FW: Wired News :Bush's Energy Plan: A Fossil?

[brian carroll <human@electronetwork.org>]

 From Wired News, available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,43556,00.html

Bush's Energy Plan: A Fossil?
By Farhad Manjoo  

2:00 a.m. May 7, 2001 PDT

President Bush sounded a clarion call on the topic of energy Thursday:
"What people need to hear loud and clear is that we're running out of energy
in America," he said.

Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the President's top lieutenant on
energy policy, have been repeating these dire warnings since they came into
office, all in an effort to sell an upcoming proposal calling for increased
production of fossil fuels.

But scientists, who have been studying the energy supply for decades
-- long before blackouts rolled through California and gasoline prices
soared in middle America -- are concerned about the Bush plan. They say that
his warnings are half-right: When it comes to traditional methods of
powering the world, we're running out of juice.

But there are about 1,000 other ways to set a light bulb glowing, they
say -- and the administration isn't fully investigating those options.

In a policy speech that gave a sneak peek at the administration's
energy plans, the vice president said on Monday that oil, coal and natural
gas would remain a major source of U.S. power for many years to come, and
that the government should support the search for more sources of these
fuels. 

He added that up to 1,900 new power plants -- a rate of two per week
-- should be built over the next 20 years.

"I was really surprised to hear the comments the vice president made,"
said Chris Flavin, the president of Worldwatch, a nonprofit public policy
research group. 

Flavin is a co-author of Power Surge: Guide to the Coming Energy
Revolution. He writes about a new, decentralized model for electricity, one
in which power comes from a diverse variety of fuels.

In his vision of the future, houses and buildings, in order to produce
their own power, would install photovoltaic (solar) cells, wind-powered
generators, microturbines or fuel cells.

The power would be augmented with electricity from the grid, when
people use more than they generate. But if they generate more than they use,
their excess power would go back onto the grid, "and the meter would run
backwards," Flavin said.

"It makes the system more resilient," he said. "You're not as
dependent on transmission systems, which makes sense, as you basically have
bottlenecks going into most cities. And if you put the power plant into a
building, you can use the waste heat to control the building's climate."

While not every energy expert may advocate this decentralized theory,
many say that it makes sense to look for power from a wide range of sources,
and that the Bush plan to increase fossil fuel and nuclear power production
is myopic at best. 

According to James McKensie, a physicist and energy expert at the
World Resource Institute, the United States today gets about 40 percent of
its energy from oil and 25 percent from natural gas. These figures are too
high, he said. 

Oil and gas and other fossil fuels cause some obvious problems -- they
release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which scientists say leads to
the warming of the planet -- but they also pose geo-political and economic
concerns, McKensie said.

"Oil production in the United States peaked in the 1970s -- globally,
it'll peak in the next 10 years," he said. "Today, we find one new barrel of
oil for every three or four barrels we use."

And the oil that the United States might find, if it begins digging in
Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- as the president is calling for
-- would be a "blip" in the big oil picture, McKensie says.

So what will happen when oil production peaks? For one thing, its
price will rise. "And another thing that could happen is war," McKensie
said, adding that today "we import a sizeable portion of oil from Iraq."
McKensie calls natural gas "everyone's favorite fuel," as it is
environmentally cleaner than coal, "and you can set up a natural gas turbine
very quickly. And until recently, it has been very cheap."

But domestic production of natural gas is declining, and the United
States has been importing more of its gas. There are huge, untapped supplies
of natural gas in many parts of the world -- including Alaska -- but it is
not as easily transported as crude oil, "so it doesn't help us all that
much," McKensie said.

There is a lot of coal, though, and -- some people believe -- enough
uranium atoms. Cheney said on Monday that these sources of energy should
also be considered. He said that people who dismiss nuclear and coal out of
environmental fears "deny reality."

McKensie and other scientists, though, think that the Bush
administration's view is the one running askew of reality. Coal power plants
emit up to twice as much carbon-dioxide as natural gas plants, and nuclear
plants -- although they produce no greenhouse gasses -- are expensive,
difficult to maintain and not well liked by consumers.

"There's a real fear among investors about nuclear," McKensie said.
"It takes up to 10 years to build a nuclear plant, while natural gas plants
-- you can get those off the shelf."

And when you consider all these options for energy, "what you're left
with is renewables," McKensie said.

Solar, wind, bio-mass energy -- these are the fuels of the future, and
their explosive growth in recent years proves it, scientists say.

The amount of solar and wind power that the world uses has recently
been growing by 20 to 30 percent each year. Nuclear, meanwhile, has had an
anemic growth of less than one-half percent, and coal has seen negative
growth. 

"So ultimately, there's not much market support and public support for
what the administration is trying to do," Flavin said. "I think it's more
likely they'll cause a limited period of paralysis -- because really, the
federal government has limited leverage when it comes to energy."

But Flavin said it's a shame the government isn't helping support
renewable fuels, as "just a little push would get these things really
going." 

He suggests adjusting tax credits for companies that invest in
renewable power. 

"We are really at the hockey-stick part of the curve for most of these
fuels," he said. 

And that's the ironic thing about the energy crisis. On the one hand,
the president has made energy one of his clear priorities, politicians all
over the land are ready to do something to ease citizens' problems, and
consumers are demanding changes.

It seems like the best of times. But the crisis in California has
brought to the fore some rather off-putting ideas, scientists say, which, if
implemented, could make these the worst of times.

Related Wired Links:

Germany's Net Idea: Electricity
April 6, 2001 

Brazil Could Face Blackouts, Too
April 4, 2001 

Still Crazy Over Electric Cars
March 26, 2001 

010101: Art in Blackout Times
March 21, 2001 

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