New Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm Has Advice for Texas — and for the Oil Industry

Energy, Federal Agency/Executive Branch, Green Jobs, Opinions, Policy, Sustainability

March 1, 2021

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by Will Englund (Washington Post) … Will Englund: This country is going to have more electric cars and trucks, and by 2035, it won’t be universal, but it is happening quickly. What is the oil sector in America going to look like when that happens?

Jennifer Granholm: Well, I would say that it’s going to be up to them. A lot of them understand that. They are now diversifying to be energy companies rather than oil and gas companies. I think Chevron just announced … that it was going to be investing $300 million in a fund to advance low-carbon technologies. So that’s a super important piece of an opportunity for them. But clearly, it’s going to be up to them to be more responsive to this. They could be investing in battery technology. They could be investing, obviously, in biofuels, which is different.

They can see where this is going. They can see that the globe is going to be demanding clean-energy solutions and carbon-zero solutions by 2050.

What are the means for diversification of their energy portfolios that will allow them to still be profitable? I think there’s plenty of opportunity if they are willing to go there.

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WE: Is there a role for the Energy Department to guide or direct or, you know, nudge the companies and the sector as a whole?

JG:From a technology point of view, we are eager to deploy a lot of the research that has been happening in the labs. So, for example, carbon capture and sequestration technologies, particularly, are being advanced out of the [National Energy Technology Laboratory] in West Virginia.

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JG: … And I fully expect that there will be a significant commitment to investing in the national grid, both expanding the lines for transmission, as well as investing in the resiliency of the grid. Both of those need to happen if we’re going to be adding all those electric vehicles and the demand for clean energy to our national grid.

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You saw, perhaps, the Brookings Institution report that said that these fossil communities are perhaps among the most ripe for the deployment of wind and solar technologies as well. So there are a boatload of clean-energy technologies that are consistent, perhaps, with the skills of those who have been doing mining, including, by the way, the mining of the critical materials that are necessary to build batteries. READ MORE

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