United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Committee information

• Date created: 1816 as Committee on Public Lands; February 4, 1977, as Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
• Members: Twenty members in the 119th Congress (2025–2027)
• Subcommittees: Energy; National Parks; Public Lands, Forests, and Mining; Water and Power

Role

The United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources oversees the nation’s research, collection, and regulation of resources. It exercises authority over government agencies and organizations in this area. It also has jurisdiction over national parks, public lands, and forests.

Committees play an important role in the US Congress, the federal government’s lawmaking branch. Congress is tasked with making sure that federal laws best serve the American people. Since this is such an enormous job, Congress uses committees as a way to organize its tasks and give each due consideration. A committee is comprised of several members of Congress, though the exact number can vary. Most exist exclusively in the Senate or the House of Representatives. However, some joint committees exist that include members from both. The Senate has sixteen standing committees, while the House has twenty.

The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources is a standing committee, which means it is a permanent fixture of Congress. This is because the nation’s concern for energy and natural resources will extend into the future.

Many standing committees began as select committees. These are formed to solve a single problem and may be dissolved or combined with another committee once they have completed their task. If it is determined that a select committee could accomplish long-term goals, a vote can be held to grant it standing status.

After each congressional election, committees may decide to adjust their subcommittees and membership numbers. Subcommittees focus on even more specific issues. Unless special circumstances exist, a committee may have up to five subcommittees. The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources had four under the 119th Congress. Each subcommittee is comprised of several members. One member can be on multiple subcommittees, but each subcommittee has a different leader and overall roster of members.

The ratio of Republicans to Democrats in the Senate influences how many spaces for each party exist on a committee. The leader of the party with the most members on the committee is known as the chairperson, while the leader of the minority party is called the ranking member.

Committees serve to watch government agencies under their jurisdiction to ensure that they are doing their assigned tasks. Committees have other responsibilities, however. They can also introduce legislation to make the work of agencies easier and more efficient. Some of the most prominent former members of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources include former US Presidents Barack Obama, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon, and former Vice Presidents Alben Barkley and Hannibal Hamlin.

History

The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources was initially known as the Committee on Public Lands. It is one of the Senate’s oldest standing committees, first formed in 1816. The committee was created in response to the sudden expansion of US territory. The nation purchased the territory of Louisiana from France in 1803. Prior to the purchase, the United States had only stretched as far west as the Mississippi River. Following the Louisiana Purchase, it doubled in area.

Settling the new territory was a slow process, however. Most potential settlers wanted to wait until the area was explored and mapped. Then the War of 1812 became the country’s main concern. Once that war ended, settlers began expanding west much more aggressively.

The country now had an enormous territory to oversee. Because of this, the federal government took large amounts of it and opened the land to the public. The government maintained the land but would sell pieces of it to settlers if they could reach agreements. The Committee on Public Lands helped provide oversight and laws to make these transactions as smooth as possible.

In the mid-nineteenth century, government officials began to realize that the land it opened to the public needed more care if it was going to remain a valuable resource. The Department of the Interior was created to manage the land more effectively. This department fell under the committee’s jurisdiction. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the government began protecting certain areas from public interference due to their natural beauty or the rarity of wildlife found there. The National Park Service was established in 1916 to help protect such areas.

The Committee on Public Lands merged with the Committee on Geological Surveys in 1921 and became the Public Lands and Surveys. It retained the same basic jurisdiction until the mid-twentieth century when Congress passed the Legislative Reorganization Act. Then the committee was restructured into the Interior and Insular Affairs in 1948. Its jurisdiction included not only land and resource management, but also federal government relations with US territories such as Puerto Rico. It also oversaw Alaska and Hawaii’s transition to statehood in the mid-twentieth century.

In the second half of the twentieth century, research about the natural world made great strides. People had a renewed concern for the environment. They realized that human activity had the potential to drive other species to permanent extinction. This focus on the environment led to the committee producing the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. This set a precedent, calling for studies of the federal government’s impact on the environment.

In 1973, the United States endured critical oil shortages. Because the country supported Israel in its conflict with several Arabic nations, those nations decided to stop selling oil to the United States. They were some of the US’s primary sources of oil, and Americans struggled with skyrocketing oil prices even after the embargo was eventually lifted. This caused the US government to consider alternative fuel sources, as well as more efficient methods of consuming oil. The United States began investing more money and resources into the study of nuclear power. Because of nuclear power’s history as a fuel for weapons, Americans were very concerned about its use as an energy source. It required very careful regulation.

Energy research and management remained very important topics throughout the 1970s. On February 4, 1977, the Senate approved a resolution that transformed the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs into the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It kept most of its former jurisdiction but took on additional duties reflected by its new name.

Subcommittees

During the 119th Congress, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources included eleven Republicans, eight Democrats, and one independent. It was chaired by Utah Senator Mike Lee. Its ranking member was New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich. The committee was made up of four subcommittees: Energy; National Parks; Public Lands, Forests, and Mining; and Water and Power.

United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy

This subcommittee focuses on federal government use, research, and regulation of energy resources. It has jurisdiction over the coal, nuclear, oil, natural gas, and electric industries. It also oversees government research into other forms of energy production.

Coal was the center of significant debate throughout the 2016 presidential election. The industry had begun a decline in the early 2010s, and eventual President Donald Trump blamed this on restrictions placed on the industry by the outgoing Obama administration. He vowed to relax many of those restrictions and increase coal-mining jobs during his presidency. Those in favor of the restrictions felt that they did not harm the industry as much as the increase of alternative fuels such as natural gas. It was also possible that the coal-mining process had grown so efficient that it did not require as much manpower as it did in the past.

Another matter that the subcommittee deals with is security surrounding energy production. After Russian attempts to sabotage electric grid systems in Ukraine in 2015, several senators began thinking seriously about the systems that controlled American infrastructure. While they were confident in conventional security and its ability to prevent physical break-ins, they were concerned about control systems. The Russian attack made them consider whether the systems that controlled American electric power grids were secure against cyber-based attacks. The subcommittee debated the Securing Energy Infrastructure Act for the next few years, finally passing it in the Senate in late 2018. In the 2020s, the subcommittee focused on the commercialization of modern energy technologies, such as solar energy systems, global climate change, and research and development concerning green energy and sustainability.

United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on National Parks

This subcommittee has jurisdiction over the National Park System, the Wild and Scenic Rivers System, and the National Trails System. It also has jurisdiction over most other areas that the federal government chooses to preserve for historic purposes, such as monuments or military sites. Prehistoric findings also fall under this subcommittee.

The National Park Service was created in 1916. It was designed to maintain and care for areas that were deemed significant and in need of protection. The goal of creating these protected areas is not only to keep them safe, but to educate the public so they appreciate the sites.

In its first year, the Trump administration made several decisions impacting the National Park System. Many of these focused on reducing restrictions on development in or near protected areas. Trump also appointed agency leaders that most conservationists strongly disapproved of. In 2017, he recommended significantly reducing the size of two national monuments to allow for land development. The subcommittee held several hearings debating the merits of conservation and economic development throughout Trump’s first term.

United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining

This subcommittee is primarily focused on land that is owned by the federal government and made available to the public. Much of this land is owned by two groups: the Bureau of Land Management and the US Forest Service. Its jurisdiction includes the research of wildlife in these areas. The subcommittee oversees the creation of wildlife refuges. This process involves studying the local wildlife to determine if extra protection is needed, forming the boundaries and establishing a refuge area, and enforcing the refuge’s protected status.

The subcommittee has been involved in the debate over the conservation of the greater sage-grouse, a bird native to the western United States. In the early twenty-first century, several conservation groups advocated for its placement on the Endangered Species list, but this met strong resistance. Much of the land on or near its habitat was used for raising livestock and mining and drilling for various resources. Farmers and developers were wary of their work being threatened.

Instead, a cooperative effort between them, the federal government, local governments, and private organizations began, which preserved human activity while protecting sage-grouse territory. Sage-grouse numbers seemed to show improvement in the late 2010s. In 2018, the subcommittee worked with the Trump administration to open up large amounts of sage-grouse territory for drilling. Conservationists opposed this, saying that it disrupted a system that was working. Proponents said that it would give more freedom to private citizens and developers.

United States Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water and Power

This subcommittee’s jurisdiction includes water used to generate hydroelectric power and the associated facilities, irrigation, flood control, and the regulation of power companies. It also oversees studies on the impact of power and treatment plants on local water supplies. With much of the western United States impacted by drought in 2017, the subcommittee examined the nation’s water management infrastructure. It studied the methods used to prepare for and respond to drought and tried to determine the most effective ways to improve them.

The Bureau of Reclamation is a federal agency that works with water resource management in the western United States, so it was an agency that the subcommittee was focused on during discussions about drought prevention. In 2018, the subcommittee discussed streamlining the bureau’s ability to transfer ownership of land and water sections to state and local governments or private entities.

Bibliography

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“Subcommittees.” U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, www.energy.senate.gov/subcommittees. Accessed 13 Jan. 2025.