WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy held a hearing titled Scaling for Growth: Meeting Demand for Reliable, Affordable Electricity.

“In the coming years, it’s critical we produce the power needed to meet the demands of the electric grid, while also powering the data centers that are being built to support the critical advancement of AI technology,” said Chairman Latta. “During yesterday's Energy Subcommittee hearing, we discussed ways to increase baseload power generation, support our grid, and ensure the availability of affordable and reliable energy for American households and small businesses.” 

Watch the full hearing here. 

Below are key excerpts from yesterday's hearing:

Representative Rick Allen (GA-12): “The United States has an abundant energy supply, and the question is not, do we have enough energy resources, but can we produce energy at the levels needed to meet the nation's future demand? My state of Georgia, the top state to do business in 12 years in a row, and with that new manufacturing and data centers are coming to the state. This is leading to high demand for the grid, and we must continue to ensure we can provide reliable, affordable energy as we power our nation's needs. In my district, the 12th District of Georgia, we have plant Vogel, the largest nuclear energy clean power station in the country. Nuclear injury will play a critical role in meeting our growing needs to ensure US leadership in the next generation economy.”

Representative Troy Balderson (OH-12): “It's been talked a little bit about here this morning. PJM's existing installed capacity mix is overwhelmingly made up of dispatchable power generation, such as natural gas, nuclear and coal. However, 97% of PGM's queue capacity comes from renewable generation. Mr. Haque, in, your testimony, you note that unlike traditional thermal generation renewable resources do not provide certain essential reliability services that are necessary to balance and maintain the power grid. Do you have any concerns with the lack of dispatchable power generation entering PJM's interconnection queue and are there enough of these projects to offset premature retirements and meet rising growth demand?” Mr. Haque: “Thank you, Representative. Great to see you. We certainly have concern with not having dispatchable resources in the generation interconnection queue and the grid is a machine and it is a machine governed by the laws of physics. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, has published papers and published analyses that say that we need essential reliability services. Which are things like control, ramp and voltage and things that as a lawyer, I don't quite understand, but that are necessary. So, we do need our spinning mass resources. We do need our thermal resources, nuclear, coal, gas to continue to run a power grid the size of PJM interconnection. Having said all that, we need these dispatchable resources to find their way in the system. We can integrate more renewables onto our system.”

Representative Julie Fedorchak (ND-AL): “Mr. Brickhouse, you're seeing significant demand increase. Do you expect that you can meet that demand with renewables alone? 

Mr. Brickhouse: “No.”

Representative Fedorchak: “How about you, Mr. Black?”

Mr. Black: “No, not renewables alone.”

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