The National Journal just published our response to Tuesday’s White House energy and climate summit, following contributions by the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, CEO of the George C. Marshall Institute, and a Director of Policy at Brookings Institution.
Third Way For Energy And Climate Bill
NationalJournal.com | June 30, 2010
This is a guest post by Teryn Norris, director and founder of Americans for Energy Leadership and senior advisor at the Breakthrough Institute.
Tuesday’s White House energy summit drove yet one more nail into the economy-wide cap and trade coffin, with Senator Kerry declaring “we’re prepared to compromise further.” The compromise gaining momentum is a scaled-back, utility-only approach. But if President Obama and Senate leaders want to deliver a real victory on energy and climate policy reform, they should move quickly to advance a third way approach based on major federal investment in clean energy technology.
As Mark Muro of Brookings Institution wrote here, “the latest efforts to gain political consensus in the Senate are continuing to neglect a crucial aspect of cleaning up the country’s energy system—technology innovation.” It was President Obama himself who highlighted an innovation-based approach in his Oval Office speech, noting that “Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development – and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.”
Regardless of an economic-wide or utility-only cap, robust federal investment in clean energy technology is a national imperative. In addition to tackling our fossil fuel addiction, it can rapidly drive down the price of low-carbon energy technologies, build new export-oriented and manufacturing-intensive industries, and accelerate the transition to energy independence. The federal government currently invests $30 billion per year in health R&D and $80 billion per year in military R&D. Energy currently receives $3 to $5 billion – less than our national expenditure on potato chips.
A new target of at least $15-20 billion in annual federal energy RD&D investment represents the national “energy innovation consensus” supported by a large and growing number of prominent U.S. business leaders, think tanks, university associations, and dozens of Nobel Laureates. The American Energy Innovation Council is the latest group to support this approach. Led by business titans Bill Gates and Jeff Immelt, and backed by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the organization is calling for $16 billion annually in federal investment. Unfortunately, current proposals like the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act would only provide $2-4 billion per year, as we documented in “The Power to Compete.”
This third-way approach can be a political winner for Congressional Democrats, Republicans, and the White House alike. Even before the Gulf oil spill, a poll by Pew Research in March found that 78% of the public favors increased government funding for research into clean energy technologies. When compared to alternatives such as carbon pricing, technology investment fairs as the most popular energy policy proposal. For Democratic leaders, this strategy would allow them to meet general public demand for reform while still satisfying their environmental base with a major achievement on clean energy. It would allow Republicans to offer a serious, pro-business alternative to cap and trade and “drill baby drill” that would boost the economy. And it would allow the White House to declare victory on President Obama’s original campaign promise to invest $15 billion per year in this sector.
Of course, Republicans tend to shy away from any proposal to increase government spending, but clean energy is a strategic national resource with too much associated risk to be borne by the private sector alone. Republicans should also remember the strong conservative precedent for these types of public investment. Presidents Eisenhower and Reagan oversaw enormous investments in scientific R&D and military technology, respectively, to maintain U.S. competitiveness. More recently, it was Newt Gingrich who in 2008 called for the National Science Foundation’s budget to triple from $6 to 18 billion to specifically help foster green technologies. And after Tuesday’s bipartisan meeting, it was Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) who noted, “Republicans would work with the White House on legislation to boost electric vehicles, nuclear power, and boosting energy research and development.”
The moment is urgent. As this week’s Time Magazine cover story notes, “Clean power could be to the 21st century what aeronautics and the computer were to the 20th, but the U.S. is already falling behind.” After decades of energy stalemate, in the midst of yet another oil crisis, it is time to seize the opportunity and secure America’s energy leadership once and for all. Federal investment in energy RD&D is a strategy for U.S. climate security, energy independence, and economic competitiveness, and it can deliver the bipartisan victory our country needs today.
[...] our position. Teryn discussed the implications for federal policy, the need for a comprehensive “third way” strategy for clean energy competitiveness based on strategic public investment in technology, as well as this week’s Department of [...]
[...] position. We discussed the clean energy race and implications for federal policy, the need for a “third way” energy and climate strategy based on public investment in technology innovation, and the DOE Clean Energy Ministerial as an [...]
[...] position. We discussed the clean energy race and implications for federal policy, the need for a “third way” energy and climate strategy based on public investment in technology innovation, and the DOE Clean Energy Ministerial as an [...]