Energy: A New Age
Someone--or several someones--has been asleep at the switch. Even Reddy Kilowatt should be shocked that California utilities have slackened their energy conservation programs significantly in recent years, apparently because the nation does not happen to be gripped by an energy crisis at the moment. Yet down the road there will be more crises. And the ultimate crisis will be when the oil runs out, as it could in the next century. There basically are two ways to prepare for that eventuality. One is to conserve all the energy possible now. The second is to prepare for a transition to a variety of new alternatives to fossil fuels.
Energy conservation makes so much sense on so many counts that it is a wonder that the nation has to be prodded so vigorously to do anything about it. At the moment, there is no such thing as an environmentally benign electric power plant. Those that burn oil or gas consume fuel that is in finite supply. Oil and coal-fired plants emit unacceptable levels of air pollution. And no new nuclear plants will be approved until safer, standardized plant designs are on the market.
But California will need no additional power plants for years if the most basic, sensible conservation programs are pursued with some vigor, as reported in Tuesday’s editions of The Times by staff writer Jill Stewart. Billions of barrels of oil can be conserved, billions of dollars saved and pollution levels stabilized or reduced. One utility executive said his firm is not in the business of social engineering. Someone should be. It should not have taken the Natural Resources Defense Council, a private environmental group that took a peek at California Energy Commission records, to point out how lax the state’s energy conservation programs had become. And it does not take an engineer or scientist to figure out that any reduction of future power-plant emissions also will benefit the environment and the people’s health as well.
But at least the state Public Utilities Commission has responded with some alacrity by calling for an energy conservation blueprint by December. The commission says the plan should include incentives for utilities to promote conservation programs and the reduction of utility bills without the sort of sacrifices that Americans became familiar with in the 1970s. That should be no problem. New-technology light bulbs, insulation devices and heating and cooling systems will save large amounts of energy without any sacrifice at all. The reasonable amount of capital investment will be repaid within months. After that, these devices just go on saving and saving, both money and energy.
There is some question about how to acquaint developers with the latest energy conservation equipment and to get them to install such products in new homes and buildings during the construction process when it is most economical to do so. That is simple. If industry associations do not accept the latest energy conservation standards on their own within a reasonable period of time--during the next year, for instance--state and local governments should adopt the standards as law. If the initial capital outlay seems too high, tax incentives should be reinstated to ease the burden of the initial investment. Low or no-interest loans should be made available to existing home and building owners who want to retrofit.
This is one endeavor that seems too good to be true. But in fact, with energy conservation, everyone wins.
