Group Says U.S. Energy Policy ‘Like an Orchestra without a Conductor’

Business News/Analysis, Energy, Federal Agency/Executive Branch, Opinions, Policy

March 8, 2013

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(Midwest Energy News) To achieve true energy security, the United States badly needs a single federal energy policy and a new White House council to make it happen, retired Marine Corps General Jim Jones said this week at the annual conference of the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E).

…More than 20 federal agencies now have a hand in creating energy policy, and they routinely work at cross-purposes. The result is a confused muddle that does not serve the nation, Jones said.

“My colleague Byron Dorgan said it best,” Jones said. “National energy policy today is like an orchestra without a conductor.”

The same was true in the national intelligence community in the 1990s, Jones said. Agencies were “stovepipes” of activity, each with their own turf.

Then “we created a director of national intelligence and forced the stovepipes to bend to the middle for a cohesive strategy and architecture,” Jones said. “It has kept our country safer.”

“We could do the same thing in the energy field,” he said. “It’s a question of having a conductor that’s charged by the President of the United States with that responsibility.”

…The need for an overhaul became clear to Gen. Jones when he served as operations commander of NATO forces in Europe for 10 years and had access to classified intelligence reports.

“I listened to Osama bin Laden as he tried to attack the soft underbelly of our markets—access to energy,” Jones said. “I concluded that our vulnerability was such that we need to do something about it.” READ MORE

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