Ranking Member Lofgren Opening Statement for Bipartisan Full Committee Markup
WASHINGTON, DC—Today, the House Committee on Science, Space, on Technology is holding a full Committee Markup of H.R. 4755, the Privacy Enhancing Technology Research Act; H.R. 4824, the Carbon Sequestration Collaboration Act; H.R. 4877, the Abandoned Well Remediation Research and Development Act; H.R. 1069, the Clean Energy Demonstration Transparency Act of 2023; H.R. 3915, the Aviation Weather Improvement Act; and H.R. 4866, the Fire Weather Development Act of 2023.
Thank you, Chairman Lucas. Today the Science Committee will consider six bills that again demonstrate how both parties can come together to improve and advance our nation’s scientific enterprise.
The first item we will take up today is the Privacy Enhancing Technology Research Act. I want to thank Representatives Stevens and Kean for their thoughtful work on this legislation. This bill directs NSF and other relevant agencies to accelerate the development of privacy enhancing technologies. These technologies have the potential to vastly improve the way peoples’ privacy is protected when information about them is processed. It is a difficult challenge to get privacy correct in a way that allows for the effective use of information. This bill aims to strike that balance.
I am pleased that we are advancing H.R. 4824, the Carbon Sequestration Collaboration Act, which I am proud to cosponsor with Representative Baird. The bill would amend the carbon storage provisions in the bipartisan Energy Act of 2020 to support R&D on ways to sequester carbon in terrestrial ecosystems, agriculture, and forestry. Recent academic research has found that agricultural approaches that enhance the carbon uptake of soils have the potential for many positive benefits, including increased productivity and improvements in the stability of yields, something the farmers in my district could greatly benefit from.
The next bill we are marking up is the Abandoned Well Remediation Research and Development Act, which was introduced by Ms. Lee and Ms. Bice. This bipartisan bill creates a research, development, and demonstration program at the Department of Energy to identify and confront the problem of abandoned oil and gas wells in the U.S. As we transition to a clean energy economy, it is critical that we locate all of these wells and have the proper technologies to mitigate the harmful methane emissions from the potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of abandoned wells in our communities.
Then we will consider H.R. 1069, the Clean Energy Demonstration Transparency Act of 2023, of which I am a proud original cosponsor. The Department of Energy has received huge mandates over the past few Congresses from the sweeping landmark climate and energy laws.
The President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law established a first-of-its-kind Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which is tasked with centrally coordinating the Department’s larger-scale clean energy technology development. H.R. 1069 simply requires reporting on the activities of this new office. This bill will help us better manage our oversight responsibilities, and I thank Mr. Carey for sponsoring the legislation.
Then we will consider Representative McCormick’s Aviation Weather Improvement Act. The Amendment in the Nature of a Substitute to this bill is the product of bipartisan agreement and will complement a bill introduced by Representative Stevens that was included in the recently House-passed FAA reauthorization under the research title. I look forward to supporting this bill.
Lastly, we will consider the Fire Weather Development Act, introduced by Representatives Garcia and Caraveo. It will establish a program in NOAA to improve fire weather forecasting, detection, and warnings. I support this bill because it further enables the important work of an agency critical to our efforts to address the threats from wildfires.
I also look forward to eventually taking up a whole-of-government initiative to reduce loss of life and property through investment in wildland fire R&D and translation of research to operations, such as described in my bill H.R. 4584, the National Wildland Fire Risk Reduction Program Act.
I am excited to be considering these bills today and, on that note, I yield back the balance of my time.
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