Like most Americans, I am hopeful that the President's stimulus plan will achieve the intended goal of creating jobs and aiding in economic recovery. On the key topic of energy (and the convergent path with environmental issues) I believe it is critical that we take a comprehensive view of how we will fuel the future of this country.

Renewable energy will be an important and growing part of our energy mix. But, we have to be realistic. Our energy system is massive and shifting it will take decades. Therefore, a comprehensive U.S. energy plan must include the strategic steps for how we will grow our domestic oil and natural gas resources along with improving the cost and technology aspects of renewable energy as it becomes a bigger part of the energy mix. Let me be clear, there is no question that we should grow the market for renewable energy, deploy new energy efficient technologies and put our best efforts into research breakthroughs that we cannot even imagine today. At the same time, we – as a nation – have to come to terms with the fact that fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, will continue to be the vast majority of energy to power our economy for at least the next several decades.

The U.S. oil and gas industry currently employs, directly and indirectly, some 6 million people. In Alaska, for example, a recent study concluded that OCS development could generate an annual average of 35,000 jobs over the next 50 years – a six percent increase compared to total statewide employment without OCS development – and provide direct petroleum revenues to state and local governments estimated to potentially be $5.8 billion (with most revenues going to directly impacted local governments from property taxes on onshore petroleum facilities.)

The U.S. has abundant oil and gas resources that are not being developed. If access to these resources were allowed and permitted, thousands of new jobs would be created. In addition, developing domestic resources would reduce the need to spend millions of dollars to import oil and gas. Even as we invest in new energy and new technology, the benefits of developing domestic resources should be emphasized – and we do not currently hear enough about this from the Administration.

The American Gas Association (AGA) supports President Obama’s and Congress’ energy and environmental policy priorities that aim to further develop renewable energies. However, we need to recognize that it will be years before these alternative fuels will be available in quantities to replace existing fuels that are so important in sustaining our economy. Therefore, more attention should be placed on our energy security by encouraging more American fuel source development. As the cleanest burning fossil fuel, natural gas is being looked to with more frequency to generate electricity, putting upward pressure on its price and making it less affordable for residential customers who rely on it to meet essential human needs (98% of natural gas is produced in North America). In the future, when renewables are able to take on more of that electricity generation, it will dampen demand for natural gas in that market and in turn make it more affordable for our customers to heat their homes, cook their meals and ensure hot water comes out of the tap.

While renewable energy initiatives are one part of a complex combination of future energy solutions, the timetables being discussed for substantially increasing the use of renewables for electricity generation are optimistic at best, meaning natural gas will remain the fuel of choice in the electricity generation market.

The good news is that natural gas is already here and it is efficient, clean burning and found in abundance throughout North America.

Natural gas currently comprises almost one-fourth of all energy used in the United States and is directly linked to the economic well-being of the nation. In fact, there are currently at least 5.8 million Americans who are employed either directly or indirectly by the natural gas and oil industries. Of those 5.8 million Americans, there are 1.8 million people who are employed directly by the companies that produce, ship and supply natural gas and oil to American consumers, with another 4 million Americans employed in supporting positions indirectly created by the development of America's domestic energy.

Since America's natural gas and oil workers earned an individual average of more than $66,000 in 2004, which is $20,000 more than the combined household income for the average American family, these higher paying jobs also help employ other Americans in a variety of businesses — including automobile manufacturing, housing construction, retail sales and more.

In the current financial and economic crisis, natural gas has a great opportunity to help revitalize our economy, to help fight climate change and to help enhance America’s energy security – all at the same time.

The U.S. government is already spending billions of dollars annually to develop renewable energy. In fact, in FY 2007 renewable energy received the largest amount of federal subsidies of all U.S. energy sources. While we need all types of energy, and renewables are expected to increase their share of U.S. electricity production from 8.5 percent currently to about 14 percent by 2030, trying to push the penetration rate much faster is likely to result in waste of taxpayer dollars. The U.S. also does not have the trained engineers and manpower to spend additional billions of dollars on renewables productively over a short time frame.

Furthermore, any “created” jobs must be weighed against jobs lost due to dramatic shifts in energy policy. For instance, many are suggesting that a “green recovery” should be funded by a cap and trade system, which would raise the price of conventional energy sources like coal, natural gas and oil. This would become a major drag on the economy and on jobs. The ACCF/NAM Study of the Economic Impact of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act showed that by 2014, the drag of higher energy prices caused by the cap and trade system reduces total U.S. employment (net of new jobs created in green industries) by 850,000 to 1,860,000 jobs in 2014. U.S. GDP and household income would also be severely impacted.

Policymakers need to promote U.S. energy supplies of all types and avoid unrealistic climate change policies. Allowing increased access to both off-shore and on-shore areas for drilling and exploration would also have a positive impact on U.S. energy supplies.

The higher costs of policy centered on renewable energy sources and the net job losses resulting from a cap and trade system are a one-two punch that the U.S. economy does not need.

“Green jobs” will only work if they make economic sense or the government forces their creation. We could create millions of “green jobs” in agriculture if the government restricted its practice to draft animals, rakes and hoes. But what would food costs be for the average American family as a result? And wouldn’t we pay an artificially high price for that food as a result of the government’s mandates? This, in a nutshell, is the inherent problem with government-forced green jobs. If the jobs don’t make sense because they are uneconomic, deficit spending will not make them economic; it simply means the U.S. diverts its limited national wealth to some enterprise that is uneconomic, and forces people to buy more expensive energy. The long-term consequences are obvious: if the U.S. deliberately and unilaterally increases the cost of its energy, we will not be able to compete with other nations around the world whose politicians do not engage in such self-destructive behavior. If it truly makes economic sense, people will willingly buy it. Until then, the government is making things worse.

President Obama is rightfully making a major commitment to increasing our nation’s reliance on renewable sources for electricity. His support for a national renewable electricity standard – a policy his predecessor opposed – is especially important.

Megawatt-hour for megawatt-hour, renewable electricity creates more jobs than dirtier energy sources. A recent UCS analysis (pdf) found that a national standard requiring utilities to obtain 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 would create 297,000 new jobs, triple the number of new electricity sector jobs that would be created without such a policy in place.

The UCS analysis also found that such a renewable electricity standard would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 277 million tons. And the good news for ratepayers is that it would reduce cumulative electricity and natural gas bills by $95.5 billion by 2030, largely because renewable electricity can reduce the demand for and the price of natural gas. Even the U.S. Energy Information Administration, using more pessimistic assumptions about renewable energy costs and performance, found that the United States could meet a 25 percent renewable electricity standard at no net cost to ratepayers.

Diversifying our domestic energy portfolio also would make us less vulnerable to fossil fuel shortages and price spikes. And renewable energy sources would reduce the environmental damage caused by drilling, mining, fuel processing and transport, and waste disposal, and save enormous quantities of water currently wasted by our energy system.

At the same time, if utilities meet a renewable electricity standard by ramping up their reliance on safer, cleaner energy sources, they would avoid the need to buy an additional 277 million allowances under a cap-and-trade system, making such a standard a critical piece of comprehensive climate and energy legislation.

President Obama should support renewables. And Congress should follow suit by including a strong national renewable electricity standard in climate and energy legislation this year.

By investing in renewable energy projects, the federal government is keeping its eye on the prize: helping to move the U.S. toward energy independence and a sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. Over-reliance on fossil fuels has put our economy and our national security in jeopardy. Global warming threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. For years, investment in renewables has languished. President Obama, Energy Secretary Chu, and others in the administration are well aware that a major investment in renewables is needed now to make up for years of neglect.

I don’t believe anyone has suggested that job creation was ever the primary standard to be used in evaluating those investments. Fortunately, though, moving to a clean, renewable energy economy comes with the added economic benefit of job creation. It is good news indeed that investing in renewable energy will also create tens of thousands of new American jobs—especially at a time when our economy is struggling, and so many Americans are unemployed.

So what other standards should be used to evaluate renewable energy projects? Because public lands, along with state and private lands, will likely be considered as potential sites for wind, solar, and other renewable energy technologies, The Wilderness Society believes that the following standards should be applied to any renewable development on these lands.

• Unlike our approach to oil and gas drilling, we should identify areas suitable for renewable projects—as well as areas that should remain off-limits to development—in order to sustain the integrity of our wild lands and wildlife habitats as we make the transition to a new sustainable energy economy.
• Real opportunities exist to redevelop land that has already been disturbed by industrial or other intensive human uses, and we should prioritize these opportunities over intact public land.
• Developing the transmission facilities needed to move power across public lands should support renewable energy above other generation technologies.
• Wherever development occurs on our public lands, we must make sure impacts to environmental and other sensitive resources are mitigated or, in some cases, offset.

Interior Secretary Salazar is laying a solid foundation for our nation’s entrepreneurs to harness the planet’s wind, sun, heat and other renewable energy sources in a manner that safeguards the wildlife and natural resources that help keep American communities healthy, safe, and prosperous. Done correctly from the start, we have the opportunity to develop renewable energy and protect our treasured landscapes—avoiding the conflicts we’ve seen over other forms of energy development on public lands. In this way, we can quickly and intelligently unlock clean renewable energy, and its power for creating jobs and contributing to our economic prosperity.

By our calculations, the natural gas industry currently employs roughly 4 million Americans in the Blue Jobs segment of the American economy. Of those 4 million, approximately 1.3 million are directly employed in the natural gas business, with the remaining 2.7 million Americans in the Blue Jobs sector support manufacturing industries and other areas.

In 2008, the positive impact of the nation's natural gas Blue Jobs was $385.5 billion to the U.S. economy, with another $7.2 billion paid directly to the U.S. Treasury by natural gas producers -- a substantial amount of money that did not require any government bailouts or loans. In fact, that was money paid TO the government.

If policymakers recognized the importance of natural gas enough to allow just a 10 percent increase in blue jobs, that would result in an additional 130,000 direct new jobs. That number is comparable to the total number of wind and solar jobs in 2008. In other words, a ten percent increase in natural gas jobs is roughly equal to a doubling of solar and wind jobs.

While we support creating new Green Jobs to help jump-start the new energy sector, we do believe that policymakers are ignoring the tremendous job potential using existing incumbent energy sources such as natural gas.

The U.S. Chamber supports as much renewable energy as the nation can produce. This renewable energy creates jobs, but in the context of this Administration’s energy and climate policies, it will do much, much more. Renewable energy is viewed by the Obama administration, Congressional leadership, and virtually every environmental group as the only form of substitute energy for the massive reductions of fossil fuel energy sources that those groups would like removed as the nation begins to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Yet this is where the dilemma begins and it must be resolved before any climate legislation can ever be enacted.

Specifically, not one piece of climate legislation addresses what energy source will be the substitute for the massive amounts of fossil fuels that will be taken out of use. This is a huge problem. Supporters of climate legislation assume that if they limit the use of fossil fuels and make their use extremely expensive that somehow, in some way, massive amounts of new, “clean, green” energy will be developed and deployed.

Unfortunately such an assumption has no basis in reality. If these new energy sources exist they would be in the market now. They do not exist and more troubling when they exist they may not be allowed into the market. Simply, it is common understanding that the environmental community opposes oil, gas, coal, nuclear and new hydro; however, they allegedly support greater use of wind, solar, geothermal and the electrical grids needed to move the electricity generated by them from rural areas to metropolitan areas. But this assumption is also not correct. In the last two years the environmental community attacked and either substantially delayed or killed 65 renewable projects and 12 grid projects needed to carry the electricity generated by these renewables. Even the congressional supporters of “clean, green energy” want to put massive areas of land, e.g. Mojave Desert, off limits to renewable energy.

So the supporters of renewable energy need to take serious action by supporting proposals that:

1. fast track renewable energy projects from development to deployment;

2. provide FERC with the regulatory authority to override efforts to block the construction of grid segments necessary to deliver electricity generated from renewables in rural areas to metropolitan areas; and

3. place clear time limits on environmental reviews

In the end the Obama administration and the supporters of “clean and green energy” may voice their support for these sources of energy, but they need to do more than talk. They need to take action and the action needed is the type that helps foster deployment of these technologies by limiting the almost limitless mechanisms for project delay and eventual destruction of projects either by denying the permits of dragging out the project so long as to kill the financing. In short, Congress and the Obama administration are ignoring the key factors needed to make sure these green projects are deployed. Support to fast track renewable projects is what is needed, not lip service.

Especially at times like these, new business starts or the expansion of existing businesses titilate politicians more than anything else. Conversely, terminating an existing government program or threatening the livelihood of a private sector company always brings with it cries that, "Jobs will be lost!"

Truth be told, though, jobs created or lost (whether green, brown or mauve) is a lousy way to determine which public policies make sense and which don't. The government could eliminate joblessness immediately, remember, by hiring half of the unemployed to dig holes in the ground and the other half to fill those holes. But such a "jobs program" would accomplish nothing useful for the country, we'd all agree. The real way to evaluate a renewable energy mandate, for example, is by asking whether the benefits of such a program (reduced risk of harmful climate change, less conventional air pollution, reduced dependence on imports of fossil fuels, for instance) outweight the costs (higher energy prices, increased risk of brownouts, etc.). While the benefits and costs can be evaluated in dollar terms, it is not necessary that they be. What does matter is that both types of consequences be carefully spelled out and carefully balanced.

Jobs were lost all across the South when agriculture became mechanized, but that wasn't a bad thing for most people because it made food much more affordable. Similarly, a green energy program that actually displaced more workers than it made jobs for could be a good thing from the country's overall standpoint. But try telling that to politicians, especially during times like these.

Independent wind energy researcher Barbara Durkin offered these thoughtful comments on our question:

The assurance of public safety is the most important public policy consideration in the evaluation of renewable energy projects. The production of renewable energy that is reliable and affordable is our main goal.

Standards that should be mandated include observance of Best Science as identified by the Department of Interior/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in their 2003 interim wind turbine siting guidelines. Zoning of our offshore resource should be conducted now, to help us to avoid use conflicts and project delays later. Exclusion zones should preclude development of renewable energy projects where competing use, critical habitat, navigational lanes, archeologically sensitive areas, and other features that are incompatible with alternative energy projects are identified.

Our expectations about the number of green jobs the federal government's funneling of billions will create must be realistic. As example, Cape Wind, now in the permitting process, has represented to the regional regulator that there will be no permanent employment associated with this project in Barnstable County that encompasses Cape Cod.

“The very existence of economic development subsidies is based on the principle that taxpayer funds can justifiably be used to benefit private parties only if the result is job creation and rising the standards of living,” states the Report: 'High Road or Low Road' commissioned by Change to Win, Sierra Club, the Laborers International Union of North America, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Subsidized employment is not automatically well-paid or secure. The quality of green jobs created matters more than the quantity of green jobs created.

The problem with renewable energy subsidies as job creators is they don’t create net jobs. Yes, with sufficient subsidies you can induce people to work in places they otherwise wouldn’t. You can point to people making windmill blades or installing solar panels or whatever and talk about the new “green” jobs. But you miss the jobs lost when the funds for the subsidies are pulled from other parts of the economy either by taxing or borrowing.

So, the economic stimulus question becomes what do you get for the subsidies: Is the output worth more than the cost? Spending $1,000,000 to produce or conserve $600,000 of electricity does not help the economy. Instead it will shrink the economy by $400,000—even if you can point to people working on the $600,000 project. It is no surprise that researchers in Spain, evaluating the actual data as opposed to models and anecdotes, found that subsidies for renewable energy projects cost 2.2 jobs for each “green” job created.

Growth in the electricity sector and the associated $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in investment needed over the next two decades will create hundreds of thousands of jobs through a variety of energy projects. There is consensus that we need a portfolio approach to meet our country’s electricity demand growth and climate change goals, including a suite of electric generating assets. The administration should use this concept of energy diversity as an underlying principle in evaluating energy projects and provide support for all fuel sources.

The nuclear energy industry already is playing an important role in stimulating the creation of new jobs and economic expansion, providing both near-term and lasting employment and economic benefits. Nuclear power plants provide more jobs than any other source of electricity. Based on jobs per 1,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, nuclear plants create 500 new jobs, compared to 220 for coal plants, 90 for wind plants and 60 for natural gas-fueled plants, according to Ventyx and the Energy Department.

Nuclear energy is one of the few bright spots in the U.S. economy – expanding rather than contracting. This reflects a consensus that any credible program to address climate change must include carbon-free technologies and the fact that our nation needs new baseload generating capacity as well as renewable energy sources.

The industry is developing the first new nuclear projects in the United States since the late 1970s. These new reactor projects are in the early stages of development, such as licensing and site preparation, and start of construction is three years away. Even so, the prospect of new nuclear plant construction already has stimulated significant investment and job creation among companies that supply equipment and services to the nuclear industry.

In the last three years, private investment in new nuclear power plants has created an estimated 14,000-15,000 jobs. The nuclear industry has invested more than $4 billion in new nuclear plant development, and plans to invest approximately $8 billion in the next several years to be in a position to start construction in 2011-2012.

Preserving and creating jobs is vitally important for the well being of American families. The oil and natural gas industry supports about six million jobs, many of which are in energy exploration and production and pay more than double the national average. The industry also has been creating “green” jobs for many years by investing in advanced technologies, including wind, solar, geothermal and other forms of energy that are an important part of the nation’s energy portfolio.

In his Earth Day speech, President Obama acknowledged that our country needs a variety of energy sources, including more oil and natural gas. But the administration’s policies have focused on renewable energy to the detriment of these traditional energy sources. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar delayed the implementation of the government’s offshore drilling plan and pushed back the second round of oil shale research and development leases. Additionally, the administration put forth budget proposals that call for billions of dollars in new taxes and fees on the oil and natural gas industry that could reduce investment, threaten jobs, and put upward pressure on energy prices when our nation can least afford it.

All credible estimates of our nation’s future energy consumption indicate that oil and natural gas will continue to play a leading role. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that U.S. energy demand will grow by 9 percent in the next two decades, and oil and natural gas will account for 55 percent of the total energy consumed in 2030.

To meet future demand, our nation should encourage the development of domestic energy resources, including oil and natural gas. The production of U.S. oil and natural gas resources for American consumers would create jobs, generate revenues for federal, state and local government, and increase our nation’s energy security.