A Decent Energy Policy

Today we need a decent energy policy, one that has three basic components, an energy policy the president has failed to deliver for 7 long years.

(1) Radical Innovations in Energy Efficiency, incentives for a free market to get new and alternative energy products up and moving quickly. The most heartening example is Congressman J. Randy Forbes (Republican VA-04) who introduced legislation that calls for a “New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence” with seven energy goals that will move the United States towards 100% energy independence in 20 years. http://video.aol.com/video-detail/forbes-introduces-new-manhattan-project-on-cnn/2703733581
http://www.house.gov/forbes/newsroom/enewsletter/2008/06062008.htm
President Bush's 2007 budget provided paltry amounts of money for energy efficiency and alternative and renewable energy, far less than the $2 billion the oil and gas industry received in 2007 tax breaks. Back in 2006 Bush pledged renewable energy Initiative and then turned around and gutted the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL). His budgets have slowly sought to sink the NREL with his current budget allocation of $181.5 million or $48 million less than the 2003 NREL budget of $229.5 million.

(2) Conservation – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) “Energy Policy Conservation Act,” of 1975 was to double new car fuel economy by model year 1985. Two years ago, the administration opposed measures to reduce oil consumption and to increase CAFE standards (see Administration Policy on HR. 6 - Energy Policy Act of 2005). Year after year the automotive industry has successfully brought pressure on government to relax or delay these standards. http://www.policyalmanac.org/environment/archive/crs_cafe_standards.shtml

(3) End Our Addiction to Oil. We must get it through our heads that oil is not in our future. We account for 25% of global demand and possess less than 3% of proven reserves. America has always had the ingenuity to lead the world on to new frontiers, and using the world governments’ concerns over carbon emission, we could very well get the world off and its oil economy and on to cleaner energy sources, sources we have. For example, natural gas that burns much cleaner than oil based gasoline is available here in the U.S. with proven reserves second only to Russia. Just as progressive minded Brazil came up with their successful flex car, we could be leading the world with fuel efficient clean burning natural gas and syngas vehicles; that is if we could get back to the days that Sputnik scared us into going to the moon. But time after time the President and congress have voted against legislation to reduce foreign petroleum imports
http://www.democrats.org/a/2007/06/bush_republican_1.php

So what is Congress doing about energy? Edison is rolling in his grave! Please listen to
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e-LOtKIIKcg

Also please read the following article by Thomas L. Friedman, “Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave” June 22, 2008 - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/opinion/22friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was “addicted to oil,” and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: “Get more addicted to oil.”

Actually, it’s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can’t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (where only 13% of our oil reserves lie).

It’s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: “C’mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we’ll all go straight. I’ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.”

It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better. The president actually had the gall to set a deadline for this drug deal:

“I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,” Mr. Bush said. “Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If Congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.”

This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers (the CAFÉ law); this from a president who’s done nothing to encourage conservation; this from a president who has so neutered the Environmental Protection Agency that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren’t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup (Stephen L. Johnson).

But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn’t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America’s energy profile right now — unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow — and create good tech jobs to boot.

That bill is H.R. 6049 — “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,” which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables. These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. “Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines — because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.

That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans — sorry to say, with the help of John McCain — have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.

Of course, we’re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I’d prefer — for geopolitical reasons — that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn’t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He’d be telling the country a much larger truth:

“Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we’re going to break our addiction: We’re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy — particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we’re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.”

That’s what a real president would do. He’d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn’t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don’t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.


By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Monday, May 12, 2008 4:20 PM PT

For the last 28 years, Democrats in Congress and a few Republicans have again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska's ANWR area when we knew it contained at least 10 billion barrels of oil we could be using now.
* For the past 31 years, Congress repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries that we now badly need.
* More recently, congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea 100 miles out. However, it's somehow OK for China to drill there.
* As a further indictment of our Congress, since the 1980s it has continually stopped all building of nuclear power plants while France, Germany and, yes, Japan, plus 12 other major nations, did build plants and now get 20% to 80% of their energy from their wise and safe nuclear plant investments.
* From 1990 to 2000, U.S. crude oil demand rapidly accelerated by 7.41 quadrillion BTUs, according to Department of Energy data. And our rate of foreign oil dependency dramatically increased while our domestic oil production steadily declined.

Under the eight Clinton years alone, U.S. oil production declined 1,349,000 barrels per day, or 19%, while our foreign imports increased 3,574,000 barrels per day, or 45%. During this time, President Clinton vetoed ANWR drilling bills that would have clearly made Alaska our No. 1 state in the production of our own vitally needed oil supply, not only for all Americans but also for national defense emergencies. So were Democrats and members of Congress together merely short-sighted, with only a few having any real business experience? Or were they just ignorant about economics - the fact that the law of supply and demand determines the price of all commodities such as oil, steel, copper and lumber? Or were they simply and utterly irresponsible and incompetent in their actions that led us to become dangerously dependent on increasing oil imports from foreign countries?

We think it was "all of the above."

The unintended consequence of the Congress members' poor judgment and meddling micromanagement of U.S. energy policy is that they actually hurt most the very people they always profess to be able to help - the average American consumer, lower-income workers and those in the inner city who can't afford an extra $100 a month to drive to and from their jobs. Democrats kowtowed to the wishes of their environmental supporters over the basic needs of 300 million American citizens. It is a national disgrace that all they now know how to do is relentlessly criticize, complain and condemn. They always attempt to blame, investigate and scapegoat someone else, in this case U.S. oil companies, when Congress is the true villain of ineptness for constantly blocking and obstructing every effort for us to become more productive and less dependent on foreign oil. Do those now in Congress really think Middle America's voters are so gullible that they will believe that its latest best and brightest answer to increasing our supply of oil and gas is to slap a 25% windfall penalty tax on oil companies and remove all other incentives for oil companies to drill and explore for oil? The right time to release oil from, or stop adding to, our Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not now. That will do nothing to increase our ongoing oil supply needs and will have limited affect on oil prices while increasing our national security risks.
Only after we first announce to the world a bold new change in our policy by proclaiming that we intend to begin drilling in ANWR and selected outer sea areas, plus adopt new conservation programs, will the release of oil from our reserves have a major impact on breaking the price of oil.

If our congressional leadership can't muster the courage to begin reversing past mistakes now and allow our companies to drill in ANWR and off-limits offshore areas, and build essential refineries and safe nuclear power plants, what will an even-more-discredited Congress do in 2009, 2010 and 2011, when millions of new city dwellers in China and India will be driving the cars their countries are now producing, thereby materially increasing their already huge demand for oil and gas?

It's wake-up time for America. Maybe we should investigate the blame-throwing investigators in Congress.