Securing America's Future/Supply Chain Solutions for a Clean Energy Economy: U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing

The Energy and Environment and Climate Change Subcommittees of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing on November 16th titled:

Securing America’s Future: Supply Chain Solutions for a Clean Energy Economy (“Hearing”)

The stated purpose of the Hearing was to examine opportunities to develop domestic supply chains for clean energy technologies and their components.

The Committee on Energy and Commerce staff transmitted a November 12th memorandum (“Memorandum”) to Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change and Subcommittee on Energy members and staff addressing in some detail a number of issues that would be discussed at the hearing. The components of the Memorandum include:

• Background
  • Biden Administration greenhouse gas reduction targets
  • Achieving greenhouse gas targets will require a significant rise in clean energy deployment
  • A dramatic expansion of clean energy supply chains will be required
  • Clean energy supply chains are either nascent or geographically concentrated in other countries
• Clean Energy Supply Chains
  • Onshore Wind
  • Offshore Wind
  • Solar
  • Batteries
• Critical Mineral Supply Chains
  • U.S. government has identified 35 critical minerals vital to security
  • United States relies on 100 percent net imports for 14 critical minerals
  • Wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, and other clean energy technologies rely on critical minerals
  • The energy sector will be the leading consumer of certain critical minerals in the coming decades
  • Certain critical minerals produced by the United States may be exported due to lack of domestic processing capacity
• Developing domestic supply chains
  • Investing in supply chain buildout and resilience, manufacturing capacity, and materials innovation can ensure the United States can produce clean energy technologies
  • Various supply and demand-side policies have been proposed to support supply chain development
  • Developing U.S. supply chains does not solely mean producing new products or materials
  • End-of-life recycling of clean energy technologies and their components will be critical going forward

The following witnesses testified at the Hearing:

A link to the Memorandum and the witness testimonies can be found here.