The US Senate on Thursday confirmed Jennifer Granholm as secretary of energy, the first of President Joe Biden’s nominees for key cabinet portfolios who will help lead his administration’s ambitious clean energy and climate strategy over the next four years.

The vote was 64-35 with all 48 Democrats and two independents who caucus with them plus 14 opposition Republicans voting yes. Some Republicans who opposed her nomination represent western states that heavily depend on royalties and tax revenues from extraction of fossil fuels to balance their budgets and fund public education.

Granholm is one of a number of key appointments under Biden who are set to radically shift the approach to clean energy from the lukewarm, or often openly hostile, approach of the Trump administration.

The new President has also nominated renewables-friendly Debra Haaland as interior secretary, and North Carolina’s environmental chief Michael Regan to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a body set to take a spearheading federal role in enacting a climate policy agenda that aims to place the US on course to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Former secretary of state John Kerry, is his administration's climate envoy.

'Obsessed with clean energy jobs'

Granholm, 62, served two terms as governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011 and gained national attention for her role in helping lobby Congress to fund an almost $81bn federal bailout of US automakers devastated by the 2008 recession. She was also among the more vocal supporters at the state level of former President Barack Obama’s efforts to curb US carbon emissions and expand renewable energy.

“I’m obsessed with creating good-paying clean energy jobs in all corners of America in service of addressing our climate crisis. I am impatient for results. Now let’s get to work!” she said in a tweet to senators. A lawyer, Granholm was born in British Columbia, Canada, and moved to the US at age four with her family.

Granholm will lead a sprawling agency with a $32bn budget (in 2020) and about 14,000 civilian employees best known for its oversight of the US nuclear weapons arsenal and 17 national laboratories that comprise some of the world’s best research facilities and scientists.

Biden envisions DoE, its laboratories and agencies playing a leading role in helping his administration tackle the challenge of climate change and create and sustain American leadership in the transition to a global clean energy economy.

Among the agencies are the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E).

Game-changing technologies

Granholm will oversee creation of Biden’s proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency – Climate which will specifically target development of “affordable, game-changing technologies” for the US to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, which is consistent with the Paris Agreement.

These technologies include grid-scale energy storage; advanced, small nuclear reactors; green hydrogen; carbon capture; carbon-neutral construction materials; decarbonizing the agriculture and food sector through soil management and plant biologies; and breathroughs in smart materials, appliances, and systems management for buildings to achieve net-zero energy.

Biden has also tasked Granholm with helping lead the administration’s efforts to develop the manufacturing capability and technologies necessary to support electrification of the American transportation system including automobile and commercial vehicle fleets and public transit.

Biden claims clean energy will create millions of jobs that will bring opportunities for those employed by the coal industry and at plants that use it now to generate power, but will close for economic and environmental reasons in the years ahead.

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Granholm confirmed as energy secretary as Biden assembles green team