‘They’re Lasting Longer And Creating More Devastation’: Frost Warns Of Hurricane Season Dangers

3 months ago

Last month, Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) questioned a Department of Energy official on hurricane destruction relief during a House Science Committee hearing.

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00:00The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Frost, for five minutes.

00:03Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Deputy Secretary Turk. In my district, the University

00:08of Central Florida is currently working on dozens of projects funded by DOE grants. This

00:14includes a million dollars to study Central Florida's risks down to the community level

00:19of the electric grid failure during severe weather. You know, when storms hit, and especially

00:24our hurricanes, because of the climate crisis, they're lasting longer, creating more devastation.

00:29And most of the folks who die during these hurricanes, a lot of them die post-hurricane

00:34because of the power outages, especially seniors who are unable to use a lot of their devices

00:39that are powered by electricity. So this has been the focus of a lot of my legislation,

00:44like the Safe Through Medicare Act. With the same goal, Florida received over $30 million

00:49in grid resiliency grants from the Biden administration this year alone. I'm really happy to see that

00:54DOE's 2025 requests would almost double the funding for the Grid Deployment Office, which

01:00is really important, of course, to my district, but to folks around the entire country, especially

01:05because we continue to see extreme weather events. Secretary Turk, how will the Biden

01:10administration focus on grid resiliency to protect Americans from extreme weather?

01:15Well, thanks for your focus on this issue, and I don't need to tell you, living in Florida,

01:20what we're already seeing in terms of the impacts of climate change, more severe hurricanes,

01:25let alone the heat waves much of our country is facing right now. It was one of our national

01:30laboratories that actually took a look at the wind speeds and other factors and features

01:34of hurricanes and said, we're probably going to need to have a Class 6 hurricane categorization

01:40just to deal with the increase in storms, the powerful nature of storms that we're already

01:45seeing out there. In fact, last year, we had $28 separate billion weather and climate impacts

01:53in our country. That is just a remarkable amount of not only financial impact, but human

01:58devastation that's happening. And you're right to focus on grids. Grids are such a key part,

02:04making sure we've got resilient grids. Much of our grid infrastructure is quite old, and

02:09we need to make sure we're updating that. We're using the state-of-the-art technology.

02:14Thankfully, thanks to the President's leadership, Congress's support,

02:17through the extraordinary pieces of legislation, the bill and IRA, we have $25 billion to help

02:23on grid resilience. $7.2 billion of that over the last year has gone out to states and utilities

02:29and others to help on that front. We also have a regular budget as well that we're trying to

02:33do cutting-edge research and development on grid technologies, but trying to get those technologies

02:38out there as quickly as we can so that your constituents and others will have the reliability

02:43and resilient grids that they depend on and need to depend on.

02:47Thank you so much. And because you brought up heat waves, we know right now deadly heat waves

02:52around the country. I think it's a stark reminder of the fact that we need to get off carbon-spewing

02:58fossil fuels as soon as possible. Extreme heat kills more people than hurricanes, tornadoes,

03:05earthquakes. Yeah, it's not necessarily classified as extreme weather emergency,

03:13and so that's something we're also working on. But this also means there'll be a greater demand

03:18for critical minerals, and that comes with its own set of environmental problems.

03:25Orlando's Precision Periodic, a local company that grew out of UCF's business incubators,

03:31recycling critical minerals from used batteries with the help of DOE's funding. How is DOE working

03:37to make sure that domestic critical mineral usage is less damaging to the environment?

03:44Yeah, so we absolutely have to diversify our supply chains as we use more lithium,

03:49as we use more cobalt. Right now, a lot of that material, much of that material is processed in

03:55China. That's not good for our energy security, our economic security, our national security.

04:00So we're spending a lot of money and a lot of focus on not just the mining part, the processing

04:05part, but your right to focus on the recycling part as well. As we have more of these minerals

04:10in our systems, whether in EV batteries or solar PV panels or magnets or semiconductors,

04:16we need to have the research done now along the lines of what you're talking about,

04:20so that we have those recycling programs in place, done environmentally friendly,

04:24done in a way that has U.S. jobs. We don't export material to be recycled elsewhere to come back

04:29into the U.S., and that's what we're spending a lot of time and focus on.

04:33Last question. How important is grid integration into achieving President Biden's goal of having

04:39100 percent clean energy by 2035? So it's absolutely vital. We won't be

04:44successful not just in decarbonizing our grid, but frankly, providing affordable power to providing

04:49resilient power in the face of additional climate disasters unless we invest in our grids. The grid

04:55is what literally connects it all together. Thank you so much. I yield back, Mr. Chair.

‘They’re Lasting Longer And Creating More Devastation’: Frost Warns Of Hurricane Season Dangers

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