Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2026

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRIFFITH. 8.

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Mr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is a necessary amendment. It addresses the importance of all types of energy research and development, R&D, funding at the Department of Energy, DOE, specifically, the energy research being conducted at the Office of Fossil Energy.

Any effective plan to handle increased energy demand must take into account our Nation's vast supply of coal and natural gas and our talent for technological innovation.

Artificial intelligence and the data centers to support it are going to require a boatload of additional power. While we don't know the exact amount of electricity we need, we know it is going to be a lot more than we have today because our country is facing increased electricity demand for the first time in 10 years. The appetite of AI and data centers is enormous. AI needs to be developed, controlled, and led by the United States of America, not an adversarial or competitive nation like China.

China is projected to increase its emissions for the foreseeable future and reportedly began construction in 2024 on coal units equivalent to 94.5 gigawatts of power. That is a lot, Mr. Chairman.

Additionally, China is financing a number of coal-fired plants in Africa and other countries with emerging economies. China is responsible for 93 percent of new coal power plant construction, and I don't believe that we should let our expertise and our vast amounts of coal in this country, good, clean coal, wither.

As I have said before, in the developing world, more energy means more hope and less poverty, and that helps us, as well. We take for granted, in this case, that our lights are going to come on when we hit that switch and turn it on. That is not always going to be the case if we don't continue to use all-of-the-above energy strategies.

Developing countries don't want to force their people to live in poverty because of a lack of energy, so they are going to use coal. What we can do is produce that coal. We can help them if we unleash our technological advantages and help find better ways to use coal and natural gas more cleanly. We should use our expertise in finding ways to control emissions with carbon capture and other pollution control technologies.

That is why DOE funding for fossil and renewable research is vital. We need to produce and then export the best, cleanest, and efficient energy technology to the world. It helps us, and it helps places like India and sub-Saharan Africa, where many of their people don't have a steady supply of electricity. Nobody can blame them for using dirty coal and those Chinese technology plants, which are not as good as the U.S. plants, because they want to make sure their people have a chance at prosperity, as well.

DOE plays an important role in this R&D, but we can do a lot more for fossil energy innovation and exploration. That is what the amendment does.

In the past few fiscal years, the delta between renewable energy research and fossil energy has really widened for the research that we are doing.

I am advocating with this amendment that we shouldn't ignore our fossil fuel efficiency and carbon mitigation research.

My amendment increases the fossil energy account by $6,875,000, or 1 percent, with an offset from the departmental expenses account.

To be clear, I am not against renewable energy research. I just believe we shouldn't be putting all of our eggs in one basket.

I urge my colleagues to support an all-of-the-above energy policy and, more importantly, an all-of-the-above research policy at DOE so that we can expand our ability to deal with the energy demand increases and that we can have research for a commodity that we have the world's greatest supply of, coal and natural gas.

We ought to use it. God blessed us with this resource. We ought to use it. We ought to use it cleanly. We ought to use it responsibly. We ought to be able to export our technologies to the rest of the world. If we don't do the research, we can't do it.

I ask everybody to support this all-of-the-above policy plan and support my amendment.

Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

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