WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, in a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, U.S Senator Angus King (I-Maine) questioned witnesses on opportunities to help reduce energy costs for consumers and maximize our existing grid resources, including through the potential use of time-of-day pricing and innovative financing mechanisms to facilitate household energy efficiency improvements. Later in the hearing, Senator King underscored the importance of energy efficiency efforts in the fight against climate change – stressing the need for the United States to maintain its leadership on energy efficiency research and to share innovative, clean, and efficient energy solutions with developing countries to reduce global carbon emissions.

“The grid itself is grossly inefficient – I just looked this morning at the New England grid. At 4:00 this morning it was 9,000 megawatts. At 4:30 this afternoon it’s going to be around 15,000 megawatts. That’s a 66% swing,” said Senator King in the hearing. “If we can have techniques such as time-of-day pricing, electric vehicles, energy storage in the home during the day—so you draw down your energy at night and use it during the day, in terms of things like space heating—we can drastically increase the efficiency of the grid… if you can use the current grid more efficiently, everybody’s price per kilowatt hour goes down. Because the cost of the grid is spread over the number of kilowatt hours – so I urge you to consider time of day pricing.”

“We can’t forget China and India,” added Senator King later in the hearing. “If we are going to deal with climate change, we’ve got to talk about those countries – and their right – I would say, to have the same kind of level of amenities that we have. We can’t tell them ‘you can’t air condition’ or ‘you can’t have a second car’. But how do we help internationally to guide them to be more efficient, because otherwise everything we do is just not going to meet the demands of the world climate situation.”

The hearing featured testimony from Daniel Bresette, Executive Director, Environmental and Energy Study Institute; Jennifer Layke, Global Director for Energy, World Resources Institute; Dr. Brian Motherway, Head of Energy Efficiency, International Energy Agency; and W. Scott Tew, Executive Director, Center for Energy Efficiency & Sustainability, Ingersoll Rand.

Last week, Senator King joined his colleagues in urging the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to release funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) as quickly as possible to Maine people who rely on its aid to pay for steep winter heating costs.

A forceful advocate for clean energy solutions, Senator King is the lead sponsor on a range of bills that encourage energy efficiency such as the Next Generation Grid Resources and Infrastructure Development (GRID) Act to improve energy independence, foster innovation, and leverage federal resources to support a more resilient and modern electric grid. In a May hearing, Senator King highlighted the grave dangers posed by rapidly rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere, and emphasized the importance of global collaboration in order to fully and effectively respond to the threats of climate change. In April, he published a column on Earth Day laying out the ambitious and attainable steps America must take to respond to the challenges of climate change. In February, Senator King took to the Senate floor to urge action on climate change. He strongly opposed the Administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.