An Energy and Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday featured a high-ranking Department of Energy official, who provided insight into the agency’s current thinking on renewables, the Hanford nuclear waste site and energy efficiency rulemaking.
Democrats at the Energy Subcommittee hearing — which focused on eight energy and building efficiency bills — had a rare opportunity to question Jeff Novak, DOE’s acting general counsel, on a variety of controversial actions taken by the Trump administration.
Several Democrats were interested to hear why the administration has been on a tear against renewable energy, most recently issuing a stop work order on the nearly completed Revolution Wind project off the Rhode Island coast.
“I think the answer there, it’s not ‘all of the above.’ It’s ‘best of the above,’ and the best of the above is always context dependent,” said Novak. “There are certain contexts in which particular generation makes a lot of sense, and there are other contexts in which it doesn’t.”
