Overview: Meeting the Challenge of our Generation

Climate change is the crisis that is happening and impacting all Americans now. It is already transforming how we live and fueling more extreme weather that puts our lives and livelihoods, and those of our children and grandchildren, in peril. How we respond will define our generation.

The next president must mobilize every part of the federal government and the economy to move our nation to zero climate pollution, and help the rest of the world get there as well, as fast as possible. As Third Way’s polling has shown, an overwhelming majority of Democratic primary voters see the change in their community today. We need a leader with the ambition and vision to match this challenge.

That means a president who will act on climate on Day One. A president who will use all of the powers and resources of the United States government to provide clean energy to all Americans and ensure that every American in every part of our country has access to the opportunities it creates. These include cleaner air and water; well-paying, quality jobs; improved roads, bridges, and transportation options; and affordable energy for our homes.

We cannot wait for congressional Republicans to enter the 21st century and acknowledge the obvious: that we are living in a climate emergency. When Republican state legislators in Oregon abdicate their responsibility to govern, flee the capital, and threaten violence, their position is clear. When U.S. Senate Republicans prevent any climate legislation from getting a vote, their position is clear. When the Trump Administration denies climate science and turns back the calendar on environmental protections to the 1950s, its position is clear.

That is why the next president must have a fulsome, ambitious climate plan that leads with executive action on day one and makes climate change an overriding priority in his or her administration. Such a plan must include:

Putting the United States on the fastest path to zero. We must use every technology that reduces carbon pollution, make clean energy affordable for all Americans, and make federal investments in innovation to develop the technologies we still need.

• We will do this by investing $4 trillion over 10 years in clean energy and improved infrastructure, so that the United States can cut climate pollution, including CO2, methane, and all other greenhouse gasses, by 50% by 2030. We will invest $150 billion over 10 years on innovation to develop the additional clean energy technologies we need to get the entire country to net-zero by 2050, at the latest.
• The fastest path to zero also needs to encompass every part of the economy that produces climate pollution – particularly in transportation and industry, which are the largest and fastest growing source of emissions, respectively – by using every clean energy resource we have today, in addition to focusing on replacing fossil fuels with clean energy in the power sector.

Building a clean energy future that creates opportunity and provides equity for EVERY American community. This transition must be affordable and fair for all American households. We must ensure that the millions of new jobs created in the change to a clean energy economy are good jobs and that opportunities and support are available for communities that will lose jobs.

Restoring America’s global leadership. We must not only return to the Paris Climate Accord but also go further by establishing new, binding goals that will put the industrialized economies of the world on the path to net zero by 2050 at the latest.

Ending taxpayers’ underwriting of the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuel companies, whose products contribute significantly to climate change, are enormously profitable and have benefited from decades of direct and indirect taxpayer assistance, federal investment in research and development, and subsidized access to public land and shorelines for exploration. It goes against our own interest to keep spending American tax dollars to underwrite not only climate pollution, but also activities that undermine climate science, clean energy, and efforts to eliminate carbon emissions. That must stop.

Section 1. Top Line Actions

Executive Action

Much of this can be done as soon as the next President takes office through executive action. This includes:

• Establishing a clear zero-climate pollution/100% clean energy standards for the federal government across every department for power, vehicles, and purchases. This will help dramatically accelerate the U.S.’s path to net-zero carbon pollution and 100% clean energy by 2050 at the latest and end the federal government’s own addiction to climate change-causing fossil fuels.
• Buying clean for America, modeled on California’s Buy Clean procurement standard to accelerate the clean energy economy by ensuring that the federal government purchases zero-carbon and recycled carbon industrial materials, alternative fuels, chemicals, and other products.
• Mobilizing every relevant part of the U.S. government to support clean energy innovation that will help us develop the technologies we still need to meet our goal of eliminating climate pollution as fast as possible. The head of OSTP should coordinate innovation across all relevant agencies to meet specific carbon emissions, cost, and deployment targets.
• Transforming transportation in the U.S. by making climate pollution reductions a key decision-making factor in what state and local projects are funded by the federal government.
• Creating a truly national railway system to reduce congestion and pollution on our roads and highways by investing in the Federal Railroad Administration and prioritizing passenger rail and rail maintenance.
• Instructing every agency in the federal government to work together to ensure that all Americans have the resources they need to thrive and get access to opportunity where they live in the clean energy economy. The National Economic Council and Domestic Policy Council would oversee this effort. It is particularly important for those in vulnerable communities that are on the frontlines of climate change or over-reliant on an industry that contributes to climate change.
• Creating a clean air and water protection SWAT team to identify, restore, and strengthen crucial environmental protections repealed by the Trump Administration, including methane restrictions, auto efficiency standards, and national park protections.
• Ensuring quality jobs for workers by requiring federal contractors, suppliers, and all federally funded clean energy and infrastructure projects comply with fair labor practices including workers’ right to organize, adherence to Davis-Bacon, and project labor agreements.
• Fast-tracking the carbon economy by synchronizing the federal government’s approach to carbon management (including removal or capture, storage, transportation, and use). This would also include instructing the Department of Interior to purchase the first gigaton of captured carbon from a variety of sources, including natural gas, direct air capture, and industrial sources to create the carbon market, and to fast-track the building of pipelines to transport CO2, hydrogen, ammonia and other gases necessary in a net-zero carbon economy.
• Making it Paris Plus by returning to the Paris Agreement and committing to more ambitious goals that are in line with our domestic priorities of cutting climate pollution by 50% in 2030 and to net-zero by 2050. This should be part of a broader international climate agenda that also includes ratifying the Kigali agreement to eliminate HFCs.
• Investigating domestic oil companies, via the Department of Justice, to determine whether they committed fraud by knowingly burying their own scientific research that found decades ago that fossil fuels were contributing to climate change and by funding research and advertising downplaying that fact.

Setting the Agenda in Congress

In addition to executive action, Congress must take certain actions to ensure sufficient funding is available and goals are set to put the U.S. on the fastest path to zero. While the full list is in Sections 2-5, key components include:

• Clean Energy Standards that end carbon pollution in every sector of the economy by 2050 at the latest. These limits would match the federal government’s zero-climate pollution/100% clean energy standards and could give states or industries flexibility as to how they would eliminate climate pollution but not when. This should include power, transportation, industry, buildings, and agriculture.
• Building 21st century clean energy infrastructure through a $4 trillion 10-year investment, including power plants to replace fossil plants that lack carbon capture, public electric vehicle charging facilities, clean manufacturing plants, and transportation infrastructure that will reduce fossil fuel consumption in all parts of the country, including urban and rural communities that lack the resources to build-out clean energy.
• Accelerating the transition away from dirty energy by enabling the use of financing and accounting mechanisms to encourage early retirement of fossil fuel power plants, particularly those that could be replaced with clean power or manufacturing facilities.
• Jumpstarting American clean energy innovation by increasing federal investment to $150 billion over 10 years to develop every zero-carbon tool we need. This funding would cover all relevant federal agencies to ensure that investments go to developing clean energy technologies beyond just the electricity sector and to all regions of the country, not just the coasts. A new clean energy tax credit for any new, zero-carbon technology would enhance the impact of the federal investment.
• Making the U.S. the leader in clean manufacturing by providing funding for companies to upgrade facilities and hold workforce training that will help meet specific emissions and efficiency goals, and by removing bureaucratic roadblocks to such actions.
• Ending subsidies for carbon pollution by eliminating the intangible drilling cost deduction and percentage depletion allowance.

Section 2. Details on Eliminating Climate Pollution

Putting the United States on the fastest path to zero

Context: To stave off the most severe impacts of climate change, the UN International Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 special report on 1.5C concluded that all nations, including the U.S., must eliminate climate pollution by mid-century. This is a backgrounder on what this means.

Most of our recommendations focus on the three economic sectors — transportation, power, and industry — that produce about 75% of the climate pollution in the United States. Here is an analysis of what economic activities contribute to climate pollution in the U.S.

Addressing electricity using every technology we have

Context: The UN IPCC Report, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance all warn that the U.S. will not get to net-zero carbon pollution in the power sector (never mind the entire economy) by relying on wind and solar alone. We need every technology we have and some we don’t yet have.

• Executive Action: The federal government (including the Department of Defense) is the nation’s largest consumer of electricity. The White House should establish clean energy standards, including all zero-carbon technologies (renewables, efficiency, existing and advanced nuclear, carbon capture for natural gas, and short and long-duration storage), for all of the power that the federal government and its contractors purchase or consume.
• Executive Action: Establish a complete plan of clean energy corridors where permitting and construction can be fast-tracked for vital infrastructure to move carbon-free power, hydrogen, and other clean energy products across the country.
• Executive Action: Create a program to revitalize retired or retiring fossil-fired power plants by accelerating permitting and financing the transition of these sites to clean energy and manufacturing facilities.
• Executive Action: Restore critical methane regulations that have been rolled back under the Trump Administration. This includes requirements for oil and gas companies to monitor and repair methane leakage and restrictions on intentional flaring or burning of methane during drilling activities.
• Executive Action: Create an emergency task force to identify and restore (and strengthen) crucial rules and environmental protections repealed by the Trump Administration. This includes rules on methane emissions, fuel-economy standards, power plants, national parks, and more.
• Legislative Action: Create a program for securitization or accelerated depreciation for fossil-fired power plants to encourage plant owners and regulators to speed their closure and replace with cleaner resources.
• Legislative Action: Enact a national Clean Energy Standard (such as S.1359 introduced by Sen. Smith (D-MN)) that requires every state to reach net-zero carbon emissions in the electricity sector by 2050.
• Legislative Action: Enact technology-inclusive clean energy tax credits that will foster all carbon-free technologies and enable a marketplace that can innovate the fastest path towards deep carbon reductions in the energy, transportation, and building sectors. Instead of a federal tax code that only has disparate and unpredictable incentives for clean energy, establishing technology-inclusive tax credits will provide the long-term vision and support to build the next generation of clean energy technologies until they are able to compete with carbon-polluting resources.

Addressing transportation, our largest source of emissions

Context: State and local departments of transportation received $63.9 billion in fiscal year 2018 from the federal government to build and maintain roads, bridges, and mass transit. They get no assistance or guidance on how to eliminate climate pollution from transportation or to ensure that every American has access to affordable, clean transportation options.

We fund our roads and bridges as if we still live in the era of leaded gasoline and drive-in movies. The president can change that on day one of the next administration by requiring that all transportation projects be evaluated by how much they will reduce (or increase) carbon pollution, prioritize rebuilding and maintaining the crumbling roads and bridges we already have, and getting every American access to more clean, affordable transportation options, especially in underserved rural and urban communities.

• Executive Action: The federal government (including the Department of Defense) is the nation’s largest consumer of fuel. The White House should establish a zero-carbon fuel standard for all of the non-combat vehicles it or contractors operate, and direct the Department of Defense to develop a plan to transition all combat vehicles to zero-carbon fuels, including through innovation funded and directed by DARPA.
• Executive Action: Have the Department of Transportation (DOT) require all state and local transportation agencies to measure carbon emissions from transportation and vehicle miles traveled in their jurisdiction. Set ambitious emissions and miles traveled reduction goals and reward states that exceed these goals.
• Executive Action: Change the way DOT funds state transportation projects to reflect states’ efforts to improve driving efficiency and reduce emissions with lower gas consumption and fewer miles traveled. Currently, the more gas is consumed in a state, the more gas tax money they get. There is no incentive for states to reduce their vehicle miles traveled since it benefits states to have people drive more.
• Executive Action: Order DOT to change the funding formula for state road projects to prioritize maintenance and repair of existing infrastructure before new roads can be built, and include measurement of the impact on climate pollutants in determining which projects get funded. This represents a significant shift from the current funding formula for states, which is designed to encourage new road construction.
• Executive Action: Transform our obsolete patchwork rail system into a true national passenger and freight rail network. Increase the staff of the Federal Railroad Administration and mandate them to create a national rail network that oversees the management, maintenance, and use of the rail system. They should prioritize efficient passenger rail travel during peak hours and coordinate use by freight railways during all other times. They should focus on intercity rail service that could reduce highway traffic.
• Executive Action: Improve public transit by changing the funding models. Now, the federal government will fund up to 50% of transit projects but up to 80% of road projects. All modes of transportation should receive an equitable share of federal funding.
• Legislative Action: Create a Federal Green Bank (such as the Green Bank Act of 2019, introduced by Democratic Senators in May) that could spur new private investment in clean energy deployment, energy efficiency, and climate mitigation.
• Legislative Action: Keep the gas tax, but shift funding of our highways, roads, bridges, and tunnels to a broader set of user fees that are progressive, provide a steady set of funding to maintain our transportation infrastructure, and do not place the heaviest burden on lower income families who too often have no other option but drive to work, live farthest away, and are most impacted by fluctuations in gas prices and poorly maintained roads.

Addressing industry, our fastest growing source of emissions

Context: The industrial sector is the nation’s largest end-user of electricity and was the largest contributor to emissions growth in 2018. Such emissions are predicted to grow by 23% through 2050. The industrial sector is strikingly inefficient: two-thirds of energy is lost along the way, and 0.5% of the sector is responsible for 25% of its emissions. While energy efficiency and fuel switching will play a large role in decarbonizing the sector, there are certain processes that require sustained high heat that cannot easily be replaced with renewables. Also, certain processes, like chemical reactions, produce GHGs and cannot be decarbonized. Here is a backgrounder on pathways to decarbonize the industrial sector.   

• Executive Action: Instate a federal Buy Clean procurement standard that includes procurement of zero-carbon and recycled carbon industrial materials, alternative fuels, chemicals, and products. Create an interagency task force to coordinate on standards, implementation, education, and outreach to procurement officers.
• Executive Action: Provide RD&D funding to three challenge areas for industry: advanced manufacturing technologies, low or zero-carbon alternatives for process heat, carbon capture for unavoidable industrial emissions.
• Executive Action: Bring together experts from energy-intensive industries to develop research plans and goals to cut energy waste and emissions in all major manufacturing sectors. These roadmaps will ensure DOE is investing in the right RD&D priorities to help industries get the job done.
• Legislative Action: Ratify the Kigali Amendment, which will be a win for American companies that have developed alternatives to HFCs and avoid an additional 0.5 degrees of warming by 2100.
• Legislative Action: Create a fund, and eliminate bureaucratic roadblocks, for the largest industrial emitters to install commercially available energy efficiency measures.
• Legislative Action: Fund voluntary energy and emissions audits and improvement plans for manufacturers of all sizes, and provide low or no-interest financing for facilities to help them make investments in new equipment and materials, efficiency upgrades, workforce training, and modern processes to enable them to meet specific emissions and efficiency goals.

Investing in innovation to create the technologies we still need

Context: We face some crucial technology gaps in our ability to eliminate climate pollution. As reports like this one from ITIF make clear, we must do much more. Current federal R&D investments are concentrated in the power sector, though it creates less than a third of emissions. Federal research investments should span all sectors of the economy and focus on areas with fewer options for eliminating climate pollution.

• Executive Action: The next president should name the Director of OSTP as the head of a new Climate Innovation Task Force that will oversee all federal R&D investments in innovation. Its goal: make sure that every relevant government agency is investing in innovative clean energy technologies that can quickly and affordably be built. This should include the Departments of Transportation, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor.
• Executive Action: Harmonize the federal government’s approach to managing carbon and other waste gases through capture, storage, transportation, and utilization. Make available funds to complete a full assessment of storage capacity.
• Executive Action: Fast-track the deployment of pipelines for CO2, hydrogen, ammonia and other gases necessary in a net-zero carbon economy.
• Executive Action: Instruct the Department of the Interior to purchase the first gigaton of captured carbon from natural gas, direct air capture facilities, and . industrial sources (or about 20% of U.S. emissions).
• Legislative Action: Increase federal investment in clean energy and climate solutions research, development, and deployment to a sustained level of $150 billion over 10 years ($15 billion per year). This has been recommended repeatedly by top science advisors, business leaders, and others. Establish explicit climate benefit and cost goals to ensure that the technologies we develop help eliminate climate pollutants AND are affordable and reduce the energy costs for American consumers.
• Legislative Action: Make explicit the environmental goals for the Department of Energy’s research to include addressing climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically authorize DOE to research, develop, and deploy technologies that will help reduce emissions, empowering personnel to pursue technologies that can help us address climate change regardless of the ideologies of any Administration.
• Legislative Action: Modernize the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy to refocus on innovating low-carbon technologies that can help us reduce emissions. The Office of Fossil Energy is responsible for federal research and development of advanced power generation, including power plant efficiency, water management, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies. Its primary authorization expired in 2009. Reauthorizing and expanding the innovation of carbon capture, such as S.1201, and establishing programs to demonstrate carbon capture with natural gas facilities, such as S.1683, will help us significantly reduce emissions coming from fossil fuels and the industrial sector.
• Legislative Action: Enhance federal research, development, and deployment support for energy storage technologies, particularly grid-scale storage needed for a carbon-free and reliable electric grid. This includes establishing grid-scale storage goals for daily, long-duration, and season storage, such as S.1602, and reauthorizing the energy storage R&D program at $50 million annually for the next 5 years with an additional $250 million technical assistance program, such as S.1593.
• Legislative Action: Advanced nuclear reactors could play a crucial role in eliminating carbon pollution from our entire economy by providing carbon-free, flexible, dispatchable power that has extraordinarily high energy density and the ability to be used for both electric and non-electric applications such as industrial processes. 2018 saw significant bipartisan legislative success in supporting advanced nuclear energy. Congress passed legislation to increase research and development collaboration with the private sector, improve advanced reactor licensing, and expand the nuclear production tax credit to accelerate early deployments. We must build upon this success with legislation such as S.903 that creates customers, sets deadlines, and generates investment for advanced nuclear reactors.
• Legislative Action: Increase federal investment for renewable energy research, development, and deployment. Federal support has already helped bring down the cost of wind and solar by 75 and 71 percent, respectively, since 2008, but we must do more to accelerate the deployment of renewables across the country. We must reauthorize and refocus the solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower research, development, and deployment programs at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
• Legislative Action: Reauthorize the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a highly effective innovation program at the Department of Energy that supports high-risk, high-reward research that could drastically alter our future energy production and use, such as with the ARPA-E Reauthorization Act of 2019. ARPA-E has a history of attracting significant private sector funding and forming new companies that are changing the energy industry. Despite abundant success, the program has been running with an expired authorization since 2013. In addition to reauthorizing, we must expand the program to address nuclear waste management and grid resilience, reliability, and security technologies.

Section 3. Details on Ensuring All Americans Benefit from Climate Action

Building a clean energy future that creates opportunity and provides equity for EVERY American community

Context: As we transition to a carbon-free economy, there will be increasing opportunity in clean energy, but also a loss of jobs in communities that are reliant on the fossil fuel industries. We must ensure that the new jobs created are good ones, with opportunities for workers to organize, advance on a career path, and secure family-supporting wages and fair benefits. And we must focus on the communities hit hardest by climate change — communities of color, indigenous people, the very old and very young, and low-income households.

• Executive Action: No one in the federal government is responsible for making sure that the people and communities most vulnerable to climate change are protected and receiving effective, efficient support. The Director of CEQ and the Chair of the National Economic Council should oversee DOE, HUD, HHS, Commerce, Labor, and FEMA to align their energy efficiency, assistance, and training regulations and programs. They should be guided by an advisory board of mayors and county leaders to ensure that these communities are represented and receive proper benefits.
• Executive Action: Direct the federal government to coordinate on jobs training for emerging and new areas in clean technology, like offshore wind, solar PV, semiconductors, manufacturing, energy efficiency, etc. (See, e.g., S.1769, the Offshore Wind Jobs and Opportunity Act, introduced by Sen. Markey (D-MA)).
• Executive Action: Require and enforce rules that all federal contractors and suppliers comply with fair labor practices that give workers the right to organize, including compliance with Davis-Bacon and project labor agreements on all federally-funded infrastructure, and clean energy projects.
• Executive Action: Create a plan to provide workforce and economic development to coal communities through programs like the Appalachian Regional Commission (see the POWER+ Plan outlined in the President’s Fiscal Year 2017 Budget).
• Legislative Action: Create a $1 billion fund to put people to work reclaiming abandoned mines and create economic opportunities in communities that have struggled with declining extractive industries — such as S.738, the RECLAIM Act of 2017, introduced by Sen Manchin (D-WV).
• Legislative Action: Make permanent the retirement funds for 100,000 former miners through the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Funds and the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. (Miner pensions typically average $560 per month.)

Section 4. Details on Restoring American Climate Leadership

Building on the Paris Agreement to do more

Context: Under the Trump Administration, the U.S. has withdrawn its leadership in addressing climate change. Our lack of commitment to reducing our own emissions allows countries like China to scale-back their own ambitions. We account for 4.3% of the world’s population and produce 15% of global emissions.

• Executive Action: The Paris Agreement is not enough. It would only put us on track to reduce climate pollution by 80% by 2050. We must and can do better. Re-entering the Paris Agreement is only a first, and symbolic, step. We must set a new, binding goal to cut emissions by 50% by 2030 and get to net-zero by 2050. We should enter into a new agreement with the world’s leading emitters that commits to getting to net-zero by 2050.
• Executive Action: We should reverse Trump tariffs on China only if the Chinese government takes verifiable actions to reduce CO2. And we should create a Clean Trade Pact that protects American clean manufacturing industries, creates new markets for these technologies, goods, and services, and rewards other countries that do the same.
• Executive Action: Lift the unofficial gag on DOD evaluating and considering the impacts of climate change on domestic and international DOD facilities, and order JCS to conduct a cross-branch assessment of the threat of climate change on national security.
• Legislative Action: Ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which 52 countries already have ratified. This amendment would phase-down the use of HFCs, a class of chemicals commonly used as coolants and refrigerants. HFCs have a global warming potential hundreds to thousands of times higher than CO2. In the U.S., the use of HFCs emits more than two times the emissions generated from the iron and steel sectors combined. By phasing down the use of HFCs and using available alternatives, we can avoid an additional 0.5 degree of warming by 2100 and have U.S. businesses lead this global transition.
• Legislative Action: Through the Federal Energy Management Program, establish water and energy usage reduction goals for federal buildings – such as the Federal Energy and Water Management Performance Act of 2019, introduced by Sen. Manchin (D-WV).

Section 5. Details on Ending Taxpayer Underwriting of the Fossil Fuel Industry

Stop funding pollution that is harming our country

Context: Oil and natural gas production are key parts of the U.S. economy. They contribute millions of jobs, provide cheap fuel and electricity, and are the building blocks for many of the goods and services that underpin modern life. Natural gas, which emits roughly half the carbon pollution as coal, has also played an enormous role in the decline of coal in the U.S. That has helped reduce air and water pollution, particularly for people living near coal power plants.

Oil and natural gas, however, are sources of climate pollution. Extraction of oil and gas, as well as oil refining and chemical production, have also had a disproportionate environmental impact on lower income communities. While our economy will remain dependent on these fuels for the foreseeable future, we must take action now to reduce their impact.

In addition to investing in carbon capture to eliminate carbon emissions from any natural gas that remains in use and restoring strict methane regulations, the U.S. should stop subsidizing the oil and gas industries. Since the start of the oil and gas booms, fossil fuel companies in the U.S. have been extremely profitable. Despite these profits, taxpayers are paying huge bills to subsidize fossil fuels – over $26 billion in direct fiscal support – $649 billion if we consider the full price of the environmental and social damage caused. A recent analysis by the IMF found that in 2015, the U.S. spent 10 times more on fossil fuel subsidies than education. We spent more on fossil fuel subsidies than we do for our defense budget. It makes no sense for us to subsidize successful, for-profit companies. These subsidies undermine all of the climate action the U.S. takes, and would make extracting half of all domestic oil reserves profitable, increasing U.S. oil production by 17 billion barrels, and emitting an additional 6 billion tons of CO2 in the next few decades.

• Executive Action: The next president should order DOJ to investigate whether it should pursue a civil or criminal fraud case against major oil companies for knowingly withholding scientific evidence that their activities were having a significant, negative impact on our climate, economy, and public health.
• Executive Action: End fossil fuel exploration on public lands.
• Executive Action: Update the social cost of carbon to reflect the international costs of climate change.
• Legislative Action: End the two largest direct subsidies to the fossil fuel industry: intangible drilling cost deduction and percentage depletion. Those funds could be directed to energy innovation. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that ending intangible drilling would generate $13 billion over 10 years, and eliminating percentage depletion would generate $12.9 billion over 10 years.