Posted: 09/22/2004 | Author: H. Sterling Burnett
Kerry's Energy Plan Fails to Match the President's for Helping Consumers
Let’s be clear; neither candidate has an energy plan to lead America to energy independence. Energy independence is a myth. Like everything else in this age of globalization, energy is bought and sold on the world market and that is not going to change. Moreover, estimates indicate that during the next 20 years, U.S. oil consumption will grow by one-third and electricity demand could increase by more than 45 percent.
Having said this, the comprehensive energy plan that President Bush put forward early in his administration clearly does more to secure future supplies of affordable energy than candidate Kerry’s recently announced energy plan.
The Bush administration laid out 105 recommendations, 42 of which encouraged conservation and environmental protection, while 35 of the recommendations dealt with diversifying the U.S. energy supply and modernizing our antiquated electric and natural gas delivery systems. The plan was not perfect; no plan would be. However, it was comprehensive and the proposals did not contradict each other.
My colleague Bruce Bartlett’s comments on Kerry’s economic plan apply just as well to his energy plan: “Kerry has policies, ... lots of them. The problem is that they don’t hang together in any logical way that could even loosely be called a plan. Viewed in isolation, any one of them might be defensible. But when you put them together, they often contradict each other. Having a plan implies that some thought went into creating a coherent set of policies that are linked together philosophically.”
For instance, like President Bush, Kerry wants to expand nuclear energy use. Unlike the President, however, he would bar the shipment of nuclear waste to the planned federal storage facility at Yucca Mountain Nevada. This may please Nevada voters, but it flies in the face of the science that says Yucca Mountain is the safest place – in terms of national security, human health and environmental protection—to store the nation’s mounting nuclear waste stockpile. This stance virtually precludes the building of new nuclear power plants since banks won’t fund new plants without a safe option for storing nuclear waste – the liability is just too high.
Concerning coal, Kerry’s position is just one more flip-flop. When he’s in West Virginia talking to coal miners, Kerry says he supports coal and wants to build clean coal power plants. When he campaigns anywhere that coal mining is not a major industry however, Kerry calls for reducing domestic CO 2 emissions into the atmosphere to prevent global warming. Even clean coal plants, should they ever actually become commercially viable, will release CO 2 – it’s an unavoidable by-product of burning coal. Thus, his preferred method of slowing global warming conflicts with his goal of keeping coal a vital component of America’s future energy supply.
In an effort to reduce America’s dependence on supplies of Middle Eastern oil, President Bush has been actively filling the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and has promoted opening a small area in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas production. The Energy Information Agency estimates that ANWR contains between six and 16 billion barrels of oil. By comparison, the United States imports approximately 7 million barrels of oil per day. If only six billion barrels of oil were recovered in ANWR, in a time of emergency, the U.S. could cut all oil imports from the Middle East for decades with little effect on our economy.
By contrast, Kerry has voted against opening ANWR, claiming that there is not enough fuel in ANWR to significantly lower energy prices. But he has called on the President to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This would free up less than 120,000 barrels of oil a day, less than one seventh the amount of oil ANWR would provide at peak production. Since the U.S.’s transportation energy needs are expected to grow, Kerry’s plan makes the U.S. more, not less, dependent on foreign oil.
While President Bush’s energy plan hasn’t gotten everything right, candidate Kerry’s plan has gotten almost everything wrong.