The meeting will come to order. Good morning and welcome. With a bit ofves a challenge on the house floor. Within five minutes. Votes maylobal call be up to one and a half hours voting on the house floor. Statementeat opening written. And asked just it that it be put in the record. With the without objection. It is order. Moving forward we have three witnesses. You guys have five minutes for opening state. Thank you. Jee before i begin i want to briefly reflect on me passing of senator domenici. Former chairman of the Energy Committee who was a leader in this space. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge all those impacted by hurricanes harvey and irma, the loss of life and dozens nation devastation. I know i speak half of those in the room and american across the country when i say our slots and prayers are with those affected. We know the road ahead will not be easy, and we will be with you every of the way. It is good to see congress act swiftly we are ready to do our part as well. Its times like this that reminds us about how resiliency the electric grid is in our daytoday lives. Storms willrom the take time, but im inspired to the brave men and women have artie stepped forward to help. Crews are assisting in this effort. Never a sure companies they will not be penalized for restoring service and they had granted an extension so that people can focus on recovery. Refinery, the loss of there is an emergency pipeline waiver to help ensure the continued flow of gasoline to the northeast. We will keep everyone in our prayers. We must be mindful that developments not threatened to robustness or security of the grid. The resiliency of the grid in several ways. Congress interested with the responsibility to improve reliability standards for the grid in 2005. Will arendards physical and Cyber Security standards. Much of this is covered in my written testimony. I am going to speed ahead and say that reliable and resilient Great Britain are as the development of needed infrastructure, through its energyry of certain infrastructure, liquefied natural gas and hydropower generation, the lack of a quorum has rendered the committee unable to perform. For is now addressing the ferc is now addressing. For his efforts in all of these involveontinued to interagency and Public Private coordination. Ferc will continue to seek ways to improve the reliability of the electric grid. Thank you for the opportunity to be with you today. Now miss hoffman. You have five minutes, maam. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss with you electricity rail diesel reliability issues. The sector is in the midst of changes. I see little reason to expect that this process will slow down anytime soon. The fundamental challenge is to understand the process so that our nations electric infrastructure contains reliable, affordable and resilient. I would like to echo the andents by the chairman that our thoughts and prayers are there for those that are affected. Givesganization electrical expertise to fema as well. We have been engaged with recovery efforts. The effort the department has deploying 26s emergencystay operation centers, region and National Coordination center. We have coordinated 3 billion 3 Million Barrels of oil, or a supported state and regional fuel waivers under the jurisdiction of the deep ea of the epa. As secretary perry has noted, america is lost to have the in resources we have today. They should be recognized for their dedication and service. Issues explored numerous. We are seeking to inform policymakers and the electric sector and create a common focal point for all stakeholders. We do research at our National Laboratories and with our industry partners. We plan and mom to her for ,rotecting monitor the grid focus on resilience and Cyber Security. Conclusion to say in , we look forward to a in theful conversation electric system. The grad grid must function well and it must need a number of competing technical and economic requirements. Managing this change means we must think about the grid holistically. We must monitor the greatest characteristics and performance, developing a systematic way of looking ahead. Putting in new processes and practices and collaboration. Thank you. Mr. Cauley we face a. Of rapid change in the electricity industry driven by the abundance of natural gas, public policy, Market Forces and customer preferences. Understanding. America is focused on the. Hallenges rapidly changing strong actions and i am confident the Electricity Sector will enhance reliability and resilience. Remains of our system reliable and resilient and shows improved performance each year. This demonstrates the strong reliability requires constant vigilance now more than ever. Each year we conduct a long term reliability assessment that looks at the reliability of the system 10 years out. We also prepare a state of reliability report that looks at the grid performance over the latest year. Challenges,ed on and the increased reliance on natural gas and structure we analyze system events such as the loss of power from solar farms in california. Over the past six years the 50 largest events impact in the grant were caused by severe , resilience is a priority Going Forward. Recommend make recommendations on improve performance. Interconnected and depends on having the right combination of resources and transmission. A is important to maintain continuous supply in the right locations on the system. Intersect, emergency response, voltage control, and ramping for changes in demand. Units withl baseload onsite fuel have provided these services. New resources coming onto the system must replace the other that is being lost. Increasingly important from the system or it is to have visibility into resources. Their natural gas is reliable bothmendations identified to promote resilience and collaborate with canada and mexico on reliability. Id like to highlight several recommendations of my own. Shouldates and markets drive baseload generation into early retirement and provide tangible incentives for completing a diverse resource met. Should value and price enhanced resilience through fuel diversity. Policymakers should evaluate make electricity needs and ensure the Gas Infrastructure is secure from Cyber Security threats. They should require all resources to ensure the resources will perform in both normal and extreme conditions and finally holly policymakers should seek alternatives. To address the challenges for the more diverse resource mix industry stakeholders and policymakers much understand and plan for the rapidly changing resource sleep. Fleet. Thank you. I will submit my statement for the record. My understanding is there will be photos and i will submit it for the record. Objection, ordered. You. Not for the question and answer for some of this hearing. I will recognize myself for five minutes. Hurricane harvey hit my home state twice or it we never lost power at my home in sugarland. Some people have are without and louisiana and people in florida have no power. Power there is mold, and death as we saw in florida. Been busyt you have assisting with Hurricane Harvey and irma recovery efforts. The programs that we have in place to recover and to also prepare for storm events in the future . Ms hoffman we are looking at advanced technologies to helps energy. The inner toouting the power, etc. , take a look at and be proactive in our risk on for identifying where the outages are. If you remember customers usually have to call the utility to let them know the power is out. The achilles have been able to automate all of that. Each hurricane is different and the damages significant. What has been the wrong of during hurricane preparations . Ms hoffman it is the focal point of coordination between the government and ceos, the leaders in the electric in community. This allows for continuity of message so we are all on the same page, what the priorities are and what the activities and the needs are by industry to the highest level of the federal government and also industry, to make an Effective Restoration process. Must say it is working well. A few months ago we passed a 3050, how does this Insurance Plan health the state deal with things like harvey, irma and more hurricanes. Ms Hoffman Energy insurance thingng is an important to take a hard look at scenarios these things. How it affects of the Energy Resources and allows us to look at contingency and it thinks about how do we build in resilience in partnership with the state. In order to have a reliable electricity system we must protect our grid from Cyber Security rats. Participate inu the grid exercises. How do these types of exercises make the system more reliable and what else are you doing in terms of Cyber Security . Commission takes Cyber Security very seriously. Ferc is focused on ensuring reliability. We also have an office of hundred Energy Infrastructure that is trying to stay ahead of potential threats to the grid. That is no question whether from hurricanes or from Cyber Attacks are of the utmost concern to the commission. I call upon the gentleman from illinois, mr. Rush, for five minutes. In your professional opinion, do you think that Climate Change will continue to play a significant role in threatening . He nations infrastructure i would like your response. I think its important as we confront the storms and the impact that they have had on the group that we make sure that as transforms for the future we want to make sure we can bounce back from these types of verizons of events. As was mentioned, when the power goes out people suffer. I was on a call in which he youed about the fact that are hot and tired, your wet and if you dont have power you start to get upset. In response to the challenges that we have a reliable and resilient grid. It is important that we ensure that the reliability that our country has enjoyed can be maintained Going Forward. I believe it is the duty and responsibility of the electric leaningy to be forward and think about the different scenarios that will happen. Resilienceuild in moving forward and what can we do to support an Effective Restoration process, getting the lights on as ugly as possible. Climate changeg is outside my organizations expertise that we see in recent years, it seems that we are seeing an increase in the magnitude and severity of is an and the storms i think we have to think about in a preparations to think about how do we prepare for more extremes then we have seen historic we. Historically. What is in apparent in the congress or in both orinistrations, republican democrat, is there a sense of urgency about this . I laid out in my remarks some of the steps that we took to thetely to respond devastation that was rocked by Hurricane Harvey and irma. Rely on thatinly resilience of the grant grid. The two hurricanes there is a sense of emergency. It is forefront on our radar. I sense there has been a strong focus on results of the grid through the most recent administrations, and we are working hard on that. The 50 most significant events we have seen in the u. S. In the last five years are all weather related. We can invest more in protecting and hardening our system. In irma, recently invested 3 substationslevating , the equipment performs significantly better than the equipment that had been before. Theing to the codename dragonfly 20 im 2. 0. Dragonfly are you of monitoring this activity and do you have the tools to address this issue an order to prevent this from sabotaging our . Tronic are electric we are aware of the report and have been coordinating with other agents seize as well other agencies. We will adjust this matter is appropriate. Helpful if we could seek to coordinated to courtney with other agencies. Dragonfly has been a around for the last we have been aware of it for the last three years. It has characteristics that would make it opportune within the control systems. It is not the instances that we , they were picked up through traffic between utility systems and information going offshore. Any harm orone infiltrated the system jet but it is there and active. Texas, mr. Leman from barton. Im going to ask one chairman and then i will yield to anyone on my side. Many states are abducting renewable portfolio standards, and some of them are fairly aggressive. Is it possible to meet the same reliability standards if you go to a Generation System that is predominantly renewable . From what we are seeing, it is technically feasible that there are a lot of reliability can challenges. Caused a transmission line to trip, when a solar panel so that they thought it was a system collapsing so they shut down at the worst time. There has to be coronation, wind and solar do not inherently come with the controls to provide frequency response. They want to put out power. We have been working with offenders to show them some of the week this is an things that need to be done. In the short term answer is no, but it is possible longterm . It just requires a lot of coordination. We had a hearing last week or two weeks ago. Just a couple of questions to segue into what joe was saying. Electricity markets talked about there may be a need curtailn opportunity to the u. S. To keep the reliability of the grid. Careful, to be congressman. Enacted in congress 1978. We have heard from numerous stakeholders in review and potential reforms. Significant changes would require congressional action. Forf e steps that take. Takeerc and we hop some of these projects are located for the benefit of the investors over the grid reliability . It is something we are looking at. You saw part of the testimony that some of these qualifying facilities, isnt part of their review and is russian . See that is if that is something the commission could handle. I yield back. You. Eld back to i would like to yield my time to the gentlewomans florida. Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. I want to think the utility workers all across the country who went into florida and i know they went to texas to help to get the power back on. I had is off to them. They are making good progress. I think these extreme weather events, these two weather events ,n addition to other events require a modern, dramatic response to what is happening with the cost of the changing climate. These disasters are very expensive and it is time to make a dramatic in estimate in a modern grid, something that is more resilient, something that serves the needs of our citizens in a better way. We have the brightest minds here in america and put the technology to web to work. Whether that be a greater distributed energy. Grid, but these just or bitty grits, building in Renewable Energy is going to help us reduce the help of the changing climate. The Business Model in many states simply do not match the challenges ahead of us. The department of energy wants to be proactive on this but i dont know how we do that when we have seen proposed cuts from research,. Tration in we have to release we have to that. Nk about certainly, these proposed cuts to research and development are going to put us further behind. How do we keep up . Thank you for the question. Focused ontration is earlystage research. We are concentrating on max demising the effectiveness maximizing the effectiveness. We did provide a budget to the house and senate and we look forward to what congress provides back and what will be implemented for the 2018 appropriations. I hope the congress is listing and understand the huge cost if we do not address this. What we are facing with emergency packages, rising property insurance and taxes. Just the loss of life that we message this morning on the heels of these disasters is lets do more working together. The scientists we have out there and this is a real call to action. Yield back. D i the gentleman from north corona north dakota. Thank you for being here today. We need to respond to establish a path for generation, especially coal. Large coala is a generating state and im worried about the forced shutdown of generation especially with plants that have a useful life. It doesnt do anything to Energy Americas future position while increasing the cost of electricity for consumers. Speaking about my state, most of to utilities have a special concern were the consumers pay for the facilities whether they are running or not running. Any strategies you could deploy that web help to adequately compensate . Being from kentucky, i have seen firsthand the importance of coal fire generation and what it nots for the delivery of just affordable but reliable electricity, certainly growing up and see that, i have an what it places on our marketplace. What strategies, it we are undergoess our great this grid undergoes this transformation we evaluate the attribute of the fuel sources to ,eep what values they provide if there is a demonstrated need for reliability, whether or not those things can be compensated. The democratic nominee for the vacancy on the Commission Said last week that while currently she believed that there was not reliability, he admitted that we had to closely monitor and watch this and i echo those remarks. Watch going to closely reliability and whether we would need to take steps to ensure that need is at. Need is met. In most cases these efforts have been challenge, contested on the basis that they undermine your authority. How should we deal with this . Withere a way to deal this . Rights,ieve in states it is their prerogative to determine their sources of generation and generation mix when it affects interstate commerce, i think we have the authority to weigh in their. It is something we will look at closely and build a record. We will adhere to the science and engineering and make those to termination. Minute, iemaining want to talk about the role of cold Going Forward coal Going Forward. Capture, utilization, all the technologies that are very from but at this point not quite to marketability while at the goe time, how can doe through its advocacy find ways to go that bridge using the existing tools, especially considering we have tax reform coming up. Do you see any way for doe and congress to Work Together to build that bridge . We would love to continue to work with you on exploring additional ideas. Looking at job growth, and opportunity we will continue to industry. E coal frequency support and response thank you mr. Chairman. The gentleman from california. I want to bring to mr. Cramers attention north dakota has the biggest win potential resource of any state in the country, dont discount alternative energy in north dakota. I want to follow up on mr. Castor, we need to build more resiliency into the electric , Climate Change is one of the drivers. Our mission is to move forward to get the congress excited about a grid innovation and resiliency. Lets keep that line of communication open. Ms. Hoffman, i want to talk about the disaster. , are theretrike barriers to the sharing of resources between utilities that we can address here . I think the biggest barrier is allowing the resources to get to the location of where it needs to be as quickly as movement andical other things we are to do is accelerate the assessment time. Which goes down to information sharing. Understand what the damages and effectively move resources to respond. Cyber attacks are becoming greater threat, statesponsored the connection between dragonfly and russia. We will continue to focus on Cyber Security. Order,tion to fercs supply chain management, are there additional steps that we should be taking with regard to supply change management . Yes. It is one of the areas we should be felt sing on we should be focusing on. Looking atm vulnerabilities and Mitigation Solutions that also ways to get ahead of the game. To monitor intrusions and look for abnormal behaviors. We are looking at legislation that night and has your capabilities in that regard. There are several frameworks andcc, ifuding kd you know what they are. Is there room for improvement on those tools should they be upgraded regularly . We always should take a look at any tools for new technologies and get hillary to advance the utilization. It will help us in the long term to help define what does mean. Ency me industry of courtesy in the interests of courtesy i would get back to record. The gentleman from the commonwealth of virginia. I will submit some questions and i have for the record will try to abbreviate my russians my questions. It is clear that some states agree and are taking action within the juris diction jurisdiction. Given the current backlog of issues how high of a priority do c placing a competition . Hearing,ses of todays high, medium, or low . Walk and chew gum at the same time, so i was a high i would say high. This has led to a lack of investment in plants. Efficiency and upgrades. We have a lack of investment in plant and efficiency of grave. Upgrades. Authored threeve tools to streamline the resource program. Youyou provide a brief or overview. I am working on the legislative end what are you doing on the administrative end . We are working diligently to streamline the review and permitting ross asked permitting process. I will leave more than glad to have a conference is on all the list of activities of what we are working on. Ofi apologize that because hurricanes earlier in the week and now our compressed voting schedule i cannot get a link to your answer. Most were the two important questions, i yield act. I see no further members wishing to ask questions. I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today. I appreciate your patience. I will remind members that they have 10 Business Days to submit questions to the record. Submit their response within 10 days. The subcommittee is adjourned. We need to develop our infrastructure, along with folks throughout the branches of the government. I feel comfortable saying infrastructure should be a major focus. We have done a lot of work in this area. What are your priorities . Last night and it looks great and look forward to it. Tour press conference like this. Anybody else . Thank you. This is a look at a gathering and washington, d. C. The organizers are calling the mother of all rallies. According to the groups website, it is in support of the country into the president. Let us take a listen. Lets celebrate its all right lets celebrate its all right