Will we learn from history in coping with the serious energy problems exposed by the Persian Gulf crisis, or if we get through this one will we simply relive it again next time? The answer may shape our economy and way of life for decades. It could begin to emerge when the Department of Energy issues its National Energy Strategy this December.
History shows that efforts to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil have amounted to one of the greatest American public policy embarrassments of the century.
In the 17 years since the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed their first embargo, we have had five presidents, nearly a dozen energy ”czars” and several attempts at writing a national energy policy. We have spent tens of billions of dollars on researching and developing alternative energy sources, and nearly that much researching and subsidizing energy conservation. Yet here we are in 1990 relying on foreign oil for over half of our national needs, and at the same time-unlike 1973-there is a serious electric power capacity problem just a few years ahead.
All our presidents, czars, plans and dollars over nearly two decades have not contributed enough oil or electricity to add much to America`s national energy supply. Every nuclear power plant that has gone into operation since 1973 was already under construction before the first energy crisis. Few new large coal plants have been started in the last 10 years.
Commentary about the energy initiatives of Jimmy Carter and California`s Jerry Brown claim that their measures were scuttled during the Reagan years. The facts are that research was cut back on unproductive avenues, subsidies were phased out, tax shelters were eliminated, and the technologies proved uneconomical. The synfuels plants and shale oil recover projects are in bankruptcy. The solar and wind machines we have, though helpful, are not economical without subsidies. And the most cost-effective conservation steps have already been accomplished.
Yes, we have made progress in energy efficiency and conservation. We put mileage goals into law, and cut the size of cars. But the easier savings have been achieved; every additional mile per gallon will be much harder. Today there are a lot more Americans and a lot more cars. We can cut frivolous uses, but that produces small savings. The fact is that this nation moves almost everything in oil.
Rather than recognizing the threat to our long-term energy security and mobilizing the country to increase use of American energy sources, we have systematically blocked them. Oil exploration, coal-burning power plants, nuclear energy plants, dams for hydro power-a combination of regulatory red tape and environmentalist opposition has brought them all to a standstill. Even many energy sources that environmentalists encouraged as ”renewables” a few years ago are facing the same type of opposition as they come closer to reality, like geothermal plants proposed in Hawaii and even new windmills in California.
The destructiveness of our energy policy trends is particularly clear with regard to electric power. We do not depend on oil for much of our electricity nationwide anymore-4.9 percent last year. But for the third consecutive summer, utilities in the East have suffered brownouts and even occasional rotating blackouts; still, practically no new large generating stations are under contruction. All new orders are for gas turbines, and the fallback will be oil for the plants we put in mothballs or on standby in the 1970s.
Since 1973, our total use of energy has hardly changed, even as the gross national product increased by nearly 50 percent. But our use of electricity has risen by 50 percent, keeping pace with GNP. That additional electricity has come from coal, nuclear energy and natural gas.
France, Japan and other industrialized nations systematically replaced imported oil with electricity, generated largely by nuclear power. As a result, they are much more nearly self-sufficient in energy than they would have been otherwise, and that helps their economies compete worldwide. These other countries are able to adopt a long-term strategy and stick to it far better than the United States can.
There is real concern that in drafting its energy strategy the Department of Energy may be taking the politically safe course of emphasizing additional conservation measures, rather than telling the public that we need both conservation and new energy production, that we can`t make it without burning more coal and also getting new nuclear power plants back into the marketplace, that there are risks with all energy sources and use but they are much less than the risks of being short of electricity, and that although all the conservation, solar, wind and alternative energy we can get will help, it won`t change what we need to do.
It would be ridiculous, but not out of character, if we succeeded in getting electric cars into production by 2000 only to find that to charge their batteries all night we would have to generate the electricity by burning more oil and gas. To remove the obstacles to any new coal or nuclear plants, the National Energy Strategy will have to tell the public the whole story. Otherwise we are sure to be painfully reliving history, not learning from it.
