GOP pushes ahead on nuclear and hydropower energy routes

WASHINGTON — House Republicans pressed ahead on legislation Tuesday to speed up the development of new nuclear energy and hydropower technologies, while also attempting to block the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce domestic energy use.

Across 17 separate bills, Republicans aim to do everything from directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to overhaul environmental reviews of new nuclear plants and speed up permitting for hydroelectric dams to blocking new energy efficiency regulations at the Department of Energy.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Washington Republican and chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced the legislation as an effort to push back against the Biden administration’s efforts to expand U.S. reliance on wind and solar energy, batteries and electric vehicles — supply chains for which are concentrated in East Asia.

“This Committee is leading on solutions to ensure the U.S. — not China — continues to be a global energy leader for decades by unleashing American energy and improving our energy security,” she said.

With Democrats in control of the Senate, many of the bills are unlikely to make it out of Congress to the president’s desk. But they demonstrate the ongoing divide in Congress over climate change and clean energy.

While Republicans have largely moved on from denying human-caused climate change altogether, they continue to push for a slower approach in which fossil fuels would play a major role in the nation’s energy sector for decades to come. Among the bills is legislation that would limit the Department of Energy’s ability to raise efficiency standards on home appliances, after the Biden administration moved to drastically cut energy use from gas-fired furnaces and water heaters.

Nuclear technology has been a rare area of bipartisan agreement, with members of both parties calling for the federal government to take steps to move ahead on so-called advanced nuclear reactors, which are designed to avoid cataclysmic meltdowns like the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2021.

Earlier this year Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and Jim Risch, R-Idaho, introduced legislation to help U.S. nuclear companies compete with Chinese and Russian firms in selling nuclear power plant technology overseas. And Democrats expanded tax credits for nuclear power plants under last year Inflation Reduction Act.