AHC/WI: Federalized United States Energy Policy

Delta Force

Banned
State governments play a major role in setting energy policy in the United States. They carry out most utility regulation, including passing laws banning offshore drilling in state waters, mandating renewable energy generation, and prohibiting the construction of new nuclear energy facilities. States also regulate hydropower to some extents, as both Oregon and Washington have water gassification standards (for fish protection) that the federal Bonneville Power Administration cannot exceed. States have also considered passing laws to mandate the shutdown of nuclear reactors, as well as to ban fracking. Some states even have cap and trade programs for pollutants such as sulfur.

This also extends to automobiles, with California having some of the most restrictive emission laws in the country. Because California is such a large market, this means that the California standards are often the standards to which all vehicles in the United States are built for. Occasionally though there are vehicles that are legal in all states but California.

Could United States energy policy become federalized, perhaps even to the extents of having utilities pricing regulated at the federal level, instead of the state level? Could this be done under the commerce clause, or would another part of the Constitution or another precedent be more suitable? Also, when would be a good time for this; the New Deal and energy demand collapse of the 1930s, or the energy crises of the 1970s?
 

Delta Force

Banned
Ideally this applies to policy only, and not generation, but there can be more federal hydroelectric projects or Tennessee Valley Authority type organizations for nuclear energy too if that goes along with federalization of energy policy.
 
Could this be done under the commerce clause, or would another part of the Constitution or another precedent be more suitable?
The commerce clause would probably be the main vehicle in any regulatory scheme, considering that most (though not all!) electrical grids cross state boundaries, as does air pollution.

Also, when would be a good time for this; the New Deal and energy demand collapse of the 1930s, or the energy crises of the 1970s?
Either would probably work. For the 1970s, you would really need to avoid Nixon (too...wound up in his own insecurities) and Carter (nice guy, but ineffectual) to have major action. There was some appetite in the era, but other issues ended up sucking the air out of the room.

Another thing that might help, and Asnys or you can correct me if I get any of my facts wrong, I believe, would be if there had been less push to commercialize nuclear power until the later 1960s, so that the first actual commercial reactors were coming online about the turn of the decade after more technical gestation.

The point of all of this is that if commercial nuclear reactors are delayed until the first of them are coming online about the same time that the energy crisis hits, there is likely to be both more (or at least similar) interest in building reactors to deal with it (as in France) and less expectation that private industry would take care of the problem. In the real world, by 1975 the United States had an approximate capacity of 40 GWe of nuclear power, compared to about 5 to 7 GWe five years earlier, so there would have been no special reason to require the federal government to step in more than they already were (with insurance and so on). If instead there were only 1-2 GWe of nuclear power online, then massive federal investment, and so influence or control, would have seemed like a wiser idea.

Of course, it would also allow more technical gestation and development, so that the plants that are built might be better, and it would prevent the loss-leader effects that led to over investment early on by commercial and smaller governmental organizations. These would be beneficial, but not really relevant to your question.
 

Delta Force

Banned
The major push for commercial nuclear power in the United States actually came from the national security side of things, not the Atomic Energy Commission. The Soviet Union and United Kingdom started using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in the early to mid-1950s (Canada and France were making major efforts of their own), and it was feared that the two could gain significant soft power influence providing nuclear energy to the developing world. The AEC really would have preferred to experiment more and was targeting commercialization for a decade later than it occurred, and since power reactors had been last in priority the crash program ended up using a reactor designed for a cancelled nuclear aircraft carrier. Combined with the experience developed by the nuclear Navy, light water started pulling ahead.

Government nuclear energy might be difficult to have happen, since the PoD is really closer to the 1950s. Apparently legislation for the construction of several commercial scale power reactors operated by the AEC was advanced in the mid-1950s though. The military nuclear reactors might have been able to supply power to the grid if there hadn't been opposition to doing so among utility groups. As it turned out, only Hanford N Reactor was used as a dual-purpose reactor in the United States, with much controversy.

I'm looking for policy in general though, not necessarily federal involvement in generation.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Any other ideas on when/what aspects of energy policy might be federalized in the United States? Automobiles would be especially interesting given the significant impact of California standards on the United States (and perhaps even wider North American) market.
 
It would be hard to federalize utility pricing if only because it is determined by local demand and local sources. Despite the breadth of the electric grid, the inability to store electricity means local demand needs to be met with a local response, for the most part anyway.

What's the motivation for federalizing energy policy? There's a big difference between the push coming from greens in California and oilmen in Texas.
 

Delta Force

Banned
It would be hard to federalize utility pricing if only because it is determined by local demand and local sources. Despite the breadth of the electric grid, the inability to store electricity means local demand needs to be met with a local response, for the most part anyway.

What's the motivation for federalizing energy policy? There's a big difference between the push coming from greens in California and oilmen in Texas.

Energy has a lot of externalities associated with its production, and once long distance transmission lines are built it has direct interstate commerce applications as well. It's also difficult to site many power facilities due to NIMBYism. Federalizing energy policy could thus work for everyone to some extents, perhaps even in the 1930s if it provides a framework for utility investments across state lines, such as linking areas of high demand with areas of high power potential (hydropower and plentiful coal). In the 1970s it could include reducing impediments for new power facilities and transmission lines, making it easier to site them. There would also be pollution concerns in the 1970s, which could be federalized to prevent free riding, as pollution travels hundreds of miles from its emission point, especially with the tall cooling towers mandated for thermal power facilities.

For vehicles, it could be argued that state standards impede trade, as vehicles are mobile emitters. California based firms would thus be at a disadvantage relative to those elsewhere, unless California started enforcing its standards on all vehicles operating in the state (an even larger issue for federalism).
 
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