The House energy committee is accusing the Energy Department of overstepping its authority in making President Obama’s climate change agenda its core focus, aligning its spending priorities with an international climate deal reached in December.
“I might add that the administration has chosen to make climate an agency priority without any statutory authority from Congress directing [the Department of Energy] to focus on global warming, as part of the Paris agreement, a nonbinding agreement,” said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Kentucky, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy and power subcommittee.
Whitfield on Wednesday held the panel’s first hearing on the agency’s fiscal 2017 budget request, saying although the GOP majority agrees with some of the department’s budget priorities, most of it poses significant problems.
“But on many areas, the direction which this agency is taking with its energy policy I personally, respectfully disagree,” he told Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, who was testifying at the budget hearing in defense of his agency’s budget.
“Most significantly this budget continues to reflect the president’s priority to treat climate change as the number one issue facing America and is DOE’s overriding concern,” Whitfield added.
The most contentious piece for the committee is the $2.9 billion increase in proposed spending to support renewable energy over nuclear power and fossil energy. Whitfield said much of the new spending would go toward an international agreement the president made after the Paris deal was struck in December, called Mission Innovation.
The Mission Innovation priorities are likely an overreach by the administration in linking its policy priorities to advancing clean energy under an offshoot of the Paris deal, Whitfield said. The goal of the 19-nation accord is to reduce the cost of renewable energy while improving their ability to replace fossil fuels. Many scientists blame the burning of fossil fuels for causing the Earth’s temperature to rise, resulting in sea-level rise, drought and more severe weather.
Those priorities have led to a 21-percent increase in the overall budget, Whitfield said. He said clean energy development and building a more efficient power system can be achieved through private companies backed by federal research money. “Not a top-down government mandated approach,” he said.
“Yet, almost everywhere in this budget, we see [the Energy Department] trying to expand its role and impose its own preferences on the private sector,” Whitfield said.
Moniz said the goals of Mission Innovation are “long overdue,” adding that business groups in 2010 recommended that the Energy Department triple spending on research and development for clean energy. He said the cost of funding the program is nothing compared to the benefits that come from research.
“I think the innovation agenda really has very substantial bipartisan support,” Moniz said.
