Energy Coalition Pushes an ‘Alternative Future’

Breaking ranks with many in the U.S. energy industry, a first-time coalition of conventional and alternative energy groups released a study Thursday that paints a bright, low-pollution vision for the nation.

Increased reliance on natural gas, renewable energy and conservation can create hundreds of thousands of jobs, save tens of billions of dollars annually and dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the study said.

The report holds that increased research and development of natural gas and alternative sources and a freer market in energy could cut the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions by 10% by the year 2000. The study was sponsored by the American Gas Assn., which represents utilities, the Alliance to Save Energy and the Solar Energy Industries Assn.

“If U.S. primary energy demand continues to increase as the economy grows, and if the U.S. energy supply mix remains carbon-intensive, we will be faced with difficult trade-offs,” warned Richard Farman, chairman of the gas association and chairman and chief executive of Southern California Gas Co.

Many in the conventional energy industry contend that renewable energy is uneconomical and that a shift from oil and coal, both high carbon-content fuels, to natural gas would only shift, not create, new jobs.

Excess carbon dioxide is primarily blamed for the so-called greenhouse effect.

“It’s a very interesting report and certainly breaks the mold of what the rest of the industry is saying,” said Daniel A. Lashof, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has reviewed the study.

The emissions reductions, Lashof said, “are well beyond what’s on the table now in negotiations.”

In fact, the energy groups’ study, “An Alternative Energy Future,” is “pretty much in line with the Administration position, and it is not an unreasonable scenario,” said Dave Ryan, spokesman for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which reviewed the study.

But in the weeks before the Rio de Janeiro environmental summit, the Bush Administration is under considerable pressure to agree to international goals set by other industrial nations, which would stabilize carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. And the Administration prefers its current energy programs, which it says would exceed that level by only 1.5% to 6%.

The study advocates dropping such state and local free market “barriers” as those requiring emission scrubbers for electric power plants, or mandatory use of coal. Instead, it relies on higher efficiency appliances and doubling the use of renewable sources--including solar, geothermal, biomass and wind--while increasing use of natural gas by 40% by 2010.

This would reduce oil imports and increase domestic employment in both the oil and gas industry and in energy conservation and renewable energy, which the study says is particularly labor-intensive. This, says the study, would create from 200,000 to 400,000 new jobs in renewable energies and energy conservation alone.

“Several environmental groups have claimed that increased reliance on natural gas and renewables would create jobs, which it most certainly would do, particularly here in California,” said Mathew Trask, an editor at California Energy Markets, a San Francisco-based independent newsletter.

“However, many other industries like the coal industry would say that it would merely shift jobs to other sectors,” Trask cautioned.

Environmentalists advocate long-term use of renewable energy over all fossil fuels, including natural gas. But, particularly in the interim as renewable sources come into wider use, gas is far cleaner-burning, they say, in large part because it contains less carbon than coal or oil. “Clean-burning gas” is the theme of an aggressive promotion campaign by the U.S. gas industry.

Meanwhile, Farman on Thursday also sent a strong letter to Bush, calling on him to attend the Rio environmental summit and to take a strong lead in emissions reductions policy. The White House had no immediate response to the letter, which a SoCal Gas spokesman declined to make public.