Energy policy is not climate policy and pretending otherwise is risky

Public policy debate entails continuous struggle among factions to set agendas, specify alternatives, and prioritize issues for government decision and action. Such contests form a typical, even normal, part of the political process in Western democracies and help manage competition among organized interests, tradeoffs among problems, and the maturation of solutions.

Timing significant policy shifts depends upon correctly reading the “streams” of problems, solutions, and politics by sensing when they converge into windows of political opportunity for substantive change. This evolutionary and episodic nature of policy change can frustrate attempts to force solutions before the streams align and tempt interest groups to constrain debate, vilify policy competitors, or deploy apocalyptic rhetoric to pre-empt normal, incremental policy processes.

The Western energy policy debate illustrates this temptation. Even though energy policy involves multiple public interests - security, sustainability, affordability, and sovereignty, at a minimum - voices in and out of government have subordinated energy policy entirely to climate concerns on the grounds of exigent or emergency circumstances.

Demanding policy changes where the “solution stream” is not yet mature - and may not be for decades - leads not only to goals remaining unmet but potentially to the detriment of interests other than climate and sustainability, as well. In addition, the modern news cycle and information environment prioritizes speed and volume over substance or nuance, creating further tension between the demands of public narrative and the feasibility of change on the ground.

The combination of pressure for top-down rather than evolutionary policy changes and a hyper-charged public debate leads to a clear bifurcation in Western energy policy. In public and fervent tones, leaders proclaim the need for transformative change and lay down significant commitments and investments to attain it.

In hushed tones, those same leaders make deals to sustain fossil fuel availability to keep the lights on and commerce moving. The German government provided a prime example when it expanded coal usage in 2022 in response to an energy crisis, a decade after committing to end the use of nuclear energy and switch to renewables - having made only modest progress in reducing fossil fuel dependence despite one of the world’s most ambitious transition.

The Urgent and the Possible

Climate activists regularly use apocalyptic rhetoric to pursue rapid policy change. That’s understandable because framing policy challenges as life-and-death crises provides more leverage in policy debates than do technical arguments (this is likewise true in other policy areas like crime, immigration, and security issues).

Polemicists from Al Gore to Greta Thunberg have deployed such arguments as “cathedral thinking” to convince political elites that other considerations must always take a back seat to climate concerns, the “defining crisis of our time.”

Yet ignoring other policy challenges and accelerating policy change on the single consideration of climate can cause new crises. Emmanuel Macron learned this from the “yellow vest” protests after pushing through a new climate tax in 2018 - he subsequently backed down.

Electricity cuts in Texas and California related to the intermittent nature of “green” technologies have demonstrated that the mix of energy sources actually available significantly lags the aspirations and investments of policy.

Policymakers learn through trial and error that there are political and technological limits to the pace of change in energy markets - activist pronouncements and aspirational policy notwithstanding.

As Matthew Bryza, a former U.S. Ambassador and energy consultant, puts it,

Research shows a host of potential problems come from focusing solely on the potentially catastrophic outcomes of climate issues rather than balancing multiple scenarios and options. Risks include creeping despotism, mental health crises, and serious economic mismanagement.

Energy policies tethered entirely to climate change also risk worsening global poverty and impairing economic development and energy strategies if not pursued with broad political consensus and robust risk mitigation.

Climate policy that balances urgency, political acceptability, and technical feasibility is needed. Put another way, urgency must be balanced against what is possible. Energy policy should be seen more broadly than simply climate policy and certainly not subordinated to it.

Yet reasoned debate has been made more difficult by the continuing propensity of climate activists to pathologize or anathematize debate about the degree, consequences, and remedies of climate change. Contrary views on these matters have been described as “destructive” and deserving a reason-based response as a matter of necessity, not intellectual honesty.

Withholding a blank check for the primacy of climate policy is characterized as climate denial, as if rational minds cannot produce divergent analyses of complex data and phenomena. “Scientific consensus” is broadly asserted to constrain policy debate, despite the incomplete nature of that consensus, continuing problems with underlying data related to climate change, and the fact that good science must always be contested, even after real consensus is formed.

Ironically, constraining debate on energy policies and resorting to apocalyptic climate rhetoric not only complicates effective energy policy - but also makes substantive progress on climate and environment more difficult.

Highly charged rhetoric polarizes the populace, indoctrinates the converted, and alienates many. It distracts from careful analysis of how investments, transitions, conservation, and development can unfold under different circumstances in different countries.

Critically, such rhetoric provides advocates a “false moral clarity” that undermines the basis for collective action by turning policy arguments into existential battles between perceived good and evil, rather than a search for fragile solutions in an increasingly complex world.

Balancing the Debate

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) role in the global energy policy debate provides an object lesson on the difficulty of maintaining balance in the highly charged contemporary information environment. Formed in 1974 to improve the security of global oil supplies, the IEA, over time, incorporated sustainability and climate into its suite of energy objectives.

Yet pressing for sustainability over an extended transition did not spare the IEA the ire of climate activists, who have accused it of overestimating how long the transition away from fossil fuels might take, and of drawing out the pace of change through its cautious estimates.

Chastened by public criticism, the IEA published a plan for “net zero” emissions achievable by 2050, albeit with multiple caveats and necessary conditions. The plan called for, among other things, cessation of investment in new coal, oil, or gas fields, while allowing investment to maintain and operate current fields and deposits. It also called for massive new investment in renewable technologies - pleasing climate advocates.

Yet the heart of the IEA approach remains rooted in the diversity of energy supply - implying that fossil fuels remain in the mix beyond the immediate or intermediate policy horizons.

Ambassador Bryza notes that:

The IEA example shows that concern for climate and environment as important public goods has become generalized - even the “buyers’ cartel” for Western energy consumers has adopted this type of sustainability as a central tenet.

Yet the enduring sensitivity of energy policy to political and technical limitations ensures that apocalyptic or constrained debate postpones, rather than accelerates, policy progress.

There is clearly a need for better balance in energy policy debates. The IEA is one source of such balanced thinking, but as a relatively little-known multinational organization, it holds little sway over political decision-making in Western capitals. Policy analysts and practitioners must create and maintain that balance as part of their policy work - or expect the continued cycle of rhetoric, disappointment, and deadlock.

Unifying the bifurcated energy policy debate on realistic terms - that is to say, without dismissing security, affordability, and policy flexibility as important goals alongside climate sustainability - is the pathway to broadly accepted, and therefore effective, policy.