The New York Times > Business >
Slow Learner on Energy-Efficiency Front
By JAD MOUAWAD
Published: October 5, 2004
The United States, land of gas-guzzling S.U.V.'s and air-conditioned
McMansions, might do well to turn to the country some Americans love
to hate for lessons on how to curb its reliance on imported oil:
France.
Now that oil has reached roughly $50 a barrel and the world is coming
to expect relatively high oil prices to last a long time, experts say
that a rethinking of America's wasteful ways is once again an urgent
undertaking.
And like it or not, France - whose perceived diplomatic
obstructionism in the run-up to the Iraq war provoked a boycott of
French products by some Americans - has displayed a quality ripe for
export: an impressive tenacity in waging what the French call the war
on gaspi, short for gaspillage, or waste. It has also done so in a
way that the United States has not been able to: over the long term.
Spurred by the oil shocks of the 1970's, France embarked on a vast
state-led drive to flush out as much oil from its economy as
possible. With the national slogan at the time, "We don't have oil,
but we have ideas," it accelerated the shift of electricity
production from oil-fired power plants to nuclear reactors, increased
taxes on gasoline to the equivalent of $3.75 a gallon, encouraged the
sale of diesel-powered cars and gave tax breaks to energy-hungry
industries like aluminum, cement and paper to shift from oil to other
fuels.
It worked. In contrast to the United States, where oil consumption
initially fell but then ended up rising by a total of 16 percent from
1973 to 2003, in France, despite some increase in recent years, oil
use is still 10 percent lower today than it was three decades ago,
according to the United States Energy Information Administration.
(Germany also matched France's record.)
"Americans have completely abandoned their efforts at energy
conservation over the past decade and have been incredibly care-free
about oil consumption because they believed they would get access to
cheap energy - through force if necessary," said Pierre Terzian, an
energy specialist who runs the Paris-based consulting firm
PetroStrategies.
The contrast between French resolve and American abandon in recent
years is sharp. The United States, too, took the high road in the
1970's and early 80's, when the combined impact of the 1973 oil
embargo, the growing power of OPEC and the Iranian revolution of 1979
created long gas lines and raised the prospect of an oil producers'
stranglehold over the American economy.
The price of Arabian light crude rose from $1.85 a barrel in 1972 to
$40 in 1981, or $80 in today's dollars.
Americans responded with a nationwide speed limit of 55 miles an
hour, a home-insulating boom and a blossoming of energy-technology
start-ups to help businesses cut their energy bills. Vast
improvements came in home appliances: refrigerators, for example, now
consume a third of the energy needed 30 years ago.
But slowly, the nation resumed old habits. By the late 1980's, with
the economy booming and oil prices below $20 a barrel, gas guzzlers
were back, cars raced along highways at 75 m.p.h. with impunity and
new vehicles' average mileage per gallon, which had almost doubled to
27.5 in 1987 from 14 in 1972, slipped back to 24, compared with
Europe's 36.
In the 1990's, the United States, which represents roughly 24 percent
of world economic output and an even lower share of industrial
production, nonetheless accounted for a third of the growth in demand
for global oil.
A big reason for the policy divide, said Amy Jaffe, the associate
director of Rice University's energy program, is a cultural contrast
of two sharply opposed ways of looking at the world.
"In the United States, we try to control things over which we have no
control, like Russia or Saudi Arabia, instead of looking at what we
could do inside," Mrs. Jaffe said. "We're like drug addicts. We're
looking around for another dealer instead of going to detox."
For now, the presidential candidates are preaching familiar themes in
their campaigning, with President Bush calling for more exploration
and increased domestic production and Senator John Kerry promoting
alternative energies.
But with oil now at $50 a barrel, double what it was two years ago,
and with many analysts expecting substantially higher energy prices
in the next decade than during the 1990's, some experts are saying
that both government and industry are going to need to do some
fundamental rethinking of some basic policies.
"The lack of emphasis on demand in the past 20 years in the United
States has a lot to do with the predicament we're in now," said Ashok
Gupta, an economist with the National Resources Defense Council. "We
need to look at what it will take to get manufacturers to offer
technologies that people want."
One obvious step, which politicians are loath to even mention, would
be to increase taxes on gasoline. Here again, the divergence between
the United States and Europe is instructive. To encourage the use of
mass-transit systems, and finance their development, European
governments impose generally high taxes on gasoline. French drivers
pay over $5 a gallon for gasoline, $3.75 of that in taxes, compared
with $1.90 a gallon on average in the United States, with only 41
cents of that going to taxes.
Proposing a tenfold increase in taxes to match the European level
would, of course, be political suicide in the United States. There
have been several attempts to increase federal taxes on gasoline over
the years, but "they've all met with disaster," said Kateri Callahan,
the president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a business-supported
group that promotes energy efficiency.
"Mobility is seen as a national right here in the United States,''
Mrs. Callahan said. "To impose a higher tax when gasoline prices are
already perceived to be high is simply not good politics."
At the same time, environmentalists face pressure to accept some trade-offs.
Most European countries, for example, have encouraged drivers to buy
cars with diesel engines, which burn 30 percent less fuel than
regular engines. Two-thirds of cars registered in France are
diesel-fueled, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers'
Association. That compares with diesel sales of less than half of 1
percent in the United States.
One hurdle to diesel sales in the United States is that compared with
conventional gasoline-powered cars, diesels emit more smog-forming
pollutants, though they offer lower emissions of the kind that
contribute to global warming. Still, with better technology, some
carmakers like Chrysler plan to offer new diesel models later this
year.
While diesels have made little headway, fuel-efficient hybrid cars -
with electric motors that take over for the gas engines at low speeds
and stops - are gaining in popularity. But so far, only a few
carmakers offer them, and there is a waiting list for some of the
more popular models, like the Toyota Prius.
An additional disparity between the United States and France is the
approach to nuclear energy. With domestic production of oil a tiny 3
percent of the two million barrels it consumes each day, France has
turned to nuclear power as its economic savior; 80 percent of its
electricity now comes from the country's 19 nuclear plants, compared
with 40 percent in Sweden, 30 percent in Japan and Germany and 20
percent in the United States.
"Because it didn't draw a lucky geological hand, France has always
looked for energy independence," said Dominique Maillard, the
country's top official in charge of energy policy as the director of
energy at the Ministry of Industry. "We used nuclear power as a path
to offset our dependency on imports."
The United States, in contrast, has turned up its nose at nuclear
energy, in part because of the risk of a meltdown (much reduced in
recent years, experts say), and in part because of the controversy
over the disposal of nuclear waste. The biggest factor, though, was
the soaring cost of building nuclear plants to satisfy more rigorous
standards.
Since the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in
Pennsylvania in March 1979, no new reactors have been built. With oil
prices rising and concern about global warming spreading, nuclear
power advocates argue that a new generation of power plants can
overcome the problems with nuclear energy at an acceptable cost.
To be sure, the depiction of the United States as the world's energy
wastrel and of France as a model of virtue can be overdrawn. All
developed countries have significantly improved their energy
efficiencies in manufacturing and construction since 1973. Moreover,
oil's slice of global energy demand has fallen to 35 percent today
from 45 percent 30 years ago.
Still, oil will remain the main source of energy for decades to come,
and official projections still show oil consumption in the United
States rising by 43 percent by 2025.
But rising prices could go a long way to damp demand.
"The question is, How much do prices have to increase for attitudes
to change?" Mr. Gupta of the National Resources Defense Council said.
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