Natural Resources committee  No.

Natural Resources committee  We still consider them customers or stakeholders, but they're not paying for anything, yes.

Natural Resources committee  I don't think it would conflict with any mandates. I think it makes it harder. At least in the United States, the populace is more skeptical of private data than federal data. One of the things that benefits federal organizations is their longevity, which contributes to their reputation, which helps us to be able to get data from respondents.

Natural Resources committee  We put out a lot of articles that include information from Canada and Mexico. Of course, it's not as extensive as we have in the United States, but we love our North American brethren.

Natural Resources committee  Most of the information we currently get about either battery storage or photovoltaic systems we get directly from utilities, which are regulated in the United States, so their information is mostly available to everyone. We also get information in our residential energy consumption survey, which is a more general survey about what energy-using facilities or devices households or commercial businesses have.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, I could give you a very quick response. I believe there are a lot of efficiencies and economies of scale in having one federal or national energy agency, and I'll give you an example. Most of our data transfer now happens through an application program interface; most of our sophisticated data users go onto our website and suck 80% of the data off that they need on a weekly basis.

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  I probably have a biased perspective on that, but yes, I think that's a good summary.

Natural Resources committee  The information that we collect from businesses is very business-competitive information. It's very sensitive. Unless we have the laws in place to safeguard information, those individuals wouldn't want to provide it. But as we are a federal agency with federal statutes that empower us to collect that information and not disseminate it unless required by the federal entity, they feel much more induced to provide that information.

Natural Resources committee  I don't consider myself an expert in that area, but I believe we work with our counterparts in Canada—NRCan and Statistics Canada—and the information we receive from them has always been of high quality. The only thing we sometimes wish we both had more of is energy use data. That's one area that probably they would identify themselves as showing a need for information.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, it is.

Natural Resources committee  All of our funding comes from the federal government by U.S. taxpayers, and we provide all of our work for free to whoever wants it through our website.

Natural Resources committee  Sure. I think—

Natural Resources committee  Okay, I'll try to answer that question. Realize that my answer is very limited, because the Energy Information Administration only deals with the collection of energy information. We have the Environmental Protection Agency, which deals with other pollutants that contribute to climate change.

Natural Resources committee  In the United States, very little information at this point is obtained directly from states. All of the information is obtained mostly from users of energy or providers of energy or transporters of energy. We have good relationships with the states and we try to maintain them and build on them continuously, because they're one of our major users of information, and that helps.