▶ 0:00:02morning the subcommittee on energy will now come to order and the chair recogniz himself for an opening statement welcome to today's hearing scaling for growth meeting the demand on electricity today we will discuss the state of our nation's bul powerst system and the opportunities that we that lie
▶ 0:00:32ahead in the Next Generation economy our economy's electric grid built over the course of well over 100 plus years has been referred to as the most complex sophisticated machine known mankind when operating correctly the US grid efficiently delivers lowcost reliable energy to communities of all sizes through extensive planning coordination and collaboration from a most of government and Industry Partners
▶ 0:01:02this complex process seamlessly responds in real time to maintain reliability in both normal and extreme weather conditions yet today historic increases in electric electricity demand primarily from energy intensive AI models and domestic manufacturing are exposing key impediments to the ability of utilities grid operators and generators to keep the lights on when the lights go out people's lives are at stake
▶ 0:01:33the entities charged with overseeing our electric grid have been warning of potential shortfalls under normal weather conditions extreme weather or unforeseen circumstances could turn catastrophic in 2025 the Energy Information Administration projects 12.3 GW of co- capacities are set to retire by the end of the decade the North American Electric reliability Corporation projects as high as 52 gws a thermog generation will retire
▶ 0:02:03the stakes couldnot be higher across the world our adversaries are seeking to undermine us leadership on the world stage to write the rules on the Next Generation economy Nations like communist China who do not share our de Democratic Values are seeking to develop World leading AI models there on a terar authoritarian military lens to export their command and control style of government across the world yet within this emerging crisis
▶ 0:02:34There's an opportunity of our nation to correct of course and grow jobs creating Industries right here at home but to get there we need more energy we need it fast the department of energies Berkeley lab estimates that us data center growth alone is projected to double or triple 2028 I know in my district it's home to over 86,000 manufacturing jobs I'm keenly aware of this problem and I always say that we're not just operating with we needing electricity
▶ 0:03:04and Power in my district we need affordable power to sure the clean power plan 2.0 is driving Accel accelerated premature retirements of our base load power permitting barriers for new natural gas pipeline infrastructure are handicapping regions of the country such as the Northeast that are desperate for energy meanwhile subsidized intermittent energy resources and public policy decisions to favor R renewable energies are flooding interconnection
▶ 0:03:34cues and making base load power from coal natural gas and nuclear near uneconomic generation developers continue experiencing ongoing supply chain constraints for distribution Transformers and generation turbines as we he today house CS Are Not Alone In raising the alarm today's discussion will help illuminate the ways in which grid operators utilities and co-ops are all addressing these challenging Dynamics to protect reliability and affordability
▶ 0:04:05while providing the opportunity to grow jobs creating and creating Industries the witnesses for us today will provide a holistic approach of the nation's electricity system the unique characteristics of each respective region of the country and the challenges facing grid governing regime PM pjm the nation's largest regional transmission organization which spans 13 states in the Washington DC organizes competitive wholesale markets to buy sell electricity
▶ 0:04:35and monitors reliability reliability standards across their Mai State footprint in the west Basin Electric Co-op members serve 3 million consumers across nine states spanning both vertically integrated States and organized markets Southern Company a traditional vertically integrated utility reliably serves customers across the southeast with a diverse portfolio of gener resources so I look forward to the discussion that we're going to have the day with each of the respective entity and
▶ 0:05:05region and how they're confronting this new frontier and the demand expansion and this uh subcommittee will play an integral role in laying the groundwork to unlock the necessary capital investment for job creating Industries while ensuring affordable and reliable energy for American households and small businesses and with that I yield back the balance of my time with three seconds at this time I recognize the ranking member of the subcommittee of the general lady from Florida for 5 minutes for an opening
▶ 0:05:35statement well thank you Mr chairman and Welcome to our Witnesses Mr chairman we've just received some very sad news that the passing of one of our colleagues uh Congressman Sylvester Turner from Houston and if representative Fletcher were here she would say Houston is the energy Innovation capital of the world uh Sylvester Turner was the longtime mayor of Houston he was just elected he was with us yesterday had brought his guests to the capital site so would you indulge us with for a moment of silence the memory sub
▶ 0:06:05will pause for a moment of silence will gentle lady yield yield to gentl thank you I than the gentle lady I served with Sylvester Turner four years in the Texas house I hated him because when he went to the back mic and talked against my bill he made me look like a fool which is not hard to do y'all all
▶ 0:06:35know that right great Champion for Texas great Champion for Houston such a gentleman uh such a scholer um I saw him last night yeah coming off the floor in his wheelchair I was shocked this morning so he will be missed and Mr shman I I yield thank you we thank you um I too served with Sylvester
▶ 0:07:07and I'm a little shook he was a legend and he was one of the most decent men you ever met and Randy's correct if you were at the front mic and he was at the back mik dead he was one of the smartest men you've ever met one of the nicest my father has a wall of fame on it at the house he's got a photo with
▶ 0:07:37him and Ronald Reagan him and Lady Thatcher him and George HW Bush George W bush and Sylvester Turner that's how much he meant to people it wasn't about party it was about the person and it was about Texas and that's who Sylvester Turner was and he'll be greatly missed thank you Mr chairman I yield thank you General ladies recognize well thank you I want to thank our
▶ 0:08:07colleagues for for sharing their sentiments about Congressman turn meanwhile back uh back here in the energy subcommittee um it is difficult to to dive into this very important topic uh Mr chairman I uh I really appreciate you focusing in on that but at the same time it's rather absurd that we're we're tackling strengthening our electrical system while Elon Musk and the Trump Administration
▶ 0:08:37are taking a sledgehammer to the Department of energy and especially the initiatives that strengthen and modernize the grid the new Administration has spent weeks illegally shutting down doe grants and loans and Partnerships that make energy safe reliable and affordable and that includes the illegal firings of the Department of energy Inspector General who is was tasked with rooting out waste Fraud and Abuse and firing the scientists that who protect our nuclear Enterprise meanwhile
▶ 0:09:07the administration and House Republicans have offered nothing to help hardworking Americans tackle the cost of living including their electric bills in fact consumers are losing confidence as Republicans focus on tax breaks for the wealthy and the well-connected and handouts to Big Oil and Gas and beware Canada and Mexico are major uh manufacturers of electrical grid components like Transformers and circuit breakers and switch gears which are
▶ 0:09:37needed to uh update our growing grid and Trump's tariffs will make these upgrades more expensive and they'll take even longer not to mention the direct cost increases that tariffs have on electricity uh especially on the northern states as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law the department of energy was administering a large grid resilience and Innovation initiative to the intent there was to enhance grid flexibility and improve the resilience
▶ 0:10:08of the power system against extreme events like hurricanes in my neck of the woods one grip project was a battery installation at an Iron Mountain Data Center in Virginia that was meant to test the potential to store clean backup power and grid support uses on his first day in office though the president illegally Froze that project as well as $13 million in Grid funding that should be helping my neighbors back home in Florida growing America's uh leadership
▶ 0:10:38in artificial intelligence requires access to more energy we'll see a doubling in data center electricity capacity by 2030 from projects already under construction a 1 gwatt data center would be the single largest energy load in the United States today and we're building dozens of them and to support for data centers and broader electricity growth the US Energy Information Association forecast that the US will build will bu 63 gaw
▶ 0:11:09of new utility scale capacity this year 94% of that is zero carbon and gas will not magically solve this challenge even for those who decide they want to build a new gas plant if they make that decision today the plant won't come online before 2030 next generation Technologies like Advanced geothermal and nuclear while incredibly promising are at least several years away and here's a fact check of the speech last night
▶ 0:11:39the president misleadingly said the Biden administration had closed more than 100 power plants that's not true according to the Department of energy the total number of electric power plants increased by 2,187 from 2020 to 2023 that is the number of utility scale electric power plants in the nation actually increased during the Biden Administration there were about 11,000 in 2020 compared
▶ 0:12:10with about 13,250 in 2023 solar wind and batteries are the least expensive cleanest and fastest way to add energy to the grid right now they're driving down energy costs now and if we want to lower the cost of energy and we want more reliable energy then we should be making it easier to build solar wind and batteries whenever it makes sense to do so that's why it's raising huge red flags that the Trump Administration is unceremoniously
▶ 0:12:41halting these grid and power projects and if Republicans were willing to stand up for the Innovative work to modernize the grid that is happening right now right now then there are real policies that we could work on together the real barriers to getting new power online for data centers for large scale menu manufacturing or just everyday American families is the limited capacity and disjointedness of our power grid we need need to build more transmission to enable more generation and get more out
▶ 0:13:11of our existing grid infrastructure us has two options we can choose to double down on outdated fossil fuel strategies that are more expensive slower to interconnect and are big polluters or we can choose the other option advancing real policies that deliver cheaper cleaner faster power that could benefit everyone I yield back the Gent time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky the chairman of the full committee five minutes for an opening statement
▶ 0:13:41uh thank you Mr chairman for the time and thank you for all the witness for being here um gosh I just met Mr Turner representative Turner I think yesterday is yesterday the day before sitting in the center aisle just chatted with him and uh and introduce myself and for um what I've heard from people spoke him him today I really miss a lot by only knowing him for less than a day and and um my thoughts and prayers are with his family and and the all of us here in Congress when we lose a colleague it's it's tough so uh God bless his family
▶ 0:14:12but turning to today's hearing it's going to continue our important work in this committee to identify what is necessary to unleash uh American energy for the benefit of the public the economy and our national security without question energy and especially the affordable reliable delivery of electric power is essential for America to make and do these do the things needed for secure and strong economy affordable reliable power is essential for going manufacturing for advancing the great Promises of AI and for producing the goods and services
▶ 0:14:42our constituents rely upon it is essential for health and safety to ensure we have the right Federal policies we must examine how the key players in our power sector the utilities grid operators state and federal Regulators are preparing for a future of extraordinary electricity City growth the witnesses today who have worked to provide Power will help us help us in this examination a pair of tough challenges make our task particularly urgent the first challenge concerns the factors behind the emerging reliability
▶ 0:15:12crisis in recent years we have witness the failure to ensure that there is power when our communities need it the most this crisis has caused has been caused by the loss of huge amounts of reliable base load and dispatchable generation across many regions of our nation following the mgot regulations and without adequate replacement for those resources the resulting threats of blackouts and brand outs even in normal Peak demand conditions have been extending across the most populous regions of the nation as authorities like the North
▶ 0:15:43American Electric reliability corporations show federal and state policies have driven growth of inter intermittent or weather dependent wind and solar generation at the expense of generation we will need for a reliable system it's all important this is increased the risk for tens of millions of Americans many of our constituents have already experienced costly and deadly power outages this started in California when we witnessed when we witnessed it in Texas three years ago during winter storm
▶ 0:16:13Erie just two years ago Southeast and East Coast communities including Kentucky lost power we had rolling blackouts in Kentucky a TVA area but due to the lack of Supply power during the winter a winter event the root cause of the situation is the lack of reliable generation capacity constraints on natural gas supplies the Second Challenge involves the the new energy demand of AI in Cutting Edge Technologies the need for power to expand
▶ 0:16:43and Advance AI in America is coming with a blinding fast urgency that represents a generational challenge in the need for more reliable electricity this presents its own unique challenges layered upon the existing problems and threats this hearing will help us understand what is being done by the power sector utilities and operators to meet these challenges and respond to the urgency of exploding demand I thank you chair L for host having this hearing I welcome the witnesses and I will yield
▶ 0:17:13to the G lady from North Dakota Miss foror with the remainder of my time thank you Mr chairman appreciate this opportunity I would have been honored to introduce uh three out of the four panelists because I've worked closely with all of them but I'm going to take a minute to introduce a fellow North dakotan I'm honored to introduce Mr Todd Brickhouse who embodies the values of hard work Innovation and Community Service as a CEO and general manager of Bas and electric power
▶ 0:17:43Cooperative Todd leads our one of our state's largest and most prominent businesses it's an organization that delivers reliable affordable power to millions of people throughout the Great Plains with over 25 years of experience Todd has dedicated his career to ensuring that Rural America and America as a whole has the energy it needs to grow and Thrive like most in this industry Todd's work isn't about politics it's about
▶ 0:18:13problem solving that's what I appreciate most about working with folks in this industry it's about powering everything from farms and small businesses to emerging leaders like car emerging Industries like carbon capture and data centers Todd's leadership is doing just that as our others on this panel today Todd brings Dakota common sense to DC and I'm proud to welcome him and his amazing team who are behind him before our committee
▶ 0:18:44today thank you Mr chairman I yield back lady yields back and the chairman yields back the balance of his time the chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey the ranking member of the full committee for five minutes for question or for paron me five minutes for opening statement thank you chairman L this hearing is an important and timely topic unfortunately it's happening in the midst of chaos and confusion for the energy industry because of the actions of President Trump and Congressional Republicans grid
▶ 0:19:14operators around the country are begging Congress to take the challenges they're facing seriously and instead Republicans just passed a budget that would gut programs and incentives vital to Electric reliability while simultaneously cutting Medicaid to fund tax breaks for billion ion and president Trump's Department of energy continues to freeze and slow walk billions of dollars in investments in the clean energy sector which could result in higher energy costs on American families it's all unacceptable in my opinion and it's frustrating because this subcomittee
▶ 0:19:44has important policy decisions to consider after a 20-year pause demand for power in the United States is growing again and as I've repeatedly said this is an opportunity it means that companies are investing in America the cuttingedge Technologies are being developed here and that families are making Investments and decarbonizing their homes and vehicles these are good things if the power sector can meet the challenge we need to act to make sure that our grid remains reliable and affordable over the next decade that means removing unnecessary barers
▶ 0:20:14to clean energy and making sure that we're adequately planning for a 21st century grid claims that this challenge can only be met with an endless Fleet of natural gas power plants are completely misguided for one the gas turbine supply chain simply won't allow it gas turbine manufacturers are backed up and cannot fulfill new orders until 2029 but more importantly we need a solution that won't saddle homeowners and businesses with higher energy bills to pay for assets they may not that may not be used for 20 years and we need
▶ 0:20:45to find a way to ensure that new large loads like data centers powering AI are paying for their fair share of grid infrastructure regardless of whether they're collocated with generation sources or pulling electricity directly from the grid and these aren't speculative issues for the future they're Happening Now families in my home state of New Jersey are going to experience an a nearly 25% increase in their power course this June in part because PGM seems incapable of getting its act together to quickly
▶ 0:21:15add renewable resources to its grid the Texas grid operator which serves less power demand than pjm managed to add 11 gaw of generation and storage capacity last year and pjm only managed to add less than half that despite having a whopping 143 gaw in its que we should be working together to develop solutions to address this problem but unfortunately the Trump Administration and Republicans have other ideas Bonville power Administration which is absolutely vital for electric reliability in the Pacific
▶ 0:21:45Northwest was forced to fire 20% of its Workforce as part of Elon Musk dismantling of the federal Workforce despite the fact that it doesn't cost taxpayers a dime Republicans are also taking aim at independent Regulators vital for reliability and affordability like FK and the NRC and because the Trump Administration Corners in its definition of energy in its executive orders there's a lot of confusion about whether the Tariff on electricity imports from Canada is zero 10
▶ 0:22:15or 25% it's a complete disaster and it's going to likely lead to higher energy costs for American consumers particularly in the Northeast now Trump and Republicans are trying to gut and repeal the INF inflation reduction act the bipartisan infrastructure law and these laws are critical to ensuring that new energy sources get built and that existing ones especially nuclear plants stay online two new studies and I'd like ask unanimous consent uh Mr chairman to insert them into the record I'll
▶ 0:22:45hand them over to you here with without objection so ordered thank you they show that repealing the inflation reduction acts technology neutral tax credits would increase prices on families and decrease the amount of power brought onto the grid the reality is that clean energy is the only source of new generation capable of meeting Growing Power demand at scale clean energy sources and battery storage are 95% of the interconnection queue and they're not going away in fact they're the only thing that can come to the rescue and power
▶ 0:23:16our Manufacturing in AI Renaissance and gutting the inflation reduction Act and the legally freezing funds will only ensure that our grid won't be able to keep up with demand all while radically increasing Energy prices for our constituents so I can say Mr chairman Democrats are going to fight against Republicans radical agenda that makes our electricity less reliable more expensive and dirtier so thank you and I yield back the balance of my time Mr chairman well thank you very much gentleman yields back balance of his
▶ 0:23:46time and that now CL concludes Our member opening statements the chair would would like to remind members that pursu to committee rules all members opening statements will be made part of the record at this time we want to also thank our Witnesses again for being here with us today and taking the time to testify before the subcommittee each witness will have an opportunity to give an opening statement followed by a round of questions from the members our Witnesses uh today are Mr Todd brook house the chief executive officer and
▶ 0:24:16general manager of basin electric power Cooperative Mr assum Hawk Hawk excuse me senior vice president for governmental and member services at pjm Mr Tyler North the James B Duke fellow at Duke University and Mr NL black senior vice president at Regulatory Affairs of The Southern Company and before I get started just a quick uh housekeeping if you you want to make sure
▶ 0:24:46you pull the mic up close to you uh when you uh speak and there's the set of red lights or lights there that will signal you have a green light for four four minutes it will go yellow with one minute remaining and it read that means stop so we appreciate we appreciate you following that and with that U Mr Hawk you I'm sorry Mr Brick House you are now recognized for five minutes for an statement thank you Mr chairman as you indicated my name
▶ 0:25:16is Todd brick house and I'm the CEO of basin electric power Cooperative Basin is a not for profit generation and transmission cooperative and we are owned by 139 member coop operatives across nine states and we serve 3 million consumers as measured by our Geographic retail service territory Basin is the largest electric utility in the country we serve roughly a half million square miles which is 12%
▶ 0:25:46of the United States so we like to say that basin's assets are the engines of Commerce for a service territory that feeds and fuels our nation Basin is one of nearly 900 not for-profit electric cooperatives across the country that are independently owned and governed by the people that we serve electric cooperatives provide electric service to 42 million Americans in 48 states there are a number of Trends and policies
▶ 0:26:17impacting our country and Electric utilities and I'd like to touch on a few of those this morning restoring our manufacturing base guaranteeing our energy security and and supporting the development of artificial intelligence all significantly increased demand for electric power after all the electrons that many many of us on this panel uh provide are the raw materials of a modern economy to satisfy this growing demand
▶ 0:26:47Basin is currently increasing its generation portfolio by more than 40% and we are increasing our transmission mileage by more than 20% over the next decade we will spend 12 billion dollar on these Endeavors that compares to currently 8 and a half billion dollars of assets on our balance sheet today Federal Regulations should be stream should be streamlined to support our efforts for example our
▶ 0:27:17recent Roundup tokuma Ridge Transmission project required two separate environmental assessments one from the Bureau of Land Management and another for the from the Bureau of Indian Affairs even though both these agencies are under the department of the Interior this resulted an added time expense and of course red tape secondly Basin is currently adding 1500 megawatts of non-dispatchable renewable resources
▶ 0:27:47to our generation Fleet this has required years of Planning and Development work and these business decisions were made based on the the availability of production tax credits we understand and we support the need to put our country on a sustainable physical path but the IM immediate removal of ptcs will not allow utilities to plan for and avoid increased costs and
▶ 0:28:18this will also immediately harm rate payers another policy matter that needs to be on your mind is tariffs which the president spoke about last night we strive to Source our capital expenditure program domestically but the utility industry relies on Global Supply Chain our billion capital expenditure program will be adversely impacted by tariffs and I'd just like to explain to you that
▶ 0:28:48these are not one-time costs these are costs that will be felt over 30 years as we depreciate these assets and we repay the debt used to fund them finally and most importantly in order to capitalize on the opportunities of reshoring our manufacturing base guaranteeing our energy security and fully developing artificial intelligence we need consistent and rational energy policies from you all every
▶ 0:29:18sector of our economy depends on reliable and affordable electricity whether it be households manufacturers or the industry as Daniel Jurgen and Peter orog wrote in an article last week we are not and I quote we are not so much in an energy transition we are in an energy addition periodic efforts to severely curtail major sources of a dispatchable electric
▶ 0:29:48generation are counterproductive and they do not further our national interest Microsoft and Amazon recognize the importance of dispatchable resources as evidenced by their recent partnership with the nuclear industry similarly meta or Facebook has recently partnered with Entergy for the development of 2300 megawatts of dispatchable natural gas resources in Louisiana Basin is in discussions
▶ 0:30:19with more than 7,000 megawatts of similar loads the Great Plains where Basin serves offers abundant wind and carbon-based natural resources helping helping Basin satisfy growing demand in a balanced manner Basin stands ready to support efforts by Congress the administration and federal agencies to enhance affordability and reliability for the American Consumer thank you
▶ 0:30:49thank you very much Mr Hawk you are recognized for five minutes for your opening statement chairman L ranking member Caster chairman Guthrie rank member palone and members of the subcommittee thank you for the invitation to participate in this hearing to provide pjm's perspective as it relates to electric grid reliability and cost during this period of heavy forecasted demand growth my name is awesome Hawk and I'm the senior vice president of governmental and member services at pjm interconnection pjm is considered the largest grid operator
▶ 0:31:19in North America as we ensure the reliable flow of power to 67 million consumers in all or parts of 13 States and the District of columia PGM is an entity without profit motive as we effectively function as a not for-profit that is fully regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission an independent Federal agency that plays a critical role in the oversight of the energy industry we are a Missi driven organization whose primary focus
▶ 0:31:50is to keep the lights on for the 67 million consumers that we serve this past January during a cold spell we experienced our alltime winter peak of approximately 145,000 megawatt and if you're here in the district or otherwise in our footprint during MLK weekend you probably didn't think for a second about the cold weather and its impact on the grid and that's how we like it and that's the expectation that we create for ourselves at pjm which is in tandem with
▶ 0:32:20our asset owners to keep the lights on 24/7 without you having to think about it while our industry can be quite complicated what we're seeing projecting out into the future actually is not incredibly complicated after years of what has been relatively flat demand for power in pjm we are now seeing a major uptick in forecasted growth due primarily to the proliferation of data centers but also due to electrification and the onshoring of us manufacturing according to our most recent
▶ 0:32:50forecast pjm expects its summer Peak to climb to 220,000 megawatts over the next 15 years to compare or alltime summer Peak which occurred in 2006 is
▶ 0:33:27pjm we are seeing that Reserve margin get eaten up pjam conducted a study in 2023 where we estimated retirements in the amount of 40,000 megawatts by 2030 driven primarily by state and federal policies and some economics now we do have a number of mostly renewable resources that want to connect to the system that are currently in our generation interconnection que that Q has undergone quite a bit of Reform per our own efforts and an order from the firk in 2022 and re are
▶ 0:33:57nearing the end of that firk approved reform we hope that all of these projects interconnect uh but we certainly have quite a few projects that are through the queue right now that aren't constructing at the pace needed to keep up with Supply retirements and certainly not the projected increase in demand last year we interconnected just 4,800 megawatts into an otherwise 180,000 megawatt system so Supply is coming off of the system and new Supply additions are not keeping keeping
▶ 0:34:28Pace again currently about 50,000 megaw through the que nothing left to do with pjm and um not interconnecting or not constructing and we can talk about that a little more um we should also note that the resources leaving the system are larger dispatchable coal and gas resources and the resources that we are adding from our queue are primarily intermittent renewable resources we are resource agnostic and when you flip the switch you don't know whether that's a nuclear coal gas renewable watt that just
▶ 0:34:58consumed but when you trace those Watts all the way back to their Source all of these resource types have different capability and availability so we need to be conscious of that it's not a one forone swap in terms of availability and capability of the resources that we're retiring and then the resources that we're adding to the system but either way we want those Watts we want those renewable resources to find their way onto the system as soon as possible we want as much Supply as we can get in order to meet meet
▶ 0:35:28this growing demand that means uh delaying retirements new Supply that Supply in our que and even additional Supply on top of that so again Supply is decreasing demand is increasing but for your constituents the supply demand imbalance has the potential to bleed into fundamental pillars of power delivery for the average American which are really reliability and cost we all need to consider reliability degradation and consumer cost increases as a natural byproduct
▶ 0:35:58of policies that exacerbate this Supply demand and balance I want to open I want to end my opening statement with some optimism uh the fact that we're here talking about supply and demand is great progress we've been talking about this pjm for some years now and the fact that this committee is focused on the supply demand challenge is a really good thing the fact that demand is growing means that our nation's economy is growing and that's a really good thing as well we have lots of resources that to interconnect in
▶ 0:36:28the pjm system that's a really good thing as well pjm in particular has markets that it can utilize to incentivize our next major technological breakthrough as well as any new resources that we can possibly find onto the system again if you could uh just finish up please thank you so again this is a moment here at pjm it's a moment for the industry and in conjunction with our stakeholders and with all of you we expect to meet that moment thank you thank you Mr Norris you're recognized for five minutes for your opening statement
▶ 0:36:58good morning chairman L ranking member Caster chairman Guthrie and ranking member palone and members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to testify I'm informed that another Tyler testified a month ago I assure you this is not coordinated my name is Tyler Norris I'm a James B Duke fellow at Duke University where my PhD research focuses on Electric Power Systems my research is informed by 15 years of experience in the energy sector spanning utility scale power plant development electricity Market forecasting and Technology commercial ization at the department of energy
▶ 0:37:29I'm here today in my personal capacity my testimony draws in part from my research as lead author of a new study called rethinking load growth released last month by Duke University's Nicholas Institute while demand presents challenges our research suggests that with strategic planning the US power system is well positioned to integrate these loads in a reliable and cost-effective manner my testimony focuses on three areas first how the existing power system can integrate new large loads while preserving reliability second how interconnection reforms
▶ 0:37:59can accelerate New Generation third how these near-term Solutions can buy time and capital for long lead resources like bulk transmission and nuclear power first our analysis finds that with modest flexibility from new large loads the GD can can accomodate significant demand growth without major new infrastructure the US power system is already designed to handle extreme Peaks and demand meaning that in most hours a substantial portion of the power system is unutilized and fact we found that the average utilization
▶ 0:38:29rate of the US power system is 53% meaning that nearly half of our power infrastructure sits unused at any given time if new large loads such as AI data data centers can adjust their power consumption during a small fraction of high stress hours on the order of 0.5% of their maximum uptime the grid could absorb the equivalent of four or five project Stargates the $500 billion doll data center initiative announced by President Trump this highlights a key opportunity leveraging existing capacity
▶ 0:38:59through flexible load strategies can provide a bridge while long lead resources such as new transmission and clean firm generation are developed second while load flexibility can help interconnection delays remain a major obstacle to deploying new generation and the volume of project stuck in interconnection cues has quadrupled to 2,600 gaw however there's one market the electric glid ability Council of Texas they've taken a different approach and it's achieving significantly greater interconnection performance than other us markets
▶ 0:39:30between 2021 to 2023 urot interconnected at least 70% more generation capacity than any other organized Market despite serving a load that is half the size of pjm unlike other regions which require extensive studies and costly Network upgrades before allowing new generators to connect urot permits interconnection first and manages great impacts in real time while planning transmission upgrades separately while not all markets can replicate ot's approach without structural reforms there are meaningful steps
▶ 0:40:00that FK and other policy makers can take to improve interconnection efficiency these include adopting a less restrictive approach to energy resource interconnection service enabling generators to use grid capacity reserved for existing power plants and developing interconnection entry fees to provide greater upfront certainty finally long-term reliability will require investment in new transmission and clean firm generation these resources can take a decade to develop and their High Capital costs makes them highly sensitive to PO
▶ 0:40:31policy uncertainty so stable Federal policies including maintaining tax incentives loan guarantees and clear transmission planning processes will be critical to ensuring that these projects are built at the same time a hasty overbuild of new gas infrastructure in response to load growth could undermine private investment in clean firm Technologies such as advanced nuclear and geothermal if investors perceive that policy makers are tilting the plane field towards gas or creating excess capacity
▶ 0:41:01that substantially depresses capacity prices they may be reluctant to commit to these highrisk long-term investments in conclusion by leveraging flexible load streamlining interconnection and investing in Long lead resources the US can maintain reliability while enabling economic growth and making progress on decarbonization thank you for the opportunity to testify and I look forward to your questions well thank you very much for your opening statement Mr Black you are recognized for five minutes for your opening statement
▶ 0:41:32thank you chairman Lam chairman Guthrie ranking member uh casor and members of the committee for the opportunity to discuss what we see as an exciting but pressing policy issues around electricity electricity is the lifeblood of our modern society it's essential service woven into every aspect of Our Lives it owers our homes and hospitals drives our economic growth and ensures the well-being and safety of customers we believe this interconnected grid that we have built
▶ 0:42:02over the last 100 years is irreplaceable in delivering electric service and provide scale and value that other Solutions can't match electricity is a necessity and access to Reliable electricity is a expectation when electricity is unstable or unaffordable the world the real world impacts are immediate and can be severe our responsibility is to ensure the grid delivers Dependable cost effective
▶ 0:42:32energy no matter the circumstances and over the long term at Southern Company our 28,000 employees take this very seriously every day we work to serve 9 million customers who rely on us our diverse 44,000 megawatt interconnected Fleet spanning nuclear and hydro natural gas coal and Renewables demonstrates how a intentionally engineered approach provides a foundation for energy security our system this inter interconnected
▶ 0:43:02grid is a modern engineering Marvels we've heard earlier utilities like ours are an essential piece of the energy equation it's not only the interconnected grid with its it is only beg pardon the interconnected grid with its scope and scale that can meet alls all customers needs Southern Company's commitment to Innovation resilience is evident with the recent addition of new nuclear units at vogle We Now operate the largest nuclear generation station in the country in this moment
▶ 0:43:32of Rapid energy growth it's become obvious how electricity and energy though are highly Regional in nature the weather resources state and local politics geography the Region's load profile and Market structure greatly impact the physics and finance of delivering electricity we have all heard the one siiz fits-all approach are often not appropriate for energy policy that's because of this intense
▶ 0:44:03regionalism that drives energy outcomes at Southern Company our customers are the beneficiaries of a state regulated vertically integrated Market structure that holds us Southern Company directly accountable straightforward regulatory models like ours where the accountability for the grid is clearly understood are producing results enabling this Innovation economy in short the southeast remains open for business regions with unusually complex regulatory processes
▶ 0:44:33are experiencing slower infrastructure buildout I think this may be why the concept of collocation has become so popular in certain parts of the country time challenged customers see collocation as a tool to cut through some of the complexities as those regions consider collocation Arrangements however it will be critical to ensure that existing everyday customers are protected collocation Arrangements we don't see are not in are not necessary in our region because we are timely serving this
▶ 0:45:04demand at Southern Company we have a robust well-planned Energy System that seeks to protect all customers from Price volatility under the watchful eyes of our Regulators we strive to make the right Investments today to keep prices stable and support economic expansion which helps mitigate any inflationary tomorrow however and I'm about to wrap up and this is important to sustain this momentum we must continue to invest in
▶ 0:45:34infrastructure the reality is clear infrastructure particularly natural gas infrastructure is required now to meet the rising demand pipelines transmission systems and generation capacity must keep Pace with the economy thank you for the opportunity to speak I look forward to discussing how we can work together to ensure America continues to benefit from reliable and affordable energy well thank you very much for your opening statement and that will conclude our opening
▶ 0:46:04statements from our Witnesses we will now begin the questions for our members and I'll begin the questions recog recognize myself for five minutes one of the questions I asked everybody who came before us in subcommittee in the last conference is very simple I just get a yes or no do we need more energy production in this country or less Mr burck house yes Mr Hawk yes Mr Norris Mr Black absolutely thank you that's exactly the same response I got
▶ 0:46:35from everybody in the last Congress uh boy so so lots lots of questions and and so little time that we get but if I could start um Mr Hawk if I could ask you some quick questions we had the polar vortex that went across the Midwest 2014 and I know in talking with PGM I think every year I asked same questions if we could sustain what we were able to do not having blackouts round outs at that time but uh when looking at PJ's uh statements and also what was told uh
▶ 0:47:05in my office that off said now we're looking at 2026 what could happen in 2026 if we had another massive polar vortex so chairman you know where we're headed is this continued Supply demand crunch so again Supply is coming off the system we're not seeing a lot of new Supply added to the system and then we're seeing these major upticks in demand let me interrupt I'm sorry to interrupt
▶ 0:47:35but let me ask you what you just said because also in your testimony you brought this up you know we're you're we're taking off generation at the same time this the demand is going up should we be looking at not taking off that generation and why is that generation being taken offline the the drivers behind generation leaving the system are primarily um state and federal decarbonization policies uh in tandem with some economics we put out a study in 2023 was an energy transition
▶ 0:48:05study that we put together that expressed the statistics around the drivers for Supply leaving the system well you know that's that's concerning because you know if we're taking it off at the same time we're having more uh need it's it's going to be a real problem for us uh Mr Black if I could ask you know in your statement and also toward your closing of your statement you're talking about that we need to be investing in that infrastructure that supports rapid growth you know
▶ 0:48:35was the the whole idea and the whole notion of all these data centers coming online ever projected maybe 10 years ago from what we were looking at in our generation that we had to have uh definitely not projected but definitely manageable right so I think we've go through processes called irps or integrated resource planning processes every few years and we expedited one in Georgia recently so that we can it's back to that notion of intentionally designing and Engineering our system Fleet to meet this moment
▶ 0:49:05um I would say we we think about it and manage it really through this notion of energy abundance as well right supply and demand obviously is an issue in everything and everything you know thing we deal with in our lives but I think we we seek to make sure we are available and that availability and abundance puts downward pressure on rates for us right and I think that's really really important issue isue and and obviously uh in this this moment of meeting this demand we can do both oh thank you uh Mr brick house
▶ 0:49:35um I have probably more electric co-ops in my district than any other District in the state of Ohio and I know the importance uh what you all do out there but you know a couple of the questions I think it's it's very important that you brought up was about permitting and on the permitting side if we don't do something what's what's going to happen out there if we don't permitting especially for not just you but for anybody that's out there either generating Trans on the
▶ 0:50:05transmission of power right well um what my colleague from pjm reference was a large uptick in um or mismatch between supply and demand and I think that mismatch is critical for policy makers to understand it takes us seven years from initial concept to Bringing on and actually generating electrons for a power plant you can bring on a data
▶ 0:50:36center in three years so what we're faced with now is uh having to tell data centers and other large loads that they need to wait up to seven years in order to build their facilities so permitting is a key part of it and um we need more sensible you permitting action coming out of Congress and frankly um in some of the states we serve as well well
▶ 0:51:06I again I I appreciate him being here today because uh all the things that we've heard from our Witnesses uh you know this is what we have to be addressing to make sure we meet our power needs into the future and my time has expired and I now recognize the general lady from Florida the ranking member of the subcommittee for five minutes for questions ah thank you Mr chairman Mr nris you're your new study um caught my attention because you you say that we can accommodate some of the additional capacity we need through
▶ 0:51:37um through load flexible load strategies what what are you talking about here thank you reiky member um what flexible load strategies refer to is for a very very small sum number of hours a year where the the system is experiencing its highest stress that these large electricity consumer could reduce their consumption from the grid from a variety of possible uh Avenues one would be if they have their own on-site power or battery storage that they could tap again we're talking
▶ 0:52:07on on an average basis of two hours per event that's one option um a lot of the new AI D data centers have the ability to defer their workloads these are the training workloads that train the foundational models uh and so those are defer other Advanced Data Center companies have now found the ability to shift those workloads loads to other data centers and other regions during extreme weather events and then finally there is the option to Simply temporarily reduce operations and this is the case for other computational loads like Bitcoin
▶ 0:52:37mining and those are actually some of the most flexible loads on the system that we see right now and they're able to dispatch down almost instantaneously in response to signals from the grid will this help us address the the growing concern with additional cost to Consumers to other rate payers as AI data centers um demand more energy yes you know there's an opportunity here because you know we already have a relatively low utilization rate for the existing power system so if new loads utilize the existing system more they
▶ 0:53:07that can result in actual reduction in rates to the existing rate payers so that's a great opportunity the challenge becomes when the new loads end up triggering the need for substantial new grid infrastructure and new power plants that are only needed to serve a limited number of hours in the year for peaking capacity and so I think it's it's important to consider guard rails when you're talking about potential um significant increas in is in rate in rates in response to that capacity expansion so is that a job for Congress is that a job for FK is that a job for
▶ 0:53:37uh public utility commissions or all of the above I think it's probably all the above I mean one of the challenges that we face right now is that in large load interconnection there are no standardized processes so this is State jurisdictional as as you know retail rates usually are but um you know it's very different from generator inter connection where we have very standardized processes it's for regulated so it's really the wild rest right now um and each state is kind of doing it differently and so I I won't I'm not a lawyer I'm not going to Pine and of the jurisdictional
▶ 0:54:08issues between fork and States but I think other you know previous former for Commissioners are saying right now as we speak that it would be helpful to have some degree of standardization so Mr hack what do you think of this and have you looked at the study uh I have looked at the study I think there's a lot there with respect to demand flexibility and we have been um in conversations with data centers uh who are trying to locate in the footprint about their ability to be flexible it is not clear whether or not uh these data
▶ 0:54:38centers can actually um Express the kind of flexibility that is described in Mr Norris's um uh paper and so you know this is this I I agree I agree with Mr Norris that if we are able to get some flexibility from data center load that you know we may not have to plan necessarily for uh because we plan our systems based on Peak because we want to serve 247 365 and I hear you um loud and clear about the internet connection queue
▶ 0:55:09problem and that that clearly is a is an area where Congress could could help uh get these large power sources onto the grid do you agree yeah representative Our Generation interconnection queue has been reformed so we got an order from the firk in 2022 and we are at the tail end of implementing that reform it has taken some time to get the queue from a position where it was evaluating these large centralized generating stations now evaluating many hundreds if not more
▶ 0:55:39of smaller renewable projects so we realize that you're you're ahead of the game uh compared to others uh I I have not benchmarked us necessarily against others and I don't want to speak about others but um we are again at the tail end of that key reform effort okay Mr Norris you also h this this problem with the interconnection cues uh in your testimony what do you recommend that Congress needs to do about it thank you for that I know we're limited on time so I'll try to be brief um I think while I
▶ 0:56:09I mentioned that it's hard for other markets to fully replicate replicate what workot is doing I think there are a lot of lessons there and things that we can do to enable generators that are willing to accept some risk of curtailment to be added to the grid much more quickly and we we've adopted this very sort of conservative restrictive approach that actually makes it makes imposes these very high barriers to entry to getting new generators on the system and so I think there opportunities to streamline an interconnection service and actually just make it more consistent with the original intent of energy resource interconnection
▶ 0:56:39service that FK set out in order 2003 thank you I yield back my time thank you very much gent A's time has expired yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Kentucky the chairman of the full committee for five minutes for questions thank you I appreciate it very much and and a lot of my thinking in this are came up a lot of us were at the Library of Congress of last fall and Eric Schmidt the Google Eric Schmidt not Senator Eric Schmidt was uh presenting to us and and he talked a lot about the demands for AI the demands for power in in his book Genesis he wrote
▶ 0:57:10with the last book written by Henry Kissinger just really lays out the need to win the Battle of AI against China and and who's going to control the platform for AI and I and I didn't he didn't say this but I took away from it it's like the dollar are we going to be the world currency or not and so and the biggest driver for AI is the innovators is going to figure it out what they need is access to power so they can generate these and there is trainable AI data centers that can be flexible but China's not building they're building others as
▶ 0:57:40well that we have to compete with and we're going to have to be flexible flexible and efficient as much as we possibly can but but to believe that that we can stay down the path that we're on in electricity and to defeat China that I think it's just it's like European thinking well let's let's let's uh run the world let's plan for the world like we want it to be not like it is and and you deal things in the Ivory Tower it just it's been devastating to Europe right now go there and and see and so
▶ 0:58:10we have to be responsible and we have to have uh but I think it's imperative that we win the fight for AI if we don't then we're going to lose the battle for AI to China in China building two co- plants a week or two c-plant every two weeks to support their AI we're also going to lose the other battle for climate change as well um unless CL China has a different climate than we do and I don't think that's accurate so Mr Black I want to in your testimony you you talk about how energy policy is highly Regional in nature and how it affects
▶ 0:58:40the physics of finance and M making and moving electricity for policy makers what should we take away from that point so we we just had a question sort of talking about whose's job it is to to deal with some of these issues you know I will say we're we're always uh thinking through uh how do we regulate as close to the customer as possible from a state perspective so a lot of the the programs that that Mr Norris has has uh studied in in presenting we've had for for a number of years I'm going to age myself but 25 years ago
▶ 0:59:10I helped develop a tariff called the customer-owned dispatchable energy tariff which is a standby generator tariff that does exactly what uh Mr Norris is talking about so but that's all through the state level right so when we get into these these responsibilities of of who can manage the grid and help us improve utilization rates we would say much of that is at the state level and we do that through irps and and again the careful careful uh management and oversight of our state Regulators
▶ 0:59:41so thank you very and we're going to have more hearings we hopefully have people that that build these data centers that will just talk about what the risk is if we go down the path that Europe is gone uh where they're not building them in Europe they're not building they can't afford to build them in Europe and that is a uh it set your back absolutely their energy policy has set them back so Mr brookhouse and Mr Hawk you're in different regions of the country under different regulatory setups would you each briefly explain how you plan to meet new growth and power demand and ensure reliability and affordability Mr brick house first
▶ 1:00:11and sure thank you so our process and actually how Basin was formed U more than six more than 65 years ago um it it starts with a load forecast and from that annual load forecast uh we will plan out uh what our generation assets are going to look like in the future so you get something similar uh to what Miss
▶ 1:00:42uh Mr Black was referencing on an integrated resource plan and basin's recent history has been rapid growth since 2010 we have average uh uh increase in megawatt hour sales to our members of about 5% a year and you're not going to find hardly any other utilities that have grown that rapidly and over that limit amount of time so Mr Hawk if you could if you
▶ 1:01:12could I'm run out of time so sure pjm is again a 14 jurisdiction Regional transmission organization and we have um we have both regulatory paradigms we have the vertically integrated jurisdictions about half and we we have restructured jurisdictions about half restructured jurisdictions they rely on um markets to incentivize new resources um vertically integrated jurisdictions the same as Mr brick house and I think as Mr Black we describing through integrated resource planning
▶ 1:01:42so thank you and and wind and solar is important to this mix a matter of fact you can produce it quicker is what my colleague from Florida talked about but the problem is if you incentivize it to the point where people don't build other dispatchable power because you can't be competitive then we lose in the long term so in the short term wind and solar is going to be able because of the supply chains and others we're going to need it but we also need to make sure we don't disincentivize building power to win this battle so my time has expired and I'll yield back thank you much the chairman yields back the chair and I'll
▶ 1:02:12recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey the ranking member of the full committee for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman um Mr Norris I want to ask you some questions I want to focus on something you mentioned in your written testimony which was that if large energy loads can be a little flexible it will buy us a lot more time to increase the grid generation and transmission capacity and frankly we're going to need that time because many grid operators have been abysmally slow at getting sources of clean energy hooked up to the grid
▶ 1:02:43um so let me ask you this can you Mr n can you talk about what policy changes to interconnection cues or anything else we need to make to get energy on the grid as quickly as possible and how important it is to make those changes sooner rather than later I have three questions so thank you Congressman um this has a been a significant area of research for us and what's actually interesting about it is how similar the solutions are on the large load side for the large generator side to get them onto the grid faster
▶ 1:03:14and the way it works right is they they look at the maximum output or Draw that the generator or the load puts on the system and they study it and what happens is it often triers a lot of upgrades on the system but if the the load or the generator is willing to be flexible such that it might be curtailed in a small number of hours a year it can connect to the grid much more quickly that's what urot does and that's why their speed to interconnection is twice as fast as every other market and so with modifications to energy
▶ 1:03:44resource interconnection service and making these large load services available they may be able to connect connect to the grid much more quickly so that we can win the AI race as the other member just said all right I guess I'm going to have to go quicker CU I actually realized I have four questions with all this increased Demand on the grid how can we best protect residential rap pairs from skyrocketing costs and how much of this is the federal government's responsibility versus the state responsibility yeah I think for a lot of these large loads that are coming on the system they're coming into
▶ 1:04:14uh a paradigm where we had no load growth and where the traditional Paradigm was we meet any new loads at any cost and the problem is that under this kind of parad with this amount of load this quickly the rate impacts could be substantial and so I think you're seeing a number of jurisdictions realize that there need to be guard rils put in place and ideally any incremental cost of service to serve the new load for these large loads should be covered by that large load and I think there are other guard rails that can be put in place like up front security um they could they could post um while they're trying to interconnect
▶ 1:04:45and then exit fees as well okay and then I wanted to go back to those studies I entered into the record earlier and they show that repealing the Ira's Tech technology neutral tax credits could increase the price families pay for power in some states by up to 20% so Mr neuros just because you know of course I I question a lot my Republican colleagues uh what they describe as facts but wouldn't that be bad for affordability
▶ 1:05:15am I correct yes and um there are a few studies out there that are demonstrating this right now I mean it's sort of obvious right if you if you pull back incentives for a given activity you're going to see less of that activity in this case that means there's going to be less generation out of the system and it's going to impose higher costs and there was a study just released last week by nerra economic Consulting that found that there would be higher rates of 7% for residential um customers in 2026 alone and I think it was 10% for commercial customers okay H my last question is of Mr
▶ 1:05:45Hawk um uh ferk recently approv pjm's reliability resource initiative or rri which allows the one-time insertion of of up to 50 projects into pgms Q ahead of other resources I'm very aware of PGM challenges with getting enough power online but just ask you know if you ask any of my K constitu they'll certainly talk about that but Mr Hulk can you confirm that the rri framework is a one-time solution for pjm and
▶ 1:06:15that the grid operator is dedicated to working diligently to comply with FK order 2023 and create an interconnection process that doesn't need these manual inventions to allow energy to access the grid I can confirm all of that uh representative thank you uh the rri initiative is actually one of three different initiatives that we Advanced to try and expedite Supply trying to come onto the system and we're grateful for uh FK um assistance in approving our proposals if
▶ 1:06:46you think about it you know we are going to be in a position next year where we are in our new Q reformed process any project that comes through the queue will have a one to twoe turn around time frame it's taken us a few years to sort of unclog the queue and get to that position but while we're doing that we have actually created through the FKS approval um some additional expedited Lanes to try and get resources onto the system to meet this growing demand and you know obviously I'm concerned about this approach of deciding which
▶ 1:07:16projects and get onto the grid is going to disincentivize clean energy developers from you know ever building generation to serve pgms again I know my time is running out but I did want to say Mr L chairman l i I was happy to see he's not here I don't think that chairman Guthrie talked about the importance of solar and wind power because every time I hear Trump he says he wants to get rid of it completely so it's good that you guys at least or I hope uh do not agree with Trump in that regard
▶ 1:07:46but we'll see thank you the gentleman's time has expired yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas the vice chairman of the subcommittee for five minutes for questions I thank you chairman uh Mr Norris I'm going to come to you you made some interesting statements in your testimony about urot has certain advantages uh would you go back through there and state those again for us yes so urot makes it much easier for new generators to connect to the
▶ 1:08:16grid and there are different reasons for this but basically it's come on come all they they study them they give them the result of the study but they don't charge them for the C the cost of Big Grid upgrades so a project can connect at its own risk and the result is that their speed to Market speed to interconnect is twice as fast as other markets and they've been adding more capacity uh as I mentioned earlier than any other Market by far when you say speed to connect is twice as fast what does that mean they're able to get up and running in half a
▶ 1:08:46day one day two weeks what does that mean well these are Big assets so it's a little longer than that but you're generally talking about on the order of 2 years is when you're talking about the speed we're talking about is from interconnection requests to getting online and so we're talking about you know three years approximately um and in other markets it can take five or six okay Mr brick housee I'm going to come to you with that in mind uh and I know of course Ott uh do I do I recall correctly I'll ask all
▶ 1:09:16there's nine grids in the country is that right nine various grids is that right and there's nine grid operators in nine grid operators okay so uh with that in mind trying to make things easier to connect to Mr Brick House how do you all fall along those lines are you like OT less like OT or how where do yall fall in that scenario Mr Norris just painted well with respect to connections as I mentioned earlier uh you can get a Data Center Online a lot quicker
▶ 1:09:47than you can build a power plant um so our focus is lately has been getting power plants online as quick as possible and so we'll go we're in the primarily most of our load is in the southwest power pool so we'll go through an interconnection process with them and with Pioneer 4 which is 580 megawatts of dispatchable natural gas generation we're finishing up we have actually elected to uh connect to the
▶ 1:10:17grid prior to the final cost estimate of what grid upgrades will need to take place is that a two or threee process uh yes okay how about you Mr hog two or three your process uh our process is different than ot's process uh if you are load that wants to connect to the system you know we feel like there's an obligation uh to serve that load um but our processes
▶ 1:10:47are different than the others so what time frame does it take I'm sorry can you repeat the question what time frame does it take uh if you're going to hook up you identify load what's it going to take a year two three uh that that is dependent okay it's dep it is it is the the load that wants to interconnect um to the system it'll be dependent on a series of different factors and it'll be dependent on
▶ 1:11:17first of all the transmission system whether the transmission system can actually accommodate load and so we'll study it and see if the transmission system can actually accommodate the load and then there are some we'll just characterize them as adventurous Arrangements that some of these data centers are trying to enter into which then adds to the potential complexity with um the possibility of this concept of collocation in general so you're studying right now about AI aren't you yes we are okay how about you Mr brick housee studying right now about AI
▶ 1:11:47yes we are expect to connect AI did either one of y'all and I'll start back with you Mr bre house have to knock off line a coal plant are we we knocked offline a coal plant have you all had to take a coal plant off offline no how about yall Mr hog for the purposes of AI no just in general yes we've had quite a bit of coal retire on our system so let me go back to Mr not just for AI but have you had to take a coal plan off just in general we have do have periodic outages and
▶ 1:12:17then when um with the wind resources Andross the Great Plains periodically but you've not decommissioned the coal PL have not decommissioned a coal plant uh one of our original coal assets was actually decommissioned in the 80s which I don't think you're referring to but that was for different reasons well I don't look that old is that what you're trying to say I like this guy so uh and I guess we come to you Mr Black how do you feel about the commissioning or decommissioning some of the coal plants you got 13 seconds sure we have
▶ 1:12:48we have retired Some Coal plants but we have some Cal plants obviously still on our Fleet that are incredibly useful for us and we've extended the life of those recently in our irps to meet the demand okay I appreciate that Mr chairman I yield back thank you the gentleman's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognize the gentleman from California's 50th district for five minutes for questions thank you very much Mr chair and thanks for holding the hearing on this issue this is something I've been looking forward to for a while where we can have a discussion about kind of what the challenge is and and
▶ 1:13:18what we might do to to come up and meet it as a country um it will be a challenge to keep the lights on and keep costs low uh given uh what we have this unprecedented increase in energy demand from data centers manufacturing uh manufacturing um electrification population growth I think we've all acknowledged that um I don't believe we're prepared to handle this demand as is we can't just address the problem by building more of any one particular kind of energy um and uh
▶ 1:13:48anyone who thinks otherwise I think is is is is probably um maybe being a little bit ideological which I don't want to be uh new cleaner generation has to play a role in meeting uh the energy demand we also need to make significant investments in our electric rrid and pipeline infrastructure so that power can be moved more efficiently from where it's abundant to where it's needed and we need to use all the tools in the toolbox to meet the challenge but we do fail if we don't get shovels in the ground and start building what we need at the pace we need to build it at a
▶ 1:14:18pace that meets the urgency of the challenge and every day we waste will'll increase costs uh give us give our competitors an edge make us more open to um unreliability and make us less safe in the 1970s when many of the first environmental rules were passed our priority was to stop dirty destructive projects we were on defense today if we want to continue to reduce our emissions and build the infrastructure of the future while reducing costs for taxpayers we need to go on the offense and reform our laws to meet the challenges of
▶ 1:14:48today as we've spoken before that means uh permit reform in many many different contexts I look forward to working with with my colleagues on real solutions that will strengthen the electric grid drive down costs and build a more resilient future for our constituents Mr Norris I've um put forward several bills to incentivize grid planning to harden utility infrastructure more efficiently site and permit National interest transmission lines and one of those bills is my bipartisan speed and reliability act which streamlines permitting for large transport transmission lines
▶ 1:15:19that relieve grid congestion and improve reliability can you talk about the cost and reli reliability benefits to identifying the highest value projects and streamlining permits for those projects absolutely and thanks for your leadership Congressman I think a good case study on this actually is in our region on the Carolinas where we the industry worked with Duke uh energy on a proactive transmission upgrade it was to the Eastern Carolinas and the reason is because the least cost resources available to the system are located there it's large scale solar power plants
▶ 1:15:50but that that area of the grid was relatively weak and so they went through a proactive public policy uh process they got approval from the Utilities Commission $560 million but it unlocked gigawatts of projects and Not only was that expected to reduce rates overall but actually could improve reliability because you know on the hottest summer days right you get a really nice solar profile so that could actually help support the summer Peaks so I think that's a good example and I think your your bill there is a no-brainer right when you have to go through two separate permitting processes both from FK and the department of energy
▶ 1:16:20it makes a lot of sense to consolidate into one um because again if we're going to meet this this load growth in a fast manner we have to be getting this transmission build as quickly as possible thanks I appreciate you being here also um um we have a Duke connection which I also so I'm listening to you extra hard appreciate that very much um Mr Hawk I wonder if you could talk about um inter Regional transmission and the importance of investing in in the electric grid how's that complimentary to building new generation sources and how do you think about that
▶ 1:16:51both Regional and Inter Regional transmission and so certainly uh the build out of transmission will be essential to getting our resources especially our renewable resources that are in the queue um connected to the power grid the more transmission that you build out we build out for reliability we build out for market efficiency um we're advancing down this path of long-term planning that was approved by the firk but the more transmission you build out um theoretically
▶ 1:17:21the less that renewable developers um need to pay in upgrades and so that will be helpful there inter Regional um we currently uh we export quite a bit of power to our neighbors uh February we were exporting in fact we exported 14,000 megawatts um during a cold weather snap to our neighbor the minc continent ISO and so there's actually quite a bit of inter Regional capability that exists today and so we will continue to study this to see if there's any addition
▶ 1:17:51what interests me is that pjm has determined that it's not just about building Transmission in your region for reliability for Consumer Service you've decided that as part of your business it's important for you to plan and to to execute on inter Regional transmission right uh we have again quite a bit of inter Regional transfer capability and we will continue to analyze that we're actually doing a joint study with the midcon and ISO right now and of course um f orderer 1920 actually mandates that we look at inter Regional planning in tandem with our long-term
▶ 1:18:21planning framework well thank you thanks for your leadership and thanks Witnesses I yield back thank you the gentleman's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Alabama the 6th District five minutes for questions I appreciate the witnesses being here and I I want to raise some questions about the reliability of the grid particularly in um as it regards Transformers u a couple years ago there was an attack on on to uh on Transformers in North Carolina that
▶ 1:18:52U shut down power for about four or five days and one of the things that I found out was that U they had to salvage or or scavenge Transformers from around the country they didn't have um Transformers in in reserve to um to get those um back up Mr Black um I should say Mr Brick House you flagged these concerns in your your testimony
▶ 1:19:23and um I'm concerned that we have a major supply chain problem in our ability to manufacture Transformers here to meet our needs if we were to have a catastrophic event a coronal mass ejection a geomagnetic uh issue that that could shut down huge numbers of of huge huge portions of our power grid so I'd just like for you to comment on that and particularly something that President Trump mentioned in his speech last night about the need to declare
▶ 1:19:54I think critical minerals rare elements is is critical to our national so on the Transformer issue I think it's extends a little bit further to Breakers as well and part of the issue that you're having is with these large loads that I think everyone has talked about today uh a data center needs similar equipment as a power plant we need Breakers and Transformers when we build a power plant
▶ 1:20:24to get that energy on the grid and to receive that energy a data center needs Breakers and Transformers so you with the Advent of these large loads in the form of data centers you have almost doubl demand for the similar equipment that are needed by the two facilities if we had a catastrophic event are you are you gentlemen familiar with an event that occurred in 1859 called the carington event was a the the worst U coronal mass injection and
▶ 1:20:54ever recorded if we had an event like that Lloyds of London has done an assessment that it would uh it' be about 30 million people in North America that would be without power from anywhere from two weeks to two years if we were to have um something along that scale uh how long would it take us to to replace the Transformers uh the breakers to to get our our grid back up and operational
▶ 1:21:26it would be um a considerable period of time depending on how the how wide the impacts were uh we did have a a lot it causes the northern lights in North Dakota actually and there was significant activities within the past 12 months on those and uh the grid operators especially Western area power Administration watch that CL point I'm trying to make sir is that we don't have the the manufacturing capacity in this country
▶ 1:21:57we don't have the skilled labor we don't have access to the critical minerals that that we need to build our own Transformers we don't have an adequate supply of Transformers most of the Transformers we get either come from Mexico or China uh we would be in in a very very serious situation that would I lyers of London I think would report would indicate potential Mass massive loss of life depending on when when it occurred
▶ 1:22:28and that's a huge concern to me and and what happened to North Carolina Mr Black the guy goes in shoots up the oil tanks and which cool the Transformers and we lose that whole station um does Southern Company have a plan uh if we were to have a even um not a catastrophic event but a major event certainly gmds have have uh been on our radar for quite some time and uh you know physical security like you mentioned in
▶ 1:22:58in the Carolinas there are are something we we plan for and and test and and prepare for it all the time I think your your sensitivity around in the midst of all this growth the supply and demand challenges you know we've seen it EB some the challenges since Co but but there's a lot going on right in in the international stress on the supply supply chain is is there for sure so we we're we're preparing for it yeah my my concern too is we're in an arms race for artificial
▶ 1:23:28intelligence and I'm looking at the nerk report on on the highrisk areas and and the medium risk areas and it's clear we don't have the power capacity to build the data systems that we need in order to to win that arms race with China with that Mr chairman I yield back thank you very much the gentleman yields back and the chair now recognizes the gentleman from New Jersey's 8th District for five minutes for questions thank you chairman clean energy is the only source of new generation capable of meeting electricity demand a report by
▶ 1:23:58the clean grid initiative suggests that we need to rapidly deploy clean energy generation and transmission faster than we currently are and 94% of proposed power generation waiting to be interconnected is zero carbon but instead the president's energy policy focused primarily on oil and gas while ignoring clean energy sources such as solar and wind in New Jersey we've already seen the consequences of the president's prioritization of oil gas as the future of Renewables like wind have been put at risk
▶ 1:24:28we should all be committed to accelerating our clean energy production and connecting it to the grid as quickly as possible instead Republicans and Trump are focused on repealing critical programs that invest in renewable energy generation putting the future of clean energy at risk the inflation reduction act provides certainty for the energy industry allowing us to plan for future energy demands investing in clean energy generation is critical for ensuring the future reliability of our grid not only does repealing the IRA jeopardize the
▶ 1:24:58future Renewables it will also increase energy cost for our for consumers and our constituents the IRA is on track to save Americans up to $ 38 billion doll on their electricity bills Mr Brick House during your opening remarks you made a reference to consistent reliable policies and I believe it is safe to say that you would agree that the energy industry needs certainty is that correct it's consistent policy is helpful correct and having some predictability is helpful
▶ 1:25:28in terms of these long-term Investments having predictability is predictability in terms of future policies is helpful in making these long-term Investments is that correct yes so wouldn't repealing the IR make it harder for the industry and states to make the Investments needed for projected demands for Reliable affordable electricity yes or no I think that depends I think the answer is yes but I'll move on Mr Norris would repealing the IRA as our colleagues across the AA seek to do make
▶ 1:25:58life more or less affordable for Americans according to economists based on studies they've conducted in the past couple months it will lead to an increase in electricity rates and the Nera study says 7% for residential customers 2026 10% for commercial customers in 2026 so the answer would be yes it would make life more it be less affordable for Americans correct and how disruptive would the repeat of the IRA B to long to the long-term Investments currently underway across the
▶ 1:26:29country to increase our access to again reliable affordable electricity I want to highlight one resource in particular which is nuclear power and I think it's unequivocal that I mean it's it's a resource that is still above cost Georgia did a great service in some sense by paying above market for those two reactors at vogle but there there still has to be some cost premium paid to get those resources online they're heavily reliant on federal subsidies and incentives and so if there is a repeal
▶ 1:26:59of the IRA Tech neutral tax credit for nuclear or any impact on the loan program's office there will not be a nuclear Renaissance in the United States and similar principles apply to enhance geothermal and other possible firm base load or clean base load uh sources in the future and and to to achieve energy dominance in this country shouldn't we want an all the above approach and shouldn't we continue these Investments that are already underway and funded by the IRA one one of one of the I think could have been bipartisan opportunities in the ira was
▶ 1:27:29to shift from resource specific tax incentives to a technology neutral structure and so the whole idea there was to make it an all of the above approach and so I think that was a that was a key design and again for these Advanced resources it's going to be critical to keep those in place if we want to see them move forward thank you Mr Hawk I understand that wind solar and storage make up the vast majority of resources in pjm's Q and pjm is currently under going Q reform efforts so let me ask you this if the Ira's tax credits were to be repealed
▶ 1:27:59would the vast majority of resources in pgms interconnection queue see a substantial amount of their financial incentives erased representative we haven't studied what potential repeal of the IRA would do to the queue I have read studies independently that say that repeal of the IRA would create Financial challenges for those resources to um come to eventual fruition and right now you know we've got a challenge because we have um actually cleared through our queue about 50,000
▶ 1:28:30megawatts 50 GW of primarily renewable resources that are having challenges um related to financing that are having challenges related to supply chain that are having challenges related to state and federal sighting and so I think that um you per pursuant to your point that you know this would probably create additional Financial strain on those resources should the IRA repealed but again nothing that I have specifically St yeah that's why we should work to make sure that we continue the IRA and see its full implementation
▶ 1:29:00not repeal it thank you all so much thank you the gentleman's time has expired and years back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Georgia's 12th District for five minutes for questions being here today um and sharing your expertise on this important uh challenge that we have the United States has an abundant energy Supply the question is not do we have enough energy resources but can we produce energy at the levels needed to meet the nation's
▶ 1:29:30future demand my state of Georgia is the top state to do business in 12 years in a row and with that new manufacturing and data centers are coming to the state this is leading to high demand for the grid and we must continue to ensure we can provide reliable affordable energy as we power our nation's needs in my district the 12th District of Georgia we have plant Bogle the largest nuclear energy clean power station in the country nuclear eny will play a critical role in meeting our growing needs to ensure us
▶ 1:30:01leadership in the Next Generation economy the advance Act was signed into the law last year and included my legislation the nuclear licensing licensing efficiency act which will drive more efficient timely and predictable reviews of reactor licenses Mr Black thank you for being here today can you discuss the considerations Southern Company takes into account when seeking to invest in nuclear facilities and how you see the role of nuclear energy in our future energy mix well we're certainly
▶ 1:30:31proud of vogle and and glad we have it online particularly in this moment of of radical expansion of our of our grid uh it is a operationally a fantastic resource and and provides a lot of sort of electrical benefits to our system that that enables us to take even more uh customers to our system I think the ap1000 is a uh a solution that we understand it's uh risks are are understood and I think it's a it's a solution that that we
▶ 1:31:01and in our nation should Contin you know should uh uh think through and expanding its its uh development right um we know how to build them I mean it was 30 years yes before we built and uh and this is somewhat of a modular project I mean it's made off a lot of it's made off site and then brought in and erected uh and uh and we can continue probably to improve on that but at least we have the now have the workforce
▶ 1:31:32we have the capability we know we can do it and uh we know that thing's going to be running there for a long long time uh Mr Brick House in my state othar power is a wholesale provider of energy for electric co-ops and they tell me that it is critical for reliability of the grid they have the ability to run their dispatchable Basel loads assets like nuclear but also their coal plants and natural gas generation uh during the B Administration the epa's clean power
▶ 1:32:02plan 2.0 would only make it harder and more expensive for cooperatives to maintain reliability of the grid can you walk us through how the EPA regulations on power plants are factored into base Bas and electric members planning and investment decisions and how that may impact the rate payer and reliability in areas certainly thank you you and our Chief Financial Officer who's with me today used to work at oglethorp so we have some things in common there I think the most illustrative uh
▶ 1:32:32example for the committee was would be that a Basel load coal plant you want it to be available and online or available at least 90% of the time if you have to go and do carbon sequestration on that you're going to have a parasitic load of about 25% of the output of that unit and you're combining another uh industrial process to that unit and the combined you're not going to have 100% reliability for your carbon capture
▶ 1:33:03which is going to bring down the entire availability of that that power plant in other words put you pretty much out of there or makes your rates a lot more expensive lot yeah uh like to Circle back on the role of uh nuclear energy uh Mr he is an organized Market pjm operates very differently than vertically integrated structure of the state of Georgia when operating efficiently the market should send price
▶ 1:33:33signals that invite potential nuclear developers to enter the region given growing energy demands in the market there should be an opportunity for more nuclear energy to help meet future energy needs of the region what are the barriers you're seeing to in pjm's region to expand the use of nuclear energy thank you representative I think we're actually seeing some good movement on nuclear in the pjam region right now and so we are seeing uh particularly nuclear uprates
▶ 1:34:03to existing facilities there was a recent announcement of the reopening of what was formerly Three Mile Island now called the crane clean energy center in the state of Pennsylvania so we are seeing some good movement uh in the nuclear space you when you have these Supply demand challenges means the prices go up and so when prices go up it sends a price signal to those who would want to invest in our market and specifically invest not on the backs of consumers
▶ 1:34:34uh put private dollars into um the marketplace to build a new unit that's the that is the sort of Crux of what the markets um are and we are actually you know seeing some of that activity already in our footprint after sending just you know frankly one high clear clearing price well thank you very much and I Y back thank you the gentlemen's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes the Gent lady from Virginia's fourth district five minutes for questions uh thank you chairman L
▶ 1:35:04and um ranking member caster for holding this hearing on how we can meet our growing demand for Reliable and affordable electricity um I'm glad to hear chairman Guthrie and his um questions earlier say that that should include clean energy sources like wind and solar I agree um so I'm a member of Gen X and I grew up on Schoolhouse Rock and I think everybody here knows and is very familiar with
▶ 1:35:34um I'm just a bill but my favorite episode actually was the energy blues and I can't help as we've been listening to your testimony and the questions I've had energy Blues rolling through my mind um maybe one day I'll ask for unanimous consent to to put the lyrics in the record um I'm not going to sing it but I do want to highlight a couple of them uh energy sometimes I think I'm running out of energy
▶ 1:36:05seems like we use an awful lot for heating and lighting and driving reading and writing and javing energy you'd think we'd be saving it up it goes through a history of uh the energy sources and the increase in demand uh in American history it says energy we're looking to try and find some new kinds energy exploring to try and make a new find nuclear and thermal and solar if we miss we'll get colder and colder
▶ 1:36:35energy we've got to stop using you up then it introduced my little kid self to the concept of Energy Efficiency so don't get cross when Mama says turn that extra light out just turn it off till we find us a fuel that never runs out out if everyone tries a bit harder our fuel will go farther and farther energy we're going to be stretching you out so just want to remind you that uh our our
▶ 1:37:06childhood shows our childhood Jingles are actually very educational and still very relevant um so Mr brick house I think I misheard you in one of your answers and I want to make sure I set the record straight um in your written testimony you urged Congress to keep the investment tax credit and production tax credit is that correct correct and in my oral testimony I reference that as well okay I thought I I might have misheard you I thought I heard something
▶ 1:37:36um that contradicted that so I just wanted to make sure that your position on that was clear um in Virginia we have the coastal Virginia offshore wind project which is an incredible example of how offshore wind can be a powerful economic engine for the entire region and it's something that has bipartisan support that grew out of bipartisan uh the Virginia clean economy act and and related wind uh legislation that we passed um
▶ 1:38:07and nationally offshore wind has brought 25 billion in new Investments to Ports factories manufacturing facilities the electrical grid and jobs um you all have discussed the demand for electricity uh in the region is expected to grow significantly in the coming years for a wide variety of reasons um and there are currently offshore wind projects like the one in Virginia and elsewhere that could contribute to pgms
▶ 1:38:37grid um Mr Norris could you explain how uh despite uh chairman Guthrie's view that wind uh and solar are necessary and we should continue down that path can you talk about how president Trump's executive order are halting new federal leases and permits for wind energy and the massive uncertainty it creates for businesses will impact pjm's ability to meet the growing demand for energy in the coming years yeah well one
▶ 1:39:07of the great things about offshore wind is it actually has a pretty high capacity factor and a capacity value because it actually produces on winter mornings when we need power so it has a nice profile uh what's happening is that some states have said we're willing to pay above Market to get the offshore wind industry kicks Ed kind of like Georgia said we're going to we're willing to pay above Market to get these two new reactors online and that's a great service to the country that they're performing because offshore wind is an an immense resource it could offer a lot of energy in the future it does require some upfront
▶ 1:39:37investment right to get it down the cost curve but if you're going to get rid of the leases then it has no possibility of of growing as an industry and you're you're basically preventing those States from saying we want to develop this resource thank you and um I'll just note in my final seconds that that uh one of the quickest ways that we can uh help to address the growing demand is to also help mitigate that demand through things like Energy Efficiency programs that are the fastest and cheapest way to help
▶ 1:40:08address demand and slowest growth so um you all touched on that in your testimony and I just wanted to reiterate that point uh given that we're taking some opposite actions here in Congress last week and this week on the house floor thank you and I yield back the gentle ladies time has expired and years back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Ohio's 12th District for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman and I will start my questions this morning thank you all for being here with my good friend and always
▶ 1:40:38my chairman uh from the great state of Ohio Mr Hawk uh Mr Hawk I'd like to discuss some concerning Trends we're seing with operators interconnection cues it's been talked a little bit about here this morning pjm's existing installed capacity mix is overwhelmingly made up of dispatchable power generation such as natural gas nuclear and coal however 97% of PGM Q capacity comes from renewable Generation
▶ 1:41:08Mr hawk in your testimony you note that unlike traditional thermal generation renewable resources do not provide certain essential reliability services that are necessary to balance and maintain the power grid do you have have any concerns with the lack of dispatchable power generation entering pjm's interconnection queue and are there enough of these projects to offset premature retirements and meet Rising demand thank you representative great to see you
▶ 1:41:39uh we certainly have concern with not having dispatchable resources in the generation interconnection queue and the grid is a machine and it is a machine governed by the laws of physics and this is not us this is a North American Electric reliability Corporation um who has published uh papers um publish analyses that say that we need essential reliability Services um which are things like um uh control things like ramp
▶ 1:42:09and voltage and things that as a lawyer I don't quite understand but that are necessary uh and so we do need um our spinning Mass resources we do need our thermal resources nuclear coal gas to continue to run a power grid the size of pjm interconnection you know having you know said all that um you again we need these dispatchable resources to find their way on the system we can integrate more Renewables onto our system uh there are um grid operators there are grids
▶ 1:42:40that um run on you know more renewable resources than than we currently run on now what that sort of balance is and what that threshold is you know we're not quite there yet but we do need um we do need dispatchable resources to run our system all right thank you um Mr hawk again um I recently introduced The Grid power act with senator hovind of North Dakota and Senator Todd young of Indiana our bill provides a process that would give grid operators
▶ 1:43:10the authority to identify and expedite the consideration of essential projects that will protect our grids reliability and provide the power needed to meet America's growing demand as you know the Q backlog isn't unique to pjm depending upon the region projects May sit and wait in the interconnector cues for over five years before they can before they can even begin their feasibility and impact studies I appreciate the PGM is ahead of the curve here and as you said you're making good progress getting through the Q backlog but I also understand
▶ 1:43:40that last year PGM cleared 50 gigawatts of resources through their queue and developers are not getting those projects built Mr Hawk can you briefly discuss why pgms reliability resource initiative is so critical to improving grid reliability and maintaining resource adequacy first question and how can can grid operators firk and Congress build off this initiative to get more reliable generation yeah absolutely I think um grid operators across the country are facing what we
▶ 1:44:10are facing which is this Supply demand Challenge and clogged cues again you know I'd like to I'd like to think that we are ahead of the curve again I have not benchmarked us against other grid operators but you know again next year we will be through our Q reform effort one to twoe turnaround time frame but in the meantime um we needed to create an opportunity for resources that are more shovel ready that can best contribute to reliability to find their way um into the queue because otherwise
▶ 1:44:40You' have to get back you would have to get in the back of a line um starting in 2026 and we need those resources now now there's been a misnomer out there that you know these are going to be effectively fossil resources and that is actually not true in fact what we know right now is that nuclear uprates and this crane clean energy center this TMI um reopening are going to find their way into the rri um the reliability resource initiative and we think some we we are um hearing anecdotally
▶ 1:45:11that we'll have some storage projects as well that find their way through to the rri so to us again um we are agnostic in terms of the resource type every resource type has its capability and we have to be uh you know sort of honest about the physics of the grid and how it operates and so that's that's our rri which I think is very akin to the legislation that you um introduced thank you Mr chairman I yield back thank you the gentleman yields back and the chair now recognizes the general lady from California's
▶ 1:45:417th District for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman and I'd like to thank you and the ranking member caster for having this hearing today and I want to thank the witnesses for joining us today um I am particularly concerned by President Trump's unprecedented power grab to exert control over independent agencies including FK Congress created the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission as an independent agency to insulate its decisions from political influence
▶ 1:46:12Mr Norris can you very briefly explain F's role in regulating electricity how that impacts Americans electricity bills and why F's impartial mil impartial parti ability is so important yes thank you congresswoman um I like to think of a FK as sort of the referee that make sure that markets are functioning properly and call fouls where they take place but the whole point is to have efficient markets right that are competitive to ensure that the least cost electricity that's reliable
▶ 1:46:42is available to the customers and so that's the role um I think it is concerning look I've been part of a number of f proceedings a lot of State puc proceedings I've never I can't remember ever hearing a participant in one of those proceedings say we wish this was more politicized and and was had less quality review right so I think when you're talking about a business context with decisions that are this critical you need substantial expertise and that's exactly why we have FK um because they bring that to Bear right now you worked as a solar
▶ 1:47:13developer adding new energy capacity to the grid to help meeting Rising demand so I guess from an energy project developers what would be your top concern if the president had ultimate authority over FK making I could think of a variety of concerns I mean I think even just from a speed of business standpoint right I mean it already takes a long time to get these proceedings done but if you add another layer of review and approval uh that could make the
▶ 1:47:43process even less efficient um I think knowing that the Regulators are impartial and Technology neutral is critical to ensure that there's business confidence and that you attract investment from a variety of different sectors so those two issues I think speed of business and the lack of impartiality would uh would be the two biggest concerns so every member of this committee should be Gravely concerned about protecting FKS Independence correct I I believe so you know otherwise br's policies could shift dramatically from
▶ 1:48:13each new Administration um fundamentally I don't disagree with my Republican colleagues about the challenges we are facing the chair has called this hearing to highlight the need to meet Rising energy demand while also lowering energy costs for consumers that's a goal we all share but if your objective is to add more affordable generation to the grid it doesn't take an energy expert to tell you that repealing feral incentives that lower the cost of building and operating
▶ 1:48:44new energy projects is counterproductive it was just reported that Republicans will start drafting a bill next week that will repeal Federal incentives for new energy projects which are supporting the buildout of affordable Energy across the country including and many of my Republican colleagues District Mr Norris what effect would this repal have on the electric Rd and let's say Southeastern us I think there are a variety of potential impacts I will note that a
▶ 1:49:14key component of Duke Energy's resource plan going out 10 to 15 years now is nuclear power expansion building on uh what's happened to Vogal and if those incentives are repealed I think it's quite unlikely that there will be any nuclear expansion that takes place in the Southeast offshore wind is another impact they're planning for that as part of their carbon plan integrated resource plan um that would probably be taken off the table and of course it would make solar and wind more expensive as well so it's likely to increase rates and it may have impacts on reliability okay
▶ 1:49:44um I want to switch gears Mr Norris to talk about load flexibility I'm a strong proponent of virtual power plants because I believe the potential to meet Rising demand faster and cheaper than many other options our utility in Sacramento SMUD is a leader on Virtual power plants but many utilities are skeptical at that virtual power plants can reliably meet demand Mr Norris what would you say to your to that is skeptical of virtual power plants well you know the the largest
▶ 1:50:14form of a virtual power plant is what we call demand response and uh it plays a very substantial role in some markets so in the Midwest independent system operator demand response contributes about 10% of their overall system Peak that is quite substantial um and then in many other markets it's above 5% um you know in Duke Energy where I'm based you know they have a power pair program where most of the subscribers actually allow the utility have direct control over the battery storage on site so in this case you could actually
▶ 1:50:45have the utility knowing that it's able to operate because they have they can send a direct control signal to that to that device okay well thank you very much and I run out of time thank you thank you the general L's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas's 11th District for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman uh it's amazing to me that we still have a math problem uh between the two sides of the aisle here um but we do and you know I want to try to address this
▶ 1:51:15this math problem last year when I asked Secretary of Energy Miss grolm how much energy does the United United States consumed she couldn't answer the question um and when you go back a couple of years ago you see that um it's the consumption has actually risen by about 0.5% annually but Department of energy the same one that Miss grolm ran actually um has predicted that it's going to be between 5 to 6% increase in consumption in the next 10 years
▶ 1:51:45and yet we're still talking about unreliable sources here which is just unbelievable to me and the billions of dollars that are being pushed out because of the IRA we'll get to those questions but um the answer to that question was 4,292 terawatt hours in 20 2022 uh with a 0.5% increase annually but that's changing so Mr Brick House what I want to talk to you about first off um is in your testimony you talk about uh tripling
▶ 1:52:15um of increase for natural gas demand and uh I want to hear what's holding us back from using that um as a provider well from Basin Electric's perspective nothing is preventing us from using it since 2010 again we we've grown 5% annually each year uh on average since then we have added roughly a th000 megawatts of natural gas
▶ 1:52:46generation to our portfolio at the same time thankful thankfully for the wind resources in our service territory uh We've added a similar amount of wind generation as we look out uh through the balance of this year we'll add 600 megawatt of dispatchable natural gas generation and then when we we will spend four billion dollars between now and 2030 to add another, 1500 megawatts of natural gas generation what's the most important quality
▶ 1:53:17to you is it affordability is it reliability is it this notion that somehow one form or another is cleaner I mean what what's the most important as a deliverer of electricity what is the most important characteristic well I think anybody that joins the electric utility industry we're a public service industry which I think is a noble calling and our objective is to prod produce safe and reliable and
▶ 1:53:47affordable power in an environmentally responsible manner I think everyone at this table that's employed by a utility that's our tagline and natural gas can do that and is that with most definitely 40% of the production of of uh Mr Black um permitting reform um what I was trying to get out what's holding us back from using that tell us about the detrimental effects of not having permitting reform to deliver affordable reliable clean energy sure yeah
▶ 1:54:17there there are three fairly specific things that we could do to amend you know this process the Clean Water Act and NEPA and judicial reform to to uh prevent litigation and uncertainty around infrastructure projects and and I think the important point of all this is and you asked a great question of what sort of what's the constraint right now and and I checked gas prices this morning they were a little less than $3 for mmbtu and pipelines are the constraint right if you there's a finite amount of space in a pipe and if we don't have enough
▶ 1:54:47pipes you you get to a point where you have things like basis blowout which is the cost cost of Transportation blows out you know 10 times more than the cost of gas so our need is to build the infrastructure so that we don't have create our own constraint and we can get access to that today sub4 gas I was just trying to Google gas prices in Europe um and I'm sure we can do that relatively quick but it's not $3 an mcf it's much higher than that
▶ 1:55:18um Mr hawk in the last 45 seconds uh any expanded thoughts on on permitting and and how we can deliver for the needs that we know we're in an energy expansion that's where we are we support permitting reform anything we can do to get energy infrastructure built more expeditiously whether that's generation or transmission will be extremely helpful you know one additional factor that we didn't discuss with respect I um appreciated Mr Brook house and Mr Black's um responses you know I think policy also
▶ 1:55:48has and specifically decarbonization policy specifically in the gas industry right now it could be the cheapest resource possible to build out and will also you know help with grid reliability in tand them with the renewable resources that we are going to um naturally see find their way onto the system you know in but if sort of there's a policy overhang that creates a risk premium that is really too high for investors to invest in that is sort of another Factor on top of what has already been
▶ 1:56:18referenced um that creates challenges uh for um natural gas generation and get built out on the system thank you very much time has expired yield back thank you the gentleman's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York's uh 20th district for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chair uh I'm glad that there is a bipartisan recognition of the impending challenges facing uh our electricity system to meet growing demand but we are
▶ 1:56:48doing ourselves a disservice if we continue to ignore demand side Solutions Mr Norris I appreciated your testimony uh because I believe we need to incentivize Energy Efficiency demand response and smarter grid management reducing Peak demand allows our existing generation resources to be stretched further so Mr Norris can you make the case for reducing Peak demand as one of the fastest and most costeffective strategies we can Implement to match near-term growth
▶ 1:57:19projections that's correct uh and I can expand on that so there if you would you know the cheapest form of a megawatt is a negawatt right so not not having need to deliver the megawatt and so there are a growing number of loads on the system that could be flexible right so they could be deferred or they could be front loaded by a couple hours because these system Peaks that we're talking about there're on average events that are approximately two hours uh the most trickiest is when they occur during winter
▶ 1:57:49mornings and that's from 6:00 to 8: a.m. or 6 9:00 a.m. is the period That's well defined for a lot of the jurisdictions in the Eastern interconnect and so for flexibility of 2 to 3 hours for example running your hot water heater you know before you wake up so that your water is already warm and ready to go so you don't have to run it right like when that Peak is occurring we can get more Headroom out of the system out of that and I think the biggest opportunity may be from these large centralized new loads that are coming in because if especially if they already have their own on-site power
▶ 1:58:19and they're able to run that for a few hours a year then we could add a lot more of that load a lot more quickly thank you I appreciate that and unfortunately demand side policies are not the only tools being ignored by the Trump Administration we really are going to need every available electron to meet our needs it is hard to believe that the administration is so braising dismissing the importance of wind of solar and of storage excluding wind and solar from energy dominance council's launch and making it harder to permit wind projects
▶ 1:58:49on both Federal and private lands is completely completely antithetical to any claim that we need to rapidly expand our electricity system certainly Renewables have supply chain and permitting challenges but so do gas plants with turbines currently being ordered for delivery in 2029 so Mr Norris since wind and solar and storage resources make up the bulk of the interconnection queue and are able to be deployed most quickly amongst new resources do you think there is
▶ 1:59:20a disconnect in the administration position of disadvantaging these resources while also seeking to encourage near-term load growth yes I I think it's worth noting so you know in Texas for example they've seen record Summer peaks in the past two years at the same time they've add record amounts of new capacity and most of those additions were solar and batteries and so I think most analysts have concluded that if OT had not added that solar and storage as fast as they did there would have been
▶ 1:59:50rolling blackouts in the summer periods during those summer Peaks so S Storage solar and storage can contribute to reliability it is doing so in a number of markets and wind as well it's a nice it actually balances out the solar profile oftentimes because you can still get decent wind resource in those winter mornings so I I think what you said is generally accurate uh we also know policy stability is needed to properly plan for and make energy Investments there have been several independent studies finding that repeal of clean energy tax in incentives will result
▶ 2:00:20in major cost increases for our American families and businesses and creating uncertainty about the future availability of these credits is already having a chilling effect on private sector Investments so Mr minoris if we need projects to be built as quickly and at the lowest cost possible how does tax credit policy and certainty discourage investment and upends planning I you know we're already hearing of impacts you know there are active procurements taking place in the Southeast right now for new solar and solar Plus Storage
▶ 2:00:50resources and even the uncertainty of not knowing where the tax incentives are going to land has a resulted in developers pulling projects out of those rfps which means necessarily the cost of those procurements is going to increase and so even the uncertainty before we even you know decide if we actually repeal them is already having an impact um but you know it's just kind of basic economics right if if you pull back incentives from a given activity you're going to see less of that activity in that case this means that you're going to see less generators added to the system
▶ 2:01:21thank you and Mr Black there is a strong bipartisan support for nuclear energy on the committee can you explain the role the department of Energy's loan programs office played in supporting the development of plant Ral and if you could answer that quickly yes uh provided hundreds of millions of dollars of benefit in Vogal the process to buy down of that loan I appreciate that and with that Mr chair y back thank you very much G the gentleman yield back and the chair now recognizes
▶ 2:01:51the G lady from Tennessee's first district five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman thank you to the witnesses for being here today I'll start with Mr Black um tech companies make a tremendous amount of money by running their own supercomputers at data centers and it seemed to me that they'd want to focus their resources on building these data centers rather than getting into the power business so why do you think these tech companies are going behind the meter because they could buy wholesale power from utilities
▶ 2:02:21or by um by utilities or at regular rates or a negotiated rate I think it's a great question and I think uh in parts of the country where maybe they are uh finding it difficult to to find available power that is Affordable uh that is a solution I think it's a u likely a near-term solution again I I waxed on about the the benefit of the integrated grid and I think the the one-off cocation solutions may be shortterm but longterm I
▶ 2:02:51think think the unable benefits of of the way we provide Power will be recognized yeah that was my next followup what would the benefits be to these tech companies or individual rate payers uh or the system as a whole when adding these new um loads like the data centers in front of the meter instead of behind the meter yeah so so the benefits of these these customers and the growth and the amount of uh of uh generation they require um Done Right charged right with
▶ 2:03:21the right tariffs allow us to build a system that that indeed puts downward pressure on rates and it's it's around some of the conversations Mr Norse has had in in around that utilization rate so I need fewer resources to produce more electricity well that puts downward pressure on each unit produced of electricity so it can be a fantastic thing yeah okay thank you sir Mr Hawk uh different types of computing facilities whether they be cryptocurrency mining uh facilities AI computing or
▶ 2:03:51otherwise they have different demand needs and as our committee uh considers these policies based on growing load demand would there be uh any need to Define these facilities differently based on their differing um demand needs it's a great question representative I think one thing that needs to be examined is this load and specifically you know the
▶ 2:04:22the you we'll just characterize it as cost and other obligations that um that it creates and so you know we have been we've spent a lot of time with our stakeholder community and within our stakeholder process talking about this load in particular how big it is how quickly it's coming on to the system you talked about you know behind the meter opportunities as well as in front of the meter opportunities for these folks to come on and look it's a good story it's a good story for the nation to have these data
▶ 2:04:52centers and to have this growth but simultaneously I do think we need to think about whether um there needs to be you know additional we'll just call it you know for us you know tariff structures or revisions to um deal with this load coming on specifically you know their cost for the system and you know for instance whether they're paying their fair share of transmission upgrades whether they're paying their fair share of ancillary Services
▶ 2:05:22which is a service um within you know our our grid framework and so I think you're bringing up an important point I think it's something that deserves analysis yeah you know we talked a a little bit U few minutes ago you know pjm covers just the sliver of my district and then TVA you know covers the vast majority and you talked about the winter storm Elliott uh where there was a surgeon demand it affected my district tremendously uh and that allowed you to get that waiver to meet to demand sell Excess
▶ 2:05:53power to TVA on the open market and you know while we don't we don't need all plants to be used at this at the same time you know it's kind of like when you lose weight and you have your closet and you don't throw those clothes away you take them upstairs and you put them in a closet and then you got your overweight clothes and then you got your skinny clothes and it's kind of the same way with this power structure you know you you don't want to turn all of it off or get rid of it all at once you agree I agree with that um
▶ 2:06:23I uh have historically been a weight fluctuator so I do have my um heavy suits and my skinny suits uh well we all do I just go upstairs to shop but I I also agree fundamentally with the premise and look the tighter we get on Supply the less we're going to be able to export to our neighbors and we have been historically when um the weather gets rough um especially these last few Winters we have
▶ 2:06:53been able to export to our neighbors in order for them to keep the lights on and so the tighter we get with Supply we have generally been the sort of the the the Grid in the in the Eastern interconnect that has had the most robust Supply the tighter we get the less we're going to be able to help our neighbors and so I think fundamentally you know I do agree with what you're saying you keep those overweight close I got you pal all right my time is up and I will yell back the gener time has expired and he back and that's the first
▶ 2:07:23time I've heard that before uh chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas's um uh 33rd district for five minutes for questions uh thank you Mr chairman and um I did want to take a little Personal Privilege here to um talk about my friend Sylvester Turner that we lost uh when I was in the state legislature with Sylvester this was his wheelhouse he loved talking about urot and knew it in and
▶ 2:07:53out and the transmission piece and uh from someone that he would always proudly say that he would never say he was from Houston he'd always say he was from Acres Home which is a neighborhood in Houston and uh from Acres home to Harvard Sylvester got his lesson and literally learned this particular thing that we're talking about today in and out and I'm devastated and um thank youall for being here today um one of the problems that we're obviously
▶ 2:08:23having is that uh bringing new resources on onto the Grid it's a challenge for a lot of different reasons uh but we know that we're going to continue to have electricity demand there was just a great article recently in one of our local papers in north Texas talking about some nuclear reactors that were going into the hasc area of West Texas in order to help uh with you know data centers and all the new electric and all the new demand that's going to be uh online for for kot one of the things that worries
▶ 2:08:53me is that I know that FK uh order 2023 to modernize interconnection process has made some progress but that uh there are still some barriers that remain the connect and manage model that's used in my home state of Texas allows generators to connect Faster by managing grid constraints in real time instead of waiting for upgrades and that means that sometimes the generators will have to curil their production uh but that's a market decision uh that they make and it works so o that urot interconnect at 2.5 times
▶ 2:09:24more capacity than pjm uh despite pjm serving a much larger load uh and so uh knowing all of that and knowing that America is going to have uh energy needs to be met and that we need a more efficient interconnection system uh I wanted to uh to ask uh Mr Norris uh a lot of your highlights that urot is far more efficient than other regions in in inter connection and I wanted to ask you what policies
▶ 2:09:54allow Ott to interconnect projects faster than other RTO and isos and do you think they can be applied nationally thank you Congressman for the great comments and the very good question um I think this is a very very significant phenomenon that's happened in urot over the past few years I don't I don't know that we've ever seen such a differential between one market exceeding every other market so substantially in such a critical area uh in this case in you know a
▶ 2:10:24new capacity editions um urot has taken a forward-looking approach here so they allow generators to connect freely and they don't charge them for the cost of network upgrades they plan their grid separately via a separate process that's designed to identify the upgrades that have the best uh benefits for the ratee payers and then they manage the impacts as you said in real time so they have sophisticated realtime operational tools that allow them to
▶ 2:10:54manage all these new generators that are coming online in the rest of the country we've we've actually established very high barriers to entry for New Generation and the way we study them is highly restrictive and it's likely in many cases to trigger substantial Network upgrades and that's really in some ways the primary cause of all these interconnection Q backlogs is that we've taken this highly restrictive approach to to getting new generation on the system so I do think think there are lessons that other jurisdictions can learn from urot they can't necessarily
▶ 2:11:25adopt it immediately because that would require larger structural reform but there are ways that they can offer services to generators to allow them to move forward more quickly I know that uh in a lot of your work you also suggest that better line and interconnection transmission planning and resource procurement uh should take place and I was wondering how should FK and Congress uh incentivize more proactive train investment proactive transmission
▶ 2:11:55planning is is going to be critical and and part because we have we're in a very Supply con chain constrainted environment by rates are already rising and so there's just a threshold for how much we can do very quickly so we need proactive planning so that we can identify the highest value upgrades to the system and focus our limited resources on those and that's exactly what order 1920 tried to do right is to create this multivalue proactive approach to transmission planning and so you know we've done I
▶ 2:12:25mentioned one example in the Carolinas that we did uh with Duke Energy and everyone got behind that it was highly bipartisan it's going to unlock a lot of cheap generation that's going to contribute to reliability but we have to make sure that we maintain order 1920 if we want to to reap the benefits of that type of proactive approach going forward thank you very much chairman a y back thank you gentlemen yelds back the balance of his time the chair now recognizes the general lady from Iowa's first district for five minutes for questions uh thank you to Chairman
▶ 2:12:56uh L and the ranking member caster for holding this hearing today I want to also thank our Witnesses for testifying before the subcommittee Mr Norris I want to especially thank you for acknowledging that the perverse incentives of the bite Administration the past four years actually dampened the energy generation from carbon based fuels but I degress the United States is experiencing unprecedented energy demand growth requiring us to rapidly deploy new generation capacity across the country in Iowa we're seeing this firstand with the recent announcement of qt's
▶ 2:13:26new data center campus in Cedar Rapids the largest Economic Development investment in the city's history at a minimum of $750 million this facility chose Cedar Rapids in part because of access to Reliable affordable renewable energy sources demonstrating how energy infrastructure directly impacts our ability to attract Cutting Edge Industries as these technology intensive facilities continue to expand across America we Face several critical challenges in meeting skyrocketing demand meanwhile epa's power
▶ 2:13:56plant 2.0 rule threatens to undermine grid reliability by forcing plants to implement carbon capture technology that isn't yet commercially viable at scale we need Common Sense pragmatic approaches that facilitate faster development such as repurposing existing generation sites and unused transmission cap capacity to streamline permitting and accelerate clean energy integration with that context I'd like to ask a few questions about how we can best meet this growing demand while maintaining reliability and affordability for
▶ 2:14:27all consumers and not seeding National Security Mr Brick House you mentioned that Technology based loads like data centers can become operational in three years while dispatchable generation take seven years to build how is base and electric leveraging existing sites and trans transmission corridors along with considering wind solar and energy storage which can be placed into service sooner to meet this interim reliability well with respect to Renewables when
▶ 2:14:57Renewables are used to hit or to satisfy our Peak demand we typically think of it as needing to have backup dispatchable generation in order to satisfy the times when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining for example on February 20th it was3 some degrees in North Dakota and across the Great Plains and probably down into Iowa and uh SP had a peak of
▶ 2:15:2848,000 megawatts and uh the wind contribution to um generation was about 2,000 megawatts and that had I believe decreased Sevenfold in 24 hours so we need to have dispatchable Generation Um given the harsh climates in our service territory exactly and we've SE seen the same thing in Iowa as well as when I visited uh myo and we know that the US needs to significantly accelerate domestic energy
▶ 2:15:58production infrastructure both to meet growing demand and as I said to compete with the Chinese Communist party and strategic sectors like Ai and clean energy Mr Black your experience with developing transmission projects across multiple jurisdiction gives you unique insight into supply chain challenges how critical are tax incentives like the tech neutral electricity credits under 45 Y and 45 e and 45x advanced manufacturing for onshoring American Manufacturing in the energy sector and what would be the competitive
▶ 2:16:29implications be against China if these credits were significantly reduced yeah there so there's definitely significant amount of investment required and those and those Investments or those tools that you you just discussed are in incredibly helpful in ensuring that we can get those projects built and online in a in a manner that's that's affordable for our customers thank you Mr Hawk Basin electric is experiencing load growth significantly higher than the national average in part due to Data Center demand given your experience at PGM
▶ 2:16:59what best practices would you highlight to balance increased cost to rate Pairs and economic development so as Supply decreases and demand increases it will raise prices and this is just the reality of the marketplace now uh one thing that we can do is work with our retail Regulators on how those costs end up getting passed down to Consumers uh I was a former retail regulator myself
▶ 2:17:30uh from the state of Ohio you know how those um we call them default service procurement auctions work how a in a deregulated State how those costs are passed down is something that's worth examining frankly in all of our jurisdictions um because uh a a price increase in just one of our markets should not actually result in a direct proportionality of costs that are passed down to Consumers thank you we need to significantly accelerate domestic energy infrastructure uh to meet
▶ 2:18:00growing demand tax incentives like the tech neutral clean energy credits under 45 Y 45e and the 45q carbon sequestration credit and the 45x advanced manufacturing credit aim to strengthen American manufacturing uh capability and reduce the engineering procurement and construction risks that have plagued major energy rep uh projects with that I yield back thank you the general General lady's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes General lady from Washington's 8th District for five minutes for
▶ 2:18:31questions thank you chairman L and thank you to our Witnesses today I'm going to start with just a few questions for Mr brick house uh Mr Brick House Basin electric purchases electricity from hydropower assets at the Western area power Administration correct yes ma'am thank you and for those who don't know this is one of just five Federal Agencies that market electricity from federally owned hydrop power can you talk about just how
▶ 2:19:01valuable the Western area power administration's hydr power is to your co-op's energy mix yes so the Western area power Administration owns and operates about 177,000 miles of transmission through the Great Planes and down into the desert Southwest and then Bonville power Administration which we don't uh we don't have adjacent service territory they have about 15,000 miles of transmission if
▶ 2:19:31memory serves me correctly and with respect to waa specifically their transmission lines will end at one of their substations on the other end of that substation basin's transmission line will connect and take it to the rest of our members so a key partner so you're focusing more on transmission I was really focusing on hydr power which is of course important because it's Basel load and it's dispatchable it's clean and we transact Hydro power with
▶ 2:20:01them on a daily basis uh what would happen if this hydrop power were to suddenly become unavailable um my colleague from pjm says when you have a supply and demand imbalance on the demand side or the supply side shrinking uh you're going to have higher prices immediately higher prices less reliability thank you and in this context the Bonville power Administration uh is similarly Public Power
▶ 2:20:31that supplies Washington Oregon Montana and Idaho and is funded by our electric bills uh not by the federal government so I want to extrapolate what this means for my state of Washington it has twice the generating capacity of waapa and in fact Bonville is the largest of the five power Market marketing administrations so I want to also mention that this is important to several of the Republican colleagues in this committee uh across the Pacific Northwest Bonville accounts for
▶ 2:21:01about 65% of the generating capacity in the region and most of the high voltage transmission as you discussed uh the operations therefore at Bondville are essential to maintaining the grid uh at existing energy rates and again you pointed out uh that we the rate payers pay the operations not the federal government so despite all of that the administration and Elon Musk uh have still set their sights uh and succeeded
▶ 2:21:32in cutting nearly 20% of the workforce there and that includes the linemen who work on down power power lines the system operators that make sure that demand meets Supply uh and they are 247 and then of course the vice president of transmission I just want to um point out that these deliberate words of uh probationary employees is really pretty disparaging it implies that they're in trouble and uh are are
▶ 2:22:02uh dis dispensable H really that is not the case it just means they've been there for less than one or two years or just got promoted so um I'm not saying BPA is perfect uh but this decision is not saying saving taxpayer money uh it's not just Reckless and it's also uh not helping to pay for the gigantic tax cuts that my colleagues are planning for the wealthiest people in corporations in the US uh I if
▶ 2:22:32this weren't even enough the self-inflicted damage from trade Wars with our allies with Canada just started yesterday and the rap hairs again uh are going to be unprotected from rate hikes so in this case uh the majority in the Administration may not know that the largest share of Washington State's natural gas actually comes from Canada so this Administration the same one that promised to slash energy
▶ 2:23:02bills in half in the next year is doing exactly the opposite and over and over either a basic misunderstanding of the facts or lying to the public or retaliation against the northwest region which includes Idaho and Montana is Hur ing my constituents and I sure hope that secretary R is listening uh thank you and I yield back thank you the general lady yields back the balance
▶ 2:23:32of her time the chair now recognizes the gentleman from South Carolina's sth district for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman and thank you to our Witnesses for being here today in your testimony uh I come from a great state of the the great state of South Carolina where we've seen record invest ments uh from an economic development standpoint Advanced manufacturing Ai and of course a rapidly increasing population Myrtle Beach Town one of the towns that I represent is the fastest growing city
▶ 2:24:02in the country uh creating more of a demand on our grid uh companies like DC blocks are investing in our critical infrastructure uh including the Myrtle Beach cable Landing station data centers across the state expanding connectivity and supporting high performance Computing um and as these industries grow and and as people continue to move to South Carolina uh energy must keep up nuclear uh is key in my mind uh to meeting some of that demand in fact South Carolina already generates 55%
▶ 2:24:33of its uh electricity from nuclear thanks to initiatives like the palmeta nuclear Coalition uh we have a strong industry-led effort to advance large scale reactors in small modular technologies um but we can't rely on the status quo for long we have we have to meet that challenge in Congress we need policies that prioritize energy expansion modernized transmission and Regulatory certainty to ensure that American industry has the power it needs when it needs it um so I look forward to talking with y'all today Mr Norris you discussed
▶ 2:25:03uh using demand response uh and load Management Programs to incorporate massive new loads onto the grid you also mentioned how this creates Headroom uh for more expansion in the short term but I'm curious uh how do utilities and grid operators approach the demand side response uh which if I understand correctly expands existing energy conservation measures yeah so what we're talking about is a little different from existing demand response programs because what we're trying to do is in this planning realm right we're all trying to
▶ 2:25:33plan for this large load that's coming we want to connect the dots between the large customer and the electric utility and say we recognize say this data center you're going to have some on-site power it could be natural gas by the way you're going to have on-site natural gas power plants already so let's not have redundant capacity so that we're going to have to install a new gas power plant and all the transmission to deliver the power and in response that data center could get online even more quickly right so we can compete in the AI race okay so I think that's that's what we're
▶ 2:26:03trying to create here Mr Black I saw you writing down some stuff car respond to that same question yes uh so to do what uh he was just reflecting on we we need what we call the abilities the visibility the dispatchability the predictability of these loads if we don't have that kind of control we can't uh frankly pay that customer an appropriate amount so that they provide benefits to our system and we've been Southern has a long history of doing this from RTP real-time pricing
▶ 2:26:34to to interruptable standby generation rates we've been doing this a long time and it is an important part of in uh uh sort of rate world we trim the Peaks and fill the valleys and that improves the the efficiency of our system so uh absolutely uh necessary but those abilities are are probably the key to unlocking that value Mr Brick House same question to you and by the way a big fan of co-ops South cona co-ops are some of the best we love them but uh same question to you
▶ 2:27:04um thank you um live in congresswoman fedor's uh District but I was born in the great state of South Carolina so thank you g um I guess from our perspective as a load serving entity we have to look at it with some skepticism and say what happens if the load does not respond and that can happen and we are in a regional transmission organization and we are obligated to abide by their rules um I'll let Mr Hawk talk about
▶ 2:27:34this a little more specifically if he'd like but a number of years ago pjm adjusted their demand response rates uh because they had and I don't want to mischaracterize this but they had significant demand for those demand response rates and they changed the rules and gave it less capacity accreditation so as a utility that not subject to pjm's RTO rules but to sp's RTO rules you do have to have that in the back of your mind is is the load going to show up
▶ 2:28:04when you curil that demand and is a regional transmission organization going to change the rules down the road and we're suddenly going to have to come up with more capacity thank you for that Mr brick house as as a utility operator what are the benefits of policies that promote energy abundance rather than scarcity management um permanent reform is a concern and I think that there a number of changes that Congress can make to the National enir Environmental Policy Act that would be very helpful to have
▶ 2:28:35uh additional resources come online more quickly thank you for that Mr chairman I see I the balance of my time is just now expired and with that I yield back gentlemen uh time has expired and yields back the chair now rep recognizes the gentle lady from Florida's 15 district for 5 minutes qu thank you Mr chairman and welcome to all of our Witnesses here today ensuring the reliability and affordability of our electric power system is crucial for our national
▶ 2:29:05security our economy and the well-being of our communities my home state of Florida is one of the nation's largest producers of electricity with rapid population growth increased manufacturing and advances and Technology including artificial intelligence and the data centers needed to power it our demand and production will only continue to rise it's imperative that our electric grid is prepared to meet this growing demand for power Our Generation
▶ 2:29:35and transmission systems must be reliable and resilient with the ability to ensure continuous power supply and to respond quickly to unforeseen circumstances and changes in demand Mr Brick House in your your testimony you mentioned the rapidly evolving threat landscape and that the electric sector faces considerable uh challenges from our cyber adversaries would you expand please on the types of cyber
▶ 2:30:05threats that our electric power faces well it's not terribly different than what you and I face every day when we go home if you click on a wrong link and your computer is uh you get some type of virus in it that can spread rapidly and and shut your computer down and obviously in the utility space or at any business we have uh large networks that can be shut down and harmed relatively quickly
▶ 2:30:36by those you also mentioned several specific programs that uh Basin electric has leveraged to strengthen its cyber security posture uh including the threat analysis Center rural municipality utility cyber security program are there any specific programs or best practices related to cyber uh that you want to highlight or share as success stories right um well the I'll answer it a little bit differently is is that we appreciate the
▶ 2:31:06federal government's support here because these are National Security issues and many of the Bad actors are people from overseas and so we need to work in a coordinated fashion with intelligence agencies in order to make sure that we understand the threats and can defend ourselves and our networks from those threats and Mr Black in your testimony you mentioned that energy policy is highly Regional due to some
▶ 2:31:36variations and factors like weather geography and resources and Florida like several of the other southern states that your company serves experienced devastating hurricanes last year I am interested in discussing ing further with you how utility companies like yours prepare for these types of events we we are certainly practiced unfortunately at dealing with hurricanes we had one of the largest hurricanes in our company's history this last year as it moved through Georgia
▶ 2:32:06um more polls but I can go through all the statistics it's it's devastating um the the our ability to work with our friends in a a coordinated manner to get customers back back on is probably better than it's ever been right I I I think the investment in our system from a resilience perspective and the investment in our system in uh recovery has been um it improves year to year these events get more remarkable it seems as as the South continues
▶ 2:32:37to grow and proliferate but the our ability to to uh invest in the system for resilience so that we can get back on quicker and work with our our peers and colleagues around the country to bring those resources in is is is is better than it's been ever and you just touched on something that that I want to ask a follow-up question about and that is I understand the investor owned utilities Mutual assistance program has been beneficial for getting customers lights back on
▶ 2:33:07in the wake of these extreme weather events can you share with us what that program is and how it has helped you work on Disaster Recovery certainly it's a it's the processes and communication and the network uh that is required to call in Crews from all over the country uh and and again these last few storms we had trucks and and folks as far away from the West Coast come coming into Georgia and and North Carolina and so many of these states that were devastated so the mutual assistance
▶ 2:33:37program again at this point is so well practiced and and the ability of companies to get people quickly on the work is is the challenge having just the resources is step one getting them on the work is where the practice and the training and the commitment comes from thank you Mr chairman I yield back thank you the general L yields back to balance of time the chair now recognizes the gentleman from New York's 23rd district for five minutes for questions Brickhouse
▶ 2:34:07uh in its 2024 long-term reliability assessment issued last month nurk ranked the middle part of the country in the Miso area is high risk for energy shortfalls with elevated risk throughout many other regions uh in nerk notes at section 111 standards Matt's rule coal ash regulations and effluent limitations guidelines specifically are quote regulations that impose considerable financial and operational challenges on Coal Fire generators and quote have the potential to influence generators to seek
▶ 2:34:37deactivation during the 10-year assessment period of nerk study uh for the first time in years we're facing increasing demand for electricity in part due to ballooning demand from data centers and increased electrification but the previous administration under President Biden tried to engineer an accelerated shift in the mix of electricity generation in the country with a goal of trying to force the shutdown of coal fired power plants while discouraging natural gas transmission and generation uh Mr brick house should we have
▶ 2:35:08requirements that any environmental push to shift the mix of electricity production be fully vetted by reliability authorities like FK and nerk uh or should we have reliability at the Center of uh electricity planning moving forward I think that in terms of regulations we have to be careful of unintended consequences and regulations that are put in um by well-intentioned people today have the threat of being misused
▶ 2:35:38in the future as a utility and I think Mr Black referenced this earlier as well it is Our obligation to balance supply and demand thank you thank you uh in in the last four years and looking even earlier than that Democratic administrations have put their own public policy agenda items ahead of real issues like reliability and affordability uh we saw this play out with former President Biden's work to shut down generation and we see it on a state level with States like my home state of New York
▶ 2:36:08uh where radical even irresponsible public policies like the climate leadership Community protection act are putting zealous goals for admissions emissions reductions and electrification ahead of basic questions about reliability affordability in the safety of residents so I'd like to go down the row here and ask uh have you seen State policies lead to or have an effect on higher rates and lower reliability Mr Brick House yes Mr he absolutely Mr Norris
▶ 2:36:39Mr Black I I will say our region and its support of our states and that regulation close to the States has has has resulted in uh affordable and Rel iable power for our for our companies so uh and our customers so uh I would say State alignment around that issue at least in our region and this is back to that regionalism has been strong now now the New York grid plans to add 3.5 gws of new large loads to its system by 2030 including micron's microchip fabrication facilities in the Syracuse
▶ 2:37:10area which are creating thousands of new jobs and leading to billions in dollars of new investment now currently my state relies on energy supplies from other states in Canada to meet more than 80% of its total energy needs and has the country's seventh highest average residential electricity rates now meanwhile vast natural gas hydropower and geothermal resources in New York remain untapped I I find this to be unacceptable uh unlocking our abundant energy resources can lower uh the cost of electricity while adding
▶ 2:37:40new loads to the system uh can put downward pressure on consumer rates Mr Black we've heard today about the demand needs of various Technologies like AI Computing cryptocurrency Mining and expanded manufacturing such as the Micron facility that I mentioned what policy consideration should be made to ensure grid reliability and efficiency while accommodating very energy intensive Industries coming into new areas I'm I'm sorry Mr P
▶ 2:38:10uh so so I think two two important points there uh firm gas pipes uh and and we've talked a little bit about today this inter connection sort of accountability and affected systems those are processes at our state level that we see that result in a more ubiquitous uh transmission and gas system you don't build a gas pipeline without a firm gas contract and that that could be some of the the struggles I don't not as familiar with your region I'm sorry for that but but the
▶ 2:38:40the our area is committed to that and again those firm gas contracts are resulting in more infrastructure to support the region thank you these these policies and their consequences are being felt across the country and will be felt in the coming years they clearly warrant greater scrutiny even vetting as in New Yorker whose constituents experience the results of such irresponsible policies as they relate to our electricity needs firsthand I believe strongly that we need to ensure reliability and affordability are always at the Forefront of energy policy moving forward
▶ 2:39:10in all levels of policymaking and with that Mr chairman I yield back thank you very much gentleman's time has expired and yields back the chairman I recognizes the gentleman from Colorado eighth District five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman thank you ranking member and thank you of course to the witnesses for coming today um in Colorado's 8th congressional district I represent a workingclass district Northern suburbs of Denver uh for whom uh energy is a major major driver in the economy uh in fact the local um electric utility that
▶ 2:39:41provides power to our area also Services one of the major oil and gas fields in the area and in my conversations with them they have said that they are for casting needing three times as much electricity in the next 10 years uh as they're currently using now and that's after doubling the amount of electricity that they have to provide uh over the last 10 years and so M Mr Brick House the the first question to you is I've also heard directly from these utilities uh that because of Colorado's just very Draconian laws around greenhouse
▶ 2:40:11gases emissions and the so-called carbon- free road map in Colorado they're being forced to pull gws of coalfire gen generation off of the Grid in Colorado and so the question to you is when you or your members are faced with those Draconian regulations that require gigawatts of electrical electrical generation to be pulled off of the grid how does that impact your ability and the ability of other electrical providers to be able to keep up with the growing demand for electricity and keep
▶ 2:40:41affordable we had a very short period of time in the late teens where our growth was slowing and um it quickly re accelerated after covid and we've grown basically 5 to 7% in unit sales every year after that and that dramatically changed our expected path of our resources um we had you know tentative plans to evaluate closure of some facilities and
▶ 2:41:12those are gone today and I concur with the um distribution Cooperative you've been talking to down there um the demand growth uh that we have in the future is going to require every existing resource and it's going to require utilities to build enormous amounts of dispatchable generation in the future how would you characterize the decision to retire Coal Fire generation in uh the United States and
▶ 2:41:43um we we have a member in Colorado that serves that load so um you they have dealt with it one way in North Dakota uh in other parts of our service territory Wyoming close proximity to Colorado we keeping all of the above resour resource strategy intact do you think it's wise to be retiring Coal Fire generation when we need additional capacity not
▶ 2:42:14no thank you uh moving on to NEPA reform um we know how critical it is that we not be Our Own Worst Enemy when we're trying to expand uh electrical generation so that folks have access to Affordable and reliable electricity and we've often heard conversations about how NEPA can sometimes get in the way of that so do you have um any examples that you might be willing to elaborate on about how Congress can streamline uh the permitting of getting more
▶ 2:42:44electrical generation onto the grid um I think with NEPA the best example is there's a project that we were doing with two partners um it was a natural gas development and we got caught up in an extra review and it uh as a result of that will um likely write off a significant P portion if not all of the development costs of that project
▶ 2:43:14thank you um switching to to Mr Hawk um I represent truly in all of the above energy District we have a major oil and gas footprint but we also have wind we have solar we have geothermal uh we used to have nuclear generation we don't have that anymore in Colorado we're trying to get that back um and so my question to you is as we are looking at again in my area needing three times as much electricity in the next 10 years are there any emerging Technologies um smrs uh geothermal
▶ 2:43:45that you would like to see us be able to to move forward to help meet some of this demand and then also be able to collocate the generation with the demand knowing that we have um certain shortcomings in the transmission representative a great question in the near term here's what we're going to see we're going to see um quite a few of the Renewables hopefully that are in our queue connect to the system we're going to see uprates of existing generating units I think I described some of the nuclear uprates there's the possibility of gas up rates as well and I think you're
▶ 2:44:15going to see more demand response participate in our Marketplace long term um we are going to get more Renewables into the system we're going to need new natural gas and we're going to need new you know new technologies uh smrs are you know a very promising technology but they are some years away so we are dealing with the technology that exists today uh and that technology um is you know as we sit here today again we've got you know effectively our existing Fleet
▶ 2:44:45and then new Renewables new storage new natural gas thank you yield back the gentleman's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes gentle lady from North Dakota for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chair um thank you all for being here and for sharing your expertise with us I have a few rapid fire questions I want to ask to start uh just because I want to hear from all of you so just a yes or no on the first one in your opinion can you both
▶ 2:45:15support Renewables and support the urgent need for more dispatchable fuel secure resources Mr Brick House yes yes yes yes yes thank you secondly is the call for more dispatchable fuel secure power generation driven by partisan politics or grid physics and mechanics physics
▶ 2:45:46physics it's a more complex answer I you only get one choice grid mechanics or po politics so I think there are cost considerations that come into play as well but other than that physics okay physics and finance but physics yes thank you I'm glad you brought up Finance because I want to talk about next uh as it relates to cost there's lot to talk about this is the lowest cost
▶ 2:46:16that's the lowest cost um as a it relates to cost does a cost per kilowatt cover the full cost of any generation source and if not what is left out of that what goes into the bill that customers pay because I had a lot of customers tell me as a regulator if everything is so cheap why is my bill going up so Mr Brickhouse what else besides the cost per kilowatt do you include in your bills to customers um we
▶ 2:46:46include hundreds of millions of a year of costs related to Environmental Compliance um so that is one area and then when when we talk to air members a good example for Basin is that our existing generation assets are on our books for $800 a KW installed uh new generation of a dispatchable base load sort would cost about $2,600 a KW installed so there's a cost aspect to that as well
▶ 2:47:17okay Mr Black what goes into your customer bills that we haven't talked so certainly the wires costs uh you know transmission distribution the variable onm and the capital required to run our plants and keep them up to compliance uh and all uh you know uh EPA requirements uh along those lines um so um you know it's a uh it's the capital and the variable uh aspects of fuel and such so it's a it's a lot of components and that
▶ 2:47:47I would say it differs a little bit bit too in the structure that you have obviously we a vertically integrated structure we we build and then they pay you know a share of the capital cost in our bills as opposed to sort of sort the market um component maybe a pjm has that that's broken out it's a little more complex I think okay thank you um Mr Hawk the one most disappointing thing for me in this new role is that partisan politics gets way too involved in
▶ 2:48:18the management of the Grid in my opinion if as you're the smart person you're the one ultimately keeping the grid uh running in the pjam area myo does it SP does it what um do you wish that federal and state policy makers understood or knew more about in in before they made policies affecting energy know all policy choices that exacerbate our supply demand challenges
▶ 2:48:48will have direct consumer impact they will have impact on reliability degradation they will have impact on cost and I'd say the other thing is that again um I think we are all collectively trying to find this balance of you know our North Star is reliability but we are very conscious of cost and you know I've got two little boys at home I mean I want them to breathe cleaner air as well and so we're trying to find this sort of balance and sweet spot between all three of these but in order to find that
▶ 2:49:18balance and sweet spot we also have to understand the physics of these resources and what they can provide to the grid that is also essential okay um Mr Brickhouse and I have one minute left so I have two more questions um in in your your seeing significant demand increase do you expect that you can meet that Demand with Renewables alone no how about you Mr Black no Renewables
▶ 2:49:49alone Assam do you think that we can meet the demand for what we're seeing uh in terms of AI manufacturing based our all right um sir I forgot your name because I don't have it in front of me Mr Norris do you think we can meet the demand with Renewables alone no but that's also includes storage and nuclear and thermal resources so yes with follow those you think
▶ 2:50:19we can just and demand response and Energy Efficiency too yes okay uh well I've only got 10 seconds so I yield back thank you thank you the gentlem lady yields back and the chair now recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania M U for five minutes for questions first I want to thank chairman L for allowing me to wave on to this important hearing when it comes to energy generation I believe in all of the above but but all of the
▶ 2:50:49above I believe that we can all agree we need to utilize accessible affordable energy and that is the coal and the natural gas that is under the feet of my constituents all generation is not created equal the capacity factors of wind and solar are simply too small to provide the reliable energy that our requires what we need in simple terms is more base load generation we need more coal
▶ 2:51:20more gas and more nuclear it doesn't matter how many gigawatts of wind and solar capacity that are built if they are not generating them when you need them unfortunately we are doing worse than not building dispatchable generation we're actually retiring it we're shutting it down pjm which is the nation's largest RTO and includes my district in Pennsylvania released a report in 2023 projecting 40
▶ 2:51:50gaw of reliable dispatchable generation will retire by 2030 pjm labels the majority of these retirements as quote policy-driven decisions this is at a time when demand is growing Tech need tech leaders like Elon Musk have said AI could lead energy demand to be as much as twice as what it currently is today Pennsylvania is in in a great position to benefit from the
▶ 2:52:20investment in the jobs of the AI Revolution we have already begun to see this benefit with agreements between AWS and Talon energy at the susqu nuclear generation facility and the reopening of Three Mile Island thanks to the power purchase agreement between Constellation Energy and Microsoft Mr Hawk successfully deploying empowering new AI data centers at the speed demanded to compete on the the global stage will be heavily
▶ 2:52:50dependent on the actions taken by FK to address collocation how has pjm approaching the issue of collocation both in its work with furk and on its own thank you representative it is still an evolving story and the FK recently actually had um they issued an order that requires us and the transmission owners to come to them with a potential solution we are in the throws of working with our membership and our states
▶ 2:53:21to try and figure out what that solution should look like uh I would have more information for you in 30 60 days but we are working that solution right now with again our states and members Mr Hawk I hope that you will agree with me that we need more generation built within pjm and what are the tools in pjm's tollbox to encourage the investment and the building of new generation the tools and the tool toolbox depending on whether you are
▶ 2:53:51a restructured or deregulated state or a vertically integrated State um Pennsylvania is a restructured or deregulated State um who are reliant on markets uh to try and incentivize new investment now you know we have a capacity Market that is meant to be a residual market so parties like the one you're referencing you actually referen TMI and Microsoft uh they can enter into bilateral transactions uh in order to make sure that they
▶ 2:54:21have Microsoft in this instance has the power that they need and the capacity Market can be relied upon to send what I would say are directional price signals as well as to incentivize new investment so Mr Hawk are capacity auctions one of the tools in your toolbox and do you believe that capacity auctions are working to incentivize building new generation and if not what can be used to attract that new generation that new investment yeah so for
▶ 2:54:52representative for our deregulated States the capacity Market is the primary tool that is utilized to try and incentivize uh new investment to the marketplace however I continue to think that as we see this proliferation in demand driven by data centers driven by the onshoring of us manufacturing um I think you will see more again bilateral transactions that occur within the footprint and look the other thing I would
▶ 2:55:22say is it's you know there there are tools that can be utilized that have not been utilized yet for instance we've got the potential if we clear three years below our Reserve margin that we can utilize a competitive procurement mechanism that is a tool that is currently in our tool box that we can utilize um states have taken action um as well uh depending on the resource types that they prefer uh in order to try and advaned new generation and those those actions can find their way into
▶ 2:55:52our Marketplace as well aort as we see the expansion of AI we are going to rely more on you expanding those tools in your tollbox Mr chairman I thank you for allowing me to wave on and I yield back the gentleman's time has expired and yields back the chair now recognizes the gentleman from George's First District for five minutes for questions thank you Mr chairman appreciate the opportunity to wave on to this committee and thank all of you for being here I I suspect I'm the last one to ask question so you're almost
▶ 2:56:23done um business is booming we need more electricity we're counting on y'all I don't want you to feel any pressure but we are counting on you okay we need you my own state of Georgia 11 years in a row number one state to do business in very proud of that and there's a reason for that because we've created a pro bus environment our legislature our governors they've created a pro bus environment and and we have available energy we
▶ 2:56:53have affordable reliable energy that's another reason why people and businesses want to locate to Georgia I know um firsthand the that the demand for more electricity is one of the top challenges that we face right now and and we'll continue to face that going forward Mr Black in your written testimony you also note that the state of Georgia is open for business in fact companies are flocking to Georgia because we have good policies as I say for business Mr Black what's what's unique about Georgia what should Congress
▶ 2:57:24do to make sure that the Georgia can remain open for business yes uh so so the load coming to Georgia is remarkable I mean we have line of sight on 10,000 megawatts know we've said a lot of numbers today but that's a lot of electricity and in the queue another 50,000 of proposed and and uh projects that that may come our way I believe um some of the structures the the electricity structure that we have is incredibly important it will
▶ 2:57:54result in firm gas pipelines it will result in firm gas firm electric transmission uh but those pipelines and the need for those and and some of the reforms we've talked about uh in and around NEPA and the Clean Water Act and judicial reform to get the pipelines done in time is essential okay that's a national issue let me ask you something and and and if I get any of this wrong you're the expert so please correct me okay but I I think it's important to note that the state of Georgia is the only state
▶ 2:58:24that has um built nuclear reactors in the last 30 years we have two new nuclear reactors at plant vogle and I believe that plant vogle right now with the four nuclear reactors that are there is providing about 22% of the electricity needs in the state and if you combine that with plant hatch which is in my district in the first district they're they're providing about 8% therefore about 30% the energy in the state of Georgia is coming from nuclear that sounds accurate yes yeah so let me ask
▶ 2:58:54you something because I I I heard um smrs a lot of people been talking about smrs but we don't have any under construction right now do we does anybody on the panel know of any that we have under construction not domestically that I'm aware of no okay AP 1000s as as you know well the reason I asked this is because and and I'm hang with me here if you will um if if Georgia Power were to
▶ 2:59:24to build more nuclear would it be smrs or would you continue with the the reactors like you have at plant vogle because it's my understanding that that you would rather do that than to do the smrs well we we learned a lot and we we have uh I think understand the risks and the time I mean the the improvement from 3 to four was about 20% that's what I understand remarkable so you know if you could go 567 you know either in our state or some other states within the country the ap1000 I think the risk the cone
▶ 2:59:54of risk if you will is is much smaller than some technology we haven't quite uh developed fully well I I would submit to you that Georgia following through on that project even though it was it was challenging no question about that and but I would submit to you that following through on that project um gave the the blueprint if you will for for nuclear reactors in in the United States because as you say we had a 20% saving between number three and four
▶ 3:00:24and and learned a lot of important lessons that can be that can be shared yeah absolutely hard but worth it and and again the the dis this the fact that it is on all the time is such a remarkably important and it's the largest provider of clean energy in the United States is that correct that's correct number one number one plus Georgia is the number seven state in the country for solar uh why is why are we the number seven state
▶ 3:00:55Georgia is the number seven state is that correct that is it is in the top 10 there are a number of states in the Southeast that have solar resources I think we're finding uh I think it's important to be uh resource agnostic but resource aware and we're able to find ways to get solar on because it is an asset and a and a a resource within our state we can bring on the system affordable Mr chairman I I thank you for the opportunity to come in here and brag about my home state of Georgia as I have done for the last five minutes so thank you'all
▶ 3:01:25very much for being here but the gentleman of Georgia Texas is number one just so you know let's not get into that okay the the gentleman's time has expired and Ys back and seeing new other uh members wishing to uh ask questions of our Witnesses today I remind members that they have they do have additional written questions that they might might be submitting to you that we'd ask that you get those back to you to us within 10 business days and
▶ 3:01:55um I ask unanimous consent to insert in the record the documents included on the staff hearing documents list without objection so ordered without objection the sub commmittee is adjourned and again thank you to our witness for appearing
▶ 3:03:16e for