(Manchester, NH) – U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, today hosted a field hearing and resource fair at the University of New Hampshire at Manchester on historic investments in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act that help small businesses lower their energy costs, transition to the clean energy economy and build resilience. Following the field hearing, small businesses participated in a resource fair and met with federal agencies and state business support programs. Photos from today’s field hearing and resource fair can be found here. A recording of Chair Shaheen’s opening statement can be found here.
Read Chair Shaheen’s opening statement, as delivered, below.
The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship will come to order.
It’s really an honor to be here today and we very much appreciate Dean Decelle’s remarks and hosting us this morning. I want to welcome our witnesses who I will introduce officially in a few minutes…
…Today we’re going to discuss an issue that I think is of real importance to small business, it’s important to all of us, but small businesses because they’re on the cutting edge, and often it’s more of a concern for them.
We’re going to talk about energy efficiency and reducing energy costs for small businesses. It’s an issue that I’ve been very interested in since before I was governor, particularly energy efficiency because I think efficiency is the cheapest, fastest way to deal with our energy needs.
Now as the drivers of our economy, small businesses feel the squeeze of increasing costs first; they’re especially vulnerable to market volatility and, as we saw after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, it’s a particular challenge.
In 2021, Congress passed what we call the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, that really invests in clean energy in a way that we had not to the same extent in the past; it includes a robust energy workforce and a cleaner, more reliable electric grid.
And there are key provisions in that legislation that I worked on with Rob Portman, who was then a senator from Ohio. He and I had worked on that legislation for a decade, when we negotiated the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law we were able to get many provisions in there to address energy efficiency, to address electric vehicle infrastructure, to help us revitalize brownfield sites and ultimately, hopefully create more good-paying jobs in our communities.
A year later Congress passed the most significant climate legislation in history, which is designed to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and invest in clean energy generation.
That Act invests nearly $370 billion in clean energy through expanded tax credits and funding for programs like the Rural Energy for America Program, and we have a number of folks here who we’re going to talk about a little later who can help put people in touch with some of those resources that are available, but the programs are aimed directly at small businesses and at farms in states like New Hampshire where we have a big rural part of our economy.
Clean and efficient energy benefits everyone across all parts of New Hampshire, and for small businesses, it can slash energy bills while keeping up profits and keeping our communities vibrant.
It also helps insulate small businesses from increasing costs, and what we’re seeing more and more is severe weather from climate change, we see that here in New Hampshire, we see it around the world, it is beginning to effect energy prices everywhere and, again, small businesses are the first to be affected by some of those higher energy prices.
That’s why it’s so important to make sure that our small businesses can access the resources that are available to help with affordable clean energy.
There are a lot of tools and opportunities that are available to our small businesses to cut costs and to transition to clean energy, and following today’s hearing we will have representatives from several federally supported agencies and state—we have a number of state organizations with us as well—who are going to talk about what’s available to small businesses. They’re here to try and answer your questions and to be helpful.
So thank you again to our witnesses for joining us and for your testimony today, and for being part of this discussion.
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