The new
Congress
has a number of bipartisan
energy
policy opportunities. The question: whether agreement can be reached, or whether partisanship will prevent action even where there is bipartisan policy alignment.
Areas of potential include a new farm bill, critical minerals policy, energy permitting reform, natural gas infrastructure legislation, and carbon border adjustment measures.
The current farm bill expires on Sept. 30, making it one of the key agenda items for this Congress. Thankfully, conservation and energy programs supporting the long-term productivity of farm and forest lands have traditionally enjoyed broad bipartisan support. For example, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program provides technical and financial assistance for conservation work that has the added benefit of storing carbon in our nation’s working lands and forests. Republicans have grown more willing to consider natural carbon solutions that are locally driven, voluntary, and produce economic benefits to farmers and forest owners.
The pandemic exposed the fragility of our just-in-time global supply chains and alerted lawmakers to vulnerabilities in key sectors such as energy and critical minerals. Developing more robust domestic critical mineral supply chains is important to maximizing the economic, consumer, and emissions-reducing benefits of the energy transition. House GOP leaders are connecting critical minerals issues to permitting reform and mining, while some Democrats remain opposed to domestic mining or even updating permit laws. They’ll need to compromise.
There is hope, however. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Joe Manchin (D-WV) recently met with key House committee chairs Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Bruce Westerman (R-AR), along with Rep. Garrett Graves (R-LA) to discuss areas of potential agreement. Hopefully, they can find common ground. Republicans have long advocated permitting reforms, and Democrats increasingly appreciate that such reforms, especially in electricity transmission and renewable infrastructure, are crucial for accelerating clean energy deployment.
Domestically, natural gas continues to play a key role in reducing consumer and manufacturing costs, displacing higher-emitting coal, and supporting intermittent renewable energy on the grid. Overseas, liquified natural gas, or LNG, exports are helping our European allies wean themselves from Russian gas and limit revenue for the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine. Policymakers should focus on permitting new natural gas pipelines, increasing efforts to decarbonize gas production and use, and expanding export infrastructure to bring gas to key markets.
Both parties are frustrated that even as the U.S. takes major actions to cut greenhouse emissions, other countries, especially China, are failing to do so. There is growing interest in measures to set a fee on imports from high carbon-intensity economies by using carbon border adjustments. Members in both chambers are considering related legislation. They recognize that we must find the means to force other nations to cut their emissions. After all, global emissions ultimately drive innovation, geopolitics, and climate change impacts. America is well-positioned to lead on this issue given the high efficiency of our own domestic manufacturing base compared to foreign competitors. Ideally, a performance-based carbon border adjustment on imports would force China and others to reduce their emissions to access U.S. markets.
There is tremendous potential for further advances in U.S. energy policy, building on the significant progress in the last Congress, including the infrastructure bill and the CHIPS and Science Act. More remains to be done to make the U.S. energy economy more affordable, cleaner, innovative, and secure.
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Sasha Mackler is Executive Director of theÂ
Energy Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center
.
