Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz came to Monday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s (LIFT) America Act with a strong argument for spending billions of dollars on modernizing the nation’s electric grid, as proposed in the bill.

Referencing the recent power outages in Texas, Moniz told the committee, “The urgency of upgrading our energy infrastructure in a changing climate is painfully clear. The weather patterns of the past are not adequate to inform those in the future, and this profoundly affects infrastructure planning.”

However, Moniz’s view of energy infrastructure extended well beyond the electric grid. For example, he pointed to hydrogen as a potentially clean fuel with multiple applications across the U.S. economy, while also noting its synergies with other low-carbon technologies such as carbon capture and sequestration.

“Infrastructure needs for achieving deep decarbonization could lower the overall development costs of hydrogen fuel,” he said. “Federal and state governments should work together to incentivize early-mover hydrogen-CO₂ hubs. Congressional action to encourage the purchasing of existing rights of way to allow CO₂ pipelines to co-locate with other infrastructures would be beneficial.”

While energy infrastructure comes in for a major portion of the $312 billion in proposed spending in the LIFT Act, the bill also contains billions for expanding broadband and health care infrastructure and updating the nation’s 911 systems. Recently introduced by all 32 Democrats on the committee, the bill includes $69 billion for clean energy and energy efficiency and $41 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure, Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) said.

“I don’t think there’s any better way to stimulate the economy for the future than to modernize our badly aging infrastructure,” Pallone said in his opening remarks at Monday’s hearing.

The committee’s summary of the bill provides a further breakdown of the specific energy funding proposed for the 2022-2026 fiscal years, including:

• $3.87 billion for electric grid infrastructure, with a focus on modernization, security, resilience and efficiency;
• $500 million for school energy-efficiency retrofits;
• $1 billion to support solar installations in low-income and disadvantaged communities;
• $3.8 billion to reduce pollution at ports by electrifying port infrastructure;
• $375 million to support the development of alternative-fuel infrastructure and the deployment of alternative-fuel vehicles.

Pallone said he sees the bill as a “beginning” step for bipartisan collaboration, but Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the committee’s ranking member, saw little common ground. She called the bill a “slush fund for the Green New Deal.” A 2017 version of the bill had an $85 billion price tag, versus the more than $300 billion now proposed, she said.

“It’s another example of how Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi wants to take us back to the Dark Ages, rolling blackouts, uncertainty as to whether the lights will come on when we turn on a light switch, [and] people having to buy generators to ensure heat in their homes,” Rodgers said. “We should be working together, rather than holding these virtual hearings where we’re all guilty of just making our own points and not listening.”

Streamline, not Shortcut

Moniz was one of four expert witnesses at the hearing. Others included Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control, speaking on health care infrastructure; Tom Wheeler, former chair of the Federal Communications Commission; and Michael O’Rielly, another former FCC commissioner, both speaking on broadband.

While primarily talking about energy infrastructure, Moniz also stressed the connection and interdependence between the nation’s electric and digital infrastructures. Broadband is an integral part of modernizing the grid, he said.

“Smart cities and communities should focus on digital backbone infrastructure, integrated smart electricity and telecommunications systems linked to big data, sensors, real-time modeling and artificial intelligence capabilities,” he said. “The integration of IT in the electricity system on both the high-voltage transmission and the distribution system will be extremely important for new services and for resilience and reliability.”

Moniz also emphasized the need to streamline, but not shortcut, federal, state and local permitting for infrastructure projects and recommended strengthening the bill’s focus on “large-scale carbon management.”

“If we’re going to make net-zero and eventually net-negative, we will need technologies like carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere in multiple ways, including terrestrial and mineralization,” he said. “We need to have our infrastructure minds focused on these new infrastructures that we will need.”