President Obama proposed in his State of the Union creating an
Energy Security Trust to invest in research and technology that
will "shift our cars and trucks off oil for good."
Oil and gas lease revenues, estimated at $150 billion over the next
decade, would fund the Trust. The idea of the Trust is more
than 30 years old and was recently endorsed by the ranking
Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee. While predicting what Congress will do is a
fool's errand, there is some reason to think that an Energy
Security Trust could become a reality.
President Carter in 1979 asked Congress to pass a windfall
profits tax on oil company revenues in order to establish a trust
that would be used to "protect low income families from energy
price increases, to build a more efficient mass transportation
system, and to put American genius to work solving our long-range
energy problems." More recently, Energy Security Trust
Fund bills were proposed in 2007
