A new website entitled Fair Price Energy includes some interesting proposals for moving forward with sensible energy policy in America. While the author admittedly offers no entirely new ideas to the discussion, the combination of policies and the clear presentation merit a look.
Although economists for decades have proposed a host of policies that would greatly improve the energy situation (economists were among the first to call for gas taxes decades ago), the key issue is political viability; this is where the ideas at Fair Price Energy are somewhat lacking. Both the suggested tax on energy imports and a lack of compensation mechanism for industries hurt by the proposal seem to make it more than a long-shot in the current political landscape. But it is still worth a look, especially since it has a nice system for redistributing the tax revenue from higher energy prices in a very progressive manner, which would ease the concerns among many environmentalists about the potential regressive effects of higher energy costs.
