Regulatory Barriers to Lowering the Carbon Content of Energy Services

Abstract

Any “clean energy” initiative cannot be effective without prompt commercialization of new technologies that are funded by both the public and private sectors. All commercial activities are affected by the prevailing legal environment. The energy sector is unusually subject to multiple federal, state, and local regulations that affect both the development of new technologies and the pace at which they can be rolled out.At the request of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, one of the nation's leading energy economists, Frank Wolak of Stanford University, provides a useful inventory of regulatory barriers (primarily at the state level) that inhibit the commercialization of technologies that would lower the carbon content of energy services consumed in the United States. A preliminary list of regulatory barriers is given in this paper.