George W. Bush’s sudden embrace of energy efficiency and renewable resources is certainly a welcome shift. Five years into his administration, the president’s State of the Union speech Tuesday called for weaning the country off oil imports. If the president is in earnest, he has chosen a goal that will occupy his administration for his final three years in office. To get started, he must review and reverse several first-term policies.
1. Let states be trailblazers. Two years ago, Colorado voters approved Amendment 37, which requires large utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2010. (Colorado’s legislature yesterday also set up a House Select Committee on Strategic Renewable Energy.) But last summer, the White House slapped down Senate efforts, led in part by Colorado’s Ken Salazar, to create a similar federal renewable energy requirement.
The administration also is undermining California’s push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. After California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved his state’s progressive policy last year, the Bush administration announced it would adopt new fuel standards for SUVs and pickup trucks. Actually, that maneuver would do almost nothing to improve the efficiency of the worst gas hogs. It would, though, ban California (or any state) from setting climate rules that have the effect of boosting fuel economy.
2. Raise mileage standards. Federal requirements for passenger car fuel efficiency are the same as in 1985, about 27.5 miles per gallon. The rules for SUVs, vans and pickups are stuck at 21 mpg, where they were five years ago. Yet boosting gas mileage to 35 mpg would save the United States 440 million barrels of oil a year.
Bush should ask Congress to pass tough fuel efficiency rules. He also should tell the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make its mileage tests more realistic. (Existing tests don’t account for air conditioners or lots of stop-and-go traffic.) Instead, last summer the administration fought a congressional push to require better mileage. If Bush wants to reduce imports, he should stop blocking this common-sense step.
3. Put up the money to achieve achieve fuel savings. Adjusted for inflation, there’s been a 14 percent decline in U.S. funding for energy efficiency since 2002. Meanwhile, the National Renewable Energy Labs in Golden has seen its budget fall from nearly $230 million in 2003 to $201 million last year. The unit is slated for another $28 million cut in 2006, so NREL will get $10 million less than the $183 million it got in 2000, the year Bush was first elected.
Properly funded, NREL could develop new materials to make better solar units and build safer but more fuel efficient cars. NREL also could perfect the know-how to make affordable ethanol from farm wastes or switchgrass, an idea Bush noted Tuesday. Bush also mentioned the “25 by 25” push to get 25 percent of the nation’s energy from agriculture by 2025.
In fact, Bush should use NREL to begin the search for new liquid fuels that replace crude oil but don’t worsen global warming – the toughest but most important piece of the energy puzzle.
If the president truly wants the nation to embrace renewable energy, he must become NREL’s champion in chief.
