Energy Future Coalition (EFC)

In late 2001, with the support of the Turner Foundation and Better World Fund, the Energy Future Coalition held exploratory meetings to discuss the inadequacies in U.S. energy policy. These meetings were focused on addressing our dependence on foreign oil and the associated risk to our economy and national security, the neglected threat of climate change, and the need to bring electricity and modern fuels to the two billion people who lack them.

A consensus emerged on the need for change, and on the opportunity to present a new vision that linked security, environment, and economics for a more sustainable future. Over the next six months, more than 150 individuals from business, labor, government, academia, and the NGO community came together to create a compelling new vision of what the energy economy could become, and to identify policy changes that would spark a revolution in energy technology.

The Coalition focused on practical political coalition building, aimed at breaking the gridlock along partisan lines that had previously prevented substantive advances in energy policy. The Coalition created six Working Groups of diverse participants that participated in a nine-month effort to identify a new path forward. These working groups presented recommendations in the areas of Transportation, Bioenergy and Agriculture, the Future of Coal, End-Use Efficiency, the Smart Grid, and Innovative Financing for International Energy Development. The original recommendations formulated by the Working Groups can be found in the 2003 report, Challenges and Opportunities: Charting America's Energy Future.

Elements of the Coalition's recommendations were included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005). Although the bill failed to make dramatic progress in reducing oil dependence and mitigating climate change, it was a step in the right direction and reflected the Coalition's success at changing the debate around energy.

Building on the Coalition's Bioenergy and Agriculture Working Group, a group of agriculture and forestry leaders developed the 25x'25 vision, which states that America should produce 25% of its energy from renewable resources by 2025. In the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 Congress endorsed 25x'25 as a goal for the nation.

In 2007, the Coalition began working at the state level on the cheapest and fastest way to meet our energy needs -- energy efficiency.  In 2008, the Coalition launched exploratory meetings into what would become the Rebuilding America initiative.  In 2010, Rebuilding America developed federal legislation to incentivize commercial building energy efficiency upgrades via federal rebates.  The legislation became known as Building STAR, and while it ultimately failed to pass, it laid the foundation for Rebuilding America’s continuing work in the commercial building energy efficiency sector at the federal, state, and local levels.

Americans for a Clean Energy Grid was launched in 2010 as an outgrowth of the Coalition’s work on the “smart grid.”  This initiative brings together a diverse group of stakeholders to support policies that scale up a cleaner electricity system by unlocking domestic renewable energy resources currently stranded in our country’s remote areas and deploying smart technologies to make the transmission and distribution grid more reliable, resilient, and secure, accommodate renewable power, and enable more energy efficiency by consumers and businesses.

Stay up-to-date on Coalition activities by frequently checking our Editor’s Blog and Press Releases.