Jay Obernolte: “I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas), my friend and colleague, for yielding time. Research and development…”

“I thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lucas), my friend and colleague, for yielding time. Research and development grants from the Department of Energy play a vital role in catalyzing the development of new energy technology in the United States. The awarding of those grants is governed by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among other things, the act requires the DOE to impose a cost-sharing requirement on non-Federal applicants for those grants. This is very appropriate because it gives the grant applicants some skin in the game, some financial participation of their own. These cost-sharing requirements can be as low as 20 percent with respect to research and development grants and as high as 50 percent for grants like commercialization or demonstration projects. As the gentleman from Oklahoma said, the DOE is empowered to, in appropriate circumstances, waive those cost-sharing requirements. Several months ago, the SST Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee had a hearing in which we examined some of the circumstances under which that discretion to waive or reduce cost-sharing had been applied by the DOE. Now, to be clear, we actually concluded that the DOE had appropriately used its authority in these circumstances. However, we were very surprised by the lack of transparency in this process and how difficult it was to obtain the information about how often the DOE was using this authority and under what circumstances.…”