WASHINGTON — Jennifer M. Granholm, who faced a confirmation hearing Wednesday morning as President Biden’s nominee to head the Department of Energy, is widely expected to play a central role in the administration’s efforts to confront climate change.
But that raises a question: How much can an energy secretary realistically do to help reduce America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions?
The agency controls some powerful levers that could help advance clean-energy technologies: a network of 17 national laboratories that conduct cutting-edge research, tens of billions of dollars in unused federal loan guarantees, and regulatory authority to encourage energy-efficient appliances and new transmission lines.
But there are also major challenges in managing this sprawling, often unwieldy agency. Only about one-fifth of the Energy Department’s $35 billion annual budget is devoted to energy programs. The rest goes toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, cleaning up environmental messes from the Cold War and conducting scientific research in areas like high-energy physics.
“There will be a lot of competing demands on the energy secretary’s time,” said Dan Reicher, a former assistant energy secretary under President Bill Clinton who noted that previous secretaries have had to deal with crises around oil spills or radioactive leaks. “Even the best-laid plans can get disrupted.”
Here’s a look at what the Energy Department could do on climate policy.
Develop Clean Technologies
Among energy experts, there is broad agreement that the world could use major technological advances to halt global warming, such as better batteries to handle larger shares of solar and wind power on the grid, or carbon capture techniques to trap carbon dioxide from heavily polluting cement plants before it reaches the atmosphere.
Historically, the Energy Department has nurtured these types of innovations, conducting basic research in its laboratories and aiding private firms struggling to bring risky technologies to market. The agency’s investments in shale-gas technology in the 1970s laid the groundwork for the fracking boom. The Obama administration’s SunShot Initiative helped drive down the price of utility-scale solar power more than 70 percent from 2010 to 2016.
Such energy innovation typically enjoys bipartisan support from lawmakers.
In December, Congress rejected former President Trump’s request to slash the agency’s energy spending, and instead authorized an additional $35 billion over the next decade to research and demonstrate new technologies around energy storage, advanced nuclear power and techniques to remove carbon dioxide from the air.
While much of this spending is directed by Congress, Ms. Granholm would have leeway to reshape and guide the agency’s efforts. The Obama administration, for example, steered the national labs to work on issues like electric-vehicle batteries and recycling. The Trump administration, by contrast, highlighted efforts to improve coal technology — a major producer of greenhouse gases.
“It makes a big difference if there’s a clear direction from the top to focus on combating climate change,” said Arjun Krishnaswami, a policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council who co-authored a report in 2018 on how the department could do more to prioritize global warming. (The report’s other author, Tarak Shah, is the agency’s new chief of staff.)
Backstop Loans to Companies
The Energy Department is currently sitting on the authority to backstop more than $40 billion in low-interest loans that could, in theory, help bring new renewable, nuclear, carbon capture and storage technologies to the market. These loan programs have been largely untouched for years.
Ms. Granholm could revive the programs relatively quickly, though that would carry some risks.
The Obama administration used loan guarantees to support a number of novel clean-energy projects and companies,…
Read More: What Can the DOE Actually Do on Climate?