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Notable
Quotes from the Report
On January 29, 2001,
the President established the National Energy
Policy Development Group (NEPDG)—a group of cabinet-level and other
senior administration officials, chaired by the Vice President—to
gather information, deliberate, and recommend a national energy
policy. The group presented its final report to the President in May
2001. GAO was asked to (1) describe the process used by the NEPDG to
develop the National Energy Policy report, including whom the group
met with and what topics were discussed and (2) determine the costs
associated with that process.
Although appointed
NEPDG Chair, the Vice President elected not to
respond to GAO’s request for certain factual NEPDG information.
Accordingly, as authorized by GAO’s access-to-records statute, and
after exhausting efforts to achieve a resolution and following the
processes specified in that statute, GAO filed suit in U.S. District
Court to obtain the information. The district court later dismissed
GAO’s suit on jurisdictional grounds, without reaching the merits
of
GAO’s right to audit and evaluate NEPDG activities or to obtain access
to NEPDG records. For a variety of reasons, GAO decided not to appeal
the district court decision.
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According to the
best information that GAO could obtain, the National
Energy Policy report was the product of a centralized, top-down, short-
term, and labor-intensive process that involved the efforts of several
hundred federal employees governmentwide. In the 3 ½ months between
the inception of NEPDG and its presentation of the final report, the
Principals (the Vice President, selected cabinet-level and other
senior administration officials) and their support staff (Support
Group) controlled most facets of the report’s development, including
setting meeting schedules and agendas, controlling the workflow,
distributing work assignments, rewriting chapters, and approving
recommendations. Senior agency officials served on a select
interagency Working Group, while the majority of agency staff working
on the NEPDG effort played a tributary role, helping their agencies
fulfill their NEPDG-related obligations and responding to the Support
Group’s subsequent requests for information, review, or comment.
In developing the
National Energy Policy report, the NEPDG Principals,
Support Group, and participating agency officials and staff met with,
solicited input from, or received information and advice from
nonfederal energy stakeholders, principally petroleum, coal, nuclear,
natural gas, and electricity industry representatives and lobbyists.
The extent to which submissions from any of these stakeholders were
solicited, influenced policy deliberations, or incorporated into the
final report cannot be determined based on the limited information
made available to GAO. NEPDG met and conducted its work in two
distinct phases: the first phase culminated in a March 19, 2001,
briefing to the President on challenges relating to energy supply and
the resulting economic impact; the second phase ended with the May 16,
2001, presentation of the final report to the President. The Office of
the Vice President’s (OVP) unwillingness to provide the NEPDG records
or other related information precluded GAO from fully achieving its
objectives and substantially limited GAO’s ability to comprehensively
analyze the NEPDG process.
None of the key federal
entities involved in the NEPDG effort provided
GAO with a complete accounting of the costs that they incurred during
the development of the National Energy Policy report.
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Nonfederal Energy
Stakeholders Contributed to the NEPDG Effort:
The NEPDG Principals,
Support Group, Working Group, and participating
agency officials met with, solicited input from, or received
information and advice from a variety of nonfederal energy stakeholders
while developing the National Energy Policy report. According to our
analysis of agency documents produced under court order, stakeholder
involvement in the NEPDG process included private citizens offering
general energy advice to the President, industry leaders submitting
detailed policy recommendations to NEPDG, and individual meetings with
Principals as well as the Vice President. The extent to which
submissions from any of these stakeholders were solicited, influenced
policy deliberations, or incorporated into the final report is not
something that we can determine based on the limited information at our
disposal. Nor can we provide a comprehensive listing of the dates or
purposes of these meetings, their attendees, or how the attendees, when
solicited, were selected, because of OVP's unwillingness to provide us
with information.
The Principals met
with a variety of nonfederal entities to discuss
energy issues and policy. DOE reported that the Secretary of Energy
discussed national energy policy with chief executive officers of
petroleum, electricity, nuclear, coal, chemical, and natural gas
companies, among others. The Secretary of Energy also reportedly asked
nonfederal parties for their recommendations for short-and long-term
responses to petroleum product price and supply constraints. Several
corporations and associations, including Chevron, the National Mining
Association, and the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association,
provided the Secretary of Energy with detailed energy policy
recommendations. EPA reported that agency managers--including the EPA
Administrator--held many meetings with outside parties, where the issue
of energy policy was raised. For example, according to the
Administrator's schedule, the Administrator and agency staff met
separately with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the Edison
Electric Institute, and a group of environmental and conservation
leaders. Interior reported that the Secretary of the Interior and staff
attended meetings with private industry to discuss energy issues,
including one meeting with Rocky Mountain-based petroleum companies
interested in leasing federal lands and another meeting with an Indian
tribe from Pyramid Lake, Nevada interested in building a power plant on
its lands. In addition, in its response to a congressional inquiry, OVP
reported that the Vice President met with the chairman and chief
executive officer of Enron Corporation to discuss energy policy
matters. The Vice President also received a lobbying group's appeal to
stop treating carbon dioxide as a pollutant and policy recommendations
from a coalition of utilities, coal producers and railroads calling
itself the Coal-Based Generation Stakeholders. We cannot determine the
extent to which any of these communications with NEPDG Principals
affected the content or development of the final report.
In response to another
congressional inquiry, the NEPDG executive
director reported that the Support Group staff held meetings with
individuals involved with companies or industries, including those in
the electricity, telecommunications, coal mining, petroleum, gas,
refining, bioenergy, solar energy, nuclear energy, pipeline, railroad
and automobile manufacturing sectors; environmental, wildlife, and
marine advocacy; state and local utility regulation and energy
management; research and teaching at universities; research and
analysis at policy organizations; energy consumers, including
consumption by businesses and individuals; a major labor union; and
about three dozen Members of Congress or their staffs. However, the
NEPDG executive director did not specify the frequency, length, or
purpose of the meetings, or how participants were selected to attend.
In addition, OVP reported that the Support Group staff also met with
numerous nonfederal stakeholders during the development of the final
report, including a meeting with representatives of various utilities
and two meetings with representatives of Enron Corporation.
Finally, senior agency
officials participated in numerous meetings with
nonfederal energy stakeholders to discuss the national energy policy.
Based on our analysis of the agency documents produced under court
order, senior DOE officials, in addition to attending meetings with the
Secretary of Energy, met with a variety of industry representatives,
lobbyists, and energy associations, including the American Coal
Company, Small Refiners Association, the Coal Council, CSX,
Enviropower, Inc., Detroit Edison, Duke Energy, the Edison Electric
Institute, General Motors, the National Petroleum Council, and the
lobbying firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers. These senior DOE officials
also solicited recommendations, views, or points of clarification from
other parties. For example, one senior DOE official solicited detailed
energy policy recommendations from a variety of nonfederal energy
stakeholders, including the American Petroleum Institute, the National
Petrochemical and Refiners' Association, the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy, and Southern Company. This official also
received policy recommendations from others, including the American Gas
Association, Green Mountain Energy, the National Mining Association,
and the lobbying firms the Dutko Group and the Duberstein Group. Senior
EPA officials, in addition to accompanying the Administrator to
meetings with nonfederal energy stakeholders, discussed issues related
to the development of an energy policy at meetings with the Alliance of
Automobile Manufacturers, the American Public Power Association, and
the Yakama Nation Electric Utility. Interior told us that senior agency
officials met with nonfederal parties to discuss energy policy or other
energy-related issues, but provided us with no further details about
these meetings.
In addition to the
meetings listed above, the agency documents reveal
that the NEPDG Principals, Support Group, and agency staff received a
considerable amount of unsolicited advice, criticisms, meeting
requests, and/or recommendations from other parties, including private
citizens; university professors; local, state, and international
officials; regional energy stakeholders; and a variety of interest
groups representing energy-related causes. Again, because of the
limited information available to us, we cannot determine the extent to
which these communications affected the content or development of the
final report.
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