President Donald Trump on Thursday officially nominated Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette to replace Rick Perry, who will resign as secretary of energy on Dec. 1.
Brouillette, a former auto-insurance lobbyist with some turn-of-the-millennium Washington experience on his rapidly expanding resume, must be confirmed by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee before he can be sworn in as Trump’s second secretary of energy.
The committee has scheduled a nomination hearing for 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 14.
“I am honored to be nominated by President Trump to serve as the U.S. Secretary of Energy, and grateful to Secretary Perry for asking me to join him at the Department of Energy over two years ago,” Brouillette said in a prepared statement Thursday. “If confirmed, I will further Secretary Perry’s legacy of promoting energy independence, innovation, and security for the American people.”
The Senate confirmed Brouillette as deputy secretary with a strong bipartisan vote in August 2017. Republicans still have a majority in the upper chamber and need only a simple majority to get Brouillette out of the committee and the Senate, and into the big office in the Forrestal Building.
Energy and Natural Resources Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has signaled her support for Brouillette.
On the other hand, at least two Democrats have already staked out some conditions for Brouillette’s confirmation. Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said Brouillette must acknowledge Nevada’s opposition to DOE plans for a nuclear waste repository in the state and also affirm the department’s commitment to remove 500 kilograms of weapon-usable plutonium from the Nevada National Security Site by 2026.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said late last month he wanted to chat with Brouillette about Perry’s refusal to comply with a subpoena from the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating impeachment of Trump over the president’s alleged attempts to condition congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine on political favors.
Perry, the former governor of Texas, served as energy secretary from March 2017. He announced his resignation on Oct. 17, saying he would return to Texas but not discussing a specific reason for his departure. Perry in recent weeks has been increasingly tied into the House’s Ukraine-focused impeachment investigation.
Before joining the DOE, Brouillette spent more than a decade leading Washington operations for the United Services Automobile Association of San Antonio, Texas. Prior to that, he was a vice president at Ford Motor Co. from 2004 to 2006. From 2003 to 2004, he was staff director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which sets policy for most branches of the Energy Department, but not the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. From 2001 to 2003, Brouillette was assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs in the George W. Bush administration’s Department of Energy, serving as the agency’s principal liaison to other parts of the executive branch and Congress.
“Brouillette’s management experience and understanding of energy issues is unparalleled,” the United States Energy Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group for the U.S. energy industry, said in a statement Friday lauding the nomination. “He gets it, from the granular details, to the long view of energy’s impact on national security, the value of innovation and global partnerships.”
Both Perry and Brouillette have used the same explanation for the Department of Energy’s efforts under Trump to resume licensing of the Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository in Nevada – it’s the law.
The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act assigned the Energy Department responsibility for permanent disposal of spent fuel from nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from federal defense operations. The law was amended in 1987 to direct that the waste be buried in the desert under Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
That waste stockpile now stands at roughly 100,000 metric tons of material, spread across dozens of sites in the United States. The amount of used fuel grows by about 2,000 metric tons per year.
During his May 2017 confirmation hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Brouillette said he is “in favor of following the law” on radioactive waste disposal.
“If the science is so definitive as to show that the site is unsafe, I don’t think it’s in the interest of anyone to place nuclear waste and endanger the lives of Americans anywhere,” he said under questioning from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.). Brouillette added, though, that “if the science were to show that it is safe, we would be obligated to follow the law.”
The George W. Bush administration Energy Department in 2008 filed its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the repository. The Obama administration defunded that proceeding shortly after taking office, eventually beginning a “consent-based” approach for siting nuclear waste disposal that was curtailed early when Trump assumed the presidency. The DOE and NRC have in the last three budget cycles under Trump requested funding to resume licensing, but so far have been blanked by Congress.
The House in June passed energy and water appropriations that zero out the latest request from the agencies, totaling about $150 million for fiscal 2020. Senate appropriators did the same in September, but the full chamber has yet to vote on the legislation for the budget year that began Oct. 1. The federal government is operating under a continuing resolution through Nov. 21 that keeps spending at prior-year levels.
Nevada’s state and federal leaders have strenuously objected to being forced to accept other states’ radioactive waste.
Nevada’s senators at the time, Cortez Masto and Dean Heller (R), both voted against Brouillette’ s confirmation as deputy energy secretary. Heller was defeated by Rosen in the November 2018 midterm elections.
Meanwhile, Mark Menezes, the undersecretary for energy, is the next DOE official in the agency’s order of succession after Brouillette, setting him up to step in as acting deputy. During a Senate hearing in September, Menezes argued that it is up to Congress to either fund licensing for Yucca Mountain or approve a different approach for managing the nation’s nuclear waste.
If Trump wants a permanent deputy secretary for the remainder of his first term, and possibly the beginning of a second, he would have to nominate one for Senate approval. One potential candidate for the No. 2 post at the agency, National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, would not say this week whether she would take the job if offered.
“I am honored to serve in the position that I have and I am honored to serve this administration and honored to serve the American people,” Gordon-Hagerty said. “I am perfectly happy in the position that I’m in now.”
