The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee was scheduled to vote Thursday morning on Department of Energy nominees for general counsel and two other posts.
During the business meeting set for 9:30 a.m. Thursday, the committee planned to consider the nomination of Samuel Walsh to be DOE’s general counsel, Andrew Light to be assistant secretary for international affairs and Shalanda Baker to be the agency’s director of the Office of Minority Economic Impact.
Walsh, a former DOE deputy general counsel who is now partner in a Washington law firm, was nominated by President Joe Biden in April and had her confirmation hearing in June.
The same nomination-and-hearing timeline applies to Light and Baker. Light is a philosophy professor at George Mason University in Virginia who is also a distinguished senior fellow in the climate program at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. Baker is already at DOE as a senior adviser, according to her online bio. Prior to taking that post in January, Baker was professor of law, public policy, and urban affairs at Northeastern University in Boston. She was also co-founder and co-director of the Initiative for Energy Justice.
The Biden White House has yet to nominate anyone to become assistant secretary in charge of the $7-billion-plus Office of Environmental Management, as that job continues to be filled on an acting basis by career federal servant William “Ike” White.
