The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing to receive testimony on opportunities to improve American energy infrastructure on March 14. President Donald Trump has made an infrastructure package an early priority of his administration after healthcare and tax reform. In anticipation of President Trump’s bill, the committee chose to hold a hearing to determine the most cost-effective way to upgrade America’s energy infrastructure.
The committee heard from a number of witnesses including:
• Mr. Stefan Bird, Chief Executive Officer, Pacific Power
• Mr. Carl Imhoff, Manager, Electricity Market Sector, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
• Mr. Clay Koplin, Chief Executive Officer, Cordova Electric Cooperative
• Mr. Jeffrey Leahy, Deputy Executive Director, National Hydropower Association
• Ms. Diane Leopold, CEO and President, Dominion Energy
• Mr. Terry O'Sullivan, General President, Laborers' International Union of North America
• Mr. Ethan Zindler, Head of Americas, Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF)
Much of the hearing focused on the need to upgrade the electric grid given its age, emerging “smart” technologies, the integration of renewable energy, and the change in consumer-electric generation system/distribution relationship from a one-way to two-way system. One of the witnesses, Mr. Zindler, did have one striking quote about the future of renewable energy, distributed energy technologies, smart devices, and electric vehicles. Zindler said, “We at BNEF believe that further growth and eventual mass adoption of these technologies is not possible, not probable, but inevitable given rapidly declining costs. For instance, the price of a photovoltaic module has fallen by 90 percent since 2008, to approximately $0.40 per Watt today. For millions of U.S. businesses and homeowners, ‘going solar’ is already an economic decision. Last year the U.S. installed far more solar generating capacity than it did any other technology. By the end of the next decade, cost competitiveness for distributed solar will arrive most places in the U.S. – without the benefit subsidies. We expect the current installed base of US solar to grow from approximately 3.6 percent capacity to 13 percent by 2030 then to 27 percent by 2040.” This view certainly presents a profound challenge to the natural gas industry and is widely held among pro-electricity advocates and environmentalists who seek full-scale electrification.
However, despite the focus on electricity, there was a common theme across witness testimony including that of Ms. Leopold, who represented the natural gas division of Dominion Energy, which was the desperate need for regulatory reform. No matter which witness, all of them implored Congress to streamline the permitting requirements that are hamstringing the development of new electricity and natural gas projects. This call for regulatory reform has strong support from President Trump and the House of Representatives but faces a hurdle from Senate Democrats who oppose the concept of shortening or getting rid of environmental reviews. Any regulatory reform package would still face a 60 vote threshold in the Senate which seems unlikely to be reached given the likely drastic changes that House Republicans would require.
For questions on this article, please contact Scott Morrison of APGA staff by phone at 202-464-2742 or by email at
smorrison@apga.org.