-Caveat Lector-
March 25, 2001-NYT
A New Role for Greens: Public Enemy
By JOSEPH KAHN
W ASHINGTON — PRESIDENT BUSH has declared that, once again, the nation has an
acute shortage of energy. But the enemy his administration has identified is
not one of the usual suspects: profligate usage, OPEC or Saddam Hussein.
Instead, it is environmentalism.
As Mr. Bush's energy team prepares a comprehensive energy strategy, its
members are meeting
with conservationists as well as oil industry lobbyists. But the team has
begun outlining what
sounds like a supply-side crusade under an anti-green flag.
Among the measures under consideration, according to administration officials
and some
Congressional and industry experts, are: easing clean-air rules for
coal-fired power plants;
loosening federal standards on river flows to protect fish; giving refiners
relief from diverse
anti-pollution standards in different states; allowing states to control
drilling rights on some federal
lands; pushing construction of nuclear plants; and, the headline grabber so
far, opening the Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration.
Mr. Bush has not been shy about taking on environmentalists: last week, he
reversed a Clinton
administration executive order that tightened arsenic standards for drinking
water, a boon to the
mining industry. And in a preview to his approach to energy policy, he
dropped a campaign
pledge to require power plants to control emissions of carbon dioxide, a
greenhouse gas.
Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, called the drafting of the energy plan
a search for a
middle ground between environmentalists and industry. But he sounded the new
battle cry at a
Washington energy conference last week, ridiculing a recent newspaper ad from
a
pro-conservation group, which argued California should solve its electricity
shortages by a crash
efficiency plan.
He cited a study his department prepared that claims that the United States
will need 1,300 new
power plants during the next 20 years. It was the Clinton administration's
folly, he said, to think that
the nation could limit demand and just let supply take care of itself.
"Through neglect or complacency or ideology, this approach has led us to the
crisis we face
today," he said.
THE Bush arsenal includes pointing out that a proliferation of "green tape"
has made blocking
energy projects on environmental grounds too easy, and that it has cost the
nation an adequate
fuel supply. And the Bush team also points the finger at people who use
environmental rules to
simply pursue their own narrow interests.
"We've had an approach that isn't balanced because it's been so easy to stop
projects," said
Vice President Dick Cheney, who is heading the energy team. "Nobody wants to
be able to see a
transmission line from their front yard. Nobody wants a gas pipeline through
their community.
Nobody wants a power plant in their county. It's going to be very important
that we change the
circumstances."
Part of the Bush focus comes out of politics. Environmental groups gave
generously to
Democrats, while Republicans collected $10 million of the $14 million in
political contributions by
oil and gas companies and their trade groups, according to the Center for
Responsive Politics.
There is also the question of experience. Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Donald
Evans, the commerce
secretary, who is also a member of the energy team, are themselves oil
industry veterans. They
are very aware that the clean-air act of 1970, as amended in 1990, is the
industry's bęte noire.
And there is no question that it has forced companies to reduce output from
older power plants
and refineries.
Yet some of the measures under consideration have, at best, a tangential
relationship to the
electricity shortage in California. Mr. Bush's backing of legislation
introduced by Senator Frank
Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, to open a part of the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge to oil
exploration will do nothing to increase the nation's capacity to produce
electricity. Oil is not a
major fuel for power plants.
Natural gas shortages are a different story. Because it is a clean-burning
fuel, power generators
have come to rely heavily on it to produce electricity. What seemed like an
endless bounty of
cheap gas a few years ago now seems more precarious. Prices have soared, and
strains on gas
pipelines are obvious.
But it's not clear that natural gas is in crisis. Natural gas has been so
cheap for so long that
companies have not had the incentive to fully exploit known reserves or
invest in new
infrastructure. High prices — as opposed to government incentives — could
work to secure more
supply relatively quickly, many experts argue. And while it is true that
community groups have
made it difficult to build gas pipelines, the mother of them all — a $10
billion gas superhighway
from Alaska's North Slope to the lower 48 states — has been stalled for
economic reasons, not
environmental ones.
WITH California experiencing rolling blackouts and other parts of the
country, including New York,
worried about shortages this summer, it seems sound enough to review
environmental controls.
But the administration also seems to be tailoring the problem to fit a
narrow, deregulatory solution
long favored by the industry.
What Mr. Bush is calling an energy crisis — scattered shortages of
electricity generating capacity
and last year's isolated gasoline price spikes — is more complex than the
label suggests. An
anti-green approach, which focuses on how environmental controls have helped
create the
problem, may obscure how they could also be part of the solution.
"I haven't heard a single word from them about energy efficiency," said
Representative Edward J.
Markey of Massachusetts, a Democrat. "Our nation's competitive advantage is
technology, not oil
reserves, so we ought be using that technology to make our society more
efficient."
A recent study by five national laboratories under the Department of Energy
found that
market-based energy efficiency policies, like tax credits for fuel-efficient
vehicles, could reduce
the growth of energy demand by a third through 2010.
David Nemtzow of the Alliance to Save Energy says that energy efficiency
regulations Mr. Clinton
promulgated at the end of his term, most notably new standards for air
conditioners, could reduce
projections for future energy needs by 50,000 megawatts through 2020. That's
one-eighth of the
total projected growth in demand during that period.
Yet the president's budget framework envisions cutting funding for energy
efficiency and
renewable energy programs by 30 percent, Congressional experts who have been
briefed on the
planned cuts said. And in what seems like a bit of smash-mouth budgeting, the
administration has
even suggested linking funding for efficiency programs to royalties from
Arctic drilling.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
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