I was just reading a story on Yahoo! where Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asked President Bush to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to temper gasoline prices (I paid $3.37 a gallon on Sunday – it is up to $3.47 now). My thought on this was: this is like throwing a rock into the river to try and stop the flow. It occurs to me that the politicians of our country seem to view everything through the prism of oil when it comes to energy.
One of the debates that is beginning to heat up even more is whether or not we have reached ‘peak status’. I have not been convinced one way or another whether oil is finite or regenerational. I hope it’s the latter, but I am not holding my breath. So what we need is a new plan – one that takes common sense into effect. Unfortunately, our energy policy is not dictated by it at all. It is beholden to a bewildering diversity of special interests – environmentalist types, oil companies, and the automobile industry. I have a feeling that this will not please either the environmentalist types or the oil guzzling types, but here we go.
1) Non-intrusive oil drilling – in Alaska and off the coasts (Gulf and Pacific). Yes, that includes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Despite the shrill screams of people blaming oil companies, it is largely an issue of supply and demand – supply goes up with stable demand, the price drops. Only a small part of ANWR needs to be drilled, and if we are to be ‘energy dependent’, certain things need to be taken into our own hands.
2) Build new refineries – related to #1, we always get screwed if a refinery has an accident, because of the limits on them. There hasn’t been a new one in over 30 years and the age of the current ones begin slowing their efficiency. Less efficiency means more cost to them and therefore more cost to us.
3) Raise fuel efficiency standards – now that I have demonstrated that we need to raise supply, we have to curb demand. Raising fuel standards in automobiles is the way to go, but there needs to be a nudge to the automakers. Tax breaks and other incentives might provide motivation, or to have a contest between the automakers to see who can be the first to develop a marketable 60 MPG car gets 75% of their taxes slashed for three years. It is an embarrasment to see auto commercials trumpeting their ‘good’ fuel standards that get 23 MPG city and 26 MGP highway. If I can get at least 33-35 MPG on my crappy little Saturn, they can certainly do that. So a minimum standard of, say, 40 MPG for a car and 35 MPG for trucks and vans. That is just for starters – as it would improve over the 27/20 standard we have now.
4) Nuclear Power Plants – I don’t give the French a whole lot of credit for anything, but they deserve it for being able to power most of the country on nuclear power, and we ought to take a lesson from them. I look squarely at the environmentalist movement as the roadblock to this. Get out of the way!! You are holding up the progress as much as the energy companies are. Instead of continuously looking at Chernobyl and the Bomb, how ’bout the positive side? It doesn’t pollute from its towers and while we do have to figure out an effective way to dispose of the nuclear waste, it will go a long way to removing our electrical grid off the coal and oil.
5) Building codes – I am against the compact flourescent lightbulb (CFL), as it is a health risk due to the dearth of disposal. Likewise, if it breaks, you are exposed to mercury, which could kill you if you are closely exposed. However, the LED light is coming and it could also be made mandatory to fit all public buildings with tankless water heaters. This would eliminate the oil/natural gas component, and likewise give a tax break to citizens who go the tankless way.
6) (A Questionable Point) Alternative Energy – Solar and wind power are favs of the green movement, but unfortunately they are still way too unpredictable to rely on them. Solar panels have to face a certain way and the wind has to be blowing in order for mills to work. Ethanol needs to be abandoned immediately as it actually causes more smog than regularly treated gas and is now even causing a food shortage due to the large swaths of corn going for ethanol production rather than eating. Biodiesel looks sort of promising, but it has the same pitfall as ethanol – the reliance upon crops as a way of production.
Tags: Energy Independence, Environmentalism, Oil
April 24, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Why not just make electric cars? (I blame the Stonecutters)
I still remember back in the mid 90’s, talking about the GM “EV1″ that people were using in California, and that his next car would be electric that you could charge at home. There’s a really interesting documentary you can find online called “Who Killed the Electric Car?” that talks about the EV1.
Ethanol isn’t going to work. Hydrogen fuel cells also will NEVER work.
I think that if someone sneezes at a refinery, they raise the price per barrel.
I’m all for more nuclear power plants. Put them in more isolated areas in states that nobody cares about.
April 24, 2008 at 10:39 pm
The problem with electric cars is that at the status quo, it doesn’t solve the oil problem, since most electricity in this country is still manufactured via oil. Now, that could be solved with nuke-you-ler power, but as long as we are beholden to environmentalists who want us to do ‘penance’ for our ’sins’, we will never have an abundance of nuclear power.