Week ahead: House examines Obama’s energy infrastructure plan

A House panel will hear from Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on the Obama administration’s energy infrastructure plan with lawmakers returning after the Memorial Day recess.

The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power invited Moniz for a Tuesday hearing on the administration’s Quadrennial Energy Review, which calls for billions of dollars to build and fix pipelines, transmission lines and other infrastructure to move energy.

The hearing is part of the committee’s ongoing effort toward writing a comprehensive energy reform package. Lawmakers hope that the administration’s energy review can help inform their package, which they’re calling the “Architecture of Abundance.”

{mosads}With wildfire season set to begin soon in the West, both chambers of Congress will hold a hearing on drought and wildfire conditions.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hear testimony Tuesday on the current drought conditions in the West, which is seeing its fourth consecutive year of drought.

The next day, the House Natural Resources Committee’s subpanel on federal land will hold a hearing on a bill aimed at fixing the nation’s overgrown and fire-prone national forests. The bill follows hearings the panel had in April and May on the problems surrounding national forests and wildfires.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, Republicans in both chambers will continue their efforts to fight the Obama administration’s environmental agenda.

The House Science Committee, chaired by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), a strong opponent of President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is bringing in representatives of business groups for a hearing titled “EPA Regulatory Overreach: Impacts on American Competitiveness.”

In the Senate, the Environment and Public Works Committee will hear testimony on the EPA’s proposal to reduce allowable ground-level ozone.

The panel will also discuss a trio of Republican bills aimed at preventing the regulation or otherwise weakening it.

The Hill will host an event on the future of nuclear energy policy on Tuesday.

It will include speeches from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and representatives of Third Way, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and the Nuclear Energy Institute, among others.

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