Q&A: Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy
This is a special online preview of a story appearing in the Spring 2010 issue of OnEarth . Subscribe here to receive our magazine. When he established the senior White House position of assistant to the president for energy and climate change, Barack Obama created one of the most important and politically challenging jobs in his administration. He chose someone with long experience in climate issues and Washington politics: Carol Browner, the highly effective administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 1993 to 2001. Browner’s mandate is to create jobs, enhance energy security, and combat climate change. That means integrating the work of a variety of federal agencies; forging cooperation among federal, state, and local governments; building partnerships with the private sector; and being constantly aware of how changing political dynamics in the nation’s capital affect — and are affected by — the responsibility of the United States to be a global leader on climate change. In a conversation with James Gerstenzang, Browner made it clear that comprehensive energy legislation, with bipartisan support, remains one of the administration’s top priorities. How are you going to get 60 votes for a climate bill in the Senate, given that you have not only opposition from the Republicans but disagreements within your own party? It’s more nuanced than that, because we’ve got John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman leading a bipartisan effort to craft legislation that won’t result in the same sort of squabbles that perhaps have existed previously. If the price of getting 60 votes is to risk weakening the legislation, wouldn’t it be more effective to simply act administratively? Well, because of a 2007 Supreme Court decision, the EPA has authority [to regulate CO2 as a pollutant] under the existing Clean Air Act. The science proves that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The next steps in the process are the proposed rules, the first-ever greenhouse gas standards for cars. And what the president has said repeatedly is that we’re going to follow the science, we’re going to follow the law. But in the meantime, we want comprehensive energy legislation, because we need all the pieces of the puzzle. The administration’s pitch for climate legislation seems to be based on the economic arguments. When we look at what’s going to stimulate private-sector capital investments in the new energy future, it’s comprehensive energy reform. That’s where we are going to give the business community the predictability that allows them to make those investments. History is a perfect guide. Every time we have a debate, for example, about the Clean Air Act and acid rain, some industry says it absolutely cannot be done. We set a standard, or Congress sets it, or the EPA sets it, and guess what happens? American innovation and ingenuity find a cheaper, faster way to solve the problem. There are lots of people in the business community who will tell you that’s exactly what is going to happen if we put a cap on carbon and set a renewable electricity standard. Then you will see the capital investment. And with that will come the jobs. Any estimates on numbers? Our latest figures show that by the end of 2009 the outlays and tax credits for clean energy saved or created 52,000 clean energy jobs. Rather than retrofitting a coal-fired power plant from the 1950s or 1960s people are going to be making the component parts of a clean energy future, whether it be the batteries for the new generation of vehicles, or the bio-fuels, or the wind turbines, or the solar cells. Those manufacturing facilities have to be profitable here in the United States, and the way to make them profitable, to guarantee them a market, is to set the standards. Germany has a huge percentage of the world’s manufacturing jobs. Why did that happen? Because they had a clean energy policy, and so businesses were prepared to make the investments that created those jobs. And what happens in Congress will also shape the attitude of business. Yes, the second step would be comprehensive energy legislation, so there’s absolute clarity in the business community as to what’s going to be expected of them. I meet with business people every week, and lots of companies say they are sitting on making investments right now because they don’t know what the rules are going to be. We have a lot of folks who believe we are in danger of missing out on the global opportunities for clean energy technology. How much political capital is the president willing to spend on this, with everything else on his plate? You know, you don’t get the job to do the easy work. You get the job to do the hard work. When people said we couldn’t do it in the House, the president went to work and we passed in the House. There were people who said he shouldn’t go to [the U.N. climate conference in] Copenhagen. But he went and he made it a hugely important step forward on the global commitment to climate change. Now we need to do the rest of it and get a binding international treaty. The president has said repeatedly that this is one of his priorities, that it’s absolutely essential in terms of moving our country forward in this global market for clean energy. What’s your overall assessment of Copenhagen, as you look in the rearview mirror? We are very pleased with what we were able to achieve. It was, I think, a direct result of the president’s personal engagement. To me, he really ended up being the person putting the deal together by working with the various groupings of interested countries: China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the coalition of African nations, Europeans. And I think we got things that we haven’t gotten before, for example, commitments on transparency that are hugely encouraging. Jonathan Pershing, the lead U.S. negotiator in Copenhagen, has raised the idea of focusing more on bilateral agreements and less on the U.N. process. Might that not isolate the United States from its natural allies, such as the small island nations, which are at immediate risk from sea-level rise, or the European Union? We need to do both. The U.N. process is important because it gives every country an equal voice. But it’s not our process. At the same time, we worked with China on some important bilateral commitments and similarly with India. The magnitude of the problem and the need for global action is such that we want to take advantage of all appropriate forums, using every tool available to achieve real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In the past, China has tended to take a wait-and-see approach, to see what we would do first. Well, we have taken tremendous actions over the last year. If you look at our domestic agenda, it starts with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A study was just published that shows we may have the best year ever in terms of investments in renewable energy. We recently announced $2.3 billion in tax credits for the manufacture of renewable components. So we’re not just putting up the facilities, building the solar farms, the wind farms, the geothermal plants. We’re also investing in the manufacturing. If you look back at what the administration has done on global warming, what one thing would you change? I think we’ve been very successful in using our executive authority, whether it’s on appliance standards or the work going on around fuels. You have two ways to create change from a broader perspective: one is through the legislative process and the other is through executive authority, and I think we have moved very successfully on both fronts. So no regrets? Well, you always want to do more. If you do six efficiency standards, you want to do twelve. But we have to do these in ways that are defensible. Also, we inherited eight years of inaction. In the first year of an administration, a lot of what you do is framed and set by what the prior administration did. Going into your second year, what’s the one thing you see as essential? Getting Congress to pass comprehensive energy legislation.
More:
Q&A: Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy