Biden settles on energy secretary choice. It’s not Inslee
President-elect Joe Biden intends to nominate a former Michigan governor with an interest in clean energy as energy secretary, according to the Associated Press and other news outlets.
It’s a key appointment for the Tri-Cities area, home to the Department of Energy’s Hanford nuclear reservation and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Together they employ more than 15,000 people, or about 5% of the people in Benton and Franklin counties.
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s apparent pick for energy secretary, was the first woman to serve as that state’s governor.
Granholm, 61, served as governor from 2003 to 2011 and for four years before that she was the state’s attorney general. Other experience includes working as a federal prosecutor.
CNN described her as a former contributor to the network.
The University of California Berkeley School of Law lists her as a “distinguished adjunct professor.”
As governor of Michigan, she worked to diversify the economy with alternative energy jobs and signed into law a new standard requiring 25% of Michigan’s energy to come from renewables, such as solar and wind, by 2025.
If she is appointed by Biden and confirmed, she will have a role in executing Biden’s promised $2 trillion climate plan, billed as the nation’s broadest and most ambitious effort to cut fossil fuel emissions linked to climate change, according to the Associated Press.
Biden’s plan includes overhauling the nation’s transportation and power sectors and buildings to eliminate fossil fuel emissions by 2050, the AP said.
She has no apparent experience in environmental cleanup, such as is being done at the Hanford site at a cost of $2.5 billion annually. However, she’s likely to be questioned about it during any Senate confirmation hearings as other energy secretary nominees have been over the last decade.
The New York Times reported last month that among possible contenders for Biden’s energy secretary were Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee and Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist who was energy secretary during the Obama administration.
This story was originally published December 15, 2020 at 6:35 PM.