Chairman Lamb’s Opening Statement for Markup of H.R. 2986, H.R. 5374, and H.R. 5428
(Washington, DC) – Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittee on Energy is marking up H.R. 2986, the “BEST Act”, H.R. 5374, the “Advanced Geothermal Research and Development Act of 2019,” and H.R. 5428, the “Grid Modernization Research and Development Act of 2019.”
Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy, Rep. Conor Lamb’s (D-PA), opening statement for the record is below.
We meet today to markup three good bipartisan bills.
The first we will consider today, the Better Energy Storage Technology Act, or BEST Act, is authored by our colleague from Illinois, Dr. Foster. The bill will authorize DOE to conduct cross-cutting research, development, and demonstration of energy storage technologies. Specifically, the bill authorizes research aimed to advance technologies with varying energy storage durations, and ensures research covers a diverse set of technologies, including batteries, pumped hydro systems, and others. National labs, academia, private industry, and environmental groups were all engaged in the making of this bill. The bill is now endorsed by the Energy Storage Association, the Chamber of Commerce, ClearPath, and Duke Energy, just to name a few.
The next bill on the roster is H.R. 5374. As its title suggests, the Advanced Geothermal Research and Development Act of 2019 authorizes DOE to pursue research, development, and demonstration of geothermal energy technologies and is sponsored by the Ranking Member, Mr. Lucas. Amongst other activities, it requires DOE to explore oil and gas technologies that could be used for geothermal applications and advances the use of computer modeling to explore geothermal resources and systems.
The bill also authorizes DOE to establish up to three field research sites that will advance the development and demonstration of enhanced geothermal energy technologies in varying geographies across the U.S. This is a particularly important activity for spurring the exploration of this resource in the eastern U.S. The bill has received extensive stakeholder input and is supported by the Geothermal Resources Council, Chamber of Commerce, ClearPath, and Third Way. I appreciate Ranking Member Lucas’s effort to reach across the aisle to cooperatively construct this bill, and that is why the Chair of the Full Committee, Ms. Johnson, is an original cosponsor. I applaud their continued bipartisan work on this committee.
Finally, we will consider my own legislation: the Grid Modernization Research and Development Act of 2019. In order for our country to utilize all the new energy technologies that we are developing and moving to market, we will need serious advancements to our electric grid. This bill seeks to address the research and development required to make those grid advancements. I’ll speak more about this bill in just a minute, but I would like to thank my colleague from Washington, Ms. Herrera Beutler, for joining me in introducing this legislation.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support these bills and look forward to advancing them out of our Subcommittee today.
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