Federal policy over the past century has largely failed to promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources. The tax code, budget appropriations, and regulatory processes overwhelmingly have been used to subsidize dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The result: increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril of climate change and radioactive waste dumps-not to mention a dependency on external energy supplies.
There is an alternative. Three decades of detailed assessments, on-the-ground results, and a flood of research and development innovations in the energy-consuming devices used in our buildings, vehicles and industries, undeniably show that energy efficiency, renewable energy technologies, and natural gas as a bridging fuel are superior energy options for society. They offer a present and future path that is economically attractive, safe and secure from large-scale or long-term risks or threats to public health, future generations, and the environment.
But embarking on that path requires overcoming the power of the oil, nuclear and other conventional fuel industries to which both the Republicans and Democrats are indentured. Under the thumb of the dirty fuel industries, Congress and the Executive branch refuse to take even the most modest, common sense measures. For example, when the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology concluded in a 1997 report that doubling the Department of Energyís efficiency R&D funding would produce a 40 to 1 return on the investment for the nation, Congress responded by proposing deep cuts in the efficiency and renewables R&D budgets.
When they have made a nod to increased energy efficiency, the Clinton/Gore Administration has pursued policy through corporate welfare. Most notably, rather than push for an increase in auto fuel-efficiency standards, the Administration established the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). PNGV is a $1.5 billion subsidy program for the Big Three auto companies that has done nothing to improve auto fuel efficiency but has served as a convenient smokescreen behind which the industry has been able to fend off new regulatory requirements for more efficient cars.
Energy Innovations: A Prosperous Path to a Clean Environment, a joint study recently prepared by half a dozen of the nation's prominent energy and environmental research and advocacy groups, shows that a simple and straightforward list of policy measures implemented in the next few years could produce:
