After a long and divisive election year, it’s tempting to view every policy issue as deeply polarized. Republicans see the world one way, Democrats see it another way, and never the twain shall meet.
That may be true for some issues, but it doesn’t have to be true for the complex set of issues that comprise energy policy – from emissions, to affordability, to reliability, to national security and geopolitics. In fact, for almost two decades, the U.S. has been a global energy leader, even as power has shifted back and forth between the two major political parties.
In 2011, under a Democratic president, the United States became the world’s largest producer of natural gas. In 2018, under a Republican president, the U.S. became the world’s largest oil producer.
Since 2007, under presidents and Congresses led by both parties, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions plummeted – energy-sector carbon dioxide emissions have fallen by 20 percent, driven mostly by the increased use of natural gas, wind, and solar and a decrease in emissions-intensive coal.
The quiet track record of energy policy successes offers the possibility of more explicit bipartisan cooperation on environmental policy. Here are five actions that could win bipartisan support during the next Congress, and lead to real energy security.
Restart LNG permitting
U.S. energy exports – especially shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) – have provided badly needed geopolitical stability to our allies and trading partners in Europe and Asia. But there are clear climate benefits, too.
U.S. oil and natural gas are produced under much more stringent environmental standards than rival exporters. For example, the Russian natural gas supply chain emits 50 percent more methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, than U.S. natural gas, according to the International Energy Agency.
In early 2024, the Biden administration announced an election-year pause on LNG export permitting. But the best available data has always pointed towards a restart – it was only a question of when.
The U.S. leads the world in emissions-mitigating technologies – such as ground-level monitors, drone and aircraft surveys, satellite imagery and many other tools and techniques to detect and reduce fugitive emissions from energy supply chains.
Continued investment will reinforce the environmental benefits of U.S. LNG over other energy sources in the global market. Therefore, lifting the pause on LNG export permitting just makes good sense on both energy and climate grounds.
Preserve energy tax breaks
Since 2022, the U.S. has rolled out a comprehensive suite of tax breaks for energy-related investments, including carbon capture and storage, biofuel refining, hydrogen production, nuclear reactors, geothermal power plants, hydroelectric facilities and other low-emission technologies.
Businesses across the energy sector, from large oil and natural gas producers to geothermal and solar developers and everything in between, have been putting these tax breaks to work. According to researchers with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Rhodium Group, tax breaks totaling $78 billion have been matched by almost $500 billion in private investment in energy-related projects over the past two years.
To be sure, some changes to these tax breaks are likely in 2025, such as to make them more technology neutral and focused on technologies that benefit most from the subsidies.
Preserving the core of existing legislated energy provisions will provide businesses across the sector the certainty they need to keep investing, building, and creating jobs in American energy production.
Modernize the nation’s power grid
The years of stagnant growth in U.S. electricity demand are over, thanks largely to the rise of data centers for cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and a move towards “electrification” of the economy.
Building more power plants is necessary, of course, but it’s not sufficient. The nation needs more long-distance transmission lines and upgraded local distribution systems to move electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s consumed.
While some progress has been made to speed up the permitting process for transmission lines and other infrastructure projects, much more needs to be done to modernize the nation’s power grid and related infrastructure at a faster pace. Bipartisan legislation is already working its way through the final days of the current Congress and even if it is not enacted in 2024, some version is likely to pass in 2025.
Invest in U.S. workers on a massive scale
After permitting, the biggest restriction on building new energy infrastructure in the U.S. is the availability of skilled workers in areas such as nuclear energy and critical materials.
To overcome this shortage, policymakers need to partner with universities, technical institutions and high schools to provide early- and mid-career training programs that align with needs of project developers. Nothing less than a surge in well-trained and highly skilled workers will do.
The situation is especially urgent in the U.S. mining sector, which will be needed to produce a secure supply chain for the copper, iron, cobalt, nickel and other raw materials that are the building blocks for modern energy infrastructure and technologies. In 2023, for example, the U.S. conferred around 160 undergraduate degrees in mining engineering compared to more than 2,500 in China.
Tackle global energy poverty
Too often, concerns over climate change and international energy security overshadow the longstanding crisis of energy poverty in the world’s poorest countries.
More than two billion people still cook their food using open fires and inefficient stoves fueled with wood, coal, animal dung and other highly polluting sources. At the same time, more than one billion people live without electricity, either because they have no access, or because the electricity where they live is too expensive or unreliable to actually use.
And up to three billion live without access to reliable power.
As a major energy exporter, and as a leader in reducing emissions, the U.S. can and must do more to expand access in the developing world to cleaner fuels for cooking, heating and lighting, including solar-powered electricity, propane, ethanol and biogas.
Advocates for energy security and climate change routinely frame their arguments in moral terms. The moral imperative to tackle global energy poverty is just as urgent and deserves equal footing. And it must go beyond minimum levels, so that both people and economies can thrive.
Global energy access will increase in coming years and decades. The U.S. should help to make that happen, which will also benefit American workers and the economy.
Energy policy offers an opportunity for common-sense policy making, supported by the vast majority of citizens on both sides of the aisle, that benefits the U.S. economy, workers, and environment.
Such policies offer further opportunities to benefit our allies by increasing energy and economic security. Billions around the world lacking energy access will benefit as well.
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