Biden Admin Is ‘Deeply Invested’ In A Successful Hydrogen Economy’: Sec. Granholm Tells Chris Coons

7 months ago

During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) questioned Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm about the hydrogen economy.

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Transcript

00:00 Senator Coons. Thank you Chair Murray and thank you both to our witnesses today

00:05 for your leadership in America's energy security and for delivering on the

00:09 promise of landmark legislation of the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation

00:13 Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure law. You are really

00:17 delivering a next generation energy future for America and since the last

00:22 time we held this budget hearing, Delaware and the Mid-Atlantic region

00:25 have been selected for one of the hydrogen hubs which has potential to be

00:30 transformational for my region and to give it an opportunity to really

00:34 participate in the hydrogen economy of the future. We have several iconic

00:39 Delaware companies that are at the leading edge of electrolyzer technology

00:43 and we have three oil refineries at the head of the Delaware Bay in three states

00:47 that are committed to a transformation towards hydrogen production and

00:51 deployment if we can get this right. Madam Secretary, how are you making sure

00:57 that each of the hubs gets the support and the flexibility they need to achieve

01:02 liftoff? I'm concerned about flexible matching requirements in particular so

01:07 that we can not just put out a big grant announcement but actually strike the

01:13 right balance between private sector partners, public sector investment and

01:17 getting hydrogen secured as a next generation fuel. Yeah, this is such an

01:22 important issue. We want these hubs to succeed and we know we have to carve

01:28 this with a scalpel and not with an axe. The 45 V requirements I know have been

01:36 put out. We have received 20 or 30,000 comments from stakeholders on all sides

01:42 and Treasury and with the assistance of DOE we are we are wading through the

01:49 comments to make sure that we get it right. Suffice it to say the Biden

01:54 administration is deeply invested in making a hydrogen economy successful in

01:58 this country. We are, I can tell you in meeting with all of my counterparts

02:03 across the world, we are really the envy of the world because we have such a

02:07 diverse array of hydrogen of inputs for these hydrogen hubs. So we are we are

02:15 looking at it, we're evaluating and we want to get it right. Thank you. I just in

02:19 our particular case I worry about a cash flow crunch in terms of what what's the

02:24 timing of the matching requirements and I want to make sure we get this right

02:27 and I very much look forward to working with you on that. Chips and Science also

02:32 helped authorize a new foundation for your department, FESI, the Foundation for

02:37 Energy Security and Innovation, which is a tool many other federal agencies and

02:41 entities have used to attract and deploy private sector funding. In fact I was

02:46 thrilled that in part because of funding from this subcommittee there was the

02:50 announcement of the inaugural board of directors a few weeks ago. What are the

02:55 key challenges facing the Department of Energy that you think would benefit from

02:58 public-private partnership from philanthropic capital and

03:03 coordination? Yeah thank you so much. First of all thank you for your

03:05 leadership on this. I know this has been in the works for a long time

03:08 and there was such a sense of joy when we finally announced the

03:13 board members and it was funded to be able to get it launched. I know the board

03:18 is it's a mixture of people with a variety of talents and so they're

03:22 interested in the spectrum of things that they might be helpful on but I do

03:26 know there is a wealth of opportunity in the in the space of taking ideas from

03:32 labs to commercialization and so helping those and getting a sense of the

03:37 spectrum from all of the various labs. I mean there's just so it's so rich in

03:42 that environment they're very interested in leaning in on that so I think that is

03:47 a very big way they can help. See there's one other way that's not so technically

03:51 involved which is to help us think through and maybe help to supply

03:56 technical assistance to for example tribes and other areas rural areas where

04:02 the region might not just don't doesn't have the is not equipped to be able to

04:07 navigate the the bureaucracy of the federal government to apply for a grant

04:12 or a loan. So those kinds of things they're looking at the vast array of it

04:15 but thank you so much for giving us this assist at the department even though

04:20 it's totally independent and bipartisan it'll be a great assist to future to

04:25 the department going well into the future. My most bipartisan bill in this

04:29 area is the Prove It Act with Senator Kramer that has 14 bipartisan co-sponsors

04:34 and it just advanced out of EPW I think by a vote of 14 to 5 in January and

04:41 NETL the whole suite of national labs will be critical to gathering data about

04:47 emissions intensity. Any thoughts you want to share about what resources you

04:52 might need as a department obviously Commerce, USTR, State, EPA there'd be a

04:57 whole range of participants but it would really be DOE led. Any thoughts about

05:02 what actually gathering emissions intensity data to advance industrial

05:07 decarbonization might look like for the department? Well I I hope the authorizers and the

05:12 appropriators come together on providing some resources to make this happen but

05:16 the bottom line is I think it's an incredibly important bill for our

05:19 competitive advantage if we're manufacturing products we need to know

05:23 what that footprint looks like and this is one way to be able to keep to do that

05:28 and to keep it updated so thank you for your leadership on it I can see why it's

05:31 so overwhelmingly supported. And I'm simply gonna reinforce what two of my

05:35 colleagues said the transformer the domestic transformer manufacturing

05:39 bottleneck is something I hear about constantly from the Delaware electric

05:43 co-op and Senator Shaheen's been a leader as long as I've been here on

05:47 performance contracting and energy efficiency and in my previous role on

05:51 FSGG I'd try to give some lift to performance contracting anything I could

05:56 do to be helpful I'd like to thank you for your forbearance Madam Chair. Yes

06:00 Senator Heinrich do you have additional questions? Sure thank you.

Biden Admin Is ‘Deeply Invested’ In A Successful Hydrogen Economy’: Sec. Granholm Tells Chris Coons

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