Exclusive: Power the Future releases roadmap on how to “actually come up with an American energy policy”
"With our long, national energy nightmare coming to an end, this roadmap provides the essential first steps to securing America’s energy future,” Power the Future's Daniel Turner told us.
A leading energy independence group’s ten-point plan could help carve out a “coherent American energy policy,” it said in a 2025 report, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.
“If Congress is savvy, it can use this model to roll back the worst of the remaining spending blowouts, right-size the tax code to maximize return to the taxpayer, and even provide pilot projects for what reasonable energy and permitting policies would look like,” Power the Future (PTF) said in its latest report.
“Despite Biden inaccurately messaging improvements to the runaway inflation occurring under his watch, disinflation is not the same as deflation,” PTF said. “The rate of inflation is no longer accelerating at historic highs, but it remains above the two-percent target of the Federal Reserve and those long lost, more affordable prices are not coming back.”
PTF’s founder and executive director, Daniel Turner, has his finger on the pulse of the GOP’s energy policy; in a series of op-eds in the Reporter, he has explained how Republican lawmakers on the Hill, like Rep. Brett Guthrie (R., Ky.) and incoming Trump administration officials Doug Burgum, Chris Wright, and Lee Zeldin, can jumpstart American energy independence.
"With our long, national energy nightmare coming to an end, this roadmap provides the essential first steps to securing America’s energy future,” Turner told the Reporter. “This roadmap not only lays out the challenges we face after four years of Joe Biden’s failures, but provides real solutions to restore our economic strength, lower prices, and boost our national security.”
The easiest recommendation PTF has for making sure that “the inflationary policies of the Biden-Harris Administration are truly in the dustbin of history” is for Congress to repeal the “Waste Emissions Charge” (WEC), which PTF notes is a “natural gas tax” which passes the costs to consumers. Fueling inflation policies are unnecessary, PTF said in the report. “Oil and gas sector have been reducing their methane intensity even while breaking production records,” it noted.
PTF has three recommendations for tackling the WEC, with the most comprehensive one being its outright repeal via reconciliation. “As a revenue provision, it can be repealed by reconciliation just as readily as the Democrats used reconciliation to impose it in the [Inflation Reduction Act] IRA,” it said.
Another recommendation would come at the expense of recommendations from a 25-year-old TikTok influencer, who reportedly helped convince the Biden administration to pause approvals of additional liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals and shipments. “Congress should fully remove the social media influencers from the decision chain and reassert American energy dominance,” PTF suggested.
Over the years, America’s overly-litigious nature has gone from a late-night punchline to “an actual threat to public welfare” due to the rise of “sue and settle” lawsuits by radical climate activists, PTF added. “Liberal activist groups and funding operations [are] propping up entities to sue against policy changes and permitting decisions intended to facilitate the buildout of infrastructure in this country.”
“This phenomenon is not limited to high-profile fossil fuel pipelines,” PTF explained. “Litigants attack pretty much any project of sufficient scale to actually move the economic needle: onshore and offshore wind, carbon pipelines, road and bridge projects, solar farms, critical mineral mines, transmission lines, to name but a few. Litigation, particularly under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) at best drag[s] out the permitting process and raise[s] the costs of doing business in the United States; at worst they kill infrastructure development that would improve people’s lives and grow the economy.”
While PTF maintains that people deserve their day in court when wrongdoings occur, the group advocated for a congressional fix that would “limit[] standing only to those directly impacted by a regulation or permitting decision…[prohibit] settlements with the federal government from creating regulatory mandates [and] only allow [for] the recuperation of legal fees to successful litigants that demonstrate an economic hardship.”
The other recommendations PTF has for the GOP trifecta include erasing the Biden administration’s oil and gas leasing moratorium, preventing policymakers in California from raising costs across the country, reforming the permitting system, accelerating breakout technologies, overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, focusing transmission policy on reliable and affordable electricity, and eliminating federal agency climate offices.
The economy was a top issue in the 2024 election, and despite the Democrats’ efforts to roll out green energy spending, PTF noted that the spending was not enough. “Reports of Democratic Washington injecting more than $3 trillion into an overheating economy was seen for what it was — a disingenuous effort to buy the votes of specific special interest groups at the expense of the public.”
The time for the GOP trifecta to take action on PTF’s is critical. “After two decades of near-zero electric demand growth and a decoupling of that metric from broader GDP, demand for electricity is poised to take off as the race for artificial intelligence, the reshoring of supply chains, and electrification of certain industries accelerate,” PTF said.
Read PTF’s full report here.
