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Posted on  

May 16, 2001

A Bottom-up Energy Policy

by: David Morris

Vice President Dick Cheney has told us that to address the electricity crisis, the nation needs one new power plant a week for the next 20 years.

President Bush has told us that to address the gasoline crisis the nation needs one new petroleum refinery a month for the next four years.

We do need new energy supplies, although aggressive efficiency improvements could reduce the amount needed by more than half.

What we don't need is the kind of energy future championed by Bush, a top-down, centralized, undemocratic vision in which we would become even more dependent on remote energy sources and remote energy decisionmakers.

While Cheney envisions one new giant power plant a week, we are installing 30 new small power plants a day, each generating a tiny fraction of the electricity generated by a coal or nuclear plant. Yet collectively they can make an important short-term contribution.

Consider the phenomenal increase just in microturbines, tiny environmentally benign power plants that serve small businesses or office buildings.

In 1999 only 300 microturbines were in use. In 2000 this increased to 1,200, with a total capacity of 53 megawatts. This year more than 5,000 units will be shipped, with a total capacity of 300 megawatts. At this rate, within five years we could have the equivalent of 200 nuclear power plants of electricity-generation capacity installed in a million basements and back yards.

On-site power plants expand supply and reduce demand, because only about 30 percent of the fuel consumed in coal and nuclear plants is converted into useful energy.

Meanwhile on-site power plants can be as much as 90 percent efficient by making use of the heat as well as the electricity generated.

The Minnesota way

Bush worries that no new petroleum refineries have been built since 1978. But while the number of petroleum refineries has dropped to 157 today from a peak of 324 in 1981, since 1978 some 57 ethanol refineries have been built, and another 50 may become operational by 2002.

The president will unveil his energy plan Thursday in St. Paul. He should inform the nation about Minnesota's own strategy for dealing with gasoline crises.

Ethanol made from crops constitutes about 10 percent of the state's gasoline supply. Fifteen biorefineries produce that fuel. Two-thirds are owned by farmers.

About 15 percent of all full-time grain farmers in Minnesota are shareholders in one or more ethanol plants. This year some of them will make almost as much money from dividends from these manufacturing enterprises as they will make selling their corn on the open market.

Bush's centralized energy policy demands that the federal government intervene in local and state affairs. It would have the federal government exercise its authority to impose high-voltage transmission lines over the objections of the affected community and local and state agencies.

His energy plan would force Nevada and Utah, two states without nuclear reactors, to become permanent home to nuclear wastes from the 26 states that do.

There is a better way, a bottom-up rather than top-down strategy, that looks to communities and households and businesses and farms as energy producers, not simply energy consumers.

Let me offer the president two energy policy actions that would move us in this direction.

First, issue an executive order that requires all federal buildings to install environmentally benign electricity-generating capacity whenever the investment repays itself in less than 10 years. Ask Congress to provide the money to finance these money-saving investments.

Second, deny California's request for a waiver from the Clean Air Act requirement that oxygen be added to gasoline in those communities where pollution exceeds certain levels.

Here's why that's important. Two-thirds of the nation uses an oxygen additive made from natural gas and petroleum called MTBE. We now know that MTBE contaminates ground water. It has been banned in 11 states.

The phasing out of MTBE gives the nation an unprecedented opportunity to embrace renewable transportation fuels. Unfortunately, California is shortsightedly asking the White House to substitute for MTBE another 100 percent fossil-fuel derived gasoline without oxygen.

A better strategy is to promote a 10 percent renewable fuel standard.

Consider this. Alaska supplies about 9 percent of the nation's oil. Bush wants to raise that percentage marginally by allowing drilling on federal lands.

Why not instead rely on fuels made from the nation's crops, urban wastes, grasses and agricultural wastes, such as straw and corn stalks. By 2010 every rural county in America could have at least one homegrown fuel refinery.

If combined with an emphasis on farmer ownership of these new biorefineries, the president would be addressing not only the energy crisis, but the agricultural crisis as well.

George W. Bush has the opportunity to offer America a new energy vision, one that offers not only security but self-reliance. It is a vision uniquely compatible with the American spirit.

-- DavidMorris is vice president of the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and author of ''Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of Our Electricity System.''
 

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