[Senate Hearing 119-122]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 119-122
THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST
FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 18, 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
61-238 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
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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
WITNESS
Wright, Hon. Christopher A., Secretary, U.S. Department of
Energy......................................................... 4
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy:
Statement for the Record..................................... 116
Blake, Robert:
Letter for the Record........................................ 128
Blake, Robert et al.:
Letter for the Record........................................ 132
Cortez Masto, Hon. Catherine et al.:
Letter addressed to Secretary Wright, dated June 17, 2025.... 112
Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe:
Letter for the Record........................................ 120
Heinrich, Hon. Martin:
Opening Statement............................................ 2
Statement for the Record with accompanying letters from
tribes and tribal organizations............................ 115
Hickenlooper, Hon. John W.:
Chart depicting Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy funding levels since 2019........................... 42
Lee, Hon. Mike:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Navajo Nation:
Letter for the Record........................................ 122
Nez Perce Tribe et al.:
Letter for the Record........................................ 134
Oceti Sakowin Power Authority:
Letter for the Record........................................ 123
Scotts Valley Energy Corporation:
Letter for the Record........................................ 130
Van Dyke, Jeremy:
Letter for the Record........................................ 138
Wright, Hon. Christopher A.:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
Written Testimony............................................ 7
Responses to Questions for the Record........................ 47
THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET REQUEST
FOR THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026
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WEDNESDAY, JUNE 18, 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. Good morning. The Committee will come to
order.
We will hear today from Secretary Wright, the Secretary of
Energy, as we discuss the Fiscal Year 2026 budget for the U.S.
Department of Energy.
Welcome, Mr. Secretary, and thank you for meeting with us
today.
When we last saw you before the Committee, back in January,
you were then President Trump's nominee to lead the Department
of Energy. You are now five months into that role and you are
already delivering results. Congratulations on that. This
Committee has, since then, favorably reported ten additional
nominees, including James Danly, who is already serving as your
Deputy, and nine more who still await confirmation by the full
Senate. I encourage Senate leadership to move forward with
those well-qualified nominees, who again, have received our
favorable recommendation out of this Committee, to move them
forward promptly so that they can get in place and then help
you implement President Trump's America First agenda.
The Department's budget in recent years has ballooned. We
have seen a dramatic expansion fueled by the misnamed Inflation
Reduction Act, which instead provided tens of billions of
dollars to fund green energy projects that make energy less
reliable and more expensive for the American people. Perhaps
the worst example of this--the Department of Energy's Loan
Programs Office. The IRA gave it over $300 billion in new
lending authority, far exceeding the traditional portfolio, and
the previous administration rushed to approve nearly $100
billion of those loans in just a few months, more than twice
what it had previously disbursed over the last 15 years. So I
want to commend you, Mr. Secretary, for taking strong action to
protect taxpayers' dollars, including by canceling nearly $4
billion in funding for worthless IRA projects that were rushed
out the door hastily, under the dark of night, between election
day and President Trump's inauguration.
Under your leadership as Secretary of Energy, DOE is back
to approving LNG exports consistent with DOE precedent, with
nearly ten billion cubic feet per day's worth of export
applications, now green-lighted after the previous
administration's unlawful pause. Your Department is also
addressing, in meaningful ways, growing grid reliability
issues, crises caused by issuing numerous 202(c) orders to keep
baseload generation online during the most stressed months,
helping to avoid blackouts, and keeping energy prices stable
for Americans all across the country. All of this tends to set
the stage for a return to the Department of Energy's proper
role, that is, focusing on basic research and development in
energy and science that foster innovation, strengthen energy
independence, and reduce energy costs for the American people,
all while assuring greater reliability. I look forward to
hearing from you today, and in particular, hearing how you plan
to continue strengthening oversight, discipline, and
accountability within your Department, and how you will manage
programs like the Loan Programs Office, the science labs, and
new transmission initiatives in a way that will protect
taxpayers, strengthen our energy independence, and serve the
best interests of the American people.
So again, welcome, Mr. Secretary, and I would now like to
recognize Senator Heinrich, the Ranking Member, for his opening
statement.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARTIN HEINRICH,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO
Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Chairman Lee, and welcome,
Secretary Wright.
Secretary Wright, we are here to discuss the FY26 budget
request, and while this is our first opportunity to ask you
questions since your confirmation, it's not your first time
defending this budget. Last week, you testified before the
Energy and Commerce Committee, and earlier in May, you appeared
before the House and Senate Energy and Water Development
Subcommittees. It is clear from those hearings that there seems
to be a noticeable disconnect between what you have stated
publicly and the actions taken under your leadership as
Secretary of the Department of Energy.
At your nomination hearing in January, I asked you if the
executive branch has the authority, without Congress's
approval, to withhold or terminate funding for an activity
Congress approved in law. You said that you would ``follow the
laws and statutes of the United States of America.'' On May
30th, $3.7 billion in awards from the Office of Clean Energy
Demonstrations were canceled without notice or without
justification. Cancellation of these awards crosses into
impoundment territory and is certainly a breach of contract.
Actions like these will severely damage our country's ability
to lead in developing and commercializing next-generation
technologies while ceding ground to our competitors.
Another way to undermine our leadership: demoralizing the
scientists and staff at DOE, the largest federal sponsor of
basic research in the physical sciences. I know you realize
this because on February 5th, you called DOE staff ``the
unbelievable humans that are in the room today, that are across
our national labs, in our cleanup facilities, in our offices
around the country.'' Less than a month later, however, 2,000
DOE employees, including hundreds of National Nuclear Security
Administration employees responsible for safeguarding the
nation's nuclear stockpile, were fired. That was unacceptable.
But only after heavy criticism did the Department partially
rescind the NNSA termination order and scramble to reinstate
these employees.
In coming months, the Department is reportedly set to lose
thousands of additional employees to early buyouts. As my
colleague, Ranking Member Murray noted, taxpayers have spent
$70 million to pay people not to work at this point, but it
seems that you may be regretting that decision. The Washington
Post reported that across the government, officials are
rehiring federal workers who were forced out or encouraged to
resign. You know that this is no way to run a business or an
agency, and I believe that we have to do better. And just
yesterday, I heard from the national labs that this budget
would cut funding for the labs by $2.75 billion, or 11 percent,
compared to Fiscal Year 2024, an estimated loss of more than
7,700 jobs once fully implemented. Our nation's scientific and
energy leadership is on the line.
And let's talk a little bit about energy dominance. In your
confirmation hearings, you said that you would be an
``unabashed steward for all sources of affordable, reliable,
and secure American energy and the infrastructure needed to
develop, deliver, and secure them.'' However, last week, before
the Energy and Commerce Committee, you said, ``I have never
been for all of the above. And if I said it at one point in
time, I misspoke. I am against energy sources that make the
energy system more expensive or less reliable.'' I wouldn't
call that misspeaking. That's a disconnect. If you truly were
against energy sources that make the energy system more
expensive or less reliable, I don't believe that you would be
propping up the uneconomic J.H. Campbell coal power plant in
Michigan to produce expensive and inefficient power. A new
report by Energy Innovation shows that the average megawatt of
power generated by U.S. coal plants is 28 percent more
expensive in 2024 compared to 2021. And that means that
families spent $6.2 billion more on electricity generated by
coal in 2024 than they would have just three years ago.
As electricity demand continues to grow, we will not be
able to meet the energy needs of new data centers while keeping
household bills low if we prevent the growth of affordable
clean energy resources. We need a true all-of-the-above
strategy to adequately deliver our energy goals, and this
budget fails to deliver on that. During your time as Secretary,
you have also said that ten percent of Americans in the last 12
months have received a utility disconnection notice, and that
one of your goals was to shrink that number to zero by making
energy more abundant and affordable. That is a worthy mission.
And yet, this budget eliminates the Weatherization Assistance
Program, which saves households an average of $372 a year. You
have often said that artificial intelligence is the Manhattan
Project of our time. And yet, this budget proposes a 14 percent
cut to the Office of Science and a 57 percent cut to ARPA-E,
where our major AI R&D efforts are currently underway. We
cannot expect to maintain U.S. leadership in emerging
technologies if we shortchange the office's programs, and most
importantly, the people needed to do so.
Lastly, I want to want to raise DOE's failure to respond in
a timely and substantive manner to congressional oversight
requests. I have sent four letters on topics ranging from staff
reductions to funding freezes and project cancellations. I have
received zero responses. That is unacceptable. You and I may
disagree on many things, but the need to ensure that Americans
have access to affordable domestic sources of energy and
support our research and energy leadership should be shared
goals. This budget proposal does not support those goals
adequately, nor do many of the current actions at the
Department, and I hope we see changes.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Heinrich.
Secretary Wright, you are now invited to give your opening
statement.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER A. WRIGHT,
SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Chairman Lee, Ranking Member
Heinrich, and members of the Committee, it is an honor to
appear before you today as Secretary of Energy to discuss the
President's Fiscal Year 2026 budget request for the Department
of Energy.
Under President Trump's leadership, our priorities for the
Department are clear: to achieve American energy dominance,
bolster our national security, meet our Cold War legacy cleanup
commitments, and unleash historic innovation, including AI, for
our nation and world. We are driven by a bedrock conviction
that an affordable, reliable, secure energy supply is the
foundation of a strong and prosperous nation. When America
leads in energy, we lead in prosperity, security, and human
flourishing. We are committed to advancing our critical
missions while cutting red tape, increasing efficiency, and
ensuring we are better stewards of taxpayer dollars. The
President's Fiscal Year 2026 budget will ensure taxpayer
resources are allocated appropriately and cost effectively. We
will invest DOE's resources in technologies and sources that
support affordable, reliable, and secure energy and provide a
return on investment for the American taxpayers.
DOE has several tools at its disposal that can advance
these emerging energy technologies, and I thank the Committee
for their leadership in establishing a new energy dominance
financing program for DOE's Loan Programs Office as part of the
One Big Beautiful Bill. This will enable DOE to return to its
core mission of supporting projects that are most critical to
America's energy security while maintaining responsible
stewardship of taxpayer dollars, something DOE failed to do in
the previous administration. It is deeply concerning how many
billions of dollars were rushed out the door without proper due
diligence in the final days of the Biden administration.
DOE is undertaking a thorough review of financial
assistance that identifies waste of taxpayer dollars, protects
America's national security, and advances President Trump's
commitment to unleash American energy dominance. As a result,
we recently announced the termination of 24 projects, totaling
over $3.7 billion in taxpayer-funded financial assistance.
These projects failed to meet the economic, national security,
or energy security standards necessary to sustain DOE's
investment, and the taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize
them. Instead, we are advancing a policy of energy addition,
fully leveraging affordable, reliable, and secure resources
that have powered our country for generations. The United
States is blessed with an abundance of coal, oil, and natural
gas, and our administration is committed to using them to meet
the growing energy needs of the American people. Every one of
these resources was unleashed through our world-changing power
of American innovation.
Our national labs are the engine that drives research and
development to expand our energy dominance. We will prioritize
research that supports true technological breakthroughs and
maintains America's global competitiveness. America must play a
leading role in the commercialization of reliable, safe, and
secure nuclear energy, and we are taking steps to accelerate
innovation in this sector. DOE is working to advance the rapid
deployment of next-generation nuclear technology, including
small modular reactors. I am proud to report that we have
officially ended the previous administration's reckless pause
on LNG export permits and have returned to regular order for
reviewing and approving new permits. DOE will also work to
replenish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a national asset
that protects our security in times of crisis. And I want to
thank this Committee for prioritizing funding to refill the SPR
in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
We are advancing President Trump's pledge to lower the cost
of living and expand choice by right-sizing DOE's approach to
home efficiency standards and regulations. Under the
President's direction, we have begun slashing more than 47
regulations as part of the largest deregulatory effort in
history. These actions are projected to save the American
people approximately $11 billion while restoring consumer
freedom and lowering costs.
The responsible stewardship and modernization of the
nation's nuclear weapon systems is paramount for this
administration. DOE is focused on addressing critical upgrades
for the U.S. nuclear stockpile and maintaining our engine
powerhouses for submarines and aircraft carriers. Both tasks
will become even more crucial in the next few years. Our
nuclear innovation, as a nation, began with the Manhattan
Project, and the next Manhattan Project is clearly AI. DOE has
a significant role to play in driving AI innovation for
scientific discovery and national security. Our agency has
world-class high-performance computing capabilities, including
four of the world's top ten computers.
Harnessing our energy potential to power global AI
leadership while meeting growing demand will be the challenge
of our time, but America does not back down from big challenges
or big builds. As Secretary of Energy, I am honored by the
responsibility to help meet the American people's growing
energy needs and lead the world in energy development. I
appreciate the opportunity to work with many of you on this
Committee to unlock America's full energy potential and drive
down costs for families with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and I
look forward to continuing to work together to achieve
President Trump's energy dominance agenda. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify before the Committee today.
[The prepared statement of Secretary Wright follows:]
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The Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Wright. We will now
invite members of the Committee to ask you questions in five-
minute rounds. I will begin, and then we will have Senator
Heinrich after me, and then we will alternate between
Republicans and Democrats thereafter, in order of seniority,
subject to the early-bird rule adopted by the Committee.
So I will begin now.
Secretary Wright, the Energy Information Agency (EIA)
defines something known as the LCOE--the Levelized Cost of
Electricity--as ``the estimated revenue required to build and
operate a generator over a specified cost recovery period.''
Now, as I understand it, this LCOE calculation does not take
into account existing generation resources--stuff that's
already in place spinning out electrons, especially
dispatchable generation, which is retiring at an alarmingly
rapid pace. Additionally, wind and solar have been shown in
many instances to have a negative effect on the levelized cost
of dispatchable generation. This is because generation, like
gas, nuclear, and coal, among others, are forced to reduce
output while still having fixed operational costs that go along
with those enterprises, all to accommodate for electrons put
onto the grid by other sources, intermittent renewable
generation sources.
I recently introduced a bill that would repeal all the IRA
subsidies for inferior generation, like wind and solar. Can you
elaborate on how tax incentives for those generating sources--
the intermittent sources--actually increase the levelized cost
of firm resources, thereby increasing costs for consumers at
the end of the day?
Secretary Wright. Yes, Senator, thank you for the question.
It's an issue I am quite passionate about. I worked on solar
energy in graduate school many years ago and so, as I said in
my opening statement and have maintained ever since, I am for
all sources of affordable, reliable energy. I am not for all
sources of energy, period--only ones that contribute to
affordable, reliable, secure energy. The levelized cost of
ownership idea is decades-old, and it came out to compare
always-on dispatchable sources--the cost with which we build a
new nuclear plant, a new coal plant, or a new gas plant--
because they provide the same thing. They provide electricity
on demand. I compare--it was never intended, of course, for a
source that you don't know when it's going to be there and when
it's going to be gone. That's just a completely different
entity.
When your child is born premature, and you place that child
in a life-saving incubator, it's not okay to say it's going to
turn on when the wind starts blowing or, well, it's on right
now, but when the sun goes down, it's probably going to be off
until the morning. There simply are no customers for
electricity that you may have it or you may not have it. I gave
it--imagine if you had a competitor for Uber that came out--
they are called ``no go.'' And it came out and said our
levelized cost per mile of transport is going to be ten percent
cheaper than Uber. Everybody should run to that, it's cheaper.
Now, we don't know when we are going to come pick you up and
when we do pick you up, we don't know where we are going to
drop you off, but our cost is ten percent cheaper. They are
just two entirely different things.
And so, as you rightly pointed out, what matters is the
system cost, but if you have sources--and I can talk more about
the Texas electricity grid later, but peak demand is the actual
time that you usually get the lowest delivery from renewables.
So you have to have the other grid, the reliable grid, to
provide electricity at peak demand to keep everyone alive and
the incubator on. And then we have a whole second grid that
comes and goes with the weather. And, of course, to manage both
of those together, it's guaranteed, and data has shown it in
spades, to be more expensive and a less reliable grid. And
further, that no-go company that wouldn't fly, if we subsidized
it and helped them buy these vehicles and stand up a business,
with the business model that doesn't work, you just cascade a
problem. They are very unique subsidies, where we spend a
dollar of subsidy and it doesn't defray consumer cost. The
government spends a dollar of subsidy and consumers pay a
dollar extra for their electricity.
The Chairman. Thank you. No, that's helpful. Very good
explanation.
There is a residential solar company called Sunnova that
received $3 billion--a $3 billion loan guarantee from the
previous administration's Department of Energy that recently
filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And now, Biden's Loan Programs
Office Director, Jigar Shah, was aware of accusations that
Sunnova defrauded seniors, selling solar to those who were ``on
their death beds.'' Despite this, Mr. Shah instructed DOE staff
to prioritize Sunnova's loan application after attending a
dinner hosted by a Sunnova Board Member. The Board Member's
spouse was the former chair of the DNC. The DOE Inspector
General determined that Shah's actions potentially violated the
ethical standards for executive branch employees.
How can the American people be confident that the Loan
Programs Office inside the Department of Energy is acting in
their best interest when actions like those taken by Jigar Shah
have undermined the credibility of that same office?
Secretary Wright. Huge undermining of the credibility,
Senator, huge undermining. And it's one of the reasons people
are mad at me for being slow and process-oriented, but it's in
response to things like that that we have created this program
review process where we have a team of cross-functional people
to evaluate every project of any meaningful scale. If it's a
few million dollars or more, and there are 500 such projects,
we are going to evaluate every one of them in a business-like,
professional manner, not a political manner, not a self-
interested manner, but a business-like manner. And so, yeah,
clearly, we need a very different culture at DOE and we are
working every day to build that.
The Chairman. Wonderful. Thank you.
Senator Heinrich.
Senator Heinrich. Secretary, first-off, will you commit to
responding to the letters that I have sent your office?
Secretary Wright. Senator, the most efficient
communication, of course, is to reach out and we can jump on
the phone at any time. I know we have done that a few times. I
am happy to do that much more. My schedule is very tough, and I
should respond, and will respond to your letters.
Senator Heinrich. I'm sorry, I should not have to spend
time in these hearings on this. It's a simple communication
that I want something formally in writing on. I am not telling
you how to respond to it. I am just asking you to do what every
Secretary of Energy has always done and respond to my letters.
Democrats and Republicans alike.
Secretary Wright. You bet. You will get a response.
Senator Heinrich. I appreciate that.
I want to go directly to the heart of some of what you
described in your Uber analogy. And first off, do you know what
the average price per kilowatt-hour that retail customers pay
across the country is according to EIA?
Secretary Wright. Yes, it's about 14 cents.
Senator Heinrich. I think it's 17.1 right now. I bring that
up because I pay substantially less than that. I am in a
utility in central New Mexico. Most people formally know it as
PNM, and I pay about 12 and change cents per kilowatt-hour. And
yet, their generation is largely clean, mostly renewable with
batteries. And they have been able to maintain that cost
profile of just over 12 cents per kilowatt-hour using
renewables and batteries. And I think you are absolutely
correct that we should be comparing apples to apples. But
today, with a little bit of storage, they are able to manage
the grid with low cost and reliability with renewables. So when
you paint a picture like they just turn off in the middle of
the night or when the wind doesn't blow, that's not my personal
experience. That's not how we are managing the grid today.
Now, I want to talk a little bit about soaring power demand
because that's something that you and I both agree on. You said
that soaring U.S. power demand is a train wreck waiting to
happen and that it necessitates significant investments in
regulatory reforms. Doubling down on unaffordable energy will
not get us the energy that we need. The NextEra CEO has
recently pointed out that the cost per kilowatt to build a gas-
fired facility has gone up from $785 back in 2022 to $2,400
today. And he also stated that retirement of every coal plant
in America, if we stopped that, would only get us an extra 40
gigawatts. Natural gas generation, because there is a five- to
seven-year backlog on turbines now, will likely get us maybe 75
gigawatts by 2030. And so, I don't want to get into a back-and-
forth over different energy sources so much as just to
understand. Did DOE do a modeling process to determine the
specific impacts of this proposed budget on both supply--energy
supply--and cost?
Secretary Wright. Absolutely. We have a team, in fact, that
develops a model of the grid that looks at the grid by regions.
And one of the comments you mentioned in your opening statement
was that we did issue a 202(c) order to keep a coal plant in
southwestern Michigan open because of small reserve margins in
MISO, and that plant was being retired without new capacity on
the MISO grid to back it up. We were criticized for that, and
two days later there was a blackout.
Senator Heinrich. Did the State of Michigan agree with that
analysis? Did you consult with them?
Secretary Wright. Well, we spoke to the grid operators, the
utility operator of that company, and had plenty of back-and-
forth dialogue on that. I think, in general, people realize
this was a good move for energy----
Senator Heinrich. Let's go back to the modeling that was
done on this budget. Can you share that modeling with us?
Secretary Wright. Sure.
Senator Heinrich. Great.
I mentioned in my opening remarks that the President's
budget would cut funding at our national labs by $2.75 billion.
At Sandia Labs in my home state, I am hearing from engineers,
pretty much every time I go home right now, that this will
significantly affect the Center for Integrated
Nanotechnologies, national user facilities, research equipment,
that it will limit fusion research on reactor environments and
advanced materials and jeopardize environmental monitoring,
potentially exposing DOE to fines under a consent agreement
with the New Mexico Environment Department. Did DOE do analysis
and ask the labs for their analysis on the impacts of this
budget on their ability to do their mission work?
Secretary Wright. The budget has not been allocated down to
individual labs and all that, but all of the allocation of
funds and decisions of how it will be impacted will be done on
a lab-by-lab basis, but no, this budget, unfortunately, comes
from the tough world we are in today, where we, the American
taxpayers, pay a dollar of tax and the Federal Government
spends a dollar of thirty. It's just an unsustainable problem
we are on. I share a passion for the national labs, like you
do. My goal is to grow, not shrink the output of top quality
science at our labs. But do we need to be a little wiser and
get the political science, not the real science, out of labs?
Do we need to be a little bit more efficient in running labs?
We do. But are we going to gut the technology and science in
what we are doing in fusion and nanotechnology at the labs?
Absolutely, we are not.
Senator Heinrich. Chairman, I am out of time for now, at
least until the next round.
The Chairman. Senator Justice.
Senator Justice. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member
and all the folks that are on the Committee.
I want to do just this--you know, we are so blessed to have
this man, it's off the chart. And I apologize--I apologize for
your service that you have absolutely dedicated to all of us in
every way and then you have to be grilled. You know, we want,
and we always would stand up--I would always stand up for, you
know, good answers--good answers. This man says over and over
and over, I am an energy guy. I understand this absolutely as
well as anybody in this room, I guarantee it--guaran-flat-tee
it. Now, with all that being said, he has said over and over,
what he is tasked with is affordable, reliable energy. That's
what we have got to have in this country today. And if we don't
have that, we are in real trouble.
Now, we know, I know, I will promise you this, we can
volley back and forth, but absolutely, with all in me, I would
vouch for this man right here. That's all there is to it. He is
just that good. If you can't see his passion, you are not
looking. That's all there is to it. He is eat-up with passion.
He is stuck on ``on'' all the time. And absolutely, he has
knowledge off the chart. Chris, I appreciate you. I really do.
And I will fight a buzz saw for you any day. That's all there
is to it.
I can tell you just this, that from an energy standpoint,
if we don't get our act together, a year from today, a year and
a half from today, we are hitting the fan. That's all there is
to it. We are absolutely on a plane and we are flying right at
the ground and we are going to hit the ground if we don't do
something. This man can lead us. He can lead us with knowledge
and his passion. He can lead us to where we don't hit the
ground. And with all that being said, we all know, we are going
to have a decision to make. How is it going to feel to make the
decision? You are going to make the decision either for homes
or really and truly for industry and jobs and AI and on and on
and on. You are not going to be able to do both unless you have
got a real leader of the band, and that's why I vouch for this
man with all in me.
Now, I can go on and on and on, but there is a fella, his
name is Jim Billings. He ran a small seed corn company. They
asked Jim Billings a long time ago to write an absolute
critique of what he did because he was being bought out by a
bigger company. And basically, what Jim Billings did is, he
wrote 13 pages of the single space, and I have told you this
before. And then, he laid his pencil down and sat back and then
he decided to write and he wrote, ``see the right man in the
right job and they are motivated.'' And he put his pencil down
because that's what the President does. Our President
recognizes the energy situation. And the last thing I would say
is just this, tell me a time in history--tell me a time in
history that we have progressed without abundant, cheap, and
now clean energy. There is nothing about this man that wants to
damage our environment, our lands, our waters. He wants to lead
us. And I truly believe our President wants to do the same
thing.
Mr. Chairman, I am done. Thank you so much.
The Chairman. Senator Cantwell.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, good to see you. We had a chance to say
hello earlier. I invited you again to the Tri Cities. You said
you think you are coming sometime soon--this summer or fall. So
we look forward to seeing you there and being with you.
The Hanford budget and the Tri-Party Agreement--there have
been cuts to the Hanford office, they lost 94 people out of
their 308 Department of Energy workforce. These are managers.
There are various issues with the budget request. So how do you
plan to meet the Tri-Party Agreement with the budget and
workforce depletions?
Secretary Wright. Yeah, a huge part of the effort at the
Department, the first few months, has been to right-size the
Department, which is to look at how do we do things today and
what is a more efficient way to do that? The Department head
count grew well over 20 percent over the last four years. And I
would say there is no evidence that it was more productive at
the end of those four years.
So again, as a business man, except for during COVID, I
never laid anyone off in my entire career. So I don't take the
personnel decisions lightly. In fact, I take them very heavily.
Senator Cantwell. I think a big moment is coming at
Hanford, so, you know, I wish I could--anyway, we will see each
other in the Tri-Cities, and we will go over it, but----
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Cantwell [continuing]. For a long time, there were
lots of schemes about how we were going to clean up Hanford.
But guess what? Vitrification is on the move. So now there is
so much more the Federal Government can do in meeting the
budget to meet the Tri-Party Agreement because we are actually
on our way. So I guess, you know, we will talk about this in
more detail, but that's what is at stake here. The normal
funding is missing the opportunity to actually get this project
that has cost us so much over such a long period of time, where
we really need it to be. So that's the key point, but we will
go over those details.
Do you support baseload hydropower online?
Secretary Wright. Absolutely. Hydro has been a great
resource for this country.
Senator Cantwell. Okay. So you think--you consider that
part of baseload power?
We have--Senator Murkowski and I have a bill, basically
giving tax credits at very low cost just to help keep the
efficiency of the hydro system. As we look at all the
challenges we face with new power demands, making that system
as efficient as possible is really critical, and we consider
that baseload power. So I am just asking. Maybe you can look at
the Murkowski-Cantwell bill.
Secretary Wright. Yeah, I would view it as baseload power
to the extent that we can repower and increase the yield from
existing hydro assets----
Senator Cantwell. That's exactly what we are talking about.
Secretary Wright. They are quite beneficial to our
electricity grid.
Senator Cantwell. Thank you. They are beneficial in a lot
of ways, but definitely to the grid. So thank you for that.
Do you support eliminating 45V? Maybe this was asked by my
colleague while I was gone, but 45V, the Hydrogen Production
Tax Credit, was proposed to be eliminated. Do you support that,
or where are you on the hydrogen tax credit?
Secretary Wright. The government record in picking winners
and losers and subsidizing in energy is a very poor one. So my
default position is, the less government involvement on the
scales of energy sources, the better. I realize in the real
world, that's not possible. So we have got to get rid of--you
have got to prioritize which ones are the most offensive, and I
mentioned wind, solar, and battery certainly as technologies
that we have subsidized and they have led to more expensive
electricity. I would put them, maybe, as the most offensive.
Hydrogen--it's tough with the math to see how, in the long
term, it becomes a meaningful commercial energy source.
Senator Cantwell. But again, there are lots of chapters
here, and we could, again, talk about them.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Cantwell. But I actually think getting rid of the
tax credits that we have, some of the other ones, broadly, are
going to lead to an increased electricity cost. And so, can I
get you to tell me about the hydrogen hubs, whether you support
the hydrogen hubs and moving forward on this?
Secretary Wright. So we have put together, as I am sure you
have heard, and we have published it on the website, you know,
this project review process. We have a cross-functional team
that evaluates every project. We are going through 500
projects.
Senator Cantwell. But is that data cull a way to kill the
projects, or do you really believe in funding some?
Secretary Wright. Oh, absolutely. We are funding plenty of
projects right now and we don't stop funding any project. We
are funding all of the existing projects right now, and when we
evaluate them, no, plenty of projects will pass. Plenty of
projects will pass. For other projects, we will say, hey, can
you modify it this way to make it much more beneficial? Some
projects will be modified and some projects will be ended.
Senator Cantwell. What application are you most excited
about in the hydrogen hub area? What application? Fertilizer?
Jet fuel? Something else? What are you most excited about?
Secretary Wright. Well, so, the highest-value use of
hydrogen, right? So it's expensive to produce but there are
high-value uses of hydrogen, like we produce it today
commercially because in refining it's very high-value in
fertilizers, materials, in chemistry. The problem is, what is
the cost to produce the hydrogen, and are there uses of it
where the value is above the cost?
Senator Cantwell. Yes.
Secretary Wright. I say energy is about two things. It's
just about people and math.
Senator Cantwell. Well, we think, going back to the 45V--my
time is expired, but in looking at green hydro, which we have
in the Northwest, it drives down the cost and provides sources
for very hard-to-serve, hard-to-decarbonize big sectors of the
economy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Senator Hyde-Smith.
Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
Mr. Secretary, for your willingness to serve, the tenacity you
serve with, and you bring so much to the table, and we are very
grateful for that, and you continue to do it every day, to just
impress us.
I, too, want to invite you to my home State of Mississippi.
It's pretty hot right now, but the humidity today here, I
think, is matching it. But we have just positioned ourselves
for greater artificial intelligence, infrastructure growth, so
many things, like many states that you talk to, the members
here. We have attracted several significant investments, like
Amazon Web Services, the hyper-skilled data centers from many
major companies that we are excited about, but, of course, what
is crucial for supporting fast-growing AI is reliable energy
and affordable energy.
The Mississippi Power Play initiative was recently unveiled
by our state leaders, and it is about increasing energy
production, but also ensuring that those things that follow--
the affordability of that, the reliability of that, and access
for all of these companies that are choosing to come to our
state. But we are uniquely positioned to use underground salt
caverns that offer energy storage to enhance the grid
reliability in high-peak seasons. We are fortunate to have
that, but moreover, the state established an artificial
intelligence regulation task force to guide the state as so
many new technologies come onboard, as the AI demand
proactively comes addressing all of these issues. The state has
really stepped up, and our state leadership is doing that with
the stakeholders' collaboration and the workforce training
that's going to take place for the programs to support all of
these initiatives. So we are really excited about this in
Mississippi.
But you would see firsthand that we are working to shape
America's path forward in energy independence and AI dominance
and aligning perfectly with our national security, our economic
growth goals, and the potentials that are there. So I believe
your insight is going to greatly benefit this country, is going
to greatly benefit Mississippi in our efforts to strengthen
this, and I am honored that you are at the helm.
In your testimony, you mentioned reorganizing the visions
within the Energy Department, including refocusing the Office
of Fossil Energy on its original mission of supporting fossil
energy production. Thank you. Will you discuss how the
Department plans to strengthen this mission and find innovative
ways to help achieve the President's goal of energy
independence through the reorganization of the Office of Fossil
Energy?
Secretary Wright. Yes, thank you.
So it's actually one of our smaller budgets, the Office of
Fossil Energy, even though it's over 80 percent of American
energy. When I was born it was sort of mid-80 percent. It's
mid-80 percent today. So it's the dominant source of energy in
the United States and the world, but it has been a commercial
success for a long time. It doesn't need a lot of involvement
from the Department, except for permitting, getting out of the
way, and issuing LNG permits so you can build infrastructure.
But we do have some money to invest in next-generation
technologies. So there is some research funding in fossil
energy.
The part that was removed was, you know, several hundred
million dollars that was focused on reducing greenhouse gases.
I have written about climate change for 20 years, so it's a
very real thing, but funding things that, you know, take a ton
of carbon out of the atmosphere at a several-hundred-dollar
cost, and if you look at what's the benefit from reducing that
ton of carbon--that's this so-called social cost of carbon,
which is very hard to calculate--but the previous
administration went through torturous math of almost no
discount rate and assumed that agricultural productivity
declines, despite the 50-year upward trend, that people won't
get air conditioning as the planet gets a little warmer. They
did all sorts of just crazy--they use a climate scenario that
has been widely dismissed as completely implausible called
RCP8.5--and they stretched it up to $100 for the social cost of
a ton of carbon.
So if that's the negative impact, should we spend $300 to
reduce a cost that maybe is $100? And that's a stretch. A more
credible estimate maybe is $10 or $20. And then, America is
only four percent of the global population. So should we spend
$300 to save a quarter? That's, you know, clearly that math
just doesn't add up. The Department will continue to support
technologies to maybe find better ways to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions. It is a real issue, but we should be credible about
it and not just throwing money out of it because it's expensive
and, you know, for a coal plant, for example, the dew
sequestration, basically, you lose a third of the power out of
the plant to inject the CO2 underground. So we are,
as you and I, when we first connected, we are about common
sense, things that make sense. If we can spend a dollar and get
$2 of benefit, we will do that every day and on Sundays too,
but we want to critically look at things. Is this making our
country better? Is this making our world better or not?
Thank you, Senator.
Senator Hyde-Smith. Thank you. Your approach is very
refreshing.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Hickenlooper.
Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you,
Mr. Secretary for taking the time and for your public service
on this.
I want to go into a little bit of the issues around climate
change again and the cost per carbon because I think they are
widely debated, a lot of criticism that the costs are not
significant. I have that liability that I actually studied this
stuff way back in--you know, I got my master's in earth and
environmental science, as we discussed, in 1979, when we called
it the greenhouse effect. But it is a little unnerving, as I
went through my geology years, all through the 80s, that much
of what was predicted then, that I was skeptical about, has
come true. And it's extreme weather, the droughts, specifically
in the western United States and southwestern United States
that were widely predicted back then.
And we look at the costs there, so I think when we look at
the value of carbon, we have to begin assessing some of these
issues. In places in California and Florida, people can't get
home insurance, right? In Florida, from 2023 alone, there was a
90 percent increase in what people had to spend to get their
homes insured. Miami was 322 percent in 2024. Tampa, 213
percent. You look in California, and I am sure my associate, my
colleague here will go into this even more--only 31 percent by
one measure--only 31 percent of residents still have insurance.
They can't get insurance.
So this is the result of either these extreme weather
events of rain, you know, these rivers in the sky, or it's
wildfires. In each case, how do you reconcile, if you begin
looking at those costs, the benefit that you get from
renewables and clean energy if eventually we are going to have
to address climate change? One way or another, if this is
continuing to grow at the level it is, we are going to have to
address it somehow.
Secretary Wright. So Senator, I always appreciate your
thoughtful approach to all of these issues that interplay
between energy and climate change. And so, yes, many pieces
there. And as you and I have talked, the world has been
decarbonizing in the way we produce energy for about 200 years,
you know, going from wood, to coal, to oil, to natural gas.
Nuclear probably is going to be the biggest growing energy
source sometime in the future. Today, it's natural gas, but we
have moved down that lower carbon intensity-ladder, and I think
eventually we will get to, probably, a carbon-neutral energy
system, but yeah, it's likely generations from now. And so, we
have tried to accelerate that. You mentioned it, you know,
globally, the world has spent--it depends on how you count it--
somewhere between $3 and $10 trillion on wind, solar, and
batteries, and last year is the first year they passed three
percent of global primary energy. So it has been a very
expensive--it has been an energy resource maybe intended for
decarbonization----
Senator Hickenlooper. We have made great investments in it.
We don't argue that. The world has made great investments and
we have seen the price come down dramatically.
Secretary Wright. We have seen the price per unit of
electricity from them come down, but everywhere they have had
meaningful penetration they have led to more expensive
electricity.
Senator Hickenlooper. Well, would you say, in Texas, you
look at their--so Texas has 80 percent more wind and solar than
any other state in the country. And yet, when you look at it,
they have among the very lowest costs of electricity to a home.
Secretary Wright. They have the most expensive electricity
of the southern states. So it's kind of--Texas does have lower-
cost electricity, as do many states across the country, but not
because of wind and solar--I would say, in spite of wind and
solar. The alternative is Florida there that--both of them
dominantly run on natural gas, but Florida did not load its
natural gas grid with just massive amounts of wind and solar
that make the grid turn up and down all the time and drive up
prices. So Texas has done, you know, better than New York or
New England, for sure, but its electricity is affordable not
because, but in spite of wind and solar.
But let's come back to your comments about insurance. These
are very real, very human issues. We do have trouble with
insurance markets. I would maintain this is the way markets are
regulated, the way they are controlled, and their restrictions
on freedom to compete, because, if you look at the losses from
extreme weather damages that are paid out by insurance--insured
losses from extreme weather damage--it has been on a multi-
decade downward trend--not an upward trend, but downward trend.
Over 20 percent decline over the last 30 years. Deaths from
extreme weather have declined over 98 percent. So extreme
weather is not actually exploding and growing as everyone says.
Drought is actually on a downward trend in the U.S. and
globally, so----
Senator Hickenlooper. Well, we will take you down on the
Colorado River when you think that--we have got 10,000 years of
data on the Colorado River, and that's a drought that is not
slowing down. I am out of time, but I will come back for a
second round, I promise.
Secretary Wright. Let's go down the Colorado River
together, my friend.
Senator Hickenlooper. Well, absolutely, and I hope when you
are coming back to Colorado at some point, I want to go out to
NREL too, as well, but we will get to that in the second round.
Secretary Wright. We would love to.
The Chairman. Senator Padilla.
Senator Padilla. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I know five
minutes go quick, so I am going to jump right into it. The
first couple of questions may seem off-topic, but there is a
point. Please humor me here.
You are a science guy. Cybersecurity is a top concern for
the country. Should we be embracing policies to ensure people's
privacy or security or should we be trying to do both?
Secretary Wright. Both.
Senator Padilla. Thank you.
We love our freedoms in America. Should we be pursuing
policy that ensures public safety or protects civil liberties
or should we strive to do both?
Secretary Wright. Both.
Senator Padilla. I suggest this because, for all the talk
that I am hearing about the need to prioritize affordable,
reliable energy, I agree, we also need to be advancing clean
energy for the sake of the grid, for the sake of environmental
protection, for the sake of public health. We don't have to
choose between the two. They are not mutually exclusive. We
should be striving to do both. That's my position. Do you agree
or disagree?
Secretary Wright. I would agree.
Senator Padilla. Thank you very much.
Now, a couple things also to correct the record or to
comment on some of the statements you made at the outset where
you make suggestions that some of the funds released at the
tail-end of the Biden administration were rushed out at the
last minute without appropriate due diligence and review. In my
experience, our office has experienced that it came out at the
tail-end of the Biden administration because of the due
diligence and the review that took place. We had been anxious
and pushing the administration for years to move on some of
these projects. So I just wanted to note that different point
of view.
Second, your comment about oil and gas resources in
America, you seemed to have left out the potential and positive
contributions of solar and wind and geothermal. You painted a
picture of the intermittency being a challenge. I point to the
experience and quantifiable progress made in California when
they integrated battery storage into grid reliability and
affordability.
So, that being said, let me jump back to the key topic of
today's hearing. I will go back to several of the statements
you made during your confirmation hearing--your confirmation
hearing, your statements, Mr. Secretary. You said there were
three priorities you had. The first was to unleash American
energy at home and abroad to restore energy dominance. However,
the budget request proposes a 74 percent reduction in the
Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. It zeros out
the Wind and Solar Energy Technologies Offices and it also
zeros out the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration, which was
authorized by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Solar was the
fastest growing energy source in the world last year. So how
does completely eliminating the Solar Energy Technologies
Office advance America's leadership?
Secretary Wright. So solar wasn't close to the fastest
growing energy source in the world last year--that's installed
capacity, not energy produced, that data, and one year is a
tricky data thing. Solar is growing fast. I have worked in
solar. I am in favor of solar. And so, we have way over-
invested resources in hoping wind and solar will, you know,
will magically transform into something they are not, but solar
will continue to grow, for sure. All I have advocated is we
should subsidize it less.
Senator Padilla. I don't mean to be rude in cutting you
off, but our data suggests otherwise, and we will certainly
follow up with questions for the record and beyond.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Padilla. The second priority you identified in your
confirmation hearing was that we must lead the world in
innovation and technology breakthroughs. I counter that with
your budget request, which includes a 14 percent cut to the
Office of Science and a 57 percent cut to ARPA-E. Again, there
seems to be a disconnect between what you say are priorities
and your budget requests. It has already been raised that these
reductions would also lead to staff reductions in national
labs, which we have recognized, you are on the record, these
are premier research institutions. When you came to California,
you reaffirmed your commitment to the national labs and you
said that they were important to maintain and secure a
``competitive advantage and security.''
So unless I got that wrong, how do you expect the United
States to lead the world when your budget proposal seeks to
decimate our research and development capabilities?
Secretary Wright. It does hurt me to cut spending in
science.
Senator Padilla. Then don't do it.
Secretary Wright. I share that passion with you.
Senator Padilla. Then don't do it.
Secretary Wright. I share that passion with you.
Senator Padilla. Then don't even propose it.
Lastly, and I know my time is nearly up--your third stated
priority was to ``build things in America again and remove
barriers to progress.'' However, in May, the Department of
Energy announced the cancellation of 24 projects, totaling $3.7
billion in investments under the Industrial Demonstrations
Program. Now, these funds were intended to support
unprecedented innovation in the cement, glass, chemicals, and
iron industries, at the core for the future growth of
infrastructure in America. And it's not just because a billion
of the public and private dollars are in California, and the
thousands of jobs related, but how does canceling industrial
grants that lead to more industrial jobs further the goal of
building things in America again?
Secretary Wright. Because an evaluation showed that the
projects at the end were not viable. There is no point in
building a bridge to nowhere. If you make a factory, make a
product 25 percent more expensive, but customers won't pay 25
percent, it clears----
Senator Padilla. Well, the projects that are being cut are
more than just viable. I would argue they are critical, and we
will be following up with you, and again, hope for responses,
as Senator Heinrich has emphasized.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Senator Daines.
Senator Daines. Secretary Wright, it's great to have you
back here. Last week, the EPA announced they have started the
process to roll back President Biden's anti-energy rules,
including MATS and Clean Power Plan 2.0. The Biden
administration specifically targeted Colstrip there in Montana
with these rules with the express intention of closing it down
for good. Mr. Secretary, as you know, this would have been
devastating for Montana jobs, devastating for grid reliability
and energy production in the region at a time when we need more
energy. It is vital we continue to expand energy production,
not shut it down or replace it. That means building more
projects while ensuring coal plants like Colstrip continue to
produce baseload power--reliable, affordable power.
My question, Secretary Wright, is, as EPA and other
agencies work to rescind and rewrite rules, will you weigh-in
to ensure that grid reliability, energy affordability, and
baseload power are top-of-mind for rules that are affecting
power generation?
Secretary Wright. Absolutely, yes, Senator. I am passionate
about that, and in fact, I testified in Congress multiple times
before I got my new job on just that issue that when
regulations pursue a narrow agenda and they don't consider the
broader impacts of what they are doing, they can be destructive
on our country and on our people. And yeah, I am very
passionate about those topics.
Senator Daines. Secretary Wright, thank you. And I will
tell you, thank you. We truly have a subject matter expert on
energy in yourself and your experience as a scientist, as a
leader, and somebody who is not an ideologue, who is very
pragmatic in trying to solve these important challenges facing
our country as it relates to energy and the constraints we face
today.
Last week, Senator Hoeven and I, along with our colleagues
from the Montana and North Dakota delegations, sent you a
letter expressing our strong support for DOE's efforts to
advance American energy dominance, particularly through the
approval of the North Plains Connector interregional
transmission project. As you know, the Department's GRIP
Program awarded a $700 million grant to the Montana Department
of Commerce for this critical project. When completed, this
North Plains Connector would extend a 420-mile high-voltage
transmission line capable of carrying up to 525 kilovolts of
electricity between eastern Montana and western North Dakota.
Right now, Montana exports the majority of its electricity,
including from Colstrip--we go west to states like Oregon and
Washington. This project would have the potential to diversify
Montana's generation assets, unlocking billions in private
investment, and enhance our nation's energy security by
connecting eastern and western electric grids.
My question, Secretary Wright: to keep this critical
project on track to meet its 2032 operational target, will you
commit to supporting advancement of the North Plains Connector
GRIP award to ensure that we can move this forward?
Secretary Wright. So Senator, thanks for that impassioned
layout of that project. I am quite familiar with the project. I
have met with the developers of the project as well. Of course,
it's very, very logical connecting two separate grids together
to allow flows back and forth. It's a very encouraging project.
We are committed to following this project review process where
a crew of people evaluate--not political, not biased for this
or that--just look at the math, look at the numbers, and is
this thing viable and beneficial for America? You know, yes,
no, or it's adjustable. It's modifiable.
So we haven't finished that on that project yet, but I
think you make a strong case for the project, and
interconnections between grids is certainly something the
United States needs more of.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
My last questions and points here are regarding the small
refinery exemption. Last week, the EPA released their renewable
fuel obligations, which will put significant pressure on
Montana's small refineries. Unfortunately, the Biden
administration never issued small refinery exemptions and the
refineries in Montana suffered. DOE plays an important role in
consulting with EPA over small refinery exemptions, and it's
important that your voice is heard as EPA makes their
decisions.
Secretary Wright, I would ask if you are willing to work
with Administrator Zeldin to ensure that our Montana refineries
with the small refinery exemption have the resources they need
to continue operating?
Secretary Wright. Yes, indeed, Senator. I said this
earlier, but I think government involvement in energy has a bad
historical track record. You raise another example where, you
know, what maybe sounded like a reasonable idea became a blunt
tool that says thou must do this. There are all different
refineries in all different settings and all different access
to feedstocks, and that rule is not well-suited to the problem
you have got. And there are ways to address the problem, and as
you just said, the last administration chose not to address
those problems, but yeah, I think this administration is very
practical and wants to look at what trade-off package makes the
most sense.
So I hear you, and yes, I am engaged and will continue to
be engaged with EPA on this dialogue.
Senator Daines. Secretary Wright, thank you.
Secretary Wright. Thank you for raising it.
The Chairman. Senator Cortez Masto.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Wright, welcome, thank you for being here.
Do you support an all-of-the-above approach to tackle
growing electricity demand?
Secretary Wright. I have always said in the past that I
don't support all of the above because that's political--I will
support your thing if you support my thing. I think energy is
the infrastructure for life and humanity. And to me, energy is
about two things--it's about people--humans--and math. And so,
I support every----
Senator Cortez Masto. Humans and math--so let me ask you
this.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Cortez Masto. Because we are in agreement on
geothermal, and I have to thank Senator Murkowski and Senator
Coons. Yesterday, we had a great conversation about geothermal,
and it is in your fiscal year budget, which is fantastic. You
know why it's fantastic? Because we have a lot of geothermal in
Nevada. But there's not a lot of geothermal in the rest of the
country. It's in a lot of the West. It's in Alaska. Not
necessarily in the rest of the country. And I believe that an
all-of-the-above energy approach is necessary for the states to
decide what their energy portfolio will be, based on their
geology, geography, and what they have abundance of. It's not
political, but it gives the states that choice. And one choice
we have in Nevada, along with geothermal, is solar.
And so, my question for you is, in the Fiscal Year budget,
why did you zero-out funds for solar energy and renewable grid
integration, which is necessary for many states who are already
investing in it and necessary for their energy portfolio?
Secretary Wright. So the EERE Office had a huge reduction
in its budget but it didn't go away. And things like OCED and
GRIP got folded into EERE. So these things aren't going away,
but there is a dramatic reduction in focus. By far, the biggest
energy expenditure line is----
Senator Cortez Masto. Why solar?
Secretary Wright. What?
Senator Cortez Masto. Why solar?
Secretary Wright. Just because of the relative over-
investment in it. We spent four times as much in EERE than in
hydrocarbons in the last administration, and one provides three
percent of American energy and one provides 80-plus percent of
American----
Senator Cortez Masto. I don't have much time. I am going to
jump to the next one. But oil and gas have had subsidies for
decades and they will continue to have subsidies for decades.
So I don't understand the political decisions this
administration has made, because I think that's the politics
that's happening here. You are favoring one type of energy over
another. But let me jump to my next question because I
appreciate you being here. So thank you.
On May 23, President Trump invoked the Defense Production
Act by issuing a waiver for critical minerals. I support it. We
need to have critical minerals here. We need to have energy
independence. Critical minerals are key for that. But one week
later, DOE canceled 24 projects, including one in Nevada that
is using innovative solutions to create the country's only all-
domestic source of alumina. Now, I assume you are aware that
the U.S. is import-reliant on alumina, as we produce less than
one-sixth of the aluminum we consume. And I am sure you are
also aware that China currently dominates global production,
accounting for roughly 60 percent of the global alumina supply
chain. So please explain to me how you are making a decision
when you identify critical minerals that are necessary, but at
the same time, you are taking away the essential funding for
this country to be independent when it comes to these critical
minerals. Why? Why did you cancel those 24 projects, including
that one in Nevada?
Secretary Wright. So thanks for the passion on that. I am
pro solar and pro critical minerals as well. So it really just
comes down to the devil is in the details. We review every
project. We are going through over 500 of them, just to say, is
this project, at the end of the day, going to lead to a
positive outcome?
Senator Cortez Masto. But what legal precedent did you and
the Department utilize to roll back congressionally approved
funds for this enacted program and those 24 programs? They were
already enacted. Congress approved them. They were already
approved by the last administration. So what legal authority
did you have to come back and terminate those?
Secretary Wright. All of the contracts--just like in
business--all of the contracts have cancellation clauses, and
we are in dialogue with every one of those parties. Some of
these projects can be fixed to make them more viable. And a lot
of these projects will be----
Senator Cortez Masto. So is this one that you will be
looking at, that critical mineral for alumina, which we need in
this country to be energy independent? Are you willing to look
at that project and renew it?
Secretary Wright. Willing to look at all of them. We are in
dialogues today with eight of the projects that were
preliminarily canceled that----
Senator Cortez Masto. So can I get a commitment that you
will look at the Nevada projects as well that you defunded,
because they are critical mineral mining and extraction, and
the production that we need to bring back to the state. Will
you work with me for those Nevada projects?
Secretary Wright. Absolutely. We will look at those
projects.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
Secretary Wright. And absolutely, we want to bring back
mining to this country.
Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Murkowski.
Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, welcome, and thank you for coming to Alaska
a couple weeks ago. The time that you spent there, along with
Secretary Burgum, Administrator Zeldin--I really, deeply
appreciate it. I know you had the opportunity to go up north
and get a little fresh air, but really have a chance to engage
with so many that are doing amazing things in the energy space.
And I really appreciated the comments that you had made at the
Sunday roundtable, if you will. You had an observation about
energy in Alaska that I thought was really telling. You noted
that there are the big things--the big things where we are able
to take our energy assets for export to help our friends and
allies. That second tier, which is that energy that is going to
allow us, as Alaskans, to have more affordable, accessible
energy for our own use, and then a recognition that in certain
parts of the state, things just look different. And I think the
words that you used were something like, you know, energy or
power generation is going to look different in different
places, and a recognition that when it comes to some of the
smaller-scale things, we just have to allow ourselves to have
some flexibility and some creativity. So I loved the way you
had captured that and I just thank you for that.
First question, super-easy. Are we going to build an Alaska
LNG pipeline?
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Murkowski. Okay, there we go--innovation. I could
really delve into the gas line, but I am going to move on to
some of the other things that relate to the budget. I had an
opportunity on that Sunday to visit with seven or so of the
national lab directors. It was great conversation. I really
appreciated it. And we talked about some of the contributions
that we are seeing out of our national labs. NREL,
specifically, has been working with our Cold Climate Housing
Center, just some great innovative technologies. So just a
direct question to you on the assets, the resources that we are
directing to sustain our national labs' ability to really
coordinate directly with communities, the ability to offer
technical assistance. Are you good with the budget and where
you are and in a recognition that there is so much value to be
had from the work of our national labs?
Secretary Wright. Oh, I love the national labs. They have
delivered tremendous value to us throughout their history and
they will in the future as well. And I am actually very open to
expanding the lab budget back a little bit from where the
current proposal is. I have been voicing that. AI is moving
very fast right now. Quantum computing is about to arrive. And
fusion energy, a thing I worked on in my youth, is going to
come to pass. And this is a time, I think, to lean in as much
as we can on these large scientific efforts. And so, I am keen,
actually, to grow the budget for our national labs in those key
areas of AI----
Senator Murkowski. Well, I will look forward to working
with you on that. I think the contributions that we get are so
important. And as you say, things are just moving at breakneck
speed, so how we keep up with all of this--one of the concerns
that I heard, in addition to budget, was also the impact that
they have seen with some of the reductions in force and just,
you know, the people that are doing really extraordinary things
that may move on may not be the easiest to replace. So know
that I am just very, very cognizant of that.
I want to ask a question about the Tribal Energy Loan
Guarantee Program. As you know, I am Chairman of the Senate
Committee on Indian Affairs. The budget is proposing a
significant reduction in the Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee
Program. I know this is not just for me--my colleague here from
North Dakota, there is so much potential, I think we recognize,
on tribal lands still remaining undeveloped. I guess I would
ask for your thoughts on how we can be doing better. If you
don't think it's within the construct of the Tribal Energy Loan
Guarantee, how is it that we can be more helpful working in
partnership to address some of the exorbitantly high energy
prices that we see in our tribal lands?
Secretary Wright. Thank you for your passion on this issue.
I share it, as you know.
Senator Murkowski. Yes.
Secretary Wright. So in the history of the tribal thing, I
think it has made one loan. That is it----
Senator Murkowski. It has been very disappointing.
Secretary Wright. So it's like, hey, we have, you know, a
whole office and it has got one thing to loan. So I would say
that's like a re-org, but it is not a pulling back. I would
love to do more projects in tribal areas and remote areas. So I
wouldn't read, you know, an office that's not doing anything
being folded into something else as a change in commitment or
change in interest in that area. In fact, some of the best
meetings I had in Alaska were from some of your colleagues up
there that are working on energy in remote Alaskan villages.
And as you know so well, it's just so different, right? If you
are--I critique wind and solar and their impact on the larger
scale here. They are competing against natural gas that on an
oil barrel equivalent price is $20--$20 a barrel energy cost
for pipeline natural gas. In Alaska, they are competing with
$10-plus diesel, which is $400--20 times more expensive base
energy. If you can put solar or wind or micro-hydro on a grid
there, you can shrink your diesel cost and extend the time
between refueling and shipping.
So yes, as you and I have both said so many times, there
are different energy answers in different settings at all
times. I am not a--I am a--people and math, people and math.
And one of the problems I think we have made the least progress
on is affordable energy in remote communities.
Senator Murkowski. We have great work to do together, and I
look forward to exploring more with you on that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator Wyden.
Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, good to have a chance to talk with you this
morning when you came up to the office. We discussed the clean
energy tax incentives law that I wrote in the Finance
Committee. As you know, it is technology-neutral--no mandates,
voluntary incentives. Now, I understand that there was some
discussion earlier. I had to be somewhere else. But there was
some discussion earlier about renewables, and renewables in
Florida, and matters like that. I wanted to run by you
something that the CEO for the utility in Florida, actually the
utility that covers Mar-a-Lago, said the other day, and get
your reaction because maybe it can help us make some progress
here. The CEO said, ``I am a CEO who has gas plant holdings. I
believe deeply in natural gas. I also believe because we have
such a need for energy now,'' and we have to deal with AI and
many of the concerns that we are talking about, and he said,
``I need electrons from any place on the planet where I can get
them. I just need electrons.'' And that certainly woke
everybody up. That kind of drives it home. And people said,
well, what about renewables? And he said, ``I have got to have
electrons from the renewables sector. It is urgent. I won't be
able to meet the growth and the AI needs.''
So why can't we just say we got this economic emergency and
we are going to get the electrons from everywhere? I know about
the comments you and others have made about intermittent uses
and the like. That's why we have batteries to help with that.
But the more important issue is, when a gas executive who says
he believes in gas, not somebody who is walking away--he says
he believes in gas, but that the problem is so serious today,
in terms of having energy, he wants to get his electrons from
anywhere he can get them. Why can't we get renewables to him?
Secretary Wright. Well, I have had the same dialogue with
the same CEO. He is the biggest renewable developer in the
world and runs a big business, but to me, it's about people and
it's about math. So we can--nobody is proposing to stop solar
power, right? The idea is it has been subsidized for a quarter
of a century, and it should compete on its own, and it will.
Solar will continue to grow. It'll continue to get built.
That's happening right now.
Senator Wyden. Respectfully, Mr. Secretary, it's getting
short shrift in the central climate change law of our time.
Until I wrote this law, we had never, in 50 years, done
anything on cap and trade or pricing or anything that anybody,
whether they were left or right, had agreed on. And now, solar
is getting short shrift. We are hearing about it from companies
who really feel that it is being left out at a time when we
ought to be saying this is something--that's why I put
technological neutrality as my lodestar. I wanted to make sure
that everybody could play. That it would be voluntary, we would
have incentives and the like, and solar is getting short shrift
now.
Now, maybe you can do something here as we try to wrap up
what we are working on in the reconciliation bill. But I would
really urge you in the strongest possible way to pursue an
approach that I am the author of, and I like the idea that a
gas executive is saying, I am for gas. I am for it. When I was
Chairman of the Committee, my first hearing, because I thought
it was relevant to the debate, was on natural gas. But right
now, we have got to have renewables, and the best way to get
them and satisfy that electron need is that way. Can you help?
Secretary Wright. Well, what I would like--the bigger the
government's involvement has been in energy, and you can look
at Germany or Denmark or the UK, if you want to see people ten
years ahead of us. When the government goes into energy and
subsidizes certain kinds of energy, you get a lot more of that.
And the net result has been expenditures of money on the
subsidies and a less reliable, more expensive system. And that
doesn't--nobody wins from that. The only people that win are
the people collecting the subsidies, the businessmen who get
paid to develop stuff----
Senator Wyden. My time is going expire. But the fact is,
this is written so that everybody can be part of a marketplace.
It doesn't give a preference to somebody. It says technological
neutrality. I hope you will think it over.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Senator Barrasso.
Senator Barrasso. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very
much, Mr. Secretary, I appreciate you being here.
Over the last few years, I believe Congress irresponsibly
saddled you, your Department, with 71 new programs overseeing
hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, and I think the
situation is fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse. And it left
the Department--your Department now--without a clear direction.
So can you talk a little bit about how you are getting the
Department of Energy back in a focused direction with regard to
your overall mission?
Secretary Wright. Yeah, I would say the simplest thing is
treating it like a business, yeah. We're not--I have been
writing on energy for 20 years. I never infused it with
politics. You know, to me, energy is about humans and math,
right? Energy is to better people's lives and expand their
opportunities of how they can do things, and the way to do that
just comes down to what is the lowest system cost to deliver
whatever that form of energy is in a reliable, secure way and
reduce the environmental impacts of it, of course, as well. And
the track record of markets in that has been quite good, but
the government getting in and through our Department, shoveling
out more than $100 billion, most of it rushed between election
day and inauguration.
I mentioned before the numbers on LPO. That's loans. Our
Department also gives out financial assistance. It's like
grants. They give financial assistance to businesses. This is
IRA and IIJA money. Those laws passed in 2022. In the full year
2023, a little over $8 billion of assistance grants were given
out in the full year of 2023, and $26 billion after election
day and before inauguration. And so, what we have done is,
created, and maybe frustratingly slow to some people, but we
haven't been lazy--we have put together a committee of cross-
functional people that are going to evaluate every project, you
know, on is it technically viable, is the engineering done, is
it financially viable. At the end of the day, is it going to be
a bridge to nowhere, or is it going to be a business where
customers are going to pay for the product and it's going to go
on.
And the projects that we have evaluated have passed and
they are continuing to fund. For some projects, we have engaged
with the other party and we have modified them, so it's a
positive for the American taxpayers. And a lot of projects have
not passed because they are just--we are just paying someone to
build something more expensive than people are willing to buy
today, and nobody wins from that. And I want to restore
confidence in our Department again, you know? We are
professionals that are here to work for the American people,
not for our own interest, not for any politically favored, you
know, technology here or there. We just want to make the
American energy system better, but that means people and
process and accountability.
Senator Barrasso. You know, Congress has made key
investments in nuclear innovation, and you are an expert in the
area. These investments include the Nuclear Fuel Security Act
to strengthen our fuel supply chain and the Advanced Reactor
Demonstration Program to move advanced reactors forward. Can
you speak about those plans in the program?
Secretary Wright. Yeah, there are lots of them. In fact, I
have a new one today. We will announce today a new solicitation
that we would like to get three new small modular reactors
critical, meaning producing power by July 4 of next year, at
the Idaho National Lab in our containment facility that can
sort of speed up ideas that are ready to go. Let's get them on
the ground and test them and prove them because look, the
Americans invented the nuclear power industry. We came out and
built 100-plus plants rapidly. Then we created an NRC and
stopped. And we haven't done much for 30 or 40 years. You and I
and many others really want to get that nuclear ball rolling
again.
We are working with companies to get domestic fuel
enrichment going in the United States again, another just
critical problem. Congress rightfully passed a bill saying we
shouldn't be importing Russian uranium. Well, I don't want to
import Russian uranium either, but we have got to get it from
somewhere. We have got to enrich uranium in the United States
by American companies and ramp that up.
Those are the kinds of things we are working on, but there
is a bunch of great innovative companies with a lot of private
capital behind them. It's private capital that's going to drive
this, but we are going to help in every way we can.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
And finally, we were together when the President signed his
coal executive orders. You know, the last administration was
flat-out anti-coal in every way they could be. They wouldn't
support the projects that we needed, even the ones that
resulted in diminished emissions. They just were against
everything. I thought it was shortsighted, and left our
valuable resource underutilized. What's the Department doing in
terms of restarting coal research, whether novel combustion,
carbon capture, coal products made from newly mined coal as a
result of the President signing the executive orders?
Secretary Wright. So a number of different efforts there.
One, I will just state the facts--coal has been the largest
source of global electricity for a hundred years. It will be
when I die as well. There is a reason coal is the biggest
provider of global electricity, but I will be in your great
state on July 11th for the opening of a new coal mine that's
combined with rare earth element mining right there. And that,
to me, is incredibly exciting. And maybe the biggest thing I
have been involved in with coal right now is that we need all
this extra power everyone is talking about for AI and we need
to win the AI race. The first thing is to stop digging the
hole. So we have got to stop closing all these coal plants with
tons of useful life left in them.
Senator Barrasso. I look forward to being with you on July
11th in Wyoming.
Thanks, Mr. Secretary.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Barrasso. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator King.
Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Secretary, good to see you again, thank you.
I want to talk about the grid because we all know that
there is going to be a tremendous expansion of demand for
electricity over the next 10, 20, 30 years, and that's going to
require significant attention to the grid. And the Grid
Resilience and Innovation Partnership Program was created under
the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. My concern is that there
are a significant number of programs under that that have
received approval, but are now being reviewed by your office.
My first question is, can you assure me that that review is
professional and engineering-based and not political?
Secretary Wright. Absolutely, it is. We are evaluating the
engineering, the science, the finance, and just the viability
of the projects. It is just a business review. Unfortunately,
it wasn't done before when grants were given, but I would say
in the GRIP Program, there are a lot of very good projects
there, but we are just trying to be careful and thoughtful.
Senator King. Well, you know, one that I am particularly
interested in is the largest grid-scale battery project that is
being manufactured in West Virginia, but is scheduled to be
located in a small town in Maine that would make a huge
difference and I hope--what is your timeline on this review?
Secretary Wright. It's--we stood up this process a few
weeks ago. Now, we are going to get, probably--trying to think
of a number here--but at least 20 of these a week out and done,
but Senator, you raised that again. I am very interested in
that technology as well. And my Chief of Staff is here with me,
and we will make sure that in the next, you know, few weeks at
most----
Senator King. Good.
Secretary Wright [continuing]. We will get onto that
project.
Senator King. Well, because batteries are part of the
solution--not the whole solution--but development of that
technology, which was described to this Committee something
like two or three years ago, is very promising. So I hope we
can move forward on that.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator King. Following up on the same area--the Grid
Deployment Office--again, looking at the demands on the grid,
the problem is, the budget proposes a 75 percent cut in the
Grid Deployment Office. I don't understand how this is a place
to cut where this is obviously an increasing demand and
pressure on the system.
Secretary Wright. It is, but I would look at it more as
part of a reorganization of the Department. You know, the
central thing there is the Office of Electricity and CESER--the
cybersecurity thing--they are sort of the two core offices
around that. There were a lot of other smaller offices set
around, but I would look at the whole complex. So the Office of
Electricity is all about the grid. So the Grid Deployment
Office was, you know, it's got grid in the name, but it's
really just a sub-office.
Senator King. Well, as long at the resources going to
strengthening the grid are not diminished. If you are talking
about diminishing some other programs, that's one thing, but
again, one of the things I have noticed just in my career in
energy is, it used to be that the principal part of your
electric bill was the cost of energy. Now, in many places,
transmission distribution is 50 percent or more. And that's
only going to increase unless we start to think about new
technologies, what are called GETs, which I am sure you are
familiar with--grid enhancing technologies--so that we're not
simply rebuilding massive facilities that could be obviated by
new technologies.
Secretary Wright. Well, I agree so much, Senator. You know,
ten years ago, I am like, we just got to build more
transmission lines. We have got to build our infrastructure. It
turns out, it's so hard to get approval to build anything. But
as you just said----
Senator King. You can reconductor.
Secretary Wright. Exactly. We can reconductor. We can do
dynamic land rating, even with our existing things. There is so
much upside in the grid and there, I think, we just have to
find some practical solutions and get local regulators to
implement these things, but I agree with you, a lot of upside
in being smarter about the grid.
Senator King. My other concern with the budget is ARPA-E.
Research is one of the things the Federal Government can do,
particularly basic research that doesn't necessarily lead
immediately to commercialization. If it led immediately to
commercialization, the private sector would be doing it. This
is where the government can fill in a gap in the market. I am a
big supporter of the market, but the market doesn't factor in
all these elements.
Why are we cutting ARPA-E by more than half?
Secretary Wright. That's a great question. And look, I
share an interest in basic science, the national labs, nuclear
physics. There is a lot of stuff. If the government doesn't do
it, then no one will do it.
Senator King. And you, of all people, know that fracking
came out of support by the Department of Energy.
Secretary Wright. And so, yes, there are discussions about
ARPA-E--what is the right thing to do? I know in the previous
Trump administration it was zeroed out entirely. Rest assured,
we want to keep ARPA-E. We will keep ARPA-E, and it will be at
a reasonable level, but you know, it had grown fast and wild,
and it backed a number of great projects, and maybe a lot of
more politically motivated, not technically motivated projects.
So it's going to be sizable and meaningful.
Senator King. Given the demand that we are going to have
for energy, it seems to me that research in new technologies is
going to be critical to meeting that demand. And I hope that
you will maintain the level of support that's required by the
demand, if you will.
Secretary Wright. I agree with your point entirely.
Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Senator Hoeven.
Senator Hoeven. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Secretary, good to see you again, appreciate all your good
work. Hope you are enjoying it. Great to have you in the slot.
I am going to start on a shared experience, and it actually
relates to something that Senator King just mentioned, and
that's the Bakken and the shale, and we actually shared that
experience during the period we went through, you know, in say,
the 2000-2010 era where we cracked the code in the Bakken and
the shale play. I was in the Governor's office and worked on
policy to help create a good environment so that entrepreneurs
like you and the companies you created could get that done. You
did. Great. And obviously, producing an incredible amount of
oil down in the Permian and the Ranking Member's State of New
Mexico, and obviously Texas and Louisiana, but in our state, we
produced over five billion barrels out of the Bakken as a
result of that. A lot of energy we don't have to get from
foreign sources and adversaries, right?
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Hoeven. But we need to put--essentially now, we
need to do it again. We need to crack the code again. Now we
need to develop the carbon CO2 floods that are going
to bring out probably an equal amount or more, given that we
are only getting, what, less than ten percent of the oil out of
the Bakken shale and the other shale plays. We now need to
develop these floods. We have used hot water and other things,
but really the CO2 will be much more effective. And
we can put a whole other life on this energy production--
domestic, high-quality, highest quality oil right here at home.
Talk to me about how we are going to get that done. How are
we going to crack that code again?
Secretary Wright. Yeah, great question. So there is
research, you know, in private industry on this and there is
research at the Department of Energy. And in fact, the guy I
picked to lead the Fossil Energy Office, which will be renamed
the Hydrocarbon Office--I really don't like some of the names
we've got in the Department--but in any case, he's a technology
guy. And his big focus is just what you said--what's next? He's
a young guy from North Dakota, actually.
Senator Hoeven. Oh, he has got to be sharp then.
[Laughter.]
Secretary Wright. He is a high-tech guy who wants to look
at what technology is five, ten, 20 years out on the road. And
you are right that the single biggest target of that next
generation is enhanced oil recovery out of shales. We can get
ten percent out with the technologies we have got today. How do
we get more?
And I think you are right that it's likely that the most
viable ways to do it will be some kind of miscible gas that is
injected underground. CO2 is certainly a great
candidate for that.
Senator Hoeven. There are others----
Secretary Wright. Right, could be methane or--but 100
percent. And your research center that you have got in North
Dakota with some great technical people there has been a leader
in that effort, and I suspect will be growing leaders in that
effort.
One of the things, if I could ask one thing for the whole
Senate is, please help confirm my people. You know, I have got
ten people that have gone through your Committee that are
sitting there and I don't have them in the office. I don't have
them on the team because of some procedural thing. They have
already been vetted. They have already got bipartisan votes
among this Committee. I would desperately need some more people
in the office to help me, including on this one.
Senator Hoeven. Glad you made that pitch, very important.
We are all aware of that and we all do what we can to help make
that happen. I appreciate that.
We talked a little bit about critical minerals. We have a
very interesting project going on in North Dakota right now
with Talon Metals. They are affiliated with Rio Tinto and some
other big mining companies and that kind of thing. But
essentially, they are mining nickel ore out of Minnesota, which
has very rich ore deposits--from northern Minnesota bringing it
over to North Dakota. And they are actually setting up a
processing facility at what was the Westmoreland Coal Mine,
which is a coal mine that shut down--reopening the mine, but
for critical mineral development. They will process the nickel
and then that will actually go to like Tesla and other places
that need the nickel for batteries so that they aren't buying
that from foreign countries. And then, the tailings will be
mixed with coal ash to produce building materials.
Talk to me about how we do more of that. You mentioned the
project in Wyoming, but this is a project in North Dakota. Same
thing, where we are now going to get critical minerals here at
home, and the key is to do it in a commercially viable way.
That's what we have got to--this stuff works when we make it
commercially viable. We can do all of it. The question is, can
we make it commercially viable, right?
Secretary Wright. So Senator, one of the things I am
excited about, this time we are right now in our country's
history, like we built big things and we innovated and we built
giant things and then we became a country where it was easy to
stop things and hard to do things. And we just killed the
mining industry. It just shrunk to a few existing mines. No one
has built a new mine in this country in forever. But I think we
have a different attitude today in America, that we use these
materials, they come out of mines--shouldn't they come out of
our mines? Because not only do we have the materials here, but
we can drive innovation to do smarter mining and better mining.
But since it has all been out of sight, out of mind overseas,
the amount of people that study and think about mining in our
country has shrunk so small and it's up to you and I and
everyone in this room to make mining and materials processing
sexy again.
But I believe we will because it's now national security.
We have seen the national security downside of this, but yes,
we need to get going on this stuff, and I think what could
happen in the next decade is thrilling.
Senator Hoeven. I love that. We are going to make mining
sexy again. That's a great way to put it. And we are looking
forward to getting out to the Energy Environmental Research
Center, which you mentioned earlier.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Hoeven. And again, thanks for all your great work,
appreciate it.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Hoeven. Thanks, Mr. Chair.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Senator Cotton.
Senator Cotton. Secretary, welcome.
The demand for lithium has substantially increased in
recent years, but the United States is currently only
responsible for about one percent of lithium mining and less
than five percent of advanced lithium chemical processing
capacity globally--that despite lithium being necessary in a
wide range of uses, to include critical military capabilities.
In September of last year, the Department of Energy selected
Standard Lithium and Equinor for a $225 million grant to
develop the lithium reserves in South Arkansas in the Smackover
Formation, where Geological Survey has found between 15 million
and 19 million tons of lithium. I know that this grant was
announced before your tenure, and it is under review now. When
can Arkansans expect an answer on when the grant will be
approved?
Secretary Wright. I think all the sizable projects will be
done this summer. You know, we are in middle of June now, so by
the end of August, for sure, maybe much sooner than that. And
Senator, it is frustrating, I am sure, for people on the other
side, you know, this--we continue to fund existing projects,
but given the track record of what happened when we walked in
the door, which is pretty alarming, and the more I have dug
into it, the more alarming it is. You probably heard me say
before, you know, $90 billion, you know, lent after election
day and before inauguration--over double the previous 15 years,
$25 billion of that in the last two days.
So in any case, there is a lot of crazy stuff, like a piece
of paper--there was a project that got funded for $2.5 million,
and then, right at the end of the administration, with a sheet
that said justification for increase, there was nothing on it,
its funding went from a little over $2 million to over $200
million. So we want to be careful with the American taxpayer
monies, with monies you have allocated, that these projects are
responsible and credible and thoughtful and they are going to
lead to some good results. You talk about a very exciting one,
this--it's hard to build mines in America. Heck, we can get
lithium out of brine, so you know, out of boreholes in salt. So
very exciting, very keen. We will be on that and let's be
talking about it.
Senator Cotton. Yes.
Secretary Wright. But we will sort that out this summer.
Senator Cotton. And we understand that there were a lot of
inappropriate actions in the lame-duck period up to, as you
say, the very last day--projects being funded that, frankly,
never should have been funded. But obviously, I think this is
one of the critical projects that should be funded, lithium
being so vital for almost every walk of modern life and now
being one of those things that's in dispute with trade
negotiations with China.
I want to turn to another topic we have discussed in the
past, Mr. Secretary, and that's security at our national labs.
I have introduced legislation with Chairman Lee and some of my
other colleagues that would ban foreign scientists from
adversarial countries like Russia and China and Iran. You, I
know, are conducting a review of security policies at our 17
national labs. When do you expect the review to be completed?
Secretary Wright. It is an ongoing process, and every time
I see the lab directors--I saw half of them in Alaska, I saw
all of them a week ago. I have been to half of the labs now and
I will get to the other half. So it's a real topic and it's a
balance. It is a balance. Do we want, you know, Chinese
nationals in our weapons research or in our critical economic
new breakthrough stuff? No, we don't. But we have, of course,
projects--I have approved three Chinese foreign nationals to
work on stuff because they have very unique expertise. It's not
sensitive stuff. And if we don't use, you know, a specific
person, there were hundreds of potentials. So we have shrunk
that down dramatically small because you raise a very real
concern. I have stressed it to the lab directors. I think they
get it, too. So we have like a matrix approach and we are
trying to balance--not stopping scientific research--but erring
on the side of caution that these are national jewels and
national gems, and clearly these countries of concern have
clearly shown zero scruples to steal everything we have.
Senator Cotton. And speaking of caution, have you
identified any urgent vulnerabilities that have needed to be
patched before your review is complete?
Secretary Wright. We have----
Senator Cotton. You know, let me stop you. If you would
like to respond to me through other channels, that's fine.
Secretary Wright. Yeah, let's--I will just say it's a real
issue. It's a real issue.
Senator Cotton. Are there any Iranian scientists in any of
our labs as of right now?
Secretary Wright. Not that I am aware of.
Senator Cotton. Okay, I hope your lab directors hear that.
All right, I will yield back the rest of my time. Thank
you.
The Chairman. Thanks, Senator Cotton.
Secretary Wright. Thank you, Senator.
The Chairman. Okay, we have now completed round one. There
is interest in doing a round two. We do need to be out of here
by about noon. So what I am going to propose is that we try to
keep, in the second round, let's try to keep them shorter.
Senator Heinrich, why don't we go to you next and try, each
of us doing a round two, try to keep it to a question or two so
we can make sure we are finished by noon, if that's all right?
Thank you.
Senator Heinrich. Secretary, in New Mexico, we have a
couple of geothermal projects, and I appreciate your enthusiasm
for advanced geothermal, also a grid reliability project. They
have both been in the Loan Programs Office pipeline for a very
long time, and over the course of the last six months, the
back-and-forth communication has gone away. And so, I would
just ask you if you would commit to sort of making sure that
your Loan Programs Office reengages with those two projects.
Secretary Wright. Yes, yes indeed, Senator.
Senator Heinrich. Thank you.
I want to ask you a little bit more about this review board
process because you described it as a business review, as
professional, not political, but your own attorneys briefed my
staff yesterday and said that there were political appointees
on those review boards. Is that the case or is that not the
case?
Secretary Wright. Well, it is absolutely the case.
Senator Heinrich. So my understanding is that in previous
administrations these kinds of reviews have been done by career
staff. If it's a business review, why do we have political
appointees on these review boards?
Secretary Wright. Oh, it's a hybrid of the two. I am pretty
confident it was that way before. I don't think the careers
would have shoveled out $25 billion in the last two days before
inauguration. That's----
Senator Heinrich. For example, in the Loan Programs Office,
there were no politicals on the review board. The final sign-
off comes from a political appointee, but prior to that, the
actual review committee did not have politicals. So I am
wondering, if we want to do this in a professional way, why are
we putting politicals on these review boards? Why not save that
for the final process and let the professionals do their job?
Secretary Wright. Senator, I am highly confident the
decision-making process now is vastly more professional and
vastly less political than it was in the previous
administration.
Senator Heinrich. How am I supposed to evaluate that if
there weren't politicals on these review boards before, and
now, we have politicals in the review boards? So why should I
believe that to be the case if there is--why not let the
professionals in your Department--and you have some of the best
in the entire world--do their job, and then you can make a
political decision?
Secretary Wright. Because the political appointees that are
in it are people I chose, they are business leaders, they are
entrepreneurs, they are on the political team we brought in,
but their job is to evaluate the math, the financial
statements, go back and forth with questions. They are playing
a business role, and if you look at--and we should have a
lunch. We should have a lunch, and you should see how we do
things today, and I can show you how things were done before.
The change in professionalism, and not political--professional
business evaluation--is dramatic.
Senator Heinrich. I am going to wrap up my questions here,
and I look forward to having lunch with you. I do want to point
out, I made a mistake earlier. I cited my cost of retail
electricity incorrectly. It was not 12 cents per kilowatt-hour,
it was 10.8, and that is with 35 percent solar, 15 percent
wind, 15 percent battery storage, and only five percent coal,
23 percent gas. So----
Secretary Wright. Are those capacity or produced energy
numbers?
Senator Heinrich. Those are capacity numbers.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Heinrich. Yes, that my utility provided to me when
I asked. That's the retail price for an individual at their
home. So if they are able to do that at 10.8 cents a kilowatt-
hour, or even 11 or 12, well below the national average,
something's not adding up here.
Secretary Wright. New Mexico has done a good job.
Absolutely.
The Chairman. Senator Hickenlooper.
Senator Hickenlooper. That's so clever to say New Mexico
has done a good job. What Senator won't bask in that reflected
glory?
Let me turn to something that I think Senator King has
already talked about a little bit, but I think that I look at
energy efficiency--as a former Governor and a former mayor, we
knew that the cheapest energy we could find was the energy that
we didn't have to use. So when you look at, whether it's home
insulation or all these different ways of trying to find more
efficient ways of using the energy we already have and saving
it, most of the studies show that it's two to three times
cheaper than when you are talking about natural gas or wind or
solar or anything. It's cheaper to get it through efficiencies.
Some of the energy efficiency experts estimate that at
somewhere between two and five cents per kilowatt-hour.
[Displayed chart follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T1238.008
Senator Hickenlooper. I think that we look at the parts of
your enterprise that really work on this and we see their
budgets being dramatically cut. We have a----
Secretary Wright. It's right over your head, I can----
Senator Hickenlooper. Well, I couldn't see it. But anyway,
you look at what the--this is Energy Efficiency and Renewable
Energy, which, of course, since NREL, the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory is involved in a bunch of this work and is in
my home turf--I can almost, on a really clear day, if I get up
on the third floor, I can almost see them. That's a dramatic
cut. I mean, and you can go even back to pre-Biden levels,
that's a dramatic cut, and am I wrong that this is leading to
some of the most cost-effective ways of addressing our climate,
or our energy costs?
Secretary Wright. So I think you are right, Senator, that
energy efficiency is a huge opportunity, and of course, it's
pursued in all different ways, just government expenditure from
one department, I don't think is a great----
Senator Hickenlooper. It would have to be a well-run
department, so I am assuming that it's not just from one
department, it would be a department that is now using better
systems and doing things more correct, more properly.
Secretary Wright. We are, you know, we have gone from, you
know, ten computer systems down to one, so yes we are doing
everything we can to run the department more like a business
and refocus it a little bit as well. But I think less
expenditure in a department that has got efficiency in its name
does not mean a walking away from efficiency, but I think the
biggest drivers of efficiencies, like most things, have been
market forces, right? People find ways to do efficiencies, as
you and I do in our lives and all that. And I have been quite
critical and quite concerned about, like, the regulatory
example for the DOE, you know. If we just keep regulating, you
know, you could only buy the super-efficient Cadillac, well,
other people can't afford the Cadillac. So different people
evaluate trade-offs differently. So I am always skeptical of
fitting a one-size-fits-all answer onto our whole population.
Senator Hickenlooper. But that's the whole point of doing--
the research they are doing is looking at a variety of ways to
achieve this goal that pretty much everybody agrees is
dramatically less expensive than having to go out and create
new energy.
Secretary Wright. Efforts in energy efficiency at the
Department and at NREL or whatever aren't going away.
Senator Hickenlooper. Got you. Okay. Well, hopefully they
will get added expense.
Just one more quick question. The intermittent--and I
understand some of the legitimate concerns about intermittent
energy--but at a certain point, when you have places where you
can get baseload secure and effective, that way if the wind or
the solar doesn't have batteries, I mean, ultimately, I think
the question is whether you can get solar and wind with
batteries to be cost-effective with coal or natural gas, which
I think you can, certainly if you look at the direction of
funding. But even forgetting that, if your baseload is--if you
have got backup, already redundant energy for your baseload so
that, let's say you only have 30 percent wind and 25 percent
solar, if you have a cloudy day or you have a windless day, you
still have someplace you can, you know, turn on natural gas-
powered plants or whatever. That really takes away a lot of the
stridency, you know, that these intermittent sources of energy
are somehow failed.
Secretary Wright. Well, but it adds to the system cost.
Like the biggest demand in PJM, the grid we are all in right
here, 65 million people. Peak demand was the night after
inauguration. At that time, 44 percent of the electricity came
from gas, 22 percent from coal, 22 percent from nuclear, six
percent from hydro, four percent from oil, two percent from
wind, zero percent from solar. So you needed, if we had zero
wind and solar, we needed exactly the same grid, and then we
add wind and solar on top. So there is just no way that is ever
going to be cheaper.
Senator Hickenlooper. All right, well those are the two
things we will discuss on our lunch.
Secretary Wright. Yes.
Senator Hickenlooper. In terms of both the issues around
climate change because I think there is a lot to discuss there.
Senator King. Can I come to that lunch, Senator?
Senator Hickenlooper. If you are polite.
Senator King. I will pay.
Senator Hickenlooper. Oh, he will pay. All right, if it's
okay with you.
Senator Heinrich. It's getting bigger and bigger.
Secretary Wright. I look forward to that lunch.
Senator Hickenlooper. Thank you.
The Chairman. Mr. Secretary, accelerating the deployment of
new nuclear energy is something that I think you agree is
critical to the U.S. achieving global energy dominance and
meeting our needs, our energy demands, our national security
needs, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence
and the emerging AI race that is surrounding that. The
Department of Energy has existing authority under the Atomic
Energy Act, as you know, to authorize nuclear facilities,
including reactors, and it appears poised to be able to
maximize the use of that authority pursuant to President
Trump's recent executive orders. Can you discuss with us the
Department's authority to authorize nuclear projects, including
reactors and fuel cycle facilities, and just describe for us
how the Department may use that authority to speed up the
development and the deployment of new nuclear energy and
whether Congress ought to consider any legislative changes
beyond that to help expand that authority?
Secretary Wright. Yes, Senator, I think we can see from the
historical record just what happened to our nuclear industry
over the last 20 or 30 years--almost impossible to permit
anything, deathly slow, which means expensive. Uncertainty
scares capital away. So we are going to try to use all the
resources of the Department. I mentioned these test reactors.
We want, 12 months from now, to have reactors that are
critical, meaning they are turned on and running in the Idaho
National Lab. These are reactors that have been talked about
for 15 years. Some of them can be built quickly and ready to
go, and we want to use that authority because our fear is, the
old way it worked, five years from now we would still be
talking about that soon we are going to have SMRs.
So we are going to use that authority. One of the limits on
our authority--we have also put out requests for people to
build data centers or energy production on government lands,
and we are going to see that happen. Right now, if they are
authorized through the DOE, they can run a reactor, but you
can't sell electricity from it. So we can run for a test or for
other purposes, but there is a limit there. Of course,
together, hopefully we can get the NRC to be focused on safety
and environmental protection in a reasonable fashion and not in
the obstructionist, way over-the-top approach it has been in.
Grand Central Station in New York City, a train station,
you know, hundreds of thousands of people walk through every
day--you could not permit that as a nuclear power plant today
because the radiation is too high. Using linear, no-threshold
math--if a lot is bad, well then, a very little is still a
little bit bad--makes it so that it just has become impractical
to build cost-competitive nuclear plants. China builds a
nuclear plant for a third of the cost we do in a fourth of the
time. We want to protect our people. We want safety. We want to
do all the right things, but we have got to be smarter about
how we do that or nuclear will forever be on the edge of
``going to happen.'' We need to make it happen. It's just a
great energy source that can help the world.
The Chairman. Yes, it is, indeed, and there is something of
a difference I think between, on the one hand, a slow
regulatory process that is advancing the ball and making things
safer, then, at some point, one might reach the point of
diminishing marginal returns with regard to how long it takes.
And it sounds like you agree that the system within the NRC
isn't necessarily calibrated in order to maximize that.
Secretary Wright. Yes, and I have got to say, I think a lot
of the presidential actions, executive orders that are
messaging and changing some regulations and stuff in the One
Big Beautiful Bill are aimed at how do we unleash American
energy, how do we get less regulation, more ability to permit
stuff and to move ahead with stuff and spend less money on
industrial subsidies that have been unhelpful to our
electricity and unhelpful to our grid, and it's just dollars we
don't have.
The Chairman. Yes.
Okay. That concludes today's hearing. I want to thank my
colleagues for being here, for participating. I want to thank
you, Secretary Wright, for being here and answering our
questions.
The deadline for submitting questions for the record will
be 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, Thursday, June 19th. Senators also have
until 6:00 p.m. next Wednesday, June 25th, to add statements
for the record for today's hearing.
Thanks again, Mr. Secretary, for your testimony. The
Committee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:15 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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