The Senate confirmed President Biden’s nominee for energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, in a bipartisan 64-35 vote.
Granholm, the former Democratic governor of Michigan, is expected to play a key role in shaping and implementing Biden’s climate change agenda.
She is planning to focus the Energy Department on promoting the development of electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies, such as wind turbines and batteries, as a way to revive the manufacturing base and create new jobs. She is best known for working with the Obama administration on the 2009 bailout of auto companies after the Great Recession.
“I believe that I was nominated by President Biden because I am obsessed with creating good-paying jobs in America,” Granholm said in her confirmation hearing last month.
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Granholm attracted some Republican votes after vowing that fossil fuels will play a role in the administration’s aggressive plans to reduce emissions to combat climate change.
Before she was confirmed, the Biden administration announced that the Energy Department plans to award $100 million in funding for early stage research in “cutting-edge, disruptive” clean energy technologies, such as carbon capture technologies and new smaller forms of nuclear power reactors. Republicans praised the initiative, including Granholm’s predecessor, former Trump administration Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette.
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Some Republicans, though, including Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member John Barrasso of Wyoming, did not vote for Granholm despite making complimentary statements about her qualifications and policy positions, citing the Biden administration’s early actions opposing fossil fuel development and the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
All Democrats backed Granholm.
