Mark Menezes, recently confirmed as the second-ranking official in President Trump’s Energy Department, envisions a future electricity grid dominated by clean energy.
Menezes, however, is warning of the perils of pushing too quickly, citing the experience of California, a state with a growing reliance on renewable power that recently had to shut off people’s electricity due to a shortage during a record heat wave.
“The concept is a good one, but technology has not caught up with the aspirational goals of those who want a system powered by intermittent renewables,” Menezes told the Washington Examiner in his first interview after the Senate confirmed him this month. “They seem to take it out on their customers because of decisions made more on political science than engineering science.”
California has mandated that its utilities generate 60% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030 and have 100% zero-carbon power by 2045.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has proposed an even faster timeline of 2035 for the nation to use entirely carbon-free power, a broader construct that allows for other nonemitting resources in addition to wind and solar, such as nuclear and natural gas with carbon capture technology.
The Trump administration is uninterested in setting such timelines and is led by a president who does not consider climate change a serious problem.
Indeed, the Trump administration and its Energy Department is mostly known for its focus on facilitating production and exports of fossil fuels, for which it sees a bright future despite an oil price crash caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Menezes has been vital to this effort, working behind the scenes since 2017 leading policy at the Department of Energy as the undersecretary of energy.
But as he moves up in rank, Menezes is eager to showcase the less-noticed work the Energy Department does to help develop technologies that he believes will be crucial to realizing a lower-carbon energy future, such as small nuclear reactors, long-duration energy storage, carbon capture, and higher-efficiency solar.
Menezes said that wind and solar can generally function as “baseload” energy 90% of any given time but that more firm, around-the-clock generating sources are needed to balance out renewables.
“We are not going to be in that position until there are breakthrough technologies,” Menezes said. “We are working hard to get that, and it will probably be in the future some time off, but we are simply not there yet.”
In California this week, as the heat pushed energy demand to record highs, solar generation plummeted in the evening when the sun set, and the wind slowed more than expected. California was left searching to close the gap after closing gas plants in recent years that can quickly ramp up. In 2012, California shut down a major nuclear plant, while the same fate awaits the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the last nuclear plant in the state, which is set to begin shutting down in 2024.
“We have seen this movie before,” Menezes said, referring to California’s electricity shortage crisis of 2000-01. “It’s not surprising when the system is stressed, they have a hard time with sufficient generation resources. Our systems should be designed for stress so people can have electricity when they want it.”
Menezes previously worked as chief counsel for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and as a lobbyist at Berkshire Hathaway Energy.
Last year, he drew criticism from Democrats and environmentalists for touting U.S. sales of natural gas to allies abroad as “spreading freedom gas throughout the world” because of its ability to reduce European reliance on Russian energy.
In his first trip as deputy energy secretary this month, Menezes touted the Trump administration’s support of a “petrochemical renaissance” fueled by natural gas during a visit to an ethane cracker plant proposed in Ohio, a key swing state. He later joined Andrew Wheeler, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, in Pittsburgh to cheer the administration’s rollback of regulations of methane, an emissions source from natural gas more potent than carbon.
Menezes is projecting a strong future for oil and gas despite some projections that doubt fossil fuel demand will ever return to what it was before the pandemic.
“We gotta get through COVID to get the demand back to where it was,” he said, citing the likely return of travel and the lack of affordable substitutes for liquid carbon-based fuels. “We are optimistic we can do it, and we expect American energy to drive the global recovery.”
But despite some disagreements on priorities, Democrats have come to respect Menezes and see him as distinguished from the president and other White House officials who do not prioritize combating climate change.
The Senate easily confirmed Menezes for his new role in a bipartisan 79-16 vote, including the support of top Energy Committee Democrat Joe Manchin, who called Menezes “up to the task to advance our energy innovation agenda.”
Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Energy Subcommittee, told the Washington Examiner that he too appreciates Menezes’s approach.
“I welcome the deputy secretary’s attention to the current climate crisis, especially when the rest of this administration appears hellbent on burying their heads in the sand,” Rush said.
Rush, however, challenged Menezes to update energy efficiency standards, a delay that prompted environmental groups to threaten to sue the Energy Department.
“If Deputy Secretary Menezes is serious about tackling one of the most important issues of our lifetime, I fully expect him to update the energy efficiency standards he and the administration failed to address during his time as undersecretary,” Rush said.
Menezes said he’s excited to prove the Energy Department’s work on clean energy, citing efforts by national labs to develop fuels that can be used in small nuclear reactors, along with research initiatives to swipe carbon directly from the air and store larger amounts of electricity for longer periods of time.
“To the extent new technologies can replace old technologies, we support that and make investments across the board,” Menezes said. “The federal government’s role is to make sure we invest in all the best technologies that will be part of our future.”
