Click here or the image above to watch Ranking Member Capito’s questions.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, participated in a full committee hearing to highlight the importance of commonsense energy and environmental policies for America’s future.

Ranking Member Capito also entered into the official record a letter from both West Virginia and Delaware state public service commissions to the Environmental Protection Agency warning the agency about the harmful impacts that its proposed Clean Power Plan 2.0 would have on America’s energy grid.

HIGHLIGHTS:

ON IMPORTANCE OF INNOVATION, TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS FOR AMERICAN ENERGY, INFRASTRUCTURE: “Mr. Dabbar (former Under Secretary for Science, U.S. Department of Energy), I love this one term that you used in your in your statement, ‘technology neutral, innovation open.’ Because I think we need to focus on solutions. I mean, everybody's talked about it. So, as one of the things that we've seen in the data that mortality from natural disasters is significantly lower in more technologically advanced societies with access to energy and resilient infrastructure. Recent reports by reliability experts show that we are projected to go, we as a nation, are projected to go backwards on our grid reliability this decade and many point to some regulations that will lead to early power plant retirements. We also see the rise of the electric economy that's being moved forward rather rapidly. And everybody's mentioned that the most vulnerable are those that are in the lower economic echelon of our society, and that's troublesome, obviously for me. So how will extreme weather impact energy demand and how do you think grid reliability will impact our vulnerability in these events?”

ON IMPORTANCE OF SOURCE-NEUTRAL POLICIES THAT ALLOW ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES OF THE FUTURE TO FLOURISH:

RANKING MEMBER CAPITO: 

“How do we create economic conditions for innovative solutions for technology neutral innovation open that would increase our resilience in our disaster readiness? I mean, the Department of Energy you probably saw this…Are there near-term technologies that can be deployed to improve our adaptation strategies?”

PAUL DABBAR, FORMER UNDER SECRETARY FOR SCIENCE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY:

“Yes, Senator…we cannot clearly see which technologies are going to be best. So having regulatory processes or mandates from states and so on that allow for those new things, instead of mandating, ‘we're only going to have this type of technology,’ ‘we're only going to have EVs,’ ‘we're only going to have nuclear,’ ‘we’re only going to have wind,’ whatever it is, is poor technology policy. So, we should be should be allowing all of those to be kind of neutrally supported, whether it's through EPA or state approvals or through funding, because if you overly fund one area, you're going to get more of that and being more neutral across that for regulatory and funding purposes is better technology policy.”

Click HERE to watch Ranking Member Capito’s questions.

Click HERE to watch Ranking Member Capito’s opening statement.

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