biden's nominee to be deputy-energy secretary. the committee is meeting the committee is meeting today for both a business meeting and a hearing. we are going to begin by considering the nomination of david turk to be the deputy secretary of energy. i am going to start with my opening statement. then, i will turn over to senator barrasso for his. and then, we'll have hopefully one more ready to roll. i was highly impressed by mr. turk at our hearing last week. he clearly has a firm grasp on the wide range of issues facing the department of energy. he is going to bring a wealth of practical experience to the job of deputy secretary. he started his career working in the senate for our former colleague, kent conrad, who speaks very highly of him. he then worked on the senate-judiciary committee for senator biden. he held a series of national-security and foreign-affairs jobs in the house, in the state department, and at the national security council. he spent two years as deputy assistant secretary in the department of energy, and he has spent four years in senior positions at the international energy agency. including the last-14 months at dr. faith broll's deputy. quite simply, mr. turk has spent the last-20 years serving in important jobs that have given him the technical knowledge and the practical experience in energy, national security, and management, that he will need to help secretary granholm lead the department of energy. and i believe his performance at our hearing last week demonstrated that he has the knowledge and ability to serve in this important position, in unbiased way. he was supremely well qualified for the job and i do heartily support his nomination. let me recognize senator barrasso to make his statement, at this time. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i agree, today our committee will vote on the nomination of david turk. and if confirmed, he will play a critical role in our nation's energy agenda and in leading the department. his experience in energy policy, i believe, is extensive. he served in leadership positions, at the international energy agency, department of energy, department of state, and the national security council. during his nomination hearing, he said that he was dedicated to all types of american energy and the need to keep america energy dominant. stated he wanted to work with our committee to support the development and expansion of american carbon-capture technologies, nuclear power, and critical minerals. i, especially, appreciated his commitment to carbon-capture utilization and sequestration technologies, as well as the need to construct co2 pipelines to move that captured carbon. during his hearing, he said, quote, there are huge opportunities on ccus if we can work together and really go to scale. i agree. republicans and democrats worked together last congress to pass the use it act. bipartisan legislation to support carbon-capture technologies, including air capture and the construction of co2 pipelines. at the integrated test center outside wyoming, groundbreaking research is already taking place on carbon-capture technologies. these are the type of efforts the biden administration should be embracing and fully support. mr. turk was also responsive to the committee's written questions for the record. this has not been the case with every one of president biden's nominees, so far. if confirmed, mr. turk must prioritize and why that exist within the state of washington -- all accountable on meeting certain milestones so we can't get it cleaned up. so, i also appreciate the secretary yesterday made further announcements at the lab about battery and storage capacity research that the national labs are doing there. so, they're playing their part. we have to get the cleanup done and move on to the other challenges that we face. i very much appreciate this nominee's commit during the i very much appreciate this nominees commitment during the q&a about his commitment to making sure they would live up to those milestones and, as i said, it's a very complex problem that oftentimes people think there's just got to be a better way to do it or do it on the cheap. well, there just isn't. we made great progress on the facility. now we have to get it operational so i hope that anybody who wants to come and visit they, or i encourage you to do so. there is, i think, with my colleague from new mexico we did create a national historic park between the three locations in the united states to tell the story and i think we have a little more work to do on that as well. i think we have to do a little more work with d.o.e. and our national parks. as well as something we want the public to have access to. so, mr. chairman, i'm hoping that we found another member or that they're on their way. >> if not, we have senator daines to help us through this. >> always >> mister chairman, i'm always here to help you in your time of need. it's rare that we need to plead with senators to say something. >> i never thought i would see it. >> it's true. i just want to let the committee know and let you know as chairman i plan on supporting mr. turks nomination. i found the interaction i had with him refreshing, pragmatic. he definitely has demonstrated the knowledge and willingness to work on both sides of the aisle and, in fact, this hearing we are going to be going into next, mister chairman, i think it will explain why we need mr. turks pragmatism and center bourassa said it's, and all above energy port folio moving forward. i used to be an operations guy before i got involved in public service, understanding what it needs to meet peak capacity, peak mode requirements and one engineer once told me if you think about a family of three and trying to develop a capacity plan for how many beds they need, some might say you only need one because on average you sleep eight hours a night and the reality is it's all about the peak load, not about averages and we just saw what happened in this recent cold snap in a place like montana in february, it happens every winter where we have the wind stops blowing, the temperatures plummet and the warmth -- if it weren't for the fact where we had an all above energy portfolio we would've had rolling blau brown often blackouts in places like montana. we got close. we see things happen in the summertime where high pressure moves in, demand goes way up and wind stops blowing. and consequently you've got to have a diverse portfolio to beat the demand. bottom line is i really appreciated what he said about critical minerals. about carbon capture and how we can work together here to work on reducing emissions as well as ensuring we've got reliable, affordable energy. i will plan to support mr. turk and thanks for the time to speak, mr. chairman. >> i just thought since we have so much extra time here we would wait out our colleague. i just want to say i want to thank you for holding this hearing today because i think it's going to be very instructive. one of the things that hasn't been particularly well covered is that during the freeze up in texas that natural gas production actually fell by 45% so it's a little more complicated than just a diverse portfolio. there's a lot of water in natural gas and the basin and when you don't winter risings it literally freezes up. and so we saw -- and, you know, natural gas just could not in texas fill the gap because of the freeze ups and so irrespective of what happened in the first few days with regard to electricity generation, there are a lot of lessons to be learned about winter rising all of our infrastructure. about planning for the incredibly extreme weather events that we are now experiencing on a regular basis and why haven't gone through this in 2011 we went to the same thing just weeks ago. i very much appreciate you calling this hearing and i'm looking forward to getting into some of those details a little more deeply than maybe tucker carlson and sean hannity. >> we've got a great panel coming up. i think you will enjoy it. senator kelly? >> thank you, mister chairman. listen, i listen closely to mr. turk and, you know, looked at his record particularly about climate change and renewable energy. i come from a prior life where part of my job -- we lived at a place on the international space station that is powered exclusively by renewable energy, solar power. i also happen to come from a state that has a rather large and growing solar power industry and it's critical to our economy. fiyou know, when i think back o my first spaceflight and i remember flying over south america and looking down at the amazon and what you notice is this big, long copper colored river going through the jungle and fast forward about ten years later and i'm on my fourth spaceflight you look down over the same part of the planet, what do you think you notice? it's not the river. you notice the deforestation and we've put a lot of carbon up into our atmosphere and we continue to do that. i think we've gone from about 250 or so parts per million of co2 pre-industrial revolution to about 415 or so today, i think those numbers are kind of close. what that means for our state if we continue on the business as usual plan in the year 2100 or so we are going to have twice as many days in phoenix over 100 degrees. it's a big, big change so it's obvious we have to do something about it. one of the solutions, it's not everything, but it's solar. we've got supply chain issues that we have to address to continue to grow our solar industry in the state and across the country. those supply chain issues often extend to issues with foreign governments, sometimes our adversaries, so we've got to sort that out. there's rare earth minerals that we need access to to grow this industry. there's also trade issues and tariffs so it's a complicated thing but we do know that it works and renewable energy and moving to more renewable and, you know, less carbon based energy is helpful but it's not the entire solution. we have seen this this past summer in arizona that we need surge capacity. we have that now but we also need to be able to reduce demand at times. our utilities have had some success with this as i've spoken to the ceos of our major utilities in arizona, they've been able to dial down the demand with connected thermostats. in one case i was told 30,000 homes at one time where the utility could reduce the demand from 30, 000, basically turn off the air conditioning in 30,000 homes just temporarily. so there are solutions, the supply change issues are critical near the state of arizona and critical to expanding solar power across our state and cost is another issue. we've got to address that as well because i would say right now where we have you, no, tax credits and we have extended these tax credits it's often a challenging economic decision for a family to make if they are going to decide to put solar panels on their roof or puts more business owners. we've got to make this a little bit more attractive. thank you, mister chairman. >> thank you, senator. >> we are going to go ahead and move to our opening statements on our hearing. we have senators coming. we will take a vote when they appear. turning now to our hearing let me begin by saying i really think that we can all agree that reliable and independent energy is a hallmark of an advanced economy critical for businesses and residential consumers alike to thrive. our north american electric grid is a marvel of engineering and the envy of the world. ongoing and increasing changes in the generation mix and outsized forces like cyber threats and weather events can test the grid also and highlight the importance of a resilient grid. this topic is squarely within the jurisdiction of this committee and it's critical that we, state and local governments and grid operators around the country, the two steps ahead planning for these changes and threats and how to ensure that we strike the right balance between resilience, reliability and affordability. at the top with everyone's mind is a recent winter storm that brought siberian weather to much of the country and west virginia was not spared. we had over 100,000 people that lost power mostly due to downed distribution lines and pulls because of the ice. of course the impact on texas has gotten the most publicity with 4.4 million texans without power for days resulting in billions in damages and billions more energy bills and tragically dozens of deaths. i understand the texas legislature has held several hearings and they are working to get to the bottom of why the texas grid was so unprepared to weather the storm as our -- and the texas operator ercot has provided us with a written statement. i have the written statement here which i am going to ask unanimous consent to enter into the record. now i encourage all of our members if you get a chance to read, it it's pretty interesting. do i have any opposition? if not, so be we enter it. let me be clear. today's hearing is not a referendum on texas. we have seen the impact of extreme weather events to our electric grid across the country whether that be the 2014 polar vortex, extreme heat in california last summer or the extreme cold around the country last month. we need to incorporate all the lessons learned from those events into our future planning, particularly as we can expect both our energy mix and weather patterns to be different in the next decade than they were in the last decade. as part of that future planning we need to take into account the need for a diverse fuel mix with a broader right of emissions reducing technologies and include an honest assessment of where our weak spots are it where we need to invest to balancing the cost of reliability and resilience with affordability. i have said time and time again that we need to address climate change and we have to do it through innovation, not elimination. and as a staunch proponent of all of the above energy policy, i want to emphasize that we need to be thinking of all of our fuel sources. we've got to use all of these resources we have in the cleanest way possible but we need to be eyes wide open that none of them are 100% are immune to weather disruptions whether that be freezing wind, turbines, freezing wind turbines, disruption to our natural gas production and delivery systems or frozen cold stop all of which we saw happen just last month. and that may take investment, winterization and infrastructure which, of course, comes with a price tag and leading back to affordability. reliable, resilient power is no good if families and businesses can't afford it on a daily basis. and while we typically think about this in terms of the cost of kilo what our we also cannot deny the incredible cost associated with major disruptions. by that i mean not only the potential loss of life but also the price tag that comes with scarcity and rebuilding or repairing infrastructure of energy and otherwise, although not labeled as such those costs are passed along to all of us weather through utility and service bills or through our taxes. we truly can't sacrifice reliability, resiliency or affordability when it comes to our electricity if we want to continue to thrive. it's incredibly important that we strike the right balance between all of these attributes as we look to the future. there isn't one answer to that equation but you sure know when you've got it wrong. i look forward to hearing from our panel of witnesses about exactly what happened in recent grid outages. and what lessons we should learn from them and what we should all be thinking about moving forward to strike the right balance. so i want to welcome our panel and now we have a quorum so we are going to go to our vote and then we go right to senator bourassa for his opening statement and i will do the panel a few minutes later. so, if there are no members wishing to be heard further the question is on reporting favourably the nomination of david m turk to be deputy secretary with the nomination to be confirmed. the clerk will call the roll. >> mr. manchin? >> i. >> mr. wyden? >> i by proxy. >> miss cantwell aye >> mr. sanders aye by proxy. >> mr. heinrich? mr. rowan oak? mr. king? miss cortez mastiff? aye by proxy. >> mr. kelly? mr. hip and lucre? mr. brussels? aye mr. rich? aye by proxy. mr. li? aye by proxy. >> mr. daines? aye by proxy. >> this murkowski? mr. hogan? mr. lankford? mr. cassidy aye by proxy. mrs. hyde-smith? aye by proxy. mister marshall? aye. >> on this vote see ayes our 20 and the noes are zero. the nomination is favourably reported. this concludes the business meeting and will now return to our hearing. if you will just let me finish up by welcoming our panel and senator barrasso will give his opening statement. i want to thank all of you for taking the time to be here and bringing your expertise to our panel. we will have mr. jim the president of ceo of electric liability corporation. we have administrator ceo of power administration, we have the honorable path ceo of hunt energy network and former texas public utility commission chairman mr. michael shulem berger, founder president of environmental progress and mr. manu astona. i want to thank you for being with us in person and i look for to your expert analysis and discussion today and i will not turn to senator barrasso for his statement. >> thank you very much, mister chairman, and thank you for following and supporting the hearing. we all agree that affordable, reliable and resilient electric surface is essential for every american. electricity is needed for virtually all aspects of our lives and that is why i have been a strong advocate for generating electricity from a diverse set of resources including coal, uranium, natural gas, hydro power, wind and solar. that's also why i have been especially supportive of energy resources that are capable of generating electricity at all times of the day and night, what is known as base load capacity. and it is why we need to be realistic about the limitations of energy resources such as wind and solar that can't generate electricity all the time. increasingly the national discussion on electricity is centered around a single metric, how much greenhouse gas does a source of electricity produce? the discussion has failed to pay sufficient attention to the questions of reliability, resiliency and affordability. during the last months cold snap, cold played a critical role in maintaining power in oklahoma and other states. in addition, nuclear powered by one standard outperformed all other energy sources in texas and hydro power was essential to keeping the lights on in western states. we must ensure that our grids can provide electricity at all times and that prices that american families and businesses can afford. the american public deserves to know what's policies and measures are necessary to ensure that that happens. the public also deserves to know what policies and measures make that objective much more difficult to achieve. today's hearing should help address these important issues. electric systems in this country are among the best in the world and they are always evolving. the men and women who build and operate them are tremendously capable. these professionals must work today with the grids we have today and not with the grids that we wish we had in 15 or 25 years. the blackouts that we witnessed in california in 2019 and 2020 as well as the blackouts across the central part of the country last month are unacceptable. what's also unacceptable are proposals that would make blackouts more likely or more devastating for the american people. for example, president biden has pledged to, quote, achieve a carbon pollution free power sector by 2035. this is the goal no state, not even california, has set for itself. president biden has also pledged to c