Among the 16 federal departments and independent agencies most often concerned with some aspect of energy policy, four cabinet-level departments and four nondepartmental agencies assume particular importance because of their size, the scope of their energy-related authority, and the variety of programs that they implement.
The Department of Energy (DOE). Created in 1977 as a cabinet department, DOE’s responsibilities now sprawl across the entire range of energy-related federal government activities.23 In 2013, the DOE had a budget of $27.2 billion and about 16,000 employees. Currently, the DOE implements policies involving nuclear power, fossil fuels, and alternative energy resources, and it assumes responsibility for advancing the national, economic, and energy security of the United States, for supervising the national laboratories initially created for the development of nuclear weapons, and implementing the White House’s National Energy Policy Development Group. DOE also inherited a double dose of hugely expensive and contentious nuclear regulatory responsibility: the agency administers the enormously costly, technically difficult, and politically volatile environmental cleanup of the nation’s former nuclear weapons facilities and also assumes responsibility for the safe disposal of nuclear waste from the nation’s commercial and military weapons facilities.24
From its inception, the DOE has had too much to do, too few friends, and too little authority. Much of the authority for domestic energy planning remains with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the EPA, the Department of Agriculture, and other agencies beyond DOE’s statutory reach or political influence.
Notwithstanding these handicaps, the DOE has still improved energy management in significant ways. For the first time, all energy research and development (R&D) planning and implementation is organized through a single agency. The creation of the Energy Information Administration (EIA) within DOE has provided the federal government an increasingly large and richly diversified source of energy data independent of energy producers, the largest independent source of credible energy data within the United States, and the most commonly cited of all domestic energy information sources.
The Department of the Interior. The US Department of the Interior, is the nation’s largest public land manager, the steward and trustee of America’s vast public domain and all its energy resources. The secretary of the DOI heads a department that in 2012 employed 70,000 people, including expert scientists and resource-management professionals, in eight different bureaus and offices.25
Several of these bureaus and offices are especially important to federal energy management. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is responsible for leasing and oversight of energy exploration and production on more than 256 million acres of public domain, most of this land west of the Mississippi River, and 1.7 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf. These public lands are a primary source of current domestic energy production, a bountiful source of federal revenue, and a huge reserve for potential future energy development. The bureau has historically been the epicenter of controversy and competition between conservationists and energy developers over access to the energy reserves on these vast federal lands.
The public lands currently produce more than 30 percent of the nation’s energy production, including 39 percent of natural gas, 35 percent of oil, 42 percent of coal, 17 percent of hydropower, and half the nation’s geothermal energy.26 In 2013, the Department of the Interior collected more than $11 billion from energy production on public lands and offshore areas.27 Additionally, the federal lands provide rights of way for energy transmission lines, rail systems, pipelines, and other energy development infrastructure. Federal lands are also estimated to contain approximately 68 percent of all undiscovered US oil reserves and 74 percent of undiscovered natural gas.28
Rising concern over domestic energy supply now casts the public lands as an “energy frontier” where potentially vast new sources of renewable energy await development. The DOE estimates, for example, that federal lands can potentially generate 350,000 megawatts of electric power (a megawatt will produce enough energy to power as many as 900 average homes), provide 23 million acres for solar energy production, and produce significant new geothermal electric energy.29 Currently, for example, almost three thousand wind turbines on California’s public lands are producing electric power for 300,000 people.
The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement is responsible for implementing the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (1977), the federal regulatory program to control the adverse environmental impacts of surface coal mining and to restore abandoned surface mine sites to ecological vitality. An estimated 5,200 abandoned mine sites, many extremely hazardous environmentally currently require remediation.30 The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE) regulates the development of energy resources, administers leasing of energy exploration, and enforces environmental protection laws related to energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf. The Deepwater Horizon accident underscored the growing importance of the BOEMRE and the Outer Continental Shelf, which is estimated to contain about 60 percent of oil and 40 percent of natural gas reserves still undeveloped in the United States.
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) exercises its important energy development and regulatory authority, like BOEMRE, largely beyond the scope of public attention and interest. Nevertheless, the FERC, an independent regulatory agency composed of five commissioners appointed by the president, exercises critically important energy management authority, including jurisdiction over interstate electricity sales, wholesale electric rates, hydroelectric licensing, natural gas pricing, and oil pipeline rates. It also reviews and authorizes liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, pipelines, and nonfederal hydropower projects. The Energy Policy Act (2005) significantly enlarged FERC’s authority by investing it with responsibility for tracking federal government progress on the act’s mandated energy developments including liquefied natural gas projects, electric supply, the Alaska natural gas pipeline, requirements for new energy market transparency, pipeline land planning, and much else.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is responsible for ensuring the safe use and environmental security of radioactive materials for nonmilitary purposes. The NRC, composed of five commissioners appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate for five-year terms, is primarily responsible for regulating all nonmilitary reactors, nuclear materials, and the transportation, storage, and disposal of all nuclear waste.
These responsibilities produce a high political profile and predictably thrust the commission into public controversy over the management of the nation’s commercial nuclear power sector, as chapter 5 illustrates. Critics of the nuclear power industry almost ritually indict the NRC for regulatory failures, and proponents of commercial nuclear power just as often complain that the NRC is insufficiently energetic in protecting and promoting the industry.
Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA, created by an executive order of President Nixon in 1970, is the largest federal regulatory agency in terms of budget and personnel. Its responsibilities embrace an extraordinarily large and technically complex array of programs ranging across the whole domain of energy-related environmental management. These programs include regulation of energy-related air and water pollutants, hazardous and toxic wastes, and chemical substances, including radioactive waste. The agency presently has about 18,000 employees and an annual budget exceeding $7 billion.
The agency, whose administrator is appointed by the president, consists of a Washington, DC, headquarters and ten regional offices, each headed by a regional administrator. Political controversy is the daily bread of the EPA’s leadership. Almost all its significant energy-related regulatory decisions,