With manufacturers using a third of the total energy consumed in the U.S., the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is determined to advocate energy policies that reflect the views of its more than 12,000 members. This is where Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources policy of NAM, plays an important role. Eisenberg oversees the association’s energy and environmental policy work, and he has expertise on issues ranging from energy production and use to air and water quality, climate change, energy efficiency and environmental regulation.
“Energy presents an interesting opportunity for us as an association and as a country,” said Eisenberg, who joined NAM in May 2012. “We actually have an advantage over our largest trading partners because we have so much energy across the board from all sources. NAM’s function on the energy and resources policy front is to make sure that gap widens and doesn’t shrink. NAM wants to continue to drive what we see as a manufacturing comeback because of our inherent energy advantage.”
Lately, NAM has been trying to find ways for every energy type to prosper since manufacturers are such a large consumer of it. Whether it’s the more stringent ozone standard or greenhouse gas (GHG) regulations for power plants by the EPA, NAM is pushing back and trying to limit the damage done by these policies that would present real danger to the industry and cost of energy.
“It all comes down to the same general point, which is we just want to make sure we have the energy we need for electricity and as a feedstock,” Eisenberg said. “It’s been so difficult to get anything energy-related accomplished through Congress. For the most part, the Obama Administration has been driving our energy policy so, as a result, NAM will be paying close attention to these energy regulations coming through the next couple of years.”
A recent NAM-commissioned study reveals the new ozone standard from the Obama Administration could reduce gross domestic product by $270 billion per year and carry a compliance price tag of $2.2 trillion from 2017 to 2040, increasing energy costs and placing millions of jobs at risk. According to NAM, EPA’s regulations for power plants — the first in a suite of pending GHG regulations — are also designed to limit fuel choice and will stifle the development of the next generation of power plant technologies.
“We are making incremental gains as a manufacturing sector, but at the same time we are trying to fend off regulations that are seeking to impose new costs,” Eisenberg said. “The inherent goal of these regulations is to limit emissions. But to limit emissions the way EPA has proposed, it essentially decides what type of energy the U.S. will use over the next 20 years. The regulations are very complicated ways of reshaping each state’s energy portfolio. With regulations come costs and that impacts us, so that’s why NAM is in this battle.”
Impacting the debate
Last year, NAM released a report that found the Obama Administration’s “unreasonable” delays in approving export projects for LNG and coal could conflict with World Trade Organization agreements. The study from NAM shined a new light on the regulatory barriers blocking the export of American coal and natural gas.
“NAM impacted the debate over energy exports very positively,” Eisenberg said. “NAM was founded in 1895 on principles of free trade and open markets, and we believe these should govern here in the case of energy exports. The slow permitting of these projects was distorting the market. We’re not telling anyone to export or not export, but at the very least the market should be dictating this process and everybody should have a fair share. Ultimately, we were able to persuade the administration to take a hard look at the process and figure out ways to make it go faster.”
Productive energy legislation
Going forward Eisenberg said he would like to see more productive legislation regarding energy. His hope is for Congress to get back to a point where it can have a rational debate about the subject.
“Congress needs to talk through the issues we’ve all been dying to talk about,” he said. “For example, how are we going to build all of this new pipeline infrastructure due to the natural gas boom? Certainly, the administration has made a concerted effort to try to address permitting challenges, and I know the Council on Environmental Quality has been working on trying to accelerate the permitting process on different types of energy-related projects. But we think the permitting process needs to be stronger. At the end of the day, if you’re going to continue to put regulations on the front end, then at the very least you should figure out a way to speed up the permitting process on the back end. The administration can’t sit on the Keystone XL pipeline for six years.”
A manufacturing renaissance
According to a recent IHS report cosponsored by NAM and other trade associations, the U.S. will continue to reap enormous economic and job-creation benefits from domestic oil and shale gas production. Unconventional oil and gas activity supports more than 2.1 million total jobs, the report said. By 2025, this number will reach nearly 3.9 million. Also, the combined upstream, midstream and downstream unconventional oil and gas production process, and the chemical industry benefiting from it, will support more than 460,000 combined manufacturing jobs by 2020, rising to nearly 515,000 by 2025.
“These numbers are impressive and show manufacturers’ best days are ahead,” Eisenberg said. “But this growth is not a guaranteed conclusion. To realize our full energy potential, we need government policies that support the continued development of oil and gas resources, energy infrastructure projects and manufacturing growth.”
According to Eisenberg, NAM will continue to fight on the energy resources and policy front against government regulations that could hamper this energy potential, including new rules on hydraulic fracturing, ozone and GHG emissions.
For more information, visit www.nam.org or call (800) 814-8468.
