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116-20

The cost of wind turbine energy has come down about 20 percent

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In my State in part because of some of our policies some of our greatest clean energy job creation are in rural parts of our State in smaller communities

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So the largest for instance carbon fiber manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere that goes into electric cars is not in Seattle

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I just went to the ribboncutting of the largest solar far in our State which is near Lind Washington which is a town of 300

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So you have these beautiful solar panels surrounded by wheat fields

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So if you are driving an electric car today you have 80probably 80 percent lower fuel costs to run your car and that is why we are happy in my State to have one of the largest percentage of use of electric cars to meet our goals

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Somebody asked me about the cost of investment in solar energy

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So several years ago we started this little clean energy development fund

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Started a little company called UniEnergy which does vanadium flow battery at that time essentially research and they brought in some private equity and today that company is making the largest vanadium battery in the world which is really important to be able to integrate renewable energy into the grid

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Nuclear powerwhere does it fit into the this carbonfree society

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Well I think that we need to continue to do RD in any potential lowcarbon or zerocarbon emission and that includes nuclear power

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I think we need to continue research to figure out whether we can solve some of the things we need to solve for nuclear power which obviouslyand they are well known to you

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We would need to have something that solved the nuclear waste problem either by eliminating the waste or finding something in the waste

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Let us follow on the closing of the fuel cycle and you knowyou are probably prepared

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We have nuclear waste spent fuel39 States 121 locations

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That is the 82 nuclear waste policy act along with the amendments of 87

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But I just hope we would rethink this because closing that fuel cycle is part of the solution that we would like tobecause I do think nuclear power especially major baseload power is critical

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Some of the wind production tax credits which you talked about has really hurt the costbenefit analysis of nuclear power and that is my Exelon one of them major generators is starting to close nuclear power plants which is in essence contrary to this goal of a carbonfree generation world that people are trying to push and I think that is something that we will talk about as we move on this committee

116-20

So for the sakethis committee will deal with the spent fuel debate

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Well we are talking about leftover waste from the nuclear facility that one the Cold War and we expect any administration whether its Republican or Democrat to help us in the cleanup effort

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No I am justactually the defense waste and the spent fuel is one package and its just partwhen we have to deal with this its not just spent fuel from nuclear power plants

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Recentlyyou are not complimentaryyou mentioned that the administration has rolled back the clean power plan that has poised transition of our grids into the 21st century attacked fuel economy and clean car standards that have saved lives and lowered consumer costs gutting modest standards that would have lowered methane leaks in the oil and gas industry

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And I think they flowthe current Presidents policies on this have flowed from a really dangerous pessimism about our ability to build a clean energy economy

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And not just electric batteries

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It includes a clean fuel standard for our transportation fuels

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When I was sitting where you were I noted that we spent more money developing one kind of Jeep than we did in the entire clean energy research budget of the United States and when you have an existential threat which is of the equivalent of a world war in some sense you got to have an RD budget that in fact does that

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We have shown that increased building codes to be consistent with the existing building technology can be very effective and we are hopefully going to pass a bill at my legislature this year that will upgrade our building codes so we dont waste energy at all

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So building an infrastructure program which I would hope Congress would do soon and making sure a significant part of it goes to reduce our carbon footprint in transportation is extremely important

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It is extremely important and we also want to have developed policies so that we can move renewable energy to its most productive usage and the Federal Government can be helpful in that interplay with different grid systems and I would love to talk to you about that

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Governor Inslee welcome back to the House Energy and Commerce Committee

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Out of curiosity I just wanted to start out by asking you how you traveled here and what the carbon footprint was associated with that travel and if you had laid out specific steps to offset that impact

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I intend to develop a clean energy system for the United States and the State of Washington and that will be the most tremendous offset of anything I have ever done in my entire life because we will give my grandchildren an opportunity to have a life that is not severely degraded

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Governor Inslee as you know in Washington State our largest source of clean renewable reliable affordable energy is hydropower70 percent

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The Columbia and Snake River systems provide important energy for us

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Barging a product up and down the riverit is really a superhighway with significantly less carbon impact than trucks or trains

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Do you plan to reimburse the taxpayers of Washington State for these expenses that you are incurring on nonofficial business and do you plan to offset the carbon emissions associated with that nonofficial travel

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It is people living in poverty who are living next to the freeways breathing those diesel smoke living next to polluting industries

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And part of our just transition we have to make during this transition to a cleaner energy source I think has to take that into account

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We need a just transition to a clean energy system not just a transition

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Your ownyou had a report put outit was 122page greenhouse gas emissions technical reportthat saidthat you all funded in the State of Washingtonthat exporting US coal would have the benefit of reducing total global greenhouse gases

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Would have the benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by exporting

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Now having said that your administrationyou have been fighting exporting coal

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But yet with all due respect you put up roadblocks to prevent exporting of coal through Washington

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Can you explain how you think that does not negatively impact the environment by preventing American coal from being burned overseas rather than lowquality Indonesia or Australian or other coal

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Would you support exporting coal in compliance with your report that said that would reduce greenhouse gases around the world

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But in general here is my thinking about coal and we have to realize I think a fundamental scientific fact and it is difficult to recognize Mr McKinley

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I dont need for you to go on a diatribe about coal

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My question is if its a global effort that we need to do and America is already reducing its COINF2INF emissions which are important for us to do it but the rest of the world is not engaging

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I want for the record everyone to understand that we may very well be able to decarbonize perhaps in America and upset our economy

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But if the rest of the world doesnt do something about its emissions particularly in China and India we are still going to have droughts wildfires severe weather alerts

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Number two coal is just a scientific fact that is very difficult that we have to realize that if we burn all of the coal that we have we will not have something anything that looks like the way we live today

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So to some degree we have to manage a transition to a cleaner energy economy over the next several decades and I think we all ought to work together to figure out how to do that to manage that transition to help the communities that are part of that transition

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And three we ought to be all working together to develop alternatives to coal which we are doing and these 23 States are showing success

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I guess what I would conclude you said you would not put a roadblock up to exporting coal

116-20

The mayors on the second panel are going to suggest among other things that Congress should reauthorized the Energy Efficiency Community Block Grant

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The first priority would be to remove the shackles that prevent us from moving forward in States and there are some that prevent us for instance in transportation fuels

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I hear the President saying we wont have planes or trains or cars and that is just not the case when we are driving electric cars

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The Governor has a little electric car that works

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Look my State is the most rapidly growing economy in the country and when you look at the 23 States that are doing things on clean energy by and large they are the ones that have the greatest rate of economic growth

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So I just suggest the most important thing to do is for the Federal Government to be as confident and optimistic as the States are right now in our capability to build a clean energy economy

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I noticed in your seven pages of testimony that you mentioned a number of renewable energies such as wind solar and hydro but you didnt mention nuclear

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I am just wondering it would appear to me that we are going to have to use a number of different resources in order toin order to get to the common goal that we want to get to butand certainly carbon capture and nuclear power are going to be a part of that

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I am just wondering why did you omit nuclear power in your testimony

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In my StateRepresentative Rodgers brought up hydroelectric

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We now are classifying hydroelectric in our clean energy 100 percent grid which has been a concern of some folks

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I have been supportive of research and development in the nuclear industry

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There are some modular nuclear systems that might be productive ifnow this is a big ifwe got to make sure we understand this

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As you know the cost is what has been the biggest problem in the nuclear industry that they are safer that they have a waste disposal problem and they have public acceptance

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They would have to be solved before nuclear would become a meaningful component of an energy future going forward

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I have had a couple questions from this side of the panel about nuclear

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Do you think it is the States role to mandate to power companies how they are going to lower their emissions or would you agree that it would really be advantageous to allow the power companies to come up with their own plans because what may work in Washington State may not necessarily work in the State of Georgia

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I can tell you that in Georgia Southern Company has done a good job of decreasing their emissions and has made a lot of progress and yet the State hasnt mandated to them what types of decreases they should make

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One of this is yes we are always looking for the most costeffective clean energy source to get the job done from a costeffectiveness standpoint

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For instance in a renewable portfolio standard if you just have a standard for multiple technologies the only one that gets developed is the next most costeffective one even though you know you have got plans B C and D that you are going to have to develop to get the job done

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Georgia is the numberone forestry State in the nation by the way and I noticed again you didnt mention and I am just wondering if you might speak to that because biomass is certainly something that is American made if you will

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I think that sequestration of carbon in biological systems is something we should explore and we ought to see if there is a way even to create a revenue stream for people in the timber industry and the agriculture industry to sequester carbon in topsoil and the reason that that makes sense is not only can it help sequestration of carbon in topsoil but it also when you do those things you prevent erosion in a lot of the low and notill technologies

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It will help when we have more folks in the ag industries want to develop policies to create a revenue stream possibly for sequestration of carbon in topsoil

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It was the first time I talked to him and we were talking about the potential of sequestering carbon from coal plants and he said he was very excited about clean coal technology of maybe being able to sequester and put coal in the ground

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So we have to have some mechanism to reduceto create an incentive not to put carbon in the atmosphere in the first place for any of these programs to work and that is where we need some more bipartisan help in this regard

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It is about 30 percent more acidic than it was before we started to burn fossil fuels

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But I always end on a positive note which is the angst I feel about these multiple emergencies I am having to declare I have the opposite spectrum when I see my friends kids going to work in clean energy

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But 6 billion in renewable investment a 125 million clean energy fund you mentionedhow has renewable energythe new renewable energy economy changed your GDP and can you talk a little bit about that technology boom that you all have

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So biomass by law is carbon neutral in our statute

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We have actually declared biomass to be carbon neutral so that we can get an advantage to help the ag industry and the timber industry using biomass

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And right now we are developing a crosslaminated timber industry that can be of assistance to the timber industry using some of the that waste product coming out of the timber potentially as a fuel source as well

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As you know the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was tasked under law to evaluate the site and after litigation they were finally allowed to release the report which said if used as designed Yucca Mountain would be safe for a million years

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So I would just hope if things go well for you in the future that we would have the same standard of evaluating and using science to determine the safety so we can at least address this defense issue and the spent fuel issue and you know it is something I have been working on formany times

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The city owns and operates its own electric utility and it participates in the Illinois Municipal Electric Agency a collection of nonprofit public power municipalities within the State

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Mayor Wescott outlines the clean energy investments the city has made but he also talks about the critical investments in baseload in the stateoftheart coalfired generation facilities a 16 gigawatt Prairie State Energy campus and this is where hethis is his warning to policy makers

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He warns that if Federal and State policies force premature closure of the coalfired units his city would still have the purchase energy but then he would also be burdened to make payments on the closed facility

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So it is like a double whammy for somefor a local municipality and a government agency to say we are going to address our electricity generation needs by the elected people that they are designed to represent

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We passed a renewable portfolio standard provision maybe a decadeplus ago

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But you have all that hydroelectric that was credited as renewable correct

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So the hydro at that time was not quote credited as a renewable because Mr Shimkus

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We now have 3000 megawatts

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The proof has been that we are much more adept at creating substitutes for some of the fossil fuel industry than we have thought and I will mention one other thing too and I think this is important

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When we listen to people about these issues I think it is really important to listen to some of the new players in clean energy rather than the incumbent utilities that are huge and have representatives here and those new players are pretty inspiring

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AD Electrical Supply in Greenville in Illinios Cooper Eaton in Troy who are installing solar Lake Land College in Mattoon Paradise Energy Solutions in Sullivanthese are small companies to start with

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I hope you have noticed that there has been a change in the committee since you left and that there is a general consensus that COINF2INF emissions are a problem

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Like you Governor I am bullish about the economic opportunity that comes with the transition to clean energy