National Energy Commission Report Addresses US Energy Options

Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America's Energy Challenges. Summary of Recommendations (.pdf - 639KB)

Full report at the National Commission on Energy Policy

John P. Holdren, incoming director of the Woods Hole Research Center, co-chaired the National Commission on Energy Policy, which released its findings on Wednesday, December 8, 2004.

The report, “Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America’s Energy Challenges,” contains detailed policy recommendations for addressing oil security, climate change, natural gas supply, the future of nuclear energy, and other long-term challenges, and is backed by more than 30 original research studies.

“It's essential to take some prudent steps now to avoid intolerable costs and impacts later,” said Holdren, who currently serves as Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University. “The task of energy policy is to ensure the reliable and affordable energy services that a prosperous economy requires while simultaneously limiting the risks and impacts from over-dependence on oil, from global climate change, and from other environmental and political liabilities of the available energy-supply options. Meeting this challenge requires measures to encourage increased use of the best available technologies for energy supply and energy end-use efficiency in the years immediately ahead, as well as increased investments in energy research and development to improve the options available to us in the future. "

The Commission, a bipartisan group of top energy experts from industry, government, labor, academia, and environmental and consumer groups, spent more than two years developing this consensus strategy, addressing major long-term U.S. energy challenges.

The Woods Hole Research Center (whrc.org) is dedicated to science, education and public policy for a habitable Earth. The institution sponsors initiatives in the Amazon, Africa, Russia, Boreal North America, the Mid-Atlantic, New England and Cape Cod. Center staff members, consisting of scientists, international law and policy experts, researchers, and administrative staff, focus on the global carbon cycle, forest function, landcover/land use, science in public affairs, and education, providing primary data on the changes in land use around the world and enabling better appraisals of the trends in forests that influence their role in the global carbon budget.