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Bush's Plan on Energy Just Words

Posted on: Sunday, 12 February 2006, 18:00 CST

By KEVIN S. CURTIS

Bush's plan on energy just words

Much has been made of President Bushs State of the Union commitment to reduce oil imports from the Middle East. With his budget request last week, the president had a perfect opportunity to put his money where his mouth was during that speech. Instead, he chose to slash funding for essential energy efficiency programs, prolonging our nations painful addiction to oil and other fossil fuels.

In his recent address to the nation, Bush unveiled his Advanced Energy Initiative, promising supposedly new support for clean energy research. He forgot to mention that this funding was actually authorized in the energy bill that he signed six months ago, at levels far greater than any spending proposed in his new budget.

Requested funding for alternative fuels, for instance, is roughly $50 million less than that earlier legislation authorizes. And increased spending on some renewable energy programs comes at the expense of others, as the president completely eliminated funding for geothermal energy, which the Department of Energy calls one of the cleanest sources of electricity available.

Moreover, if our country is ever going to reduce its dependence on nonrenewable fuels, we need to make all sectors of our economy more energy efficient. Otherwise, we wont be able to install solar panels or build wind turbines fast enough to keep pace with our soaring demand for energy, which the Alliance to Save Energy projects will increase another 30 percent over the next two decades.

The president himself has acknowledged that, Increasing energy efficiency will ... help us achieve a vital national goal, and that is making America less dependent on foreign sources of energy. But when it came time to back up that rhetoric, his administration instead reduced funding for efficiency programs across the board.

Weatherization assistance grants which help low-income families install weather stripping, storm windows and insulation were cut by almost one-third, taking $78 million away from households that are already struggling to pay their heating bills. The administration also sliced spending on new vehicle technologies, industrial efficiency and the deployment of more efficient appliances.

These cuts take money straight out of consumers pockets. The government estimates that Energy Star appliances could save the average household about 30 percent on its energy bills, or about $450 per year.

Efficiency programs also represent the only government initiatives that address both our immediate and long-term energy problems. Research and development of new technologies is important as well but the prospect of new fuel cells 20 years down the road wont help anyone heat their homes or fuel their cars today.

In the State of the Union, President Bush said that the best way to break this (oil) addiction is through technology. But its not the technology thats lacking; its the political will to use it. The president has repeatedly blocked efforts to move these technologies off the shelves and onto the streets.

During the last energy debate, the president opposed proposals to raise vehicle fuel economy standards and mandate the use of renewable electricity.

He even helped to block a Senate-led effort to reduce our nations oil imports a million barrels per day by 2015.

The current administration is not the first one to talk about our nations petroleum addiction. More than any of his predecessors, however, President Bush has enabled the very addiction that he so publicly renounced in the State of the Union. His latest budget request reminds us once again that, when it comes to addressing our dangerous reliance on foreign fuel, talk is cheap, and oil is not.

Kevin S. Curtis is director of the energy program at the National Environmental Trust. This article was distributed by the Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.

Source: Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.

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