Morgan Caplan
Senior Communications Manager
Congressman Sean Casten—a former clean energy entrepreneur—is a leading voice in Congress on clean energy issues. We spoke with him this week about a range of hot-button energy issues. The highlights are below, and you can watch the full interview here.
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On Permitting Reform…
“Everybody in the White House is pushing to raise the price of energy. Chris Wright’s a fracker. He makes more money when the price of gas goes up, he’s very transparent about what his interests are. Doug Burgum makes money when the price of energy goes up and the Trump White House has given them what they wanted. Then you know, the price of natural gas has gone up in part because they pushed all of those LNG exports. So I don’t think much good is going to happen on the permitting front in the foreseeable future. But that’s not to say we can’t.”
On the Cheap Energy Act…
“For huge parts of our history, we’ve bent over backwards to make sure producers are profitable and very rarely work to make sure energy prices go down…What Mike [Levin] and I have tried to do in the Cheap Energy Act is change some incentives in our system so that energy producers can make money if they help energy consumers save money…You can keep a portion of the money you save rather than pass all along to your customers.”
On Climate Messaging in Politics…
“I’d be reminding [Iowa] voters that…we got a lot of biofuels that comes out of that state. But that requires, you know, going after some of the petroleum interests and your elected officials that you’re representing you right now are afraid to stand up to John Thune because he represents the Bakken oil shell and he wants to make sure that oil prices are high. They’re afraid to stand up to Mike Johnson because he represents the Gulf Coast of Louisiana where they want the price of gas to be high. So vote for me because I will actually deliver what you want as constituents and won’t be beholden to Republican leadership.”
On Something Most People Don’t Know About Him…
“My high school was majority African-American, the white people were majority Jewish. The non-Jewish white people were majority Italian. So, I was a I was a deep minority trying to figure out how to be popular in the ways that high school kids do. And hands down, the most popular thing I ever did in high school was I won a lip-sync contest as Mike D doing the “New Style” from the Beastie Boys first License to Ill…I knew I’d really made it when I was a sophomore and seniors started high-fiving me in the hall…”
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