Biden Plans To Nominate Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm As Energy Secretary

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Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm speaks during a TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco in 2019.





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Lisa Ramsden, senior climate campaigner with the environmental group Greenpeace USA, welcomed the news.

«Jennifer Granholm has forcefully spoken out against both the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines and advocated for shifting investment from oil and gas to renewable energy solutions, she said in a statement. «That’s the kind of leadership the Department of Energy has been sorely missing.

Progressive climate activists had campaigned against another possible DOE nominee, Ernest Moniz, citing his ties to the fossil fuel industry.

The Department of Energy leads research into key areas experts consider essential to addressing climate change, including: boosting electric vehicles and renewable energy, reducing the carbon footprints of buildings, capturing carbon from power plants and reinvigorating the nuclear power industry.

If confirmed by the Senate, Granholm will lead a DOE that is sometimes called «the department of everything because its mandates extend beyond energy.

The agency was created in 1977 but has its roots in the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb during World War II.

The Energy Department portfolio includes managing the security of the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile, 17 national labs across the country, renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and the cleanup of nuclear and chemical pollution leftover from the Cold War.