Summer Lee Decries Minority Communities Being Used As ’Sacrificial Lambs’ For Economic Prosperity

7 months ago

During a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) questioned Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm about Biden Admin energy policies.

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00:00Ms. Lee from Pennsylvania. Thank you, Mr. Chair. As we've heard today, my Republican colleagues

00:07would like to use this hearing to bolster this narrative that the Biden administration is

00:12enacting a war on energy. And we recognize that that is falsely promoting this idea

00:19that combating the climate crisis is somehow mutually exclusive with promoting economic

00:25security. But we know that this is a decades old myth that's been used to excuse the unmitigated

00:34polluting of frontline communities, especially communities like mine and Braddock of the Mon

00:38Valley of western Pennsylvania. For generations, communities like this, largely black or brown

00:45or poor and working class communities have been kind of made into these sacrificial lambs, right,

00:50left to sacrifice their health, to sacrifice the air quality or the water quality in their

00:56communities, mostly for the sake of good jobs, but also for the economic prosperity that the nation

01:02has enjoyed. Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act serves as to prove that this argument is not

01:09just a false choice, but that we can and we will and we have the tools to fight the climate crisis

01:15while creating high quality and union jobs. In Pennsylvania, the IRA is expected to create

01:23more than 200,000 jobs over the next decade, and it'll incentivize investments in low income

01:30and disinvested communities that have been harmed the most and that stand to lose the most.

01:36But to make these goals and the intent of the IRA a reality, implementation matters, of course.

01:42President Biden's Justice40 initiative, for instance, aims to ensure that 40% of the overall

01:48benefits of certain federal investments, including investments in clean energy,

01:52workforce development and the remediation of legacy pollution, go to disadvantaged communities.

01:57However, prioritizing grants funding through Justice40 isn't enough on its own to combat

02:02decades of underinvestment and disinvestment of frontline energy communities. I'm happy because

02:08I feel like in years past, some of these questions about how do our policies impact

02:14marginalized and frontline communities probably would have gone unasked. And I'm proud that we've

02:18had several folks sitting here today ask these very questions. I do want to leave a second.

02:23If there is anything specific or even more specific, like, for instance, a community like

02:26mine, that is a community that for a long time has not had the opportunity to turn a corner

02:31because we haven't had the opportunity to think about the future economies, particularly as we

02:36think about steel, how can communities like mine, in the best, in the shadows of the steel industry,

02:42as it's struggling to figure out how or where it goes next, how does this, the IRA and the DOE

02:48impact our communities? Yeah, I mean, let me just say, the great thing about the President having

02:53signed that first executive order on Justice40 was that means that everybody's thinking about how do

02:58we, how do we make sure that we do right by communities that have stood at the back of the

03:01line? And so the what Congress did in providing, for example, a 10% incentive, additional stackable

03:11tax credit for locating in a disadvantaged community, that has has achieved policy works

03:18that has actually achieved and steered and drawn investment to disadvantaged communities. We're

03:24doing our part with our community benefits agreement. We've just stood up an entity called

03:28Ready, which is working with communities to know how to negotiate a community benefit agreement on

03:33their behalf, what do I ask for, etc, giving them technical assistance in making sure they've got

03:38a level playing field in negotiating. But all of the work that Congress has done has given us the

03:43ability to help communities that have have been at the back of the line. Thank you. And similarly,

03:49as again, as someone from from Pittsburgh, I represent both a marginalized frontline community,

03:54also a community where labor is incredibly important. Part of building a new energy

03:59economy is the development of a workforce that is high quality and unionized. A 2023 DOE Office of

04:05Energy Jobs report found that workers in the energy sector were more than 1.5 times more likely

04:11to be represented by a union or covered under a project labor or collective bargaining agreement.

04:15In Western Pennsylvania, we know the value of good union jobs. So it's crucial that federal

04:20investments coming to our region and every other region benefit from a strengthened benefit and

04:26strengthening our robust unionized workforce. And as we grow our unionized workforce, to be very

04:30clear, we also have the dual responsibility of ensuring we're creating pathways for those

04:36traditionally underrepresented in the trade unions, and particularly women and people of color

04:40to participate. So Secretary Granholm, how is the DOE working to ensure that the growing energy

04:45workforce includes high quality union jobs? And even more specifically, the intent is to focus on

04:54labor agreements specifically, right? So how are how is the department prioritizing project labor

05:00agreements and competitive grants allocations to ensure we're supporting unionized workforce?

05:04We encourage project labor agreements and projects that come to us are evaluated on the strength

05:12of their community benefit plans, which also require paying a prevailing wage and having

05:18strong labor practices. So we are doing our part to embed a movement that will allow for more

05:25unionization, but we can't require unionization. We can just say we expect people to be treated

05:31well and paid well. And hopefully the private sector takes it from there.

05:35Thank you. I appreciate that. I think that appreciates him. I yield back.

05:38Chair now recognizes Grofman from Wisconsin.

Summer Lee Decries Minority Communities Being Used As ’Sacrificial Lambs’ For Economic Prosperity

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