Energy

One of the biggest challenges for Washington policymakers who are driven by yesterday’s headlines is to formulate policies that will sufficiently address problems yet unknown and accommodate opportunities few can yet envision. 

After President Obama’s remarks to the National Governors Association this morning, America’s governors still have some energy questions for the president:

>Keystone XL.  The governors of every state, but especially those from Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas deserve to hear what is more important than creating thousands of construction, manufacturing, and service jobs in their states. 

On February 9th, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a Combined Construction and Operating License for two nuclear reactors at the Vogtle facility in Waynesboro, Georgia, the first new reactors in a generation.  This is terrific news for the long-awaited revival of a nuclear renaissance in this country.  Doubly great: the Department of Energy is finalizing plans to issue the plant an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to support construction.  Unless Congressman Markey

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President Obama’s 2013 budget would rack up more wasteful spending on his favorite energy gambits.  With 5% increases in non-military R&D, a trajectory to double the budgets of science agencies, billions in job training, and handouts for private companies to update their facilities, this budget doesn’t do anything to trim the deficit or define an appropriate energy policy.  Worst of all, Obama is hiding new energy bets at the Pentagon, charging our Defense Department with major investments in renewable energy projects while cutting their budget by $5.1 billion.

Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Henry Waxman is frustrated that the majority of the public supports construction of the Keystone pipeline.  He decided to waste the taxpayers’ money and try to change their minds by holding a gripe session this morning in the form of a congressional hearing. 

Just as the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is beginning to approve new nuclear reactor designs and sites, potentially heralding a new renaissance of nuclear power, the president’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (Commission) reports that our failure to properly manage nuclear waste is, “damaging to prospects for maintaining a potentially important energy supply option for the future.” At two hearings this week, the House and Senate analyzed the recommendations of the Commission, chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft,

Today marks the beginning of considerations for a long-awaited game changer in energy & infrastructure policy, the “American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act”: a bill that dedicates oil & gas royalties to funding the nation’s transportation system, reduces long environmental review processes, and shifts more control over infrastructure development to states and private companies.

President Obama may have an abysmal track record on expanding access to American energy, but that didn’t stop him from grandstanding at the State of the Union.  He promised to “take every possible action” to develop shale gas resources, a proposal that requires expanded use of hydraulic fracturing techniques.  We’ve already pointed out that this platform doesn’t reconcile with the

As a member of the McCain campaign that popularized the “all-of-the-above” slogan, I shudder at the president’s use of the term.  While we used the phrase to talk about opening up energy development and innovation in every corner, Obama is trying to pacify disgruntled Americans who are sick of his “anything-but-fossil” energy policies.  In a deft re-election tack, the president seems to have figured out that oil & gas development can actually be good politics.  Unfortunately, he has yet to discover that it is also good policy.

Amid all the grandiose, non-specific commitments to American energy and the gobs of subsidies, tax incentives, and handouts he threw around at the State of the Union last night, President Obama picked up on the same common conservative vernacular – and McCain campaign slogan – as White House press secretary Jay Carney, and told us he was committed to an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy.  The only trouble is Obama’s all-of-the-above strategy is old, recycled policy, and