From petroleum marketers to homeowners and more, the group advocates for all energy users.
By Keith Reid
The U.S. energy industry has been so successful in meeting its customers’ needs that for some the appreciation has been lost as to how complex the process is, how easily it could be disrupted by unbalanced policies and how important it is to businesses of all types and sizes and to their customers and employees.
The Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA) aims to increase that appreciation and give energy users an advocate for affordable, reliable and cleaner energy solutions. Its members include families, farmers, small businesses, distributors, producers and manufacturers. This past spring, Fuels Market News interviewed CEA President David Holt for a deeper dive into the organization’s goals and operations.
What is CEA’s mission?
The whole idea behind the Consumer Energy Alliance is that energy in all its forms—oil, gasoline, diesel, natural gas, electricity, renewable energy—is the lifeblood of the economy. Every job relies on affordable and reliable energy. Our economic livelihood—our personal security at home—relies on being able to turn on the lights and have something happen.
Back in the early days, the premise behind our founding was that there wasn’t an effective consumer advocate that represents manufacturers, farmers, truck drivers, small businesses, homeowners and everyone else who depends upon energy. CEA now has about 400 member companies, the vast majority of whom do not produce a molecule of energy—but they need energy every single day to sustain their lives and their jobs. And in 2026 we’ll celebrate our 20th anniversary.
The strong representation of the Chambers of Commerce is apparent.
Those local chambers are really the frontline representatives of the business community in small towns, all over the country. We have a lot of local chambers, and a lot of their members are individual CEA members as well. The relationship that CEA has with those local chambers and business leaders is critically important to providing a common understanding and balancing this debate in a thoughtful way. Right now, a lot of the energy debate is occurring at that local level, but many of those who oppose refinery expansion or a pipeline moving through a community that would bring local jobs and economic growth are from outside the community and funded by national groups.
Lately, a lot of that balance seems to be an almost exclusive focus on electrification at the expense of combustion, including lower-carbon renewable solutions. Describe that challenge.
The United States is proving its energy leadership with innovation. We’re leading the world in carbon reduction, but we’re also leading the world in volatile organic compound, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter reduction. Virtually every environmental measuring stick has the United States leading the world in meeting and exceeding environmental goals.
Consumers all over the country want cleaner energy. But these mandates and these draconian policies don’t provide meaningful environmental benefits and certainly increase prices for families and small businesses. The groups that oppose fossil energy, natural gas or oil also oppose carbon capture technology, which is a great strategy for industrial users that produce carbon. So, there’s clearly another agenda at play here.
The business of carbon reduction is here now. Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000 companies have solutions for petrochemical plants, ethanol plants, refineries and other industrial plants all over the country.
You’re seeing that carryover into the opposition of pipelines that carry carbon dioxide from capture for ethanol production. What’s the environmental justification for that?
There’s a group called the Bold Alliance that has attempted to demonize carbon pipelines related to ethanol production. They’re trying to scare people on eminent domain and right-of-way usage. A lot of pipelines try to use existing right of ways and be associated with current pipeline routes. They are using a lot of the same fear tactics, almost going door to door to scare citizens. And CEA goes up against them to tell the truth and provide balance to these discussions.
We all need to recognize that the environmental movement is also a business. A lot of these groups raise a lot of money by saying “no” to projects and striking fear in voters’ hearts—and they are not accurate. They’re not dealing with facts, and they conveniently ignore the economic implications for families and small businesses.
There are a lot of structural problems with the grid to be addressed with a push for electrification. And then if you add the electrical demands of AI to the equation, those challenges seem to dramatically increase.
In 2016, we had 100 “intermittency days,” which is when a state or local government makes an announcement for their citizens to conserve power. In 2023, we had about 350. We can all be concerned about unaffordable or expensive energy, but we are moving ourselves into a position where we’re having more and more potential blackout days.
We need to make sure that we have enough of what’s called base-load power, which is the available power that can peak up and down depending on the need. And that really comes from natural gas, and very soon nuclear. It’s encouraging to hear so many states and Washington, D.C., talk about small modular reactors and advanced nuclear technology to augment natural gas. I’m not saying we do away with renewables—wind and solar will have a role—but they are not always available power.
How much support is there for that? Modular reactors were a part of the Biden Administration’s energy plan, but a lot of the same people who are the most aggressive in the environmental sector have little to no love for nuclear.
I think it’s strong and getting stronger and it’s good that we’re having these conversations. This isn’t your grandfather’s nuclear industry anymore. These are small modular reactors that don’t produce a lot of waste. They are all scalable so you can “stack” them to serve communities of various sizes. I think the big discussion for the next several years is which technology or technologies are going to win as the preferred choice. But we can’t get from here to there without nuclear.
Electric vehicles are here to stay. They have a market that appreciates technology, the technology is ready for prime time (and improving),but there’s a large market that still appreciates internal combustion engines. What would be a good mix for the transportation sector?
The market will pick the proper balance. I think one of the worst things that could happen to the EV market is for states or Washington, D.C., to mandate a certain required number of EV purchases to force consumers into a market. That would strain the grid, and we still don’t have enough recharging stations around the country. On average, EVs cost up to $17,000 more than an internal combustion engine. As they age, the replacement cost for EV batteries is about half or a third of the cost of the EV when it was originally purchased.
All these things are difficult for consumers to accept unless they’re well educated, and they make an informed choice—if they’re allowed to make that choice. I think the market will respond and there will be a large segment that will pick EVs. They’re efficient and they’re fun to drive. And if you don’t have to drive 500 miles or so on a regular basis, they are a practical choice.
How do you get your messages out and support your members?
We have a very strong communications team, and we do a lot of op-eds and interviews all over the country. We have a strong social media push and we’re getting stronger. We have members in a variety of states and we’re in constant communication. We have pipeline campaigns going on right now—plus transmission campaigns, oil and natural gas campaigns, both onshore and offshore, all over the country. We meet with governors, state legislators, city council members, mayors, county councils and large national associations of all types all over the country.
It’s really a combination of those face-to-face meetings, understanding the key stakeholders in the community, the business leaders that understand and appreciate energy implications and the impacts of bad policy or good policy. Then, mobilizing them to take a leadership role and giving them a voice as part of that leadership role.
Frankly, it’s that advocacy approach long used by groups that say “no” to progress and “no” to energy in some way. We are a group that says “yes,” and we need to find a solution. We must use ingenuity and technology, but you must make sure that energy is affordable and reliable.
There are a lot of organizations involved in your membership. Could a local petroleum marketer or retailer become a member?
We’re open to everybody. The entire U.S. economy needs to be represented in the CEA in some way to amplify our messaging. We would welcome having fuel marketers and retailers as part of the mix. It makes us stronger as an organization. The Transportation Energy Institute has been on the CEA board for several years, so we are already engaged with petroleum marketers. But for that local conversation or state conversation, the more involvement we have the better.
Keith Reid is the editor of Fuels Market News
