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Energy Reports
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| To fix our roads and bridges, America first must fix our transportation policies. To counteract the tendencies to neglect repair and maintenance, we must adopt strong “fix-it first” rules that give priority to maintenance of our existing roads and bridges, set national goals for the condition of our transportation system, and hold state governments accountable for achieving results. |
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| America’s highways and airports are increasingly congested. Our nation’s transportation system remains dependent on oil. And our existing transportation infrastructure is inadequate to the demands of the 21st century. The United States should build an efficient and fast passenger rail network, with high-speed rail as a central component, to help address the nation’s transportation challenges in the 21st century. |
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| Nothing illustrates how the lack of transportation options hurts consumers and our economy more than the fact that, since approval of the tax rebates in February, Americans on average have already spent the amount of their stimulus checks at the pump. |
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| This report shows why rail, rapid buses and other forms of public transit must play a more prominent role in America's future transportation system. America has grown more dependent on car travel with each passing year. |
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| The public need and demand for transit will grow sharply in the future and transportation funding must become better targeted to future needs. This paper explains why lawmakers should turn to new dedicated revenues to provide long-term solutions while increasing market efficiency and reducing social costs. Legislators should avoid short-term band aids from the general budget or one-time gimmicks such as road privatization. |
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| America has the technological know-how and the resources to move away from dependence on oil and other fossil fuels and toward a cleaner, more secure New Energy Future. Achieving that future will require America to set clear goals to guide our energy policies and to mobilize the scientific, economic and political resources we need to meet them. This paper examines the benefits, in terms of fossil fuel savings, of achieving a New Energy Future. |
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| In the summer of 2006, Americans from coast to coast experienced a sweltering heat wave that broke more than 2,300 daily temperature records in July alone. This record warmth, however, was not an anomaly; rather, it is indicative of a broader trend toward increasing temperatures and extreme weather resulting from global warming. To examine recent trends in temperature in cities and towns across the United States, this report analyzes 2000-2006 temperature data from 255 major weather stations and finds that temperatures were above normal almost everywhere during the period. |
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| Extensive scientific evidence demonstrates that global warming is real, that it is affecting us now, and that human activities—particularly the burning of fossil fuels—are the primary cause.
This report lists six challenging but feasible strategies that, if implemented, could achieve these reductions, while improving America’s environment and our energy security. |
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| This report examines trends in carbon dioxide emissions and fossil fuel combustion nationally and by state for the four decades spanning 1960 to 2001. |
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| Campuses can set an example for their communities and the nation by implementing alternative energy, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability projects on campus to demonstrate their feasibility and cost effectiveness. Academia has traditionally been at the forefront of cultural and technological change, and campuses once again can be the catalyst that drives this county into sustainable energy independence. |
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| The recent rise in oil and gasoline prices is the result of increasing demand bumping against both natural and technological limits in the world's ability to produce and supply oil. This tight supply/demand balance, coupled with increased market concentration in the oil industry, has left consumers vulnerable to price spikes at the pump. |
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| The coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge is the only area along Alaska's entire North Slope that is not currently open for oil and gas exploration. Unfortunately, oil companies such as ExxonMobil and their allies in the Bush administration and Congress are pushing to drill in the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge, endangering one of America's last wild places for a few months' worth of oil and gas. |
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| We stand at a crossroads on energy policy in the United States. Our dependence on oil is costing consumers at the pump, draining the economy, endangering our national security, and polluting the environment. Unfortunately, U.S. policy-makers have responded not with a plan to lead our country away from oil dependence but with more of the same. ExxonMobil, the world's largest oil company, has not only echoed these short-sighted policy decisions but led the charge to craft and implement them. In contrast to many of its peers in the oil industry, ExxonMobil has acted consistently to move our country backward, not forward, on energy policy. |
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| Although the technology does exist to safely increase automobile fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon in the next 10 years, NHTSA has not enacted a meaningful increase in fuel economy in almost three decades. As a result, this holiday weekend, Americans will be paying more at the gas pump and using more foreign oil than they should be, given technology available today. |
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