GOP Energy Policy

We're way beyond "Drill baby! Drill!" at this point.  Sen. Lisa Murkowski, ranking Republican on the Senate Energy Committee released a "blue print" of energy policy for the US moving into the future.  Brad Plumer, writing at Wonkblog, has the breakdown of nine key ideas from the blueprint.

Some of it is traditional GOP energy policy boiler plate. Open up ANWR. Open up off shore drilling. Slow down on the phasing out of coal. These aren't surprising recommendations. I'm not a big fan of opening up ANWR and memories of Deep Horizon are still to fresh for me to think we should go gung-ho toward off shore drilling, but some of the ideas around coal should be discussed. And there are a couple other ideas that I think Democrats could easily support.

The chief one of these would be to use the money now tagged for alternative energy subsides and putting it into basic science research around these energy technologies. This is a very smart move for a few reasons. First, if you're a Democrat you've grown tired of the "picking winners and losers" argument over these subsidies because there's an inconvenient kernel of truth in it. Second, you bring the resources of the government to bear to facilitate innovation. Let the market worry about how to commoditize the innovation, but let's support the base innovation. I would be hesitant that the GOP money men would come after this basic science program and such programs tend to have a weaker political constituency than direct subsidies do, but I think this is a great idea to consider.

The other idea I liked was the expansion of hydroelectric energy by building more dams and electrifying existing dams. The report cites Energy Department figures indicating doing this would lead to 300 gigawatts of energy. If the figures here are to be believed, that would mean we would bring enough power into the system to electrify fifteen New York Cities. The odds are slim you could get to the full 300 gigawatts, given NIMBY issues and water management concerns but this is the sort of infrastructure investment that helps us begin to lower our reliance on coal and nuclear.

Perhaps the most revealing part of the blueprint is an explicit recognition that we can and should lower our greenhouse gas emissions. The breakdown doesn't say whether or not Sen. Murkowski believes climate change it man made, but having it mentioned as part of her plan is certainly a step in the right direction.

This blueprint has the potential to be an incredibly important document should the Senate decide to take up energy policy. I hope it does and if this is where the GOP is starting from, we may be able to do a lot more to change our energy position and begin to mitigate global warming then I thought was possible even just a couple weeks ago.