Indisputably inspiring, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released its first photos from the James Webb Telescope this month. These breathtaking images proved the telescope’s successes in clarity and range over the former purveyor of these galaxies, the 1990 Hubble Telescope, and demonstrated our growing awareness of the universe. Yet some still doubt the allocation of federal funds for this exploration, not grasping that federally-funded space exploration promotes innovation, intergovernmental collaboration, and a stronger STEM workforce.
The Webb Launch shows the American people what international collaboration can look like. A joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA), the launch upholds the Biden administration’s commitment to peaceful international relations in space. Launches require intergovernmental and private sector collaboration through various federal agencies, state and private universities, and contracts with businesses or nonprofit organizations.
Those with concerns regarding costs claim privately-funded missions as solutions. These concerns neglect the fact that NASA receives less than 1% of the federal budget, and as astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson argues, private companies may avoid more risky projects that won’t prove valuable to investors. The House Subcommittee on Space understands the importance of public investment in exploration and hopes to advance NASA’s economic efficiency in the next decade through increased resources for synchronized manned missions, robotics, and research and development operations. Taking on risks, promoting competition in the private sector, and inspiring patriotism necessitate public financial commitment to space travel.
In a time of uncertainty, the Webb launch and imaging exhibit positive impacts of federal funding and cooperation. Further funding for space exploration and improving its efficiency inspires trust in government as it continues to foster innovation, collaboration, and STEM education.
Asian countries consume nearly half of the world’s energy and 70% of the world’s coal. China burns more coal than all other countries combined and plans to build an additional 80 new coal plants in coming years. The United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that heavy coal use will continue in many parts of Asia throughout 2050 even in a “low demand” scenario.1 Asia’s dependence on coal works at cross purposes with the global consensus to limit warming to under 2 degrees Celsius as set forth in the Paris climate agreement, as well as pledges by major Asian countries to cut their carbon emissions.
For example, China has pledged to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.2 India set a similar net-zero emissions goal by 2070.3 Since Asia emits well over half of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, any realistic strategy to bend down the global emissions curve relies on reducing Asian emissions deeply over time.4 The construction of new coal plants — which typically operate for 40 years or more — raises serious doubts about the climate commitments of leading Asian nations. China’s annual greenhouse gas emissions alone are now more than 30% of the global total, greater than all developed nations combined. Asia’s large and growing countries must transition to a cleaner fuel base to stand a chance at meeting their climate targets while sustaining economic growth. In addition, Asia’s reliance on coal also undermines efforts to reduce local air pollution, which led to over 30 million premature deaths in China alone between 2010 and 2016.5 How can Asia reduce its coal use while also ensuring continued prosperity and sustainability across the continent? Substituting cleaner-burning natural gas for coal offers one key strategy to cut emissions deeply, but only if Asian countries recognize that natural gas is not created equally from a climate change perspective.
For example, Russia and the United States both increasingly export natural gas to Asia. However, studies show that the United States produces natural gas that has far lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than Russian gas. That’s due to America’s greater performance on all three dimensions of effective methane control: (1) measurement, (2) validation, and (3) policies.
In fact, this paper will show that:
Due to its very high fugitive emissions of methane, Russian gas delivered through pipelines to China emits slightly higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than Chinese coal itself based on this best available data. Thus, any pretense by China that using Russian gas reduces overall greenhouse gas emissions is false.
This fact undermines the climate change rationale of the recently announced new, second major natural gas pipeline project from Russia to China. Increased Chinese imports of Russian gas will only subvert Asian and global climate protection goals.
In contrast, due to lower lifecycle emissions of methane, U.S. liquefied natural gas delivered to China has on average 30% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than does Chinese coal.
On this basis, we argue that Asia should not only increase its use of natural gas to displace coal, but do so particularly by purchasing liquified natural gas (LNG) imports from the United States and other lower methane emitting sources, rather than sourcing natural gas from Russia.6 We find that lower methane emissions gas systems give the United States a significant competitive advantage versus other sources of gas as Asian countries shift from coal to gas to cut their carbon emissions.
But these U.S. advantages will only continue if the federal government and domestic energy companies work together to lower methane emissions from its production, transportation, and exportation of natural gas. We urge the Biden administration to set an explicit national goal to work toward making America the cleanest natural gas producer in the world. Not only would that boost U.S. LNG exports, it would also pressure other exporting countries to reduce their methane and lifecycle emissions if they want to be remain competitive.
This paper offers a three-tier framework for a comprehensive comparison of methane emissions by Russia and the United States. We explore how each country measures its methane emissions, the extent and effectiveness of third-party validation of emissions estimates, and the role that policy frameworks play in creating incentives for cleaning up gas production.
We note that Russia’s obsession with secrecy makes a comprehensive comparison of methane emissions between the United States and Russia difficult. The bottom line is that Russia’s insistent lack of transparency compared to the U.S. means Russian emissions are likely far higher even than the existing estimates used in the paper. We also note that from an economic and national security perspective, the U.S. has an opportunity to partner with key Asian nations in providing cleaner natural gas while reducing the influence of petro-states like Russia. This is imperative is an especially crucial given Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and other expansionist policies. However, this is not the main focus of this paper.
All these factors suggest that it is strongly in the U.S. and global climate protection interest for America to continue to expand its LNG exports into Asia, while making sure U.S. regulations drive down methane emissions to work toward being the world’s cleanest producer of natural gas. This report will offer a series of specific recommendations for how to accomplish these goals.
INTRODUCTION
Natural gas consumption in Asia has risen steadily in recent years, a trend expected to increase more dramatically to meet Asia’s projected increase in energy consumption over the next thirty years, as displayed in Table 1a and 1b. Economic growth in the region, particularly in China and India, is expected to drive demand for a wide range of energy sources, including natural gas. In addition, calls for cleaner sources of energy has motivated commitments by governments in the region to begin shifting away from coal and towards natural gas and renewable energy.
This vision was directly reflected in China’s 2016- 2020 “energy revolution” plan, which featured growth in natural gas as part of its “three-pillar approach” to sustainable energy. Specifically, the plan included increasing the share of natural gas in primary energy consumption to 10% by 2020 and 15% by 2030 and in urban dwellings to 50-55% by 2020 and 70% by 2030.7 8Natural gas continues to feature prominently in China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, spanning years 2021 through 2025,9 and will continue to do so in light of China’s carbon neutrality by 2060 pledge.10 India is following a similar trajectory, with a recent announcement committing to net-zero carbon emissions by 2070.11 In line with this new ambitious policy direction, India has set out to increase the share of natural gas in the country’s energy mix from just over 6% at present to 15% by just 2030.12
Due to limited domestic supply of natural gas in Asia, natural gas imports are also projected to increase steeply, roughly quadrupling from 4.1 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2020 to 16.1 Tcf in 2050.13 China and India are projected to receive roughly half of these dramatically increased imports.14 Liquified natural gas (LNG) imports specifically are similarly projected to increase over this time period, representing as much as 72.5% of the total demand for natural gas in the Asia-Pacific region by 2050.15 This is especially the case for India, which has experienced a decline in domestic natural gas production. Indeed, India has been the fourth largest importer of LNG since 2011 and continues to rely on these imports, which represented 50% of the country’s natural gas supply in 2019.16
Three of the world’s largest natural gas producing regions (the United States, Russia, and Middle Eastern exporters) are expected to increase natural gas production to meet growing demands in Asia, as displayed in Figure 2. However, at least prior to its invasion of Ukraine, Russian production of natural gas (which may reach 14 Tcf by 2050) has been expected to significantly outpace exportation from other regions, positioning Russia to become the largest net exporter of natural gas through 2050.17 And while these estimates were made prior to the EU’s announced embargo on Russian gas, and are likely therefore to be too high, the EU is still importing gas from Russia, as are other nations.
Crucially, Russia has already taken steps to secure its natural gas foothold in China even as its market in Europe is now threatened by its invasion of Ukraine. The Power of Siberia-1 pipeline, which began operating in 2019, is Russia’s first natural gas pipeline to China. The $400 billion contract, the largest contract in the history of Russia’s natural gas company Gazprom, calls for Russia to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually for 30 years. The impact for China is also significant, with the amount of natural gas supplied enabling China to displace coal in China’s northwest region over that period.18 Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi recently held a high profile event during the Beijing Winter Olympics at which they announced an additional agreement calling for another Russian gas pipeline to China, known as the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline, which is expected to have an export capacity of 50 Bcm per year19 and is scheduled to commence operations in 2030. At the February 2022 event in Beijing, Russia and China announced another 30- year contract to supply 10 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China through this new pipeline.20
Russia has also begun making a natural gas footprint in India. Although India currently only accounts for 0.2% of Russia’s natural gas exports,21 India recently entered into a 20-year contract with Russia to supply it with 2.5 million tons of LNG.22 Both countries have expressed commitments to deepening their ties and boosting LNG activity.23
As with Russia, net exports of natural gas from the United States are expected to spike through 2050. The United States just recently, in late 2021, became the world’s largest LNG exporter. Asia has been the largest destination for U.S. LNG exports since 2020, with South Korea, China, and Japan being the largest buyers in both 2020 and 2021, although the recent pledge by President Biden to supply more U.S. LNG to Europe to displace Russian gas suggests that both Europe and Asia will be receiving greater U.S. LNG shipments in coming years.
While Japan has been the largest LNG importer in the world for the past 50 years, China is poised to surpass Japan to facilitate its transition away from coal.24 The year 2021 marked this transition, as Japanese LNG imports fell 4 million tons short that of China. The U.S. recently surpassed Qatar and Malaysia as the second largest source of LNG imports to China, after Australia. The United States further cemented its relationship with this import partner in the third quarter of 2021, when China signed four long-term LNG contracts with leading U.S. LNG producers following a Chinese government directive to secure LNG at any price.25, 26
While India has historically received most of its LNG from Qatar due its geographic proximity, India is still one of the primary destinations of U.S. LNG, ranking seventh in 2019. New commercial contracts with U.S. LNG companies will continue to sustain this relationship.
COMPARING NATURAL GAS FROM THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine jolted the European Union out of its complacency surrounding energy imports, exposing how the EU addiction to Russian gas has been funding Putin’s malign regime at ever greater levels, in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, even since Russia’s 2015 annexation of Crimea. Apart from the wide-ranging geopolitical costs of the EU reliance on Russian oil and gas, the invasion of Ukraine is also suddenly forcing the EU to recognize the huge additional methane emissions of Russian gas, contributing to the EU determination to cut its dependency on Russian natural gas imports.
Asia should follow suit, on both ethical grounds to protest Russia’s unlawful invasions, but also on environmental grounds. Without a dramatic fuel shift from coal to cleaner natural gas, Asian countries have no plausible way to meet their climate commitments.
Natural gas emits about half the carbon dioxide emissions as coal when combusted. However, natural gas producers emit significant amounts of greenhouse gas in the form of methane by venting, inefficient flaring, and fugitive emissions through leaks in wells, transportation in pipelines and equipment.27 These emissions have a disproportionately large impact on the climate because the primary component of natural gas, methane, warms the atmosphere 86 more times per molecule than carbon dioxide emissions over a 20-year timeframe.28 Therefore, high fugitive methane emissions can more than offset the climate gains of switching to natural gas from coal. Studies show that gas is more climate friendly than coal only so long as methane emissions are kept below 2.7% of gas production, although some estimates range to more like 3.5% leakage rates.29, 30
In the context of Asia, natural gas imports with high methane leakage rates result in higher carbon emissions than anticipated, and in some cases, are no better from a climatic perspective than continuing the use of coal. Ultimately, Asia should not purchase any natural gas that does not have low enough methane emissions to provide climatic benefits over coal.
Moreover, Asia should prioritize the lowest verifiable methane emitting option from a lifecycle perspective, over any other natural gas alternative. Without Asia’s leadership in cutting emissions of coal and using lower-emitting natural gas, it will be difficult for the planet to stay on track for a 2 degrees Celsius goal. As this paper will discuss, leakage rates vary considerably based on the geographic location of the natural gas source, including across and within national boundaries. Therefore, comparing the climatic benefits or costs of exports of natural gas from the United States and Russia into Asia requires significant analysis.
This paper addresses the unique opportunity and associated challenges for Asia to substitute coal with low-leakage natural gas, specifically, LNG sourced from the United States. This cleaner natural gas will not only allow Asia to deliver on its policy commitments, but will also reap real and significant benefits for the climate as well as for human health, both of which have been severely threatened by decades of coal use throughout most of Asia. The decisions Asian countries make today to secure their future gas supply have enormous bearing on both their economic and social development and on climate change. Where they source their gas from is crucial to ensure high-quality natural gas imports with low leakage rates for methane emissions.
This paper is organized around a three-tiered framework for assessing the climate impact of natural gas exports from the United States and Russia. Section 3 introduces and discusses this framework at length with a comparison between the United States and Russia. Section 4 offers policy recommendations for Asia and the United States
Measuring methane emissions from the natural gas lifecycle is notoriously difficult. Methane emissions can happen anywhere along the supply chain from initial production to final consumption. In addition, a small minority of leaks often explains the vast majority of any observed emissions, thereby earning the moniker of “super” or “ultra” emitting sources. For these and other reasons, there are wide uncertainties in many estimates of methane emissions, making comparing national emissions inventories alone a necessary yet insufficient step in assessing the climatic impact of different natural gas sources. Countries also put varying degrees of diligence and skill into validating national emissions. Finally, countries adopt very different policies and incentives to encourage the reduction of methane emissions. More specifically, we conceptualize three tiers of comparison as follows:
Government Emissions Inventories: Countries collect and maintain their own national data on emissions, sometimes including methane emissions from the oil and gas sector, but the accuracy of this data varies widely. In addition, countries periodically submit national inventories to the United Nations for assessment under the Framework for Climate Change. This tier ranks the accuracy of the measurements provided by national data or inventories.
Third-Party Validation Efforts: Over the last decade, academics, and nonprofits started inventing new methodologies for measuring methane emissions from the oil and gas sector to test the validity of government data. The overall level of effort put into validating government inventories by these third-parties, the effectiveness of their methods, and the results of their findings are all taken into consideration under this tier.
Methane Policy Mix: Countries adopt widely varying policies for reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector. Clearly, while measuring and validating emissions are pertinent for current methane emissions, a country’s policy mix largely determines the level of its future methane emissions. Therefore, this tier accounts for the trajectory of methane emissions. We also report on recent political announcements that shed light on the future direction of each country’s methane emissions trajectory.
Figure 3 summarizes our main results from applying this conceptual framework to LNG exports from the United States and natural gas exports from Russia. While there is ample room for improvement in both countries, the United States clearly offers a strong relative advantage by offering a lower carbon natural gas product in the form of LNG exports. In particular, U.S. measurement of methane emissions is more accurate, the validations of those measurements are more rigorous, and the methane policy framework is more aggressive. We believe these realities confer a substantial competitive advantage on U.S. natural gas.
At the same time, we recognize that geopolitics will sometimes supersede climate protection considerations. But if climate and geopolitical considerations are not given appropriate value, Russia could wind up being the key gas supplier to what some are calling the “axis of autocracy” — countries with rulers who may favor Russia against free and democratic nations. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this group has clearly included not only China, but in some cases India. But for Asian countries struggling to grow and do their part to slow down the overheating of our planet, the evidence points overwhelmingly to the superiority of cleaner U.S. gas. These nations must be called to account on the negative climate implications of using Russian gas, especially given the increasing availability and price competitiveness of lower emitting LNG alternatives from the U.S.
Finally, recommending imports of cleaner natural gas as baseload power and heating in Asia to displace higher-emitting natural gas sources and coal should be in way no detract from aggressive efforts among Asian nations to expand production of renewable energy, nuclear power, hydrogen and other near-zero emitting sources.
Government Emissions Data
In both the United States and Russia, government emissions inventories have historically likely underestimated methane emissions from the oil and gas sector compared to independent estimates, which the next section discusses in detail. A central, but not the only, reason for this is that these inventories rely on bottom-up measurements, which make assumptions regarding the quantity of equipment used (known as “activity factors”) and their emission rates (known as “default factors”) that are inherently prone to underestimation. Therefore, government emissions inventories should be taken with a grain of salt.
Figure 4 shows government inventories of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector compared to a selection of recent independent estimates (denoted as yellow triangles) as well as how those inventories changed over time (denoted by the dotted lines). On the first dimension, Figure 4 shows (a) that Russia initially overestimated emissions before significantly underestimating them, leading to a widening gap between government inventories and independent estimates. It also shows (b) that the United States likely underestimates emissions but that the gap between government inventories and independent estimates is quickly closing, with several academic studies roughly agreeing with the government inventories. In both cases, the notable exception outlier is IEA (2021) which accounts for ultra-emitters, an analysis that we describe in detail later in this report.
Regarding changes in government inventories over time, a recent investigation by The Washington Post shows that Russia has repeatedly and arbitrarily lowered its estimates for methane emissions from its oil and gas sector. As displayed in Figure 4A, these estimates have dropped by nearly an order of magnitude over the last 15 years with frequent revisions. According to the Post investigation, experts believe that Russia is massively underestimating its methane emissions.31 Similarly, Russia’s own estimates of methane emissions from the oil and gas sector are remarkably low in relative terms. For example, Gazprom reported a methane leakage rate of three-tenths of one percent in 2015, a number widely viewed as unbelievably low by experts,32 while the United States reported a 1.54% methane leakage rate in 2017.33 Taken together, the trend of constant downward revisions and remarkably low leakage rates immediately raises deep suspicion over the quality of Russia’s emissions inventory.
Beyond the estimates from the annual inventories, the process for making estimations is drastically different between the United States and Russia. For example, as displayed in Figure 4B, the United States also lowered its estimate for methane emissions from its oil and gas sector over the last 15 years, although to a much lesser degree than Russia. Importantly, these changes are much more gradual and accompanied by a coherent and public technical explanation in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) annual greenhouse gas inventory report. As part of this reporting process, the EPA invites and responds to public feedback — including from academics, nonprofits, and businesses — on its methodology and potential updates. On the other hand, to our knowledge, Russia does not have any such a transparent process. As such, there is no plausible explanation for why Russian estimates change so drastically or frequently, except political expediency. In addition, the Post reports that Russia does not impose substantial fines for noncompliance and that third-party audit reports in Russia cannot be trusted.34
Based on the United States Greenhouse Gas Inventory and Reporting Programs, the National Energy Technology Laboratory conducted a comprehensive study comparing the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from different sources of energy. As illustrated in Figure 5, the study finds Russian gas piped to China has up to 5% more greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) than Chinese coal based on a 20-year global warming potential. In contrast, liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipped to China from the United States has only 72% of the GHGs compared to Chinese coal based on a 20-year global warming potential. From a 100-year global warming potential perspective, Russian gas piped to China has about 11% more GHGs compared to United States LNG shipped to China.35, 36.
A major caveat is that, within each country, there is massive variance in leakage rates. In particular, both the United States and Russia have localized “super” or “ultra” emitting sources, as discussed in detail by a recent academic article published in the journal Science. 37 Within these regions, researchers have observed spikes in methane leakage well in excess of what would make natural gas a reasonable substitute for coal from a climatic perspective. For example, a recent study in the United States estimates that methane emissions leakage rates from the Permian Basin, a major producing region in Texas, were 3.7% of production in 2018 and 2019, suggesting a significant disadvantage from using natural gas from this region over coal.38 Approaches that account for ultra-emitting sources, such as IEA (2021), will therefore tend to yield higher estimates of methane emissions. This speaks to the importance of independent estimates, which we will turn to next.
Third-Party Validation Efforts
Independent actors, including academic and environmental organizations, are another vital source of data about methane emissions from country to country. As described in detail in Appendix 1, we focus primarily on collecting independent estimates across the two countries that are comparable. These approaches primarily rely on either “top-down” satellite-based studies or “bottom-up” emissions factor studies. Particularly in the United States, there are dozens of excluded studies that use airplanes, trucks, sensors, and in-person assessments to provide detailed geographical estimates of methane emissions. These methodologies require a certain level of governmental or corporate permission to study methane emissions and, to our knowledge, this permission tends to be granted in the United States and not granted in Russia. This is one of the reasons why we know so much more about methane emissions in the United States compared to Russia.
In an effort to make reliable comparisons, we have focused only on studies that employ the same methodology to ascertain national-level estimates in the United States and Russia. Our analysis reveals that the average leakage rate reported in Russia is 2.80% (ranging between 1.54 and 4.14%), substantially higher than the 1.74% average rate in the United States, (ranging more narrowly from 1.12 and 2.19%.)
Most recently, the International Energy Agency recently launched a Methane Tracker Database.39 This initiative aims to blend country-level inventories with satellite-based measurements to track methane emissions over time. It also complements the International Methane Observatory (IMO), which is expected to increase the quality of methane estimates overall.40 We calculate a methane leakage rate originating from this database equal to 2.19% for the United States and 3.02% for Russia in 2020, making Russia’s methane emissions nearly 40% higher than those from the United States. Again, the uncertainties around Russia’s methane emissions are much greater, since there are many more independent estimates conducted in the United States.
Previous academic efforts to estimate country-level methane emissions from oil and gas reflect similar trends. An article published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics estimates methane leakage rates of 2.11% in the United States and 2.49% in Russia for 2012.41 Another academic article published in 2017 by the journal Environmental Research Letters estimates methane leakage rates of 1.57% in the United States and 3.42% in Russia for 2012. We were unable to find any third-party country-level estimate that estimates the United States emitting at a higher methane leakage rate than Russia.42
There is also a distinction between the overall effort put in by third-parties, such as academics and nonprofits, in validating government emissions inventories. In the United States, these researchers have produced well over several dozen major studies estimating methane leakage ratios at different geographies and scopes spanning the last decade. Importantly, there is a diverse array of methods including airplane, drone, sensor, and satellite data.
In contrast, there is far less activity in Russia, with only a handful of academic studies independently estimating methane emissions. Those typically find that inventories are underestimated. For example, a 2021 article published in the journal Atmospheric Environment employs satellite imagery to estimate methane emissions from one particular region in Russia that are much higher than official figures. The authors identify widespread flaring, even though this activity was supposed to be illegal, and argue that more satellite imagery is required to validate Russia’s underestimated national data.43 Taken together, not only are third-party validation efforts more commonplace in the United States, but those validation efforts that allow for comparisons with Russia show lower comparative methane leakage rates for the United States. This means that validation efforts are stronger in the United States when compared to Russia. Of course, both countries should improve further on facilitating validation efforts, since there are large gaps between estimates from government inventories and independent estimates at local and national scales in both countries.
Methane Control Policies
We are not aware of any significant policies in Russia to incentivize reductions in methane emissions. Moreover, while President Putin has called for cuts to methane emissions, Russia has not signed onto any of the recent international efforts to reduce methane emissions including, for example, the Global Methane Pledge launched by the United States and the European Union.44 For these reasons, we are unable to credit Russia with any effective policy for mitigating methane emissions.
In contrast, the United States has recently furthered its effort to reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector as part of its Methane Emissions Reduction Plan.45 Importantly, the United States Environmental Protection Agency is updating rules for new and existing oil and gas sources, which it estimates will reduce methane emissions by approximately 75% from covered sources. These sources will include those previously unregulated including oil wells with associated gas.
Bipartisan infrastructure legislation that President Biden signed into law also contains $16 billion in new funding to cap old or existing wells and mines that leak methane. In addition, the Bureau of Land Management will further reduce venting, flaring, and leaks on public lands and waters. This is notable because one of the main hotspots for methane emissions in the United States, the Permian Basin in New Mexico, would be subject to these regulations.
Finally, the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) is implementing the bipartisan PIPES Act, passed in December 2020, with the potential to reduce 20 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year by reducing or eliminating leaks or ruptures of oil and gas pipelines. Interestingly, PHMSA is proposing a rule this year to strengthen standards for LNG facilities, particularly from large scale incidents and storage tanks.
Policy Recommendations – Key Actions by Major Stakeholders
1. Asian governments should phase down and then halt the importation of Russian gas based on climate change, humanitarian, and geopolitical grounds.
2. Asian nations should also suspend and cancel the construction of natural gas pipelines from Russia since they increase lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions and are therefore inconsistent with climate goals.
3. In particular, China should cancel a proposed new gas pipeline from Russia (the so-called “Power of Siberia 2”) given its high lifecycle emissions.
4. Asian nations should construct LNG infrastructure to facilitate imports from countries with lower methane emissions, including the United States.
5. Asian countries that have carbon prices (including China, Japan, and South Korea) should, in time, consider adding a greenhouse gas import tax that regulates natural gas imports based on their lifecycle methane emissions. Carbon prices can and should be redesigned to give priority to low leakage natural gas.
6. Major greenhouse gas emitting Asian countries, especially China and India, who have not already done so should join the U.S., EU, and over 100 countries in the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions from all national sources by 30% by 2030. It is notable that Russia has not joined this Pledge.
7. U.S. lawmakers and regulators (at the federal and state levels) should continue improving management of methane emissions — including measurement, validation, and policy frameworks — to work toward achieving the lowest leakage rates of any gas-producing and gas-exporting country in the world. U.S. regulators should specifically improve measurements of methane emissions by incorporating new methods, including satellites and other airborne measurements. A strong national inventory will bolster the effectiveness of any policy aimed at reducing methane emissions. U.S. regulators should pay special attention to ultra-emitters among oil and gas producers, including small producers and those in the Permian Basin.
While more aggressive regulation is necessary, the U.S. government should also use incentives and fees to challenge domestic oil and gas producers to a “race to the top” when it comes to controlling methane emissions. Several U.S. LNG exporting companies have taken measures in this direction, including “tagging” or disclosing the full lifecycle emissions of its LNG export cargoes in 2023, and new efforts to capture and store carbon at one of its U.S. export terminals.
In order to make greater amounts of natural gas available for export both Europe and Asia and to improve global climate outcomes and geopolitics while limiting domestic price, the United States must also expand the production of additional clean energy sources including renewable energy, nuclear power, geothermal and related technologies including electricity storage, carbon capture and storage, direct air capture and other advanced energy. As the Progressive Policy Institute noted in its previous reports from 2020 and 2021 on the role of natural gas in cutting domestic greenhouse emissions and those in Europe, the U.S. should enact $325 billion pending legislation to dramatically expand clean energy tax incentives this year, as well as invest in increase domestic production of gas, including expanding gas pipelines as needed.
Both gas exporting and importing governments should challenge oil and gas companies to show steady progress in reducing their methane emissions, including by encouraging companies to consider bundling their LNG shipments with carbon offsets that would enable exporters to achieve lower carbon status over the long-run, while ensuring offsets are high-quality. In time, importing nations are likely to reward these efforts with greater demand for low-emissions gas delivery.
International climate oversight bodies (including U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and International Panel of Climate Change) should strongly encourage all nations to provide accurate data on actual methane emissions from all sources, including oil and gas production. These organizations and IEA should also continue deploying methodologies capable of improving estimates of methane emissions in all countries, and particularly emphasize remote measurements in countries, such as Russia, that do not have robust independent estimates or transparent public processes for estimating inventories. Parties to the Paris Agreement are required to submit nationally determined contributions (NDCs), and the UNFCCC Secretariat should require each Party’s national climate plans to include plans to cut methane emissions from oil and natural gas, whether through production, exports and/or imports.
Independent third-party entities, such as nongovernmental organizations, should continue to conduct research into Russian methane emissions to fill the data gap that inhibits a thorough understanding of the magnitude of the emissions.
Appendix: Estimates of Russia and Untied States Oil and Gas System Methane Emissions from Existing Studies/Inventories and Derived Emissions Rates
Reported volumes of estimated methane emissions across sources come from the International Energy Agency (IEA) 2021 Methane Tracker Database and the IEA 2022 Methane Tracker Database that compiled estimates across published studies and inventories.46,47 The authors retrieved the data compiled by the IEA 2021 database in February 2022 and the data from additional studies reported by the IEA 2022 database in April 2022. IEA 2021 interactive figures reported what year the reported emissions covered and both IEA 2021 and 2022 databases report volume breakdowns by the segments of the oil and gas systems that were included in each study (e.g., upstream oil, upstream gas, downstream gas). As such, all estimated methane emission volumes included in our tables are the reported numbers for national totals across the entire oil and gas systems.
To calculate a derived percent of the country’s natural gas production lost as methane emissions based on the findings from each study, the authors divide the IEA 2021 and IEA 2022 compiled methane emission volumes by the total dry natural gas production volumes for the respective countries and base years reported by U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) datasets. Production data for both Russia and the U.S. comes from EIA’s International data set for all years of interest except for one. The U.S. volume for 2021 comes from EIA’s dry production data series.48 Before dividing, we convert the reported kt of methane for each source to billion cubic feet (assuming 1 kiloton of methane equals 0.051921 billion cubic feet of methane).
For example, Maasakkers et al 2019 estimate that in 2012 Russia emitted 10,413 kt (or 541 Bcf) of methane from across the country’s oil and gas system.49 EIA reports that in 2012 Russia produced 21,742 Bcf of dry natural gas. The authors then calculate the emission rate by dividing the total methane from Russia’s oil and gas systems in 2012 as estimated by Maasakkers et al 2019 by the Russian dry natural gas volume reported by EIA for 2012 (541/21,742= 2.49%).
NETL 2019 calculate the cradle through delivery emission rate of Russia natural gas via pipeline to Shanghai as 5.1% and of U.S. LNG to Shanghai, assuming gas comes from Appalachia, as 1.2% (see exhibit 6-8).50 This study may underestimate LNG methane emissions because NETL 2019 assumes Appalachian upstream methane emissions for its U.S. LNG calculation that may be lower than the upstream methane emissions for other major natural gas regions in the United States.
Paul Bledsoe is a strategic adviser for PPI, working on intersection of U.S. and global energy, climate, and economic policy. He is also a Professorial Lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. Paul served as communications director of the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton, as special assistant to U.S. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, and communications director of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance under former Chairman Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
He was formerly senior policy advisor to the Presidential Commission on the BP Oil Spill, director of strategy for the National Commission on Energy Policy, and a teaching fellow at Oxford University’s School of Geography and the Environment. Paul has been a leading figure in shaping two major climate agreements — the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 and the Kigali Agreement to phase out HFCs of 2016. He writes often on climate and energy in the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, Politico, USA Today, LA Times, The Hill and other leading publications. Paul received a B.A. with honors and a M.A from Ohio State University.
Clayton Munnings is a widely published environmental economist with over three dozen scholar articles and policy papers focused on carbon pricing and methane emission policies. He holds an A.S. from Monroe Community College, a B.S. from Cornell University, and an M.S. from UC Berkeley. He is completing his PhD at UC Berkeley with a focus on novel methods to create and identify high-quality carbon offsets.
Clayton currently serves as Strategic Advisor to the International Emissions Trading Association, Expert to Perspective GmbH’s International Initiative for Development of Article 6 Methodology Tools, and Board Member at Eartshot Now. He operates a consulting firm that provides advice to countries, corporations, and startups abating greenhouse gas emissions through carbon pricing, climate finance, and carbon offsets.
He has written climate laws for top-emitting countries, built carbon offset quality assurance frameworks for large companies, and designed investment strategies for novel approaches to climate finance. Previously, Clayton held roles as Researcher and Portfolio Manager at Kepos Capital LP, Economist in the Executive Office of the California Air Resources Board, Senior Research Associate at Resources for the Future, Short Term Consultant at the World Bank, and Youth Delegate to the UNFCCC for SustainUS.
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1. “International Energy Outlook,” United States Energy Information Administration, October 2021, https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/.
5. Fengchao Liang et al., “The 17-y Spatiotemporal Trend of PM 2.5 and Its Mortality Burden in China,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 41 (2020): pp. 25601-25608, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1919641117.
28. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing,” In Climate Change 2013 – The Physical Science Basis: Working Group I Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 659–740. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107415324.018.
29. Ramón A. Alvarez et al., “Greater Focus Needed on Methane Leakage from Natural Gas Infrastructure,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 17 (April 2012): pp. 6435-6440, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1202407109.
37. T. Lauvaux et al., “Global Assessment of Oil and Gas Methane Ultra-Emitters,” Science 375, no. 6580 (April 2022): pp. 557-561, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj4351.
38. Yuzhong Zhang et al., “Quantifying Methane Emissions from the Largest Oil-Producing Basin in the United States from Space,” Science Advances 6, no. 17 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5120.
41. Joannes D. Maasakkers et al., “Global Distribution of Methane Emissions, Emission Trends, and OH Concentrations and Trends Inferred from an Inversion of GOSAT Satellite Data for 2010–2015,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics 19, no. 11 (2019): pp. 7859-7881, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-19-7859-2019.
42. Lena Höglund-Isaksson, “Bottom-up Simulations of Methane and Ethane Emissions from Global Oil and Gas Systems 1980 to 2012,” Environmental Research Letters 12, no. 2 (2017): p. 024007, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa583e.
43. Iolanda Ialongo et al., “Satellite-Based Estimates of Nitrogen Oxide and Methane Emissions from Gas Flaring and Oil Production Activities in Sakha Republic, Russia,” Atmospheric Environment: X 11 (2021): p. 100114, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aeaoa.2021.100114.
A new report authored by the Progressive Policy Institute’s Paul Bledsoe and environmental economist Clayton Munnings finds that China and other Asian nations are rapidly moving toward natural gas to displace coal — but their efforts will not yield significant climate benefits if they don’t cut imports of high-methane leaking Russian gas. The report, which is the second in a series of papers on natural gas, is entitled “The Role of Natural Gas in Reducing Asia’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions.”
PPI argues Asian countries can reduce coal by substituting cleaner-burning liquefied natural gas (LNG), but must acknowledge that Russian gas piped to China emits higher emissions than Chinese coal. Thus, any pretense by China that using Russian gas reduces its overall emissions is false. This warning comes as Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi announced a new proposal for a gas pipeline from Russia to China, called the “Power of Siberia 2.”
United States LNG delivered to China has, on average, 30% lower lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than Chinese coal. The report authors argue that Asia should purchase LNG imports from the U.S. and other lower methane emitting sources, rather than sourcing dirty natural gas from Russia. Current purchases of oil and gas by China, India and other Asian countries are a major source of revenue for the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.
“Not only are China and India funding Putin’s war machine by purchasing natural gas from the Kremlin,they are also increasing climate emissions, since Russian gas has higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than coal due to massive Russian leaks of methane,” said Paul Bledsoe, Strategic Adviser for the Progressive Policy Institute. “It’s time the global climate community held China, India and other buyers of Russian gas accountable for the huge geopolitical and climate costs of their continuing purchase of Putin’s gas.”
“Asian countries importing gas should purchase liquified natural gas from the United States rather than piped natural gas from Russia based on comparative greenhouse gas emissions alone. This superior climate performance of liquified natural gas will increase if the United States continues to focus on measuring, verifying, and reducing methane emissions,” said Clayton Munnings.
Select key policy recommendations from the report include:
1. Asian governments should phase down and then halt the importation of Russian gas based on climate change, humanitarian, and geopolitical grounds.
2. Asian nations should also suspend and cancel the construction of natural gas pipelines from Russia since they increase lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions and are therefore inconsistent with climate goals.
3. In particular, China should cancel a proposed new gas pipeline from Russia (the so-called “Power of Siberia 2”) given its high lifecycle emissions.
4. Asian nations should construct LNG infrastructure to facilitate imports from countries with lower methane emissions, including the United States.
5. Asian countries that have carbon prices (including China, Japan, and South Korea) should, in time, consider adding a greenhouse gas import tax that regulates natural gas imports based on their lifecycle methane emissions. Carbon prices can and should be redesigned to give priority to low leakage natural gas.
6. Major greenhouse gas emitting Asian countries, especially China and India, who have not already done so should join the U.S., EU, and over 100 countries in the Global Methane Pledge to cut methane emissions from all national sources by 30% by 2030. It is notable that Russia has not joined this Pledge.
7. U.S. lawmakers and regulators (at the federal and state levels) should continue improving management of methane emissions — including measurement, validation, and policy frameworks — to work toward achieving the lowest leakage rates of any gas-producing and gas-exporting country in the world. U.S. regulators should specifically improve measurements of methane emissions by incorporating new methods, including satellites and other airborne measurements. A strong national inventory will bolster the effectiveness of any policy aimed at reducing methane emissions. U.S. regulators should pay special attention to ultra-emitters among oil and gas producers, including small producers and those in the Permian Basin.
Mr. Bledsoe’s first report, published prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in December 2021, focused on the European Union’s huge reliance on high-methane emitting Russian gas, which undermines the EU’s climate goals and provides the Kremlin a financial and political upper hand against the EU and its allies. Read the first report here.
Paul Bledsoe is a strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute and a professorial lecturer at American University’s Center for Environmental Policy. He served on the White House Climate Change Task Force under President Clinton, at the U.S. Department of the Interior, as a staff member at the Senate Finance Committee and for several members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Read his full biography here.
Clayton Munnings is a widely published environmental economist with over three dozen scholar articles and policy papers focused on carbon pricing and methane emission policies. He currently serves as Strategic Advisor to the International Emissions Trading Association, Expert to Perspective GmbH’s International Initiative for Development of Article 6 Methodology Tools, and Board Member at Eartshot Now. He operates a consulting firm that provides advice to countries, corporations, and startups abating greenhouse gas emissions through carbon pricing, climate finance, and carbon offsets.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C., with offices in Brussels and Berlin. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous quote that “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” is only true, at least in politics, if you learn from your mistakes. And last year was a teachable moment for Democrats.
Democratic leaders missed huge opportunities on election reform (including the all-important Electoral Count Act), climate change, police reform, the right kind of immigration reform and much else, all because their eyes were too big, packages were too ambitious and most of all because they refused to say “no” to the extremist purity tests of the party’s hard left. Build Back Better was sacrificed on that altar.
Success requires tapering untested grandiosities and selling commonsense ideas to the 70% or so of the public that reject the extremes of the hard right and the hard left.
Six months after invading Ukraine, not much has gone right for Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. But it’s dangerous for despots to admit defeat, so he’s doubling down on death and destruction in hopes of salvaging something he can call a win.
Having failed to topple Ukraine’s government or overwhelm its highly motivated defense forces on the ground, Putin is settling into a grinding war of attrition, featuring World War II-style leveling of cities and terror attacks on civilians.
His aim is to seize more land along Ukraine’s eastern and southern borders that adjoins territories already contested by pro-Russian separatists following Putin’s 2014 incursion. U.S. officials expect Moscow to declare its intent to “annex” the conquered terrain, just as it did with Crimea.
In this way, Putin would have something to show Russians for the horrendous butcher’s bill he’s running up. CIA director Bill Burns last week estimated that 15,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far and as many as 45,000 have been wounded.
Since Ukraine is fiercely resisting its piecemeal dismemberment and occupation by Russia, the fighting could continue indefinitely. Putin shows no interest in negotiating an end to the war, either because he still believes he can break Ukraine, or, more likely, because he thinks a military stalemate works in his favor.
This calculation rests on unflattering assessments of the West’s strategic stamina. As long as the NATO countries keep supplying Kiev with weapons and financial support and enforcing suffocating sanctions on Russia’s economy, Ukraine probably can hold out against its bigger and heavily armed neighbor.
Dr. Michael Mandel, Vice President and Chief Economist and Taylor Maag, Director of Workforce Development at the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released the following statement on the passage of the Chips and Science Act:
“PPI applauds the Biden administration and Congress for the bipartisan passage of the Chips and Science Act. This historic legislation will bolster domestic semiconductor manufacturing and provide targeted support in science and technology innovation to strengthen our global competitiveness. This bill will be essential as the U.S. moves into a future with less dependence on Chinese chip production.
“Chips not only impacts America’s self sufficiency and national security but it also impacts the American workforce. This policy will create jobs in key industries, support American supply chains and grow America’s highly skilled science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce. PPI supports federal policymakers’ commitment to creating education and training opportunities while diversifying STEM talent pipelines.
“PPI congratulates President Biden and Congress for working across the aisle and securing a win for American manufacturing.”
Dr. Michael Mandel is Vice President and Chief Economist at the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington DC and senior fellow at the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at the Wharton School (UPenn).
Taylor Maag is the Director of Workforce Development Policy at PPI. Taylor focuses on developing policy solutions that strengthen our nation’s workforce, ensuring employers have the talent they need to remain competitive and people have the skills and critical supports necessary to succeed in today and tomorrow’s economy.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released the following statement on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022:
“PPI applauds Senator Joe Manchin and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for returning to the negotiating table and agreeing on a historic reconciliation bill that would invest in clean energy, lower the cost of health care, and modestly reduce federal budget deficits. This bill advances precisely the kind of pro-growth, innovative climate policy that PPI has been calling for throughout the process and that America needs. It will not only spur new investments, create jobs, reduce emissions, and critically lower the cost of living for millions of Americans, but also strengthen our country’s economic future for generations to come.
“This deal is a major step forward for Congressional Democrats and the American people, and while it does not include as many legislative priorities as the original framework, PPI is encouraged to see a few well-funded programs that will result in transformational change rather than a broad progressive wish list. We are also encouraged that the deal includes a plan for taking up additional legislation to reform federal permitting processes later this year, which has long been a PPI priority.
“This package isn’t perfect. It doesn’t close the Medicaid coverage gap, or permanently fix the ACA subsidy cliff. More deficit reduction would have strengthened the legislation’s inflation-fighting potential. But the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good, especially when Democrats have an ideologically diverse caucus with no votes to spare in the Senate. Democrats should take the win now and continue to work on making further progress in these areas next Congress.
“Together with the CHIPS and Science Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will cement President Biden’s legacy of the largest increase in domestic public investment in modern history. Democrats in both chambers should act quickly and decisively to advance these bills and secure a stronger future for all Americans.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Photo identification is necessary for modern life. However, more than 21 million Americans do not possess valid ID, and those without home addresses cannot register for state driver’s licenses. Without that physical license, a person can’t get a job, receive aid or health care, vote, or represent themselves in court. Luckily, IDs aren’t the only way to prove identity. Those born in the US have official paper trails through birth certificates and social security cards. To lose these documents and to obtain new copies require paying a fee or appearing in court. How can legislators ensure documents are accessible and protected? The City of Austin Innovation Office’s LifeFiles initiative offers a unique and scalable approach to inclusive documents.
LifeFiles distinguishes itself from global digital ID programs in its decentralized administration and accessibility. In its initial prototype funded by Bloomberg, LifeFiles sought to help people experiencing homelessness gain autonomy over identity documents by creating an official, digital repository of documents like birth certificates. Using a web application, the program was designed for all levels of tech literacy and access: First, by making it accessible from any computer and second, by offering multi-modal sign in methods, password, biometrics, social attestation, or a security question to unlock the documents. Initial testing enabled official free notarization of uploaded documents using blockchain so the digital repository could be used in government settings like applying for a driver’s license or for food and social welfare benefits.
LifeFiles is open source and never collects user data. It uses a combination of blockchain and encryption to secure user documents. Blockchain technology creates an encrypted hash to ensure secure notarization. Then, public-private key infrastructure shares documents, giving an identity verifier the ability to check the blockchain ledger to guarantee authenticity. Decentralized identifier technology (DID) allows these official documents to be accessed via web browser without having a record of identifying information saved in that browser. Technological alternatives to LifeFiles without DID are less secure.
Though piloted as an inclusion tool, digital documents are universally advantageous. User-controlled release of identifying data and encryption make LifeFiles secure and private. The system may also lessen the paperwork burden for individuals and governments through official, centralized, digital storage of essential documents. LifeFiles researchers concluded the program may eventually lower the costs of administering IDs.
The city of Austin’s Chief Innovation Officer, Daniel Culotta, suggests the program could function nationally. Without further grant funding, LifeFiles halted its testing of prototype documents, but the code is still publicly available for replication and scaling. If the government administers the program, onboarding is as simple as volunteer-led document uploading clinics.
This pilot has potential to be adopted by many states and localities. Currently there are 47 states including Washington DC where digital notarization is legal. Eventually, widespread adoption of digitized records will save money, and digital copies of birth certificates at the time of birth will prevent the loss of important records later on, all with users’ autonomy over their identities.
LifeFiles is an open-source response to the difficulties citizens face when they lose important documents. If states fully support this approach, it could aid more than 20 million Americans in controlling their identity and accessing services.
* Estimates from Cisco’s Visual Networking Index, 2017 and earlier reports.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
It is a quarter-century since WTO members approved a “moratorium” on applying tariffs to electronic transmissions, at “MC-2” — the second Ministerial conference — in the spring of 1998. Last June, a quarter-century later, the twelfth Ministerial conference extended this once again, with another decision point at the 13th Ministerial conference likely in late 2023. In the intervening years:
The world’s internet user community has grown from 147 million (of whom 77 million were American) to 5.3 billion or two-thirds of the world’s people in mid-2022.
The digital economy has grown to about 15.5% of global GDP, equivalent to $16 trillion, a figure close to the $18 trillion Chinese and EU economies.
The scale of information flowing across telecom networks, according to estimates in Cisco’s now-slightly-dated Virtual Networking Initiative, rose about 4-million-fold, from 100 terabytes to a likely 396 exabytes per month.
The cost of transferring information has dropped by a likely 99%, as fiber-optics replaced copper submarine cables and low-altitude satellites proliferated.
Debate over the “moratorium” this spring centered on growth, development, and taxation: How does the economic and social value of rising information flows match up against the revenue poor-country governments could take by taxing these information flows (while in doing so slowing their growth). Here is a small human case for the choice WTO members have made so far:
Cambodia’s 800,000 garment workers, mostly young women from rural towns and villages, have been the country’s engine of industrial development over the past generation. At the national minimum wage for garment factories, they earn $194 and up monthly, which is about 50% above Cambodia’s $1,591 per capita income at paycheck time. But they lose some of this, and assume personal risks that workers in middle-income and rich countries don’t, because they are mostly paid in cash and have great difficulty finding safe places to put their money.
Visiting factories around Phnom Penh a decade ago, the Trade Fact series editor noticed that almost all the line workers at sewing machines were wearing silver necklaces, earrings, and bangles. Experts and factory managers explained that this was not a fashion choice, but the best among a poor set of savings options. Since rural Cambodia lacked an effective birth certificate or ID system, workers could not open bank accounts and took wages in cash. To avoid carrying lots of paper money around, or trying to hide it in their (usually shared) apartments, they would visit pawn shops and buy small pieces of jewelry, essentially ‘wearing’ their savings until the holidays. Then they would resell the jewelry at a small loss in order to bring remittance money and presents to their families. In financial-services jargon, this is a negative-interest savings account, but the best choice available since it is physically safer than others.
World Bank researchers now see the falling cost and eased availability of financial information transfer — the ability to move data cheaply and securely, combined with worker’s widespread adoption of smartphones with low-cost monthly data plans — beginning to change this system. For a one-time fee of $5,900, a Cambodian garment factory can contract with a bank or telecom company to replace cash payouts with automatic digital deposit that workers can access through phones and ATMs with unique pins. This in turn will enable a worker to earn interest and develop credit rather than losing part of her wages to pawnshops, and send remittances home digitally rather than carrying a purseful of cash on a bus.
This local case has analogues throughout the low-income world as data flows grow cheaper and reach more countries: financial inclusion for informal-sector workers, telemedicine for rural areas, weather and soil bulletins for farmers, and other support for the poor. More generally, World Bank researchers believe that raising access to mobile digital service by 10% in low-income countries raises per capita income by 2% (and in sub-Saharan Africa by a somewhat higher 2.5%). The WTO members will be arguing these matters as they prepare for “MC-13” sometime late in 2023 or early 2024. Arguments for slowing this growth by taxing it, however attractive to accountants in Finance ministries, need to be weighed against larger-scale potential loss in development and daily life.
FUTURE READINGS:
Digital growth and policy
What does “grow from 100 terabytes per month in 1998 to 396 exabytes in 2022” mean? A “byte” is eight binary digits, enough information to form one letter. Prefixes run as follows: kilo represents 1,000, mega 1 million, giga 1 billion, tera 1 trillion, peta 1 quadrillion, exa 1 quintillion, and zetta 1 sextillion. Yotta comes next, but has not yet been achieved by anything human. Thus, the 396 exabytes thought to be transmitted each month this year are about 4 million times more information than the 100 monthly terabytes of 1998. By analogy, the ratio of digital information flows in 1998 to those of 2022 is about the same as the ratio of the 2 million trees in and around Washington D.C., to the 3 trillion trees thought to be alive and growing on Planet Earth.
The White House electronic commerce report, from the Clinton administration in 1997, argues that “Unnecessary regulation of [Internet-based] commercial activities will distort development of the electronic marketplace by decreasing the supply and raising the cost of products and services for consumers the world over. … Accordingly, governments should refrain from imposing new and unnecessary regulations, bureaucratic procedures, or taxes and tariffs on commercial activities that take place via the Internet..
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of representatives and senators released a discussion draft of a federal digital privacy bill: the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. It has now moved out of committee and, if passed, would create new legal rights for all Americans regarding the collection, access, and security of their personal data.
This is not the only consumer privacy bill considered by Congress, and there may be others. As written, this bill would align the United States with other nations, such as the European Union, that have thus far set global standards for digital privacy. Introduced in 2018, the European Union’s digital privacy law filled an important gap in regulating consumer privacy. Four years on, the data revealing how the law interacts with innovation and whether it succeeds in its goal of protecting consumers is still unclear. This should give US lawmakers pause to potentially explore more creative solutions for digital privacy.
The Progressive Policy Institute released a comparative report providing a general framework for analyzing privacy legislation across three separate but interrelated layers: legal access, security, and innovation.
Legal access defines what rights individuals have to see, access, update, and delete their data. Security describes the technical responsibilities for protecting collected data. And the third level, innovation, addresses how the laws interact with economic growth.
How does the new bill fit into these layers?
1. Legal Rights
If passed, the ADPPA would codify a set of data collection and access rights for all Americans who share data with private companies. It’s important to note that ADPPA does not apply to government collection or storing of personal data. As noted in PPI’s report analyzing countries’ privacy legislation, Canada, the European Union, and the United Kingdom put some controls on government use of data, but China did not.
ADPPA requires firms that collect consumer data to gain clear “affirmative express consent.” Consent for data disclosure is firmly rooted in the European Union’s landmark data protection law, the General Data Protection Regulation. It is typically solicited via checkboxes on web pages, and the bill requires clear, plain language description of data collection needs. Specifically highlighted in the bill is the right for consumers to opt-out of targeted advertising and a prohibition of targeted advertising to children.
Once the data is collected, ADPPA states that individuals have the right to access, correct, delete, and transfer data about themselves, with private companies; China and the European Union provide similar access rights to citizens. How to exercise these rights must be clearly stated in easy-to-read privacy policies.
Overall, the bill provides very similar data rights as other countries.
2. Security
Global privacy laws typically address security as a principle and design feature, the U.S. bill follows this trend. Without being overly prescriptive, as digital security is highly technical and evolving, it directs data collectors to implement a risk-based approach depending on the level of sensitivity of the data collected. High-risk data includes biometric or genetic information, passport or social security numbers, and private communications like text messages or email.
In line with other data privacy laws around the world, ADPPA requires large data collectors to appoint a data protection officer and to first conduct a data protection impact assessment, which is a plan for data security and risk.
Additional security and privacy measures recommend data minimization (an essential pillar of the GDPR), or restricting data collection to specific uses and deleting data after use. Data minimization is important because if data is not collected or not stored, it can’t be improperly used or exposed. (they direct not recommend, and i write measures and only add one additional measure. Is this bill simply a copy of the GDPR, does it try to be the same thing in the American context. How it relates to the ADPPA discussion.)
3. Innovation
It’s challenging to predict how a privacy law like ADPPA will impact digital innovation. Crucially, a federal privacy law will provide clear guidance for online companies that serve Americans across multiple states. In the current system, where states are passing digital privacy laws only for their residents, a federal law would ease compliance burdens on firms.
Similar to the GDPR, the bill exempts researchers, journalists, and small data holders except for those who derive 50%of their revenue from data sales. However, it does not clarify whether research conducted by big firms for platform improvements or marketing is exempt. The bill’s right to opt-out of targeted advertising and data transfers, which include data sales, may negatively impact certain industries like advertising and data brokers. Additionally, the bill recommends a study for a universal opt-out portal, which could be an innovation, but also could bankrupt the industries that rely on that data.
These provisions have broad implications for the data economy and should be evaluated carefully. Notably missing from the bill are recommendations for studies of other privacy-preserving technologies or security technologies. To assess the full impacts on innovation it requests an economic impact study five years after the enactment of the Act.
Conclusion
This draft bill is the newest of many privacy bills to be considered by Congress. Many of its provisions mirror the GDPR, as many global privacy laws do, with a major exception that this law does not apply to government data collection.
A key point of consideration for American legislators as they consider this bill is that it replicates many statutes from the GDPR. Enacted in 2018, we still don’t yet know the full impact of regulations like the GDPR on long-term digital innovation or whether its consumer protections are effective, but more information is coming out all the time. A new study from the University of Oxford in 2022 found that small business profits were most affected by the GDPR regulation. A National Bureau of Economic Research study found that the GDPR decreased the number of apps on the Google Play app store and depressed new entrants into the app market. As of the writing of this post, this author found no data detailing the state of data breaches since the introduction of the GDPR.
It’s undoubted that consumers deserve enhanced transparency and protection of their personal data online. If ADPPA passes, it would provide new data collection and protection rights for Americans which is an essential step toward digital privacy. But remember that the United States has a unique and strong innovation culture that is not necessarily well-reflected in the GDPR and other similar global privacy legislation. Those approaches shouldn’t be the only model being considered by lawmakers to enhance digital privacy. Congress has the opportunity to use existing research and data on alternative privacy-protecting technologies and ideas to set new global standards.
The passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in November marked the first large investment in American infrastructure in decades. The $1.2 trillion law includes over $550 billion in sorely needed new spending for areas including broadband, transportation, and sustainability. The Biden administration has prioritized quick implementation, but tools for accountability and efficiency have been lacking. To prevent misuse or wasting of funds, more centralized sources of information about current projects should be available to public entities, private sector investors, and citizens. Actions to increase accountability and efficiency will improve public confidence in the administration and ensure funds are being used for their intended purposes.
So far, around $110 billion in funding has been released and over 4,000 infrastructure projects are underway. Two recent projects include the Airport Terminal Program, which just announced $1 billion for improving terminals in 85 airports nationwide, and the Internet for All initiative, which provides funding for broadband infrastructure. The rapid action taken to implement the IIJA reflects the White House’s awareness of the law’s transformative potential. Mitch Landrieu, White House Senior Advisor and Infrastructure Implementation Coordinator, told CBS, “If we can … learn how to do big things again, which we are confident that we can do, it’s gonna be a wonderful thing to see.”
The Biden administration has demonstrated a desire to improve accountability and efficiency after the rapid dispersal of COVID-19 relief funds resulted in waste and fraud. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a guidance memorandum to executive branch agencies directing them to work closely with Inspectors General and OMB during IIJA implementation. This collaboration should result in the evaluation of risks in implementation plans to reduce the potential for costly disruptions. In May, the White House released a Permitting Action Plan outlining the administration’s strategy for making sure environmental reviews and permitting processes are effective, efficient, and transparent, illustrating the administration’s determination to accelerate permitting processes to avoid expensive delays.
The White House has also created a Permitting Dashboard to allow the public to keep track of approved projects, adding another level of accountability. Additionally, in May, the administration released the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Technical Assistance Guide to help communities and entities across the country access and employ infrastructure funding. These actions are good first steps for promoting transparency and efficiency because they show the American people what actions have been taken and provide resources to streamline implementation.
But there is still room for improvement. A main goal of the administration should be to centralize information about how IIJA funding is being spent and what funding opportunities are currently available. This interactive map released by the White House for the six-month anniversary of the law’s passage is useful for cursory examinations of funding outlays, but only provides information about total funding for each state and the percentage of funding spent on each of three main categories: Transportation; Climate, Energy, & Environment; and Other.
This map could be a powerful tool if it contained details about specific programs to assure the public that their taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely. Public accountability is essential and could keep state and local governments on track. For instance, one announced program is the Carbon Reduction Program (CRP), which provides states with funding for projects designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from on-road sources. However, this program allows states to transfer up to 50% of CRP funds to another state apportionment from the Department of Transportation, meaning outcomes from the CRP could vary greatly depending on state priorities. Transparency about each state’s use of CRP funding could ensure governments are held accountable for using this money as it was intended.
The Biden administration should also take steps to centralize information about available funding so eligible entities do not miss opportunities. With programs spanning multiple executive branch departments, it is difficult to track every program being announced. One tool, the Grants.gov database, is not operating as efficiently as it could be. When “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” is selected in this database, few funding opportunities come up even though there are many more IIJA-funded projects elsewhere in the database. The federal government is therefore running the risk of communities missing out on much needed funding by categorizing projects incorrectly.
While technical assistance is being made available as stated in the White House guide, it is also important that outreach to stakeholders is increased. For instance, individuals and households often qualify for internet service discounts through the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) because they are eligible for SNAP, Medicaid, WIC, Pell Grants, or another assistance program, but there does not appear to have been any ACP information distributed through these programs to participants. Private sector inclusion in project planning and management also needs to be enhanced so the most efficient technologies and construction methods are utilized. Helping communities leverage private sector investment can ensure that even projects that are not part of competitive funding programs meet high standards for future performance.
The IIJA represents a meaningful investment in America’s future, but to reach its full potential, the federal government needs to consolidate information about its implementation. This will allow all stakeholders, from individuals to states, to hold the government and other entities accountable and access opportunities to better their communities.
Monkeypox virus has long been endemic — meaning there is a continuous baseline level of infection — in West and Central Africa. But nine weeks ago, the virus left the continent and began spreading in Europe and now the U.S. There are now at least 13,000 cases across 60 countries and three reported deaths. In the U.S. alone there are almost 2,300 cases and unfortunately, it seems that the public health infrastructure and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are demonstrating some the same pitfalls of the early days of COVID. Experts say that the window to contain the disease is closing.
The monkeypox virus presents itself with fever, body aches, chills, and fatigue, and if it is a more severe infection, rashes, and lesions. It spreads person-to-person through direct contact with the rash, respiratory droplets, and through touching contaminated clothing or linens. It has a long infectious period of roughly 2-4 weeks. Though the symptoms can resolve themselves, it can be highly uncomfortable and is a greater threat to immunocompromised people, children, and pregnant women. There have been no reported deaths outside of Africa but right on the heels of a multiyear, deadly, global pandemic, how is the U.S. repeating several of the same errors as it did during the early days of COVID?
Too little testing: Until recently, monkeypox testing was limited to a small number of government-run labs that are a part of the CDC’s Laboratory Response Network. This meant that providers were required to complete bureaucratic paperwork to receive permission to order a test. This slowed testing in the initial days of the outbreak. However, in recent days, five commercial labs have begun offering monkeypox testing which should help alleviate testing backlogs. Unfortunately, it may be too late to stop the virus from spreading: the virus is already spreading undetected in many communities as indicated by exceptionally high positivity rates — the rate at which those who are tested are positive. And for many of the confirmed cases, health officials don’t know how the person caught the virus. Those infected haven’t traveled or knowingly been in contact with another infected person.
Not enough vaccines: Unlike the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there are two vaccines that are effective (roughly 85% efficacy) at preventing monkeypox. First, there is an older smallpox vaccine which also works against the virus — however, it has a high risk of side effects and can’t be used on people who have HIV or are pregnant. Then there is a newer smallpox vaccine that also works on monkeypox, without the risks of the older vaccine. Though the U.S. has ordered nearly 7 million doses, it has struggled to expedite the acquisition and distribution process. In fact, 1 million doses that have already been purchased have been held up in a manufacturing facility in Denmark awaiting on FDA clearance. The CDC estimates that roughly 1.5 million American men are eligible for the vaccine based on their guidance.
As states and localities have received a slow drip of vaccines, appointments have been gobbled up faster than they can be set up. New York City, learning from lessons of COVID-19, has decided to give as many first doses as they can and worry about the follow up doses later. This goes against FDA guidance but is the type of response that is warranted in an emergency.
Limited access to treatments: An FDA approved smallpox antiviral drug, TPOXX, is presumed to work on monkeypox, but will require physicians to obtain special permission to use it on their monkeypox patients. The bureaucratic application process creates further delays in treating patients suffering from the symptoms of monkeypox: lesions, headaches and sometimes debilitating pain.
It’s important to note that this virus isn’t COVID-19. It’s not a novel, deadly virus without treatments or vaccines. There is no need for widespread masking or shutdowns. Indeed, the United States government has been forward looking enough to order monkeypox/smallpox vaccines and stockpile treatments, but now that the virus has presented itself, the government can’t seem to efficiently deliver on the last mile of getting the therapeutics to patients.
COVID-19 and monkeypox illustrate that the threat of diseases is ongoing — pathogens will continue to emerge and pose a threat to the public. It’s paramount that the U.S. invest in the pandemic preparedness infrastructure to meet demand as I outlined in an earlier paper. It’s time for the government to learn from its missteps and invest in the public health system, such as on the ground clinics, as well as supply chain infrastructure, and to embrace greater flexibility when combating novel threats.
FACT: 4.85 billion people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 worldwide
THE NUMBERS: Vaccination rates for adults, by world income group*
Upper-middle income countries 78%
High-income countries 73%
United States 67%
World 61%
Lower-middle income countries 55%
Low-income countries 19%
Source: Ourworldindata.org for percentages by income level. World Bank definitions for these classifications are above $13,205 in Gross National Income per capita for ‘high-income, $4,206 – $13,204 for upper-middle income, $1,086 – $4,205 for lower-middle income, and under $1,085 for low-income.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
The world’s first COVID vaccine jab, delivered by nurse May Parsons, went to a 91-year-old Margaret Keenan at University Hospital Coventry in England, on December 8, 2020. That was 331 days after the first publication of the coronavirus’ DNA sequence. With another 589 days have gone by since Ms. Keenan’s first shot, where do we stand?
According to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Information Center, health care providers like Ms. Parsons have given 11.84 billion vaccine shots worldwide. This has “fully vaccinated” 4.84 billion people, or 61% of the world’s population. (“Fully vaccinated” by JHU’s definition: two mRNA shots or one Johnson and Johnson shot.) A study last month conducted by the British medical journal The Lancet calculates that these vaccinations have cut worldwide COVID-19 deaths by a range from 14.4 million to 19.8 million, in the context of an epidemic of 565 million known cases and 6.4 million known deaths. Each day the total rises a bit, as providers administer about 9 million more shots. This is a remarkable, even stunning, achievement of government and private-sector science, transnational manufacturing and logistics, and health-provider delivery. But it remains an achievement with gaps; and these may grow more important as new variants emerge and immunity conferred through early vaccination fades.
One gap is that of income. People in rich and upper-middle income countries are somewhat more likely to be vaccinated than people in lower-middle-income countries, and low-income countries are far behind both. Low-income countries also appear to be relatively more reliant on Chinese- and Russian-produced vaccines that offer lower levels of protection than U.S./European vaccines. There are also some gaps by region – vaccination rates appear relatively high in South America, East Asia, ASEAN, the Pacific Islands and western Europe, and relatively low in southern and eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Caribbean, South Asia, and Africa. These general patterns have many exceptions — low-income Asian countries including Cambodia and Bhutan are near the top of the vaccination-rate tables, for example — and some countries in very similar circumstances report quite different results. As an extreme case, the world-low vaccination rate in JHU’s table is Burundi’s 0.1% of the population (13,800 of 12 million people); next-door Rwanda is at 65%, essentially the same as the United States.
The U.S. in a way mirrors the international pattern, with vaccination rates by state varying widely, and modestly correlating with state median income levels, political divisions, and larger geography. New England, where vaccination rates are in the 75% to 84% range, is comparable to the rates in Japan, France, and Australia, and taken as a distinct region would be near the top of the high-income spectrum. D.C., Hawaii, Puerto Rico, New York and New Jersey are also in the top ten. The “least vaccinated” group includes Wyoming and a set of deep South states; here, rates are in the 51%-55% range and at par with lower-middle income countries such as Tajikistan, Bolivia, and Honduras (and upper-middle income Russia). Explanations for relatively high U.S. state rates of vaccination may include lower public “vaccine hesitance”, strong outreach from state governments, high health-provider-to-population ratios and low levels of uninsured people. Explanations for lower rates, the reverse.
A table illustrates, with vaccination levels in sample countries and U.S. states drawn from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Information Center:
Much, then, achieved. But with 3 billion still unvaccinated around the world, mortality counts still at 15,000 weekly, new variants emerging every few months, and many early vaccination recipients needing booster shots, much still to do.
* Using the District’s own 77% count; JHU has a perplexing 100% rate for D.C.
FUTURE READINGS:
TheLancet calculates that vaccinations have saved between 14.4 million and 19.8 million lives
Data on vaccination rates, new cases, death rates by country and U.S. state, etc.
Ourworldindata.org has an interactive site allowing selection of particular countries and regions.
Johns Hopkins U. Coronavirus Information Center reports 6.4 million deaths among 560 million cases since December 2020. The mortality count has diminished to a still-high 12,000 deaths per week worldwide, from levels in the range of 50,000-100,000 deaths per week from mid-2020 through late 2021.
At home:
Rhode Island’s 84% vaccination rate is the highest in the U.S.
Washington, D.C., is at 77% by its own count; the JHU list somehow credits the District with a 100% vaccination rate. Either way, one of the top U.S. vaccination performers. Mayor Muriel Bowser explains vax requirements.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 site.
Overseas:
USAID outlines its COVID aid program in low- and middle-income countries.
The WTO explains the state of debate on intellectual property rules and COVID.
The African Union outlines vaccination trends and policies in Africa.
And the OECD reviews the supply chains that produce and deliver vaccines.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
Today, Taylor Maag, Director of Workforce Development Policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, released the following statement of support for the bipartisan ISA Student Protection Act of 2022, which will support enhanced accountability and transparency in higher education financing while ensuring stronger consumer protections and regulations.
“The Progressive Policy Institute has long supported Income-Share Agreements as a bold and innovative model for financing postsecondary education and training. These models can help nudge institutions and providers toward greater accountability for results and promote equitable access to higher education. The ISA Student Protection Act of 2022, recently introduced by Senators Warner, Young, Coons and Rubio, builds off of previous versions of the bill to ensure ISA models are of higher quality — ensuring greater transparency for students and providers as well as stronger consumer protections. PPI applauds this effort to fix higher education financing and supports the bill’s commitment to expand postsecondary opportunities for today’s students, while ensuring the necessary protections for their success.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
Does Germany struggle with homelessness the same way cities like Denver do? What can the U.S. learn from Germany in regard to improvements to public transportation infrastructure? In the Fall of 2019, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) partnered with Das Progressive Zentrum (DPZ) and Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft (AHG) for a new project titled “New Urban Progress: Transatlantic Dialogue on the Future of Work,
Democracy, and Well-being” which is aimed at fostering metro innovation and democratic renewal in the spirit of transatlantic dialogue. The organizations joined forces and convened a group of fellows consisting of public servants, policy experts, and community activists from Germany and the United States for a collaboration that involves two international tours, four conferences, and ten cities, all while the twenty project fellows study how we can reimagine transatlantic relations and positively impact cities on both sides of the Atlantic.
Neel Brown, Managing Director at the Progressive Policy Institute sits down with Maria Willett, Chief of Staff to Mayor Bryan K. Barnett of Rochester Hills, Michigan and Steffen Haake, Senior Consultant at Dataport who are both New Urban Progress fellows and offer their thoughts on what they learned from the fellowship. Learn more about the Progressive Policy Institute and the New Urban Progress project. Learn more about Das Progressive Zentrum. Learn more about Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft.
Congratulations are in order to thousands of public charter-school parents, educators and advocates who lifted their voices in opposition to the U.S. Education Department’s proposed changes to the federal Charter School Program. Thanks to their relentless advocacy, the finalized rules adopted recently are more rational and slightly less burdensome than the bull-in-a-china-shop scheme the department unveiled in March.
Congress established the CSP in 1994 to provide federal support for children who are poorly served by traditional public schools. The CSP benefited from the support of every presidential administration since—until Joe Biden. Although the program represents a minuscule fraction of the federal education budget, the returns on that investment have been high: The millions of dollars in grants the CSP awards each year enable thousands of new public charter schools to open or to add additional campuses. The vast majority of these schools are located in urban centers, where they serve mostly low-income and minority children.
The department’s proposed rules would have required a public charter school seeking a CSP grant to form a partnership with a traditional public school—in other words, with a competitor. The grant-seeking public charter school would also have had to prove the “need” for a new school based solely on enrollment levels in the traditional schools in the district—ignoring that charter schools serve many purposes beyond the relief of overcrowding. The school also would have had to prove its student population would be “diverse.” Never mind that many traditional schools aren’t. This last demand overlooks both the realities of the U.S. housing market and the desire of some minority communities, such as Native Americans, to establish culturally relevant schools that serve specific student populations with unique needs.
