Efficient Use of Energy Stressed at Hearing

Environmentalists made efficiency and conservation the hands-down first priority in national energy strategy Thursday, telling the Bush Administration that protection of the environment is not incompatible with economic growth.

Nearing the end of a long round of public hearings on major energy issues, Energy Secretary James D. Watkins heard repeated calls for a drive to put more efficient automobiles on the road, as representatives of environmental groups harked back to the 1970s, when the oil crisis and gasoline lines sparked a drive that significantly increased mileage.

With motor vehicle exhausts contributing about a third of the gases associated with the greenhouse effect, automobiles have again become the prime target for an overhauled energy strategy.

Besides recommendations for big federally mandated mileage improvements, Watkins Thursday heard calls for taxes on gas-guzzlers, rebates for customers who buy efficient cars and an end to practices such as employer subsidies of employee parking.

The country’s goal, said James Trip, the general counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund, should be nothing less than to wipe out the $50 billion a year that oil imports add to the national trade deficit.

An increase in automobile efficiency, Trip said, is but one conservation measure that could yield potentially spectacular results. He cited a study conducted for the state of New York, which concluded that the country’s electrical consumption could eventually be slashed as much as 30% to 40% through the use of more efficient electrical appliances and new fluorescent lighting that uses a fraction of the energy required by conventional bulbs.

Spokesmen for industry and trade associations cautioned against overreacting to the threat of global warming, and they hesitated to cast Watkins’ design of a national energy strategy as a bevy of choices between energy production and the environment.

“In our view, it is not a case of either the environment or energy,” said Clement B. Malin, general manager of corporate planning and economics for Texaco. “The two are inextricably intertwined.”

Before coming to Atlanta, Watkins had conducted similar hearings in Houston, Detroit, Des Moines and Washington, looking into the relationship of energy policy and the oil, automobile, agriculture and defense industries.

He will hear testimony in three more cities next month before his department turns to drafting a strategy responding to President Bush’s request for a long-term plan to assure that the country will have an adequate supply of clean, competitively priced energy into the next century.

Several other Cabinet members have joined Watkins in questioning the experts along the way. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly, who was co-chairman of the session here Thursday, said the government must strive to get past the cleanup of pollution to pollution prevention.

While environmentalists stressed conservation measures with the potential for significantly reducing greenhouse gases, others cautioned against the United States taking a long-term unilateral commitment to fighting global warming.

Richard G. Richele of the Electric Power Research Institute provided some estimates of the cost of stabilizing the atmosphere’s content of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas.

To stop the increase and bring about a 20% reduction in emissions by the year 2020, he estimated, could cost from $8 billion to $3.6 trillion.

Such outlays, he said, might require a five- to tenfold increase in coal prices and an increase of 75 cents to $1.50 a gallon for gasoline.