Granholm, who served two terms as Michigan’s governor, has long taken a deep interest in energy issues. She also comes from a state dominated by the auto industry, according to NBC News.
As energy secretary, Granholm will also be playing a key role in Biden’s vision for a green economy as the United States fights to slow the climate crisis.
Michigan was devastated by the 2008 recession and Granholm has promoted emerging clean energy technologies, such as electric vehicles and battery manufacturing as an answer for jobs that will be lost as the US transitions away from oil, coal, and other fossil fuels.
At her confirmation hearing last month, she made many Republicans nervous about the loss of fossil fuels when she appeared to be embracing new wind and solar technologies. “We can buy electric car batteries from Asia or we can make them in America,” Granholm, 62, told senators. “We can install wind turbines from Denmark or we can make them in America.”
Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate energy committee, said the Obama administration “went on a regulatory rampage to slow or stop energy production.” Barrasso and other Republicans have complained that a freeze imposed by Biden on oil and gas leases on federal lands is taking a “sledgehammer” to Western states’ economies. The moratorium could cost tens of thousands of jobs unless rescinded, Barrasso said.
However, Granholm assured Barrasso and other Republicans that creating jobs was her top priority – as well as Biden’s. “We cannot leave our people behind. In West Virginia, and in other fossil fuel states, there is an opportunity for us to specialize in the technologies that reduce carbon emissions, to make those technologies here, to put people to work here, and to look at other ways to diversify.”
Senator Joe Manchin, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said he appreciates Granholm’s pledge to “innovate, not eliminate” fossil fuels in the transition to a clean-energy economy.
“She understands when markets shift, and basically leaving people behind that had good jobs and now have a hard time just surviving, let alone living and quality of life they lived before,” said Manchin, D-W.Va. “She understands that.”
