Watch Senator King’s questioning HERE 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King today laid out his goals for achieving a clean energy future and urged the Biden Administration to continue taking action. In a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, King asked Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk to work with a sense of urgency on his three main priorities: “number one, storage, number two, storage, and number three, storage.” Senator King also pressed Turk on the administration’s work to ensure federal funding is being used effectively to support future storage developments.

The questioning came shortly after Senator King sent a letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm highlighting the need for a broad variety of energy storage technologies. 

“I think that the three essential priorities to getting us to a clean energy future are number one, storage, number two, storage, and number three, storage,” said Senator King. “You are astride a whole series of provisions of the infrastructure bill involving research, development for storage technologies. I guess, the first thing is to get from you, I hope, a sense of urgency about this.”

“So there is an absolute sense of urgency on this, and not just for the near term storage, the battery technology, but long duration energy storage, as well,” replied Deputy Secretary Turk. “It was one of our very first, or second Energy Earthshot that we put out a very aggressive goal to drive down those costs of long duration energy storage. Because we will need to have that in our tool kit, as well.”

“We cannot just put all of our eggs in the lithium-ion basket. I hope that there is a diversity of research on other technologies,” continued Senator King. “We had a testimony here, a fascinating testimony, about iron oxygen, which I think is happening in West Virginia, and molten salt, and old-fashioned pump storage. I am very much hopeful that the Department will have a wide aperture in terms of the technologies that you are looking at.”

“Absolutely. There is a wide variety of really impressive technologies, a lot of them that have been developed in our labs, or in partnership with private companies out there,” agreed Deputy Secretary Turk. “As you referenced in the letter, and thank you very much for that letter, the first 2.8 billion dollars that went out on battery manufacturing did just have lithium. It was open to other types of technology, but those were the ones that our team – these are civil servants making these judgements – felt were most mature for that first tranche. What we've said is let's go back with the second tranche, which we’re trying to get out as quickly as we can, and make sure that that aperture is open wide.”

Continuing his questioning, King stressed that clean energy investments, including those in storage, risk being compromised by a slow, unpredictable permitting process. Last year, Senator King spoke from the Senate floor on the need for permitting reform, and the tradeoffs that will be required in the transition to renewable energy.

“This leads us to permitting reform. We are in a race against time here. We have had testimony before this committee that it takes over ten years to permit a pump storage project which is 100-year-old technology – it is very well-established and well-known. We cannot afford that, and the same thing goes whether it is acquiring lithium,” said Senator King.  “I did some research, recently. It turns out that about 70% of the lithium that we use comes from Australia. That's good. The problem is 87% of the processed lithium comes from China, and we have to develop that kind of technology, as well.”

“That is going to involve being able to do it on a timely and predictable basis because, again, the goal here is clean energy,” continued Senator King. “We cannot allow the permitting process itself – not standards but the process itself – to become barrier to having us achieve that clean energy future. It would be ironic if environmental objections to copper, for example, which we need to expand the grid, ended up compromising or crippling our ability to expand the grid in order to accommodate the cleaner energy future.”

“Completely agree, and we have to do a better job. We have to do a better job, across the board, on permitting,” concurred Deputy Secretary Turk. “It is not just the mining piece, it's the processing piece, it’s separation and diversifying those supply chains. Working with Australia and other partners, but a lot of those jobs could be here in the U.S., as well. One area in particular where we are very focused is transmission permitting.”

As a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator King has advocated for climate solutions that support Maine communities, unlock America’s clean energy future, and strengthen national security. He has been one of the Senate’s most vocal advocates for improving energy storage technologies and development and worked to include significant storage investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. 

The bipartisan letter to the Department of Energy on energy storage can be found here.