U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited West Virginia March 18.
Granholm arrived in the Mountain State the same day the DOE launched a $5 million national workforce development strategy to manufacture lithium batteries.
"American leadership in the global battery supply chain will be based not only on our innovative edge, but also on our skilled workforce of engineers, designers, scientists and production workers," Granholm said in DOE's announcement about the program. "[President Joe Biden] has a vision for achieving net zero emissions while creating millions of good paying, union jobs – and DOE's battery partnerships with labor and industry are key to making that vision a reality."
The secretaries were welcomed by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Gov. James "Jim" Justice, among other elected officials.
"We discussed W.V.’s contributions to the energy supply of our nation and our world, while also recognizing that we are now an all-of-the-above energy state," Justice said in a Twitter March 18 post.
In his own Twitter post, Manchin said he was "proud to welcome" Granholm and Haaland.
"With billions in federal funding available to West Virginia, we have a real opportunity to reclaim abandoned mine lands, retrain our workforce, reinvest in our infrastructure and showcase our beautiful state to the world," Manchin said.
This visit to West Virginia was the third stop for Haaland in her multi-month, multi-state tour of Appalachia to call attention to "critical infrastructure investments," an Interior news release said. Haaland's first two stops had been in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Stops during their joint visit included the Robert C. Byrd Institute at Marshall University, a news conference to discuss goals for economic revitalization and an interagency coal and power plant communities working group, according to a DOE news release.
The Interior described Haaland's visit as a change to talk about department investments to address pollution and abandoned mine lands, eliminate dangerous conditions, create good-paying union jobs "and lay the foundation for future economic development." The news release also mentioned the almost $215 million in Interior funds that have been made available to West Virginia so far this year.
During a tour of the the Solar Holler rooftop solar collection at the Coalfield Development's West Edge Factory in Huntington, Granholm told WSAZ News there was nothing about green and renewable energy that West Virginia doesn't already know.
"Really, this community is embracing new chances and opportunity in their own way," Granholm told the television news outlet. "Nobody is coming here to tell West Virginia what it should do because West Virginia is figuring it out and it's really exciting."
