Martin Heinrich Trashes Trump Over Big Beautiful Bill Green Subsidy Cuts And Costs Of Electricity

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During a Senate Energy Committee hearing in July, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) spoke about the Big Beautiful Bill.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Chairman Lee. Welcome to our witnesses, Mr. Gramlich, Mr. Huntsman, and Mr. Tench.

00:08As we'll discuss today, the scale and drivers of today's rising electricity demand are relatively

00:14unprecedented. It's not just that electricity demand is reaching record highs, it's that we're

00:21entering a new era of sustained load growth. The structural forces underlying today's load growth

00:27are converging, the growth of AI data centers, the electrification of vehicles, buildings, industry,

00:34as well as a resurgence in domestic manufacturing. And meeting this load growth will require structural

00:41changes to how we permit and build our energy infrastructure. In his testimony, Mr. Tench

00:48states that Vantage would prefer to source power from the grid, but that the system is out of sync.

00:54From interconnection timelines that are too long, transmission lines that take too long

01:00to build, and permitting that is too fragmented, the challenges that Mr. Tench articulates are

01:06the same ones that this committee has been trying to address for some time. As Mr. Tench notes

01:12in his testimony, no single business or technical workaround can substitute for a coordinated,

01:18modern, responsive grid. Fortunately, we sit on the committee that can help make that happen. The

01:26urgency isn't just about maintaining our edge in AI innovation. It's about affordability. As Mr.

01:33Gramley points out in his testimony today, electricity bills are becoming unaffordable for too many Americans.

01:40And recent actions by President Trump and by the Big Bad Bill will make this worse. The

01:48Reconciliation Bill alone is estimated to increase annual energy costs more than $16 billion in 2030 and

01:56more than $33 billion by 2035. This is because at a time when we need every single electron we can get,

02:06the Reconciliation Bill is causing many clean energy projects to be cancelled. And the President's

02:12tariffs are driving up equipment costs, raising the costs of all energy generation resources. All of them.

02:20This is leading directly to Americans spending more on their utility bills. And on top of this, an

02:26aging electrical grid is causing many energy projects to be stalled for years in interconnection queues.

02:34In June 2025, Grid Strategies released a study that found that investing in well-planned high-capacity

02:43transmission could save U.S. households between $6.3 and $10.4 billion annually. And that's even after

02:52accounting for the cost of actually building those transmission lines. The amount of energy currently in

02:59U.S. interconnection queues substantially exceeds the existing electricity demands, if only the grid

03:06could integrate it. According to the Energy Information Administration in 2024, the U.S. installed

03:14nearly 49 gigawatts of new grid capacity, 95 percent of which was for renewable resources. This year, the EIA

03:24estimates that developers will build 63 gigawatts of new capacity, including 32.5 gigawatts of new utility

03:32scale solar, 7.7 gigawatts of wind power, 18.2 gigawatts of energy storage, and just 4.4 gigawatts of

03:42natural gas fire generation. Clean energy is the most affordable, and it's the fastest type of energy

03:50generation to deploy outpacing natural gas, which is facing years-long backlogs in turbine availability.

03:58If you order a combined cycle natural gas turbine today, you'll be lucky if it puts its first electron on the grid

04:07before 2032. Meanwhile, states like Texas and California are demonstrating that high levels of

04:14renewable energy do not compromise grid reliability. In fact, they improve it. After Texas added 9,600

04:23megawatts of clean energy, including 5,400 megawatts of solar, 3,800 megawatts of energy storage, and 253

04:32megawatts of wind, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vega said that the risk of grid emergencies dropped to less than one percent.

04:42That's down from 16 percent the previous year. NERC's 2025 summer reliability assessment confirmed this

04:51trend, showing that the risk of rolling blackouts in Texas fell from 15 percent to 3 percent as battery

04:58capacity came online. I'll close by saying that I am deeply disturbed by the recent Department of

05:04Interior policy that requires Secretary Doug Burgum to personally review and sign off on wind and solar

05:11projects on federal lands. This nakedly political decision will risk delaying new generation additions

05:19to the grid when we need them the most. And consequently, it will drive up costs. According to the Department

05:28of Energy, federal lands in the contiguous United States could support more than 7,700 gigawatts of

05:36renewable energy capacity. And with that said, I look forward to discussing how we can meet the rise

05:42in electricity demand and lower energy costs for households by integrating the most affordable and

05:49rapidly deployable energy resources today while also investing in long-term modernization. Thank you, Chairman.

05:57Thank you, Senator Heinrich. We'll now hear from each of our witnesses. I've given you five minutes to

06:06make your opening statements. We'll hear first from Mr. Huntsman, then from Mr.

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