Currently, the United States is the largest producer of oil and gas in
the world. Under President Donald Trump, the fossil fuel industry
received between $10.4 billion and $15.2 billion in direct pandemic
relief from the federal government.
This hearing will discuss the dire health and economic impacts of fossil
fuel subsidies and why the current Administration and the rest of the
international community should fulfill their commitments to repeal
fossil fuel subsidies.
The hearing will also examine how federal subsidies for the fossil fuel
industry disproportionately affects already vulnerable communities.
Witnesses
Greta Thunberg, Founder, Fridays For Future
Tara Houska, Founder, Giniw Collective
Joseph Aldy, Professor, Harvard University
Peter Erickson, Climate Policy Program Director, Stockholm
Environmental Institute
Jill Antares Hunkler, Seventh Generation Ohio Valley Resident
Republican witness:
Frank Macchiarola, senior vice president of Policy, Economics and
Regulatory Affairs, American Petroleum Institute
The New York Times reports that “cows at 15 farms across
Vermont have had
their grain feed adjusted to include more plants” instead of corn and
soy, reducing their enteric methane emissions (burps) by 18 percent,
without any loss in milk production.
“President Obama may attend world climate talks in
Copenhagen this
December, marking the first visit to the annual U.N. conference by a
sitting U.S. president since George H.W. Bush’s 1992 trip to Rio de
Janeiro,” according to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD).
The Washington Post finds that “corporate lobbyists have won billions
of dollars of
subsidies
in the Waxman-Markey green economy legislation, including $500 billion
for electric utilities and $12 billion for the auto industry.
The ethanol mandate taught us that energy subsidies for commercial
energy projects can lead to unintended consequences and ultimately be
counterproductive. Yet Washington’s attempts to address America’s energy
questions continue to rely heavily on preferences, mandates, and
subsidies for energy commercialization. This is causing energy experts
from across the political spectrum to begin questioning the role of
subsidies in energy policy. Is this an area where liberals and
conservatives might agree?
Join us for a panel with four politically diverse energy experts who
will discuss these questions and others as they investigate where
agreement exists on the role of energy subsidies, mandates, and
preferences in commercializing energy in the United States.
Speakers
Peter Bradford, Vermont Law School, former
NRC Commissioner and Union of Concerned
Scientists Board Member
Marlo Lewis, Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Doug Koplow, Founder, Earth Track
Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst, Energy and Environment, The
Heritage Foundation
Hosts
Jack Spencer, Research Fellow in Nuclear Energy Policy, The Heritage
Foundation
Henry Sokolski, Executive Director, Nonproliferation Policy Education
Center (NPEC)
This is a seminar presented by DOE/EERE’s
Office of Planning, Budget, and Analysis and
NREL’s Strategic Energy Analysis Center,
featuring Gregory Nemet, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin.
Demand subsidies or funding R&D – which works best? During this “bonus”
seminar, Gregory Nemet of the University of Wisconsin will talk about
his analysis combining an expert elicitation and a bottom-up
manufacturing cost model to compare the effects of R&D and demand
subsidies. In his work, he modeled the effects on the future costs of a
low-carbon energy technology that is not currently commercially
available, purely organic photovoltaics (PV). His research found that
(1) successful R&D programs reduced costs more than did subsidies, (2)
successful R&D enabled PV to achieve a cost target of 4c/kWh, and (3)
the cost of PV did not reach the target when only subsidies, and not
R&D, were implemented. He’ll also discuss how these results are
insensitive to two levels of policy intensity, the level of a carbon
price, the availability of storage technology, and uncertainty in the
main parameters used in the model. However, a case can still be made for
subsidies: comparisons of stochastic dominance show that subsidies
provide a hedge against failure in the R&D program.
Gregory Nemet is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin
in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and in the La Follette
School of Public Affairs. He is also a member of the university’s Energy
Sources and Policy Cluster and a senior fellow at the Center for World
Affairs and the Global Economy. His research and teaching focus on
improving understanding of the environmental, social, economic, and
technical dynamics of the global energy system. He also teaches courses
in international environmental policy and energy systems analysis. He
holds a master’s degree and doctorate in energy and resources, both from
the University of California, Berkeley. His undergraduate degree from
Dartmouth College is in geography and economics.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory 901 D Street SW (adjacent to the
Forrestal Building) or 370 L’Enfant Promenade; Ninth Floor.
Please contact Wanda Addison, of Midwest Research Institute (MRI), at
[email protected] or 202-488-2202
DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
