WITH MONIZ ON HOLD, PONEMAN LEADING DOE FOR NOW

Kenneth Fletcher
GHG Monitor
4/26/13

Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman is leading the Department of Energy for the time being as acting Secretary after former Secretary of Energy Steven Chu left the Department early this week and a hold was placed on the confirmation of new Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz. Supporters had hoped for a quick confirmation of Moniz after he cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last week, but Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) placed a hold on Moniz the day after Chu’s departure this week, citing his opposition to DOE’s plans to cut funding for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility being built in South Carolina. “He’s a fine fellow, he’s a good man, but this is the leverage I have to get a better answer than we’re getting,” Graham told GHG Monitor this week. “The President’s budget proposal is completely unsatisfactory.”

DOE’s uncertain plans for the MOX facility has become a top concern for members of the South Carolina Congressional delegation—due to the MOX issue Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) was the only vote last week in the Senate energy committee against Moniz’s confirmation. The MOX plant is being built as part of an agreement with Russia to disposition of 34 metric tons of surplus plutonium by converting it into fuel that can be used in commercial nuclear reactors. While the facility is more than 60 percent complete, earlier this month DOE stated that it would seek to cut funding, slow down construction and examine alternative ways to disposition surplus plutonium. Officials said the decision was due to significant cost increases on the project, which the latest estimate puts at about $8 billion total, compared to about $4.86 billion in the previous baseline.

Graham ‘Will Not Entertain’ Anything Other Than MOX

Graham emphasized that he believed the MOX facility was the only solution to meeting the plutonium disposition agreement. “I will work with the Administration—I talked to [White House Chief of Staff] Denis McDonough about this last night—to get the cost down, but I will not entertain for one minute a disposition plan other than MOX,” Graham said. It is unclear how long the hold could impact Moniz’s nomination.

The White House nominated Moniz to replace Chu in early March. Moniz is currently a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as director of the MIT Energy Initiative and director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at the MIT Department of Physics. Moniz previously held the position of Under Secretary of Energy during the Clinton Administration from 1997 to 2001, and served as associate director for science of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President from 1995 to 1997. During his time leading the MIT Energy Initiative, Moniz co-authored multiple highly-cited reports about the need for government to further invest in carbon capture and storage and advanced coal technologies.

Chu Longest-Serving DOE Secretary

In February, Chu announced plans to leave his post, and April 22 was Chu’s last day at DOE. His four-year tenure makes him the longest-serving Secretary of Energy. In a message to DOE employees this week, DOE acting Chief of Staff Jeff Navin said called Chu’s departure “the end of an historic and successful tenure as Secretary of Energy.” Chu now returns to Stanford University, where he will hold a joint appointment within the university’s physics and molecular and cellular physiology departments. Chu worked there as a physics professor from 1987 to 2008. Poneman, who has been Deputy Secretary of Energy since 2009, began serving as acting Secretary the day after Chu’s departure.