Suzanne Bonamici Praises Dept. Of Energy's Efforts To 'Transition To A Clean Energy Economy'

3 months ago

During a House Science Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) questioned Dept. of Energy Deputy Secretary, David Turk, about

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00:00member who would like to question. So if the other members prefer to go vote,

00:07Ms. Bonamici and I will be here to finish her question and then we'll

00:11recess until after the vote series and I'll come back. With that the chair

00:15recognizes gentlelady Morgan. Thank you Chairman Lucas and thank you Ranking

00:19Member Lofgren and thank you Deputy Secretary Turk. The Department of Energy

00:22plays a critical role in combating the climate crisis through its work to

00:25transition to a clean energy economy including in rule and underserved

00:29communities and the department is also well positioned to address emerging

00:33challenges like strain on the grid caused by the rapid growth of data

00:37centers and artificial intelligence and to support other agencies to develop

00:41novel climate solutions like marine carbon dioxide removal. So I'm going to

00:46ask about those issues. According to a recent paper from the Digital Climate

00:50Alliance, data centers are projected to compose up to 9% of U.S. energies

00:55a demand by 2030 and I recently heard during an Oregon Clean Energy Task

01:00Force meeting that we need reliable grid enhancement technologies to responsibly

01:05maintain the pace of advanced computing and innovation. So Deputy Secretary Turk,

01:09what is the Department of Energy doing to make sure that the load growth

01:12caused by the expansion of AI and the need for data centers does not exceed

01:17the grid capacity? And let me I'll answer that question very directly but let me

01:21just thank you for pointing out the focus on rural and underserved

01:24communities. One of the parts of the bill in IRA that hasn't gotten as much

01:28attention as a billion dollars for those communities. It's frankly way

01:32oversubscribed and there's a lot more we could do with those those communities. So

01:36on AI, you mentioned 9% of electricity demand by 2030. Our latest numbers which

01:42aren't yet public but we'll put these out here in the next several months is

01:45growing from about 6% of our electricity demand right now coming from data

01:50centers. A part of that's AI. It's probably about 15 to 25 percent or so

01:53right now. That growing to 9% by 2027. So that's a significant amount of growth.

02:00But that's not the only source of growth. We're seeing growth from all

02:04this industrial renaissance that we're seeing across across the country which

02:07is just phenomenal from a jobs perspective. We're also seeing growth

02:11from electric vehicles and heat pumps. So we're actually in a period where we

02:14haven't been last 15 years or so we've had pretty flat electricity demand. We're

02:19now growing again quite substantially. We've had significant periods of growth

02:23before. So what we're doing is a multi-pronged strategy. First of all

02:27we're working with all of the data center companies on efficiency right. The

02:31more we can efficiently get as much compute power power out of what

02:35electricity we put in the better right and we've got a strong record of

02:38efficiency improvements including our national labs and our supercomputers

02:41that this committee has been so supportive of in years past. Secondly we

02:46need to focus on all the clean generation sources and we're spending a

02:50lot of money and time on enhanced geothermal. We're spending money and

02:53time on small modular reactors. Other baseload power but also storage options

02:58that can help on the generation side. Right. We've got a very big focus on

03:02virtual power plants and other demand response and for some of the AI and the

03:07data centers they can actually fluctuate the amount of electricity they need over

03:10time which can help. And then we've got to invest in transmission. We've got to

03:14reduce our permitting times on transmission across the board. Thank you

03:19I appreciate that. And we know that that meeting our climate goals is going to

03:24require the removal of six at least six gigatons of carbon dioxide per year by

03:292050. The ocean can act as a massive carbon sink so marine CDR and

03:34sequestration have emerged as a potential climate mitigation strategies.

03:38The bipartisan infrastructure law provided the Department of Energy with

03:423.5 billion dollars to create new carbon removal hubs are marine CDR projects

03:48eligible for this funding? So as of right now no and I think that's actually

03:54unfortunate. I think there's a huge opportunity for marine carbon dioxide

03:58removal. We've got 36 million dollars in ARPA-E that's working on that. We've got

04:03our fossil energy and carbon management and energy efficiency and renewable

04:07office as well with smaller amounts. Can I ask you why they're not eligible? Is it

04:10in the statutory? So it's a statutory and congressional intent.

04:15Okay. And so if Congress wants to change that we've not funded we're doing duly

04:20noted. This is one of these multi tranche funding streams and so we still have a

04:24significant amount of that funding available. And another clarification can

04:27the IRA renewable energy development funds be used for offshore wind? That's a

04:33good question I don't know the answer to that right offhand but happy to get back.

04:35I would I would like to have the answer to that and I appreciate that and I just

04:39want to note that the five and a half million dollar investment that the DOE's

04:43water power technology office announced earlier this this month I believe for

04:47the Oregon State University's Pacific Marine Energy Center which supports PAC

04:51wave is going to support testing and deploying technologies for marine energy

04:55sources including tidal and wave energy and I really appreciate that investment

04:59and well it's phenomenal expertise as you well know right eager and happy to

05:04support. Thank you so much I yield back.

Suzanne Bonamici Praises Dept. Of Energy's Efforts To 'Transition To A Clean Energy Economy'

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