'We Need To Be Thinking About The Future': Kim Schrier Decries Clean Energy Tax Cuts In BBB

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During a House Energy Committee hearing before the Congressional Recess, Rep. Kim Schrier (D-WA) asked Executive Director of the Pipeline Safety Trust Bill Caram about infrastructure to support hydrogen as a clean energy source in the future.

Transcript

00:00Recognize the gentlelady from Washington's 8th district for five minutes for questions

00:06Thank you, mr. Chairman and thank you to our witnesses. I want to

00:11Start just by expressing how important pipeline safety is all over but particularly in my home state

00:19It's been about 26 years since the Olympic pipeline explosion in Bellingham

00:23Which is less than an hour from my district and this tragedy killed three young people

00:27Injured ate more and severely impacted the ecosystem and the nearby communities and

00:34Many of the safety protections and considerations currently in place stem from this tragedy

00:41So I just want to remind us all why we're here and why FIMS is so important

00:45I'd love to just turn to hydrogen a fuel that Washington state is heavily investing in

00:50Mr. Moriarty in your testimony. I discussed the role that your utility plays in the mid-atlantic hydrogen hub

00:58I was wondering if you could discuss the economic opportunities that this hub will bring to your region

01:06Thank you for that question

01:08We there was a great deal of excitement

01:10When mock 2 was announced which is our hydrogen hub in the Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

01:17New Jersey

01:19Our role as a company was going to be to use our safety town

01:24Which is where we have built little houses and little facilities and I say little it's just all the all the

01:32Appliances that you would use are in there and we use that to train our employees, but also to train first responders

01:39Our role at mock 2 was going to be to blend hydrogen into those energy sources

01:46To see how they reacted and then to help train our folks and others to do that

01:51So there was a great deal of excitement when it first started

01:56That is really cool that mock 2 has a safety town there to do practice and

02:02drills and I think it all makes all of us feel better

02:06And we we also

02:08We we also were very excited about and we are very excited about being a hydrogen hub in Washington state

02:16In particular in Washington where we have 70% of our power comes from hydropower and there

02:22It's clean hydrogen, which is particularly exciting. It's a way to store that excess energy

02:27And it's one of the reasons. I'm so disappointed that this administration and House Republicans are undermining the efforts toward

02:35Hydrogen, which is our important one of our important future fuels

02:40When they deliberate deliberated about the one big ugly bill they slashed tax credits for clean energy

02:47including weakening the 45 v clean hydrogen tax credit which is crucial to get this nascent hydrogen

02:55industry off the ground and

02:57And both mock 2 and the Pacific Northwest hydrogen hub may be on the chopping block according to some leaked documents

03:07um

03:07I will also note that one of the largest hydrogen hubs is in texas and

03:13That these exist in red states and blue states and all over and we need to be thinking about the future

03:18For the purposes of this hearing and safety

03:20I just wanted to discuss again the knowledge gaps that we still need to fill in in terms of how to integrate

03:27Hydrogen fuel into the existing pipeline systems and infrastructure through blending and later hopefully

03:34maybe even on its own and these

03:37Safety issues have not been fully discussed

03:40Mr. Karam. It's good to see you again

03:41We talked about some of these unknowns last time you were here and why further studies are needed

03:47To evaluate what modifications are needed to existing infrastructure to be compatible with hydrogen we didn't know a ton at the time

03:54It's been about a year we still haven't passed femsa

03:57Reauthorization and with a hydrogen blending study to address these safety concerns, and I was wondering

04:05If you could speak to the urgency of this the consequences of not filling those knowledge gaps sooner rather than later

04:12Yes, thank you for the question

04:14At this point operators do not need to report to anyone including femsa or their state regulator if they are blending hydrogen into their system

04:23As long as it's below 50 percent

04:25So we don't really know how urgent this is because we're not aware of how many operators are blending hydrogen into existing systems

04:34um

04:34I will say that the knowledge gaps and research gaps and regulatory gaps that we discussed last time

04:41Um are are largely still present hasn't been a lot of progress made as far as I know

04:47Well, I hope the way we discover the problems isn't through a catastrophe at safety town

04:53And figuring out where there are gaps in our knowledge and pipelines

04:57So I want to thank you and I will yield back unless you want to use those six seconds

05:01You looked eager to say something. No, okay. I will yield back. Thank you

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