Dear Chairman Murkowski and Ranking Member Manchin:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce applauds your bipartisan leadership on energy innovation and strongly supports the Committee’s efforts to enhance energy security, increase energy efficiency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and strengthen America’s economic competitiveness.
The Chamber supports the nominations of Dan Brouillette to be Secretary of Energy, James Danly to be a Member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and Katharine MacGregor to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior. The committee’s favorable reporting of these nominees, and ultimate confirmation, would serve to benefit U.S. energy posture, both domestically and abroad.
In addition, we strongly encourage the committee to favorably report the following bipartisan bills, each of which would build upon the committee’s comprehensive efforts to spur innovative approaches to enhancing America’s global competitiveness while advancing technology solutions to address climate risk. Specifically, the Chamber supports:
S.2368, the Nuclear Energy Renewal Act of 2019, which would both support the sustainability and relicensing of existing nuclear facilities, along with the research, demonstration, and development of next-generation nuclear technologies.
S. 2657, the Advanced Geothermal Innovation Leadership Act of 2019, which would support innovation and the research and development of advanced geothermal energy resources.
S. 2668, the Solar Energy Research and Development Act of 2019, which would direct the Secretary of Energy to establish a program to accelerate the research, development, and demonstration of technologies that improve the efficiency, reliability, resilience, security, and capacity of solar energy generation, while also reducing the cost of such systems.
S. 2688, the Technology Transitions Act of 2019, which would elevate the Office of Technology Transitions within the Department of Energy (DOE) to expand that office’s impact on the commercialization of technologies that support the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and/or support other DOE missions.
S. 2702, the Integrated Energy System Act of 2019, which would establish within DOE an Integrated Energy System Program charged with the maximization of energy production and efficiency, in order to provide reliable, competitive, and environmentally sustainable energy to the electric grid.
S. 2714, the ARPA-E Reauthorization Act of 2019, which would serve to reauthorize, through fiscal year 2024, the DOE’s highly successful Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, thereby continuing this agency’s advancement of high- potential, high-impact energy technologies that are not yet poised for private sector investment.
In order to ensure that veterans are positioned to contribute their unique and valuable skills to the development and implementation of America’s energy future, the Chamber also strongly supports S. 876, the Energy Jobs for our Heroes Act of 2019. This bipartisan bill would serve to transition today’s military heroes into tomorrow’s energy and cybersecurity workforce.
We encourage the Committee to report these bills and combine them with previously reported bipartisan energy bills to craft comprehensive energy innovation and climate technology legislation.
Sincerely,
Neil L. Bradley
cc: Members of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
