Supporters of nonfossil energy are using a deepwater blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to advance their agendas. Their doing so is as inevitable as the crackdown producers face in the regulation of offshore work. As was argued here last week, tighter regulation is appropriate and will be constructive if based on proper motives and applied in the context of a strong and enduring need for oil (OGJ, May 17, 2010, p. 16). New pressure for new forms of energy can be useful, too, if accompanied by controls now absent.
"One lesson is already apparent from the catastrophe in the gulf," said House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) while opening one of several congressional hearings on the Macondo blowout last week. "We need an energy policy that emphasizes clean, renewable sources of energy. We can't snap our fingers and transform our energy economy overnight. If we do not have the courage to take on the oil companies and take decisive steps to reduce our over-reliance on oil–when the consequences of doing nothing are so clear–we may never start down the path toward a clean energy economy."
On the same day, May 12, John Kerry (D-Mass.) cited the gulf tragedy while unveiling legislation on energy and climate change that he and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will introduce in the Senate. Support for the bill, Kerry said, is "a vote for clean energy after a devastating oil spill."
'Teaching moment'
Promoters of renewable transportation fuels naturally joined in. Renewable Fuels Association Pres. and Chief Executive Officer Robert Dinneen urged President Barack Obama in a letter to use the gulf disaster as "a teaching moment" to "steel the resolve of the American people to take this country in a new direction." And Joe Jobe, chief executive officer of the National Biodiesel Board, made the spill part of an appeal, at a conference in Las Vegas, for congressional action on an expired tax credit. "As we all wait in dread for the gulf oil slick to wreak devastation on some of the nation's most sensitive wetland habitats, Congress's inaction has left America's nontoxic, biodegradable biofuel at risk of collapse," he said.
The advantageous use of news events goes with public persuasion. With goo from the Macondo well now touching shorelines, almost any form of energy that isn't oil can be made to look clean. Promoters of nonoil energy forms deserve no fault for capitalizing on a moment when standard comparisons are unusually sharp. Oil can be massively messy. Ethanol and biodiesel seem pristine when oil's messiness is on full, distressing display.
The gulf mess thus will advance a "clean-energy" program to which the current US government already was strongly committed. That commitment, by itself, is nothing to regret. Development of alternatives to oil, gas, and coal serves national interests and deserves some measure of the public expenditure on which it depends. What has been regrettable about the US approach to nonhydrocarbon energy is a combination of unrealistic hope and inattention to cost. The hazard is spending too much on too little energy while trying to displace, rather than supplement, hydrocarbon fuels, requirements for which will not seriously diminish anytime soon.
At least as much as the US needs improved regulation of deepwater drilling, it needs more control over federal spending on politically preferred energy. A good first step would be to increase transparency. The public should know how much its government spends on solar, wind, ethanol, biodiesel, and other such energy forms through direct spending, forgone tax revenue, and other favors. And it should know how much energy supply results.
Watching subsidies
The Energy Information Administration published a revealing study of energy subsidies in 2008, from which it was possible to calculate spending per unit of energy supply and draw comparisons. The numbers in EIA's study were historic. They should be updated periodically and published, along with dollars-per-BTU calculations, regularly (OGJ, Mar. 2, 2009, p. 18).
Information like that would help restrain governmental energy spending. Politicians need regulation, too.
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