Bush’s energy program

Feb. 4, 2008
It’s no mere coincidence that the most sterile climate in decades for energy policy-making developed while the US president followed instead of led on the subject.

It’s no mere coincidence that the most sterile climate in decades for energy policy-making developed while the US president followed instead of led on the subject. George W. Bush surely knows more than he lets show about energy. He also knows that a Texan president with family roots in the oil and gas business arouses stifling suspicion in the US and that relief comes from speaking against 62% of his country’s energy supply.

When Bush disparages oil—and by association natural gas—therefore, it’s reasonable to assume the motivation is politics. He doesn’t denounce the industry that brings oil to market or the companies or people within it. He confines his scorn to the substance. His measured approach has been enough to hold mostly at bay the detractors who condemn him for any hint of friendliness toward an industry they hate. It also has allowed discussion about energy in the US to become delusional.

Costly turn

A president leads with public pronouncements, which achieve their greatest force in the annual state-of-the-union address. What Bush has said from that platform explains much about a costly US turn on energy. In 2003, promising to “promote energy independence for our country while dramatically improving the environment,” he proposed $1.2 billion in research funding for hydrogen-powered vehicles. Through this “important innovation to make our air significantly cleaner and our country much less dependent on foreign sources of energy,” Bush set the country back on a course, discredited by history, toward fuel selection by government.

In 2004, Bush urged Congress to pass “legislation to modernize our electricity system, promote conservation, and make America less dependent on foreign sources of energy.” The legislature obliged the following year with a bill full of political favors for a range of energy sources, including for oil and gas but more extravagantly for fuels from renewable sources such as ethanol and biodiesel.

With prices high after hurricanes slashed US oil and gas supplies, Bush in January 2006 complained that the US was “addicted to oil.” He boasted that the government had spent nearly $10 billion since 2001 “to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative sources” and promised: “We are on the threshold of incredible advances.” Announcing further increases in spending for “clean-energy research,” he set goals of making ethanol from cellulose commercial within 6 years and replacing 75% of US oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.

In last year’s state-of-the-union address, Bush raised the targets. Seeking a 20% cut in gasoline use within 10 years, he called for a quintupling of the mandate for renewable and alternative vehicle fuels to 35 billion gal by 2017 and a toughening of fuel efficiency standards. He again heralded innovation, saying, “America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil.” And again, Congress obliged him, passing the Energy Independence and Security Act.

The president was more general in his last state-of-the-union speech on Jan. 28. He talked up coal use for power generation with carbon capture, increased use of renewable and nuclear power, advanced batteries and renewable fuels for vehicles, and an “international clean technology fund” to help developing countries increase their use of “clean energy sources.”

Programmatic approach

Throughout his presidency, then, Bush has articulated a programmatic approach toward energy that veers away from the market orientation in place since the 1980s. The approach plays to American cravings for domestically produced energy forms that are—or at least appear to be—less polluting than oil. It also ignores American requirements that energy be plentiful and cheap—the very essentials that have doomed past government forays into energy choice.

To his credit, Bush at various times has supported expanded federal leasing and other efforts to raise US production of oil and gas. With his serial acquiescence to popular fantasy, however, he has invited into the national energy discussion an antioil prejudice that consistently forecloses steps his country must take if it is to raise domestic energy supply in large amounts at affordable cost.