Acting in Time on Energy Policy

This book clarifies the urgent priorities for U.S. energy policy at the dawn of the Obama administration and recommends specific steps that the U.S. government should take to address the numerous energy-related challenges facing the United States. Government must play a prominent role to ensure that adequate supplies of various forms of energy are available to enable and sustain U.S. economic growth, boost the competitiveness of U.S. firms in the global energy marketplace, counter the extreme volatility in oil prices of the past few years, limit the political and economic vulnerabilities associated with dependence on oil and natural gas, adequately and cost-effectively address the global climate change threat, and develop, acquire, and deploy advanced, clean, and efficient energy technologies to meet all of the above challenges. The book's title—Acting in Time—refers to the persistent problem in U.S. energy policy that typically just enough is done to satisfy the short-term political imperatives, but not enough is done to actually solve the underlying problems themselves. As a result, many of the fundamental economic, environmental, and security-related challenges arising from patterns of U.S. energy production and consumption have become more intractable. Some now approach a point of crisis....