Memo: Voters Support the Creation of a National Investment Authority
By Danielle Deiseroth, Julian Brave NoiseCat, and Marcela Mulholland
Executive Summary
Voters agree that the federal government, rather than the private sector, should lead investments in new clean energy infrastructure projects
Voters support the creation of a National Investment Authority, a new federal agency to centralize and lead clean infrastructure investments, by a 22 percentage-point margin
Democrats have recently introduced new plans to transform and rebuild American infrastructure with historic investments in clean energy. House Democrats recently passed the Moving Forward Act, a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan, and the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released a lengthy report detailing policy recommendations for how to decarbonize the United States and transition the economy away from fossil fuels and towards renewables. In July 2020, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden released his own plan to invest $2 trillion over four years to build a new clean energy economy. Yet, as our latest report The Climate Case for a National Investment Authority by Saule Omarova argues, left-leaning policymakers will need to build new public financial institutions to aggregate and direct capital into this new clean energy economy. Private financial institutions as they exist and operate are insufficient. In her report, Omarova outlines a vision and role for a ‘National Investment Authority’ (NIA) to centralize and drive this just transition.
