Sec. of Energy Jennifer Granholm

Sec. of Energy Jennifer Granholm

Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm has a new title: U.S. Energy Secretary-designate.

Two days after advance news of her pending selection, Joe Biden makes it official. She and others "will advance the president-elect’s agenda leading the world to confront the climate crisis — creating good-paying jobs, building resilient communities, and making historic investments in environmental justice," a transiton team announcement says Thursday night.

Bridge Michigan frames the choice, which requires Senate confirmation, as "an embrace of an early green-economy evangelist whose message more than a decade ago mirrored the one Biden is spreading now."

As governor, from 2003 to 2011, ... Granholm’s multibillion-dollar financial investments in green energy sometimes fail[ed] to bear fruit as she governed through the economic turmoil of the mid-2000s. 

"It's a very different energy landscape," [U-M public policy Professor Barry] Rabe said, than it was when Granholm began championing green energy and battery technologies as the key to Michigan's economic revival.

Wind and solar have gone from marginal to major players in the U.S. energy market. Advanced battery technologies that struggled to find a market during Granholm's tenure are now in high demand. And there is generally "a much broader base of support" for a shift away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energy.

Granholm now lives in northern California with her husband, Dan Mulhern, and is an adjunct instructor of public policy at the University of California-Berkeley. In her former state, a legislative admirer from Livonia tweets:

Earlier coverage, Dec. 15:

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to pick ex-Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm as Secretary of Energy, Politico and The Washington Post report.

Granholm would help carry out the new administration's plan to gradually move America away from fossil fuels.


Wikipedia was updated Wednesday in anticipation.

Politico writes: 

Granholm, who served two terms as Michigan's governor, is experienced in dealing with the auto industry — a potentially big advantage as the new president seeks to speed the rollout of electric vehicles and the network of charging stations needed to power them.

Granholm's ardent support of the auto industry may help Biden's team strengthen its appeal to blue-collar workers and the manufacturing sector as the incoming administration pitches its climate-centric economic transformation. And it would be a marked change of course from President Donald Trump's first Energy secretary, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who used the position to promote natural gas exports and push regulators to prop up coal as a power source.

Granholm, 61, who was governor from 2003-11 after serving as state attorney general from 1999-2003. She's now an adjunct professor of law at the University of California-Berkeley. 

Michigan's senators react to the news: