Heinrich Grills Trump Administration Nominee on Maintaining a Robust Energy Grid That Keeps Utility Costs Low for Families, Oil Spills in New Mexico

On Maintaining a Robust Energy Grid to Keep Costs Low for Families 

Heinrich began by questioning Audrey Robertson on Texas’ grid, “I've been looking closely at NERC’s 2025 summer reliability assessment in Texas. Texas added seven gigawatts of solar power in 2024, nearly seven and a half gigawatts of battery storage in 2024 alone, which is helping the state meet growing electricity demand from AI data centers and some of the things that you've articulated. As a result of those additional capacities, the risk of power emergencies has dropped to just 3% now, as opposed to 15% a little over a year ago. So, Ms. Robertson, do you agree that in the face of rising demand, that the grid requires more, not less affordable, reliable energy?”  

Robertson responded, “Undoubtedly the grid demands and we need to deliver more reliable, affordable, secure energy. Are you specifically asking about best systems, or solar systems?”  

Heinrich pressed, “Looking at Texas, would you agree that deploying both energy storage in tandem with renewable energy technologies can actually increase grid reliability, hold prices down and add new generation sources?”  

Robertson followed, “It certainly has the capability to do that. Texas still relies primarily on natural gas as its base load power, and that has to be the base load and the maximum because solar, solar plus wind, excuse me, solar plus batteries can provide a number of benefits, both at a large scale and a small scale, but we have yet to see the 5 or 10 year implications of these large battery systems, which unfortunately or ironically, the environments that are wonderful for solar Texas are not great for batteries. And so battery degradation and the life, the lifetime of a utility scale battery is something that is going to be a further effort of my Department, if I'm so fortunate to be confirmed. But those technologies have yet to play out.” 

Heinrich countered, “I would beg to differ. In New Mexico, we were an early adopter of grid scale storage. At this point in my personal grid in the Albuquerque area, we're not only 35% solar, 7% nuclear, 15% wind, but using 15% battery storage, we've been able for a number of years now to maintain a high level of reliability, and not just a high level of reliability, but a low retail cost, which is the other thing that American consumers care about. I pay about 10.8 cents. Now I rarely pay that, because I have solar on my roof at a scale that I don't get an electric bill most months. But when I do, I pay 10.8% - 10.8 cents, which is, if you look at the country as a whole, much lower than what you see in the Midwest and the East.”  

On Oil and Gas Spills in New Mexico 

Heinrich pressed Robertson on her company’s record of oil and gas spills in New Mexico, “Ms. Robertson, I wanted to ask you, give you something that's been raised to me, and I wanted to give you a chance to speak to it is that Franklin Mountain Energy has had a number of both Clean Air Act [violations] and spills in the state of New Mexico, several dozen spills, in fact. And what would you just say to my constituents that are concerned about that record in the Permian?”  

Robertson responded, “Senator Heinrich, happy to speak to that. Franklin Mountain Energy is now sold, but when we built this company from a few barrels a day to over 65,000 barrels a day of oil production. Growing an organization from raw BLM leases in Southeast New Mexico, to running five rigs at one time is a massive 24/7 manufacturing operation for which our team has an outstanding safety record and an outstanding EPA air quality record. We did have a number of violations that were cited, the vast majority of those were remedied within a day or two. The majority of those issues came from third party equipment that were on our facilities. We take great pride in both building and operating some of the most remarkable oil and gas facilities in the United States and in this great state of New Mexico. So I guess... Having spills is part of running a big, complicated business. There is not an oil and gas company that can move the amount of fluid, gas, and people that we do without having an occasional spill, but our record within the community is outstanding, and I'm very proud of them.”  

Heinrich responded, “I appreciate your response to that. I think that while these impacts are reality, they also have very real impacts on my constituents and so I think the goal as challenging as it should, should be zero. But I appreciate your focus on that and your response to those questions.”