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WASHINGTON – At a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on responding to climate change in the electricity sector, U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) delivered remarks on the importance of grid resiliency and highlighted the failed Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) resiliency docket, which closed last month with zero recommendations for federal resiliency policy.

“I spent nearly ten years as a utility regulator at the North Dakota Public Service Commission,” said Senator Cramer. “Reliability was always at the forefront. I like to say we were doing resiliency before most people thought it was cool.”

“In light of the recent outages and brownouts in California, Texas and Upper Midwest, [FERC’s] lack of action is an abject failure to recognize the problem and provide answers,” continued Senator Cramer. “Commissioner Danly’s dissent really said it well: ‘The bottom line is this: as long as we have markets that procure the wrong types of generation and in the wrong quantities because the resources providing the greatest reliability benefits are insufficiently compensated, we will continue to see events like those in California and Texas.’”

Senator Cramer submitted the dissent into the record. Read it here.

He then pressed Ben Fowke, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Xcel Energy, which powers many homes and businesses in North Dakota, about reliable energy amid severe weather conditions. Senator Cramer pressed Mr. Fowke on the problems caused by an overreliance on renewable energy sources, which falter in adverse conditions and overwhelm other sources like natural gas. Such problems are far less likely to occur when using reliable sources like coal or nuclear energy.

“Mr. Fowke, as you know I’ve been a strong proponent of nuclear,”said Senator Cramer. “I would submit to you there’s not a better fuel in the world than nuclear for accomplishing the goals you want to accomplish. I can say that because it’s not parochial to me; we don’t have any nuclear in North Dakota.”

“We don’t have polar vortexes in my part of the country. We just have winter,” continued Senator Cramer. “They seem like vortexes to some people, but not where we live. And Xcel Energy is not just an electric utility, it’s a gas utility in my state as well as others. One of the things I worry about in regards to natural gas, not just as a bridge but as a substitute for good baseload electricity, is when we’re confronted with a -40° day – which is not as uncommon as people might think, certainly -30° is not and -20° is not – those are the days the wind rarely blows … If you’re confronted with either heating your home with natural gas or curtailing it to generate electricity to keep homes powered, which do you choose?”

“You always choose a rolling electrical blackout versus a gas out,” replied Mr. Fowke, “Because the difficulty of relighting homes safely is incredibly time consuming.”

Mr. Fowke went on to admit when gas supplies are restricted, the utility burns heating oil as a replacement, which is dirtier than the natural gas it replaces. Senator Cramer continued his remarks by noting ambitious emission reduction goals must be backed by a federal regulatory process that allows for innovation. The senator has helped introduce legislation to incentivize the development and deployment of innovative carbon sequestration technology.

“I don’t want to leave anything off of the table as a solution,” said Senator Cramer. “I’m all about your ambitious goals. I don’t think we can get to your ambitious goals of 2050 carbon free without some reforms to the permitting and citing process for building the infrastructure necessary.”

Senator Cramer concluded by promoting carbon capture technologies as a unifying area of climate policy. Minnkota’s Project Tundra, Denbury, and multiple ethanol plants are working on carbon capture projects in North Dakota.

“I don’t want to leave out carbon capture utilization and storage either,” said Senator Cramer. “If we don’t kill the innovators, I think we are not that far away from having even fossil energy be largely, if not completely, carbon free. I want to work with people on the solutions, not argue so much about the problems.” 

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) applauded Senator Cramer’s comments on carbon capture and aligned himself with those efforts. The two senators are part of a bipartisan coalition of EPW senators who have worked to advance these technologies. 

“Carbon capture has a very important role in our climate solutions,” said Senator Whitehouse. “There’s probably not a lot in energy policy where Senator Cramer and I agree, but here we have overlap, so that’s great.”

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