's budget. They do a lot of very important work for
    our nuclear weapons arsenal, a lot of research, a lot of
    production. One thing in particular that they do is the
    production of plutonium pits for nuclear weapons. We have had a
    challenge with this for years. We were supposed to get to the
    point where we produce 80 new plutonium pits by 2030. Under the
    Biden Administration, that slipped to 2035. Can I get your
    commitment that you will advocate for NNSA to get all the
    budgetary resources it needs to perform its vital mission?
        Mr. Danly. The NNSA is one of the fundamental elements of
    American national security. The weapons stockpile is the
    ultimate instrumentality of sovereignty for the United States.
    And I commit to doing everything I can to ensure, should I be
    confirmed, that NNSA's mission is discharged fully.
        Senator Cotton. And specifically, trying to get back to 80
    pits--what they need to do in New Mexico and South Carolina
    facilities?
        Mr. Danly. So I am not certain, because I am not at the
    Department of Energy, what the necessity is regarding the rate
    or level of pit production, but it is fundamental to our
    weapons stockpile, and I absolutely commit to doing everything
    I can to ensure that the duties are discharged.
        Senator Cotton. Okay, thank you.
        Senator Heinrich.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you.
        Ms. MacGregor, I want to start with you. During your time,
    both on the transition team or since you've been nominated to
    be Deputy Secretary, have you engaged in any discussions about
    proposed sales of public land with either Department of
    Interior or transition team personnel?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, while I did gladly serve on the
    transition team as a volunteer, in my personal capacity, I did
    sign an NDA related to that work. However, I can tell you,
    currently, and in my current position, no, I did not engage in
    conversations regarding sales of public lands.
        Senator Heinrich. If confirmed, can you commit that any
    public land disposals will fully comply with existing federal
    laws, like the Federal Land Policy Management Act and the
    Federal Land Transaction Facilitation Act?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, absolutely. I fully intend, if
    confirmed, to obey the law.
        Senator Heinrich. That brings me to a related question,
    which is, the Department is currently failing to disburse grant
    funding that a federal judge has ruled must be disbursed. If
    you are confirmed, will you work to ensure that the Department
    follows federal court orders?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I am not familiar with that particular
    case. However, I know in our discussions in your office, we got
    into several of those subjects, and I know they are very
    important to you. And absolutely, I will commit to working with
    you on that.
        Senator Heinrich. The Great American Outdoors Act is a very
    positive example of how this Committee, and Congress as a
    whole, worked in a very bipartisan fashion, with President
    Trump and with previous Secretaries of Interior, to provide
    permanent funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund, and
    that has had an impressive impact on states across the West,
    particularly in protecting and expanding hunting and fishing
    access--something I know that you are very passionate about--
    and wildlife habitat.
        Can we count on you to continue to carry out this law and
    support this conservation legacy that this Committee and
    President Trump established in 2020?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I am overjoyed for you to highlight one
    of the issues that you worked with President Trump on, and
    absolutely, we would love to work with you on further
    implementation of that Act.
        Senator Heinrich. Mr. Danly, I want to start with an easy
    one for you. How do you feel about visiting Sandia and Los
    Alamos National Labs?
        Mr. Danly. As we talked about in your office, sir, I cannot
    wait for the opportunity. I love the national labs.
        Senator Heinrich. That's the right answer.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Heinrich. You mentioned permitting reform, and I
    was really glad to hear you bring that up, because I think it
    was one of the high-water marks on this Committee in the
    previous Congress, but it's not something that we have gotten
    all the way to the President's desk. It is not something that
    we have been able to get through both houses of Congress in the
    same Congress. What are your thoughts on the product that this
    Committee produced in the previous Congress and the
    importance--I would say even necessity--of coming together
    around a permitting reform package to accomplish some of the
    goals that you articulated.
        Mr. Danly. So Senator, I truly appreciate the effort that
    the Committee went through before in trying to streamline and
    speed up permitting. Just the briefest glance at my separate
    statements at the Commission shows how important this is
    throughout the time that I was at FERC. I don't actually know
    the specific bills, because there were a bunch of different
    ones that were moving around, and we who are not in Congress
    have difficulty tracking everything that is happening. But
    there were elements of several of the iterations that I thought
    were very promising. And just as I have always said before to
    the Committee, any help anybody wants with thoughts from me on
    permitting reform, I am happy to assist.
        Senator Heinrich. I have to pick and choose here because I
    am running short on time.
        Ms. MacGregor, while you were at the Department of the
    Interior, the number of forest acres treated for wildfire
    resilience by the BLM saw some modest increases. However, from
    2021 to 2023, the BLM treated nearly 50 percent more acres for
    wildfire, and that wasn't by accident. It was because this
    Committee funded them. In particular, in both the Bipartisan
    Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act, it created
    funding streams to be able to deal with forest resilience and
    prepare to make sure that wildfires are not catastrophic when
    they do occur.
        Can you commit to continuing to implement the
    Infrastructure bill and the IRA programs that are focused
    strictly on wildfire risk reduction?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I was alluding to that conversation
    earlier, but I absolutely can commit to working with you on
    everything related to forest management. I know it's extremely
    important to so many on this Committee. It is really important
    to a lot of humans living in the wildland fire interface, and
    it was absolutely a priority of President Trump the last time.
        Senator Heinrich. Thank you.
        Senator Cotton. Senator Justice.
        Senator Justice. Thank you.
        Well, let me lead off by just saying this, you know,
    whether it be any of you, any on the other side of the aisle,
    anybody on our side--anybody--there is nobody here that loves
    hunting and fishing, our public lands all across this
    unbelievable country, you know, there is no one here that
    worships wildlife habitat more than I. Nobody. And with all
    that being said, I have got to just put out a plea more than
    anything. I want all of us to realize the magnitude of the
    problem that is right on our doorstep. That's all there is to
    it, right on our doorstep. You know, as far as forestry
    management, I am all in--100 percent. On and on and on and on
    and on, but the problem that is facing us today, and we better
    listen to this white-haired guy from West Virginia, and it's
    just this: we have an energy problem that is astronomical and
    it's going to be so, so important, and so big, that we best
    better get at trying to do something with all that is in us to
    address this situation because it's coming not like a freight
    train, it's coming, like Mr. Danly said to me on the phone,
    it's coming like bigger than absolutely the demand of World War
    II, bigger than any time in our history.
        And absolutely, Ms. MacGregor and Mr. Danly, we appreciate
    so much, and you are going to do great. You are absolutely
    going to be confirmed. Absolutely, I am all in. But with that,
    I would say to everyone, okay, it's time to step up. What are
    we going to do? What are we going to do? A year and a half from
    today, our grid and the demand--we cannot handle it. We can't
    handle it. I don't care what you say, you are going to have an
    electricity meltdown in this country, and it's coming, and you
    are going to have to make a decision. America, you are going to
    have to make this decision and this is all there is to it.
        We are either going to stick and say, well, we are going to
    protect our homes or we are going to protect energy and our job
    opportunities. What are you going to do? Because you can't do
    them both. There is no way. There is no way. Whether it be that
    side of the aisle, this side of the aisle, any of you all,
    these nominees absolutely, if we don't do something now, right
    now. You talk about up--Creek, now you're there. You're there,
    America. And absolutely, if you don't watch out, what will
    happen is just this--we will have to defer to people of the
    world that are not our allies, but they are our adversaries. We
    are going to have to say, okay, you have the leg up. You have
    the leg up, not America. That's what is going to happen, and
    it's going to happen soon. So all of us, you know, our national
    labs, we are protecting with all in us. We do everything we
    possibly can, but we have got to get at the absolute issue at
    hand, and that is just this, we absolutely, there is no way
    that if we don't get moving, and get moving really quickly,
    that we are not going to have a colossal problem.
        And the last thing I would add is just this: you know, I am
    from little old West Virginia, but little old West Virginia,
    along the way, has gotten it right on energy over and over and
    over. And little old West Virginia, along the way, stepped up
    when we had to have them really step up--really, really step
    up. You know, whether it be these terrible world wars that we
    had or whatever it may be. We have always stepped up, and we do
    know a lot about what we are talking about, about energy.
        So I congratulate both of you. I really don't have a
    question for either one of you. Absolutely, I know your
    testimony is rock solid. I have talked with both of you. I
    absolutely believe in both of you and I just congratulate you
    on being here. And I would say, for God's sakes-a-livin', let's
    go. Let's go. We have got to do something. Let's go.
        Thank you all for being here.
        Senator Cotton. Thank you, Senator Justice, I also agree
    you should always listen to white-haired men from West
    Virginia, especially this white-haired man from West Virginia,
    because I could have given your same remarks, just not as
    eloquently as you did.
        Senator Wyden.
        Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
        I have questions for both of you. I am going to begin with
    you, Mr. Danly. I believe you know that I am the author of the
    technology-neutral clean energy tax credits, and they have
    worked out so well in the private sector, that 21 House
    Republicans are making it very clear they want them to stick
    around. They have said it very explicitly. Now, your role in
    this--people don't much know this--is pretty important here
    because you guys have the science and Treasury has got the
    taxes. So we have got to get you guys in sync, and that is why
    I need to start with asking you, for the record, do you believe
    that the IRA tax credits have brought more private-sector
    investment into the energy space?
        Mr. Danly. Thank you for the question, Senator.
        And of course, you and I spoke about this when I visited
    you in your office. Do I believe that it brought more
    investment? I can't be certain about that----
        Senator Wyden. The reason I am asking is, 21 House
    Republicans think that it sure as hell has.
        Mr. Danly. I understand that, but it is impossible to run
    the counterfactual to know what investment would have occurred
    had those tax credits not been there. Certainly, the tax
    credits had an effect on the capital markets. They always do.
    Every tax regime has a tendency to bias us or favor one use of
    capital over another, as we discussed.
        Senator Wyden. Now, as a kind of economic proposition, more
    choices, like the Clean Energy Tax Credits, mean more
    competition and the opportunity to hold down costs and prices.
    Do you share that view?
        Mr. Danly. The details of any particular incentive regime
    matter to that answer, and I am not certain----
        Senator Wyden. But the economic theory.
        Mr. Danly. No, no, but if we were to take that to its
    logical extension, that would mean a 100 percent taxation rate
    and a 100 percent incentive rate would yield the best possible
    outcome, and of course, that's not true. So actually getting
    the levels of incentive right to achieve the objective that
    Congress has, which, of course, is Congress's authority, that
    is an Article I function. I don't quibble with any of that. I
    just don't know what the counterfactual would be for
    investment.
        Senator Wyden. What I am going to do is, I am going to hold
    the record open to give you some examples where it's clear that
    can help lower prices. More choices, more competition. We'll go
    back and forth on examples because I think I've got more of
    them than you do.
        Thank you.
        Mr. Danly. Thank you.
        Senator Wyden. Let me go to you, Ms. MacGregor. I
    appreciated our visit. I didn't get a chance to talk about one
    forestry issue that I feel very strongly about, and that is
    doing more prescribed burns, because we have to get out there
    and get serious about this granular material and all the stuff
    that we hear from the experts. Senator Manchin and a group of
    us, on a bipartisan basis, worked on this. We made a start, but
    I am of the view that we have to dramatically increase the
    focus of the Federal Government.
        And you'd be in a position to do something about it. We
    need to increase this because, in our part of the world, if we
    don't get out there in the cold weather months, which is one of
    the reasons these cutbacks have been so harmful--we do our best
    prescribed burn work when it's cold. And you can get in there,
    and you can get both sides--labor and business and
    environmentalists--and you can really make big strides. But
    now, we have reduced the number of people we got, and that hurt
    us when we have had some cold weather, when we could have been
    out there, and we have got you here who can tell us that yes, I
    want everybody to know on a bipartisan basis, I am serious
    about prescribed burns making a bigger difference in terms of
    fighting these infernos that we have today. And in our part of
    the world, they are not fires. They are not your grandfather's
    fires. They are infernos. And we need this prescribed burn.
        Your thoughts?
        Ms. MacGregor. First, Senator, I just wanted to thank you
    for spending time with me. I loved our conversation and I also
    enjoyed your thoughts on grazing as well and how that can be
    used as a management tool. And I know that that is something
    that has been important on this Committee. How about you and I
    go out with a drip torch and get to work?
        Senator Wyden. I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Wyden. I thank my colleagues, and there is
    tremendous interest on a bipartisan basis in this prescribed
    burn issue. The question is the urgency of it. Everybody's got
    their laundry list. In our part of the world, we are 3,000
    miles from Washington, DC. We want people to be actually
    hearing us, and it sounds like you are open to further
    discussions. I appreciate it.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you very much. And I
    appreciate your patience with me. I have multiple committee
    assignments that are pulling me in three different directions.
    I may have to leave later for another committee hearing, but
    bear with us on that.
        Ms. MacGregor, I would like to start with you.
        The nationwide housing shortage is something that some
    states are experiencing more than others. We experience it to a
    particularly acute degree in the West, and in my home State of
    Utah, where the Federal Government owns two-thirds of the land.
    And that severely restricts the housing supply. Now, there is a
    law in the books, the Recreation and Public Purposes Act, that
    authorizes the Department of the Interior to lease or convey
    federal land for public purposes. Under the law, a public
    purpose is defined as ``for the purpose of providing facilities
    or services for the benefit of the public in connection with,
    but not limited to, public health, safety, or welfare.''
        In your view, could housing be considered a public purpose
    for purposes of Recreation and Public Purposes Act?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I think it could.
        The Chairman. And in the event that it couldn't,
    recognizing that some might see it differently, or to address
    any ambiguity, I have introduced legislation called the HOUSES
    Act, which follows the template of the Recreation and Public
    Purposes Act to independently allow for that.
        Now, I was pleased to see recently that there was this
    announced partnership between the Department of Housing and
    Urban Development and the Department of the Interior to address
    housing affordability in the West. Any idea what actions the
    Department of the Interior could take to help tackle the
    housing crisis?
        Ms. MacGregor. Well, sir, I first want to say that we would
    love to work with you on that endeavor, and I know that for
    technical assistance, we offer it to every member of the
    Committee when it comes to drafting legislative ideas that are
    creative. And I know housing has been a big issue, not just in
    the West, but throughout our country. And I recall, you know,
    working on this in the first Trump Administration with
    particular attention to Park Service employees because housing
    for Park Service employees tends to be one of the greatest
    obstacles to get that workforce out into these very rural, or
    sometimes difficult, or maybe more expensive areas so that we
    can have the workforce we need to keep our parks open.
        But when it comes to some of the opportunities there, I
    think, you know, the R&PP Act has some issues with it. For
    instance, the reversionary clauses can be difficult and tie up
    potential home ownership with the full transference of land. I
    think when people think about owning a home, they believe it
    belongs to them and that the land is theirs, not that it could
    pulled back by the Federal Government or by a township based
    upon not fulfilling the needs of the Act and its original
    statutory form.
        The Chairman. Right.
        Ms. MacGregor. So I think working on that, working on
    environmental reviews and efficiency will actually help make
    better use of that Act.
        The Chairman. Yes, no, I think that is right and it's one
    of the reasons why in the HOUSES Act we deal with that by
    leaving a short reversionary interest for a period of 15 years
    just to make sure that it remains in use as single family
    housing during that duration. Once that 15-year period has
    elapsed, the reversionary interest goes away.
        Mr. Danly, let's turn to you for a moment. President Trump
    seeks to attack and limit the waste, fraud, and abuse occurring
    within the U.S. Government, in the government spending, you
    know, $7.2, $7.3 trillion a year, the crumbs that fall from
    that table are going to be pretty large, and it leaves room for
    people to make mistakes along the way. But some of those
    mistakes end up being very big and very costly. Recently, a
    number of projects, grants, and contracts that were mandated by
    law, such as the laws like the Infrastructure Investment in
    Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, have been exposed as
    problematic in one way or another--unnecessary, duplicative, or
    otherwise an issue. For example, the Department of Energy
    recently canceled a $247 million contract for appliance
    standards.
        If confirmed, how will you commit to working with Congress
    to make sure that DOE is not frivolously spending taxpayer
    dollars or spending taxpayer dollars on unnecessary,
    duplicative, or wasteful projects?
        Mr. Danly. Thank you, Senator Lee.
        Every government agency head and all of their subordinate
    officers are required to stop waste, fraud, and abuse wherever
    it is found. Every contract that the government signs and every
    set of funds that the government commits has to be done in
    accordance with the law and in accordance to the preconditions
    established by the agency's regulations, and the terms of the
    contract have to be honored. This is everything from the basic
    predicate requirements for the contract to the milestones and
    conditions. President Trump has outlined a very bold vision for
    reducing waste in Federal Government spending, and I am
    absolutely dedicated to the same purpose. It is the only way to
    properly steward the taxpayers' money, and government should
    constantly be on the lookout for ways to find greater
    efficiencies.
        The Chairman. And strictly speaking, outside the context of
    its own branch, neither the legislative branch nor the judicial
    branch is typically a contracting agency. In other words,
    contracts may be entered into within the legislative branch for
    the legislative branch, or within the judicial branch, likewise
    for the judiciary. But typically, for the government,
    generally, contract decisions overseeing the performance of a
    contract, entering into the contract, signing the contract,
    even in some circumstances, anticipatorily repudiating a
    contract for reasons deemed necessary and appropriate by the
    executive--those are executive decisions, not legislative or
    judicial ones, typically. Is that right?
        Mr. Danly. Of course it is. And not only does every branch
    have their own obligations, the executive branch spending--I
    don't know what the percentage is--but 99.99 percent of the
    money in contracts from the government has, obviously, a much
    weightier duty to ensure that those dollars are spent properly
    and, you know, there are efficiencies, not just in the way that
    government conducts its business through contracting, but in
    the ways that the contracts are awarded and in the types of
    solicitations that the government undertakes. It is a
    fundamental problem, and there is a huge amount of money that
    is spent that doesn't need to be.
        The Chairman. Thank you.
        Senator King, you are up next.
        Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Ms. MacGregor, one of my principal concerns as the Ranking
    Member--we call ourselves Co-Chairs--with Steve Daines on the
    National Parks Subcommittee, is staffing at the national parks.
    Ten or fifteen years ago--well, let me just put it in
    perspective: In the last 15 years, staffing at the national
    parks has fallen by 15 percent, not counting the cuts that have
    been made in the last couple of months. Visitation at the
    national parks has gone up 15 percent. So we already had a
    staffing problem. So my request to you is stop cutting people
    at the national parks and start hiring them because the parks
    are a gem of America. People visit them. They expect them to be
    maintained. They expect them to be open. They expect to be able
    to not have to wait in long lines in order to get into a park.
        So can you commit to me that we are going to stop cutting
    in the national parks and we are going to start to rebuild that
    very valuable staff?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, so many members of this Committee
    raised that issue because I think they and we understand how
    important it is to keep those parks open, especially for
    tourism and economic dollars that are flowing into your
    communities. So I absolutely will commit to you on making sure
    that we work to have the appropriate staffing levels to keep
    those parks open and get as many people as possible into them.
        Senator King. Well, I would hope that the appropriate
    staffing levels would be somewhat higher than they are today
    given the fact that we already have a 30 percent gap in what's
    happened, forgetting about the recent cuts. So this is
    essential and I think it would be a great disservice to the
    American people to compromise the availability of our national
    parks.
        The second thing on national parks is maintenance. As you
    and I discussed, the Great American Outdoors Act, I think, was
    one of the signal achievements of the first Trump
    Administration, which had a big piece of money for deferred
    maintenance. The problem is, we are still deferring
    maintenance, and I fought all the way up to the Office of
    Management and Budget in the prior Administration to try to get
    the maintenance budget increased. It's a false economy to not
    make repairs. They are only going to have to be done in the
    future and they are going to cost more.
        Will you work with us and work with the Congress to
    increase the maintenance budget at the national parks? It's not
    very exciting, but it's something we have to do.
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, coming from the private sector, I
    understand the importance of O&M dollars on an annualized
    basis, but I will say this--it is interesting, and there is a
    lot to dig in on, on the implementation of the Great American
    Outdoors Act. I find that--we talked about how, you know, we
    worked to advance this amazing legislation, and now the
    maintenance backlog has somehow gone up. We have a lot of work
    to do together on this, and I absolutely commit to working with
    you on it.
        Senator King. Well, one way to keep it from going up is to
    quit digging the hole, and that's what we are doing right now.
        Mr. Danly, I agree with you about permitting reform. I was
    one of the supporters of the bill here. I am hoping we are
    going to be able to bring that bill back to life and perhaps
    improve it. I assume you agree that part of the permitting
    reform has to be transmission, because we are all talking about
    increasing electricity. The electricity has to get somewhere,
    and transmission is one of real serious bottlenecks right now
    in sort of reinventing our electric system. Do you agree?
        Mr. Danly. So to date, the real problems with federal
    permitting haven't been seen in transmission because other than
    the backstop siting authority----
        Senator King. Are you serious about that, because we have
    some transmission projects in the West that have been pending
    for 20 years?
        Mr. Danly. So for the most part, other than when you have
    federal land crossings, which do, of course, occur in the West
    far more than they do in the East, but the places where we have
    the greatest sets of constraints--the highest congestion
    costs--are in the East more than the West. This is typically--
    obviously, there are examples where that's not true. Most
    siting and permitting happens at the state level for
    transmission. There is only--for transmission lines, generally,
    there is the backstop siting authority that was re-enacted
    again.
        Senator King. Right.
        Mr. Danly. But, of course, transmission has to be part of
    the solution--or part of the discussion--because as the demand
    grows and we have to have a more robust transmission system,
    both to meet NERC reliability standards and simply to get real
    power to its destination, we are going to have to increase
    transmission lines all over the country.
        Senator King. And that has to be part of the solution.
        Quickly--research. You talked about research. One of the
    things that disturbs me that's going on now in the
    Administration is cutting research money all over the place--
    the Department of Health and Human Services, even research on
    Alzheimer's, which I absolutely don't understand. The
    Department of Energy is one of the leading research parts of
    our government, and I think you mentioned basic research being
    important that's not immediately commercially valuable so it's
    not going to be done in the private sector. Fracking was
    invented under Department of Energy research grants back in the
    80s. And do you agree that we have to maintain the research
    budgets, not only at the national labs, but in places like NREL
    and the other work that the Department of Energy is doing in
    research on energy development, generally?
        Mr. Danly. Yes. The Congress has charged the Department of
    Energy with conducting this research. As I mentioned in my
    opening statement, the number of advances we have had has
    changed America's commercial outlook and has created new
    industries. And the money spent on basic research whether--I
    mean, the national labs found quarks. These are things that are
    not commercially viable on their own, but if improved, the
    sense of the world----
        Senator King. I, myself, wouldn't know a quark if I fell
    over one, but I understand.
        Mr. Danly. Nevertheless, they are important.
        Senator King. Yes, sir.
        Mr. Danly. Yes, I absolutely agree with you that this
    research is important and is central to the function of the
    Department of Energy.
        Senator King. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I hope we can have a second round
    because I have a few more questions.
        The Chairman. Senator Hyde-Smith.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I
    certainly welcome you both here, excited that you are back,
    very excited about your nominations, and I want to associate
    myself with the remarks of Senator Justice. I think you are
    going to do a fantastic job, and thank you for your willingness
    to do this.
        And I want to start with Ms. MacGregor. I sure enjoyed our
    visit, and we talked about the Vicksburg National Military Park
    in Mississippi and the Natchez Historical Park sites that are
    in Natchez, Mississippi, and I certainly would love your
    commitment on helping reach our goals there. We are looking at
    several things--a visitor center--but Mississippi's number one
    tourist destination is the Military Park, and we are very, very
    proud of that.
        One of the other things is the offshore oil and gas
    exploration and production in the Gulf of America. It is
    crucial to both the President's energy agenda and to the
    economies of the Gulf states. Revenue from lease sales supports
    our states and funds mandatory programs such as the Land and
    Water and Conservation Fund, and mandatory lease sales in the
    Gulf would further boost this revenue. And I support Senator
    Cassidy's bill to mandate two offshore oil and gas lease sales
    per year for the next 10 years and look forward to working with
    him and this Committee to advance that legislation. And where I
    am from, so many of our residents there have employment there.
    We know what fossil fuels do and they have really, really been
    in dire need in the last few years.
        But do you consider continued offshore oil and gas
    development vital to our nation's security and economy? And
    will you support our efforts to mandate lease sales, especially
    if the Department works on the new five-year leasing plan?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, thank you for the question, and I
    truly enjoyed--I love our visits together. Absolutely, I can
    commit to you with working on that legislation. I know that the
    Gulf of America has been one of the largest energy producing
    provinces in our country for decades and the innovations that
    come out of that offshore province have been exported
    throughout the world, but ultimately that was created and
    innovated here in the United States. And I would like to see
    that province produce long into the future. As the statute
    requires, we need to make those resources available for
    national need, and I think the American people would like to
    see their prices come down in energy. So I absolutely will work
    with you and the Senators on various solutions for that.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. And the invitation certainly stands
    open for the Military Park. I would love to host you there.
        Ms. MacGregor. I would love to come. Thank you. Love to.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. Mr. Danly, thank you for being here. I
    cannot tell you how excited we are that you are willing to do
    this, and look so forward to working with you. As we know,
    reliable, affordable energy and a resilient grid are critical
    for continued economic growth, especially in companies that
    make investment and expansion decisions based on access to
    inexpensive, reliable energy. As demand grows, so does the need
    for more baseload power, and I believe nuclear energy continues
    to be at the forefront of the conversation providing more safe,
    clean, reliable power to meet those growing demands. And we are
    very excited about this and we are looking forward to some
    growth.
        What steps do you see the Department of Energy taking to
    advance nuclear, including new technologies such as small
    modular nuclear reactors?
        Mr. Danly. Thank you for the question, Senator.
        In fact, in most of my discussions with the members of the
    Committee, the subject of advancing nuclear energy has been
    very common in all the talks that I have had. Probably the most
    important thing that the Department of Energy can do--and in
    fact, has done, right, the first civilian nuclear power
    demonstrations were done in a national lab where the Department
    of Energy started the entire process of creating civilian
    nuclear power--is to continue the work that is being done in
    Idaho National Lab to prove and have demonstration cases for
    SMRs and next-generation nuclear power. There are any number of
    regulatory and commercial hurdles to commercialization of
    nuclear, all of which I would love to see either overcome or
    changed. I don't see a way that we can meet the demand that we
    are facing without having nuclear power as part of the
    solution. Right now, it makes about 20 percent of the total
    generation in the United States, but if we increase our--load
    at the rate that I think we are going to, we are going to have
    to build more nuclear to provide that baseload generation. And
    so, the Department of Energy is going to be key to that.
        Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you, and I am out of time.
        The Chairman. Senator Gallego.
        Senator Gallego. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I feel like I am
    going to sound like a broken record because when you are this
    low on the dais, everyone takes all of the great questions, but
    number one, to echo Senator King's comments on staffing at our
    national parks, and I spoke earlier with you about this--in
    Arizona, we are entirely dependent, especially in the northern
    Arizona region, the economy is entirely dependent on our
    national parks and tourism. So we want to make sure that there
    is some good thought and forethought before we have more
    layoffs, and if possible, to bring back these workers because
    there actually are not that many in Arizona to begin with, but
    the fact is, they produce billions and billions of jobs because
    they get such a great experience visiting our, I think you
    said--did you say gems or gyms as I was walking in?
        Senator King. Gems.
        Senator Gallego. Jams?
        Senator King. G, E, M.
        Senator Gallego. G, E, M. Okay, sorry. English is my second
    language so sometimes things will--and then just moving on,
    further conversations on SMRs and nuclear power. When I was
    meeting with Secretary Wright during his nomination, we talked
    about the need for more nuclear energy deployment, especially
    in Arizona. We have a three-prong problem, which is a good
    problem. People want to move to Arizona because it's a great
    state. They have great weather, and great representation in my
    opinion, but we also have a great economy, which is a highly
    skilled, high-energy economy, whether it's chips or the
    ancillary businesses that feed into chips, and we have data
    warehouses that are moving in to Arizona because Arizona, for a
    lot of its problems that we do have when it comes to forest
    fires, the likelihood of us having any type of massive, massive
    emergency that is going to destroy these data warehouses that
    are worth billions of dollars is slim to none.
        So what does that mean? We have an energy problem coming up
    in Arizona. Thirty percent of our energy portfolio is nuclear.
    I would like to see it grow. And so, I want to make sure that
    we can do anything we can to do that, including fixing
    regulatory burdens and hurdles or anything else. So I would
    love to make sure that we have an ability to work with that in
    a bipartisan manner because the country that can deploy quicker
    and faster nuclear energy is going to be the country that is
    going to be able to really own the next 100 years. And AI is
    really important, but AI only matters if you actually can
    energize it and actually create it and move that energy.
        So since everyone took my questions, I will go into
    something more deeper with Ms. MacGregor here in terms of
    drought in Arizona, especially with Glen Canyon, something that
    I think you worked on when you were on the House Natural
    Resources Committee with me. In the last four years, we have
    learned from Reclamation that Glen Canyon Dam has design flaws
    that limit its ability to pass water at low elevations, which
    is really bad when we have drought. So we need to fix this dam
    as soon as possible and we need the ability to pass water
    around the dam if hydrology gets worse--so, if we just don't
    have enough snowmelt. I raised this issue with Secretary Burgum
    in his hearing, but I would like to just ask you too. Will you
    make fixing this dam that delivers water to approximately 30
    million people in the Lower Basin a priority?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, I know that we had a great
    conversation about drought in the West and how that impacts
    water users in your state, especially for hydropower too, I
    believe. And I am curious about some of the decisions of the
    last Administration, and I know that was an alternative, I
    think, that was scoped in one of their initial reviews of
    alternatives. So I will absolutely commit to working with you
    on that and other issues related to drought in the West.
        Senator Gallego. And back to the drought questions, Arizona
    is where whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting. The
    Colorado River supports a total $1.4 trillion economy, and then
    it's a primary water source for now 40 million people across
    seven western states. It also, of course, supports 5.5 million
    acres of agriculture, tribes, 11 national parks. Since 2001,
    the Colorado River community has been grappling with risk and
    uncertainty in available water supplies at increasing
    intensity. Would you please just share your thoughts on the key
    priorities that DOI will use to avoid the need for crisis-to-
    crisis management and provide greater predictability in
    available water supplies for our communities?
        Ms. MacGregor. Absolutely. I know that the law of the river
    is incredibly important to so many. I think it's the seven
    Basin States. They are almost all represented on this
    Committee, and I know there are a lot of opinions reaching
    across all those states and their needs, and not just the
    states, but tribes, and as you said, the 40 million people who
    depend on that--getting it right.
        My hope is ultimately that that is what--and remains and
    has been successful in the past--is a state-brokered solution,
    and Interior will be playing a role in that. And I think that
    is one of the important issues facing the water and science
    hallway in that Department.
        Senator Gallego. Thank you. I yield back.
        The Chairman. Senator Cassidy, you are up next.
        Senator Cassidy. Okay. Thank you both, because I had a
    chance to meet with you both, and some of these questions seem
    like what we have talked about. I just want it for the public
    record, if you will.
        Ms. MacGregor, last week the Department of the Interior's
    Office of Natural Resources Revenue announced its 2024
    disbursements to the four states along the Gulf of America. As
    expected, the revenues from oil and gas development from GOMESA
    far exceeded the $375 million cap. Now, if the cap were higher,
    there would be dollars there to help rebuild coastline to
    protect communities from hurricanes like Katrina or from, which
    hit both of our states--Ida, Harvey, et cetera, because we know
    that when you build out your wetlands, that you absorb the
    impact from the hurricane, which means that your settled areas
    have less damage. We use that money in our state for flood
    protection and for coastal restoration by a state
    constitutional mandate.
        So that said, I have a bill--the RISEE Act--which would
    lift the cap on state funds under GOMESA, ensuring that states
    hosting energy development directly benefit from those
    activities. Given your experience as Deputy Secretary of the
    Interior, how important is an effective model for revenue
    sharing?
        Ms. MacGregor. Thank you, Senator, for the question, and I
    think with you hailing from Louisiana, and now me, from
    Florida--hurricanes--I have a renewed appreciation for their
    devastation. And I, when it comes to revenue sharing, I
    absolutely agree with you. It is the law now. It's in GOMESA.
    We are required to faithfully execute on GOMESA when it comes
    to revenue sharing, and as many of the Senators here on this
    dais also know, those dollars are also dedicated to the Land
    and Water Conservation Fund, which has impacts in everyone's
    districts. So I look forward to working with you on that and I
    understand that it is important to all four Gulf states.
        Senator Cassidy. And so, to that degree, how would you
    envision working with the Secretary to leverage offshore energy
    in the Gulf of Mexico--excuse me, I'm sorry, I can't help it--
    to support energy dominance?
        Ms. MacGregor. So for leveraging greater offshore oil and
    gas in the Gulf of America, we will--we have a lot to work on,
    and I think it's important that Senators understand we will
    obey the law, we will follow the contours of the Outer
    Continental Shelf Lands Act, as required, but I do think the
    American people would like to see more than just two to three
    lease sales. Historically, in the past, we have had, really,
    quite a few prodigious lease sales, and not just in the Gulf of
    America--Alaska and beyond. And so, I know the resources are
    concentrated a lot on the Gulf of America and up in Alaska, and
    we look forward to working with everyone on measures that will
    further embrace offshore energy.
        Senator Cassidy. Mr. Danly, Louisiana is currently home to
    more than 60 percent of the current LNG exports, and a large
    number of LNG projects are in the pipeline--excuse the pun--
    awaiting permitting approval. And I appreciate what President
    Trump, Secretary Wright, and the Department of Energy have done
    to help unleash this LNG bonanza, if you will. What can DOE do
    to further eliminate barriers through LNG exporting, including
    through improved permitting?
        Mr. Danly. Thank you for the question, Senator.
        It should probably come as no surprise that I care a lot
    about LNG exports. I worked on the subject from the Commission
    side for years. The most important thing is to return to the
    statutory standard in Section 3 of the Natural Gas Act, which
    has the inverted presumption for the granting of permits to
    non-free-trade-agreement countries, where you have to
    demonstrate affirmatively that the export is not consistent
    with the public interest, which is an analytical rubric that
    requires the examination of a handful of different elements in
    the application but return to that standard which had been the
    standard, invariably, for decades beforehand.
        Senator Cassidy. Let me ask you as well, in Baton Rouge
    last Friday, LSU and the Idaho National Laboratory signed an
    MOU to accelerate technology and talent development in
    Louisiana to benefit the rest of the nation. This is the first
    formal partnership between a national lab and a Louisiana
    university. So I am just going to ask: How can you ensure that
    DOE labs prioritize research supporting my state's energy and
    manufacturing sectors?
        Mr. Danly. So I am not at the DOE, and I don't know the
    details of all of these partnerships between universities and
    the labs, but I am happy to talk to you as much as you want,
    should I be confirmed, to ensure we have as much cooperation
    between the institutions as we can get.
        Senator Cassidy. That would be good because, if you will,
    we have the ecosystem that is developing the technology for not
    only our nation, but for the rest of the world. And obviously,
    I would like my Louisiana talent to be able to benefit from
    that development being supported by the DOE.
        Mr. Danly. I think it's fundamental to the DOE's objectives
    with the national labs in its research mission to get as much
    talent as we can from wherever it is possible. We want the
    absolute best scientists and engineers working on the hardest
    problems.
        Senator Cassidy. Sounds great. Thank you. I yield.
        Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Senator Cortez Masto.
        Oh, sorry, Senator Hirono, I apologize.
        Senator Hirono. Thank you.
        Welcome to both of you. As part of my responsibility to
    ensure the fitness of the all nominees who come before any of
    my committees, I ask the following two initial questions, and
    we will start with Ms. MacGregor.
        Since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted
    requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical
    harassment or assault of a sexual nature?
        Ms. MacGregor. I have not.
        Mr. Danly. No.
        Senator Hirono. Have you ever faced discipline or entered
    into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?
        Ms. MacGregor. I'm sorry, have I ever?
        Senator Hirono. Have you ever faced discipline or entered
    into a settlement related to this kind of conduct?
        Ms. MacGregor. I have not.
        Mr. Danly. No.
        Senator Hirono. For Ms. MacGregor, on DOGE's list of
    federal lease terminations, on that list is the Ironworks
    Building in Hilo, Hawaii. This building currently houses U.S.
    Geological Survey employees that work for the Hawaiian Volcano
    Observatory, which was destroyed during the 2018 Kilauea
    eruption, and this building provides temporary office and
    storage space while the permanent Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
    is built on the campus of the University of Hawaii at Hilo,
    planned for completion in two years. This move to terminate the
    lease with no clear plan on where these employees will work or
    store their equipment in the interim makes me question this
    Administration's regard for the important role the volcano
    observatories play in keeping our communities safe and
    informed.
        Do you believe that the USGS Volcano Hazards Program is
    important, and if so, what will you do as Deputy Secretary to
    ensure that USGS employees in Hilo are able to carry out their
    critical lifesaving work?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, thank you for that important
    question. And I want you to know that in the first Trump
    Administration, I spent quite a bit of time with the USGS
    Hazards Team, especially on some of the seismic systems
    installed up in the Pacific Northwest related to earthquake
    early warning systems. I know how important they are to
    communities, and while I am not in the building, I haven't seen
    a list of cancellations. I will absolutely work with you on
    your needs and for those of the people of Hawaii.
        Senator Hirono. Okay, that sounds as though you consider
    their work to be very critical and that they obviously need a
    place to work from and store the things that they need. So we
    will work to make sure that that happens? Should you be
    confirmed, of course.
        Ms. MacGregor. Yes, I will work with you, especially on a
    lot of the hazard systems, yes.
        Senator Hirono. Thank you.
        Also for you, in your 2019 testimony before this Committee,
    you noted that your introduction to the Department's mission
    was through visiting Valley Forge National Park and that
    visiting national parks drove your passion for American history
    and your understanding for the importance of preserving these
    special places. Similarly, during Secretary Burgum's nomination
    hearing earlier this year, he asserted that, and I quote, ``We
    have to protect every single inch of our national parks.''
        There are currently hundreds of mining claims within and
    thousands more near national park boundaries threatening the
    preservation of these special places. A couple of weeks ago,
    President Trump issued an executive order directing Secretary
    Burgum to prioritize mineral production and mining-related
    purposes as the primary--as a primary use of federal land with
    mineral deposits.
        My question to you is, how would allowing companies to mine
    in or near national parks preserve ``every single inch of our
    national parks?''
        Ms. MacGregor. Well, Senator, I am unfamiliar of any
    situation where there is mining directly in a national park.
    Can you give me an example that you are referring to that I can
    take a look at?
        Senator Hirono. Well, there are hundreds of mining claims,
    and if the President says that these are the claims that can be
    acted upon, you are going to be directed to let them do so, I
    suppose. That is the question.
        Ms. MacGregor. I think, when I hear----
        Senator Hirono. How does that comport with the Secretary's
    desire to protect every single inch of our national parks?
        Ms. MacGregor. It sounds like we might have a little bit of
    a misunderstanding of--when I hear public lands, I think
    multiple use and public sustained yield under FLPMA lands,
    multiple use lands managed by the BLM, not by the National Park
    Service. And my understanding of the protections under the
    Organic Act and the establishment of these national parks,
    their maintenance, and their continued management----
        Senator Hirono. So you would say--excuse me, my time is
    about pretty much up--but you would say that allowing mining in
    our national parks would be probably incompatible to the desire
    to save----
        Ms. MacGregor. I can't----
        Senator Hirono. I mean, you would want to save these
    treasures as a priority.
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, I am not familiar of any national
    park, and I could be completely wrong, but of any national park
    where there is mining within the boundaries of the park.
        Senator Hirono. No, the President wants you to go there
    then.
        Okay, we obviously are going to need to see what happens
    because he wants these federal lands to be used for extraction
    purposes.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Hirono.
        Senator Murkowski.
        Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome,
    both of you.
        Ms. MacGregor, I enjoyed our conversation. I am looking
    forward to you being back to fix a lot of things. Many of the
    issues that we spoke about in my office related to federal
    lands, better consultation with Alaska Natives, extending as
    well to restoring what we do with our multiple-use lands,
    natural fires, natural hazards, like wildfires, producing more
    of our energy, a lot to do.
        And Mr. Danly, you have been before this Committee multiple
    times as well. I am looking forward to working with you to help
    address some of Alaska's energy challenges, everything from
    microgrids, to geothermal, to advanced nuclear, and I want to
    follow on the comment that was made by the Senator from
    Arizona. I just came from a critical minerals discussion this
    morning, and as I look to our opportunity to be able to access
    these great resources that we need, until we figure out how to
    deal with power in some of these remote areas, it's going to be
    really hard to do. And I look at small modular reactors, the
    advancements that can come from here as a real opportunity.
        I want to address a couple of questions to both of you.
    Hopefully, they should be very quick and easy. I know that you
    are not in the building yet, I get that. But we have all
    watched as we have seen this effort to reduce the size of
    government, and certainly within the Department of Energy and
    the Department of the Interior. I have been concerned and have
    expressed how many of these employees have been treated in this
    process. I would ask that you both commit, if you are
    confirmed, that you will abide by the statutory requirements to
    notify Congress of any plans to reorganize, restructure, or
    implement reductions in force. I am also the Chairman on the
    Interior Appropriations Committee that has oversight here. We
    have sent letters to the Secretaries themselves with regards to
    the requirement in law about advanced notification, and then,
    just from my perspective, as a Senator who represents a state
    that has a lot of public lands and big federal presence, we
    have a lot of engagement and interaction with you.
        So I would just ask, again, if I can have your commitment
    that you will be transparent with us about what is coming and
    to abide by the statutory requirements to notify.
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, we will--I can commit to obey all
    federal laws when it comes to any of the efficiency efforts
    that we are working on.
        Senator Murkowski. Great. Thank you.
        Mr. Danly. I also commit to following the law for all of
    the efficiency efforts.
        Senator Murkowski. Thank you.
        I have had an opportunity to talk, not only to you, Ms.
    MacGregor, but certainly, my colleagues here on the Committee
    know that we are facing a situation in Alaska with declining
    production in Cook Inlet with regards to our natural gas, and
    in facing what I think is really an unforgivable direction, and
    that would be the prospect of LNG imports and potentially from
    Canada. So I would ask both of you to partner with me, with the
    delegation, to advance the Alaska projects and to support
    development of our resources so we can avoid the reliance on
    energy imports. For a state that has as much as the State of
    Alaska has, there is no good reason that we should be relying
    on Canada to keep our lights on.
        So do I have that commitment from the both of you?
        Ms. MacGregor. You sure do. And I was just as shocked when
    you informed me of that. And I look forward to working with you
    on those issues.
        Senator Murkowski. Great, thank you.
        Mr. Danly.
        Mr. Danly. It's crazy to think that Alaska would be
    importing energy.
        Senator Murkowski. It is crazy.
        Mr. Danly. I absolutely commit to working on that with you.
        Senator Murkowski. Yes, you know--you both know--we have an
    awful lot to offer there.
        Ms. MacGregor, I want to take you back to some of our
    greatest hits from when you were in the first Trump
    Administration. Some of the alphabet issues that you worked
    on--ITRs, PLOs. We have got to be making progress with that.
    Certainly, the President's executive order is going to help us
    there, but I also raised with you the issue of BIA probate and
    the extraordinary backlog that we are dealing with. It should
    not take five or ten or more years to resolve these probate
    cases. And I would just ask that you put a priority on these
    issues so that we can deal with something that has not only
    impacted us greatly in Alaska, but I think in so many other
    parts of the country as well.
        Ms. MacGregor. I am so grateful that you raised that issue.
    I had never even heard of it before, but the first thing I
    thought is, if it's impacting you and the people of Alaska, it
    must be impacting so many more on this Committee and other
    parts of the States. So I look forward to working with you on
    that.
        Senator Murkowski. Great, thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman, my time is expired.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator.
        Senator Hickenlooper.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks to both
    of you for your past public service and your willingness to go
    back into the maelstrom.
        I will start with you, Ms. MacGregor, and thank you for the
    time to come and visit. You know, the staffing cuts that were--
    there were the major cuts, and then people were put back, but
    even though they've been reinstated, there is another plan out
    that a quarter of all DOI employees are on the chopping block.
    And I think the volatility certainly has staff that I know in
    Colorado--and people that have reached out unnerved, and there
    is a level of anxiety there. And obviously the decisions that
    get made that I think you will have a voice in--I hope you will
    have a voice in--on staffing that will have consequences, have
    reverberations, in terms of how we use those lands in terms of
    conservation and recreation, not to mention energy production
    or critical minerals.
        What are your plans--or how do you look at trying to ensure
    that the staff have that spirit, which--the good culture that
    any group needs to perform at a high level while they are
    working to protect some of our most valuable resources?
        Ms. MacGregor. Well, thank you, Senator, and thank you for
    meeting with me. I had a great meeting with you. Talking about
    Pennsylvania was nice. When I review a lot of this, I have been
    watching, just like you all have, with media reports. I am not
    in the building, as we have talked about already, but I think
    there is a lot of, you know, questions I have, but I also think
    there is a lot of spin, and that tends to happen in these sort
    of instances. Ultimately, I support the President's efforts to
    achieve efficiency in the Federal Government. I think the
    endeavor to achieve efficiency should be applauded. But I also
    agree with you that to achieve efficiency, you have to have
    talent to move permits, you have to have the talent and you
    have to have an inspired workforce to be able to do the work.
        So I fully understand that that's part of the job going in
    the building, and I look forward to working with a lot of the
    same excellent career employees that I worked with the first
    time around and working to get moving on a lot of the actions
    we need to take at the Department.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Yes, well, again, I am no stranger to
    trying to make government more efficient. As mayor and as
    Governor, we did a hiring freeze for, I think, two and a half
    years when I was mayor as a way diminishing the workforce, but
    we found ways to use efficiencies to actually deliver more
    services to people at a lower cost. But I spent a quarter of my
    time in the agencies talking to the workforce and making sure
    that they were fired up and knew how valuable they were. I
    don't see that happening right now and I find it very
    concerning.
        And Mr. Danly, the same question to you, with similar
    circumstances, I suspect.
        Mr. Danly. I am not at the Department of Energy, so of
    course, I don't know the details of anything that's going on
    there. I have read the same press accounts that everybody else
    has. You know, I am no stranger to dealing with the personnel
    end of administrative agencies. I was the Chairman of FERC, and
    I dealt with the personnel there, and I plan to do what I have
    always done before when my advice was sought, which is seek the
    input of the employment counsel and the ethics counsel at the
    Department, whenever making decisions regarding employment.
        Senator Hickenlooper. All right, got it.
        And I wanted to also talk to you a little bit about this
    effort to gain energy dominance, but a lot of the clawbacks
    that are being discussed, of funds that were originally
    appropriated to support projects to build advanced energy
    technologies and make investments to try and get electricity
    more reliable, more affordable. The last number we saw was that
    the DOE may rescind up to $104 million of Colorado-based awards
    alone. And that's a rumor. I don't think there is--let's throw
    that number out, and let's throw that number away, but there is
    probably going to be a large number because there is a real
    push to try and find these savings. In many cases, these funds
    were already appropriated by and through Congress and they are
    for things like grid efficiency or grid reliability, or some
    other form of advanced technology.
        Are you willing to commit that you will obey the law and
    make sure that we don't rescind funds that have been
    appropriated legally for these, I think in many cases, really
    important energy projects?
        Mr. Danly. So again, just like I said before, I have seen
    the same press accounts everybody else has. Actual rescissions,
    as far as I know, haven't occurred yet.
        Senator Hickenlooper. Right.
        Mr. Danly. And I don't know what the plans are, if there
    are, in fact, plans.
        I absolutely commit to following the law. The focal point
    of my entire career so far is doing honor to the statute, and I
    will follow the law in discharging the duties of the
    Department.
        Senator Hickenlooper. All right, well, I appreciate that.
        I thank both of you. I think both of you are in crucial
    positions that are going to have--you are going to have a lot
    to do with what happens in the next couple of years, and we
    appreciate your service.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Hickenlooper.
        Senator Daines.
        Senator Daines. Chairman, thank you.
        I am going to jump right in, Ms. MacGregor. In Montana, we
    are facing serious hurdles to implementing forest management
    projects due to litigation. Our forests no longer have loggers
    in them. They are crawling with lawyers. That's a problem. The
    situation was exacerbated in 2015 when the Ninth Circuit issued
    that Cottonwood decision. Today, as I speak, we have 300
    million board-feet of timber tied up in litigation in Montana.
    Region 1, over 500 million board-feet tied up because of
    litigation. That Cottonwood decision creates a cyclical
    procedural requirement to consult under the Endangered Species
    Act. After a new species is listed, new critical habitat is
    designated, or ``new information'' is found. We just need to
    get the Ninth Circuit Court to be congruent with the other
    circuits, and that is essentially what the Cottonwood fix does.
    It has passed this Committee with strong bipartisan support. So
    we are ready to act on it yet again. We are going to need help
    getting it across the finish line and certainly on the
    President's desk.
        We have seen hundreds of projects across states in the
    Ninth Circuit that are delayed because we have the Forest
    Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service attempt to meet this
    ambiguous standard with no on-the-ground impact. We have this
    legislation, again, with strong bipartisan support. So my
    question is, would you commit to working with me and working
    with Congress, to ensure that a permanent solution is found,
    either through administrative action or through this
    legislative fix?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, thank you for that important
    question, and it's probably no laughing matter. Forest
    management, I know, is life or death in a lot of your states.
    We absolutely commit, and I personally commit to working with
    you on that, and I know that getting--like I said in my opening
    statement--certainty so that these actions can continue is
    incredibly important. And I should say, I was very inspired by
    all of you in the efforts you all led to amend NEPA for the
    first time in 50 years in the Fiscal Responsibility Act. And I
    know when you come together, this body can do amazing things
    that help us implement our laws in a more efficient way.
        Senator Daines. Thank you. There are just so many wins if
    we can get this problem fixed in terms of improved wildlife
    habitat, improved economic benefits, and overall improved trout
    habitat in the streams that get hammered with the silting from
    the major disastrous wildfires. So lots of benefits, not to
    mention, we literally have had football games on Friday nights
    in Montana canceled because of air quality. This is not the
    smog of LA, this is smoke coming from these wildfires. So it's
    a health risk as well. And then, we, of course, have the tragic
    examples of firefighters losing their lives trying to fight
    these very hot and robust fires.
        Mr. Danly, a question for you. With your experience at
    FERC, you have firsthand knowledge of our energy and
    transmission needs. Our energy demand is only projected to
    grow, as we talked yesterday. And to meet this demand, we must
    expand our energy production, not replace it. With rising
    demand, and I will tell you, every time I meet with a tech CEO
    today, the conversation is not about the constraint of the
    workforce. The constraint is energy as we want to move forward
    here with a significant increase in data centers and so forth
    to meet the demands of AI and quantum computing. With rising
    demand, we also need to ensure we can maintain our grid
    stability. And the key to grid stability is going to be more
    baseload power. Doing this will ensure we have access to
    affordable, reliable power, 24/7 and year-round. And as we
    talked yesterday, our transmission systems are crucial to
    deliver this power, but we need to expand our systems if we are
    going to bring new projects onto the grid. In Montana, the
    Department of Energy is involved in numerous energy and
    transmission projects that will help enhance our energy
    dominance and support our energy needs.
        My question, Mr. Danly, is how do you envision the
    Department of Energy strengthening partnerships with our
    states, with our communities, and with energy companies to
    expand energy production and to expand transmission across the
    United States?
        Mr. Danly. So thank you for the question, Senator and I
    appreciated the conversation we had in your office yesterday.
    The Department of Energy has innumerable different programs
    that are designed to either promote the commercialization of or
    help with the improvement of the preexisting facilities that
    are fundamental to keeping the transmission system working or
    developing new generation. And the President and the Secretary
    have both shown extreme enthusiasm for the idea of getting as
    much new generation online and interconnected as possible. And
    the Department is going to use every one of the tools at its
    disposal to ensure that we have as much generation available
    and as resilient a bulk power system as we can get.
        And you are correct that the constraining factor for all of
    the tech companies right now is power, not just the amount of
    delivered real power, but also the interconnection sites that
    are available to actually connect the facilities to the bulk
    power system and the availability of power that is on a
    reliable basis. It can be very challenging in constrained areas
    to achieve both of those. And we will not be able to meet the
    commercial demands of our companies if we don't ensure that
    there is more power available.
        Senator Daines. Thanks, Mr. Danly.
        Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you very much, Senator Daines.
        Senator Cortez Masto.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        Mr. Danly, during your FERC nomination hearing before this
    Committee in November 2019, I asked you then if you agreed that
    renewable energy should continue to play an important role in
    our nation's energy mix. And you replied, ``undoubtedly.'' Then
    in response to my follow-up question, you agreed that
    renewables like wind and solar power can be reliably integrated
    into the power grid. Do you still agree with that today?
        Mr. Danly. Thank you for the question, Senator, and I
    remember that confirmation hearing like it was yesterday. Yes,
    they can be integrated. There are challenges to integration.
    It's not the same type of generation that the bulk power system
    was built on from its infancy. And when you reach a certain
    threshold, those challenges become multiplicative. And so,
    there are thresholds that can be reached where it becomes more
    difficult. But yes, the idea that in a time of demand like we
    are facing now, that we would turn away any megawatts that are
    available seems irrational to me, but there are engineering
    problems that attend to use of intermittents.
        Senator Cortez Masto. In response to another follow-up
    question, you agreed that states hold the authority under the
    Federal Power Act to establish the resource mix that best
    serves their customers. Do you still hold that position?
        Mr. Danly. The law hasn't changed, and neither has my
    opinion. The states are granted the authority to determine what
    generation is within their borders.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        And then, this is a question for both of you. As you've
    heard from some of my colleagues, we have been concerned by
    what you might be walking into in your respective departments.
    We're seeing decisions by the current Administration, from
    tariffs, to firings, to restructurings, that are undercutting
    our national and local economies, including in emerging and
    critical industries like outdoor recreation, travel, and
    tourism. The chaotic executive orders and actions often have to
    be walked back or reversed, such as--and we have heard a little
    bit about this--the firing of federal firefighters, or in my
    state, nuclear safety officials within DOE's National Nuclear
    Security Administration. So my question to both of you is, and
    I will start with you, Mr. Danly--if confirmed, will you commit
    to transparency on future actions taken by you and your
    departments and prioritize substantive responses to overdue
    questions that me and my colleagues have requested in letters?
        Mr. Danly. So this Committee has seen my correspondence in
    my response to your letters before when I was a Commissioner. I
    did not give you the pro-forma one-pagers, I had these 90-page
    missives that completely laid bare everything at the
    Commission. I have no problem telling this Committee or any
    Member of Congress anything they want to know about what we do.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Great, that's a yes. I appreciate
    that.
        Ms. MacGregor.
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, I also agree with you that sunshine
    is always important for this Committee and also for the
    American people to understand how their government is working.
    So we will work with you.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
        Ms. MacGregor, much of the West has been experiencing a
    historic drought, and I think one of my colleagues may have
    asked this question of you already, but let me further
    elaborate. Nevada is one of the several Basin States that
    relies on water from the Colorado River. We are currently
    engaged in negotiations to set the guidelines for future water
    allocations because we also know that the current guidelines
    expire in 2027, and we need to start now, and we have started,
    even before now. But the new operations have to be in place
    before the end of 2026 to avoid confusion and conflict for the
    entire Southwestern United States. Despite 20 years of
    collaboration, the Upper and Lower Basin have not yet reached
    an agreement. The Department of the Interior must be a leader
    to bring the seven Basin States together on these alternatives
    and develop the post-2026 guidelines.
        As Deputy Secretary, how will you prioritize this process
    to ensure the Basin can reach a consensus and avoid litigation
    before time runs out with the necessary guidelines that we have
    to pass?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, thank you for that question. I was
    able to enjoy several meetings with many Senators on this dais
    about this particular issue. And I know that avoiding
    litigation on this incredibly important Basin is absolutely a
    must, and it's going to be a priority of the Department to work
    together with the seven Basin States, tribes, water users,
    hydropower generators, everyone--the 40 million people who rely
    on a smart solution that must be state-led.
        Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you. I am looking forward to
    that. We need that involvement. And I--if you don't know, the
    Senators in the Basin States, we all work very well together on
    this particular issue, and we are looking for that involvement
    from the Department of the Interior as well. So thank you.
        Senator Barrasso. Senator Padilla.
        Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Echoing Senator Cortez Masto's comments on the entire Basin
    States working so well together, because you know how critical
    that is, and we had that conversation in my office just
    yesterday.
        But Ms. MacGregor, I definitely appreciated the opportunity
    to go through some of my priorities with you when we met
    previously, and I hope you took away from our meeting the
    constant theme of collaboration on so many of these intricate
    and complex issues, including but not limited to the recently
    established national monuments in California. As I mentioned,
    these protected landscapes, we crafted very intentionally to
    ensure that there is no energy potential that is being
    compromised as a result of the designation of the Chuckwalla
    and Sattitla National Monument, and I think you have that
    confirmation through the endorsements of these monuments by
    energy utilities and energy developers. I raised the same
    background with Secretary Burgum, both in our conversations and
    in writing, that the Department's review that has been called
    for--public lands must include meeting with the stakeholders
    that were involved--stakeholders that include the Congressional
    delegation, the Governor of California, the state's energy
    agencies, local officials, and notably, the tribal leaders who
    actually spearheaded the movements and the creation of these
    monuments.
        And so, it took me a little bit by surprise when last month
    the Administration issued, but then rescinded, a fact sheet
    that suggested that the White House terminated the recently
    designated national monuments, all despite the fact that the
    President, in my opinion, doesn't have the legal authority to
    undo a monument under the Antiquities Act. I am not sure if you
    were involved at all with the crafting of the executive order
    and/or the fact sheet, but I guess my first question would be,
    are you aware of the broad, bipartisan, local, and tribal
    support for the Chuckwalla and Sattitla National Monuments?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I have closely watched that monument
    establishment.
        Senator Padilla. Is that a yes?
        Ms. MacGregor. Yes.
        Senator Padilla. Okay, because we want to get you on the
    record recognizing the broad-based support for the creation of
    these monuments.
        Now, more broadly, as a matter of policy, do you believe
    that local communities and tribal leaders should have a say in
    the management of their public lands?
        Ms. MacGregor. I think local involvement is something that
    everyone on this dais agrees with.
        Senator Padilla. Okay, well, I am talking just about you,
    not the folks on the dais. You are the nominee before us----
        Ms. MacGregor. Local involvement is embedded in almost all
    the Organic Acts at the Department, so, yes.
        Senator Padilla. Good, good. Good-faith consultation and
    engagement is what we are looking for.
        Now, as the Department did under the first Trump
    Administration, will you commit to releasing any rollbacks that
    you may be considering for public comment prior to taking
    action, if you are confirmed?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, it's hard for me to commit on a
    completely hypothetical question related to the Antiquities
    Act, especially given that the Antiquities Act of 1906 has the
    designation of monuments purely within the ambit of the
    President of the United States. But I do know that that
    monument and many monuments are important to you and the State
    of California, and I will absolutely work with you. But I
    haven't seen any direction from the President yet. I am
    familiar with that of the past, but I have not seen any yet,
    unless I have missed something related to a review of our
    national monuments.
        Senator Padilla. Okay. I wasn't trying to debate the
    Antiquities Act, just referencing what seemed to be the policy
    in the first Trump Administration of sharing publicly before a
    natural effort to roll back, and I would hope that continues in
    this second Administration.
        A question in my time remaining for Mr. Danly. California
    proudly was the first state in the nation to launch a hydrogen
    hub. We refer to it as ARCHES, which will facilitate a network
    of hydrogen production sites to catalyze the use of hydrogen
    throughout California, and frankly, jump-start the hydrogen
    economy, not just in California, but across the country. The
    California hub enjoys bipartisan support from our California
    delegation. However, last week, the Department of Energy ``cut
    list'' reportedly included ARCHES and other hydrogen hubs to be
    cut. So I want to point out that ARCHES, again, is not just
    critical to California, but critical to our national economy.
        If confirmed, would you commit to working with California
    to ensure that funding is not arbitrarily taken away?
        Mr. Danly. Thank you for the question, Senator. And I have
    had a series of inquiries like this along the way. Of course, I
    am not in the building, and I don't know what is being
    contemplated, but I am obviously happy to work with any member
    of the Committee on any of the subjects that the DOE is working
    on in their state.
        Senator Padilla. And should you be confirmed, would you be
    willing to commit to meet with the ARCHES staff before any
    final decision on cuts are made?
        Mr. Danly. Again, I am not certain what, should I be
    confirmed, what my schedule is going to be like or what the
    normal fora are for engagement. I don't know what the rules
    are----
        Senator Padilla. Meeting with the leadership of the hub
    that may be on the chopping block, but one of the most
    important hubs in America.
        Mr. Danly. I certainly would have no objection to doing so,
    I just, it's a little premature to start filling calendars for
    a position I haven't yet been confirmed----
        Senator Padilla. I am not looking dates and times, just
    your commitment and willingness to----
        Mr. Danly. I am perfectly happy to work on any of the
    projects that the DOE is working on.
        Senator Padilla. Okay, we will be following up.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
        Senator Hoeven.
        Senator Hoeven. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Welcome to both of you. I appreciate you stopping by and
    visiting with me, and look forward very much to working with
    you.
        Starting with you, Ms. MacGregor. We have got some
    legislative priorities, and I would like your help on it. So I
    am going to ask on the record here if will help us. We are
    working on the North Dakota Trust Lands Completion Act, which
    would allow tribes in our state to swap land with the state to
    the benefit of the tribes and to the benefit of the state. It
    involves tribal-owned land and state-owned land. That's one.
    The other is the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. You
    might have heard about it, perhaps Secretary Burgum mentioned
    it to you because he has really worked on it hard. It's a great
    project. We have worked on it hard. And we have passed
    legislation here through this Committee and across and through
    the Congress to make it happen, but there is more to do. And
    then also the Dakota Water Resources Act, which, actually,
    Senator Padilla co-sponsored with me.
        But those three are legislative priorities, and I ask for
    your help with them. Are you willing to help?
        Ms. MacGregor. Absolutely, sir.
        Senator Hoeven. Thank you.
        The next is, the Biden Administration implemented on BLM
    lands what they call a BLM Public Lands Rule. Essentially, it
    closes off about half of the BLM lands in our state--and we
    have a lot of them--to oil and gas and closes off almost all of
    them for federal coal. And I would ask that you work with us to
    roll back that harmful policy.
        Ms. MacGregor. I am familiar with that rule, sir. And I
    would be happy to work with you ongoing on that matter.
        Senator Hoeven. Thank you.
        Are you committed to multiple use on federal lands? It is
    the law, by the way.
        Ms. MacGregor. It's the law, sir, so yes.
        Senator Hoeven. Good.
        And then, in a lot of cases, we have split estates on
    mineral interests between the Federal Government and maybe the
    state or private individuals. Don't you think it's important
    that we get timely response from the Federal Government so as
    to not disenfranchise individual private property rights or the
    states?
        Ms. MacGregor. Absolutely, sir. That was in my opening
    statement. I think timeliness is incredibly important.
        Senator Hoeven. And the same on NEPA reviews?
        Ms. MacGregor. Yes, sir, that is also the law.
        Senator Hoeven. And then, are you pro-horse or anti-horse?
        Ms. MacGregor. It depends on the horse.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator Hoeven. Good answer. As somebody who was raised
    with horses, she knows her stuff. In this case, I am looking
    for a pro-horse answer though, because we are working on
    legislation to protect the horses in Theodore Roosevelt
    National Park, and would welcome and appreciate your assistance
    with it, if you are so inclined.
        Ms. MacGregor. I have some ideas for you.
        Senator Hoeven. Great.
        Ms. MacGregor. Some horses.
        Senator Hoeven. Yes, yes. But you are willing to work with
    us on it?
        Ms. MacGregor. Absolutely.
        Senator Hoeven. Okay, thank you.
        Mr. Danly, we need more baseload for the stability of the
    grid, and I mean, I think you coming into this position to work
    with Secretary Wright is really outstanding given your, not
    only legal background and all that, but your work on the FERC.
    I mean, I think that is just a great background for this
    position, and so I welcome that. We need more baseload on the
    grid. I want you to talk about that and then I also want you to
    talk about how we get, you know, carbon capture technologies to
    economic viability. We have technological viability, as our
    Chair knows, or current acting Chair, I guess. He is actually
    our Whip, but I see they are letting him chair the Committee
    today, so. How do we get more baseload? How do we get to
    economic viability for carbon capture technologies?
        Mr. Danly. So this has been--the subject of needing more
    baseload power for the stability of the bulk electric system is
    a subject that I talked about multiple times, including in
    colloquies with you, in front of this Committee when I was at
    FERC, and that still remains true. The baseload needs now
    though are not merely for the services that are required to
    keep the system stable, from spinning mass and the like, but at
    this point we need more baseload power simply because we are
    having increasing demand for real power delivered. And so, it
    now has the dual purpose of we need baseload to shore up the
    stability of bulk power system and we actually just need to
    deliver more power reliably.
        Senator Hoeven. Right, and so, for Maine and New Mexico,
    places like that, we need baseload so they don't have problems
    getting their power, right? It's really important for our good
    friends there.
        Mr. Danly. So the Federal Power Act is a national act that
    tries to make sure that everybody can have access to power
    across state borders. And yes, baseload power anywhere in an
    interconnection is good for everybody in the interconnection.
    How to get more of it? We have problems with the development of
    transmission, which was a subject that had come up before, but
    there is also the problem, at least in the areas that are
    regulated by FERC jurisdictional markets--baseload power has
    historically been undervalued. And we see this in retirements
    of assets that still have useful life in them. We see the
    scarcity in the pricing in the most recent prints in the PJM
    base residual auction, and the way fundamentally to fix this is
    to pay rates that are commensurate with the benefits that
    baseload power delivers to the power system.
        Senator Hoeven. Yeah, see, this is why your experience on
    the FERC is going to be very important to DOE. And of course, I
    meant to include Washington State in making sure that that
    power is there and viable and available on the hottest day or
    the coldest day, whatever the needs may be.
        But again, I think that this kind of expertise is going to
    be very important as we address the issues in our national
    grids.
        Mr. Danly. It is critical. And without the deployment of
    sufficient generation, the United States--AI isn't the only
    source of the demand that is rising, but it is a very important
    one. The Biden Administration estimated that we were about 18
    months ahead in AI development for the language training models
    in China. Eighteen months is the blink of an eye in utility
    planning terms, and there is real need to develop generation to
    meet that.
        Senator Hoeven. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and also Mr. Ranking
    Member, I appreciate it.
        Senator Barrasso. Senator Cantwell.
        Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was just
    asking staff if they remember the last time that somebody
    voluntarily mentioned the Federal Power Act at a hearing, so
    thank you.
        Mr. Danly. I would hope that I was that person.
        Senator Cantwell. You were. You were.
        Well, we will go back in the record and search and see when
    was the last time somebody brought it up. We often bring it up
    as members, but not a witness voluntarily. So I think it shows
    your prowess. So let me just jump right into it.
        As it relates to--we will just stick on this subject for a
    second. Do you commit to opposing any proposals to auction off
    assets, including those owned by Bonneville Power
    Administration?
        Mr. Danly. I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I had trouble
    hearing you.
        Senator Cantwell. We don't want to--BPA's a unique
    situation.
        Mr. Danly. Oh, Bonneville, yes.
        Senator Cantwell. Will you commit to not auctioning off any
    of the PMA assets, including those by Bonneville?
        Mr. Danly. So the Power Marketing Administrations are
    fundamental components of the Department of Energy and provide
    electricity to huge swaths of territory in America. I love the
    Power Marketing Administrations. I just don't know anything
    about--I know there have been talks at different times for the
    Power Marketing Administrations to be privatized and the like.
    I have no interest in that subject historically in my career.
    And I don't really know enough about that to give an informed
    answer here. It certainly isn't anything I have heard talked
    about recently, but----
        Senator Cantwell. Yeah, well, maybe, yeah, take a little
    homework assignment.
        Mr. Danly. Yeah.
        Senator Cantwell. Bad idea.
        Okay so, PNNL, as it relates to grid modernization,
    chemistry, and materials science--will you advocate for robust
    resources for our national labs to continue to play a role on
    the forefront of innovation as it relates to key energy
    national defense applications?
        Mr. Danly. I think the national labs are fundamental to
    America's geostrategic position in the world, and on top of
    that, I am just a really big fan of them.
        Senator Cantwell. Well, a lot of great work is being done
    there. I invite you to come also and see the fusion technology
    in the Pacific Northwest--three different fusion companies that
    are underway. I do think we have to think about this, like if
    the United States wants to run fast, if we do, if somebody
    creates a miracle solution here, how do we get it integrated
    very quickly into the grid. So I invite you to come and look at
    that.
        Hanford--very big issue for us, and Hanford cleanup. I am
    concerned about the layoffs from DOGE and retirements. And so,
    I don't want to lose qualified workers. One of the major
    obligations by the Federal Government is to live up to the Tri-
    Party Agreement. And so, will you commit to supporting a budget
    that meets the milestones of that agreement, which is previous
    energy secretaries committing to a plan for cleanup? So these
    are legal commitments that everybody has made, our state, just
    as a state where this activity is housed, and obviously,
    concern about the environmental contamination played a key role
    in getting those agreements. But will you live up to a budget
    that lives up to the milestones of the agreement?
        Mr. Danly. So fundamentally, the budgets are not the
    purview of the position to which I have been nominated, but I
    will say this--the cleanup of the legacy waste sites is one of
    the handful of the truly core missions of the Department. And I
    have every intention of abiding by the agreement, and to the
    extent that the Department has obligations to discharge, I will
    see them discharged properly.
        Senator Cantwell. So you would worry if, like, so many
    workers were laid off in the area that you didn't think you
    could meet those milestone agreements--that would be something
    you would be concerned about?
        Mr. Danly. I mean, put another way, would I be concerned,
    should I be confirmed, would I be concerned that we didn't have
    the workforce to discharge the duties that Congress gave us?
    Yes. But that would apply to virtually anything that we are
    told to do, so.
        Senator Cantwell. Thank you. I need to get to Ms.
    MacGregor.
        If I could, last year, we spent 96 days at the National
    Preparedness Levels of 4 and 5, which means we are using all of
    our available resources to fight fires. Over the last ten
    years, that only happened in 2021. So, we are very concerned
    about what this year's fire season is going to look like, and
    so, we don't want to see a layoff of critical employees that
    are going to help us for the future. The Department has a
    responsibility to fight here. Will you support--how would you
    make sure that we have the workforce that we need as part of
    our incident command teams, and if confirmed, will you not
    support a production plan, including off-selling of public
    lands that would reduce our access?
        Ms. MacGregor. Thank you for the question, Senator.
        I stated earlier that I think wildfire--and I think I
    stated in my last hearing that it is one thing that actually
    keeps me up at night in this job--if confirmed--that wildland
    firefighters are absolutely part of our essential workforce,
    and getting them out there is just as equally important as
    wildland wildfire management efforts that the Department, not
    only our Department--states, in partnership with us, local
    communities, the Department of Agriculture, do to help give
    that toe-hold so that we can fight fire better and more
    effectively. And I absolutely will commit to you to work on
    wildland firefighting staffing to make sure we have what we
    need.
        Senator Cantwell. I am asking--the two of you are the first
    witnesses to come before us since all the DOGE cuts. So I am
    asking you, specifically, will you stop any cuts that will
    affect wildland firefighting efforts?
        Ms. MacGregor. I will absolutely evaluate any proposed
    cuts, should they be, you know, proposed for wildland
    firefighting cuts, and review those very closely. I can't
    imagine a situation where that would occur, but if it did, I
    would want to make sure that we are balancing and keeping the
    resources we need to fight fire.
        Senator Cantwell. Yes, I think most of us would just be
    able to agree today. No one here wants those cuts, no one. We
    think we need more resources. We think we have a pretty good--
    you will see a lot of western members here, and we have a very
    good handle on what's happening. We have had to deal with it
    for a long time. And so, we had to fight to get the money out
    of deficit reduction and back into the firefighting budget.
    That was a major bipartisan accomplishment, mostly led by this
    Committee. And now, we just want to keep moving forward. The
    Palisades fire was more than a wake-up call, more than a wake-
    up call. So we need more resources, not less.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator Cantwell.
        Senator McCormick.
        Senator McCormick. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to
    our nominees. Congratulations to both of you and your families.
        Mr. Danly, I am going to start with you. I am thrilled to
    see a fellow Army man come before our Committee, and we are
    talking a lot today about artificial intelligence and the
    importance of it for our economy and for our national security.
    To reap the full benefits of the AI revolution, we need power.
    We need an expansion of natural gas production and nuclear
    power, in particular, to power the next generation of AI. What
    do you think are the biggest challenges to expanding natural
    gas production and to increasing nuclear capacity in the United
    States?
        Mr. Danly. Most of them are regulatory. The actual siting
    of generation is left to the states, as was alluded to earlier,
    but the regulatory burdens that attend the submission of any
    Section 7--that is NGA Section 7 Natural Gas Pipeline--are so
    profound that the risk premiums make it almost impossible to
    allocate capital rationally. And so, even though over the short
    and intermediate term, natural gas is the obvious solution to
    plug holes in resource adequacy, especially in areas that have
    constrained transmission systems, the biggest problem is the
    permitting of natural gas pipelines.
        And as far as nuclear goes, you know, we recently had two
    new AP1000 units that went live in Georgia. My hope at the time
    had been that, once the first company went through the
    minefield clearing the path, everybody would follow after them
    immediately, and that hasn't happened. And my understanding,
    from the people I talk to about it mostly is, first of all,
    AP1000s are really big, but the main problem is the rates paid
    on the back end in the markets. For any of the areas that the
    two-thirds of Americans who are served by FERC markets, it is
    impossible to get rates paid, especially at capacity prices,
    that are commensurate with the upfront costs and the long-term
    ongoing costs of running a nuclear power plant. Even though the
    actual cost of delivered power is completely reasonable, it's
    everything that goes into the setting, construction
    application, and permitting that is expensive, not to mention
    the after-the-fact litigation. And so, really these are
    regulatory challenges primarily.
        Senator McCormick. Very good, thank you.
        And Ms. MacGregor, good to see you the other day. We didn't
    talk about this, but I wanted to bring up the question of
    critical minerals, which are so necessary to our national
    security and to ensuring that we maintain a dominant position
    vis-a-vis China, our primary competitor. And China, as you
    know, is seeking to get control of rare mineral supply chains
    around the world with mineral extraction processing and
    refining. As you know also, domestically many of those critical
    minerals lie on federal land. It takes years to develop these
    mining projects, and the constant delays and overzealous
    environmental regulations have, in the past, deterred
    investments in these capital-intensive projects.
        So what will you do--what can you do to tackle these
    challenges to spur mineral development in the United States?
        Ms. MacGregor. Senator, that is a great question, and
    coming from Pennsylvania, which is one of the original mining
    states, I think it's incredibly important that our country
    continue to be a leader when it comes to mining, milling, and
    production. And in my past position at the Department of the
    Interior, I had the stress of reviewing the United States
    Geological Survey Annual Mineral Commodity Report that goes
    between 18 to 20 different mineral commodities every year where
    we are nearly 100 percent reliant on foreign adversaries. And
    that worries me very much, especially when we have abundant
    resources here and smart regulations to be able to deploy them
    and mine them responsibly. And I personally, in the past,
    worked on a lithium mine in the State of Nevada, in my position
    in the Department last time around. I envision that there are
    more opportunities in the future. And if confirmed, I really
    look forward to working on that because I think we need to be a
    leader.
        Senator McCormick. Thank you.
        Mr. Danly, I am going to try to squeeze in one more
    question about the national labs. This Committee had a meeting
    about China and its attempt to infiltrate our universities, our
    national labs, as our primary adversary. As Deputy Secretary,
    what role do you expect to play in implementing, hopefully,
    more robust research security policies at DOE and across our
    national labs to make sure we are protecting against the risk
    of foreign researchers taking our innovation and technology
    elsewhere?
        Mr. Danly. Yes, so, I think that's--when I first learned
    about the sheer volume of foreign researchers that came to the
    national labs and used the facilities in close proximity to the
    other researchers, I was really shocked by it. And when I
    further looked into it and found that there were very few--
    seemingly, at least by the press reports, press accounts--few
    constraints placed on that research being done and the choice
    and vetting of the people that arrive, I was, again, shocked by
    it.
        So I don't know the specific actions that I would take,
    should I be confirmed, but it is something that I think is
    really serious and has to be dealt with immediately.
        Senator McCormick. Thank you.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Senator McCormick.
        Senator King, did you have an additional question?
        Senator King. Yes, I wanted to follow up--a very productive
    discussion, Mr. Danly. First, I would mention that one of
    bottlenecks, Senator, on natural gas is it takes five years to
    get a turbine. They are so backed up that that's a bottleneck
    in itself. If you wanted to build a gas turbine, you would need
    at least five years and then, of course, you have to do the
    ancillary transmission. But I wanted to talk about--we often
    use the word baseload, and you mentioned earlier in your
    exchange with Senator Cortez Masto that renewables--solar and
    wind--can play an important role in meeting this energy demand
    that is coming. And if you add storage, then you've got
    baseload. And I think one of the most important things that the
    Department is doing is research into battery storage. I learned
    recently that, you will excuse the term, the availability of
    battery storage has exploded over the last three years.
        Mr. Danly. Please don't use that term.
        [Laughter.]
        Senator King. Sorry. It has expanded dramatically, how is
    that?
        And would you agree that this is an important area, because
    solar and wind today are the cheapest forms of energy, about
    three cents a kilowatt-hour all-in, compared with other
    sources. Combined cycle is three and a half cents, but other
    sources are much more. And they are also the fastest to the
    market. So I hope that you agree that storage is an important
    area of research and development in order to expand capacity on
    the grid from all sources.
        Mr. Danly. Absolutely. Research into storage is, like all
    research, incremental, but the change in the effectiveness of
    batteries, the rate of discharge, and the total capacity
    availability has increased over time. If we could solve the
    technical, engineering, and cost elements to storage, that's
    not just a matter of allowing intermittent resources to have
    more continuous output, it also allows for the delivery of
    services to the bulk power system that otherwise would have to
    be provided directly by generation, and could solve any number
    of transmission constraints that right now we have to have
    generators for.
        Senator King. Exactly. It could be a peaker. It could have
    all kinds of roles on stabilizing the grid.
        Mr. Danly. Yeah, it could provide ancillary services that
    just because of the geography and the topology of the system
    would otherwise only be fixed by putting in, let's say, a
    combustion turbine or something like that.
        Senator King. Well, the Department is working on a number
    of initiatives at NREL and other places on battery development
    and technology. So I hope you will be a cheerleader for that
    when you get to the Department.
        Mr. Danly. Should I be lucky enough to be confirmed, I will
    cheerlead the national labs and I am completely behind the idea
    of trying to figure out the storage question.
        Senator King. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
        Any other questions on this side? Then I am just going to
    proceed to mine.
        But congratulations to both of you. Thank you so much for
    taking the time to visit with me. Let me start with Ms.
    MacGregor.
        The Biden Administration's Bureau of Land Management
    finalized what was the Rock Springs Resource Management Plan.
    They did it on the way out the door, December 2024. It occurred
    not even a week after our Governor, Governor Mark Gordon,
    submitted his appeal to the proposed plan. The final plan is
    going to devastate the people of Southwest Wyoming and lock up
    millions of acres of land that the local communities and the
    entire state rely upon. The Governor, the state legislature,
    the county commissioners, and the local communities all
    strongly oppose this plan that came out in the final days of
    the Biden Administration. Will you commit to work with my
    office and the state to undo this disastrous plan?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I am very familiar with that plan, and
    I want to say that the law itself has a really important
    consistency review that is required to be conducted by the BLM.
    And it concerns me when you have a resource management plan
    that you work on for years and your ultimate result is
    something that ends up inconsistent with what the state would
    like. I think that's something we can absolutely work with you
    on.
        Senator Barrasso. So in terms of before implementing the
    Biden Administration's flawed plan, you are going to continue
    to work with us?
        Ms. MacGregor. Absolutely.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
        The Resource Management Plan for Buffalo, Wyoming--the
    Biden Administration finalized a Resource Management Plan for
    the Buffalo, Wyoming Field Office that is going to ban new coal
    leasing in the Powder River Basin, the most energy-rich area in
    the country. This short-sighted decision is an insult to
    Wyoming communities and harmful to American energy security. If
    confirmed, would you work with me to reverse this plan?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, yes, I will work with you on that plan
    as well.
        Senator Barrasso. On oil and gas leases, the previous
    Administration, I believe, had a disgraceful record on oil and
    gas management. President Biden blocked production at every
    turn, deferred over 600,000 acres from leasing in Wyoming that
    were previously cleared for oil and gas production. Glad to see
    there is already a lease sale in Wyoming this year. I think it
    needs to continue. If confirmed, will you work to offer
    additional acres for leasing?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, conducting lease sales is a requirement
    of the law. I will obey the law and we will issue lease sales.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        In terms of sage-grouse, Wyoming is home to a large
    population of the greater sage-grouse and its habitat. For over
    15 years, Wyoming has been at the forefront of adopting new
    management approaches to protect the species. Our state has led
    successful efforts to balance conservation with economic
    development. The Biden Administration proposed to designate
    over 600,000 acres in Wyoming as Areas of Critical
    Environmental Concern, also known as ACECs. That is going to
    lock up thousands of acres in Wyoming, halting production and
    development across the state. Would you be willing to reopen
    the Department's greater sage-grouse management?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, we worked on the sage-grouse resource
    management plan in the last Administration, and I was
    interested to learn that this issue is remaining and needs to
    be addressed and we will work with you on it.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        In terms of federal grazing, the Department of the Interior
    plays a critical role in managing federal lands across the
    West. Almost half of the land in Wyoming is owned by the
    Federal Government. Land managed under multiple use is required
    to be managed without impairment of the productivity of the
    land. These are public places that people from Wyoming depend
    upon accessing for their livelihoods. Congress directed
    grazing, timber harvesting, recreation, as well as energy and
    mineral development to take place on these lands. Will you
    support the multiple-use mandate of federal lands?
        Ms. MacGregor. Absolutely, sir, that is the law.
        Senator Barrasso. With regard to the Colorado River Basin,
    the Colorado River flows through seven states, and the Upper
    Basin includes Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. We need
    short-and long-term solutions that provide Westerners the water
    that we need. More water storage, improved federal flexibility,
    better data, and improved forecasting can help accomplish these
    goals. What do you think is the role of the Department in these
    negotiations between the Colorado River Basins, which is
    currently ongoing?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, it sounds like I will be spending a lot
    of time in Wyoming.
        Senator Barrasso. We appreciate it. We would love to have
    you.
        Ms. MacGregor. I think the role of the Department is
    ensuring that we have a responsible solution that provides for
    the 40 million people who rely upon that water, but the
    solution must be state-based.
        Senator Barrasso. Okay.
        With regard to the grizzly bear, the grizzly bear is fully
    recovered. The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem population of
    grizzly bear has been fully recovered for 20 years. Wyoming is
    proud of the role that we played in leading the recovery. The
    population has been delisted two times, under both Democrat and
    Republican administrations. It has been relisted by a federal
    judge. The only thing that Presidents Biden, Obama, Trump, and
    Bush all agreed on is that the grizzly bear is fully recovered.
    But we have federal judges who are taking a different approach.
    The Endangered Species Act was passed by Congress to protect
    species from extinction. Does it make sense for the Federal
    Government to manage and waste taxpayer dollars on a species
    that is in no danger of becoming extinct?
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, I believe we are borrowing some great
    talent from the State of Wyoming to assist us on a lot of these
    issues, especially as it relates to the grizzly bear and the
    science behind that decision.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        Mr. Danly, congratulations to you as well. Let's talk about
    Advanced Reactor Demonstration Projects--nuclear energy.
    Developing first-of-its-kind technology requires time and
    resources. This is especially true for nuclear energy. The
    Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program
    is meant to help developers overcome these hurdles. It is work
    that had begun in earnest during the first Trump
    Administration. The program was signed into law by President
    Trump. I look forward to continuing this good work in getting
    the current projects over the finish line. If confirmed, will
    you ensure the Department of Energy remains committed to this
    mission?
        Mr. Danly. Both the President and the Secretary have
    expressed their enthusiasm for next-gen reactors. I think they
    are almost certainly going to be part of any solution we have
    to meeting power demand. I have every intention of supporting
    the program and working with you on it.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        So Russian uranium--last year, Congress passed legislation
    to ban imports of Russian uranium into the United States. The
    law is intended to revive American uranium production and
    strengthen our nuclear fuel supply chain. This is needed to
    reliably supply critical baseload power plants. The legislation
    must be implemented correctly. The Department of Energy has the
    discretion to provide waivers to companies seeking to import
    uranium from Russia. Do you agree that waivers should be used
    only as a last resort?
        Mr. Danly. We need to remove our reliance for uranium on
    other countries. It is very difficult to have affordable,
    reliable, and secure energy if the fundamental inputs are in
    the hands of either adversarial or even hostile nations. And I
    absolutely agree that the waivers are designed only for use in
    extremis, when you have to have the fuel.
        Senator Barrasso. All right, because we are now seeing that
    sales of nuclear material are coming from China.
        Mr. Danly. Which are coming from Russia.
        Senator Barrasso. Which are coming from Russia, exactly. I
    am glad you know, because the first Trump Administration
    recognized our dependence on uranium imports to fuel our
    nuclear reactors as a national security risk. It convened the
    Nuclear Fuel Working Group to develop recommendations to
    address the issue. As an extension of the work, in 2023,
    Congress passed the Nuclear Fuel Security Act to rebuild our
    nation's nuclear fuel supply chain. Congress repurposed $2.72
    billion in 2024 to support this goal. If confirmed, will you
    make it a priority to build and secure our nuclear fuel supply
    chain, including enrichment and conversion?
        Mr. Danly. Senator, the entire supply chain from beginning
    to end for nuclear power has to be absolutely resilient and
    redundant within the United States. And the Department of
    Energy would not be fully discharging its functions if it
    didn't work on that.
        Senator Barrasso. Before ending this hearing, any other
    questions?
        [No response.]
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
        So for the record, I will ask three questions addressed to
    each nominee before the Committee. Will you be available to
    appear before the Committee and other Congressional Committees
    to represent Departmental positions and respond to issues of
    concern to Congress?
        Mr. Danly. I will.
        Ms. MacGregor. I will.
        Senator Barrasso. Are you aware of any personal holdings,
    investments, or interests that could constitute a conflict or
    create the appearance of such a conflict, should you be
    confirmed and assume the office to which you have been
    nominated by the President?
        Mr. Danly. I am aware of no conflicts.
        Ms. MacGregor. Sir, aside from the ones I disclosed that I
    discussed and will divest, no, there will be no conflicts.
        Senator Barrasso. Great.
        Are you involved in or do you have any assets held in blind
    trusts?
        Mr. Danly. No.
        Ms. MacGregor. No.
        Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
        I want to thank the witnesses and congratulate you. Thank
    you for your testimony.
        All Senators, I thank. We had a very good turnout for the
    questioning today.
        Questions for the record of the hearings are due by 6:00
    p.m. this evening.
        The hearing is adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 12:12 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

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