Energizing California

Reid Porter
Posted July 10, 2015

Our series highlighting the economic and jobs impact of energy in each of the 50 states continues today with California. We started our focus on the state level with Virginia on June 29 and continued this week with Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia. The energy impacts of the states individually combine to form energy’s national economic and jobs picture: 9.8 million jobs supported and $1.2 trillion in value added.

Information covered in this series can be found online here, arranged on an interactive map of the United States. State-specific information will be populated on this map as the series continues.

Click on the thumbnail to bring up a two-page snapshot of energy’s benefits to California.

The top-line numbers: 793,200 jobs supported statewide, according to PwC; $131 billion added to the state economy; $58.9 billion contributed to the state’s labor income. All are significant drivers for the state’s economy.

Page 2 of the document highlights California’s opportunity to add 23,787 jobs and more than $2 billion to the state economy in 2020 if federal restrictions on U.S. crude exports are lifted. This pairs with a new Harvard Business School study that concludes: “The oil export ban is outdated and based on circumstances in the 1970s that since have been reversed.” Adding to an already extensive body of research chronicling the economic benefits of repealing the outdated crude export ban.

U.S. oil production has skyrocketed about 80 percent since 2006, and net petroleum imports are at their lowest levels in decades. Yet we’re the only advanced nation that prohibits crude oil exports.

Energy is critically important to California, serving as a key engine for the state economy – expanding job opportunities and offering the hope of prosperity to individual Californians and their families. Jobs, economic growth, consumer savings, and energy security – the case for overturning the obsolete crude export ban is irrefutable.

The future benefits of energy for California – and the rest of the country – largely depend on national decisions on the country’s energy path. A new Wood Mackenzie study contrasts the benefits that a set of pro-development policies could have on energy supplies, jobs, the economy and American households with the likely negative effects on energy of regulatory constrained policies. The key comparisons are found on the first page of the linked document.

Energy is essential for all facets of our daily lives, from powering national, state and local economies to powering the family vehicle. Safe, responsible development of domestic oil and natural gas resources is linked to individual prosperity, energy security and basic liberties.