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Articles by Trevor Houser

Trevor Houser, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, is partner at the Rhodium Group (RHG) and director of its Energy and Climate Practice. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York and a visiting fellow at the school's Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. During 2009 he served as senior advisor to the US Special Envoy on Climate Change. His areas of research include energy markets, climate change, and the role emerging Asian countries play in both. He is author most recently of The Economics of Energy Efficiency in Buildings (2009), Structuring a Green Recovery: Evaluating Policy Options for an Economic Stimulus Package (2009), Leveling the Carbon Playing Field: International Competition and US Climate Policy Design (2008), and China Energy: A Guide for the Perplexed (2007).

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This piece was co-authored by Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Few groups have been more strident in their opposition to cap-and-trade legislation than the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Last year, four prominent members of the powerful business lobby, including Exelon Corp. and Pacific Gas & Electric, quit on account of its obstructionist approach to climate policy. When some activists announced, in a prank press conference, that the chamber would throw its weight behind an ambitious climate bill, the group responded with a lawsuit.

In arguing against cap-and-trade, the chamber has repeatedly advanced the notion that such legislation would harm U.S. energy security in some fashion or another. So last month, when the chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy announced that it had created a comprehensive new index of “Energy Security Risk” — a tool designed “to track shifts in U.S. energy security over time and assess potential impacts of new policies” — we wondered whether its calculations might be applied to the most recent energy and climate change policy proposals. In other words... Read more

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  • CBO stumbles into the green jobs debate

    Cross-posted from the Peterson Institute for International Economics. On May 5, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an issue brief titled “How Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Affect Employment” [PDF]. With unemployment hovering stubbornly around 10 percent, the report could shape the Senate’s appetite for taking up the energy and climate change bill […]