The Trump administration’s nominee to head the Energy Department branch overseeing renewable energy efforts is reportedly temporarily assigned to DOE’s Office of Environmental Management as a senior adviser.
Politico reported the interim status of Daniel Simmons of Virginia on Friday. Spokespeople for DOE and its nuclear cleanup office did not respond to requests for confirmation by deadline for Weapon Complex Monitor.
Simmons is not included in the most recent public organizational chart for Environmental Management, posted to the DOE website on June 1. That chart lists Roger Jarrell and Angela Watmore as senior advisers in the office. Jarrell left DOE in mid-June to accept a position with URS-CH2M Oak Ridge (UCOR), the department’s cleanup contractor for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.
An industry source said Friday he had not heard of Simmons being shifted to Environmental Management but wouldn’t be surprised by such a temporary posting. The Energy Department has to find a place to “park” the nominee while he’s awaiting confirmation as assistant secretary of energy efficiency and renewable energy, the source said.
A second industry source concurred. He noted Anne Marie White, shortly before being confirmed as assistant secretary for environmental management, briefly served as a DOE adviser outside of EM. The source suggested Simmons will have an office at the Environmental Management office while awaiting Senate action.
Simmons has recently served as the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. He was listed as acting assistant secretary for EERE as recently as last spring. Prior to joining government, Simmons was vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, and before that director of a natural resources task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council. He has also worked as a congressional staffer.
The Office of Environmental Management has a roughly $7 billion annual budget for remediation of 16 former and active nuclear weapons sites.
President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Simmons on June 14. The Senate received the Simmons nomination on June 18 and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee conducted a confirmation hearing on June 26. No vote has been set yet.
The website for the EERE office describes its mission as furthering American leadership in the transition to a global clean energy economy. The Trump administration has proposed slashing its budget from more than $2 billion in fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2018 to less than $700 million in fiscal 2019.
Simmons told the committee his work during the past year at the renewable energy office took him to a number of national laboratories, including the Idaho National Laboratory and Oak Ridge in Tennessee. He called the trips “educational and inspirational.”
