George P. Shultz Energy Policy Working Group

Since its founding by the Hon. George P. Shultz and Amb. Thomas F. Stephenson in 2007, the Hoover Institution’s Shultz Energy Policy Working Group has pursued what the former secretary of state called “a balanced approach” towards sustaining the economic, environmental, and security dimensions of energy policy. Though political interests at any given time may be parochial, those who neglect any one leg of the stool for too long are apt to be mugged by reality.

In today’s emerging geopolitical era—arguably the most dangerous since 1962—the working group aims to shape a constructive agenda for assessing how our energy choices can best strengthen America and the West. It convenes energy and national security experts alongside industry practitioners to think afresh about how US energy resources, technologies, and commercial markets can be used as platforms to deepen and reinforce America’s critical alliances and partnerships with like-minded nations around the world.

Two epochal shifts have converged to prompt this fresh look at American energy statecraft.

China’s revanchism and totalitarian turn under Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brazen invasion of Ukraine and military cooperation with North Korea, and Iran’s continued disruptions throughout the Middle East have demonstrated that the post-Cold War world is a more dangerous place than many thought. As we once again navigate a world of great power competition and outright conflict, economics and technology intersect with security concerns in new and ambiguous ways—shared principles have become more important in national relationships.

Meanwhile, we have seen incredible growth over the past fifteen years not only in US domestic oil and gas production, but also in the other advanced energy supply and demand technologies—including clean energy technologies—that underpin our national dynamism. After decades of seeing the energy landscape primarily in terms of risk, it is now one of opportunity. We are no longer in a place of weakness on energy, and we have choices about who we want to be and how we wish to act in this nascent era. And our domestic energy actions directly impact the vitality and security of allies and partners abroad—including both rich but energy insecure importers, and developing nations that aspire to high levels of economic growth that depend on new, reliable, and affordable sources of energy.

The Group’s work combines these two trends, bringing both shared values and interests to the table with energy as a central pillar of American diplomatic and strategic goals. Members are drawn from the Hoover fellowship and represent bipartisan expertise, public service, and industry operational experience at the highest levels across economic, scientific, diplomatic, and security realms. They convene an annual Global Energy Statecraft Workshop to consider specific regional dynamics through economic, environmental, and security lenses. And at any given time, members pursue a small number of research projects intended to help guide the development of a balanced energy policy portfolio for the global West, including:

• Building energy and economic resilience among American allies in the Indo-Pacific LNG basin through expansion of US supply and establishment of a multilateral gas coordination institutional framework.
• Development of a responsible US-India LNG corridor that improves India’s environmental performance over coal and supports economic growth, while positioning the United States as a reliable alternative to Russian fuels. 
• Bilateral partnership to evaluate and strengthen the security and reliability of Taiwan’s energy system.
• A measured approach to Western critical materials resilience that balances market and government forces.
• Meeting growing AI data center and industrial clean energy demands through new business models and regulatory frameworks that shift from first-of-a-kind to Nth-of-a-kind unit costs for new nuclear technologies.