Rep. Obernolte’s bipartisan Department of Energy accountability bill passes U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Congressman Jay Obernolte’s (R-Hesperia) bill to increase accountability of taxpayer dollars at the Department of Energy passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday evening with broad bipartisan support. H.R. 6933, the Cost Share Accountability Act of 2022, boosts the Department of Energy’s accountability to Congress and the public when awarding research grants, addressing important transparency concerns raised by Rep. Obernolte and the bill’s coauthor, Rep. Bill Foster (D-IL), about the Department’s decision-making process for waiving cost-sharing requirements.

WATCH REP. OBERNOLTE’S FLOOR SPEECH HERE

“Several months ago, the SST Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight held a hearing in which we examined some of the circumstances under which the discretion to waive or reduce cost sharing requirements had been applied by the DOE,” said Rep. Obernolte. “We were very surprised by the lack of transparency in this process, and by the difficulty in obtaining information about how often and under what circumstances the DOE was using this authority. This bill is a very simple solution to this problem.”

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 establishes cost-sharing requirements for most research, development, demonstration and commercial application activities at the Department of Energy. However, at least three times in the last several years, the Office of Nuclear Energy has made use of its authority under the law to award large sole-source grants while simultaneously waiving the cost-sharing requirements for those grants. While these waivers can help enable faster investment in critical novel technologies, they also remove funding from the competitive award process and deny other prospective participants the opportunity to submit their own competing proposals.

H.R. 6933, the Cost Share Accountability Act of 2022, increases accountability over the Department of Energy on federally funded projects by requiring the DOE to submit to Congress and make public quarterly reports on the use of its authority to modify or bypass the statutory cost-sharing requirement. This change will ensure better transparency and competitiveness in the Department’s awards process and improve stewardship of taxpayer dollars.