Reihan wants conservatives to embrace a new report, “Putting Energy Innovation First.” Yep, he’s one of the sane ones. In a follow-up, he smartly defends putting innovation before other climate change responses:
While it is true that we have the technological means to curb carbon emissions, we don’t have the means to curb carbon emissions without substantially changing how we organize our society in ways that will tend to also curb consumption and mobility. This is why energy innovation, and specifically devising cheaper-than-coal energy technologies, is so important: Energy poverty remains an enormous problem, and so we have to find a way to both increase energy consumption while also reducing reliance on carbon-intensive energy sources.
Carbon pricing can help encourage the adoption of low-emissions technologies and reduce the amount of driving, etc., yet politically realistic carbon taxes are unlikely to have a dramatic effect. Politically unrealistic carbon taxes, meanwhile, will tend to shift carbon-intensive activities to jurisdictions that don’t impose them. Cheaper-than-coal technologies, in contrast, will spread organically, and quickly. So if energy innovation reform increases the likelihood of achieving energy breakthroughs, I think it makes sense to prioritize it above carbon taxation or CTPs [cap-and-trade programs], both as a political and as a substantive matter.
Meanwhile, Gleckman examines a study finding that current energy-related tax breaks are ineffective:
Although the Code included $48 billion in energy-sector tax preferences in 2010-2011, their effects were essentially nil. “The combined effect of energy-related subsidies for renewable sources and fossil fuels is very small, probably less than 1 percent of U.S. emissions, and could be either positive or negative.” … The NAS report did conclude that one set of subsides—tax incentives for research and development in low-carbon technology—may be effective. However, the panel could not model those preferences.
The Dish 