The making of energy policy is not a fashion show for fuels. Proper decisions of energy policy-making deal not with what types of energy people should use but with which life choices people should surrender to government.
In its response to the Bush administration's proposed energy policy, much of which found its way into legislation passed by the House of Representa- tives, the Sierra Club appeals for an energy policy achievable only by fiat.
"Instead of depending on big oil, dirty coal, and dangerous nuclear power for our energy needs," the group says, "we should be adopting an energy policy that is based on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and responsible supply." The document laments what it calls President George W. Bush's "'dig, drill, and destroy' approach to energy policy." It proposes instead an approach that amounts to shirk, shrink, and shrug.
Mandated limits
When the Sierra Club espouses energy efficiency, it doesn't mean reducing energy consumption as a factor of measured economic growth. In that area, in righteous response to economic influence, the US has made steady progress for many years.
What the Sierra Club means by "energy efficiency" is mandated limitation of energy use. Examples in its counterproposal include the raising of caps on average automobile fuel mileage and the hiking of threshold efficiencies for air conditioners. Politically acceptable as these measures have become, they amount to the government's telling individuals how much energy they may use and should be ap- proached with extreme care.
A Sierra Club version of energy policy could not stop with the consumption efficiencies of cars and air conditioners. The curbs that the group proposes on energy supply would have to be balanced by far greater demand reductions.
Without specifying quantities, the counterproposal appeals for lower consumption of coal, oil, and nuclear power and increased use of natural gas and renewable energy, as though supply from the latter sources can be increased at will.
Supply of natural gas has limits. One of them is the resource itself, which might not support production increases implied by current demand projections. And the Sierra Club would restrict land available for leasing and drilling. Under its counterproposal, there is no way production of natural gas could increase enough to balance significantly diminished supplies from oil, coal, and nuclear power.
That means heightened pressure on demand cuts and supply from the Sierra Club's energy favorite, renewable sources such as sunlight and wind. On this subject, the group loses its sense of proportion.
It notes that the Department of Energy has estimated wind power "could be expanded to serve the electricity needs of 10 million homes." That sounds impressive. But it's just a way for DOE to illustrate potential, not a goal achievable within any reasonable planning term. And while 10 million is a large number, it represents less than one tenth of total US households.
Under a Sierra Club energy program, more than 90% of American households apparently would have to compete for legislatively curtailed supplies of energy from sources the club deems unfashionable plus whatever might emerge from other renewable sources. That's not much.
In its current long-term energy forecast, the Energy Information Administration sees total generation of electric power from nonhydro renewable energy rising to 242 billion kw-hr in 2020 from 146 billion kw-hr in 1999. That's solid growth. Yet the renewable share of total generation climbs in that period from 2.8% to only 4.6%.
Renewable energy is important. Its development should be encouraged. But to rely on it to displace meaningful amounts of traditional, unfashionable sources of energy would be foolish.
Not painless
The environmentalist energy agenda, given voice in the Sierra Club's response to the Bush plan, sounds painless: balance diminished use of unfashionable energy sources with supply from favored fuels plus consumption cuts. But it's not painless. Supply constriction implicit in the environmentalist agenda requires consumption cuts more extreme than what the politically popular word "conservation" normally implies. The cuts would have to be the kinds that require sacrifice of economic health, living standards, and personal freedom.
Shirk, shrink, and shrug. Once Americans realize what lies behind the conservation-and-renewables mantra, they'll know what to do with the rest of the Sierra Club's energy agenda.
