The new momentum behind Constitution comes as Democrats reckon with voter defections in low-income communities grappling with high energy costs, as detailed in a February report by the Progressive Policy Institute, a center-left think tank. It highlighted how energy costs were a significant concern driving votes in poor, predominantly Black communities in the Boston area, where Trump notched gains in November.
“If you’re a poor resident of public housing in, say, Boston or Dorchester and Roxbury, it’s really hard for you to see the benefits of tax credits for heat pumps” or other policies aimed at curbing fossil fuel use, said Elan Sykes, the report’s author. “This is really something that we as Democrats need to recognize.”
In the scatter plots for each state, every panel reflects the relationship between Black population and energy burdens in one Congressional District in that state. Within each district’s panel, one dot represents each census tract in that district. The slope of each panel’s light blue line reflects the correlation between higher black population and higher energy burdens for that district, with its confidence interval shown in gray (so a wider gray shading represents a looser fit for that panel’s blue line). Then, each Congressional District in the states included in PPI’s report “Energy Costs Come First: a New Approach to Environmental Justice” is mapped such that the fill color of each census tract scales according to the energy burden as a percent of area median income or the proportion of Black households as share of the tract’s population.
This appendix uses data from the Department of Energy’s Low-income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) tool collected through the Census Bureau. Importantly, these estimations are not causal and only reflect the statistical level of similarity between the two characteristics across the range of census tracts in each district. Additionally, the underlying data report values for energy burden calculated from area median income and average annual energy costs and so do not capture varying levels of energy burden within each tract or microdata like individual household burden. Even though this correlation does not allow for direct causal claims, the simplicity of this comparison provides significant insight when paired with the entire PPI report.
Each state listed below links to a PDF with this data:
WASHINGTON — Across the country, particularly in major cities, there is a stark disparity in energy infrastructure. Many predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods have older homes that lack energy-efficient, cost-effective appliances, further straining communities already disproportionately impacted by poverty, discrimination, and underinvestment.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report, Energy Costs Come First: A New Approach to Environmental Justice, authored by Elan Sykes, examining the disproportionate energy burdens faced by low-income Black and Latino communities. The report provides a critical analysis of how current climate and energy policies exacerbate economic hardship for these communities and outlines a pragmatic path forward — one that prioritizes affordability, clean energy deployment, and regulatory reforms to enable rapid progress for all Americans in the energy transition.
“Too many communities of color in the U.S. are stuck with outdated energy infrastructure and sky-high energy bills,” said Elan Sykes, author of the report and Director of Energy and Climate Policy at PPI. “The clean energy transition represents an opportunity to fix this, but we must do it in a way that actually benefits the people who need it most — by lowering costs and emissions while ensuring a reliable, affordable supply of energy.”
The report focuses on Boston and the broader New England region as a case study, revealing how energy policies, infrastructure constraints, and regulatory barriers have compounded energy insecurity in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Key findings include:
Higher Energy Burdens for Black Households: Data shows that energy costs, as a share of household income, increase in proportion to the share of Black residents in a given Boston neighborhood.
Infrastructure Bottlenecks Driving Up Costs: Due to legal and regulatory hurdles, New England remains cut off from lower-cost energy sources, forcing vulnerable communities to rely on expensive and dirtier fuels like diesel and imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).
Flawed Climate Strategies Worsening Inequality: Activist-driven policies focused on blocking new energy infrastructure — without adequate replacement solutions—have made electricity and heating even less affordable for working-class families.
Lessons for National Policy: The dynamics seen in New England are not unique. Across the U.S., a failure to balance climate ambition with affordability is alienating working-class voters and exacerbating economic inequality.
The report highlights how federal, state, and local permitting laws — intended to protect the environment — are instead being weaponized to delay clean energy projects, prolong dependence on expensive fossil fuels, and drive up costs for the very communities that environmental justice advocates seek to protect.
PPI’s recommendations include:
Permitting Reform to Accelerate Clean Energy Deployment: Congress and state governments should streamline approval processes for renewable energy projects, grid expansion, and natural gas infrastructure to lower costs and improve reliability.
Targeted Energy Assistance for Low-Income Families: Expand and modernize programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) to better serve households struggling with high energy burdens.
Creation of Community Energy Hubs: Establishing local institutions to provide consumers with trusted information on energy efficiency, clean energy options, and financial assistance programs.
A Balanced, Technology-Neutral Approach: Instead of rigid fossil fuel bans, policymakers should support an energy mix that includes nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, and natural gas to ensure both emissions reductions and cost stability.
The report also warns that Republican efforts to dismantle clean energy policies, combined with Democratic policies that exacerbate affordability issues, risk deepening political alienation among working-class Black and Latino voters — a shift that was evident in the 2024 elections.
With the Biden administration’s historic clean energy investments now facing potential rollbacks under a second Trump presidency, PPI urges policymakers to adopt a pragmatic, affordability-first approach to the clean energy transition — one that accelerates progress while keeping energy bills manageable for working families.
PPI’s Energy and Climate Solutions Initiative links two vital and inseparable national goals: assuring abundant and affordable energy for Americans while lowering U.S. and global greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. These goals must be pursued in tandem because we won’t be able to build majority support for climate action if Americans fear it will lead to higher energy costs at home or free-riding by the world’s major carbon-emitters. Only by tackling both sides of the energy and climate equation can U.S. leaders break today’s political deadlock between climate deniers and fossil prohibitionists and create a politically sustainable strategy for America’s clean energy transition.
Founded in 1989, PPI is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on X.
Across the United States, too many communities of color lack access to reliable and affordable energy. Facing the dual problems of inadequate infrastructure serving their neighborhoods and being more likely to live in older, less energy-efficient housing on average, low-earning Black and Latino families are forced to spend higher shares of their smaller incomes on energy compared to wealthier and better-connected neighborhoods around them. As a consequence, they face painfully high energy bills and experience energy insecurity at double the level of white households. This burden is a woeful legacy of poverty, discrimination, and underinvestment in poor urban neighborhoods.
This legacy also includes aging energy and transportation systems like coal-fired power plants and highways that release disproportionate concentrations of harmful local pollution in disadvantaged communities, exacerbating health issues that compound with widespread financial and energy poverty. The clean energy transition offers a historic opportunity to relieve these burdens by replacing older and dirtier resources with new technologies and expanding electricity grids, transit systems, and dense urban housing to meet growing needs. Unfortunately, this opportunity has not yet been taken.
Instead, the green left has pursued a transition strategy that exposes vulnerable communities to higher, less predictable prices while obstructing reforms that would enable faster and wider deployment of clean energy projects. In the name of environmental justice and climate urgency, activists and decisionmakers have urged the abolition of all fossil fuels and used procedural barriers to obstruct new fossil infrastructure. But as explored in this paper, the strategy of procedural obstruction backfires when it adds interminable delays to clean energy projects and prolongs the life of coal- and oil-fired power plants.
Energy prices emerge from a complex mix of geography, markets, and policy choices, which are hard to isolate. This report focuses on Boston and the regional grid of New England more broadly as an initial case study of the special energy burdens of low-income communities. Connected to the rest of the continental U.S. by the state of New York, elected leaders and green activists have combined to lock Boston and New England into a status quo energy system that cuts off access to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydropower as well as domestic natural gas capacity. By opposing local substation upgrades, transmission lines for hydropower imports from Quebec, and pipelines bringing Appalachian shale gas across Pennsylvania and New York, politically powerful elites in one of America’s most progressive regions are using federal laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act, and state laws like the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) to subject their lower-income neighbors to unnecessary price volatility and prolonging reliance on coal and oil. When global gas markets are disrupted, as in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, this import dependence exposes isolated New England to severe price spikes. To make up for the winter power shortfall, Boston and its surrounding areas are forced to use dirtier and more expensive energy resources, burning diesel and imported gas to power the grid and heating homes with fuel oil.
The cost of these spikes does not fall evenly on all New England communities. This paper tracks community impact using the metric of energy burden, or average monthly residential energy costs divided by median household income for a given location, to identify which people and places are hit hardest. According to data from the Census compiled by the Department of Energy’s LEAD (Low-income Energy Affordability Data) tool, the rate of energy burden in a given Boston census tract rises in clear proportion to the share of households identifying as Black. This paper includes an appendix with data for the energy burden in every district represented by a member of the Congressional Black Caucus for further examination. Future reports will examine energy burdens in other communities, starting with a study of congressional districts with significant Latino populations.
The statistical relationship between Black population share and higher energy burdens holds true for Black communities across the country. LEAD’s data definitively show that census tracts with high shares of Black households are more likely to experience higher energy burdens than their neighboring tracts even across states with wide variation in energy infrastructure, resource mix, and housing types in a remarkably strong pattern. These are the results when utopian demands of green activists and environmental groups for a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels — which still supply 83 percent of America’s primary energy and vary in carbon intensity — take precedence over local families’ struggles to pay their electricity and heat bills.
Boston is exemplary, but not unique. National activist groups like the Sierra Club, 350.org, and the Center for Biological Diversity argue for the same policies regionally in New England as they do in policy debates across the country. This includes not just state and local fights over individual projects but also federal policy discussions in Washington, where they sent a joint letter to then-Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) opposing federal energy permitting reforms in June 2024. If these activist approaches continue to dominate the Democratic party’s environmental justice and climate policy conversations, low-income voters who do not share their priorities may continue their exodus from the party.
The main challenge facing Democrats is to build broader public support for a more pragmatic energy transition. To win a new hearing among working-class voters, Democrats must discard the utopian visions of Green New Dealers and their failed strategy of trying to scare working-class voters into supporting the premature abolition of fossil fuels. As PPI polling shows, most working-class voters are neither abolitionists nor climate deniers, with 54% majority support for a combination of old and new resources, including nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, and natural gas, to power our growing economy while reducing greenhouse gases.
On the other extreme, Trump’s so-called “energy dominance” agenda would devastate U.S. clean energy industries and dismantle crucial methane mitigation programs that incentivize oil and gas producers to prevent waste. Such an abrupt shift would not only cede ground to Chinese clean technology producers in global markets, counter to stated administration goals on trade and manufacturing, but would also hurt consumers by depriving them of access to the cheapest and cleanest resources available.
Instead, policymakers should embrace a pragmatic environmental justice vision that brings down costs and emissions by enabling wide and rapid deployment of clean energy technologies and the infrastructure needed to support them. This infrastructure push would include relieving regulatory bottlenecks on clean electricity development, transmission and distribution grid upgrades. It would also include the natural gas pipeline and generation capacity needed to support them, enabling the connection of significantly more clean energy resources to consumers and helping to bring down costs.
Pairing this shift with bolstered subsidies for low-income households and introducing innovative frameworks for community engagement hosted at newly established Community Energy Hubs (see PPI Policy Recommendations below) would ensure that disadvantaged Black households would stand to gain improved access, lower costs, and a more concrete sense that the energy transition is working for them. On top of changes to the federal energy policy landscape, state and local policies that remove barriers not just to the development of clean energy infrastructure but also restrictions on dense housing, mass transit, and multimodal streets would help ensure that Black communities that face concentrated poverty and generations of infrastructural discrimination are not left exposed to the elements by inadequate insulation, higher utility bills on lower incomes, or lack of policy support.
POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS IN BRIEF
Congress, State legislatures, and local governments should enact all-of-the above permitting reforms to accelerate the development of electricity grid expansion, clean energy generation, supply chains for clean energy technologies, low-carbon mass transit and dense housing construction, and the natural gas capacity needed to support the grid while displacing coal and fuel oil combustion.
Congress must also maintain and strengthen LIHEAP and WAP to ensure that households can afford energy services in acute crises and gain access to efficiency upgrades.
State governments should establish pilot Community Energy Hubs that serve as a consumer-facing resource to ease transaction costs and close information gaps on available resources and technologies for homeowners, renters, landlords, workers, and small business owners.
Last year’s presidential election was a demolition derby for a host of progressive causes and illusions. Democrats are the biggest casualties of this collision with political reality, but Green New Dealers aren’t far behind.
President Trump’s triumphant return to the White House puts climate science deniers back in charge of national policy, at best retarding and at worst reversing America’s clean energy transition for the next four years.
After declaring a bogus “national energy emergency” last week (is he really unaware that U.S. oil and gas production has surged in recent years?) Trump issued executive orders pulling America out of the Paris climate accord, expanding drilling on public lands, blocking offshore wind and gutting former President Joe Biden’s clean energy initiatives.
Climate change was far from the voters’ top issue last November. In fact, the outcome underscored the failure of environmental activists to convince voters that it should be. Nor have they come close to forging a national consensus behind their demands to swiftly phase out fossil fuels and rely exclusively on renewables.
Massive fires continue to rage across Southern California, exacting a terrible toll on its residents. At this writing, at least 27 lives have been lost, over 12,000 structures have been destroyed, and over 90,000 people remain under evacuation orders. The fires are estimated to have caused up to $275 billion in damage, making this the most expensive wildfire in modern American history, and one of the costliest natural disasters overall.
Normally when faced with an emergency like this, the nation’s political leaders set aside politics and offer aid and sympathy to the victims. Instead, Congressional Republicans are politicizing the catastrophe, threatening to withhold disaster aid unless Democrats cave to their partisan demands.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters this week that he thinks “there should probably be conditions on [the] aid.” Many Republicans agreed, though no consensus emerged on what those conditions should be. Some, such asCongressman Warren Davidson andSenator John Barrasso, chose this perilous moment to demand state officials change California’s allegedly bad forest management practices, which they claimed worsened the disaster.
There’s no doubt that sound forest management techniques, such as controlled burns, can be a valuable tool for fire prevention. But what works in more heavily forested areas of the state isn’t necessarily applicable to the drier and more densely populated hillsides of Los Angeles County. These fires’ rapid spread has more to do with natural phenomena, such as the powerfulSanta Ana winds, and the region’s noticeablelack of rainfall this year, than the state’s forest management practices. Scientists believe California’s recent dry spell has been exacerbated byclimate change. If Republicans were truly serious about fire prevention, they’d be supporting rather than blocking policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Other Congressional Republicans seemed purely interested in scoring partisan points. Congressman Ralph Norman, for example, said, “[Republicans have] got to get a pound of flesh on any dollar spent on California” simply because it is a predominantly Democratic state. BothPresident-elect Donald Trump and Speaker Johnson have proposed to extract that pound of flesh by linking aid to a temporary suspension of the federal debt limit, which they know a narrow House GOP majority will struggle to pass on its own. Democrats have thus far refused to support any debt limit changes that merely serve to expedite Trump’s agenda without making broader reforms to the broken debt limit process that undermines future presidents of both parties. But Republicans believe that by taking wildfire aid as a hostage, Democrats — several of whom represent districts affected by the fires — can be pressured into giving up their leverage in budget negotiations.
This type of politicization is not the norm in Washington. When Hurricanes Helene and Milton hit heavily Republican areas of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida only months ago, Democrats were quick to support emergency aid. The Biden administration and Congressional Democrats put no conditions on disaster funding, and when it was clear that FEMA’s budget would not be sufficient to cover recovery efforts, President Biden declared that more funding was “urgently needed.” Shortly thereafter, disaster aid was included on a bipartisan basis in December’s government funding bill.
Congressional Republicans are attempting to set a terrible precedent by attaching partisan strings to disaster aid. This callous ploy violates our government’s basic responsibility to come to the aid of U.S. citizens whose lives and property are threatened by natural forces beyond their control. Democrats have rightly rejected this blackmail attempt, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jefferies calling GOP demands “unconscionable, unacceptable, [and] un-American.” He’s right, and Democrats should continue to stand firm as Republicans attempt to use this tragedy to extort purely political concessions.
Berkeley, California is arguably the most liberal city in the U.S. Tourist shops sell t-shirts touting its identity as a leftist hub. The city is overwhelmingly white and wealthy, with large Asian and small Black minority populations, a median household income over $100,000, and median home value of nearly $1.3 million. When we think of the liberal elite, we think of Berkeley. So when residents last week voted down a new fossil fuel tax, it came as a rude surprise to green activists across the country.
On the Berkeley ballot this November was a local initiative that would have imposed a heavy tax on large buildings that used natural gas for heating, cooking, and for other purposes. Proponents argued that the measure would help rid us of fossil fuel use, following a trend across the country in which climate activists look for every opportunity to shut down natural gas.
In a resounding rebuke, Berkeley voters rejected the ballot measure 68% to 32%, sending the message that they were not interested in sacrificing their use of natural gas for any climate benefit that they thought it would net. To soothe their nagging climate conscience, donations to environmental activists will surely flow forth from Berkeley. The ability to avoid any sacrifice in the name of climate change only to demand those sacrifices from other, less wealthy communities is an environmentalist privilege that does not go unnoticed by working class Americans.
TRADE FACT OF THE WEEK: Pennsylvania produces 1.5% of all world energy.
THE NUMBERS: World energy production, 2022, in BTUs* –
Area
Energy production
World
598 quadrillion BTUs
China
137 quadrillion
U.S.
99 quadrillion
(Texas)
25 quadrillion
(Pennsylvania)
10 quadrillion
(New Mexico)
7 quadrillion
Russia
60 quadrillion
Saudi Arabia
30 quadrillion
India
22 quadrillion
Canada
22 quadrillion
All other
228 quadrillion
* Energy Information Administration. A “BTU” (British Thermal Unit) is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of a pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.
WHAT THEY MEAN:
From the “oil shocks” of the 1970s until recently, energy policy arguments featured mostly moaning, grim charts illustrating the consequences of “energy dependence” on unstable parts of the world, and predictions that things would get worse. Here’s what’s actually happened, using the year 2003 — 20 years ago — as a point of departure:
Starting point: According to the Energy Information Administration (the Department of Energy’s data and research arm), in 2003, Americans produced 67.3 quadrillion “BTUs” worth of energy, and used 95.8 quadrillion BTUs. This meant Americans bought, on net, about 28.5 quadrillion BTUs from foreigners, mostly in the form of crude oil. The resulting economy (a) employed 130 million people, (b) produced $11.7 trillion worth of farm products, manufactured goods, movies, government programs, and other goods and services (which, converted to the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ “constant 2017 dollar” figures to allow for meaningful comparisons with today’s economy, would be $14.9 trillion), and (c) released 5.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Since then, two big changes in the energy figures:
More production: Scarcity and price instability produced curiosity about whether we might find more at home. With heavy deployment of solar panels and wind turbines, drilling for natural gas, and so forth, the BTU count of domestically produced energy has grown from 67.3 quadrillion in 2003 to 91.9 quadrillion in 2020, and 102.8 quadrillion in 2023. In other words, domestic energy production has jumped by 40% since 2003, and by 10% since 2020. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Pennsylvania — the site of the world’s first oil well in 1859 — has seen energy income rise like this:
Year
Energy Income
2023
$8.1 billion
2019
$5.3 billion
2003
$0.3 billion
More Efficiency: Likewise, scarcity and price instability produce caution, efficiency, and savings. As America’s energy production has grown, use has dropped from 95.8 quadrillion BTUs in 2003 to 93.6 quadrillion in 2023. To put this 2.2 quadrillion BTU drop in perspective, total annual energy “consumption” figures are 10.8 quadrillion BTUs in Brazil, 1.6 quadrillion in Sweden, and 4.9 quadrillion in Taiwan. Carbon dioxide emissions, meanwhile, have dropped by about 25%, from 6 billion tons a year in the mid-2000s to 4.5 billion as of 2023.
Endpoint: As of 2023, the $28 trillion U.S. economy – $22.7 trillion in BEA’s constant 2017 dollars — employed 156 million people. Converting all this into BEA’s inflation-adjusted “constant 2017 dollars,” the 2% decline in energy use, and the accompanying 25% drop in carbon dioxide emissions, have accompanied the following big-picture changes:
2003
2023
Change
‘Real’ GDP
$14.9 trillion
$22.7 trillion
+52%
Manufacturing
$1.7 trillion
$2.3 trillion
+36%
Mining
$0.16 trillion
$0.34 trillion
+111%
Agriculture
$0.14 trillion
$0.19 trillion
+36%
Employment
130 million
156 million
+26 million
With respect to trade, meanwhile, the “dependence” of the 1970s through 2000s has not totally vanished — Americans still buy lots of crude oil from the Middle East, lots of solar panels from Southeast Asia, and lots of electricity from Canada. But fundamentally, the world depends on the U.S. to sell energy, not the other way around. Trade balance data, converted into BTUs, look like this:
What can we expect next? Energy trading will likely change sharply in the next decade, as fossil fuel use falls and countries rely more frequently on materials and machines used to generate and convert electricity, and thus use electricity in ways that look like “stocks” than “flows.” Neither renewable technologies like wind turbines nor electrified end-use technologies like heat pumps and batteries, for example, use fuels to operate. So perhaps “trade” will include fewer BTUs overall, and more materials and machines used to generate and convert electricity. Having surprised everyone by evolving into the world’s top source of energy since 2003, the U.S. now likely needs more powerful domestic clean energy supply chains to stay in the role.
* The “British Thermal Unit,” like the 159-liter/42-gallon “barrel” of oil, is a defiantly non-metric energy unit. The BTU and the annual amount of dollar-trading on forex exchanges are the only indexes of human activity measured in quadrillions, and BTUs will likely soon hit the 1 quintillion — 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 — plane. As a comparison, the mass of the moon is about 78 quintillion tons.
Note on this: China is the world’s top energy producer, but rankings look different depending on the type. Of China’s 138 quadrillion BTUs, 106 quadrillion come from coal. India is the No. 2 coal producer at 17 quadrillion BTU, and Indonesia is third at 12 quadrillion; together with China, this is 80% of world energy from coal. The U.S. however edges China by 15 quadrillion to 14 quadrillion in “nuclear, renewables, and other”; the U.S. is also first in both natural gas at 37 quadrillion BTU (above Russia’s 23 quadrillion and Iran’s 10 quadrillion), and petroleum at 32 quadrillion as against Saudi Arabia’s 25 and Russia’s 23.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
The Jones Act is costing Americans billions in higher energy costs and delaying the deployment of green energy sources. To address these costs, in addition to the energy supply and environmental consequences of the status quo, lawmakers must reassess the utility of the act.
The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 — commonly called the Jones Act — is an obscure shipping law that requires vessels transporting goods between two U.S. ports be American-made, manned, and flagged. Originally motivated by principles of national security and protectionism, the law was passed to complement a wartime reinvigoration of domestic shipbuilding that saw the U.S. construct one of the most dominant merchant fleets in the world. A century later, however, the Jones Act now presents a major hurdle for domestic offshore energy projects and fuel transportation, resulting in higher energy prices for Americans and slower deployment of cleaner energy sources.
The U.S. offshore wind industry, already plagued by high interest rates, permitting delays, shoddy port infrastructure, supply chain issues, and recent high-profile turbine breakdowns, is desperately searching for ways to improve project costs and expediency. Building offshore wind turbines requires shipping enormous individual components to be assembled on-site, miles from land. In most countries, this is done using specialized vessels called wind turbine installation vessels (WTIVs). With no Jones Act-compliant WTIVs of its own, the U.S. employs smaller compliant vessels instead, which take significantly more trips to and from project sites, raising project costs and emissions. Currently, the U.S. only has one WTIV under construction — Dominion’s Charybdis — which has taken both years and hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Building and deploying Jones Act-compliant WTIVs is far more costly than simply enlisting foreign-owned ones, and that cost is ultimately reflected in project price tags. President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law thankfully includes funding for port upgrades which will alleviate some of the infrastructure bottlenecks, but Jones Act reform, in addition to long overdue permitting reform, is essential for scaling offshore wind to meet our energy goals.
The act also has economic and climate implications for LNG markets. The U.S. is a major producer of natural gas, but domestic pipeline infrastructure–particularly in New England–is inadequate to satisfy consumer demand and balance the grid, and attempts to spur new projects are thwarted by neighboring states. This creates a local reliance on shipped LNG to bridge the gap, but foreign-owned vessels bringing gas from the Gulf of Mexico cannot sail to a second U.S. port, necessitating imports from abroad and slowing supply chains in a region where harsh winters make adequate seasonal energy supplies critical. And given New England’s poor electricity and gas pipeline infrastructure, many households there burn extra-dirty fuel oil for home heating that emits more greenhouse gas instead.
Because the U.S. does not possess any of its own Jones Act-compliant LNG tankers, shipped LNG that the Northeast does receive comes from Trinidad and Tobago and other distant countries. These import inefficiencies widen the rift between supply and demand, further inflating already disproportionately-high energy prices for New Englanders. With no foreseeable plans to revamp domestic shipbuilding to produce compliant LNG tankers, the law leaves regions like New England vulnerable to supply chain disruptions and stuck with an expensive and emissions-intensive energy system. These risks, in tandem with energy security concerns spurred by the war in Ukraine, motivated the New England governors to jointly request that the Department of Energy suspend Jones Act restrictions in 2022. A group of New England senators also wrote to DOE about inflated energy prices, citing increased U.S. exports as the cause of supply shortages. In reality, the Jones Act’s shipping rules and disjointed pipeline infrastructure limit supply mobility and leave consumers in the Northeast cut off from the rest of the country’s gas market, beholden instead to exports from abroad and the volatile international LNG trade.
Energy transportation challenges imposed by the Jones Act also have heightened consequences for Americans outside the mainland. Geographically isolated places such as Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico are subjected to shipping constraints, cost burdens, and emergency response threats. In fact, the White House had to waive Jones Act requirements for LNG shipments to Puerto Rico in 2022 to enable the territory to recover from devastating hurricanes. And aside from LNG, Jones Act shipping restrictions on petroleum and oil products force Americans to forfeit roughly $769 million in unrealized consumer surplus annually — a conservative estimation which excludes areas with further inflated prices like Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
Ultimately, lawmakers must reassess the utility of the Jones Act. A protectionist law passed in the spirit of national security is no longer doing its job when it poses looming energy and economic concerns, and even stifles the industry it was designed to protect. Its limitations seem especially frivolous considering that the U.S. has no LNG carrier fleet of its own–and a reported 30-year timeline for building one–while countries such as South Korea are already building them more cheaply and efficiently. The lack of compliant LNG and wind turbine installation vessels, in tandem with the eye-popping costs and timelines for building them domestically, make foreign-flagged alternatives a sensible option if we could only use them.
The obvious solution is to repeal the Jones Act, however the political blowback from powerful proponents of domestic industry could be significant — despite the billions of dollars in potential economic output that would follow. At minimum, specific carve-outs or exemptions must be made for foreign specialized energy carriers to promote energy and economic security, particularly in at-risk regions. A large-scale subsidized campaign of domestic shipbuilding could offer another option in theory, but in practice the combination of high costs, fiscal and political uncertainty, existing difficulties with subsidized Navy shipbuilding, and the current availability of non-U.S. ships all strongly suggest that allowing foreign specialized energy vessels to travel between U.S. ports is the best course of action, at least in the short-term.
Until we adopt such reforms, the harmful effects of the outdated Jones Act are a stark reminder that ensuring security and reliability of clean energy–now and in the future–requires a regulatory regime that is not anchored to the past.
The U.S. military is being tested by the many fires it is trying to put out abroad. These crises pull assets from the country’s network ofhundreds of foreign bases, more than170,000 troops deployed internationally andmutual defense treaties with upwards of 50 countries.
But amid these global missions, the military is increasingly burdened by its responsibility for extinguishing literal fires across the U.S.
The U.S. armed forces have engaged in domestic wildfire suppression forover a century, but asclimate change and historicalforestry malpractices increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, the military’s role in fire response has ballooned.
Washington, D.C. — Today, Elan Sykes, Director of PPI’s Energy and Climate Solutions Initiative, issued the following statement praising the introduction of new permitting reform legislation led by Senators Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.):
“The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is a major step forward in the necessary effort to speed up environmental reviews, federal permits, and electric transmission development. PPI thanks Senators Manchin and Barrasso for their efforts and calls upon Democrats to uphold the spirit of the 2022 Schumer-Manchin agreement to implement the Inflation Reduction Act alongside the permitting reforms needed to harness the IRA’s clean energy programs to the fullest.
“The clean energy transition requires the manufacture and installation of millions of new machines for generating, moving, and using clean power — without passing these reforms, America will not be able to deploy sufficient clean technology fast enough. While the bill also increases the frequency of oil, gas, and coal leasing, the reforms to renewable energy and storage permitting (especially for geothermal), the use of public lands, expansion of Categorical Exclusions, and especially changes to planning, paying, and permitting for new lines and technologies on the electricity grid will far outweigh any increases in fossil fuel production while keeping consumer costs low and maintaining public support for the energy transition.
“The same is true for the changes to LNG export permits, which should aid our allies and trading partners in transitioning from coal to gas while benefiting from the Biden administration’s methane mitigation policies. PPI also calls on state and local governments to match these reforms with parallel changes to their own planning and permitting authorities to ensure that all levels of government work together to unleash clean energy growth.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe — iokeefe@ppionline.org
The next administration must confront the consequences that the American people are finally facing from more than two decades of fiscal mismanagement in Washington. Annual deficits in excess of $2 trillion during a time when the unemployment rate hovers near a historically low 4% have put upward pressure on prices and strained family budgets. Annual interest payments on the national debt, now the highest they’ve ever been in history, are crowding out public investments into our collective future, which have fallen near historic lows. Working families face a future with lower incomes and diminished opportunities if we continue on our current path.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) believes that the best way to promote opportunity for all Americans and tackle the nation’s many problems is to reorient our public budgets away from subsidizing short-term consumption and towards investments that lay the foundation for long-term economic abundance. Rather than eviscerating government in the name of fiscal probity, as many on the right seek to do, our “Paying for Progress” Blueprint offers a visionary framework for a fairer and more prosperous society.
Our blueprint would raise enough revenue to fund our government through a tax code that is simpler, more progressive, and more pro-growth than current policy. We offer innovative ideas to modernize our nation’s health-care and retirement programs so they better reflect the needs of our aging population. We would invest in the engines of American innovation and expand access to affordable housing, education, and child care to cut the cost of living for working families. And we propose changes to rationalize federal programs and institutions so that our government spends smarter rather than merely spending more.
Many of these transformative policies are politically popular — the kind of bold, aspirational ideas a presidential candidate could build a campaign around — while others are more controversial because they would require some sacrifice from politically influential constituencies. But the reality is that both kinds of policies must be on the table, because public programs can only work if the vast majority of Americans that benefit from them are willing to contribute to them. Unlike many on the left, we recognize that progressive policies must be fiscally sound and grounded in economic pragmatism to make government work for working Americans now and in the future.
If fully enacted during the first year of the next president’s administration, the recommendations in this report would put the federal budget on a path to balance within 20 years. But we do not see actually balancing the budget as a necessary end. Rather, PPI seeks to put the budget on a healthy trajectory so that future policymakers have the fiscal freedom to address emergencies and other unforeseen needs. Moreover, because PPI’s blueprint meets such an ambitious fiscal target, we ensure that adopting even half of our recommended savings would be enough to stabilize the debt as a percent of GDP. Thus, our proposals to cut costs, boost growth, and expand American opportunity will remain a strong menu of options for policymakers to draw upon for years to come, even if they are unlikely to be enacted in their entirety any time soon.
The roughly six dozen federal policy recommendations in this report are organized into 12 overarching priorities:
I. Replace Taxes on Work with Taxes on Consumption and Unearned Income II. Make the Individual Income Tax Code Simpler and More Progressive III. Reform the Business Tax Code to Promote Growth and International Competitiveness
IV. Secure America’s Global Leadership
V. Strengthen Social Security’s Intergenerational Compact
VI. Modernize Medicare
VII. Cut Health-Care Costs and Improve Outcomes
VIII. Support Working Families and Economic Opportunity
IX. Make Housing Affordable for All
X. Rationalize Safety-Net Programs
XI. Improve Public Administration
XII. Manage Public Debt Responsibly
WASHINGTON – Today, Elan Sykes, Director of Energy and Climate Policy, and Alec Evans, Energy Policy Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, released the following statement regarding the U.S. Department of Energy’s second-round funding opportunity for enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) demonstrations under President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
“The Progressive Policy Institute applauds the Department of Energy (DOE) for providing funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for East Coast enhanced geothermal energy pilot projects. The DOE’s announcement follows a recent publication by PPI’s Energy and Climate Solutions Initiative that advocates for East Coast geothermal pilot plant construction. Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) have the potential to provide consistent and plentiful renewable energy throughout much of the United States, and expanding geothermal’s footprint will accelerate the technology’s adoption and rollout. An East Coast geothermal program would prove especially beneficial for securing investments, collecting data, and counteracting public skepticism towards renewables, three of the largest hurdles inhibiting EGS adoption.”
“Moving forward, it is critical for the DOE to consider the implications of its site selection carefully. Although several regions in the Eastern U.S. are viable for geothermal, Appalachia would prove most beneficial for the initial development phase. West Virginia and Pennsylvania are among the most geologically feasible locations for geothermal, and they rely heavily on producing and generating energy for their workforces, exports, and economies. Furthermore, the energy future of these states is at risk due to the declining use of fossil fuels. Prioritizing West Virginia and Pennsylvania for geothermal pilot projects would provide an opportunity for local energy workers to transfer their skills toward clean energy and allow these states to maintain their status as energy exporters. PPI recommends that prospective developers and the state governments of Pennsylvania and West Virginia collaborate to secure a project in Appalachia and to remove any undue regulatory or permitting obstacles to this crucial resource.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
As a lifelong Democrat and a Co-Chair for Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, I am eager to quickly develop a secure and practical energy policy that drives down global carbon emissions. We owe it to our children and grandchildren. And we have a moral obligation to be stewards of God’s planet. To abate the worst impacts of climate change, the impartial data and real-world success stories show we must partner the carbon-free power generation of renewables with the affordability, reliability, and security of low-carbon natural gas.
Recent commentary and short sighted attacks about me in the Ohio Capital Journal reflect the simplicity of bumper sticker slogans, even though our national energy infrastructure is far more complex. Serious people need to understand that. Cutting back on natural gas exports abroad to allied economies that need it, and turning off natural gas here at home, would be bad politics, destructive economics, and atrocious climate policy.
Next-generation geothermal technology shows promise as a clean and potentially abundant baseload power source with relatively limited environmental tradeoffs. One method, Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), uses drilling technology developed for hydraulic fracturing to access ubiquitous heat sources deep below the surface. EGS has yet to become a major component of the U.S. grid and few plants have been built east of the Mississippi despite indications of feasibility. To solve two of the largest hurdles inhibiting the adoption of EGS (underinvestment and public skepticism toward renewables), the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) urges the U.S. Department of Energy to provide funding for three EGS pilot plants in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, energy-exporting states that produce large quantities of fossil fuels and show high geothermal potential. This will demonstrate EGS’ widespread viability, bolster public and political support for the technology, and garner increased investment for accelerated rollout.
Legacy geothermal systems are costly and rely on existing underground water reservoirs as a heat source, which limits their viability to areas with preexisting geothermal activity and abundant water resources. In contrast, Enhanced Geothermal Systems do not require onsite water supply and can be sited in most areas with sufficient subsurface temperatures. By 2050, the U.S. will require 700-900 GW of additional clean firm energy capacity; EGS has the potential to fill 90 GW of this demand, providing enough power to supply more than 65 million homes. Unlike most renewables, EGS can supply consistent baseload power and heat, and requires a smaller ground footprint than wind and solar. Furthermore, it leverages many existing technologies such as subsurface drilling and hydraulic fracturing used in oil and gas extraction, facilitating rapid rollout and providing career transition prospects for fossil fuel workers. EGS has yet to be implemented at scale, but project costs, drill times, and permitting constraints have all fallen rapidly as interest and investments grow. The Department of Energy’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff plan advocates for EGS pilot locations in different regions to prove its widespread adaptability; thus far, geothermal projects have mostly been limited to the Basin and Range region in the western U.S., where high subsurface temperatures abound. Nevertheless, DOE’s next pilot funding opportunity will be inclusive of proposals for East Coast sites.
Small EGS pilot projects have been constructed in Massachusetts and Maryland to provide heating and cooling; however, no energy-producing pilot plants have been constructed in the eastern U.S. Although the West contains the majority of viable geothermal sites, the DOE has identified West Virginia and Pennsylvania as highly feasible EGS locations. These states are also known for their outsized roles in producing fossil fuels and exporting energy. Coal remains a core resource in this region; nearly 90% of West Virginia’s electricity is generated using coal (compared to ~7% from renewables), and citizens pay hundreds of millions in subsidies to keep coal plants operational, even as relative costs balloon. Pennsylvania is the nation’s second-largest coal exporter, trailing only West Virginia; renewables produce only 4% of its electricity, excluding its four aging nuclear plants. As fossil fuels face more stringent legislative constraints, these states risk losing their status as energy exporters if they continue to rely on hydrocarbons.
West Virginia and Pennsylvania have something else in common: weak political support for traditional renewables and large energy workforces who remain skeptical of clean energy. From constraining federal clean energy programs to preventing the expansion of solar farms, West Virginia’s political leadership has repeatedly prioritized coal over clean energy. Although coal mining provides tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in export revenue, continued dependence on coal is untenable. Coal’s declining appeal, along with cheaper natural gas and renewables, have diminished the industry’s workforce to its lowest size since 1890, and citizens now pay more for coal power than they would for other energy sources.
Pennsylvania is also no leader on clean energy; between 2013 and 2023, it ranked 49th in the nation in renewable energy growth, trailing behind only Alaska. This is due both to regulatory barriers and the abundant natural gas provided by the Marcellus Shale. New approaches are necessary to enhance the growth of renewables in these states, and the EGS rollout could provide a more politically palatable approach to clean energy.
The White House, along with the DOE, should provide funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) for three EGS pilot sites in West Virginia and Pennsylvania to be built by 2028. Considering the costs and pace of previous pilot plants, the depth of available thermal resources, and the foreseeable difficulties of EGS expansion in new regions, construction of the pilot plants should receive a budget of roughly $45-60 million. The BIL allocates funds for seven geothermal pilot plants; three pilot projects received such support after applying during the first round of proposals. The second round of prospective grants includes the possibility of Eastern EGS sites, and all efforts should be made to ensure that Appalachian sites are well-represented in the selected proposals. A multi-plant approach also reflects the DOD’s geothermal pilot program, which created sites at several bases in different states using contracts with three EGS companies. Creating multiple pilot plants proves feasibility in different geology and geography, reduces the likelihood of failure, and facilitates wider public and political engagement. Implementation should be coordinated with regional and local grid providers and energy agencies.
Site selection should be based on several factors: high projected viability and low risk; proximity to existing electrical infrastructure; different geology and geography from existing EGS sites; and political viability. Three potential locations emerge as ideal candidates, given these considerations and in consultation with studies such as the DOE Liftoff plan and other feasibility research. One plant should be sited in northwest Pennsylvania, in order to prove viability in traditional natural gas country, utilize existing gas infrastructure, and facilitate outreach to the gas industry and workforce. Another should be located in northeast Pennsylvania, due to indicated geothermal potential, proximity to larger population centers, and to engage the area’s sizable energy workforce. The final plant should be constructed in northern West Virginia, which offers relatively abundant thermal resources, unique geology with limited natural gas reserves, a declining coal industry, and low support for traditional renewables. Selecting sites for test wells in the vicinity of recently closed coal plants would be ideal, given these locations’ existing transmission infrastructure, energy workforces, and political significance.
In tandem with pilot plant construction, 10-15% of the program’s budget should be allocated to public EGS education and to offer training for local fossil fuel workers. Pennsylvania already uses over 3% of its BIL funds for workforce development; this relatively larger budget to bolster the geothermal workforce reflects the lack of existing EGS plants in the region, as well as additional costs incurred through public education. These funds can be drawn from the initial pilot plant budget or through the $200 million provisioned in BIL for workforce development. This is a vital component of the process; without stakeholder engagement, especially to provide jobs and transparency and engagement for investors, pilot projects lose much of their value. For similar reasons, the program’s contracts and standards should be configured as models for future East Coast EGS projects and risk should be clearly allocated between involved parties.
To minimize negative public reactions towards geothermal, this process should also be intentionally apolitical; investment in renewables can often trigger backlash if it is clearly tied with political interests, especially in conservative states. EGS also has the potential to incur criticisms from environmental groups due to its use of fracking technology. Hopefully, growing support for EGS from mainstream environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club and NRDC will diminish this risk. The NRDC notes, “While this connection (to the oil and gas industry and fracking) may initially give some pause, it creates a fantastic opportunity to deploy an already-trained workforce into an industry that could help secure our zero-emission electricity future.” Given the correct outreach and education strategy that eschews political bias, this campaign can appeal to legacy fuel producers and environmental activists.
Constructing EGS plants in Appalachia, a conservative and renewable-skeptical region with abundant fossil fuels and unique geography, would indicate geothermal’s widespread feasibility. Furthermore, demonstrating the similarities in technology and workforce requirements between geothermal power and fossil fuel industries would engage skeptical audiences and garner broader support for geothermal. EGS plants can make use of the qualified local energy workforces, providing employment and easing implementation. Crucially, funding remains the largest remaining constraint for EGS; the DOE notes that the Eastern geothermal rollout “could have an outsized impact on investor confidence.” Although the declining price of geothermal energy promises to meet DOE’s targets, the U.S. has yet to realize the full geographic potential of EGS. With commercial liftoff planned for 2030, DOE can best position geothermal for success by expanding its reach. The creation of Appalachian EGS facilities could markedly accelerate geothermal’s upscaling, thereby reducing U.S. emissions and facilitating a timely transition to zero-carbon energy.
Washington, D.C. — Climate change, coupled with flawed historical forestry practices, has exacerbated the frequency and intensity of wildfires in the United States. Due to a shortage of dedicated firefighting resources, military units — including active-duty forces — are deployed to suppress wildland fires ever more often. Meanwhile, the U.S. armed forces’ extensive foreign commitments show no indication of abating, especially considering China’s burgeoning military strength and Russia’s continued aggression in Ukraine.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new report titled, “Redefining the Military’s Role in Wildfire Suppression,” which makes the case for increased investments in civilian firefighting resources and new modern forestry and fire reduction techniques in an effort to reduce reliance on the U.S. military. While military forces have served an indispensable role in U.S. fire suppression, creating new fire management plans and reinforcing nonmilitary firefighting assets will help bolster the nation’s ability to respond to intensifying wildfires while leaving the armed forces with leeway to address their primary commitments.
“The increasing demand for the military to engage in wildfire suppression threatens to undermine global force posture in a climate of growing instability and multipolarity,” said Alec Evans, Energy Policy Fellow at PPI. “It is critical for the U.S. to enhance its dedicated wildland firefighting resources in order to safeguard its military strength, especially as U.S. wildfires continue to intensify and the prospect of great power competition returns to prominence.”
The report evaluates the military’s role in wildfire suppression and examines the legal and command framework behind military wildland firefighting assignments, offering policy recommendations to prepare the U.S. military and civilian agencies for the growth of future fire seasons. As climate change increases the threat posed by wildfires and the armed forces become further engaged in great power competition, the United States must implement proactive reforms now to prevent greater future climate catastrophes.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
