GUEST SPEAKER: Great.
Thank you very much, everyone, for the opportunity
to present some of the strategies
that we can use to influence federal policy making in
regards to renewable energy.
So first of all, I'm just give you,
just going to give you a brief overview of the presentation
today.
So first, I'm going to talk a little bit
about some background information
about climate change regulation here in the United States.
Then I'm going to give you a general overview
about the policy making process.
And with that, I'm going to give you specific strategies
that we can use to employ and increase employments
over federal policy making.
So just briefly, the three strategies are, first one,
take advantage of the political momentum.
The second one is to frame climate change
as both an energy issue and as a health issue.
And the third one will be to focus
on tax credit for investments in renewable energy production.
So as a way of a background, as you know,
renewable resources and climate change regulation
are closely linked.
So unfortunately, climate change regulation
is, congressional action on climate change is stalled.
However, the federal government and President Obama,
more specifically, recently proposed regulation to cut--
and the wording is, carbon pollution
from power plants in 30% by 2030.
So this is a very big opportunity.
And as you can see in the diagram,
I'm just going to talk about three phases, if you will.
There are more phases after that.
But it's agenda setting, policy formulation, policy option.
So the first thing that you, that's important
is that this is not a sequential--
line of-- policy making.
Even though we do have some legislation on renewable energy
and tax credit, we are still, we still
have to take advantage of the agenda setting phase
and the policy formulation and the policy adoption.
So the first strategy that I talked
about before, which is take advantage
of the political momentum, is that we have to make sure
that we take advantage of the fact that climate change
is now permanent in the media, not only
because of this announcement of this new push for regulation
of power plant emission.
But also-- we have to make sure that the United Nations climate
summit creates also this opportunity for us
to put this, the action on renewable energy
and the political agenda.
The second strategy will be to frame renewable energy
as both a climate change issue and a health issue.
So as I said before, President Obama's announcement
was targeting health issues, or climate change
as a public health issue.
So I think that's an interesting way
to frame our policy proposals and use
this framing that was already given
by the federal government.
But we can use it in our advantage.
By reducing fossil fuel use, we can actually
increase public health.
So also, just remembering that the issue is already
part of the institutional agenda,
meaning that renewable energy and tax
credit for renewable energy production
is already part of the institutional agenda
because there's already regulation in place.
Unfortunately, the tax credit will expire by 2016.
So we need to make sure that it continues in the agenda
and propose the tax credit in the policy formulation
and make sure that is adopted after it expires.
So just briefly, I'm just going to give you
five reasons why a tax credit is a important policy
instrument in this case.
First of all, it's the only issue that you all agree on.
So I think the fact that this coalition actually
has a consensus on one policy instrument
is a very important political tool
that we can use to actually tell Congress, well,
this is what we agree on, all sides of--
this issue.
And second, there is no direct expenditure.
So basically, tax credit is an investment.
There is no additional expenditure.
Third, it's easier to administrate because we already
have the institutional framework in place.
And we already have tax credits anyway.
It's not a new, a brand new proposal.
And fourth, it's technically and politically feasible.
So we just have to make sure that we tell Congress
that there's regulations already in place.
It's, renewable energy is technically feasible.
And so we just need more incentives
to actually invest in renewable energy
and make sure that better regulation that was proposed
by President Obama actually has a positive impact
on renewable energy production.
Thank you.