Ranking Member Kaptur Statement at Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the Department of Energy Hearing

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Ranking Member of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the subcommittee's hear on the fiscal year 2025 budget request for the Department of Energy:

- As Prepared For Delivery -

Thank you, Chairman Fleischmann. I appreciated working with you to develop and pass our bipartisan fiscal year 2024 bill. I truly hope that we can continue in our subcommittee's bipartisan partnership for the fiscal year 2025 bill.

Thank you, Secretary Granholm, for joining us today. We are so grateful for your service and leadership on these issues vital to America's future.

Today we are here to discuss the Department of Energy's fiscal year 2025 budget request.

Energy security is national security. Since World War II, America paid a terrible price for its unconscious slide into foreign dependency on imported energy. Our nation's path towards U.S. energy independence in perpetuity is clear, steady, and successful to date.

Putin's unprovoked war against Ukraine clearly highlights the importance of energy security. Russian manipulation of oil markets and the sharp escalation in geopolitical risk in the Middle East has oil markets on edge. Never again should America depend on foreign adversaries to fuel our cars and power our homes.

44 years ago, as our nation's economy tanked due to the first Arab oil embargo, President Carter and my predecessors in Congress created the U.S. Department of Energy. With their vision and steadfast bipartisan commitment, our nation has made progress in attaining energy independence. Over the last 40 years, America has made remarkable progress through the expansion of domestic oil and gas production and developing new, cheaper clean energy sources, such as biofuels, solar, thermal recovery, and pushing into new energy frontiers of fusion, advanced hydrogen, and energy storage.

U.S. petroleum imports peaked in 2005, and for the last four years, the United States was a petroleum net exporter. In fact, for the past six years in a row, the United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time in history.

Natural gas exports from the United States reached a record high in the first half of 2023. Last year marks the third consecutive year in which the United States supplied more liquified natural gas to Europe than any other country.

Last year, overall biofuels production capacity reached a record level, with fuel ethanol representing 79 percent of that capacity. That is a win for farmers and for having an alternative source of energy.

However, for sustained U.S. energy security, our nation must pursue an all-of-the-above energy strategy. We must also invest in clean energy to diversify our energy portfolio. Clean energy technologies will lower the costs for consumers, create good paying jobs, and help address the climate crisis.

We know this approach works. Over the last 12 years, DOE's investments have driven down the costs of clean energy. Onshore wind costs have dropped 69 percent. Solar PV costs have dropped 89 percent as multi-layer solar technologies become more powerful and advanced.

Energy drives our private sector's ability to flourish in a modern economy. Millions of living wage jobs attend to energy production, conservation, and the skills of a workforce working 24/7 to power our nation. Imaginative energy technologies are being created by America's amazing inventors in new building materials, solar and electrified windows, biofuels, advanced nuclear, fusion, hydrogen, geothermal and thermal heat recovery, and offshore wind and wave energy, to name a few. This year, the movie Oppenheimer won Academy Awards – that is the world in which our subcommittee lives and works.

Out subcommittee, on both sides of the aisle, knows how important it is that we continue to support DOE's balanced portfolio of transformative investments – including energy efficiency and renewable energy – to develop clean, affordable, advanced, and secure American energy.

In other parts of DOE's budget, the National Nuclear Security Administration assures our nation's nuclear security assets – including the excellence of our nuclear Navy around the globe – are modern and ready, acting as both a deterrent and to safeguard our nation's security. With Vladimir Putin's recent reckless threats about launching nuclear weapons and former President Donald Trump's appeasing reaction, we must maintain strategic investments as an affirmation of American will to protect and defend our people and assure our nation's security.

However, given the evolving nuclear security landscape, I am concerned with proposed cuts to nuclear nonproliferation programs. These investments are crucial to enhancing the nation's ability to prevent adversaries from acquiring nuclear weapons and to respond to nuclear or radiological incidents and accidents domestically and abroad.

With that, I'll close my remarks, and I look forward to discussing this request.

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