Getting America Off Oil: The Oil Solutions Initiative
Instead of allowing the differences in the plans to divert attention from the important solution these groups were all striving for, RMI partnered with the Brookings Institution and created the Oil Solutions Initiative (OSI), a multi-pronged effort to use the strengths of all the plans without losing sight of the shared goal: reducing America’s dependence on oil.
RMI and Brookings then created a network which included representatives from all the groups with plans related to making the United States less oil dependent: the Alliance for Climate Protection, the Apollo Alliance, the Council on Competitiveness, the Energy Security Leadership Council, Andy Grove’s “Retrofit” Plan, the Institute for 21st Century Energy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Commission on Energy Policy, the National Petroleum Council, NRDC, the Pickens Plan, Set America Free, Brookings, and RMI.
After initial interviews with representatives from each group and research into the various plans themselves, RMI and Brookings convened the collection of stakeholders, at Brookings’s Washington, D.C. facilities, during an Oil Solutions summit.
Perhaps the most surprising thing the whole process has revealed is the growing nationwide interest in getting off oil. In past decades, as soon as oil has dropped in price, it’s been forgotten. By time of RMI/Brookings Oil Solutions summit, oil was back down to around $40 a barrel and the economy was tanking. But RMI and the 13 other groups’ focus on oil independence shows that oil issues— that is, oil’s impact on the economy, security and the environment—have become just too weighty to be ignored.
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