| Energy and Climate News for August 27: Solar panels drop sharply in price Posted: 27 Aug 2009 09:28 AM PDT  More Sun for Less: Solar Panels Drop in Price
For solar shoppers these days, the price is right. Panel prices have fallen about 40 percent since the middle of last year, driven down partly by an increase in the supply of a crucial ingredient for panels, according to analysts at the investment bank Piper Jaffray. The price drops — coupled with recently expanded federal incentives — could shrink the time it takes solar panels to pay for themselves to 16 years, from 22 years, in places with high electricity costs…. American consumers have the rest of the world to thank for the big solar price break. Until recently, panel makers had been constrained by limited production of polysilicon, which goes into most types of panels. But more factories making the material have opened, as have more plants churning out the panels themselves — especially in China. "A ton of production, mostly Chinese, has come online," said Chris Whitman, the president of U.S. Solar Finance, which helps arrange bank financing for solar projects.
Talk about your mixed feelings — it's WalMart all over again, but with clean energy, not toys and households products (see "Solar PV market doubled to 6 Gigawatts in 2008 — U.S. left in dust, having invented the technology").
Many experts expect panel prices to fall further, though not by another 40 percent….
John Berger, chief executive of Standard Renewable Energy, the company in Houston that put panels on Mr. Hare's home, said that his second-quarter sales rose by more than 225 percent from the first quarter. "Was that as a product of declining panel prices? Almost certainly yes," Mr. Berger said. Expanded federal incentives have also helped spur the market. Until this year, homeowners could get a 30 percent tax credit for solar electric installations, but it was capped at $2,000. That cap was lifted on Jan. 1. Mr. Hare in Texas cited the larger tax credit, which sliced about $23,000 from his $77,000 bill, as a major factor in his decision to go solar, in addition to the falling panel prices. Sensing a good deal, he even got a larg er system than he had originally planned — going from 42 panels to 64. The electric bill on his 7,000-square-foot house and garage has typically run $600 to $700 a month, but he expects a reduction of 40 to 80 percent.
Ah, the 7,000 square foot house. Enjoy it while you can! As Oil Explodes, Why Natural Gas Prices Stay Low If Best Buy had a big sale on Blu-ray discs, would you go out and buy a Blu-ray player? The energy markets are kind of like that — natural gas is really cheap, for now, but does that does mean we should build infrastructure for a natural gas-fueled economy? Bargains only last so long, even in this recession. Sorry, T. Boone Pickens. To delve deeper, let's examine why gas prices have deflated so much: Natural gas prices and oil prices are no longer bedfellows in our present economy. As crude oil has skyrocketed from about $30 per barrel in December 2008 to over $70, natural gas has plummeted from nearly $6 per million BTU to under $3, recently setting a seven-year low. To put these numbers in perspective, this makes oil over four times as expensive as natural gas to produce the same amount of energy, according to the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration (EIA). Long story short, this year we are going to have more natural gas than we need — or potentially even store. That's no reason to party. Here's why: Unlike the global crude oil market, the natural gas market is incredibly localized. The United States produces nearly 90% of what it consumes, and the rest is imported from Canada or from overseas — the latterd amounting to only about 2.5% of U.S. consumption. Thus, a glut of domestic gas doesn't really affect imports.
U.S. Biofuel Boom Running on Empty The biofuels revolution that promised to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil is fizzling out. Two-thirds of U.S. biodiesel production capacity now sits unused, reports the National Biodiesel Board. Biodiesel, a crucial part of government efforts to develop alternative fuels for trucks and factories, has been hit hard by the recession and falling oil prices.
The House Bill Will Start Clearing the Air for Everyone David Schoenbrod and Richard Stewart are right that a cap-and-trade policy will be good for our environment and our economy ("The Cap-and-Trade Bait and Switch," Aug. 24). But we think history will show they are way off the mark in their criticism of the American Clean Energy and Security Act that recently passed the House.
Boxer and Colleagues Feel the Heat on Cap and Trade There will be plenty of time next month for the Senate to debate a cap-and-trade policy, but some groups have already decided that the bill currently on the table is not an adequate solution to national energy and environmental concerns─and they're making sure to speak up early. Later today, more than 320 environmental and energy groups plan to deliver a letter to Calif. Sen. Barbara Boxer and her colleagues on the Senate Environment Committee that she chairs, arguing that the climate bill that the House narrowly passed in June is too diluted to reasonably curb carbon emissions and spur growth in renewable energy. Letters of support or opposition constantly fly through the halls of Capitol Hill, but this one is bound to turn some heads for the sheer number of names on it. The broad collection of signatories─form the Center for Biological Diversity to the Southern Energy Network and a whole host of municipalities, faith groups and social justice organizations─lays out in short form exactly what a better bill should look like. "A top priority must be to eliminate or greatly limit and restrict offsets," which would allow carbon pollution to continue or even increase in some regions, the letter says. It also urges that the framework of the cap-and-trade program be more transparent, to limit how much big energy companies can manipulate the value of credits. And when it comes to setting limits and emission standards, the groups suggest overshooting current scientific projections, rather than falling short.
Worth a shot, but they are mostly lobbying the wrong people. It is the swing Senators, not Boxer and the Senate environment committee, who will determine how weak or strong the final bill is. |
| Grist: Barack Obama is not Bagger Vance Posted: 27 Aug 2009 08:09 AM PDT My colleague David Roberts at Grist has a provocative post I am reprinting below. I think it is an important message for progressives to hear (see "Memo to enviros, progressives: The deniers and dirty energy bunch are "full of passionate intensity" — and eating our lunch on the climate bill!") although I only half agree with him. I think that if team Obama's messaging and outreach had been superlative (as it was for most of the campaign), rather than dreadful as it has been for over two months now, that both the health care and climate bills would be in far better shape. But that would still not be any guarantee of success nor would it necessarily have resulted in a climate bill on his desk substantially stronger than the one the House passed, for many reasons some of which Roberts spells out. Even Obama can't single-handedly beat the well-funded disinformers when progressives in genral are lousy at messaging and big media is impotent? I'll blog more on messaging in September. Comments on Roberts' piece are welcome.  Things are pretty grim among progressives these days, what with health care bogging down and climate legislation on indefinite delay; right wing crazies everywhere and Blue Dogs intransigent; the organized coalition that brought Obama to office fractured and ineffective. Disillusionment is in the air.
In response, on listservs and private conversations, I'm hearing more and more people express some version of the following sentiment: Barack Obama should save us. According to this line of thinking, if Obama really got serious, got his messaging right, did a really good speech, exercised his extraordinary popularity with the American people, he could right the ship for his two main domestic initiatives, both of which are drifting perilously close to the shoals. It's understandable. Everyone still remembers the extraordinary high of the campaign, the rare and almost forgotten feeling of being genuinely moved by a civic-minded politician. Everyone wants that high back, as an escape from the lies, bottlenecks, and general unpleasantness that now beset us. But let me be blunt: Barack Obama is not our magic negro. He's not Bagger Vance. He hasn't come along to teach the ornery white folk the error of their ways. He's just the president, a centrist Democrat embedded in a power structure replete with roadblocks and constraints. The president, even an extraordinarily popular president, can only do so much. Making one more speech won't have any effect on Sens. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) or Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). It won't reduce the money pouring from dirty energy companies into congressional coffers. It won't change anybody's mind at a teabagging rally or a dirty energy astroturfing event. This notion that Obama trying harder is the key to progressive success is just a siren song; it delays getting serious. Along these lines, read Mike Tomasky. It's about health care, but it applies just as well to the climate/energy fight: So now, liberals have to fight hard for something they're not terribly excited about. A health bill will likely have a very weak public option or it won't have one at all. But liberals will have to battle for that bill as if it's life and death (which in fact it will be for thousands of Americans), because its defeat would constitute a historic victory for the birthers and the gun-toters and the Hitler analogists. In the coming weeks, building toward a possible congressional vote in November, progressives will have to get out in force to show middle America that there's support for reform as well as opposition, even though they may find the final bill disappointing. This is what movements do—they do the hard, slow work of winning political battles and changing public opinion over time. It isn't fun. It isn't something Will.i.am is going to make a clever and moving video about, and it offers precious few moments for YouTube. It takes years, which is a bummer, in a political culture that measures success and failure by the hour. The end of euphoria should lead not to disillusionment, but to seriousness of purpose.
Obama can't save progressives. They'll save their agenda, if at all, with persistence and organizing. As it always was. – Dave Roberts |
| Videos of Chu, (Bill) Clinton, Gore, Pickens, Reid, Van Jones, Villaraigosa, Wirth, and Zoi at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 Posted: 27 Aug 2009 07:21 AM PDT Videos are now available (here) for the "National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 on Jobs and the New Economy" at UNLV in Nevada August 10. Participants at the National Clean Energy Summit 2.0 in Las Vegas, NV, discussed ways smart federal and state-level policies can work to upscale existing markets for energy-efficiency retrofits, renewable energy, and energy infrastructure in a way that creates jobs, saves consumers money, and generates private investment. In conjunction with the summit, John Podesta and former Senator Timothy E. Wirth (D-CO) authored a short memo about the promise of natural gas as a bridge fuel for the 21st century, and CAP released a report with the Energy Future Coalition.
The videos represent an excellent six-hour workshop on the clean energy challenge and opportunity from some of the leading experts in the country (see also "An introduction to the core climate solutions"). Here is the agenda with the full list of Summit Speakers you can listen to:
Roundtable: Building the Clean-Energy Economy Welcome and opening remarks by:United Nations Foundation President, Former Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO), Moderator
Dr. Neal Smatresk, acting president, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
Former Vice President Al Gore
John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund Moderated Discussions: The macro economic case for clean-energy investment Bringing energy-efficiency retrofits to scale Promoting the market for renewable energy and energy infrastructure
Participants include:
Denise Bode – CEO, American Wind Energy Association
Lucien Bronicki – Founder and Chairman, Ormat Technologies
Dr. Stephanie Burns – CEO, Dow Corning
Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Secretary Steven Chu – U.S. Department of Energy
General Wesley Clark – Chairman, Growth Energy
Former Vice President Al Gore
Nevada State Senator Steven Horsford
Van Jones – White House Council on Environmental Quality
Rose McKinney James – Energy Foundation Boards
Terry O'Sullivan – General President, Laborers' International Union of North America
T. Boone Pickens – Boone Pickens Capital Management
John D. Podesta – President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Marc Porat – Serious Materials and Pegasus Investments
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)
Steve Roell – Chairman and CEO, Johnson Controls
Dr. Keith Schwer – Director, UNLV Center for Business and Economic Research
Secretary Hilda L. Solis – U.S. Department of Labor
Danny Thompson – Executive Secretary Treasurer, Nevada State AFL-CIO
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – Los Angeles, California
John Woolard – President and CEO, Bright Source Energy
Michael Yackira – CEO, Nevada Energy
Former Senator Tim Wirth (D-CO) – United Nations Foundation, Moderator Special Remarks by President Bill Clinton Clean-Energy Policy Community Town Hall Vice President Al Gore
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV)
T. Boone Pickens
Cathy Zoi, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Department of Energy
John D. Podesta, Moderator Again, the videos are all here. |
| On the 150th anniversary of first commerical U.S. well, the oil industry is headed toward oblivion — and trying to take civilization down with it Posted: 26 Aug 2009 06:38 PM PDT  "I claim that I did invent the driving Pipe and drive it and without that they could not bore on bottom land when the earth is full of water. And I claim to have bored the first well that ever was bored for Petroleum in America and can show the well."
So wrote Edwin Draka aka Colonel Drake, who is "popularly credited with being the first to drill for oil in the United States" on August 27, 1859 in Titusville, Pennsylvania. His methods were quickly copied by others and "By 1871, the entire area was producing 5.8 million barrels a year." As Daniel Yergin wrote in his still must-read Pulitzer Prize-winning history, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, & Power (where I found Drake's quote): Drake's discovery would, in due course, bequeath mobility and power to the world's population, play a central role in the rise and fall of nations and empires, and become a major element in the transformation of human society.
Combined with Henry Ford's mass production and moving assembly line, the oil boom ushered in the American Century. For two world wars, America was not just the arsenal of democracy, we were the engine fuel of democracy. As late as the mid-1950s, we still produced roughly half of all the world's oil — twice as much oil as the Middle Eastern and North African states combined. But our drain-America-first policy — coupled with the gross inefficiency of our oil consumption and successful conservative efforts to block an energy policy built around efficiency and alternatives — caused U.S. production to peak decades ago. And now world oil consumption is peaking, even as the nation's and the world's fossil fuel consumption are driving us toward catastrophic climate impacts, Hell and High Water, which would outlast the oil age by a thousand years. The U.S. oil industry, going back to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil, has long been guilty of the most anti-competitive tactics. Originally, those harsh tactics focused on competitors, with the worst impact for most Americans being higher prices than they might otherwise have experienced. "The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1911 that antitrust law required Standard Oil to be broken into smaller, independent companies," but "ExxonMobil, however, does represent a substantial part of the original company." ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute are still guilty of harsh, anti-competitive tactics, but the worst impacts of their massively funded disinformation campaign will be to ruin a livable climate for the next 100 billion people to walk the planet. If we don't overcome that campaign and reverse emissions trends quickly, then long after an oil-driven economy is a distant memory, future generations will curse the industry for engaging in the most despicable act in human history — persuading just enough Americans, opinion makers, and politicians to delay or weaken efforts to restrict greenhouse gas emissions. 
It bears repeating on this anniversary that Big Oil is manufacturing 'Energy Citizen' rallies to oppose clean energy reform and funding economic disinformation (see "Even fantasy-filled American Petroleum Institute study finds no significant impact of climate bill on US refining"). It bears repeating that the country's biggest oil company has funneled millions of dollars to fund the disinformation campaigns of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of which continue to advance unfactual anti-scientific attacks as I have detailed recently (see posts on Heritage and CEI and AEI). Chris Mooney wrote an excellent piece on ExxonMobil's two-decade anti-scientific campaign. A 2007 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report looked at ExxonMobil's tobacco industry-like tactics in pushing global warming denial (see "Today We Have a Planet That's Smoking!"). The oil giant said it would stop, but that was just another lie (see "Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge"). Let me end with an excellent commentary from Tuesday by award-winning journalist, Eric Pooley, "Exxon Works Up New Recipe for Frying the Planet": Exxon Mobil Corp. is trying to put one over on you. The world's biggest publicly traded oil company wants you to believe that it actually supports the fight against global warming. But its tactics, which have been unfolding on opposite sides of the globe, are just another recipe for cooking the planet in three easy steps. Exxon's old formula wasn't working anymore. The oil giant used to bankroll scientists who claimed all that stuff about starving polar bears and melting ice caps was just mumbo jumbo. In a 1998 memo, the American Petroleum Institute — the industry group in which Exxon has long been dominant — said it would achieve "victory" when doubts about climate science become "part of the 'conventional wisdom.'" That helped create a noisy minority of skeptics, but it won't block climate legislation forever. So now Exxon is playing a more subtle game. It runs plenty of ads featuring people in lab coats talking about clean energy. It spent $15 million on Washington lobbyists in the first half of this year — more than all the solar and wind companies combined. And it has created its new three-step program, which is based on bad economics instead of shady science. Step One: Gin up some frightening numbers, and use scare tactics and lobbying muscle to kill the Obama administration's proposed mandatory cap on carbon emissions. Job-Killer As the U.S. Senate begins work on the climate-change bill, which squeaked through the House of Representatives in June, Exxon is among those denouncing the plan to cap emissions as a stealth tax that would destroy jobs and drive up energy costs. How does the oil producer know this? Because think tanks funded by Exxon and others say so. The company announced last year that it had stopped giving money to global-warming skeptics who "divert attention" from the need for clean energy. Instead, it supports groups such as the American Council for Capital Formation and the National Center for Policy Analysis, which issue industry-friendly research. One study released in May by the Heritage Foundation, which received at least $50,000 from Exxon last year, claims that by putting a price on carbon, the measure will kill millions of jobs and send gasoline soaring. The study has been criticized for making wildly pessimistic economic assumptions — no energy efficiency gains, no increased use of renewables — and for ignoring the bill's many cost containment provisions. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that middle-class households would pay only $175 a year more in 2020 because of the legislation. Doomsday Study But let's look closer. This doomsday study claims the measure would drive gasoline prices to $4 a gallon — in 2035! If we don't develop alternative energy, which is the whole point of climate legislation, a gallon of gas will cost a lot more than that in 25 years. The price of inaction is far higher than the cost of acting now, though that's not a discussion Exxon wants to have. Step Two: Organize demonstrations. On Aug. 18, about 3,500 people rallied in Houston against the bill — the first of some 20 such "Energy Citizen" events sponsored by API and other industry groups. The participants were energy industry workers, many of whom wore T-shirts saying, "I'll Pass on $4 Gas." How did they come to be there? A leaked memo from API president Jack Gerard asked the group's member companies to send employees to the rallies to "focus our message" against "Waxman-Markey-like legislation, tax increases, and (energy) access limitations." He also asked them to keep it quiet. Legislative Caricature Royal Dutch Shell and BP refused to participate in the events because they support cap and trade, but Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Anadarko Petroleum are involved, along with more than 60 other businesses and associations. Exxon advised its workers that attendance was "at their own discretion and not required," spokesman Rob Young told me, while saying that Exxon "opposes this deeply flawed legislation" and agrees with the rally's job-killer message. How could it not? It helped pay for studies that "prove" the point. Step 3: Offer a seemingly sensible alternative policy. Having caricatured the legislation, Exxon then offers a compromise. That's what it did in Australia earlier this month, after the legislature shot down Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's climate proposal. Last week the chairman of Exxon's Australian unit, John Dashwood, called for replacing cap and trade with a carbon tax. Echoing a January 2009 speech against cap and trade by Chief Executive Rex Tillerson. Dashwood said the carbon tax "is more transparent to consumers, will achieve greater environmental benefits and is more difficult to manipulate than a cap-and-trade program." Tax Without Change Let's get this straight. Exxon is demonstrating against a climate bill in the U.S. because it is supposedly a hidden tax, and on the other side of the globe it is lobbying for a tax. This may seem contradictory, but it's not. I believe the company simply recognizes what so many others have missed in the debate over the tax versus the cap: The cap requires economy-wide emissions reductions, and the tax doesn't. Exxon doesn't want to do business in a world where cuts in carbon dioxide are mandatory. It would prefer to pay a modest tax and keep on polluting. A tax wouldn't guarantee any carbon reductions, let alone bring about the steep cuts needed to stave off the worst climate changes. By calling for a small tax instead of a mandatory cap, that's exactly the kind of solution Exxon is proposing. (Eric Pooley, a former managing editor of Fortune magazine who is writing a book about the politics of global warming, is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)
Come 2059, oil consumption will be far smaller than today and on a sharp downslope. The only question is whether we were smart enough to voluntarily abandon fossil fuels starting now, staving off the worst climate impacts or we stupidly listened to the Siren song of the big oil Delayers. The industry is inexorably headed toward oblivion. Are we? |
| 'China will sign' global treaty if U.S. passes climate bill, E.U. leader says Posted: 26 Aug 2009 04:38 PM PDT Much of the fate of the U.N. climate treaty talks now rests in the U.S. Senate, according to a leading E.U. official, who says China would "lose its last reason" not to support an international pact if the United States passes a cap-and-trade bill. "I know for the American Senate it's absolutely crucial to know that China will sign the treaty," said Sweden's environment minister, Andreas Carlgren, whose country currently holds the European Union's rotating presidency. "I understand that. We fully support that. We have the same expectations." "The difference is that we [Europeans] have done so many things already, and the Senate is still deciding on cap and trade," Carlgren said yesterday in an interview at the Swedish embassy. "If the Senate would pass it, there would be no reason for China not to sign up."
The pressure is building on those swing Senators, as E&E News PM (subs. req'd) makes clear in its reporting tonight. It is increasingly clear that a handful of senators — maybe 3 to 5 (see "Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?") — hold in their hand not just the fate of domestic climate action, but the fate of an international climate deal. China is pushing hard to become the clean energy leader and is strongly considering major emissions commitments (see "Peaking Duck: Beijing's Growing Appetite for Climate Action"). Europe is obviously prepared to make a stronger climate commitment than the United States. We are the linchpin. Interestingly, Carlgren makes clear that the Waxman-Markey bill contains elements that make up for its relatively weak 2020 target — so it will be crucial for the Senate to keep those pieces:
Carlgren was recently in China, and said "it seems the Chinese are very serious" about climate change and, while "it is not very easy to turn a tanker around, the first step is that the captain has to understand that he has to make a move." China understands that, he said, and the efficiency goals it has already set in its five-year plan will reduce emissions. E.U. and U.S. officials want a firmer commitment, signed into international treaty, that will expand and possibly raise China's efficiency and renewable commitments until 2020. They are unlikely to ask for hard caps, officials have indicated. In the ongoing climate treaty talks, the European Union expects more from the United States than its current proposals on midterm emissions targets and adaptation funds for developing nations, Carlgren said. "We expect much from the United States, certainly more than we saw in President Obama's first bid for the midterm perspective," Carlgren said. Establishing a "sufficiently ambitious" target remains a key issue between Europe and the United States, he added. European negotiators have insisted that comparable steps to reduce climate change be taken on both sides of the Atlantic. (E.U. states are set to trim emissions 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.) However, given that the U.S. 2020 target is unlikely to exceed the limits proposed in the House's climate bill — which, under rosy projections, would drop emissions by no more than 13 percent below 1990 levels — the bloc is open to broadening its view on what is considered comparable, Carlgren said.
It's good to see some flexibility by the EU. The 10% in additional emissions reductions the climate bill gets from a massive investment in new national-accounting based efforts to stop deforestation are certainly one of the best features of Waxman-Markey. Among other areas, "efforts on financing could also be taken into account," he said. Also, "if America could really go for a steeper pathway after 2020, that could also be taken into account."
And indeed the climate bill does in fact make steeper emissions reductions post-2020, hitting a 42% reduction in 2030 and then 83% in 2050. Again, these our crucial features of the bill that the Senate needs to retain. The Swedish minister has been flummoxed by some of the debate he has heard over the climate bill as it is set to be discussed next month in the Senate. "There are some crazy calculations going around here in America" and largely distributed by lobbyists, he said. "But we can show that there is no alternative [to cap and trade] that would lower emissions at a lower cost."
If he's been flummoxed by the House debate, he is really going to be baffled by the Senate debate. Are there 60 Senators who understand the stakes, understand that cap-and-trade lowers emissions at the lowest cost, understand that this is the most important vote of their career? Let's all keep working as hard as possible to make sure there are. |
| Enhancing our national security by reducing oil dependence and environmental damage Posted: 26 Aug 2009 01:59 PM PDT 
The United States has an historic opportunity to enhance its national security by reducing its dependence on oil. Policies to accomplish this goal, including more efficient fuel economy standards, investments in hybrid and electric vehicles, development of natural gas-fueled heavy duty vehicles, and production of advanced biofuels would also create jobs and reduce global warming pollution. This piece, by CAP's Christopher Beddor, Winny Chen, Rudy deLeon, Shiyong Park, and Daniel J. Weiss, was first posted here. It summarizes the findings of their 21-page report (pdf).
On June 26 the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, or ACESA. The bill would cap greenhouse gas emissions, boost investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy such as wind and solar, and jumpstart the transition to a clean-energy economy. These new investments in clean-energy technologies would slash global warming pollution and reduce foreign oil use while creating jobs and increasing our economic competitiveness with China and other nations. But in the lead up to the ACESA vote and in the weeks since House passage, conservative opponents of clean, domestic energy have wildly misrepresented the bill's content and cost, while resorting to scare tactics and half-truths in service of the status quo. On the contrary, America's reliance on imported fossil fuels instead of clean, domestic sources of energy has long been costly to our economy, our environment, and our national security— and will become even more so if we fail to act now. America's dependence on foreign oil transfers U.S. dollars to a number of unfriendly regimes, while robbing the United States of the economic resources it desperately needs for domestic development and American innovation. American petrodollars fund regimes and economic investments that do not serve U.S. interests. And our enormous appetite for oil—America burns a full quarter of the world's oil—feeds the global demand that finances and sustains corrupt and undemocratic regimes around the globe. The perilous implications of this arrangement—increasing power and influence of oil exporters, many of whom comprise the world's worst regimes—will become more explicit if global demand increases as some current forecasts predict. What's more, the United States will increasingly turn to exporting countries that have opposing interests as oil production in friendly nations becomes depleted or less viable. Ultimately, the United States will become more invested in the volatile Middle East, more dependent on corrupt and unsavory regimes, and more involved with politically unstable countries. In fact, it may be forced to choose between maintaining an effective foreign policy or a consistent energy supply as U.S. consumers face higher energy prices. The good news is that the United States has an historic opportunity to enhance its national security by reducing its dependence on oil. Policies to accomplish this goal, including more efficient fuel economy standards, investments in hybrid and electric vehicles, development of natural gas-fueled heavy duty vehicles, and production of advanced biofuels would also create jobs and reduce global warming pollution. A transformation from oil to no- and low-carbon energy sources will catalyze innovation that creates new technologies that the United States can market to other nations, leading to long-term economic growth and prosperity as well as enhanced security. This fall the Senate has a historic opportunity to reduce U.S. oil consumption as part of its debate on comprehensive clean-energy jobs and global warming pollution reduction legislation. Download the full report (pdf) Related Posts: |
