By Texas A&M University Bush School staff
Newswise — COLLEGE STATION, March 3, 2017 — The recent confirmation of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to head the U.S. Department of Energy presents an opportunity for a smarter, price-based energy policy, according to Dr. James Griffin, professor in the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University.
Griffin has authored a new policy brief in The Takeaway, entitled “A Smart Price-Based Energy Policy,” where he argues for price-based policies encouraging technological innovation to keep energy reasonably cheap but also reasonably clean and secure. Expanding on Perry’s comment during his confirmation hearing that he will commit to “helping provide stable, reliable, affordable, and secure sources of American energy,” Griffin discusses the need for greater emphasis on basic energy research supported by government funding.
“A smart energy policy does use government research and development funds to stimulate advances in basic energy research and high-cost initial development projects,” Griffin writes. “[Research and development] funding decisions should be made by knowledgeable professionals in the energy department, not Congress.”
Griffin is professor of economics and public policy and holds the Bob Bullock Chair at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. He is the author of A Smart Energy Policy: An Economist’s Rx for Balancing Cheap, Clean, and Secure Energy and the leading energy economics text, Energy Economics & Policy.
The Mosbacher Institute was founded in 2009 to honor Robert A. Mosbacher, secretary of commerce from 1989 to1992 and key architect of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Through the Institute’s three core programs–Integration of Global Markets, Energy in a Global Economy, and Governance and Public Services–the objective is to advance the design of policies for tomorrow’s challenges.
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