DOE's energy strategy

The U.S. Department of Energy's Comprehensive National Energy Strategy, now in draft form, appears to have been written by the Environmental Protection Agency and edited by the Department of Interior.

It's a catalogue of high hopes: for security, for free markets (coaxed away from their lapses by tender nudges from the government), and for environmental and economic progress. It appeals for cooperation, research and development, and technology. It resonates with verbs such as "promote," "enhance," "maintain," and "support."

And it treads lightly on how to achieve these ambitions, which of course would require such politically difficult verbs as "tax," "mandate," "restrict," and "ration."

Environmental core

The core tenet appears on p. 9: "Energy use is a principal driver of local and regional environmental problems such as emission of fine particulates and the creation of smog and acid precipitation from nitrogen and sulfur oxides." Then there's climate change, suspected ("by the great majority of involved scientists") to result from a buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

These thoughts come, of course, from EPA, which seems to have cast such a spell on DOE that the draft seldom mentions energy without genuflecting to the environment. It's not enough that energy enable work to be done in the most efficient way; it also must be "clean." Hence one strategy hopes to cut "expected oil consumption" in 2010 by 1 million b/d-not through anything as unpopular as taxes or allocation but rather through "technology options."

While the strategy does seek to "grow domestic energy production," the methods are as screwy as the language. It commits to "support policies to allow our natural gas supply to grow by up to 6 tcf by 2010." And while it envisions a reversal in the oil production decline by 2005, the only recommendation to that end is to "use advanced technologies to recover more oil from reservoirs without significant environmental degradation." What is that-enhanced recovery with a drip pan?

Come on. Increasing production means drilling, and drilling requires leasing. On that subject, the strategy is silent-in deference, no doubt, to an Interior Department loath to allow leasing in new areas. And it pins unreasonable hope on research, which it too casually invokes to explain away inconvenient market behavior and to dispense with problems created by regulation, including new air emission controls affecting refiners.

"Expanded research, development, and demonstration support for advanced coal and natural gas electricity generating systems," the draft purrs at one point, "will accelerate market adoption of new technologies in the context of greater competition in the generation sector." Sure they will.

The draft has more to do with implementing provisions of a global warming treaty that Congress won't ratify than with accomplishing anything real with energy that markets can't accomplish on their own. The oil and gas industry should encourage DOE to scrap it.

Villains and victims

A fanciful effort like this just proves that no solid energy initiative can survive environmental sanctification within the Clinton administration. There, energy will forever play the villain in a tiresome melodrama casting the environment as victim.

In the DOE energy strategy, shaped as it is by these predilections, cloying juxtapositions don't end there. Immediately preceding the paragraph about cutting oil demand by 1 million b/d is a call for removal of barriers to trade in oil and gas.

Maybe oil exporters will think it's a joke.