An Energy Policy in Need of Vision and Common Sense : Congress must, and probably will, do better than the White House plan

Between 1973--the year of the first Middle East oil shock--and last year, the number of cars in the United States increased by more than 40% while the gross national product rose by two-thirds. The nation’s consumption of energy of all kinds rose by a mere 10%.

Other countries did better, but the U.S. energy record was noteworthy: During most of that time, the savings were accomplished with no help from the Reagan White House, which gave all energy policy a wide berth.

Now, President Bush signals that he wants to extend the hands-off approach to energy policy of the 1990s, at least where energy savings are concerned. His budget office is circulating a draft of a new energy policy that proposes a barrel of energy production for every teaspoon of increased energy efficiency. This proposed energy policy lacks, in effect, any real energy, literally as well as figuratively: It relies too heavily on oil and therefore shortchanges America’s future. It is a policy blackout and intellectual failure. Congress should refuse to have any part of a proposal that tilts so sharply toward oil consumption. It would be shortsighted with 500,000 Americans fighting in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

Transportation represents the most noteworthy failure in the policy draft. U.S. cars and trucks use 63% of the nation’s domestic and imported oil. By themselves, private cars use 43% of the oil.

The oil guzzling would be far higher had Congress not passed the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Act in 1975. By forcing auto manufacturers to meet fleet efficiency standards for the cars they produced, the law just about doubled gasoline mileage by 1988. The law has reduced the flow of oil to transportation by 2 million barrels a day.

Now the CAFE momentum is to be slowed down: The centerpiece of the draft’s proposal is yet more oil, this time by allowing exploratory drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And the only recent White House mention of transportation and energy policy suggested relaxation of the energy efficiency standards of CAFE.

Congress may not buy this. It is reviving a plan for even stricter standards that narrowly missed passage last year. Sens. Richard Bryan (D-Nev.) and Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) are sponsoring legislation to raise the fleet efficiency standard from the present 27.5 m.p.g. to an average 34.4 m.p.g. by 1996 and an average 40.2 m.p.g. by the turn of the century. Bryan and Gorton calculate that American motorists would use 2.5 million fewer barrels of oil a day by 2005, saying that the wildlife refuge could produce only about 12.5% of that amount.

Unrealistically, the White House draft also depends more on expanding nuclear power than the facts warrant. It would make it easier to license nuclear power plants, but utility companies are in no mood to go that route right now.

The President’s draft policy takes electric power efficiency slightly more seriously, but not much. It would require light bulbs to use less power, joining existing standards for appliances, but there apparently is no plan to apply stricter standards to appliances generally.

The draft does focus on a central problem that is unresolved after 20 years--disposal of radioactive waste from existing nuclear plants. Washington is stepping up its search for safe sites to bury spent fuel rods, but it will take 10 or more years just to know whether it is on the right track.

When Energy Secretary James D. Watkins presents his final version of the plan to Congress next week, members will want to know why it says so little about conservation when the retired admiral and his staff said so much about energy efficiency during the 18 months they were putting the draft together.

Before the nation goes any further, essentially without an energy policy, it needs a free-swinging debate on what such a policy should contain. With such an imbalanced and shortsighted policy proposal, the White House has guaranteed that the nation will get the debate.

DANGEROUS DEPENDENCE

% of United States Oil Imports Originating in the Persian Gulf Source: Department of Energy