What A Difference a Few Years Makes: GOPers Flee from Greener Past

Here's an intriguing story to kick off the new year with a little retrospection...

Flash back to 2008, and nearly all of the top GOP contenders for a 2012 presidential run were taking global warming pretty seriously and offering real, if measured, endorsements of Congressional or state action to curb pollution and GHGs.

On the campaign stump, in books, speeches and nationally-televised commercials, aspiring GOP White House candidates such as Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have warned in recent years about the threats from climate change and pledged to limit greenhouse gases. Some have even committed the ultimate sin, endorsing the controversial cap-and-trade concept that was eventually branded “cap and tax.”

Back in 2008, Newt Gingrich took to a couch next to the Right's current-day arch-nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, to endorse Congressional climate action in an ad sponsored by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.

And as Politico notes, even Sarah Palin has flip flopped on the issue:

Just days after McCain picked her as his running mate, Palin told ABC News she believes human activities "certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change" and that "we’ve got to do something about it, and we have to make sure that we’re doing all we can to cut down on pollution."

Politico's Darren Samuelsohn calls it the McCain effect, with John McCain's prominent endorsement of cap and trade legislation making it safe for GOPers to talk about climate.

"I think McCain is moving in a responsible direction," then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told E&E News in May 2008. "Clearly the issue of climate change is on the minds of a lot of people. Humans clearly contribute to this. It just really depends on what kind of a cap-and-trade system, what kind of safety valves are in there."

Flash forward just a few years and each of these prominent GOPers are likely running for an excuse, a mea culpa, or another way to distance themselves from green records that are now liabilities with a Republican base strongly influenced by the Tea Party movement.

So what happened? Was it simply the polarizing direction of the cap and trade debate? The shift in the economic winds? The rise of the Tea Party? The inherent politics of a proposal centered on making our current base of energy sources more expensive, rather than making the cleaner alternatives cheaper?

Whatever the constellation of causes, the change is quite stark. Looking ahead to 2011 and beyond, can we build a new and enduring consensus around an innovation-centered approach to energy reform, building a clean economy, and responsibly reducing pollution? And can we make it sustained enough to avoid the factors that turned the endorsements of prominent GOP leaders into liabilities just a few years later?

We welcome thoughts from our readers...

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Sen. Graham: GOP should seek bipartisan progress on energy policy

Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

With the GOP set to make significant electoral gains on November 2nd, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is urging the GOP to work together with Democrats and President Obama in the coming Congress to make bipartisan progress on the nation's energy challenges. But the South Carolina Republican pointedly rejected further work on a cap-and-trade proposal he briefly backed during the 110th Congress.

According to E&E news (subscription required) Graham recently told South Carolina's WVOC radio last night:

"My belief is, if we get back in power in the House and get close in the Senate, that we ought to really clamp down on spending and reform the government. ... But we ought to not put ourselves in the position of being the party that said 'no' to hard problems, that we ought to ... come up with an energy policy without cap and trade that will create energy jobs in America, break our dependency on foreign oil and clean up the air. ... There's plenty of things that we could do that would be good for job creation by challenging the president to come to the middle and find ways to move forward as a nation, and put the burden on him to say 'no' to us."

Graham added:

"Energy legislation in the Senate has stalled, and our energy policy in America is nonexistent. The EPA's going to start regulating carbon in January if the Congress doesn't act. So one of the real priorities of the Congress and the nation ought to be energy independence."

See also:

"Post-Partisan Power" - Report Overview; How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation Can Deliver Clean Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity, and National Prosperity

"Power Surge" - The Conservative Case for Clean Energy Innovation by Steve Hayward in the Weekly Standard

"Why Bipartisanship on Energy Won't Be Easy--and Why It's Necessary" by Bryan Walsh in TIME magazine's Ecocentric blog

"Does November GOP Win Spell the End for Clean Energy Progress? Maybe Not"

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Brooks: Anti-government Ideology Threatens American Greatness

By Devon Swezey and Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute

It is fashionable these days to paint the government as a useless yet ravenous institution, the expansion of which will turn America into a third world country - or, worse yet, France.

Even the Economist, a respected, moderate publication, has recently taken to framing the government as a hideous Leviathan consuming private business, and everything else in its path.

But according to a new column by conservative commentator David Brooks, the hysterical, anti-government ideology that has taken root within even mainstream corners of the Republican Party is driven by an "oversimplified version of American history, with dangerous implications."

Writing in the New York Times, Brooks reminds his fellow conservatives that the history of American innovation and economic strength is one of "limited but energetic governments that used aggressive federal power to promote growth and social mobility."

"George Washington used industrial policy, trade policy and federal research dollars to build a manufacturing economy alongside the agricultural one. The Whig Party used federal dollars to promote a development project called the American System.

Abraham Lincoln supported state-sponsored banks to encourage development, lavish infrastructure projects, increased spending on public education. Franklin Roosevelt provided basic security so people were freer to move and dare. The Republican sponsors of welfare reform increased regulations and government spending -- demanding work in exchange for dollars."

Certainly, this country's innovative private businesses and intrepid entrepreneurs have been central to making America the world's leading economy. But time and again, America's entrepreneurs have succeeded with the full and active support of the federal government, without which, things may have turned out very differently.

As the Breakthrough Institute documented in our 2009 report, "Case Studies in American Innovation," the story of American innovation is one of enduring partnership between the public and private sector, where smart public investments have catalyzed entrepreneurialism and innovation and paved the way for so many of the great American technological and economic success stories of the 20th century.

Time and again, public-private partnerships have driven the development of whole new industries, and created the conditions for leading private sector companies to thrive. Without the public sector as both an initial funder and demanding customer, the vibrant industries built around great American innovations in communications, aerospace, semiconductors, computing, biotechnology and many more may have sprouted up elsewhere, or not at all.

Giving credit where credit is due, former Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, one of the nation's greatest entrepreneurs and business leaders, recently noted that early government investment in information technology was central to the success of Microsoft and so much of the IT revolution that propelled Americas economy in the later years of the 20th century:

"The Internet and the microprocessor, which were very fundamental to Microsoft being able to take the magic of software and having the PC explode, were among many of the elements that came through government research and development."

Indeed, the catalytic investments of the federal government have been central to the success of countless leading American firms, including HP, Apple, Genentech, Boeing, and Dow Chemical, along with hundreds of the small businesses and entrepreneurs that are the core of America's economic strength.

According to R&D Magazine, a quarter of the top 100 innovations in America each year consistently come from small businesses that are funded by one federal program alone--the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

Many conservatives, and indeed many liberals and environmentalists as well, have forgotten this history, and believe that the private sector is most innovative when the government is most absent.

Yet, as Brooks reminds us, the greatest American Presidents, from Washington to Lincoln, to Roosevelt, didn't build their philosophies or their policies around small government or big government, but smart government:

"Government is a means, not an end. They built their philosophy on making America virtuous, dynamic and great. They supported government action when it furthered those ends and opposed it when it didn't."

This "long, mainstream American tradition" is by the reflexive anti-government ideology of the surging Tea Party, now fighting for the soul of today's Republican Party.

For America to remain a great nation in the 21st century, smart government policies and investments will be essential. Whether or not those pivotal investments are made may hinge on the ability of conservatives and liberals alike to overcome this collective amnesia about what made this country great in the first place.


See also:

• Case Studies in American Innovation
  
• In Defense of Bill Gates

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Does November GOP Win Spell the End for Clean Energy Progress? Maybe Not

By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute

According to most electoral prognosticators, Republicans are poised to win major victories in the upcoming November midterm elections, with control of both the House and Senate within their reach. That should spell the end for climate and clean energy legislation, according to many observers, at least for the next Congressional cycle.

But what if it doesn't? Over at SolveClimate, Elizabeth McGowan takes a fresh look at what a GOP win in November could mean for clean energy progress, noting that split control in Washington could actually improve chances for bipartisan energy legislation.

New dynamics in a Washington under divided rule

With one party in control of the White House and both legislative branches, it's far too easy for priority issues to become politically polarized -- so the argument goes. The majority party lacks significant incentive to reach out to the minority party from the beginning to craft solidly bipartisan bills. Meanwhile the minority party can simply become 'the Party of No,' attempting to block any of the majority party's legislative priorities while riding electoral angst at a "broken Washington" back into power in the next Congressional cycle.

With the White House in the hands of one party and the House, Senate, or both under the other party's control, the dynamic can be quite different, according to Capitol Hill observers.

McGowan quotes Paul Bledsoe, a strategist at the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Commission of Energy Policy with a long resume of inside-the-beltway experience:

When one party has a supermajority, Bledsoe pointed out, those in charge tend to write legislation without consulting the minority. That can make it virtually impossible to "sell" complex and significant mechanisms such as cap and trade--which now appears to be dead on arrival.

Even Republicans who once supported cap and trade approach as valid now dismiss it as an unacceptable tax.

"Traditionally, energy is not a partisan but a geographically focused issue," Bledsoe said, adding that the 2005 and 2007 energy bills passed with bipartisan support, the former in a Republican Senate and the latter in a Democratic Senate. ...

"A strange dynamic can develop when the balance of power is narrower," he said, adding that polarization along party lines can dissipate. "I think senators will feel a greater sense of urgency to initiate legislation together. I see senators of goodwill coming together to create bipartisan approaches."

Moving beyond cap and trade could yield bipartisan clean energy progress

According to Josh Freed, director of the clean energy program at the moderate Democratic DC think tank Third Way, a bipartisan clean energy strategy -- one that moves beyond the failed cap and trade debate toward a renewed public-private partnership aimed at developing and marketing improved clean energy technologies -- is ripe for passage in a Washington under split rule.

Freed spoke with SolveClimate's McGowan, saying:

Some sort of climate and energy legislation will eventually emerge but first, the public and private sectors need to cooperate to invent, demonstrate, deploy and market the green batteries, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, advanced nuclear power, renewables and other technologies that are actually competitive with fossil fuels.

"As a country, we seem to have lost our way on that model," Freed said, adding that it propelled the success of the airline industry, the Internet and the biotechnology sector. "How do we go about turning that around?"

Congress needs to champion this push with thoughtful, comprehensive and bipartisan legislation, Freed explained, but the American public, business leaders, universities, entrepreneurs, large companies and the financial sector have to act in tandem.

Building a new bipartisan consensus for clean energy progress may take some time, but according to Freed, the effort can begin in the next Congress and external pressures may keep the heat on Congress to act sooner rather than later:

"This is going to take longer than a campaign. It's much like the health care debate in 1993," Freed said, adding that the need for reform was obvious but the mechanism being deployed all those years ago collapsed under its own weight. "It took 17 years to rebuild that coalition. With energy, we don't have the time to wait 17 years but we need to learn those lessons."

Politicians and everybody else involved have to realize that America is playing catch-up because its dawdling has ceded much of the clean technology market to China, South Korea, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.

"This has to be an issue that resonates in Minnesota, Tennessee and Ohio as much as it does in Oregon, Washington and Connecticut," Freed said.

Beware the Tea Party

While there are many strong motivations for bipartisan legislation to clean up, secure, and modernize the U.S. energy system while developing competitive U.S. clean energy industries, progress may ultimately depend on what kind of Republican party takes office in November.

According to Jim DiPeso, vice president of the Michigan-based non-profit Republicans for Environmental Protection, the radicalizing influence of the surging Tea Party movement may torpedo chances for clean energy legislation in the coming Congress. As DiPeso tells SolveClimate:

"All bets are off because those [Tea Party] newcomers will have different ideas about what priorities should be tackled. ... Then, you're looking at gridlock."

His wish is that President Obama, [House Minority Leader John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell will be "smart" enough to mollify dissenters and follow President Clinton's lead of the mid-1990s by collaborating on a centrist agenda. ...

[DiPeso] and [Bipartisan Policy Center's] Bledsoe echo one another with their comments about why partisan bickering and backing on the climate front can be so detrimental.

"It's a huge mistake for climate activists to become partisan," Bledsoe emphasized. ...

"You can blame both sides for the polarization but it doesn't matter who is to blame. We need to fix it and that's the only way forward."

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Does New Republican Bill Signal Bipartisan Support for Clean Energy Investment?

By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute

New legislation introduced by Republican Representative Devin Nunes (CA) and backed by several GOP House members would invest billions into renewable energy deployment, signaling an opportunity for bipartisan support for clean energy technology policies.

Over at CNBC, reporter Trevor Curwin has been one of the first to note the significance of the Republican bill, which Nunes' says could "potentially provide hundreds of billions in financing" for renewable energy over the next several decades.

Rep. Devin Nunes' (R-Calif.) who introduced the bill, in late July, wants to use a reverse auction process to allocate future federal oil royalties to the best renewable energy projects and technologies, with the lowest-price-per-megawatt, (MW), bid winning funding.

"It's clear and transparent; the people with the best technology will get the help," Nunes says of the bill, dubbed "A Roadmap for America's Energy Future,"

Depending on how much territory is eventually opened up to drilling, research firms estimate the royalties could be worth $10 billion to $50 billion a year.

As Curwin notes, Nunes' plan would rely solely on new revenues from oil and gas leasing to fund the renewable energy investments, including the always contentious proposals to open up areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well as the development of oil shale resources and expanded offshore drilling. While more offshore drilling enjoyed bipartisan support just months ago, in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf, the prospects for new offshore oil and gas production are uncertain.

But there are other ways to fund the renewable energy investments Rep. Nunes' and his GOP colleagues envision. Curwin quotes my recent suggestion, along with Breakthrough's Yael Borofsky, that a small fee on each barrel of oil sold could do the trick.

A $5 per barrel fee on all oil consumed in the United States, for example, would raise roughly $40 billion annually for critical national investments in clean energy technologies and industries, and would increase gasoline prices by just 12-15 cents per gallon. That's in the regular 'noise' of gas price fluctuations, which have risen or fallen by 15 cents or more on 14 different occasions in the last two years, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Other alternatives include a very modest fee on carbon pollution ($5 per ton would raise roughly $30 billion annually and increase gas prices by less than a nickel per gallon) a wires fee on electricity sales ($10 billion could be raised annually without costing the average household more than $5 per month on their utility bills), the sunsetting of well-worn subsidies for mature energy sources (including oil, coal, corn ethanol and probably even wind power), or some combination of the above.

At the end of the day, the choice of revenue raiser is important, but not the central issue. With representatives on both sides of the aisle now recognizing the importance of national investments in clean, American energy sources, new opportunities for bipartisan progress on clean energy may be possible where efforts to pass contentious cap and trade legislation have repeatedly failed.

As I told CNBC, Nunes' proposal is a positive step forward, a sign that smart investments to boost U.S. clean energy production, spur innovation to reduce the price of emerging clean energy technologies, and strengthen America's clean energy industries and entrepreneurs are all points that can enjoy bipartisan consensus.

On it's own, a program for strategic, competitive deployment incentives to spur clean energy adoption, similar to that proposed by Rep Nunes and his colleagues, could be a key component of a 21st century clean energy strategy.

A comprehensive strategy to make clean energy cheap and abundant and ensure American leadership in clean energy markets would also include key public investments in clean energy research, energy science and engineering education, advanced manufacturing, and enabling infrastructure, each areas that both Republicans and Democrats can support.

Regardless of what you believe about the urgency or importance climate change, we can agree that making more clean, American energy, making it more affordable, and making it right here in the USA are all in the national interest.

See also:

$40 billion for clean tech at 12 cents per gallon? Yeah, why not?

Time to Bury Cap and Trade and Plan Anew

After "Drill, Baby, Drill," Obama Should Embrace Another GOP Energy Plan

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After "Drill, Baby, Drill," Obama Should Embrace Another GOP Energy Plan

By Jesse Jenkins and Yael Borofsky, originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

With President Obama's announcement Wednesday that the Administration would support expanded offshore oil and gas extraction, it's now apparent that price pressures on oil make political pressures on politicians impossible to ignore and that some expansion of offshore drilling is inevitable.

But despite Green backlash against the Obama administration's apparent embrace of "drill, baby, drill," it's actually another Republican energy plan Obama should turn to if he wants to make a real dent in America's dependence on oil. Embracing a GOP plan to put the hundreds of billions in potential federal revenues from new oil and gas royalties into a fund to accelerate clean technology innovation could offer Obama a bona fide opportunity to "reach across the aisle," strengthen America's energy security, and help make clean energy cheap.

Don't believe it? Here's the breakdown...

While much of the rhetoric used to advocate for offshore drilling deals with the threat of rising prices at the pump and our nation's energy security, EIA projections show that "access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf [offshore] regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." At that point, access to the new portions of outer continental shelf (OCS) previously off-limits would cut gasoline prices at the pump by just three cents, a clearly insignificant step towards "energy independence."

What could have a significant impact on our energy security, however, would be to invest the hundreds of billions in potential federal revenues from oil and gas royalties to accelerate clean tech innovation and deployment, helping America develop the clean and affordable energy sources needed to truly diversify our energy mix and secure our freedom from oil.

How much money are we talking about?

According to EIA estimates, there are about 8 billion barrels of crude oil and 58 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (about 59.6 billion mmBTUs) potentially available in Eastern/Central Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic OCS areas previously off-limits to exploration and extraction (another 10 billion barrels of crude and 18 trillion cubic feet of gas may lie off Pacific coastal areas). That estimate does not include potentially recoverable oil and gas in the Arctic Alaska coastal areas also opened up in the President's new proposal.

At today's oil prices of roughly $85 per barrel, that works out to about $680 billion worth of new oil production and another $238.5 billion worth of gas at today's relatively low natural gas prices (about $4/mmBTU). Add in the recoverable reserves off Alaska's North Slope and let's call it an even trillion dollars worth of new oil and gas production (more if prices climb in the future).

The federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) controls oil and gas leases in the OCS and collects 1/6 of the value of oil and gas produced from OCS areas. That means, the MMS has the potential to collect over $165 billion in royalties from new offshore drilling. That's far from a trivial sum of money.

Of course, those royalties will be collected over the course of a couple decades and likely won't start flowing until 2014 or later, but even after individual states close to drilling sites claim their share of the revenue there will still be a sizable chunk of change available that could be invested in the development of clean energy technology.

(And there could be ways to front-load the royalty payments to get money flowing to cleantech sooner, such as a requiring a portion of the royalty value paid in advance upon signing the leases; this would have the additional benefit of helping discourage speculative efforts to lock up sites but not produce oil, accelerating production of new oil and gas).

After all, we simply cannot drill our way to energy security. The New York Times reports that at current rates of consumption, estimates show that there could be as much as a three-year supply of oil and around a two-year supply of natural gas in the OCS areas. That's not exactly a long-term 'fix' for an oil-addicted nation, which is why Obama noted Wednesday in his speech at Andrews Air Force Base that offshore drilling is meant merely to aid in the "transition to cleaner energy sources;" drilling is no alternative.

We can, however, invest and invent our way to freedom from oil. That's where (somewhat ironically!) the Republicans 'all of the above' energy plan, AKA the "American Energy Act," has a leg up on the President -- at least for now.

Under the GOP proposal, put forth by House Republicans in June 2009, 90% of the federal share "of the revenues created by OCS exploration would go to a renewable energy trust fund to pay for a variety of renewable, alternative and advanced energy programs." This "American Renewable and Alternative Energy Trust Fund" would be dedicated to efforts accelerating the development of clean energy technologies that can truly help end America's oil addiction. If the federal government retained 75% of the royalty revenues from new OCS and Alaskan Coastal Plain production, this formula could represent an infusion of over $110 billion for critical clean energy investments over the next twenty years.

So while the expansion of offshore drilling may seem like we're taking a step back from a future free from oil, investing the royalty revenues in clean tech RD&D could amount to a big leap forward in the transition to a clean energy economy by securing a revenue source for clean tech that is not tied to embattled efforts to establish a carbon price -- all while beginning the urgent work of securing America's clean tech competitiveness and ensuring our energy security.

Nearly the entire Republican caucus, not to mention a handful of Democrats, are already on record voting for this concept in the August 2008 vote on the New Energy Reform Act, introduced by the so-called Gang of 10 during the height of the oil price spikes in 2008.

If offshore drilling is to move forward over the next few years, the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats should waste no time in embracing this clean energy investment plan.

Alternatively, Obama could look to pacify the deficit hawks by dedicating the royalty revenues to lower projected deficits -- ignoring for a moment that it will be new industries and a growing economy that will have the largest impact on rebalancing the federal budget. Obama could also heed the advice he's likely to get from Beltway Green Groups who will no doubt urge the President to use the lion's share of the funds for state revenue sharing in a (likely futile) attempt to entice votes from Southeast and Gulf Coast Senators for the troubled Kerry/Graham/Lieberman 'comprehensive energy and climate' bill. Either would represent another wasted opportunity to make a critical large-scale investment in our clean tech competitiveness and a future free from oil.

With offshore drilling seemingly unavoidable, wouldn't it be ironic if Republican plans for the resulting royalties wound up more supportive of clean-tech investment than President Obama and the Democrats?

Update: Michael Lynch, an energy consultant and MIT faculty, writes as an op-ed contributor to the New York Times that total oil and gas tax revenues from new offshore production could reach at least $10 billion per year and likely no more than $25 billion. His estimates are quite a bit higher than ours because he counts both royalty payments and other taxes paid by oil and gas exploration and production companies. Lynch also notes that there would be about $20 billion a year in additional taxes if we open up California and other Pacific coastal areas, which he advocates.

Jesse Jenkins is the Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute. Yael Borofsky is the Institute's Staff Writer and Researcher and her writing can be found daily at the Breakthrough Blog

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