[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 71 (Tuesday, April 23, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2995-S2996]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         TRIBUTE TO CARL IMHOFF

  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about and thank 
Carl Imhoff who is retiring after an explementary 44-year career at the 
Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
  Carl's insights and contributions have shaped our Nation's approach 
to grid reliability, resiliency, and security. I can personally attest 
to how Carl's keen understanding of how our Nation's grid works has 
helped me draft and enact legislation ranging from measures to respond 
to the West Coast Electricity Crisis, to the Smart Grid Title of the 
2007 Energy Bill, to numerous provisions related to boosting grid R&D, 
cybersecurity, and expanding transmission lines.
  Aided by his forethought and vision, Carl has been a champion for 
infrastructure modernization. He understands and his work underscores 
the importance of the electricity grid as the backbone of our economic 
and national security, as well as the critical role it plays in 
decarbonization strategies that will power America into the future. His 
leadership has helped bring forward new approaches and technology 
advances to energy and grid challenges that will have an impact for 
years to come.
  A native of Arkansas, Carl grew up learning about the intersection of 
technology, policy, and economic security through the work of his 
father John, a distinguished professor and long-time chair of the 
Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Arkansas, who 
also served in an advisory capacity on a variety of initiatives for 
Senators Pryor, Bumpers, and then-Governor Bill Clinton. From his 
mother Lois, an avid conservationist and community organizer, Carl took 
lessons on the value of public lands and waters and the necessity of 
their preservation. In fact, Carl paid his first visit to the hearing 
room of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as part of 
his mother's work with the Ozark Society, which would ultimately lead 
to the Buffalo River's designation as our first National River, way 
back in 1972.
  With his own degrees in industrial engineering in hand, Carl brought 
these very sensibilities to Richland, WA, in 1980, when he joined PNNL. 
Carl began building not only his technical career, but also his 
reputation in the region as a collaborator and thought leader in 
charting the path forward for energy system reliability. Meanwhile, he 
took the opportunity as an avid outdoorsman to experience all the 
variety and adventures the Pacific Northwest's public lands have to 
offer and shared them with his growing boys. Carl remains a student of 
the works of former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, a Yakima 
native and confidant of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who is 
renowned for his work in connection with the preservation of wilderness 
and wild and scenic rivers.
  I have known Carl for the last two decades of his career at PNNL, 
much of which time he spent as the leader of the lab's grid research 
and development portfolio. When I first took office in 2001, our region 
was experiencing the

[[Page S2996]]

challenges and economic dislocation associated with the Western energy 
crisis. As a new member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources 
Committee, I immediately set out to understand how technology--and in 
particular, the convergence of grid and emerging internet and 
communications technologies--could bolster system reliability and 
prevent such a series of events from happening again.
  I learned that a group of researchers from PNNL had been working with 
the Bonneville Power Administration on concepts of wide-area 
situational awareness, given transmission system reliability events 
that had recently happened in the West. What is more, they were working 
on extending those concepts to provide more flexibility and control at 
the grid edge, integration of variable renewables and working to build 
cybersecurity into these approaches from the outset.
  Over time, Carl and his team's work at PNNL would help inform 
technical programmatic trajectories included in the Energy Independence 
and Security Act of 2007, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, 
the Energy Security Act of 2020, and related provisions in the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Approaches pioneered at PNNL in the 
cybersecurity arena, with the stewardship of DOE's Office of 
Electricity--and subsequently, the Office of Cyber Security, Energy 
Security, and Emergency Response--would underpin the designation of DOE 
as the energy sector-specific Agency for cybersecurity included in 
2017's FAST Act.
  Throughout these two decades of dynamic change in the electricity 
industry--and the added complexity of the environment in which it 
operates--Carl has shown the unique ability to synthesize the technical 
findings of PNNL and other laboratory and university researchers, take 
into account multiple perspectives from industry, and help chart a 
clear and actionable path forward for next steps in the grid 
modernization journey. He has built relationships on the basis of a 
clear-eyed, technically unassailable and unbiased approach, and with 
the confidence of his colleagues grounded in his integrity and his 
insistence on always putting the Nation's needs first, ahead of any 
parochial concerns. Carl has stressed the importance of research, 
government, and industry working together and built the relationships 
across industry, long-time DOE civil servants and spanning different 
administrations, necessary to deliver on the mission.
  As a recognized expert and cochair of DOE's Grid Modernization 
Laboratory Consortium, Carl would find his way back to the very same 
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing room he had first 
visited as part of his mother's conservation work back in Arkansas. He 
has testified on `` . . . the high return on investment encountered by 
utilities and national labs across the country when combining new 
electric infrastructure innovation with public-private validation and 
deployment.'' He has brought perspectives on growing interdependencies 
across multiple critical infrastructures, smart grid concepts, changes 
in generation mix, grid controls, and information technology ``. . . . 
collectively reshaping utility business models and enabling new 
innovations and market participants.'' And most recently, Carl brought 
forward DOE and laboratory perspectives on efforts to mitigate wildfire 
risk and increase grid resiliency--an emerging issue of great concern 
for utilities and communities across the West.
  Our collective efforts to address the necessity of grid modernization 
as an energy, economic, and national security imperative are much 
better for the work of Carl Imhoff and the leadership he has shown 
across his four decade plus career at PNNL. As he heads off to spend 
more time with his wife Kristen and his growing grandchildren, I 
congratulate him on a well-deserved retirement. Still, I hope Carl will 
keep a phone handy to share occasional wise perspectives on the next 
phases of our grid modernization journey in the Pacific Northwest, even 
if he answers the call while hiking Badger Mountain.
  So I am pleased to have this opportunity to publicly thank Carl, not 
only for the contributions he made while at PNNL, but for his approach 
to collaboration and innovation in the public interest, which will 
continue to help the Pacific Northwest and our entire Nation realize a 
more reliable, resilient, affordable, and cleaner energy future.

                          ____________________