Test. Test. Test. And part of that reason is because of the research that is going on at our National Labs. And im going to, again, ask paul to share with you, just because hes fresh out of seeing some of this and has to do with the Battery Storage. And the progress being made on Battery Storage is really fascinating. And ive always said that Battery Storage is the holy grail. If were able to get to that point where we can use our renewables, solar and wind in particular to power these batteries that have long time storage, and what were finding now is that the the elements that are being used to create some of these batteries are not Rare Earth Minerals and theyre elements that we have right here in the United States, so were going to be in control of our future substantially more on the Battery Storage if you just kind of give them a glimpse of whats going on here and i think thats pretty exciting stuff. So a couple of examples, the complex, r d business, beyond lithium ion batteries that not only have tremendous improvements in performance the three to five times but made out of elements as the secretary said we dont have to source it from places we have more of a challenge. The second thing is an example that we did with the support of the committee is the recycling battery announcement we made at Argon National lab where we announced the First Research for recycling batteries, so the materials you are talking about that have to be potentially sourced from other places in the world, were looking at with all these batteries being used and the economy now, how we could reuse those rather than needing to source that from other locations. Thank you. Thank you. You mentioned on the electric grid and i think in 2017 you produced the doe produced a report on listing recommendations we should do to prepare for an emp attack. Do you know of any progress that has been made . Yes, sir. Substantial amount of it. And april of this year, we doe issued cybersecurity for Energy DeliverySystems Research call to the federally funded research and development centers. And theyre working exactly on what youre talking about there, the resiliency, the reliability of the Nations Energy infrastructure and theyre looking at a host of different ways to, you know, we actually stood up an office we referred to as caesar cybersecurity and the Emergency Response that is headed up and so, again, thank you for the funding of that. I think it is very timely. And in the previous that i talk about this 35 million is going to be used for testing that can be used to verify and validate Operational Technology equipment, software, and there is also funding opportunity announcement that was released in the month prior, in march, to establish a cyber manufacturing institute, and that one is comanaged by our Caesar Office and eere to mitigate cybersecurity threats. So there is a lot of movement in that space. The doe, our national lab and private sector partners are all engaged i think in a very constructive way to send a message to our citizens, to those that operate our electric and Power Systems that were doing Everything Possible to protect them against both cyberthreats, physical threats, and National Natural disasters as well. In florida, you know, your governor is about to do a an announcement on infrastructure resiliency and what have you. Our two states have, you know, time to time we get more natural disasters than we would really like to have. But how we build that infrastructure and how we develop that resiliency of the grid is very, very important. Not just because the cyberside of this, you know, ten years ago we that wasnt a problem. It is today. Thank you very much. Mr. Mcnerney. I want to thank the chair, thank the secretary for coming today. I worked at santa National Laboratories in albuquerque, and live more labs outside of my district. Im well aware of the quality and quantity of labs. I encourage you to support those labs as much as you possibly can. Secretary perry, do you believe research on Climate Science is needed or do you think Climate Science is settled . Well, i think were continuing to add to the body of science that is out there. We need to continue to work on that. What makes the doe labs uniquely qualified among the National Science agencies to conduct research on climate . Well, partly because we historically have been engaged in it. So when you go back and look at the history of Climate Science, doe and their scientists, they have been involved with it, there is a foeia out now, congressman, that is going to it is a selection the doe issued yesterday on climate modeling. And i think this is just another example of how does role in the Predictive Modeling of what is going on in the environment, these severe storms that were seeing i know youre not intentionally filibustering. No, im excited about what is going on i strongly urge you to continue to double down on climate research, including climate intervention research. We need those tools available. Secretary perry, one way to make energy from renewable sources that are remote available to load Centers Across the country is to Better Connect them with the what we call interconnection seams. The National RenewableEnergy Laboratory completed a study on this, however the Committee Staff informed me that the release of the report that contains findings from this study has been delayed without explanation and the authors have been told not to discuss it publicly. Are you aware that the limits have been placed on the authors in discussing results of this study publicly and whether the limits remain in place today . Im not. Okay. So will you make commitment to make this publicly this report available . Yes, sir. Well circle back and find out where that originated from. And make it right. Thank you, appreciate that. The doe canceled a 46 million funding opportunity announcement on solar r d. Just days before the winners were to be announced. Can you or anyone on your staff explain why that was pulled at the last minute . Well go research it sir and get back to you. I appreciate that. I appreciate your comments on Artificial Intelligence. Mr. Olson and i are cochairs of the Artificial Intelligence caucus and were going to continue to pursue that subject with vigor. I know that National Labs have a lot to offer on that. I urge you to keep the labs well funded, and keep the morale high at those labs by not threatening their funding year after year. With that, im going to yield back. Thank you. Ill yield back the three minutes that the prior speaker took. Thank you very much, mr. Olson. I thank the chair. Howdy, secretary perry. Dont go over your time, pete. Never my intention. Ill start with something very important to meadville, texas. A personal invitation from a young texas lady we both know and admire. Her name is katie vossic. You met her President Trumps first speech before congress. She fell out of a live oak tree, broke her spine, has not walked for three years. As you see now, shes a fellow aggie. Proud aggie. And she wants to thank you personally for meeting with her and inspiring her to get moving forward and going to college station. So on her behalf, maybe find some time to come down to meadville, texas, the jay cafe had the best chicken fried steak and pecan pie of all of texas. And maybe pop over to the power plant across the way. If you have time, come down and would love to have you come down. You dont even have it use the extra bait of chicken fried steak to get me there. Thank you. A question, very important, sugarland, texas, involved the nnsa. As you know, the nnsa picks up some waste used by industry and then disposes of it. They send out to a site called the waste isolation power plant, the wipp, radioactive 241 is needed for safe drilling. This is a known carcinogen. They pick up, they send is off for safe storage somewhere in america. But there is a very small amount of that mineral that is picked up by nnsa and cant be kept here because it came from foreign sources originally. It is identical feel. Identical. We cant dispose of it because it came from another country. So we had the sites all across our country now, right now, sprinkled with this radioactive waste. One site, secretary perry is half a mile from my sons high school, ft. Bend christian. In 2015, they had a small release of sesium 137. Workers took that home on their clothes. I would like to change the law to make sure we dispose of this carcinogen without regard where it came from. Are you aware of this, and how can we help you to make this common sense dispose, dispose, dispose and not delay . Dispose and not delay. Yes, sir. We are familiar with this. And what i apologize for turning my back to you and asking a question. I wanted to make sure i was correct in the assumption that i was making that this is going to require a statutory change in which you just mentioned. And we will assist you any way we can from the standpoint of using science at the labs or what have you to back up because i agree with you, that these types of materials do need to be put in appropriate disposal places and so the idea that just because it was produced in a foreign country, versus the exact same element that is produced at a National Labs reactor for these isotopes, there is a host of these isotopes that we use in medical and obviously for the oil and gas industry, but we agree that the statute needs to be changed. It is the old land use act that prohibits any foreign produced elements of being placed in like the whip. We would support your effort there and anything we can do from a scientific standpoint to back that up, consider it available. It sounds look i have to call the ball, three down, clear to land. Not our job, your job. Youre on it. Ai, we are the cochairs of the house ai caucus. Your video was awesome. It shows the potential future of ai. Can you discuss ais potential for protecting our grid, protecting our pipeline, protecting our National Labs. This is the future. How are you doing that . I cant do it briefly. It is just such a broad and but i think some time in the future, let me just leave it at this, i dont think there is a field that the government is participating in that has any more potential to have bigger impact on our citizens than Artificial Intelligence. The Super Computers that the department operates that we operate and we are our next level computers are going to be operating the computer coming online at argon over at mr. Fosters district. In 2021 will do a billion, billion transactions per second. Thats the speed of which anywhere between i think it is up to 50 times faster than the computers we have today. It is fascinating work so ai, Machine Learning, coming with that. Were going to find answers to challenges that we had no idea we were going to be able to address in the very near future. Thank you. I yield back. Thank you very much. Miss horn. Thank you, madam chairwoman. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. I want to start off by framing this that issues of workforce development, stem, building our workforce of tomorrow as well as the Cutting Edge Technology development are all very important, both to me and my district and clearly energy is a big issue in oklahoma as it is across the country. So i want to start with the funding. I think we have to have a conversation about the role of technology development. And in its ten year history, they have funded high risk, high reward Energy Innovation projects that create cleaner energy and Economic Growth. The important thing about that of the 145 projects that have been supported by rpe, they have attracted 2. 9 billion in follow on funding, follow on private sector funding and 76 of these projects have gone on to form new companies. I say that to ask in the proposed budget, it basically zeros out rpe. In the balance of Public Private partnerships, were looking at the Cutting Edge Development of Government Investment leading to follow on actual companies and Economic Growth and development. What are you doing as secretary of energy to communicate the clear successes that this program has had to the president and his budget team . Mostly sitting in front of committees like this, defending what rpe has historically done. I will continue to do that. I recognize it from time to time were not always on the same page as the hymn book. And this is one of those. I hope you raised that. It is such an important way to encourage that Economic Growth and development by investing in cutting edge. Now, turning for a moment to cybersecurity and manufacturing, which are also topics that are critical and im i think we need to talk about, the manufacturing usa program, you probably know, a network of advanced Manufacturing Technology areas that have the goal of establishing American Leadership and manufacturing. And with respect to cybersecurity, which is absolutely critical in high tech manufacturing, the manufacturing times digital or mdx, a program funded by the department of defense is focused on improving cybersecurity and digital manufacturing and that is their focus and on march 26th of this year, your department announced a 70 million award for cybersecurity for a new manufacturing usa institute. My question is why the duplication of effort in those projects which are basically the same and have you encouraged your staff and the doe to work with the dod because this is very important but in terms of streamlining our programs and not duplicating effort, why the duplication here . May i ask paul dabbar to weigh in here a second . I think he may be able to enlighten up a little better than me telling you. We work with undersecretary griffin in charge of research at dod quite a bit and our other peers at nasa and nsf and the others. We each focus on different areas to be direct dod focuses on lethality applications. The department of energy is more about energy and science. And so there is different applications for different aspects. Dod, for example, does not focus on cybersecurity for the grid. They focus on cybersecurity for what they do. So there is a lot of similarities, a lot of overlap and their lab research and our lab research, but there is some very practical points of research that are different, hard to fully get into here today. So, just a quick followup on that. Did you coordinate with the dod to build the scope of this program to not overlap or overlapping of the manufacturing . Because it is a whole new institute, thats my question. It is a whole new institute. Are there not other ways this could be coordinated . For this particular institute im not certain if there was a discussion, specifically with undersecretary griffins scope. But we do it all the time with him, across quantum, around ai, around hypersonics. This particular one i cant answer. We can follow up with you on that. I would appreciate that. And i yield back the balance. Thank you, madam chair. Thank you very much. Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, madam chair. And secretary perry for being here today. One of the challenges i think we always face in this committee is connecting our basic research, which i think is absolutely critical to the future of our nation, to every day constituent issues and things that folks on the ground are feeling on a day to day basis. And kind of with that in mind, especially when were talking about things like quantum computing and ai and big data, these are important buzzwords, how do we connect it to the day to day. And one of the big issues across our country and in my district is the issue of veteran suicides. The number that has been most widely circulated is 20 veteran suicides a day. I know that the doe and the va have engaged in a partnership to solve just that with the use of some of our technology. My colleague mr. Norman has introduced legislation to reauthorize that partnership. And i guess i would like to just turn it over to you, just to hear from your perspective how is the partnership working, what are you working on specifically with respect to the va. And how can we do even better . Thank you. Thank you for your serious passion about this issue. Probably every one of us in here, this isnt just about veterans, this is about our kids, about our colleagues, it is about the citizens of this country and you and i talked about this, congressman mcnerney talked about it, the importance of what we potentially have in front of us now because of the breakthroughs that were seeing in the partnerships that are being created between historically disparate agencies of government. Nobody ever thought doe was supposed to be involved in traumatic brain injury or pts post Traumatic Stress or cte and what we are showing people is that we have a real role to play in this. We may have one of the most important roles to play because of that computing capacity that we have. And the ability for us to partner with the va in the sense of working with the va. The data that they have and they know they can trust us, no off