Learn More About the Environment
What is the Problem?
What are the Solutions?
Transportation
Energy Efficiency
Utilities
What is the Problem?
Our country is at a crossroads. We are four percent of the world's population and currently use 25 percent of the world's fossil fuel on an annual basis. Reliance on imported oil has also weakened our national security. The path we choose has never been clearer or more important. Either we take steps to cut down this fossil fuel use or we face a weaker economy and growing threats to our health.
Because the cost of fossil fuel use was subsidized by everything from tax policy to the building of roads, our society has never been confronted with its real costs. This includes all the public health costs from asthma, cancer and premature death associated with air pollution. Our coal burning power plants rain the poison mercury upon the sea and land, increasingly making even fish like tuna a growing danger to eat.
Human activity from burning fossil fuel and increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has warmed the earth by one degree during the last century. The trend is increasing rapidly but there are clear steps we can take to prevent the two and a half to ten degree rise that scientists predict for the coming century. We face increasing threats from global warming which will cause economic damage from larger storms and widening drought. There are new public health threats. In the past several years, we have seen a tropical virus, West Nile, established in the United States, and this will threaten our well being for years to come. Scientists predict sea level rise of one to three feet in the next 100 years, which would imperil many of the world's low lying areas, including many great coastal cities. It is obviously far cheaper to reduce global warming than to move millions and millions of people if this becomes necessary.
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Any sensible national policy would recognize that the status quo is not sustainable for economic and environmental reasons. Sadly, this is not the stance of our current Administration, which promotes a status quo energy policy. Our federal government should be leading the way towards energy independence; instead, it is marching in the opposite direction. This is not in our national interest.
The United States has walked away from an international treaty on global warming. Instead, established climate science is being ignored.
So, it is time to debate the facts of our energy future. Any objective discussion of the costs and benefits of the two approaches (the status quo or a new sustainable energy path) would end wasteful consumption of fossil fuels and provide broad benefits across our society, including disentangling the U.S. from Middle East oil dependency.
We should quickly begin a massive investment in sustainable energy. But these decisions are obscured by myths and the notion that the market will decide all energy choices and, of course, the power of the fossil fuel industry. A better energy future will utilize fossil fuels for a bridge period, particularly natural gas, but will look to alternatives wherever possible.
What would be the basis of a new energy mix? Certainly solar and wind would be the choices to produce more electricity, along with natural gas. Our transportation policy would feature better design and more hybrid engines to greatly increase fuel efficiency. Then we would move to hydrogen fuel cells. It would feature advanced public transportation. It would feature more jobs than the current energy production and more careers in advanced technologies. Technology is ahead of political will. These changes could be made if government and business were forced by public opinion to take action.
Sustainable energy will make the United States less vulnerable to disruption of energy supplies from volatile areas like the Middle East and would promote energy independence. Finally, it will make all of our lives healthier and reduce the threat from global warming.
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What are the Solutions?
There are three major thrusts to a sustainable energy policy.
Transportation
For the private transportation market, the auto industry must increase fuel efficiency by better design and materials and by hybrid engine technology. This must be done now. If we just increase the average fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet from 24 to 40 mpg in the next decade, it would be the equivalent of taking 44 million cars off our roads. This can be done by better design, fuel switching and lighter and stronger parts. This would cut our greenhouse emissions significantly as our transportation system accounts for 30 percent of our CO 2 emissions. It would also cut our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. A 3.25 mpg improvement in the 2000 U.S. light-vehicle fleet would have saved as much oil as was imported net from the Persian Gulf. If 27 percent of cars in 2000 were the popular 48-49 mpg hybrid-electric models, or 15 percent were ultra-light hybrid SUVs, they could displace the Persian Gulf oil imports. During model years 1979-1985, a 3.25 mpg improvement was achieved on average every 32 months. The National Academy of Sciences also found in 2001 that safe, cost-effective, but efficient cars and light trucks could nearly double the 20.4 mpg fleet efficiency.
Fleet vehicles can also use hybrid or at a minimum, natural gas engines in the transition to hydrogen fuel cells. Hydrogen can be created either through fossil fuel or solar production process, and it is clear what is preferable. This is not futuristic technology, as a limited number of fuel cell vehicles have been built. It will, however, require a major investment in more research and development and in new infrastructure to service hydrogen vehicles. Fuel cell powered buses now run in six cities worldwide. Because the only emission from fuel-cell vehicles powered by hydrogen is water vapor, they are significantly cleaner than existing gas and diesel vehicles. The six cities are Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai and Beijing.
Where is the United States? We need to encourage current and future leaders to bring American know-how and pioneering spirit to this effort, or we will fall further behind in the technology of the future and the markets for these innovations. Currently the Europeans, Japanese and Canadians are all ahead of us in vital new energy technologies. It is ludicrous that the type of advanced train service routinely available in Europe and Japan is rare in the United States. This is ridiculous, given our technological might.
In the public transportation sector, studies have shown that every billion dollars invested translates into 47,500 jobs. There has to be much more investment in high-speed rail projects in this country. Surface transportation systems, like buses, should be changed to run on cleaner fuels. Dirty diesel buses do not belong in any public transport system in the country and should be replaced as soon as possible. Diesel particles contribute to pulmonary distress in millions of Americans. Other engine technologies and fuels are available now.
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Energy Efficiency
The amount of energy wasted in the United States is still extraordinary despite three decades worth of collective investments in conservation. The waste represents both money down the drain and increased air pollution. Our appliances can be made far more efficient in order to use less electricity. Lighting also currently uses almost 25 percent of our electricity in the U.S., so we can replace our lights with compact fluorescent bulbs and save money while cutting greenhouse gases.
According to one estimate, the changes made in 2000 by the federal government to the energy efficiency standards for air conditioners will lead to the construction of 50 additional peak power plants. In the past 20 years, energy initiatives promoted by the Department of Energy have saved the country 5.5 quadrillion BTUs of energy (and 53 tons of greenhouse gases) and $30 billion in avoided costs. If each American household replaced its existing appliances with energy efficient ones, we would save $15 billion in energy costs and eliminate 175 million tons in heat trapping gases.
Just think what these numbers would be if the government promoted as much research and investment in conservation and renewables as it does in fossil fuels and nuclear power. We could promote new jobs here by strengthening standards of all household and industrial appliances and by giving domestic manufacturers incentives to produce the next generation of technology. This would mean more jobs and capital investment.
In our schools and public buildings, we can save both money and energy by retrofitting with the latest in energy conservation technology. At a time of restricted state and municipal budgets, it is common sense that we make the best use of taxpayer money. Grades kindergarten through 12 schools spend $6 billion on energy each year, and savings from simple energy retrofits like state-of-the-art insulation could save enough to retain teachers and reduce class size. Seattle, Washington expects to save $260,000 each year from changes to a handful of buildings. Even floating bonds to pay for one-time energy improvements quickly pays for itself.
Municipal buildings can also benefit. San Francisco is using “solar bonds” both to generate electricity and cut down its usage in public buildings. Perhaps no act was symbolically shortsighted as the decision to remove solar hot water panels from the White House in the 1980s.
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Utilities
Electricity production is responsible for about 40 percent of our carbon dioxide production as well as the pollutants sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide and the poison, mercury. There are a number of steps that can be taken to reduce pollution from existing plants like installing state-of-the-art scrubbers. There are also technological steps that would reduce the major loss of electricity along transmission lines. The next step, though, is to generate electricity from sources that will reduce total pollution levels. This means a major commitment to wind energy now and the major investment in photo-voltaics to produce electricity from the sun.
Worldwide, wind electric generation grew by 32 percent a year from 1995 to 2001 in the United States, and wind electric generating capacity jumped by a phenomenal 66 percent in 2001. The cost of wind-generated electricity at prime wind sites has fallen dramatically in the United States over the last 15 years – from thirty five cents per kilowatt-hour in the mid-1980s to four cents per kilowatt-hour in 2001. A U.S. Department of Energy inventory found that three states – Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas – have enough harnessable wind energy to meet electricity needs for the whole country. Wind energy alone could provide $1.2 billion in new income for farmers and rural landowners by 2020 and 80,000 new jobs, again, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. For example, a Danish company recently opened a wind turbine blade manufacturing plant in Grand Forks, North Dakota, creating 130 new high paying jobs. This is the equivalent of 20 percent of the jobs in the state's coal industry.
Photo-voltaics are still not cheap, but the costs have come down dramatically. Expanding energy efficiency and increasing renewable energy to 20 percent of the total energy supply would reduce natural gas use by 31 percent, compared to business as usual projections. We would eliminate the need for 975 new power plants of 300 megawatts each, as well as avoiding many miles of new gas pipelines and power lines. We could retire 14 existing nuclear power plants of 1,000 megawatts each and reduce coal generation by 60 percent, closing 180 coal plants of 500 megawatts each.
If we did this, consumers and the environment would also gain. Net consumer savings would total nearly $105 billion per year by 2020, or $350 per year for the typical family. Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants would decrease by two-thirds, compared to business as usual. Emissions of sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain, and of nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog, would both drop by 55 percent.
Renewable energy would go even further toward improving the reliability and resilience of the electricity system. Wind farms and solar arrays carry none of the vulnerability of nuclear or fossil fuel plants. They are small and geographically dispersed, making them difficult to target. Moreover, they have no fuel supply that can be disrupted or volatile fuel stocks that can burn.
This will require mandates from state and federal regulatory bodies to utilities, but the potential to build more wind farms and to advance solar electric capacity is clear. It is a matter of national will.
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