Secretary of Energy on Whether Biden’s Climate Legacy Will Survive Trump

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And now, to the United States, where an incoming Trump administration is vowing to unravel parts of President Biden’s climate legacy. But outgoing Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is optimistic about the lasting impact of what they’ve done to protect the environment. And she joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss it now.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Secretary Granholm, thanks so much for joining us. At the beginning of the Biden administration, the president set out some fairly ambitious goals. He wanted to be cutting gas emissions, greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, reaching net zero carbon emissions by no later than 2050. Here we are at the end of his term, kind of progress report. Where are we?

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, U.S. ENERGY SECRETARY: Yes, we are on track to — he had another big goal, too, which is to get to 100 percent clean electricity on our grid by 2035. So, by 2030, we will have cut just because of the two basic laws that were passed during the Biden administration, the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, those two bills will mean that we are on a path to cut by 40 percent our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and we will be at 80 percent clean electricity by 2030 on our electric grid. That doesn’t account for, of course, what the private sector is doing separate from that, what governments, local and state governments are doing. So, we’re very, very confident and honestly very excited that we have seen so much progress in this brief four years, thanks to the president’s agenda.

SREENIVASAN: So, a lot of times people forget that the impacts from one administration will likely be felt in the next one because it takes time to get things started and running. So, what are the kind of ripple effects that you see Americans benefiting from in the next couple of years?

GRANHOLM: The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, was only passed two years ago. But since that time, and since the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law, we have seen over 900 announcements of factories that are coming to the U.S. or expanding in the U.S. Those announcements, some of them have been has — have moved to ground breakings. Some of them have moved to ribbon cuttings where they’re actually opening up and hiring people, but the vast majority of them are still in track. So, we will see. And this is — obviously, this happens, this — the announcements continue to happen and continue to roll out. So, the Trump administration — under the Trump administration, they will see a huge number of ribbon cuttings of people being hired because of the laws that were passed. And, you know, that’s good for America. It’s good for the planet because those particular investments, 81 percent are going to communities that have below average weekly wages, and 86 percent are going to communities that have below average college graduation rates. So, across America, we’re going to see the benefits of this administration bleed over into the next.

SREENIVASAN: There’s also sometimes a gap between what a policy does or how it’s framed versus what people actually see. And we saw this election was, you know, inflation and the cost of eggs was really the thing that was on top of mind for so many people. And I think one of the questions that people might have is OK. fine. So, you’ve got this sort of big ideas, but why is the price of my energy going up, right? If you look at the stats, I mean, the retail price is up about 20 percent or so over the last four years. And when will we see that turn the corner and come down?

GRANHOLM: We know that demand for energy is increasing and when demand increases and the generation doesn’t increase as fast, you have price increases. So — and that’s going to continue because, first, all of these data centers that are coming online, which will require a huge amount of energy from our grid. Second, the transportation system is being electrified, and that means more electricity demand from the grid. Third, all those factories I’m talking about, all that economic activity, is going to cause the demand for electricity to rise. So, this is the question is how can we keep up with that? So, the good news is that, again, these laws have created a huge amount of incentive for the build out of clean electricity. So, this year alone, we will be adding 60 gigawatts, which is effectively 30 Hoover dam’s worth of clean power to our electricity grid because of those incentives. That’s more than double what we have ever added to the grid. That trajectory will still go up. Clean power is the cheapest form of power. You don’t have to pay for the fuel of the sun or the wind. And therefore, we get more clean energy, prices will begin to stabilize. But it is true that the demand will cause upward pressure on pricing. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve asked the hyperscalers who will be building out these data centers to BYOP, bring your own power. If you’re going to build out a big data center, bring the power and bring clean power with it so that the rest of the world — the rest of the country doesn’t have to pay for your power needs.

SREENIVASAN: I know we have a goal to try to move towards renewable energy. But when — what — when will that mix significantly change? Because right now, even — we still seem to be in the investment phase, you know, renewable still account for an incredibly small fraction compared to all the oil and natural gas that the United States uses. So, as we move into this more energy intense times, and let’s say people have more electric cars and they need to plug in, is the primary source of that energy still going to be fossil fuel driven?

GRANHOLM: Well, fossil fuels will still play a part, clearly. We — our goal is to get to net zero by 2050. So, we have 26 years to be able to get there. And at the rate we’re going in terms of adding clean power, we will be able to meet that moment. We also have technologies to reduce the carbon emissions from fossil fuels, and that’s part of what the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law have been incentivizing as well. But as I said, we’re going to get to 80 percent clean electricity on our grid by 2030, and then 100 percent by 2035. That’s because, again, of these incentives. So, we’re — we are moving in this direction, and these laws, which were the biggest and the most — I don’t know the most comprehensive energy — clean energy laws in the world, certainly in the U.S. history, but in the world, to cause all of this investment and all of this generation to come online. So, people should feel comfortable that we’re moving in the right direction. And I don’t think we’re going to see Congress pull back on them because of these 950 some odd factories, 80 percent of them are in red districts. So, once members of Congress see people being hired for future facing jobs like building solar panels or electric vehicles or the batteries for electric vehicles it’s difficult to undo that. It would be political malpractice, frankly, to undo that.

SREENIVASAN: That’s probably an accurate assessment given where the money has gone. But we also have a president-elect who has said, in his words, he wants to terminate the green news scam and rescind all unspent funds from the IRA and redirect energy incentives into, quote, “real infrastructure.” I don’t know how much of that is — you know, what he likes to say on Truth Social or his social platforms and how much of this will translate into policy. But how do you ensure that the work that you’ve been doing for the last three or four years is not overturned by Congress, which seems pretty happy to go with their candidates?

GRANHOLM: Yes. I mean, I understand the political rhetoric, but the reality on the ground is much more difficult to undo. So, for example, 18 members — Republican members of Congress have sent a letter to the incoming administration saying, do not undo the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act because our districts are seeing so much activity and our people are benefiting from it. One portion of the of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act included rebates to citizens. It goes through the states. 49 of the 50 states have said, we want these programs and they have gotten their administrative funds and put in their applications to make it happen. So, it will be difficult to undo those. And we’re also making it — I mean, we’re trying to get as much of the funding out the door as possible. The Department of Energy was given 60 new programs to administer, over a hundred billion dollars. 98 percent of those programs will have had at least one round of funding. Once that funding has been committed, legally it’s very difficult to undo as well. So, both from a legal point of view as well as a political point of view, I think — as well as just common sense. I mean, we’ve got now industrial policy that is doing a lot of what the Republicans in Congress have been talking about, which is bringing back supply chains and manufacturing in the United States, making sure we’re doing the critical minerals for those batteries that are necessary. All of this economic activity from soup to nuts upstream, downstream of the economy, it’s happening now. And so, undoing that would be really unwise.

SREENIVASAN: You mentioned that there were a lot of different programs that were authorized in the last three or four years through these different pieces of legislation. And, you know, there has been some concern of whether or not these funds are going out the door too fast and whether there are enough checks and balances, your own office of inspector general they said in a recent report that there was a — that you rescinded a hundred-million-dollar infrastructure investment and jobs act grant award after you found that the grantee was under investigation for exporting equipment to a Chinese company. I mean, how do you make sure that as you are sending large sums of money to different places that it isn’t going into the wrong hands?

GRANHOLM: Yes. No, this is a great question. We have a really rigorous process that has been set up to make sure that we are not benefiting China, for example, in any of the grants that are going on. It is set up — it was set up at the time at the start of the deployment of these funds. This is — every — it’s not just the Department of Energy, but every agency inside the federal government has really got a close relationship with their inspector generals to make sure the processes are in place to ensure that no monies are misspent. And that is what we have done. There’s been no finding of any misspent money. We — part of the process is to pull back funds if you find out later on that there is a problem. So, no taxpayer dollars have been spent in a way that benefits our economic adversaries.

SREENIVASAN: You know, there are technologies that we know and understand now, and then one of the things that the Department of Energy has been able to do through the national labs is invest in research of some things that we don’t yet understand. And so, it — traditionally, government has taken that risk where the private sector would not. And I wonder how is it — how do you convince kind of a very market sensitive public and a kind of politically sensitive public that it is worth making investments in the study and pursuit of technologies of something that might not deliver you a return this quarter or even this year or this decade, but it’s — that it’s still important?

GRANHOLM: Yes, really important. We have had long bipartisan support of our labs. We have 17 national labs that are pursuing the most fundamental questions of science to ensure that we have the best and most efficient materials to manufacture these products that we are going to be using to bring down the cost. To do modeling. We have the fastest computers in the world. It is really a competitiveness issue. We do not want to cede the territory of research and discovery to our competitors across the world. We’re really proud of the fact that we have the best and tools in the world for research and discovery. And it’s not just in the energy space, these same tools, like the Exascale computers, which are the biggest and fastest in the world in the Department of Energy Labs, they’re also discovering ways to cure people of significant illnesses, helping to find the best strategies for reducing — you know, for COVID, for example, that was part of the — vaccine discovery was made in the Department of Energy labs because of our tools. So, both from an economic perspective, competitiveness perspective, as well as to finding the solutions to the deepest problems of our time, really important. One of the things the labs have been working on are ways to bring down the cost of some of these clean energy technologies. So, we’ve launched a series of Earth shots to bring down the costs, for example, of clean hydrogen or offshore floating wind platforms or, you know, enhanced geothermal technologies. These are all, you know, ways that we are looking at. So, that maybe down the road, to your point, we’re going to see the price drop by 90 percent for these technologies, which in turn will make sure that we have the power we need to move forward. And the final thing I would say about this is our labs — one of our labs was the — it was the first lab in the world to prove that we can achieve fusion ignition. Fusion is nuclear. When you put — you know, we shove atoms together and atomic particles together to achieve energy as opposed to fission. When you split atoms, which is our traditional nuclear power comes from fission, but if we can achieve fusion at scale, that is a huge solve for our clean energy. It’s basically represent — replicating the sun on Earth in a way that’s contained, but produces no atomic, no radioactive waste. It’s really exciting the breakthroughs that are happening in our labs.

SREENIVASAN: The person who’s coming into the job right after you, President-Elect Trump has nominated Chris Wright, who’s an oil industry CEO as his nominee for energy secretary. And there’s some things that he’s said explicitly in the past being kind of a climate change skeptic. He’s, you know, said there is no climate crisis. And I wonder what makes you think that some of these steps that your Department of Energy has taken will not be rolled back? What’s your advice to him just to make it very simple math to continue on this trajectory?

GRANHOLM: Yes. I mean, he comes from the fossil fuel industry. So, he’s going to be supportive of drill, baby, drill and what the president has said on that, and I’m sure that’s why he was nominated. But he’s also been — he’s played a role in investing in geothermal, which is exciting. He has sat on the board of a nuclear startup. That’s exciting. I’ve read that he has done some work in solar as well. So, if the Republican strategy is really — as many Republicans will say, and all of the above strategy, then that would — and one would expect that both the opportunities that have been built around renewable energies as well as what they will continue to do on fossil fuels, both sides may coexist. I will say I do have optimism about this. I think that there are certain areas where we do have this bipartisan support, and that tells me that a lot of the work that the department has been doing and a lot of the support that the department has in the Republican Party. We have a huge — you know, we — the National Nuclear Security Administration is under the Department of Energy. And that means all of the nuclear stockpile occurs under the DOE’s ambit. There’s support for that on both sides of the aisle. There’s support for our labs on both sides of the aisle. There is support for a lot of the clean energy technologies on both sides of the aisle. So, I am optimistic that much of this will remain. And I think that it’s true that the support of Congress will have — will remain bipartisan for the Department of Energy.

SREENIVASAN: I know the Nuclear Security Administration is under Energy, and the START Treaty between the U.S. and Russia, I mean, that’s one of the last remaining ones, and that’s supposed to lapse in February of maybe next year — or ’26. So, what are the consequences if it we’re — if that does lapse?

GRANHOLM: Well, clearly, we need to have a global nuclear control system, regimen, and it starts with the United States and Russia. Although, of course, there are other countries who are very much active as well. But if the U.S. and Russia can demonstrate that responsible nuclear caps validation inspection, can keep our — that we’re confident as countries, as we have been, that our control will keep the world safer, that we have a mutually — a mutual interest in making sure that it doesn’t get out of control. So, both from just you at a bilateral political point of view, but also as an example on the multilateral front. I think that everybody wants to see that happen. And, you know, hopefully, the incoming administration, they have a different relationship with Putin. Hopefully, they’ll see the benefit of renegotiating — of restarting negotiations on the next new start or whatever the version is that they see as important. I have some — you know, I’m hopeful because I think at the end of the Trump administration, last time we — it was — the new START agreement was extended for five years in 2021 by President Biden. But at the end of the Trump administration, there was some discussions beginning to be able to do something like that. So, I’m hopeful that really rational minds understand the importance of nuclear safety, nuclear security and caps on nuclear weapons.

SREENIVASAN: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, thanks so much for joining us.

GRANHOLM: Thank you.