issue: Energy & Environment

Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As Americans choose a new president in 2016, populist anger dominates the campaign. To hear Donald Trump or Senator Bernie Sanders tell it, America is either a global doormat or a sham democracy controlled by the “one percent.” These dark narratives are caricatures, but they do stem from a real dilemma: America is stuck in a slow- growth trap that holds down wages and living standards. How to break this long spell of economic stagnation is the central question in this election.

Today’s populists peddle nostalgia for our country’s past industrial glory but offer few practical ideas for building a new American prosperity in today’s global knowledge economy. Progressives owe U.S. voters a hopeful alternative to populist outrage and the false panaceas of nativism, protectionism, and democratic socialism. What America needs is a forward-looking plan to unleash innovation, stimulate productive investment, groom the world’s most talented workers, and put our economy back on a high-growth path. It’s time to banish fear and pessimism and trust instead in the liberal and individualist values and enterprising culture that have always made America great.

Download Unleashing Innovation and Growth: A Progressive Alternative to Populism

Washington Post: The new Democratic Party proposal to rival Bernie Sanders’ socialism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Simplicity is one of Bernie Sanders’ great strengths: Corporations and the rich have rigged the economy. His solutions sound simple, even when the plans behind them are complicated: college for all, health care for all, tax the rich, break up big banks. He trails Hillary Clinton in presidential delegates to this point, and he remains an underdog for the Democratic nomination, but Sanders has already pulled Clinton, and the party, toward a more populist, more socialist policy agenda, thanks in part to that clarity of message.

The centrist Democrats who oppose that leftward lurch have struggled to match his simplicity. They tend to view the economy through a lens of skills and adaptation, not power and treachery. Many of them pushed in the 1990s, under President Bill Clinton, to expand global trade and deregulate the financial sector. They now concede those efforts did not go according to script, particularly for middle-class workers, but they are not calling for a full rewrite in response.

Their risk, in this election and moving forward, is to define themselves solely as anti-Democratic-socialist – the folks who don’t like the stuff that a lot of Democrats like about Sanders.

The Progressive Policy Institute is the latest centrist Democratic institution to try to counter that image. Today it will release what its president, Will Marshall, calls a “radical” agenda to get America working for the working class again. The report is called “Unleashing Innovation and Growth: a Progressive Alternative to Populism,” and it is organized around a straightforward, if not perfectly simple, principle.

Read more at The Washington Post

Federal Agencies Should Investigate on Reasonable Fears, But Regulate on Science

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In November, the Food & Drug Administration approved for the first time a modified, fast-growing salmon for human consumption. More than five years ago, FDA accepted a risk assessment’s conclusion that the modified fish was safe to eat and posed no threat to the environment. The FDA re-opened the process for additional comment because critics challenged the science, among other things. This landmark decision to go forward spotlights two key issues: the importance of assuring scientific integrity of government regulations, and a key difference between how North American regulators view science from their European counterparts.

Major enhancements in human and environmental health impact studies have allowed regulators to dive deeper into scientific determinations, but they also have given partisans tools to obfuscate the dialogue. In litigation, important causation decisions are expected to be based on battles of opposing experts, but the regulatory process is supposed to be less partisan where subjective agendas are set aside for real science. People must believe FDA, for example, when it approves a drug as safe and effective for its labeled indications. When the Environmental Protection Agency, Center for Disease Control or other agency issues exposure guidelines for potentially harmful substances, it should reflect the best scientific knowledge. Scientific understanding evolves, and these regulations and standards should reflect those advancements.

For progressives, the importance of this process is more than just assuring that regulations are appropriately tailored to known risks. It is essential for protecting the integrity of the government and the regulatory process itself. Thus, while competing viewpoints on the science may infect submissions to federal agencies, just like they do in court, it is the agencies’ responsibility to make decisions that are not unduly influenced by partisans on any side. Submissions from all stakeholders, including both for and against industry, should be treated with the same scrutiny so that agencies are not unduly influenced by anyone’s tainted lenses.

For modified salmon, reopening the investigation affirmed the initial results. A few years ago, the Canadian Environment Minister reversed course when reopening its rulemaking on siloxanes. Siloxanes have been used since the 1940s in a variety of household products, including deodorants, shampoos and cosmetics. It gives these products a smooth, non-greasy texture that helps in their applications. When the products are used, the siloxanes either evaporate into the air or wash off and go down the drain.

In the early 2000s, scientists in Norway developed computer modeling suggesting that siloxanes, namely those known as “Siloxane D5,” could have adverse environmental impacts. Computer modeling has become an increasingly useful tool in assessing health and environmental risks, but it has obvious limitations given that it is not based on actual results such as epidemiological studies. In 2006, Canadian officials began reassessing its rules for Siloxane D5. In 2009, Canada issued a proposed order to add Siloxane D5 to its Toxic Substances List, which much like California’s Proposition 65 leads to significant restrictions on product use.

Before the new rule took effect, the Silicones Environmental Health and Safety Council of North America filed a Notice of Objection requesting an expert Board of Review to investigate the integrity of the modeling. Canada’s Minister of the Environment appointed three independent, highly respected toxicologists to this review panel. This was the first time an official Board of Review was used in Canada since it adopted this process for potentially serious and irreversible threats in 1999. The panel conducted a multi-disciplinary evaluation of the nature and extent of any hazards posed by D5 to the environment and biological diversity.

In 2011, the Board of Review issued a report concluding that the modeling used to predict Siloxane D5 in the environment was wrong. What they found was that regardless of whether Siloxane D5 entered the environment in the ground or air, it migrates to the air and degrades rapidly. As a result, “it is virtually impossible for Siloxane D5 to occur in any environmental matrix at concentrations sufficient to produce harm to the environment,” and that “Siloxane D5 does not pose a danger to the environment or its biological diversity.”

The Board further found that a key error in the modeling was that it used other types of silicone as surrogates for the physical and chemical properties of Siloxane D5. It then recommended better transparency for how modeling is developed and that agencies have better means for reviewing regulations to make sure they reflect the best scientific knowledge. In 2012, the Canadian Minister of the Environment endorsed the findings and removed Siloxane D5 from its list of toxic substances.

Last summer, the Norwegian scientists at the center of the allegations reportedly acknowledged that field studies showed conflicting results. The article from the High North Center for International Climate and Environmental Research that included the scientists’ remarks ironically was published around the same time that European regulators decided to move forward with their own restrictions on siloxanes. European regulators should learn from Canada and look beyond modeling. Just last year, the U.S. Trade Representative called out European regulators on genetically modified foods and feed, saying they were “ignor[ing] science-based safety and environmental determinations.”

In the end, what matters most is getting the science right. With modified salmon and siloxanes, U.S. and Canadian officials demonstrated this point by re-opening an investigation to assure a thorough understanding of the science. Like the scientific process itself, this approach to regulation encourages good faith skepticism, honest debate, and confidence in the regulations themselves. Most people, whether in Canada, Europe or the United States, understand that government investigations may be based on suspicions, but regulations must be based on science.

This is cross-posted on the Huffington Post.

CPP Loses Its Steam

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, has slammed the brakes on President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). It’s a major setback for the administration, which held up the CPP at last December’s Paris climate summit as proof of America’s commitment to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. The White House believes the plan helped to persuade China and India to promise large reductions of their own.

The ruling bars the Environmental Protection Agency from putting into effect regulations that would cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. That’s to give the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit time to consider challenges to the CPP from 26 states and energy companies that have opposed the regulations on several grounds, including whether the EPA has the legal authority to impose such comprehensive regulatory requirements on existing power plants under the Clean Air Act.

After Congress failed to pass carbon cap and trade legislation in 2010, President Obama decided to use his executive powers to direct EPA to regulate carbon as a pollutant. It now appears that the White House erred in putting all of its carbon reduction eggs in the basket of an executive order. Top-down rulemaking by the EPA was always the fallback or second-best choice, after a carbon tax or cap and trade system. Now, depending on what happens in the courts, Obama may leave office without having a clear proposal for curbing U.S. emissions.

PPI supported the CPP on the basis that something is better than nothing. But we have always believed that a market-based solution that puts a price on carbon is more efficient and more comprehensive than command and control regulation from Washington.

In fact, the EPA has a history of making rules that trail behind market developments. It imposed Acid Rain rules after electric utilities had begun to comply with air quality controls. Similarly, the CPP rules come amidst a dramatic transformation of the electricity sector brought about mainly by cheap natural gas and distribution wind and solar generation. These factors already are cutting greenhouse gas emissions and are likely to go on doing so.

The Clean Power Plan was envisioned as a “worst case” scenario that the electric utility sector could avoid by pressing Congress instead to pass cap and trade or a carbon tax. But the utilities recognized that, because the CPP wasn’t sanctioned by Congress, it would always be vulnerable to legal challenge. And that’s where we are today.

Even if the CPP survives in the courts, it will not enable the United States to meet its Paris commitments because it only covers emissions in the utility sector, as the CPP alone is only expected to account for a quarter of the carbon reductions outlined in those commitments. In the end, there’s really no substitute for putting a price on carbon, which will both discourage the use of fossil fuels across the entire economy and drive investment to renewable energy and clean tech.

Democracy: A New Kind of Public Works

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Barack Obama is thinking big as his presidency enters the final stretch. The centerpiece of his last budget, unveiled this week, is a $300 billion plan for a “clean transportation system”—the biggest federal infrastructure push since President Eisenhower launched the interstate highway system. Here at last is a fix that’s equal to the magnitude of America’s immobility crisis. In polarized Washington, however, it’s going nowhere.

Obama’s proposal would effectively double U.S. transportation spending, paying for it with a $10-per-barrel oil tax. There’s no way a Republican-dominated Congress will vote for a new energy tax, even with oil prices down to around $30 a barrel. House Speaker Paul Ryan already has dismissed the plan as “an election-year distraction.” Nor can the White House expect many Democratic candidates to rally around what is essentially a middle-class tax hike.

Obama, the arch realist, knows all this. But he seems determined to ensure that two issues on which he’s made frustratingly little headway—clean energy and infrastructure investment—stay high on the nation’s political agenda. And if his visionary proposal injects these issues into campaign 2016, so much the better.

It’s hard to imagine a more urgent national priority than modernizing America’s decrepit transportation and water systems and updating our energy-wasting electrical grid.

With our economy stuck in low gear six years into “recovery,” making such investments now should be a no-brainer. It’s a proven way to create good middle-class jobs, boost the productivity of U.S. businesses and workers, and lay new foundations for future growth.

The deterioration of our country’s economic infrastructure has long been glaringly obvious, but U.S. political leaders have failed to coalesce behind policies for reversing it. A big reason is that Congress is controlled by a new breed of Republicans who regard all federal spending with kneejerk hostility. Conservative lawmakers seem to have lost the ability to distinguish between investments that generate tangible economic returns to society and spending that fuels present consumption.

Continue reading at Democracy.

Forbes: U.S. Energy Policy Now Reflects Our Energy Reality

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Discussing U.S. energy policy, Forbes contributor Bringham A. McCown utilized a recent report by PPI’s Dr. Michael Mandel:

In fact, the energy industry is generating more revenue for this country than ever before. A recent report released by the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) showed six out of the top 25 companies that invested in the U.S. are energy companies. In all, those six companies, ‘had a total domestic capital expenditure of $43.6 billion, which is an increase of nine percent from last year.’ While the U.S. economy most greatly benefits from the direct financial investments that the energy industry has produced to date, removing the final prohibition to trading oil on the global markets will produce positive externalities. These benefits will manifest as innovative enhancements to safety and security for domestic infrastructure, which will ultimately increase efficiency and generate energy savings.

Read the article in its entirety at Forbes.

Agenda 2016: Reviving U.S. Economic Growth

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) teamed up with Columbia University’s Richard Paul Richman Center for Business, Law, and Public Policy to co-host a compelling symposium Nov. 6-7 in New York on revitalizing the U.S. economy. The event featured a distinguished roster of Richman Center economists and scholars, as well as PPI analysts and special guests, and more than two-dozen top policy aides to Members of Congress, Governors, and Mayors.

Held on Columbia’s Manhattan campus, the symposium examined the U.S. economy’s recent performance, as well as the causes of the long-term decline of productivity and economic growth. Against the backdrop of the 2016 election debate, the participants grappled with specific ideas for unleashing more economic innovation, modernizing infrastructure, reforming taxes, improving regulation, expanding trade and reducing inequality by ensuring that all children have access to high-quality public schools.

The discussions, which were off-the-record to encourage maximum candor, featured the following speakers and topics:

  • An overview of the U.S. economy’s recent performance by Abby Joseph Cohen, President of the Global Markets Institute and Senior Investment Strategist at Goldman Sachs.
  • A roundtable on key elements of a high-growth strategy, led by Michael Mandel, Chief Economic Strategist at PPI, Andrew Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union and now Ronald O. Perelman Senior Fellow at the Richman Center, and
Philip K. Howard, Founder of Common Good, a nonpartisan reform coalition. The conversation touched on ways to improve the regulatory environment for innovation, including reducing regulatory accumulation and requiring faster permitting for big infrastructure projects, as well as a lively debate on the future of work in a tech-driven knowledge economy.
  • An insightful macroeconomic analysis of why productivity and economic growth have slowed, by Pierre Yared, Associate Professor at the Columbia Business School and Co-director of the Richman Center. Yared highlighted three potential contributors to the slowdown: labor demographics and participation; “capital intensity” or business investment; and the “production efficiency” of U.S. companies.
  • A detailed examination of the impact of energy innovation—from the shale boom to renewables and the construction of a new, “smart” grid—on jobs and economic growth. Leading this segment were Jason Bordoff, formerly energy advisor to President Obama and Director of Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, and Derrick Freeman, Director of PPI’s Energy Innovation Project.
  • A dinner conversation at the Columbia Club with Edmund Phelps, the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Economics and Director of Columbia’s Center on Capitalism and Society at Columbia University. Drawing on his recent book, Mass Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge and Change, he stressed the importance of indigenous innovation in creating the conditions for broad upward mobility. He also emphasized the crucial role of “modern” or individualistic cultural values in sustaining the mass innovation and entrepreneurship America needs to flourish again.
  • A detailed look at business taxation and reform as a potential driver of economic growth. It featured Michael Graetz, Alumni Professor of Tax Law at Columbia Law School, David Schizer, Dean Emeritus and the Harvey R. Miller Professor of Law and Economics at the Columbia Law School and Co-director at the Richman Center, as well as PPI’s Michael Mandel. The discussion ranged widely over global tax frictions, including the OECD’s new “BEPS” project; the need for corporate tax reform; “patent boxes” and mounting U.S. interest in consumption taxes.
  • A roundtable on trade and productivity growth with Ed Gerwin, PPI Senior Fellow for Trade and Global Opportunity and the versatile Michael Mandel. Noting President Obama’s controversial call for a Trans-Pacific Partnership, Gerwin stressed the agreement’s potential for “democratizing” trade by making it easier for U.S. small businesses to connect with customers abroad. Mandel underscored another PPI priority: raising awareness among policymakers of the growing contribution of cross-border data flows to growth here and abroad, and the need to push back against proposals that would impede “digital trade”
  • A luncheon presentation on “financial regulation after the crisis” by Jeffrey Gordon, Richard Paul Richman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and Co-director of the Richman Center. Gordon described the new regime put in place by Dodd-Frank and other rules to guard against “systemic risk” of another financial meltdown, and suggested its “perimeter” may been to be expanded beyond banks.
  • The symposium’s final panel featured a vigorous discussion on K-12 education reform and the economy. The discussants were Jonah Rockoff, Associate Professor at the Columbia Business School and David Osborne, who directs PPI’s Reinventing America’s Schools Project, and is a co-author of the seminal “Reinventing Government.” Rockoff highlighted research showing that the returns to school improvement are enormous, and recommended reforms that could increase school quality. Osborne traced the evolution of school governance in America, and offered detailed looks at new models emerging in cities like New Orleans and Washington, D.C., both of which are leaders in the public charter school movement.

The symposium gave the policy professionals who participated a rare opportunity to delve deeply into complicated economic realities, guided by presenters of extraordinarily high caliber. The conversations were highly illuminating and will inform PPI’s work on Agenda 2016—a new blueprint for reviving U.S. economic dynamism and opportunity.

RealClearEnergy: Nuclear Power Going Dark in New England

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The U.S. commercial nuclear fleet will shrink by one more plant, as Entergy Corp. recently announced its plans to close the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, Mass. While some environmental and anti-nuclear activists are no doubt popping corks, it’s bad news from a climate perspective.

And it’s part of a trend. Pilgrim is the fifth nuclear power station slated for shuttering over the past two years. Entergy, which announced it would shut down Vermont Yankee in 2013, cites falling revenues and rising operational costs for its decision to close Pilgrim. What’s happening in energy markets that’s tilting the playing field against nuclear power?

For the last few years, nuclear industry leaders have warned that decreasing electricity demand, low natural gas prices, and price regulation are making it uneconomical to keep small nuclear plants (600 megawatts or less) up and running. Specifically, they complain that regulators don’t allow them to reap the full value of the services nuclear energy brings to consumers — reliability, efficiency and grid stability which permits the smoother integration of renewable energy. That makes it difficult to defray operations and maintenance costs, which have risen because of new regulations imposed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after Japan’s Fukushima crisis.

The economic viability of nuclear power plants is also threatened by state energy policies that subsidize renewable energy projects. For example, Entergy cited a Massachusetts proposal that would require utilities to buy hydro-electric power from Canada at above-market prices. The amount of electricity they would be required to buy would amount to about one-third of the state’s electricity demand.

Continue reading at RealClearEnergy.

 

The Daily Beast: Will Iran Get a Better Deal Than U.S. Oil?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As Congress takes up the Iran nuclear deal next month, it ought to confront this paradox: The agreement allows the Iranians to do something Americans can’t—sell oil to the rest of the world.

Don’t get me wrong. I support the deal, under which Tehran would stop enriching weapons-grade uranium for the next 15 years in return for relief from economic sanctions. It’s not perfect, but President Obama is right that it’s better than what we’d have if his conservative critics got their way—no deal, leaving the Islamic Republic on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Still, freeing Iran to crank up its oil exports stands in stark incongruity to what’s happening here at home. Domestic oil production has soared by an amazing 68 percent over the past decade, yet we can sell very little of it abroad thanks to outdated laws banning U.S. oil and gas exports.

Passed during the energy crisis of the 1970s, these laws were intended to protect the nation’s then-dwindling oil and gas resources as a strategic reserve against supply disruptions like the Arab oil embargo. But the premise used to justify this deviation from our country’s free trade principles—energy scarcity—has been shattered by America’s shale boom.

Continue reading at the Daily Beast.

RealClearPolicy: A Bipartisan Approach to Energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The infrastructure debate in Washington usually centers on planes, trains, and automobiles. However, President Obama recently highlighted America’s other great infrastructure challenge — modernizing the way we move kilowatts to power our homes and businesses — by unveiling the first Quadrennial Energy Review (QER). Developed by the U.S. Department of Energy, the QER is a strategic plan for upgrading the nation’s energy systems — the vast network of storage, distribution, and transmission facilities that power the U.S. economy. Based on similar exercises at the Pentagon and the State Department, the QER provides a new roadmap for policymakers struggling to understand America’s fast-changing energy landscape.

The last comprehensive national energy report was published nearly 14 years ago — well before two key developments that have transformed America’s energy landscape: the shale gas and oil boom and the rapid expansion of wind and solar energy. While the QER is not a comprehensive document, it does examine, and calls for measures to improve, America’s energy backbone.

With the QER, Congress has an opportunity to move beyond the distracting and highly partisan Keystone XL pipeline debate and focus instead on urgently needed improvements to America’s aging energy systems.

Continue reading at RealClearPolicy.

A Bottom Up Approach to Reducing U.S. Carbon Emissions

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

With last year’s landmark U.S.-China agreement on climate change, the Obama administration has raised the bar for America when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). That deal set new targets for reducing emissions by 26—28 percent (from 2005) levels by 2025, well above the previous pledge of 17 percent by 2020. Given implacable Republican opposition to taking action against global warming, how can the United States deliver on this ambitious promise?

Congress has tried, and failed repeatedly, to pass legislation that would cap greenhouse gas emissions. In June of 2009, the House of Representatives, then controlled by Democrats, narrowly passed a bill that placed an economy-wide cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Attempts to move a Senate bill floundered in the summer of 2010 on Democratic defections; monolithic Republican opposition and, some environmentalists complained, tepid White House support. That fall, Republicans took back the House and narrowed the Democrat majority in the Senate, killing any prospect of national legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The impasse led President Obama to reach for the only policy lever he had left—executive action. In a landmark 2007 decision, the Supreme Court gave the Environmental Protection Agency the green light to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Download “2015.03-Freeman_A-Bottom-Up-Approach-to-Reducing-US-Carbon-Emissions”

The Hill: The Keystone distraction

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Senate will vote soon on what the GOP has made their top legislative priority: expedited approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Given the realities of today’s crude oil market, the political wrangling over Keystone has a decidedly retro feel.

The United States has experienced an energy revolution since the Keystone XL pipeline was first proposed seven years ago. Most important is America’s shale oil and gas boom, which has contributed to a sharp drop in global oil prices. With U.S. oil production in particular surging, why do Republicans persist in claiming that Keystone is a matter of such urgent national interest?

The answer clearly has more to do with politics than with the new realities of U.S. energy abundance.

The energy sector has become an important driver of U.S. investment during our painfully slow economic recovery. Investment is projected to total $890 billion over the next two decades. And all this investment is spawning good, middle-class jobs for Americans. Unfortunately, inadequate infrastructure constrains our ability to take full advantage of such investment and job growth.

Continue reading at The Hill.

Pipeline Politics: The Keystone Distraction

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The decision by Senate and House Republicans to make approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline their first legislative priority has a decidedly retro feel. Much has changed since the Keystone project was first proposed in 2008. Most important is America’s shale oil and gas boom, which has contributed to a sharp drop in global oil prices. With U.S. oil production in particular surging, why do Republicans persist in claiming that Keystone is a matter of such urgent national interest?

The answer clearly has more to do with politics than with the new realities of U.S. energy abundance. Republicans see Keystone as a classic wedge issue that splits two important Democratic constituencies, labor and environmentalists. So much for claims by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others that the GOP will use its new Congressional majority to govern responsibly and put problem-solving over partisanship.

That’s a shame, because the Keystone debate is a distraction from a bigger and more important issue: How to move America’s shale windfall to market. A good portion of U.S. production is happening in places like North Dakota, which is far outside America’s original “oil patch.” When Keystone was first proposed, about 60% of domestic production came from Alaska, Texas, and the Gulf of Mexico, where significant oil and gas infrastructure is located. However, with production now occurring in shale developments like North Dakota, surpluses are developing at storage and transportation hubs making it difficult to get to market.

Download “2015.01-Freeman_Pipeline-Politics_The-Keystone-Distraction.pdf/”

PRESS RELEASE: PPI Statement On New York State Fracking Ban

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

WASHINGTON—Derrick Freeman, Director of the Energy Innovation Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, today released the following statement after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced Wednesday that his administration would ban hydraulic fracturing in New York State:

“For the past five years, the shale boom has provided the United States with a vibrant new source of economic prosperity. States across the country have experienced soaring economic growth and expanded job creation from utilizing hydraulic fracturing, while conclusively illustrating that it can be performed safely and in an environmentally sustainable fashion. That’s why today’s decision by Governor Cuomo to ban fracking in New York State is so baffling.

“If political constraints and government interference on this proven technology continue, we risk shutting down investment and innovation in one of the most productive areas of the American economy. PPI strongly urges Governor Cuomo to avert such a disaster and reconsider his decision.”

Free Energy Trade: Time to Lift the Oil Export Ban

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In July 2014, the United States passed Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s biggest oil producer for the first time since 1970. This dramatic turn of events marked the end of an era in U.S. energy policy—an era that began in the 1970s with two oil embargoes, soaring gas prices, and growing dependence on imported oil, especially from the Middle East.

For better or worse—and some environmentalists think it’s definitely for worse—America unexpectedly finds itself richly endowed with fossil fuels again. The question now is how can we take advantage of this new energy abundance without accelerating global warming?

The answer, in PPI’s view, lies in a balanced national energy strategy that promotes both economic growth and a healthy environment. Such a strategy would capitalize on the domestic shale oil and gas boom while also enabling America to meet its international commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There are two ways to square that circle. One is to boost public investment in energy-related research and development. The other is to price carbon accurately, which will spur more investment in efficiency, clean tech innovation, and renewable and nuclear energy.

This approach steers a pragmatic course between “drill baby drill” conservatives, who ignore or deny the overwhelming scientific evidence for climate change, and extreme environmentalists who imagine that Americans will go along with their demands to keep the nation’s shale bounty “in the ground.”

Download “2014.12-Freeman_Free-Energy-Trade_Time-to-Lift-the-Oil-Export-Ban.pdf/”

Exporting U.S. Natural Gas: The Benefits Outweigh the Risk

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a remarkably brief period, America has become awash in oil and natural gas. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) we have surpassed Russia as the world’s leading energy superpower, producing more oil and natural gas combined than any other country. This newfound abundance has turned old assumptions about U.S. energy scarcity and security on their head. For the first time since the energy crisis of the 1970s, there is mounting pressure—both domestically and abroad—for the United States to once again become a major energy exporter.

According to the EIA, America’s proved reserves of natural gas have increased in each of the last 15 years to a total of 308.4 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2013, up 84% from 1999 estimates. The agency also estimates that unproved natural gas resources were at an increased level of 1,903.7 Tcf in 2009. These U.S. government estimates are in line with other assessments reported by several respected sources.

Most of these reserves are unconventional resources like coal bed methane, tight gas, and shale that have become more accessible due to significant advances in gas extraction technologies. As a result, the oil and gas industry, including expanding gas and oil production, have accounted for more than 9 million full- and part-time American jobs over the past few years.

The energy revolution also shows up in the results of the Progressive Policy Institute’s recently released 2014 U.S. Investment Heroes, an annual survey of the top 25 U.S. companies that invest most in the United States. On that list are 10 energy companies, involved in the exploration and production of oil and gas or energy distribution and power, that invested a total of $57 billion in 2013, representing 37% of the top 25 investment.

Download “2014.10-Freeman_Exporting-Natural-Gas“