Stopping energy production on federal lands and waters would result directly in massive job losses nationwide, according to a report issued Wednesday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for 21st Century Energy. “The impact would be immediate and severe to the U.S. economy, leading to the loss of hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and robbing the federal government and primarily Western states of potentially billions of dollars in revenues in the form of lost royalties,” the report says.
The report, the first in the institute’s new Energy Accountability Series, seeks to counter the ongoing “Keep it in the Ground” movement, which calls for an end to all fossil fuel production on federal lands. The issue became a talking point during the Democratic presidential primary, with both eventual nominee Hillary Clinton and second-place finisher Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) supporting leaving fossil fuels in the ground. The Clinton campaign had not responded to the report at press time.
Sanders also co-sponsored legislation that would halt the extraction of fossil fuels from federal lands. The bill was introduced in November.
Halting coal mining and other forms of energy production on federal lands and waters, the paper says, would result in: the loss of nearly a quarter of the nation’s current supply of fossil fuels; the loss of more than $11.3 billion annually in revenue from royalties and rental fees; and the loss of more than 100,000 direct jobs as well as 280,000 indirect and induced jobs across the broader economy. According to the economic model used by the Chamber, “Keeping it in the Ground” would threaten more than $70 billion in annual U.S. GDP.
The Interior Department announced in mid-January it would issue no new coal leases on federal lands while completing a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) of the U.S. coal leasing program. The review is intended to determine if the program is properly structured to provide a fair return to taxpayers, reflects its impacts on the environment, and will continue to help meet the nation’s energy needs. The agency last conducted a PEIS review for the federal coal program in 1983-1984. Currently, approximately 41 percent of the nation’s annual coal production comes from federal land.