‘DIVERSIFIED ENERGY SYSTEM’ NEEDED, SAYS DOE SCIENCE NOMINEE

Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
12/13/2013

President Obama’s nomination to Under Secretary of Science, Franklin Orr, largely breezed through his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee this week. He faced a few questions from senators about his qualifications for the post—including a question from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va) about whether he believes in an “all of the above” energy strategy and if he agrees with a forecast from the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration that 35 percent of the energy mix will come from coal for the next two to three decades. “The diversified energy system is exactly what we do want,” Orr responded. “We need to have a variety of primary energy resources and a variety of ways to transform those into the energy services that we all use.”

But Manchin continued on to express skepticism about carbon capture and sequestration, noting that there is no project currently in the commercial scale, and pointed to $8 billion dollars for research and development that he said has so far has been untouched by the Department of Energy. “I don’t understand how not one penny or one award or one grant has been approved for new fossil research or technology or anything driven towards that direction to find the new technologies,” Manchin said. “How are you going to find the technology if you don’t partner up with the private sector to spend some of that $8 billion and try to move the ball forward?” Orr replied: “I know only broad outlines from the outside, but I do understand that there is work in progress to invest those dollars. And if I’m confirmed then this will be an area where I’ll be happy to work with you and communicate with you on what’s going on.”

Orr is a Stanford fellow, and said in his opening statement that his early career was spent working on enhanced oil recovery with CO2. “So that led me into work on carbon capture and storage, and that’s been a big focus for my research for the past 15 years,” he said. He also worked on a large energy research project that looked at ways to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy use by much more efficient conversions to some primary resources into energy services,” he said. Other nominations that were considered at the hearing included Jonathan Elkind as Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs; Rhea Suh as Assistant Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks; and Tommy Beaudreau as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Policy, Management and Budget.