the hearing will come to order let me just bring everybody up to speed on where we are although the memorial service is over the house may still be technically in recess for a few more minutes we have the right to move forward but i have consulted with the minority and i want to be sure they feel comfort with that because we're going to have a series of votes that an hour and a half or so and i want to be sure that dr brown has plenty of time to ask to ask how he wants to ask so if we're going to do that we need to we need to get started with with no objection then we will begin now i thank you all good morning i want to suggested that we there wave or make our own statements brief and so i'll be brief and simply say that for those that believe in destiny dr chu your destiny was to be here at this moment in this time to bring your unique set of skills maybe not here at this hearing room but here as the secretary of energy you do have a unique set of skills that are needed i think as we are moving from a really in both for national security as well as economic security a time of losing jobs of the twenty first century as we are looking for the new jobs of the twenty first century so we welcome you here and i congratulate you on a tremendous turnout yesterday for the r p for those that weren't there there were over two thousand people that came to the r p if i could real quickly since raf i always tell stories i'll tell a quick one  bathroom in the middle of it so that everybody would have to come there sometime and have interaction where there was only one coffee pot at this meeting yesterday with two thousand people and they were all around the coffee pot you could hear really really stimulating discussions about what about this what about that so i think it was a great success and with that i will yield to my newly championed ranking member on his way to his fourteenth  welcome your your all statement followed by each member will have an opportunity to question you for five minutes so with that dr chu the secretary of energy for the u s the secretary of energy for the u s department of energy  welcome you made again thank you chairman gordon and thank you ranking member hall members of the committee i thank you for having the opportunity to be here before you today to discuss the president's fiscal year two thousand eleven budget request the department energy president obama stated that a nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads in the twenty first century to a global economy and i fervently share this view the president's f y two thousand and seven budget request for twenty eight point four billion dollars for the department of energy will help position united states to be a global leader in this new energy economy the budget requests makes much  investments to harness the power of american ingenuity this request will create clean energy jobs expand the frontiers of science we use nuclear dangers to help curb the carbon pollution that threatens our planet the president's budget request inclu investment of two point four billion dollars in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources it also promotes innovative energy efficiency and renewable energy projects through five hundred million dollars in credit the subsidies that will support three to five billion in lending expands the advanced manufacturing tax credit by five billion dollars to help build a robust domestic manufacturing capacity through this budget we will increase research demonstration and deployment of wind solar geothermal energy to make buildings and homes more efficient develop energy efficient vehicles pursue carbon capture and sequestration nuclear energy must also be part of a clean energy mix our budget request includes an additional thirty six billion in loan guarantee authority for the nuclear power sector as well as for good ninety five million for nuclear energy research and development on february sixteenth president obama announced conditional commitments for more than then eight billion  loan guarantees for what will be the first nuclear power plants to break ground in nearly three decades we have many technologies in hand today to bring the transition to a low carbon economy but we'll need further breakthroughs and better technologies to our long term goals the budget requests invest in basic and applied research and puts us on a path doubling the funding for science the key presidential party i know this committee is deeply interested in the department's research agenda indeed you have been instrumental in some of the key r and d initiatives in this budget request i think the committee for your efforts to pass american competes act and for your work to reauthorize this important legislation the budget request supports the department's three new complementary approaches to marshalling the nation's brightest minds to accelerate energy breakthroughs the first approach is energy innovation hubs the hubs are multidisciplinary goal oriented and will you manage by top teams of scientists and engineers with enough resources and authority to move quickly and respond to new developments there to be modeled after laboratories such as mit's radiation laboratory which developed radar during world war two and bell laboratories when invented and developed the transistor ideally this work will be considered concert done under one roof the department will continue funding the three innovative energy innovation hubs introduced in f y two thousand and ten but in addition we are proposing breakthroughs and we believe we can clear these robots faster by linking together small groups of researchers across departments schools and institutions the department proposes expanding the energy front to research centers to capture emerging opportunit materials and basic research for energy needs the third funny approach is one that was made possible by this committee the advanced research projects agency energy or are pretty the r p is technology oriented and best ideas for potentially transformative energy technologies and finding them to see if they work r p is also dedicated to the market adoption of these new technologies the f y eleven budget request includes three hundred million for p this week r p sponsored a successful conference here in washington that the chairman gordon mentioned to bring together our nation's energy and innovators i want to thank chairman gordon for taking part in this band and for his continued leadership p to develop clean energy solutions and maintain nuclear security the department must cultivate the workforce of the next generation in f y two thousand and eleven we are request seen fifty five million to start reenergize initiative to support case through twenty plus science and engineering education in addition to the health of our economy and our planet department energy is focused on the safety and security of our people the department is requesting a significant more than five hundred fifty million in new funding for the n s a defense nuclear nonproliferation program to help the president's goals of securing all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years to ensure the safety security and practice of our nuclear stockpile we're requesting seven billion to upgrade our infrastructure support the work of our national labs and recruit the skilled workforce we need the budget also protects public health and safety by clean up the environmental legacy of our nation's nuclear weapons program in two thousand and ten the department will discontinue its application for the nuclear regulatory commission for a license to construct a high level wa to deal with our nuclear waste management needs the administration has announced an independent bipartisan commission co chaired by general brant scowcroft and congressman lee hamilton to conduct a comprehensive review of the back end of the fuel cycle and make recommendations for safe long term solutions building a clean energy future won't be easy but is necessary for our economy and our security as a scientist i'm optimistic i believe we can meet this challenge and lead the world in the twenty first century president obama and i look forward to working with this committee and this congress to build a stronger safer more prosperous future and please answer any questions at this time they could actually questions again that i recognize myself for five minutes the administration's decision to cancel funding for yucca mountain has proven to be perhaps the most controversial change that the department has undertaken yet the administration racially signaled its support for nuclear power have no impact on our expansion the n r c is declared nuclear waste where it is now and moving to dry cask storage will be safe for many decades that gives us time to prepare a much better more comprehensive view of what's going on we know a lot more than we did in the early one nine hundred eighty s when the nuclear waste act was passed and so this blue ribbon commission now has an opportunity to step back look at the whole template of options that could that exist today and could be developed the next twenty thirty fifty years and that's where we're heading as i understand it they have a eighteen months to report or a given in a report and then six more m meeting will be held i believe it's march twenty fourth and twenty fifth of this month well you have put together a good balance group so i think that will this is a augustine type of group and so we look forward to their report  often times to it we're all concerned about taxpayer dollars being used to develop technology through the part of energy or elsewhere here in this country that winds up creating jobs elsewhere and so with r p with the  first you have to develop the ideas but you're quite right mr chairman that you need a comprehensive plan you need investment tax credits you need a number of things so that you keep the manufacturing of these new technologies here in the states i think that's a very important part of our path towards economics are you working on that package i mean or is it that when will that be rolled out while we are working on it but it's you have to get  some of the incentives and sought in order that matter fact the company said but let me just say one of the biggest incentives is a home market if you have a whole market for some of the energy technologies  what any manufacturer multinational manufacturer wants to do is they want to manufacture in that whole market and so the best incentive is to create that whole market that demand and so that's one of the crucial things that congress will percent more expensive one light bulb a new light bulb is more expensive than for example the contemporary one is there a way that we can give some preference to some level so that we can then get that supply chain and technologies they are very concerned about these things and that's precisely one of the strategies we are looking at well i think this congress has shown over and over a preference to buy american that we might add to that by american new technology and so if hope as discussed come to us if there are authorizations or something that we need to do to help expand those markets raise one thing the budget request for five are very fortunate to have more than fifty years a natural gas supply according to the energy information administration and natural gas is a clean source of energy can help bridge the transition from fossil fuels to next generation fuels bail and it was in the bail in the president our president signed it then and since his tried to take it out was unable to take that because the senate the house floor and voted not to there now you know it's based on the fact that we know energy is there but we can't get it and if we get technology to get it up and we trade the energy that they get up that they won't get up if they don't get the technology it looks like it makes sense to me last year i stated my disappointment with the president's twenty ten budget to terminate to the water and unconventional natural gas and other petroleum for resource program so again let me express my disappointment that even after our discussion on that day in march of two thousand and nine the budget seeks to eliminate the today programme and for that matter the fossil fuels research and development budget l strongly disagree with this policy which ignores own going importance even your own the oil and natural gas will play in our domestic energy picture through the year twenty thirty five the energy security aspects of this i'm going to take up all my time with my question was chairman of the policy of terminating the today program was especially prevalent in a lot of the fact that this administration has approved a preliminary commitment to land up to two billion dollars to brazil's state owned oil company patrol boats to finance offshore deepwater oil exploration in the central basis near rio de janiero i don't understand something like that i don't think it makes any sense at all to do that while i'm not necessarily opposed to technology transfer to develop natural gas resources in our pursuit of energy security we ought to be promoting and using innovative technologies for own domestic exploration so i guess my question is do a transition fuel in this century in order to get to a cleaner energy supply i might also add that department energy since the one nine hundred seventy eight has explored and this is i think one of our real success stories  most people think it's increased our gas reserves from thirty percent to as much as double our gas reserves my feeling about deep water is we have we have a methane hydrate program that is now shifting over the science but it's a program i feel that we should develop that still at a time when the oil and gas industry does not want to invest in it they're willing to go along but as soon as and those instances where commercial companies say this is to speculate we don't want to do this i think that's the role in this part of energy and so the methane hydrates problem is something i support the shale gas problem historically over the years for fifteen years it pays for itself out of energy that we won't get if we don't get the technology will get the technology will get it and now we're talking about transfer and then let me ask you this do you think it's acceptable to fund exploration in other countries but not domestically i'm not but the exam bank did it at the request of american interest american companies and so so it's not the federal government is ex im bank loaning money to buy american equipment then to go to brazil  we get we won't get if we don't get it i think the research you speak of i think that's wonderful but i also think the oil and natural gas companies do have the financial resources to support that but you look into it won't you to we want to look at it and see if there are incentives to bring the companies to bear here mr lew you are recognized thank you very much mr chairman i will be very brief my question mr secretary to encourage you to take as much time as you want and discussing this particular topic i find your rollout of the hub lab concept very very interesting there are three that are out for proposals  d if you could discuss some of your goals what you're looking for in proposals and what you hope to achieve over time i'd be very interested and perhaps with the most emphasis on the most recent rollout on and if energy efficient particular during war time we wanted to accelerate innovation in the manhattan project in development a radar there was a time in bell labs took a very long term deal but they also for example wanted to accelerate innovation and getting rid of those vacuum tubes that kept on bernie out on them and so they entered into a program to develop a solid state version of viking to so what were the common denominators in all these aspects they put scientists together with engineers they said we want a leadership team and so they're going to span the whole gamut these are the scientific questions we have to answer but we're not going to stop it answer scientific questions we have to go all the way to delivering the goods for greater ownership or an airplane we have to deliver the goods and so we want this team to be very dedicated we're not going to fund a project you didn't ask oppenheimer and sarah me and all those people well would you give us your idea will decide whether it's good or not and then after a while we'll decide if you want to do something else we'll decide whether you want to go now we assemble the best team and said solve the problem and you got to solve it quickly and because of that these teams of scientists very actively managed new on a day by day week by week basis what was going on so they're much more intimately connected with what was going on than one could ever be in washington and it was the management team people like glenn sieberg who were developing ways to separate and chemically you read his diaries he was on top of what was happening every day and say ok we can do this and something happened we couldn't get a detector we're going to invent it we can't wait for it to be developed by a commercial company so you can go look at the split and that's idea you want to go look at the slate you want to go with a team that can actually the top scientists to actually participate in but also great managers the selection of these hubs in large part will be dependent on how dedicated and how good these matters well be not as good as scientists but also how good a science manager they will be and that's one of the keys we want to replicate what did work in times of real national need before in but in now in the energy sector the secretary how do you how do you calibrate the if you will divide and perhaps divide is too strong a term between the research side of the enterprise and the engineering slash dissemination slash economic development  side of the equation and well let me give you an example of a deal we hub although it's not called the hub in fact this was also what was in my mind it was in my old laboratory lawrence berkeley laboratory it had to do with a bio energy they came up with a breakthrough the leaders of this hub were some of the world leaders in a new field of science called synthetic biology and so they reprogrammed bacteria to when fed simple sugars to produce a direct substitute for gasoline not something that then later refined you can almost put it in the tank and to overproduce it i learned about this it was published in a very prestigious journal called nature i emailed my friend and director the laboratory this is great what's the time scale how good does it have to be to be commercially viable without subsidy question number one what's the timeline when you won't get it up and down vote he said it's got to be not within ninety percent of what we think is a theoretical maximum already a company else i is running with that there and that same team that did the basic research are making a little pilot so those scientists are walking over and they're saying we're going to do this and he said within two years we'll have an up down vote to see where there's flies both in the alice noncommercial work and from what we are doing so those scientists are actually part of the delivering the goods and that that institute was founded on a more corporate structure so it's not a basic science is hands off to an engineer the hands off to some development you know they're going to they're going to walk it so that's exactly the type of thing i'm looking for  the other hubs thank you very much mr secretary as knowledgeable as you are i think that what i find most appealing about your presentation is it is the passion which you are able to convey thank you comrade rock rock on research into nuclear power over the last few years and how much are you proposing that we spend this year i'm going to have to go back and look at the exact number but it's on the scale of certainly tens of millions of you mean on the very research research i think on the scale of tends to abate perhaps one hundred million i have to remind myself and annually yes ok and i just remind myself the whole nuclear r and b i was being spending what i have to plead ignorance on what the history ok fine well mr secretary we have been spending considerable money on r and d research into nuclear energy over the years and five hundred  available to build a new nuclear power plant for the first time in over two decades could you tell us how that will they be preconditions of that power plant is different than the power plants that were built light water reactors fifty years ago absolutely so why why is it that we're building a light water reactor that still has leftover waste when there are several companies the very substantial companies who say they can build reactors that will basically not have that waste problem general atomics to be one which is a high temperature gas cool reactor which is they're going to actually take stuff out of yucca mountain rather than put it in so there is a difference in th water runs down due to gravity it's much much much less likely to have any any issue based on something goes wrong there's another system that backs it up and if that goes wrong there's another system that backs it up because of basing our next generation of nuclear energy that we're now we're investing in with something that substantially is an old concept when they were in there a steam engine right when we have some revolutionary ideas coming out and that should be our focus rather than spending money on the old stuff one little note mr secretary are you aware that the bureau of land management does not offer as not given one permit for a  solar energy project and you're of land management land there's one hundred five of them that are waiting five years where that no i'm not ok well i would hope that you would look into this this is unconscionable i mean at a time when we're talking about developing alternative sources of energy making you self sufficient and is it your understanding i got fifteen seconds left that we can now build solar facilities in places like the desert that would be competitive with the producing electricity of where the coal fired plants and oil fired plants getting there on us not quite they still need a little help but let me return a little bit back to there's a distinction between our five hundred  are scored we did part of energy's task to convince all in be that it will cost the taxpayer zero and so i think this is not fully appreciated so those long guarantees are our self pay the assets of the company the stability of the company the fact that there are loan guarantees the first one went to a consortium of companies that i really had pre purchased a power agreement for the nuclear power very very different that's to get today's technology get going again or it's actually not today's it's tomorrow's in the sense that we don't have to operate in the world in eighty one thousand but in the meantime the five hundred million are to look at  thanks very much mr chairman thank you very much as well secretary chu i want to commend you on a recent appointment that you made in appointing creen edmonds as national technology transfer coordinator in the office as well and i think this signals an important relationship going forward with our deal we laboratories and moving forward towards commercial lighting some of the technology that's been developed by some of the brightest that we have in the country your emphasis in your statements around  innovation that will need breakthrough breakthroughs and better technologies to meet our long term goals the efforts that were highlighted by the president as well in as reflected in the budget with innovation investing in science discovery and innovation to provide solutions to pressing energy challenges and mr secretary as we talk about these programs and completely understanding how we can create more jobs how we can do a better job of commercialising some of these big ideas and finding ways to get them to the marketplace so that we can engage in manufacturing domestically is something that i'm anxious to see more of two weeks ago i had a visit to the los alamos national laboratories and talk to them about a program that is supported by corporate funding called new mexico northern new mexico connect which supports opportunities for small businesses and for some of our scientists physicists engineers to use entrepreneurial leave to commercialize these ideas and to take part in these projects but i was discouraged that there didn't seem to be a serious investment coming from delia itself as opposed to the partnership that was put together with the corporate funding and so mr secretary i'd ask for you to comment on what you feel the role of dealey is on what do we what can we expect from a funding perspective to support efforts like that within our deal we laboratories specifically  laboratories to help in gauge in promoting some of these big ideas creating the jobs and which would lead to some commercialization manufacturing domestically well first thank you for recognizing that appointment i think she's wonderful and it's something when i walked into the before walked in the job when i walked into the job as a laboratory director once berkeley lab one of the first things i did was to get the  person in charge of technology licensing from stanford which has a very good reputation and truly outstanding reputation nationwide worldwide for taking discoveries out of the laboratory  and getting into or actual sector and so this person as a favor to me came over spent today to say how we can improve things probably the most important thing i did when i was director is i said number two and you know every year there is a merry view there is no sour adjustment of our scientists and engineers lp now so every year there's a merit review and there were many criteria about twelve fifteen lowered it to four or five number two after quality of papers patents and disclosures it wasn't listed before and remarkable thing happened the number of  of sudden started to take up just by that single stroke of the pen you know you're going to be judged on how many patents and disclosures you produce and so there are many things that actually can be done for free we want to do this now department wide there is a reason why we in the department or g feel that we are going to be responsible for the entire innovation chain from the basic research all the way to not only the applied research development piloting guinean out to deployment but deployment to scale and so we've and and and then entire energy sector because we feel that the every part of us life will be a key future to our future prosperity so so we want very much for the private sector to be picking up these things because of the fact that you know we we fun social science in the united states the national lab assets the people and universities are some of the best things we have in the u s that's our competitive edge and so we're going to be very focused on that well i appreciate that very much mr secretary and i would ask for your consideration on how we could tie fees with our laboratories to the exactly what you saw from behavior with getting more patents out and things of that nature and lastly mr secretary i want to tell you that i anxiously awa t the announcement for consideration for an individual to fill the administrator position for defense nuclear nonproliferation as we talked about the concerns and what's been highlighted by this administration to make sure we bring attention to securing loose nuclear materials in addition to everything else associated with it very much appreciate that so thank you very much for my time to mr chairman dr blix recognize for five minutes thank you mr secretary i'd like to ask a couple of questions to kind of put our energy challenge in and perspective france gets what seventy five eighty percent of its electricity from nuclear are you pretty sand going i think we're going to need all those things as well as much improved generation of conventional sources to use our fossil fuel sources in a much cleaner way for example as you well know we're deeply committed to developing the technologies in carbon capture and sequestration so we can continue to use coal in united states but environmentally responsible way so we need all these things is not the liquid fuels energy future a bit more challenging understand that the world is now a pumping and using about eighty four million barrels of oil a day that's correct i agree with you to look again you'll see part is the most challenging so the strategy you bear with me thirty seconds is it has to be multi pass it number one we're investing in trying to electrify personal vehicle transportation for short range fifty miles to a couple hundred miles offload some of it we're investigating investing in next generation biofuels that will give you much less fossil fuel investment in order to get per liter of future the world uses about eighty four million barrels of oil a day we use a fourth of that we're going to find more oil but we'd like to use more oil because we like our economy to grow the industrialized world would like to use more oil the developing world like india and china would like to use a lot more oil would you agree that the more oil that we all like to use that will be kind of lucky if we can find that much more oil in the world i actually think so what's happening now is there are there is conventional oil and then there are water called non conventional deeper offshore and so as the man grows especially in developing countries the overall world  man is projected by all these do to actually grow the o e c d countries probably to plateau but but because of china india and other  developing countries the overall demand will grow so but i see a transition already happening now from conventional oil on shore to offshore to harder to get on oil to tar or to things of that nature and that's true the more expensive oil is the more oil we're going to be able to pump because the new oil we're finding is more difficult to get we use eighty four million barrels of oil a day that means and what twelve roughly talks about we've found ten billion barrels of oil that's going to last us one hundred twenty days that's right big deal i use the numbers from from your department the reserves that saudi arabia has the reserves that russia has in the percentage of the world's oil that they have to get roughly the same figure when i use those when i compute from those the world has today about one point two one point three trillion barrels of oil i think there's general agreement i had to vent general agreement on that for about a decade now that's the amount of oil we find if i divide it into that you know every twelve days we use a billion barrels of oil we have enough oil at the rate we're now using it to last forty years that's all now it's not going to be forty years like we're using it now and then fall off a cliff it's going to be ever harder and harder to get more and more expensive so i don't see this budget anywhere near recognizing the urgency that we need to have to address that you agreed that the amount of oil oil that we're likely to buy that we're going to be more than lucky if the more oil we buy represent is equal to the more oil that we would like to use in the developing world i'd like to use so what with all of us seven billion people facing forty years of oil don't you think we ought to have more urgency about substitutes we are working very hard on that but let me also remind you that the oil recovery is getting better and better before you know you stick a holy ground you get five percent out of you start pumping water through you get more out now the average reservoir is getting the average oil hovers around thirty thirty five percent of the oil in the ground in those reservoirs can actually be pumped up moving to fifty percent so a lot of things are happening that are unable you do recover more oil in your proven reservoirs saudi arabia is now talking fifty percent recovery average of their reservoirs and there they think they can get to seventy percent so so it's so i would say it's not clear to me that we will run out of oil in forty years based on these trends and based on the fact that we are learning how to recover what we used to think were inaccessible forms of oil but but let me response of use by fifty percent so so there are there are plans out there you know i hope you can get there there are plans out there that we want to look at this very aggressively and so there is a sense of urgency because it will take time to deploy these things to scale but we are also we want to clean up our our oil supply as well i mean because there is a carbon issue is that's why electrification of personal vehicles is something i think we can do and so yesterday at the r p summit and they before and then much of this morning there i want to commend you and dr me jump for the success and also chairman gordon for writing the legislation that created this my my wife and i were talking this weekend about some of the many challenges the country face and she said what are we doing right and i said i think the department of energy and our baby but i also wanted dollars in national labs in addition to their ongoing work which is done so much over the years so well done on that as we look at the meeting the energy needs my own belief is that the problem is urgent as dr bartlett has said many times in this committee i think we can show we can save twenty percent of our energy budget in twenty weeks i don't think we have to wait through fairly simple behavioral that up and i don't mean some social science stuff i mean just making the right decisions like inflating your tires etc which as we have been subject to derision but are actually legitimate measures if we just drove the bloody speed limit we would save a fair amount we don't have to lower the speed limit just drive that there are some other things i think we can do and the president rolled out the homestar program yesterday i understand that let me give you just a couple of examples of things we've kicked around when you buy a house in this country you get information about what the kind of heating or air conditioning is but you get no usable cost information if we just put m l s listings required in some fashion that when you buy a house you get the annual energy budget the actual expenditures month by month to houses that look like the same purchase price but one as a hundred fifty dollar greater monthly output for energy is a much more expensive house over time vastly more expensive and you now reward people who make the investments both in behavior change and technology just by listing it no costly audit's no intrusive anything just list the energy price for the year secondly transportation audit that just give people information you can use google earth to do this and say what's the real cost of this all you're buying because it's cheaper in the b so you can spend an hour and a half commuting into washington d c what's the real cost in terms of your time value and the energy transportation cost again free that gives people information they can make a decision with regarding the home star program the best time to make an energy investment in your home is a point of purchase for two reasons but cost of the borrowing if you're borrowing two hundred thousand dollars for a home another twenty thousand dollars to rent energy retro retrofit is is is additional but small relative to the base cost but secondly you're not in the home you don't have a bunch of people troop on through with energy with insulation or new windows some way finding a way to incentivize point of purchase retrofits seems to me to be a really major investment with buildings consuming forty percent of our energy finally a question i'm very concerned you know my state had the last major nuclear investment in this country was in my state we call it what's the washington public power supply system the assumption and by the way those are bankrupt never completed with it with one sole exception but the rest of the tower stand there they make great echo chamber some rock bands going to discover him but it's not their original purpose but this business that we're garrett making loan guarantees my belief is we're investing with it whether it's c c s and major coal plants or major nuclear plants i think we're investing in any our computers to be perfectly honest when you go to the r p and other places around the world as i've had the privilege of doing i think a distributed energy like down the fair or some other bright person is working on is going to obviate a lot of this and so what we're doing is making this big loan guarantee and investment for something that may not be necessary if we cut consumption by twenty percent behaviorally right there we obviate a whole lot of new if we invent distributed energy technology we further do it what's your thought on that i worry will put a lot of money in adequate a technology well i actually agree with you one hundred percent on  names on energy efficiency many of the things you had judged i'd like so much that we actually started the ball rolling and them about a have a year ago so the thing it's starting to talk with hud is it this is this is the energy use in this home this is the energy used for this square footage in this entire region so it's like a refrigerator a label we also recognizing that you know people live differently some people like it very warm in the winter it's seventy eight not seventy or it's i happen to keep our house at sixty five but that i don't think many people like to do my wife my wife and i have the same discussion so we're also trying to develop thousand a year so we're trying to figure out how to get it so it's tens of thousands hundreds of thousands a year you know the average hundred thirty million homes average ciaran time seven years so we can start doing major retrofits you can start to turn over the stock of homes in a major way but we have to make it very painless the homeowner that you have confidence that the added a little bit more you put in your mortgage which is a nice long term loan low interest rate you will recover in energy savings on a month to make basis  so you're not out of pocket and in fact you're making money and so these are one many of the programs we want to do gas mileage higher mileage standards another thing all those things are i don't think so i think i disagree with you is i don't to increase the funding by four point four percent which is consistent with that competes act and of the programs increases i'm glad to see the advanced scientific computing research received a  boost in considering the importance of that to d o a in the research community do you have plans for a sustained investment never our leadership class puting facilities and more specifically will the department consider utilizing the advanced computing infrastructure across the programs and daily to meet many of our energy challenges the short answer is yes we see a sustained program  where we're pointing out as the computers get more powerful as the algorithms get more powerful we can begin to simulate design in a real way complex  n spanning the gamut between combustion in diesel engines so you don't have to build a prototype and see what happens build another prototype of the poster child that is a collaboration with commons diesel engine and sandia our energy supply it has to manage to a flows i mean right now states distribution system there are these regional sections and if you want to go across someone calls up the line says hey can you send me a little more juice it's just like the old time movies congratulate the chairman for the success of our party and i'm not going to eat crow but it is critical that you said that it is critical that the fund the not jeopardize the basic research supported by the office of science in this respect i believe in the old tradition and the word do no harm and the office of science is a great part of the department of energy and you want to keep it on a path of budget  and so these are real problems it doesn't make fine national says it doesn't make nonplused sense so we want to do research to see if we can get to a place where it makes both of those things in addition to that we're also looking at reactors in this for five hundred million dollars where right now you degree or any amount of ground you lose use less than one percent half a percent of the energy content of that mind or and the rest becomes spent fuel could be waste wouldn't be lovely if we can use twenty percent you know it's once through a cycle if you do that you go from one percent to twenty percent and you've just reduced the waste by a factor twenty but in addition to that we also want to do research in fast neutron reactors designed to burn down the long lived radioactive waste to reduce the lifetime all these things will be factored into to blue ribbon commissions being charged anticipate what might happen in next fifty years that will totally wipe what we might we're going to do with the back end of the fuel cycle so there are these possibilities and it will take time because anything having to do with nuclear because of the safety concerns does take time but we do have time and we have at least a half a century to do this and so we feel very committed here's an opportunity to go forward and by the way likes with small modular actors here's a here's an opportunity to recapture an industry the united states started the first nuclear reactor was built in the united states and it's now going abroad to france and japan and korea have more nuclear production capabilities for reactors than we do so we you know we want to bring that high tech manufacturing back to the states is what we want again want to be a leader in that  as an interim measure with dry cask storage technology we have availability on site of operating power plants to your knowledge of there are any space consider space limitations for that type of on site storage to best of my knowledge no and you also mentioned that when the congress passed the nuclear waste policy act back in the eighty's we knew a lot less than than we know now is your understanding that dry cask storage in terms of the capability for doing that was not very well understood back in the mid eighty's is that one example where we've learned more since that's one example but it does much deeper than that i think given for example in the proposed repository yucca mountain first it was for a ten thousand years then there was a supreme court ruling said no it wherever it turns out i knew that scientists doing a lot of the simulations for the water flows in yucca mountain and the maximum leak out would be at a half a million years well quite frankly we haven't built humans have built anything that's lasted a half a million years roman aqueducts come to mind two thousand years and so what you really want to do is you want to do something that has  that is inherently natural deposit safe so there are other geological repositories in that case and also if you don't want to ever have access to it for example you might want to consider over the next few hundred years we could put it somewhere some places where you want to have access but one the economic value is really spent down and you can say no we don't we don't think we'll ever have any more economic and you reduce the amount of rejected because well we need maybe we need to get get get it back well no in this case we might not ever want to get back the beauty of those things is there radioactively dated and they've been around for tens of millions of years so imagine the continents of the world you're sitting around but this thing has been safe for ten million years that's good so so again we know a lot more so goes much deeper than that so this is we can take a fresh look at this i appreciate that and i know and assume you will be engaged with this bipartisan committee and in their discussions well i mean they're a very blue ribbon committee and we stand by to offer them information but they're going to make recommendations to me to the president and congress based and they can form little subcommittees of four points of technical information but we really want their best advice another question to ask you about in terms of the n s a s stockpile stockpile stewardship role over the past few years there were talk about coming up with a new generation of weapons there is the reliable replacement warhead program and and yet i believe is just in the past year most recent jason analysis of the of the existing stockpile and it's its projected life or longevity or by ability there's a lot of there's a sort of confidence that the existing stockpile could be maintained for a in my opinion a reasonably long amount of time what is your view right now of the need to develop the next generation do you think the existing stockpile stewardship program with the existing stockpile satisfies our needs for the next i don't know a few decades well first there is going to be a nuclear posture review that will be coming out i hopefully in the next couple of weeks and that sets the tone for what we would in that part of energy need to do that jason part of aware of is having said that there are many of these devices were designed with vacuum tubes and by the vacuum tubes any more so merely by replacing vacuum tubes with integrated circuits things of that nature that don't in my mind cause a new weapon at all it's just you can't buy the stuff replace it with something that modern electronics doesn't enhance any capability just i think those things need to be done ok and so that you differentiate that from from that and so what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking at these are very complex no testing eventual elimination of nuclear warheads around around the world but as long as other countries have and we're going to have them but so far have my knowledge there from on how the department makes his decisions and whether or not the american people trust those decisions to be candid recent decisions have made befuddled case in point the record is fairly clear that you have supported unilaterally disarm in our nation's economy by advocating a carbon tax and a carbon tariff your rationale for this irresponsible policy is based on the claimed scientific consensus regarding the severe t and impacts of anthropogenic climate change as evidence of this consensus you specifically cited the national academy of sciences setting aside the recent issues revealed by the climate research unit sleep e mails almost daily embrace findings from the scientific bodies why you embrace the consensus surrounding climate change you ignore a report from the national research council on yucca mountain which states quote there is a strong worldwide option for dealing with a high level waste despite clear legal obligations after over twenty five years of scientific study with they ins of dollars at risk and no plan going forward georgia ratepayers have already paid into the nuclear waste fund over seven hundred eight point nine million dollars to nuclear reactors going to be built in georgia it's been three decades since a new nuclear plant plan has been built it terminates the license application for yucca mountain you initiated a blue ribbon commission to look into storage options but their report will be completed until the end of this administration's term and after a certain senator reelection bid why not keep the program on track until you receive those recommendations why not spend the collection fees for the nuclear waste fund suspend the collection fees for the nuclear waste fun until  storage solution is agreed to how can you justify continuing the collections of hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from electricity consumers in these tough economic times it's just not right right now you're essentially kicking the can down the road all the while you defend our nation's only existing storage options a decision that appears to be politically motivated not based on science in order to understand the rationale behind these decisions ranking member hall and i along with ranking members barton and walden wrote to you last may with over twelve specific questions your response to the committees of jurisdiction was frankly responsibility o c your overseer department i hope you will take our current request seriously and be more responsive a few future inquiries during the president's inaugural address he stated his intention to quote restore its rightful place unquote unfortunately all we have seen from this administration is rewarding a political allies cherry picking scientific recommendations and  been to come out and there are issues with it and its repository nature depends a lot on the assumed precipitation and that side over a million year period and so there are many hamilton actually want to much more accelerated time and i'm all in favor that ideally quite frankly i don't want to box in the corner but they are targeting this year to get this first  so there is no desire to keep getting can down the road regarding the commission with regard to climate data and the understanding i think i still believe very strongly that  overwhelming body of evidence well let me let me stand back and say that the overwhelming body of evidence still is that the climate is changing it's caused by humans and although the uncertaint and what happens going forward are large it is not uncertainty as to whether it's happening or whether it's caused by humans is to the degree the the way science works is there sometimes are cation bumps a and what happens is science investigates itself and and tries to find out and that's exactly what's happening but as far as i know there is an overwhelming body of  no in fact the more recent especially the satellite data as it gets better and better is putting to rest concerns that we might have had ten twenty years ago so thank you d chairman the secretary thank you for your contribution is now to our nation what you are doing is secretary i was just out it in every village and they were speaking very highly of all that you did to example of pulling together different institutions to do some really important work in the good example of what you have tried to do when you're trying to do right now as a secretary so i congratulate you and thank you for doing that i'm concerned to some degree about the that many of our research facilities though in this country are suffering from chronic  under investment in deferred maintenance as i'm sure you know that and s s last survey of science and engineering facilities documented a problem in academic research facilities a three point six billion dollar  backlog into for repair and renovation and i've heard anecdotally of problems at the at the national labs as well in this concerns me in that we as you clearly understand we cannot lose our leadership in science and engineering and i'm concerned that we may not be able to lead in we might be having inefficient use of research dollars if we don't have the infrastructure that we need so i want to ask you what your current what's your impression the current state of the we facilities especially the the national expanding little bit on what whether that is going to be for a while it's regarding the infrastructure the national laboratories it's not even there are some that are and especially the newer national laboratories i think are a little bit better condition recovery act money has been invested in and a lot of that that delayed maintenance but for the going for them that actually replace the buildings once the laboratory buildings get to be fifty sixty seventy years old it's hard to keep them going it's better to start a new it's more economical in fact starting new and so  that is an issue again my old laboratory the oldest national laboratory in the complex we had a fair fraction i forget the exact number but it was something forty fifty percent were over fifty years old there was a there's a section of old buildings wooden buildings coal old town it was called old town when i was a graduate student there are nine hundred seventy it's still there the infrastructure having to do with the n s a labs are the fact that because of many budget stresses and other issues over a period of perhaps a decade maybe a little longer but certainly over a decade the amount of the fraction of money spent for science and technology and the infrastructure for more important anything else also includes the total assets of the lab including the people have been declining the science and the fraction of money spent on science and technology in those laboratories has was going down steadily so that over a ten year period it would have been cut in half and it was we were entering the ninth year of helping with the improving the infrastructure at our national labs yellow thing following on what ms biggert said very happy to see the leadership computing facility at argonne the increase in funding requested i'm a little bit concerned about with high performance computing that some of this has not been available have not reached small manufacturers they have not had the ability to take advantage of that i was at sandia also in what you were talking about earlier but what they're doing with cummings i saw that was told about that what are some ways that you look to helping the small way if actually but even boeing some of the supply chain for boeing is having trouble being able to access and use high performance computers i think the major issue in the very high performance computing is they have many many processors tens of thousands of going now up to is computer scientists with the scientists because you go to these very complex machines most scientists don't have the technical expertise you know after you've ganged up a thousand of them going from a thousand to ten thousand it doesn't get ten times better and so it begins to waste a resource so in the very highest leadership computing we actually have these teams scientists but the average small company doesn't have that expertise one of the things that i'm processors we don't have that yet and that's the next logical step in order to bring high performance computing to the average engineer in the scientists talk to them fred you are a victim of your own knowledge we are getting you my biggest concern is making sure that your science does not get blocked by by washington's politics we talk a lot of around here about how people need to change their lifestyles and who to reduce their emissions and conserve energy business gotta change its operational but the one thing we don't see talked about much is how government needs to change we're right now burning dirty coal to generate electricity for this place and you know we're talking all these law the ideas but the reform aspect in fact i think the term we always talk about energy is we need a manhattan project the fact is mr secretary the manhattan project could not legally be done today it be legal to do it because the regulations are we are we looking at is there any studies being done in your department of what we need to do to change government regulations to make energy more efficient and give an example we talk about conservation of individuals but government control of traffic could reduce emissions and consumption by almost twenty two percent you know they mr baird talk about slowing down anybody can talk about the fact problem is the fact the law isn't in force is any is there any study or any proposal to do a study to look at what government and governments can do to reduce the energy dependency and to clean up the environment and it's basically your point there probably are can name addictive things but but let me just say very quickly the parmigiano does have a slight regulatory well we we do appliance standards and so those appliance errors have saved the country many billions of dollars  and we are expanding those appliance standards because sometimes there's no price that will give it and all but the this is the best part for the first time in history to farm energy where in forcing them  i serve ok i appreciate and i serve over the government reform but my problem i have is that we don't you believe that somebody who's looking at the scientific side of it needs and need to be from that perspective that we look at the government of struction and barriers to get a good example i drove a natural gas car in the one thousand nine hundred but most public utility commissions will not allow public utilities to write based out of home dispensing of clean gas for cars it's a technology we have but the government regulation keeps you from doing that we don't allow building code doesn't allow the use of a lot of renewable resources because of the obstruction don't you agree that we it's time that scientists look at this and say look we'd love to  or barriers that we have to it a good example let me just say the algae fuels discoveries in california i met with the governor and pointed out sequel our environmental regulations in california stop the production of algae fuel in california for the next decade where the scientists at scripps have to go to new mexico to do it don't you think that it's time that we have scientists take a look at where you know start speaking out and be able to have some voice to be able to say these grants there are things like energy efficiency conservation block grants there are requirements mandated by congress we're working through those things so that we can get kind of both so we're trying to identify and we're talk about any money but we're not talking about asking government to do what we're asking business and individuals to do change your operation change your mindset and we're not doing that i mean i i don't you know i take a look at every time i stop at a stop sign it could be a yield sign it's five times more polluting the not having that sign there but nobody calls the government down for that kind of emissions and that's out of sight now to mine don't you think from the scientific point of view i just personally when we talk about new we talk about all these things and governments in the way governments in the way not the government answer is always will spend more money and that's a big challenge i have in there and i appreciate i'm just raising this please take a look at this i look forward to working with your department i hope that we can do with nuclear power what we do with the interstate system and have your department do more than just look at it and participate but be the lead agency it citing that we could build freeways the interstate system in this country if we approached we approach the transportation system the way we've approached our energy system we'd still be driving on two lane roads private sector doesn't ask for a grant to site a freeway to permit it the government does that and then we put it out the contract to the private i'd like to see us work together to be able create that same dynamic when it comes to energy independence thank you mr bilbray mr wilson is recognized thank you mr chairman welcome back mr secretary the partitive energy has longstanding policy of refusing to provide loan guarantees to companies that are in litigation what is frustrating to me is that environmental groups have taken advantage of this policy by allowing thousands of frivolous lawsuits against the coal related projects and holding them up in courts indefinitely companies with viable projects are unable to proceed on a basic level because they can't get loan guarantees from the department i know that ohio governor strickland has been in contact with the administration about this as well and therefore i ask you will you be considering re examining your department's policy in certain situations for call well in terms of long guarantees i don't think to be quite candid we can say we can give a lo guarantee to a company that's in litigation because of the we have a responsibility taxpayers and sometimes litigation puts the company at someone surnamed financial risk and so we have to serve again u ltimately to the on be that the taxpayer dollars are protected so when there is litigation and and we have to say well wait a minute we can't do this until that is settle the electricity most importantly a lot of jobs in our area of ohio to me and my constituents it would appear that the administration has declared a war on coal with the hopes of eliminating its use entirely yet i see no way that this country's energy needs can be met without coal how does the department of energy intend to bridge the gap both in terms of energy needs and jobs between now and ten years from now if the pursue it in coal usage were to be successful well we're investing quite a bit of money into learning how to use coal in a clean way so that we continue to use it as an example through our programs and recovery  act over four billion dollars of federal funds are invested in clean coal technologies over the last several years and that is actually match by industry of something six or seven billion dollars and so there is a very healthy partnership going on to develop better and better ways economically viable ways to capture the carbon and to prove that it's safe and geological sites in i think six or seven sites around the country so we are very heavily invested in that in all due respect mr secretary it looks like the administration is saying one thing and then doing something entirely different for example on february third the president announced an interagency task force on carbon capture and storage however only two days earlier the president revealed a budget with eighty five million cut to fossil fuel fuel research and development can you address this perception in a way that sheds light on the future for coal within the department of energy sure because of the as we've been making in the recovery act as you said four billion dollars over a couple of years is not chicken liver it's  taking i don't think they're mixed signals if you look at the amount of investments that we've been making over the last couple of years we fully intend to try to our goal is to develop this technology so it can be deployed seaquest ration demonstration projects by two thousand and sixteen there would be glad to give you a detailed list of the projects we have invested in and so you can see for yourself i would appreciate that thank you mr secretary but smith recognized thank you mr chairman in the interest of time when transmission capacity you know i'm going the president's request for a hundred forty four million dollars to research and develop smart grid technology how might you think we'd be able to capitalize on the wind resources of middle america and yet still lack the transmission capacity i think we need both simultaneously very complex problem as you well know  cabinet on this issue because we know it is a problem but i have to say quite frankly we don't have the clear solution yet shifting gears just a bit on the cap and trade i know that i've been contacted by numerous folks one person suggested when i raised concerns about the rail industry particularly in my district she suggested that hauling wind turb comes to the energy information administration estimating how much energy prices might skyrocket under cap and trade and to use someone else's words in description there given their mission to analyze the information to promote sound policy making and our responsibility to make sound policy decisions can you comment on what the that agency has done in terms of estimating the cost to the public sure i don't remember the exact number but it is you take the average family of four in the household an average household it was there was a range for members somewhere between thirty and forty five cents per day so multiply by three hundred sixty five days we're talking about hundred dollars a year added energy expense let me add though that if one simultaneously which you know some that's significant others it's not but if you simultaneously develop programs to help the american homeowners make whether rides or homes make make their homes more fish and the bills could actually go that i know it sounds cliche in this town to thank you for your service but i am grateful for your service thank you mr hawes recognize for just a few seconds is should be relatively quickly yucca mountain specifically what scientific analysis was used to determine that scientifically that was no longer the place to do it and where is it in the words it was or a deep scientific analysis group of scientists got together they did a report a study where was it who did it now i'd believe there was no deep i mean we face it i believe there is no scientific paraphrasing where is a scientific analysis and who made it well there are a number of things as the thing that the project unfolded over the twenty five years there was growing realization that there were  there were issues the original design for example there was a realization that there were bits of information coming along at the time and so for example there was a realization that the natural geography geography wasn't enough you need a titanium shield that would be many many billions of dollars more in order to protect the water influx and so these these we to withdraw that application so where was the scientific analysis of the term and where is it now the words we know there's a million issues in all this stuff there's a million issues on both sides but there was a decision made to withdraw the application where is a scientific  that i'd be glad to give you some of the things over the period of years that were growing concerns but in the end as i said let's let's look forward there are i believe much better options to lot of things that people heard in you know magazines in the scientific decisions were made based on that what was a scientific analysis and who made it to withdraw the application that's it's a relatively simple question there is no single report explaining what some of the read that made it look like perhaps not the wisest choice i'd be glad to supply you with that but if that doesn't count as scientific now says well you tell me was it is that you consider that scientific analysis to make a decision  scope or do you expect more scientific analysis if you can get back to me that is i haven't i'm not going to get it now we talked about the stimulus there's a thing that today that i just saw on politico which talks about about stimulus and says a number of democrats  are in the article furious that majority the grants from the clean energy program from last year so most have been awarded to forn awarded to foreign companies including one project they make specific mention to three thousand jobs created in china were returned to those jobs created in the united states you know i mean we've all heard about the stimulus it's obviously been a dismal failure and we've heard about the eighty million dollars web pages and the millions of dollars for political consultants that help individual candidates and millions of dollars going to congressional districts don't exist this just seems to be another example of that and you wonder why the american people know the reality is because here is just another example of things in the published edition for all of us in the it's on the web on possibly be met under any reasonable procedures and made it extremely costly there are far better ways to deal with nuclear waste than the mountain and i don't want to waste my time by getting into a lot of the details but i think the department of energy did the right thing that congress should recognize that i attempted when i first got here to try to write a progress so i think the decision was the right one the job and you'll for fifteen no i have very little time and you've had more than enough time i just want to comment on major issues that i think the department should spend a lot efficiency than we have we have put far more emphasis on educating the people about energy energy waste what is efficiency i find that most people most lay people don't even know what energy is let alone energy efficiency and i would love to see the department doing more i think it's an indictment to this was long before you got here but the only government program that really helped on energy efficiency did not come out of the department of energy but from the e p a with their green lights program for businesses they went around the country talk to businesses showed them what the payback time was to put an efficient lighting in their factories their shops their stores and  george it was about it here and i have sometimes two years payback time any businessman would an investment that's gets paid off in that short of time and i would i would really like to see the department of energy emphasize that much a servant of the people in that way i'm delighted with what you're doing with the appliance standards by the way that's very good also dr baird had some good points too and i won't repeat but i support was he he was suggesting to so i think the word was that you should probably hire or have the white house fire dr bartlett dr baird i don't know but i think he plans to run again with dr burgess not running again i'm not running again but i don't want to job i want a job i just would be happy to help in any way i can without pay that's a standing offer but there's so much to be done in the area of energy efficiency energy sources and energy education that i really think a lot of effort should go into that i'd be happy to say we're out of time here but i'd be happy to talk to  i'll take you up and that that you know there's not enough is in the department energy happy to have one more thank you dr even the employed one you're always a doctor you're always a crowd pleaser so thank you for being here the record remain open for two weeks for additional statements from members and the answers to any follow up questions the committee may ask the witness is excused and a hearing is