Week ahead: Senate panel launches energy reform effort

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will formally kick off its efforts toward comprehensive energy policy reform next week, while the House Energy and Commerce Committee continues its own reform efforts.

The Senate Energy panel will host a hearing Thursday on 17 bills that Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said this week could make up a comprehensive package.

The bills range in subject from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to hydropower, electric reliability and methane production.

{mosads}While lifting the ban on oil exports is not on the agenda for Thursday’s hearing, Murkowski said she would introduce a bill on that next week.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy and power subcommittee will meet Wednesday for a markup in the committee’s continuing efforts to write its own comprehensive energy package.

The subjects of Wednesday’s hearing will be modernizing the regulatory regime around hydropower and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) role in natural gas regulation.

The House Natural Resources Committee will have a busy week examining some of the Obama administration’s environmental policies.

That committee’s energy and mineral resources subpanel will host a hearing Thursday on the Supporting Transparent Regulatory and Environmental Actions in Mining (STREAM) Act, sponsored by Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) to stop upcoming regulations on mountaintop removal mining.

The full committee will meet Wednesday to discuss the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s guidance on how federal agencies should account for greenhouse gases in their decisions, and its subcommittee on federal land will talk about the effects of planning and litigation on national forests.

Congress’s other plans next week include a House Science Committee hearing on the role of the Energy Department’s national labs in nuclear energy innovation and a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing on mining of critical minerals.

Off Capitol Hill, the Alliance to Save Energy and the Nuclear Energy Institute is each hosting a major conference in Washington.

The Alliance to Save Energy is bringing in Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) and FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur for major speeches Monday and Tuesday.

Top speakers at the Nuclear Energy Institute event will include Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Stephen Burns, Murkowski and Rep. Pete Visclosky (D-Ind.).

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— This was updated at 2:15 p.m.