The recommendations offered by the Bush-Cheney Energy plan lack innovation and foresight and do not present viable long-term energy planning for the country as a whole. Paradoxically, many of its recommendations would also not provide short-term aid to California or similar victims of energy price fixing. This is despite the fact that the Bush administration is perfectly willing to use the California fleecing as an excuse to blame "onerous" environmental regulations rather that address the real problems including rapacious deregulation laws and greedy energy producers and distributors. In fact, across the country many power facilities are already slated to go online within the next 18 months under the current regulatory regime. Nation-wide, most of the 400,000 MW of new generating capacity called for by the Plan could be provided by energy efficiency (180,000 MW) and renewable energy supplies (50,000 MW) according to a DOE energy study "Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future". Many believe that the contribution of energy efficient and renewable energy technologies could be higher. The solutions proposed by Bush-Cheney gut environmental regulations and cut public participation while not addressing a fundamental energy problem in this country: unnecessary energy consumption. The US produces 400% more energy than it uses.
Given the outright refusal of the White House to turn over, at the request of the Government Accounting Office, a list of individuals who met with the task force privately, the public is left to assume that its recommendations mostly serve the interest of the President and his contributors rather than the interest of the American people. This assumption is further supported by the available list of advisory members which includes 62 people, the majority of whom have ties to the fossil fuel/nuclear power industries. This group also contributed more than $8 million dollars to Republican candidates in 1999-2000. Most of these members had no experience in renewables or energy efficiency. This explains why the plan is bearish on new, clean, promising energy technologies but bullish on failed and dangerous technologies like nuclear fission and fusion.
The following guiding principles for sound, accessible electricity development were not emphasized in the energy plan:
FIRST PRINCIPLE: Put electric power back in the hands of the people at a local or regional level and encourage decentralized energy generation.
It is financially responsible. Like it or not, the California utilities that are failing are the ones which were privatized at a great expense to the public which they are supposed to serve. In fact, over 25 billion dollars was given to them and subsequently disappeared into their parent companies which now seem to have no fiduciary responsible for the CA utilities' failure.
Clean, renewable energy becomes cheaper. Sustainable technologies thrive and become even cheaper in a decentralized energy system because less energy is wasted in transporting the energy to its final destination. This also means less energy needs to be generated in the first place, which will cut demand.
Energy is provided for all. While public utilities can make a profit, their incentive can be primarily on providing energy and service. They are also free to assure that the most environmentally friendly, efficient, and therefore, money-saving technology is available to all.
SECOND PRINCIPLE: Get rid of subsidies for established technologies such as nuclear power. Subsidies distort the true cost of energy sources and make market entry for new, promising and innovative energy technologies difficult.
1) Energy technologies, like nuclear power, which have received enormous public benefits and subsidies now need to swim on their own—or sink. Nuclear subsidies have cost the average household a total amount of $1,411 compared to $11 for wind. If nuclear power can't compete in a free-market with the amount of subsidy it has received to date, then it should fail.
2) The Bush-Cheney energy plan calls for renewal of the Price-Anderson Act, which limits nuclear industry liability in the event of an accident.
The view of nuclear utilities on the safety of nuclear power can best be seen by the existence of the Price-Anderson Act. No utility would build or operate a reactor if it were not shielded from the potential liability that could be accrued from a nuclear accident (upwards of $300 Billion in property damage and thousands of deaths and injuries). No other hazardous industry enjoys such liability protection—an indication of just how dangerous nuclear power is. A mature industry with a good safety record would not need the Price-Anderson Act.
The Price-Anderson Act limits total industry liability to about $8 Billion (some proposals have called for this number to be increased somewhat). This is far short of the potential damages described in Sandia National Laboratories 1982 Calculation of Reactor Consequences (CRAC-2) report. Taxpayers would have to make up the difference.
Even if it were not renewed, the current Price-Anderson Act would continue to cover existing reactors. Thus, the only rationale for extending the Act is in order to build new reactors. The taxpayer subsidy for Price-Anderson—based on projections of what it would cost for nuclear utilities to purchase private insurance, if any were available—is on the order of $3.5 Billion per year. There is no reason to extend this subsidy to new reactors, which are either mature and proven, according to the nuclear industry, or "inherently safe," according to the industry. In fact, both the Nuclear Energy Institute, (the industry trade and lobbying organization) and Vice President Cheney, are pushing for renewal of Price-Anderson. VP Cheney claims that no utility would build new reactors without reauthorizing Price-Anderson. If nuclear proponents like VP Cheney and the industry's own trade organization don't have enough faith in the safety of nuclear power to abandon Price-Anderson, why should the public be asked to believe in nuclear safety and the continued hollow promises of the nuclear industry.
THIRD PRINCIPLE: Account for the TRUE cost of an energy source. Renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures are the most effective and cheapest way to address global climate change while fulfilling our energy needs. Obviously, using coal and oil, while providing more energy will also increase greenhouse gas pollution, no matter how cheap they are or how clean, they will always emit some greenhouse and other unhealthful gases. Nuclear power is no better.
Global Climate Change and True Cost Accounting
Industry claims that nuclear power is not a source of greenhouse gases are simply not true. When the entire fuel chain is taking into account, nuclear power produces 4-5 times more carbon emissions than any renewable energy resource and nuclear costs more than most renewables. Therefore, we would actually be hurting our attempts to curb carbon emissions by investing more money in nuclear which would bring us less greenhouse gas mitigation.
Additionally, the uranium enrichment plant at Paducah, KY—the last remaining enrichment plant in the U.S.—is the nation's single largest emitter of banned chorloflourocarbons—an absolutely proven climate change contributor banned by the Montreal Protocol.
Moreover, nuclear power is not "emissions-free." Its emissions—at every step of the fuel chain—are of radioactivity, one of the relatively few absolutely proven human carcinogens. These emissions take place daily and routinely; they do not require an accident. The emissions build up over time, and concentrate in plants and soil. That they are invisible and odorless does not make them less toxic. If radiation were the color and texture of oil—if people could see the radiation being released—no reactor ever would operate again.
Uranium-A Finite Resource vs. Renewable energy-An infinite resource
Uranium is a finite resource like oil. According to some predictions, it will run out by 2050. The nuclear industry's answer to this is reprocessing: a dirty, waste-ridden, polluting process which has contaminated every place it has touched. Not only is land and water around these sites contaminated, but human health, especially that of children, suffers. Pollution from these facilities has been associated with childhood cancers in Ireland and France. The Bush-Cheney energy plan recommends a re-evaluation of the current U.S. ban on reprocessing of nuclear waste, and advocates additional research on "transmutation" of radioactive waste. 20 years and more than $1 Billion later, the U.S. is still cleaning up the contamination caused by the first experiment in reprocessing at West Valley, New York. Indeed, a radioactive waste train—carrying one of the largest radioactive inventories ever in the U.S., is scheduled to travel from West Valley to Idaho this summer—to the consternation of citizens all across the likely transport routes.
Renewable and Energy Efficient Technologies
Meanwhile, having consumed only a fraction of the public subsidy historically given to nuclear power/coal/oil research and industry, the cost of renewables is falling all the time. Wind is a very citizen-friendly energy source, allowing farmers and indigenous people to use wind not only power their own operations, but also sell some back to the grid. Wind power has dropped 90% since the 1980's, down to 3-6 cents per Kwh.
Solar technologies are also becoming cheaper and photovoltaic panels can fit on business and residential rooftops, cutting down the land area believed to be required for solar electricity generation. On Long Island a currently planned installation project of 1.5 mW of solar PV power on a local business' rooftop will cover its own cost in 5 years. The life of the solar cells will be 20-30 years. Additionally, PV power adds electricity when the grid is at peak demand, ensuring that rolling blackouts like the ones in CA are less of an issue.
Equally important, renewables have overwhelming public support. Energy efficiency measures save energy and money.
Most frightening is perhaps the Plan's lack of interest in technologies that will be extremely desirable and profitable to investors. The US has an opportunity to lead the world in clean energy technologies, but the window is quickly closing and those in power refuse to abandon old, failed technology and electricity models. Not only could we use these renewable energy technologies to fill our own energy needs, we could recoup our investment and see profit in selling them to others. Rather than throw money at dangerous energy sources, our government needs to back truly sustainable technologies, such as wind, solar, fuel cells, micro hydro and some forms of biomass. Other countries have already seen this future and are working to develop and sell these technologies. Instead of investing in the future, the Bush energy plan clings to environmentally destructive and economically stagnant energy policies.
In short, it is not enough to discuss renewables and energy efficiency measures in a vacuum. We must consider their success or failure in light of market forces, subsidies and the current electricity creation paradigm, that is centralized versus decentralized power generation. We must discuss them in tandem with other energy sources. We must realize that predictions of future energy use have consistently over-estimated demand. We must decide that we will make renewable energy and energy efficient technologies work for us and do what is necessary to ensure their success rather than assuming that they alone will not be enough to supply our future energy needs. We must not just pay lip service to these technologies, as th Plan appears to do, we must aggressively pursue them. We must bolster funding to renewable energy and energy efficiency programs, not cut them as the Administration is currently planning. Anything short of this dooms us to the same environmentally devastating energy sources we rely on today. The current Bush-Cheney plan fails on all counts: it propels us to a failed energy past, rather than the energy future we want and deserve.