The Competitive Enterprise Institute advocates for free market reforms that ensure abundant and affordable energy and better protect our environment. CEI has been instrumental in fighting decades of climate alarmism and anti-energy policies that constrict energy supplies, raise prices, and stoke unjustified pessimism about human adaptive capabilities.
Conclusions of CEI’s research and analysis include: Abundant, affordable energy is a blessing underpinning the unprecedented improvements of the past two centuries in life expectancy, health, standards of living, food and nutrition, and industrial production. The climate catastrophe narrative is based on global climate models that inflate greenhouse gas emission scenarios and have been falsified by the past four decades of temperature data. The real costs of proposed solutions to the alleged crisis hugely exceed their hypothetical benefits.
Coalitions led by CEI were instrumental in defeating ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, defeating enactment of the 2009 Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, and convincing President Trump to withdraw from the 2015 Paris climate treaty.
Energy and Environment Issue Areas
Featured Posts
Blog
Congress should support the Grizzly Bear State Management Act
Tomorrow, the House Natural Resources Committee will meet to consider 12 pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the 119th Congress. One of…
Blog
Congress should recognize the importance of prescribed burns
The Clean Air Act (CAA) requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six major air pollutants:…
Blog
Dispelling the desperate myths on IRA subsidies for wind and solar
The budget reconciliation process continues, as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act just passed the Senate and is headed back to the House. …
Studies
Laboratories of Bureaucracy
Introduction The United States faces significant challenges in modernizing its infrastructure and meeting evolving energy needs. One of the obstacles is the complex and time-consuming…
End IRA Subsidies Now
Introduction “The first lesson of economics is scarcity,” wrote economist Thomas Sowell. By contrast, “The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson…
Pumping the Brakes on Reform
This report examines Michigan’s recent permitting reforms, highlighting how some productive efforts to enhance accountability and efficiency have largely stalled. While the state took steps…
Blog
Regulatory hurdles could jeopardize growth of nuclear energy
Since the late 1800s, fossil fuels have been the energy source of the highest economic utility in driving innovation and prosperity.
EPA Proposes to Repeal Biden Power Plant Rule
As demand for electricity continues to rise, a pragmatic energy policy wins out. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin just announced the proposed repeal of a Biden…
Free the Economy podcast: Shareholders vs. stakeholders with Jerry Bowyer
In this week’s episode we cover the failure of postal banking, Trump pausing the TikTok ban (again), and the political crack-up…
News
CEI releases new report detailing how states are improving environmental permitting policies
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released a new report detailing how states across the country are improving their environmental permitting systems to become…
Senate poised to start undoing green subsidies in Big Beautiful Bill
The U.S. Senate will soon start debate on H.R.1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The latest version of this reconciliation bill includes many…
Report Urges Congress to End Boondoggle Green Subsidies Now
Congress has a golden opportunity now, during final negotiations over the budget, to wipe out green subsidies passed back in 2022 as part of the…
Op-Eds
Fox News
Trump’s Energy Department is taking back our home appliances from berserk bureaucrats
In quite possibly the sharpest regulatory U-turn thus far in 2025, the Trump Department of Energy (DOE) is proposing to roll back home appliance regulations…
DC Journal
EPA Should Consider the Harm of Regulating Greenhouse Gases
Even for the least essential choices we make in our daily lives, such as what we should have for dinner, we consider the pros and…
Wall Street Journal
Zero Is the Magic Number for Cutting Red Tape
One of President Trump’s executive orders could transform how the federal government reviews and manages energy regulations that rule and constrain our lives.
Staff & Scholars
Daren Bakst
Director of the Center for Energy and Environment and Senior Fellow
- Energy and Environment
- Lands and Wildlife
- Property Rights
Ben Lieberman
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Consumer Freedom
- Energy
Marlo Lewis, Jr.
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Energy
- Energy and Environment
Myron Ebell
Senior Fellow
- Climate
- Energy
- Energy and Environment
Paige Lambermont
Research Fellow
- Capitalism and Free Enterprise
- Energy
- Energy and Environment