Full Title: Drilling for Innovation: Funding Clean Energy R&D with Oil and Gas Revenue
Author(s): Meghan Nicholson and Matthew Stepp
Publisher(s): ITIF
Publication Date: June 1, 2013
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
The United States faces at least two ostensibly contradictory energy challenges. It must reduce carbon emissions to address global climate change, but new drilling technologies are allowing more domestic oil and natural gas production than ever before. It must significantly invest more public dollars, especially in R&D, to drive down the cost of clean energy, but federal investments in clean energy innovation have remained stagnant since the Stimulus expired. Congress can reconcile these challenges by generating new revenue from oil and gas drilling by opening new lands in exchange for raising drilling fees on federal leases. These new revenues should be directed to fully support key clean energy innovation programs like the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Redirecting revenues from drilling to invest in the future of clean energy offers a bipartisan solution to expanding the nation’s energy supply while also mitigating global warming.