American Energy. Walter A. Rosenbaum
and solar energy equal to almost three times current US electric generating capacity.48 But much of this ecologically valuable land is fragile biosphere, inhabited by endangered species or valued culturally and esthetically by those who fear the degradation may come in the form of renewable energy technologies like solar and wind power.
Another increasingly significant instance of environmentalism’s impact upon the course of national energy development is the association of conventional energy production with global climate warming. Environmental opponents of aggressive new fossil fuel development and proponents of increased fossil fuel production both recognize that public belief about the credibility of human-induced global climate change and its basis in fossil-fueled combustion can powerfully influence public preferences for future domestic energy production.
Interest Groups
So embedded in government are organized interests that it often seems to critics of interest-group power, such as political scholar and commentator George Will, that if “you want to understand your government, don’t begin by reading the Constitution. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all organizations with titles beginning with the word National.”49 Interest group access to the inner citadels of energy policymaking is treated with public ambivalence. It is the excesses, not the existence, of group claims to influence that invite censure. That privately organized interests should share in formulating public energy policy excites almost no one.
Energy-related interest groups have been among the largest contributors to congressional and presidential election campaigns, and, among the top spenders for lobbying among all national interest groups. In 2010, for instance, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors interest group political activities, reported that more than 1,600 individuals lobbied Congress and the White House on behalf of conventional and nuclear energy organizations.50 Since 1990, most of the money spent on political campaigns by the energy sectors has gone to Republican candidates.51 The energy sector is also among the largest of all interest groups contributing money to political campaigns and lobbying: in 2012–2013, this sector spent an estimated $144 million on such activity.52 Fossil fuel and nuclear power interests dominate the energy sector in campaign spending, lobbying, and other political activities.
The rise of new issues on the governmental agenda often triggers the formation of new groups and, conversely, new issues on the agenda reflect the growing political influence of new interests. In recent decades, traditional energy sector groups have been increasingly challenged politically by a relatively small but growing array of energy-related environmental groups, state and regional interests, and new technology advocates, especially groups promoting renewable and nonconventional energy.
Energy administrators routinely consult, formally and informally, with representatives of affected organized interests who become “stakeholders.” Congressional legislation frequently mandates that agencies responsible for implementing important legislation create advisory committees that include representatives of the programs affected by the legislation. If Congress fails to create an advisory committee, agencies often create their own. This ensures that these interests will be informed and solicited for their opinions during the program’s implementation. In the Department of Energy (DOE), for example, the National Petroleum Council, consisting of almost 100 individuals representing major energy producers, research institutions, technology producers and related groups, is among the high-level DOE advisory groups, reporting directly to the secretary of DOE. The agency assuredly does not lack advisory help. DOE has at least 20 high-level program advisory groups and has terminated another 60 since its creation. However, compared with older federal departments, many of which have more than 100 advisory groups, DOE is hardly in the business.53
Administrative agencies also collaborate with organized groups by “working the clientele.” Agencies turn to organized interests strongly supportive of their mission when help is needed. Thus, when DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) struggle over congressional proposals to increase or relax pollution controls on public utilities, both sides mobilize their clientele to bring pressure on Congress. EPA appeals to environmentalists, DOE to utilities.
The Tyranny of the Electoral Cycle
Elections have an imperious hold on presidents, members of Congress, and their respective staffs. For elected officials, the clock segmenting the time during which decisions are made ticks away in four- and eight-year intervals. These are Washington’s constitutionally appointed electoral cycles. Within these time frames, federal officials will continually sift policy decisions for their electoral implications. “Good” and “best” policy is often defined as much by electoral impact as by its substantive merit.
Elections affect energy policymakers in two particularly important ways. First, the short term dominates the long term. Presidents and legislators may talk about programs enduring for decades or defend the interest of unborn generations, but their eye is usually upon the program’s impact on the next primary or general election. “Presidents and their staffs arrive at the White House charged up to produce results, to make good on the pledges of the campaign,” observed presidential scholar Thomas Cronin. “The President and his staff think in terms of two- and four-year frames, at most. They strive to fulfill campaign pledges and related priorities with a sense of urgency, seeking ways to build a respectable image for the forthcoming electoral campaign.”54
Members of Congress are similarly preoccupied with elections. The constituency is an unseen presence at any deliberation about public policy, the electoral impact on the folks back home a continual preoccupation. Any congressman or senator could probably sympathize with the two-term Democratic congressman caught between the dominant economic interests in his constituency and his own desire to support a decades-long regulatory program to reduce acid precipitation. “I feel,” he lamented to a reporter, “as if I pitched my tent on an anthill, there are so many people crawling over me. … I can’t win either way. This is how representatives get whipsawed. … I vote one way and the people say ‘Aren’t you supposed to represent the national interest? I vote the other way and people say, ‘We sent you there to represent us.’”55
Globalization
The most potent impact of the domestic energy crises of the 1970s was the harsh message that the United States was increasingly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of global energy supply, politics, and economics. In the years since 1970, the United States has had to recognize, among other unwelcome realities, that it controls a significant but diminishing proportion of the remaining global petroleum reserves and may never achieve “energy independence.” In this twenty-first-century world, the United States competes increasingly with rapidly developing non-Western nations for available petroleum supply, still stakes much of its national security on insecure foreign petroleum and unstable national governments, and confronts potentially severe domestic environmental risks from global fossil fuel consumption it cannot control. Economically, the domestic energy markets are increasingly sensitive to global macroeconomic events such as fluctuations in international energy exploration and production. All these global interdependences are tethered to equally significant economic implications and political complexities.
Reserves and Resources: How Much Energy?
Succeeding chapters concerning specific energy sources begin with a brief assessment of the domestic energy supply, a fundamental consideration in all energy policymaking. However, disagreement over the available amount of a resource, especially fossil fuel energy, is a predictably contentious prelude to many discussions about how to manage the resource. Experts with respectable credentials frequently disagree about the precise amount of an energy resource physically available domestically or internationally.
One reason for this disagreement is different estimates concerning how much energy is recoverable under current economic and technological conditions (an energy reserve) and how much of the total energy source exists (an energy resource). A petroleum producer or a coal mining company, for instance, would define