Criticism Of Biden Advisor Moniz Is Misplaced

About twenty years ago, I served as an expert for two meetings of the International Energy Forum, a gathering of officials from oil producers and consumers, and both times I found myself lecturing the U.S. Secretary of Energy as if they were schoolboys. (Both insisted that better data and free markets would end oil price volatility.) This made me popular with the non-American officials, who appeared to dislike the American arrogance (one Secretary urged free markets shortly after the U.S. had imposed steel import tariffs, for example), and a member of the U.S. delegation who was an old friend laughingly suggested I might have my passport revoked.

So, when articles appeared saying many progressives were urging Joe Biden not to listen to Ernest Moniz, an M.I.T. professor and one of Obama’s Energy Secretaries, I was a bit nonplussed. Obama was unusual for relying on experts as his energy secretaries: Stephen Chu and the aforementioned Ernest Moniz, both physicists. In fact, probably the high point of Energy Secretaries’ public stances since the creation of the department was Dr. Chu refusing to comment on OPEC because of his lack of expertise on petroleum markets. Something rare for academics and rarer still for cabinet secretaries. (Full disclosure: my path crossed Dr. Moniz’ several times when I was at M.I.T. but I don’t recall exchanging more than pleasantries with him and doubt he remembers me.)

But Ernest Moniz is opposed for a) having accepted money from the fossil fuel industry and b) holding pragmatic rather than idealistic or absolutist positions. The New Republic’s Kate Aronoff described a letter from progressives to Biden “urging the candidate to ‘ban all fossil fuel executives, lobbyists, and representatives from any advisory or official position on your campaign, transition team, cabinet, and administration.’”

Anyone who engages in public policy debates is used to being accused of ‘where you stand depends on where you sit,’ or your affiliation determines your positions. Oddly, such claims are often done by people who decry ‘science denialism’ of which those same ad hominem attacks are a subset. Indeed, I was accused of ‘peak oil denialism’ and being a ‘shill’ for the oil industry, sometimes simply for holding a stance of which the industry would approve. (My oil industry funding has been a small portion of my support over my career, perhaps because I don’t predict ever-higher oil prices.)

In a radio ‘debate,’ I tried to make the point to a Greenpeace executive who made such a claim about me that he, too, was tainted by his affiliation: Greenpeace paid his salary, after all. His riposte was that Greenpeace was supported by many small donations—rather like a TV evangelist, I would have responded but the host went to commercial. The point I was trying to make is that everyone is biased, and you would no more expect an official from an environmental group to support fossil fuel use than you would expect an official from an oil industry group to support electric vehicles. But you shouldn’t really trust anyone blindly, even an academic without funding; all research is prone to error and all humans to bias. (Even me!)

A belief that policy debates are nothing more than political dogfights is not completely invalid: conservatives tend to support energy production, liberals favor energy conservation. But in most cases, there are real facts and issues that should be determining policy choices: solar in New Mexico is probably going to be more economical than in Germany, for example, and natural gas in the United States is much preferred for power generation over natural gas in Japan, which must be imported as a cryogenic liquid and is thus more expensive. (But which doesn’t mean natural gas isn’t the fuel of choice for utilities in Japan, it depends on many other factors—as is so often the case.)

Which brings us to the question of Moniz’ pragmatic rather than extremist approach to energy policy. Aronoff mentions specifically the 2011 M.I.T. Energy Initiative’s study “The Future of Natural,” which she describes as “sponsored by several fossil fuel companies and front groups.” I provided some input to the study, although it was mostly ignored, and was not particularly impressed with its contents, but the primary arguments—natural gas is abundant and cheap in many places, and is a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through substitution for coal—have certainly held up. Similarly, the study’s view that fracking can be done safely have not been disproved by the occasional statistical analysis reporting ‘linkages’ to health problems.

My experience has been that sponsors do not so much hire academic researchers and then pressure them to produce favorable results, as sponsors seek out researchers whose views they prefer. I worked on a different natural gas study at M.I.T. in 1985-86, and British Gas, anticipating that we would be critical of their stances, refused to fund us. On the other hand, others who funded us got answers that did not conform to their preferences.

Shale gas has been of huge environmental benefit in the United States, and the rest of the world would be much better off burning natural gas for power than coal, but the specifics of each policy and investment requires careful analysis, rather than observation of the researchers’ alignment with ‘good’ or ‘bad’ funders or employers.

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