Revealed: NERA Economic Consulting is Third Party Contractor for DOE LNG Export Study

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Reuters has revealed the identity of the mysterious third party contractor tasked to publish the economic impact study on LNG (liquefied natural gas) exports on behalf of the Department of Energy (DOE). Its name: NERA Economicย Consulting.

โ€œNERAโ€ is shorthand forย National Economic Research Associates, an economic consulting firm SourceWatchย identifies as the entityย that published a June 2011 report on behalf of coal industry front groupย American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). ACCCE‘s report concluded, โ€œclean-air rules proposed by the Obama administration would cost utilities $17.8 billion annually and raise electricity rates 11.5 percent on average inย 2016.โ€

That report went so far to say that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations of the coal-generated electrcity sector would amount to some 1.5 million lost jobs over the next fourย years.

NERA was founded by Irwin Stelzer,ย senior fellow and director of the right-wingย Hudson Instituteโ€™s Center for Economic Policy. In Oct. 2004,ย The Guardianย described Stelzerย as the โ€œright-hand man of Rupert Murdoch,โ€ theย CEO of News Corp., which owns Foxย News.ย 

According to NERA‘s website, the late Alfred E. Kahn, the โ€œfather of deregulation,โ€ advised NERA‘s 1961 foundation.ย 

In 2010, NERA published a letter to the New York Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to protest the prospective closure of the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plants.

A NERA report from earlier this year provided the basis for the popular King Coal refrain that the EPA‘s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) Rule would cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars and โ€œkillโ€ 180,000-215,000 jobs.

These figures were picked up and cited by climate change denier U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) in June when he spoke out against President Barack Obama’s mythological โ€œwar on coal,โ€ as well as by the Republican Policy Committee in a May policy paper titled, โ€œObamaโ€™s War on Coal.โ€ย 

With a track record like this, it’s best to view whatever report the Obama Administration’s DOE (aka NERA) produces on the economic impact of LNG exports, set to come out by the end of the year,ย with extreme skepticism if not downrightย hostility.

Photo Credit:ย Oleksandr Kalinichenko | ShutterStock

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Steve Horn is the owner of the consultancy Horn Communications & Research Services, which provides public relations, content writing, and investigative research work products to a wide range of nonprofit and for-profit clients across the world. He is an investigative reporter on the climate beat for over a decade and former Research Fellow for DeSmog.

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