The former Michigan governor is a strong advocate for electric vehicles. She’ll need an experienced deputy to handle nuclear weapons programs.
By Will Englund, Juliet Eilperin and Dino Grandon, The Washington Post
President-elect Joe Biden is nominating Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan who has been a strong voice for zero-emissions vehicles, as secretary of energy, two people familiar with the process said Tuesday.
Granholm, 61 and currently an adjunct professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley, has argued that the United States risks being left behind by other countries if it doesn’t develop alternate energy technologies. Her pick is a clear sign that Biden wants the department to play an important role in combating climate change.
Arun Majumdar, a materials scientist and engineer who led a new research agency within the Energy Department under the Obama administration, is under consideration as deputy secretary, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no decision had been finalized. Majumdar, who has been working for the Biden transition team and was considered a candidate himself for the top Energy post, is an enthusiastic advocate for modernizing the nation’s electricity grid.
Granholm and Majumdar are both immigrants — she from Canada, he from India. Both come to the department from California with backgrounds and expertise in promoting and developing alternate technologies, even as the bulk of Energy’s mandate has to do with the maintenance and safeguarding of the nation’s nuclear weapons and handling the cleanup efforts at contaminated nuclear sites.
In budgetary terms, the nuclear program consumes about 75 percent of the department’s budget, or $27 billion.
“The Energy Department is actually the Nuclear Weapons Department,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
But its role in promoting research began getting more attention in the Obama administration and is likely to feature prominently under Biden, given his promises to tackle climate change.
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