Crunch Time on Energy
Published: June 19, 2007
The Senate will tell us this week whether it really wants to do
something about oil dependency and global warming or if it is just
fooling around.
The first week of debate on an energy bill, which the Senate majority
leader, Harry Reid, says he is determined to finish before the Fourth of
July recess, produced a few satisfying moments mainly involving bad
ideas that were made to disappear. The days ahead will be more combative.
Here are important points of contention and some thoughts about how they
should be resolved in a way that moves this country toward a cleaner,
more sustainable energy future:
¶ Fuel Economy. The most effective energy efficiency policy ever adopted
by the federal government is the Corporate Average Fuel Economy
requirement of 1975. CAFE has saved billions of barrels of oil, but it
has not been improved for decades. The bill before the Senate would
bring fleetwide averages from roughly 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles
per gallon by 2020, hardly an impossible target. This proposal should be
approved, and a weaker compromise offered by industry allies should be
defeated.
¶ Renewable Electricity. A provision championed by Senator Jeff
Bingaman, the leading Democratic spokesman on energy issues, would
require utilities to produce 15 percent of their power from wind, solar,
biomass and other clean-energy sources by 2020 reducing demand for
fossil fuels as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Senior Republicans,
complaining about the one-size-fits-all approach, are threatening a
filibuster. Here again, though, the requirement does not seem insanely
onerous. The Senate approved a 10 percent requirement two years ago, and
the House is talking about 20 percent.
¶Coal-to-Liquids. A coalition of coal interests has been lobbying
furiously for subsidies to build a new generation of coal-to-liquid
power plants to produce diesel fuel. This could reduce our dependence on
foreign oil, although marginally and at great cost. It would also be a
disaster in terms of global warming unless ways are found to capture and
store the carbon dioxide emissions from the refining process. Without
such safeguards, coal-to-liquid plants cannot be allowed to proceed.
¶Renewable Fuels. Biofuels offer a far cleaner and more promising
approach to oil dependency than coal-to-liquids. The bill would
quintuple production, chiefly ethanol from sources other than corn. This
is a generally popular provision that must be amended to make sure that
the rush to ethanol does not destroy valuable forest and conservation lands.
Waiting in the wings is a tax bill that will eventually be married to
the energy bill. On the whole, the tax bill favors renewable and other
clean energy sources over the oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear
interests that received top billing in the 2005 plan. In fact, the
entire energy discussion this year is more forward-looking than it has
been for some time. It will be up to the leadership to keep it that way.
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