A presentation by Michael Vickerman at the Green Vehicles Workshop sponsored by the Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Vickerman poses the question, “[C]an we change our current habits and attitudes to transition into a less mobile but more sustainable future relying on renewable energy flows and low-EROEI energy stores?”
Complete presentation here.
by Michael Vickerman
March 31, 2008
Almost two decades have elapsed since Dr. James Hansen, a scientist with NASA Goddard Space Institute, injected global climate change into the political bloodstream. “It’s time to stop waffling,” Hansen told a Congressional panel. “The greenhouse effect is here.”
Yet the United States is no closer to adopting an overarching policy to curb greenhouse gas emissions than it was in the summer of 1988. Much of this inaction can be attributed to the successful disinformation campaign underwritten by fossil energy interests like Exxon Mobil and the Western Fuels Association.
Aiding and abetting this campaign was a handful of contrarian scientists who publicly challenged the existence of a scientific consensus on global climate change.
Because these so-called “climate skeptics” possessed scientific credentials, reporters and commentators gave them equal time without performing any due diligence to ferret out the political agenda that lurked behind their public statements. Given nearly unlimited access to the media, climate skeptics successfully sowed doubt and confusion in the minds of decision-makers and ordinary citizens about the severity of the problem and the urgency for action.
While the climate change denial effort has lost steam in recent years, the disinformation tactics used in that campaign haven’t gone away. Instead, they are being retooled and redeployed to challenge the most visible manifestation of carbon reduction policies: windpower installations.
Wind generating capacity is increasing dramatically as more states adopt requirements on utilities to increase their supplies of renewable energy. But not everyone is welcoming this change, and those who don’t want to live near wind turbines are fighting back. In recent years, an Internet-based disinformation campaign has sprung up to both oppose individual wind projects and challenge windpower’s effectiveness in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
An example of this lamentable trend is the Industrial Wind Action Group (www.windaction.org), which serves as a bulletin board for antiwind commentary and articles highlighting grass-roots resistance to specific windpower proposals. Among the myths this web site and others like it propagate is the contention that, contrary to the prevailing wisdom, zero-emission energy sources like wind actually create more carbon dioxide when their impact on the electric grid is taken into account.
The argument goes like this: the wind doesn’t blow all the time, therefore utilities have to build new coal and gas plants to provide back-up power whenever demand for electricity is high and the turbines aren’t spinning.
This is pure mendacity, but it’s also easily disprovable mendacity. As anyone who works at a utility can testify, today’s wind projects do not require dedicated back-up power sources. That’s because utilities are required for reliability purposes to have enough capacity in reserve to accommodate record-breaking levels of demand, even when large power stations are off-line. And in Wisconsin, the reserve margin today is 18% above the highest peak ever recorded.
That margin is more than sufficient to accommodate all the wind generation that will be built to satisfy Wisconsin’s renewable energy requirements through 2015. Put another way, there is enough reserve capacity to back up We Energies’ 88-turbine project in Fond du Lac County and 11 others of similar size without any effect on system reliability.
According to another oft-repeated Internet myth, wind turbines do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions even when they are producing at full power. This preposterous assertion assumes that grid operators have no control over their generating units, and are unable to redispatch their plants to respond to fluctuating output from wind turbines. In reality, whenever wind is available to displace a fossil generator, a grid operator will shut it down. To do otherwise would add unnecessary costs to the electric system.
Outfits like the Industrial Wind Action Group don’t care if their arguments can’t stand up to scrutiny from energy professionals. That’s because they understand that very few people in state legislatures, county boards, and media outlets know how an electric utility system works. Lacking the specialized knowledge that would help them filter out fantasy from facts, these decision-makers and opinion-shapers tend to deal with their confusion by giving wind opponents equal time. And when they do, they give the antiwind groups a platform that allows them to pollute with impunity the public discourse on clean, renewable energy.
As Dr. Hansen went on to discover, successful disinformation campaigns are the price we pay for living in a country with a low energy IQ.
Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, an organization advocating for a sustainable energy future. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s web site: http://www.renewwisconsin.org, RENEW’s blog: http://www.zmetro.com/community/us/wi/madison/renew and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, February 26, 2008
“The way things stand now, it’s easier to build a 100-megawatt wind farm in this state than it is to put up two or three turbines.” So says Roy Thilly, chairman of the state’s Task Force on Global Warming and president of Wisconsin Public Power Inc., a consortium of municipally owned utilities, on local ordinances that tend to restrict the development of small wind farms in Wisconsin and hurt the state’s ability to meet its goal of generating 10% of its power from renewable energy by 2015 (www.jsonline.com/721206).
That’s not the way it should be.
An ordinance enacted in Trempealeau County in December, for example, bars wind turbines from being built within a mile of a habitable building. That’s effectively a countywide ban, according to Michael Vickerman, executive director of the environmental group Renew Wisconsin.
Right now, state law requires state regulators to approve large wind farms but leaves the decision-making on smaller projects to local units of government. While local governments should have a say in siting wind farms – or anything else – in their jurisdiction, giving them the ability to outright ban small projects goes too far. And standards for wind farms should not vary widely from community to community.
The Global Warming Task Force has recommended changing state law by setting similar standards for wind turbines across Wisconsin, and a bill to that effect is expected to be introduced by state Sen. Jeff Plale (D-South Milwaukee). Legislators should get behind a reasonable bill that would enhance Wisconsin’s ability to provide more renewable sources of energy.
A final version of the measure should include at least uniform standards for wind turbines and a provision that would give wind power developers or those opposed to a particular development the option of appealing a local government’s decision to the state Public Service Commission.
Wisconsin needs all the tools it can get to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Wind farms – large and small – are among those tools. The state and local governments should be doing all they can to encourage more of them where they are appropriate.
Immediate release
January 16, 2008
More information
Ed Blume
RENEW Wisconsin
608.819.0748
eblume@renewwisconsin.org
Katie Nekola
Clean Wisconsin
knekola@cleanwisconsin.org
608.251.7020, ext. 14
Calumet County morass blocks wind projects again
Clean energy advocates expressed frustration over the Calumet County board’s adoption of a 70-day moratorium on issuing permits for wind turbines.
The action leaves wind developers wondering whether the County, which has among the best wind resources in the state, is effectively off-limits to commercial-scale projects.
State law requires utilities to get 10 percent of the electricity they sell from renewable sources by 2015, but local restrictions have paralyzed wind developers from moving ahead with project to help meet the goal.
“As far as the wind industry is concerned, countywide limits and delays speak louder than the state’s renewable energy goals,” said Katie Nekola, energy program director for Clean Wisconsin.
“What’s the point of state government promoting renewable energy development in Wisconsin when it’s practically impossible to obtain permits for wind turbines?” asked Michael Vickerman, executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide nonprofit group that promotes renewable energy.
“This marks the third moratorium on wind development adopted by Calumet County 2005. It seems that every time the Board considers changes to its ordinance regulating wind turbines, it moves farther and farther away from resolving the controversy and allowing projects to move ahead. What a morass Calumet County has become!” Vickerman said.
Between the moratorium in Calumet County and a restrictive ordinance in Manitowoc County, four wind projects totaling 200 megawatts (enough to power 60,000 Wisconsin homes) have ground to a halt, Vickerman added.
RENEW and Clean Wisconsin back a proposal being considered by the Governor’s Global Warming Task Force that would allow wind developers to seek approval from the Public Service Commission, the state agency that regulates utilities and large wind projects (over 100 megawatts), instead of local authorities.
“Wisconsin cannot afford to lose clean energy opportunities at a time when our Governor and others in the region have made a commitment to stopping global warming,” said Nekola.
– – – – –
Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy organization, protects Wisconsin’s clean water and air and advocates for clean energy by being an effective voice in the state legislature and by holding elected officials and corporations accountable. Founded in 1970 as Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade, Clean Wisconsin exposes corporate polluters, makes sure existing environmental laws are enforced, and educates citizens and businesses. Phone: 608-251-7020, Fax: 608-251-1655, Email: info@cleanwisconsin.org, Website: www.cleanwisconsin.org.
RENEW Wisconsin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. More information on RENEW’s Web site at www.renewwisconsin.org.
Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
January 4, 2008
What is it about living within sight of large wind turbines that spooks certain people to the point of irrationality?
Consider the example of Trempealeau County in western Wisconsin. At the urging of a local citizens group, the County Board there adopted an ordinance last month that requires wind turbines higher than 150 feet tall to be set back no less than one mile from neighboring residences, schools, churches and businesses. This is by far the longest setback distance on wind turbines imposed to date by a local government in our state.
Now, the population density of Trempealeau County (38 residents per square mile) is less than half of the statewide average of 103 residents per sq. mile. Even so, as one developer pointed out at the hearing, there is not one acre of land that can legally host a commercial wind generator under this ordinance.
Why would a local board effectively ban wind turbines within its jurisdiction? Those backing the ordinance say that the one-mile setback is necessary to protect the health and safety of its citizens. Turbines, they contend, may produce sounds and electrical currents that can cause illnesses, even though no peer-reviewed study documenting such a phenomenon exists.
In a recently published book examining the environmental impacts of wind energy projects,” the National Research Council wrote that wind turbines that are 1,000 feet away from a listener produce “relatively low noise or sound-pressure levels compared with other common sources such as a busy office, and with nighttime ambient noise levels in the countryside. While turbine noise increases with wind speed, ambient noises—for example, due to the rustling of tree leaves— increase at a higher rate and can mask the turbine noise.”
In other words, while wind turbines produce an aerodynamic sound that is audible at 1,000 feet, ambient sounds inside a residence (e.g., air-conditioners, fans, refrigerators) and outside (e.g., birds, crickets) will very often mask or muffle it, even at night.
Then there is the issue of the flickering shadows cast by the turbine’s spinning blades at certain times of the year under certain conditions. Though wind opponents commonly inflate this phenomenon into a health issue, the National Research Council believes otherwise. “Shadow flicker is not important at distant sites (for example, greater than 1,000 feet from a turbine) except during the morning and evening when shadows are long. However, sunlight intensity is also lower during the morning and evening; this tends to reduce the effects of shadows and shadow flicker.”
A house 1,000 feet from a wind turbine could experience as much as 20 hours of flickering shadows per year, assuming cloudless conditions and strong crosswinds during all 4,380 hours of daylight in a year. Even if Wisconsin had such a climate, which would make the state uninhabitable for obvious reasons, how does this even rise to the level of a nuisance, let alone a health risk?
But it doesn’t take much mental effort to come up with at least a half a dozen land uses more disruptive to neighbors a half mile away than commercial wind turbines would be from 1,000 feet. Some that might legitimately be considered nuisances are airports, quarries, landfills, auto and motorcycle racetracks, rail freight corridors, hog farms, food processing plants, central station power plants, highways, automobile dealerships that are lit up 24/7, and anyplace where trucks congregate. Yet I’m willing to bet that there’s not one local ordinance in Wisconsin that requires them to be at least one mile away from a residence.
Meanwhile, there are four fossil energy stations in the heart of Madison supplying heat and electricity to local businesses and residences. Classroom buildings surround the main heating plant serving University of Wisconsin’s Madison campus. Within 1,000 feet of Madison Gas and Electric’s downtown power plant, one can find restaurants, offices, apartment buildings, stores, a bike path, a day care center and over 50 residences.
Clearly, for thousands of Madisonians, living, working, teaching or taking classes in full view of these energy plants is no big deal. But to hear Trempealeau County’s wind opponents talk, living among wind turbines would devastate their quality of life. That’s a very harsh assessment of a form of electricity generation that neither pollutes the air or water nor depletes the energy resource it uses.
Trempealeau County’s antipathy toward local wind generation is symptomatic of areas that are completely dependent on the outside world to provide them with their energy. All of the motor fuel, heat and electricity consumed by the citizenry comes from somewhere else. The coal that generates electricity for that area is mined in Wyoming. The power plants that burn the fuel are located in other counties. There is not enough generating capacity in that county to power a single holiday light display, let alone a school or a church.
Indeed, apart from the distribution lines along the roadways, there are very few visual cues reminding Trempealeau County of the electrical apparatus that allows them to toast their bread or automatically open their garage doors. Should one be surprised that a population used to views without smokestacks, large transmission lines, substations, strip mines, and drilling pads would object to wind turbines in their midst? Saddened maybe, but not surprised.
Yet some communities are beginning to appreciate the liability of energy dependency in a time when oil costs $100 per barrel. In the Town of Springfield, a semirural part of Dane County 10 miles northwest of Madison, a group of farmers has banded together to host a six-turbine wind project. Though this installation would be visible from several dozen neighboring residences within a half-mile of it, not one of them has registered an objection to the proposed energy facility.
Indeed, this may be the only project in Wisconsin that has not triggered any opposition, even though the population density in Springfield is higher than in other areas of the state where restrictive ordinances have been adopted, including Trempealeau County. Evidently, the neighbors around the host farms have concluded that nearby wind turbines would not constitutes a health or safety hazard.
This begs the question: why is living in proximity to wind turbines acceptable in one part of Wisconsin and unacceptable in other areas? And what kind of world would come about if every jurisdiction followed Trempealeau County’s lead? These are questions worth wrestling over, even though such an effort would inexorably lead to a book-length response.
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Sources: Environmental Impacts of Wind Energy Projects, National Research Council, May 2007, The National Academies Press.
Michael Vickerman is the executive director of RENEW Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. Michael Vickerman’s commentaries also posted on RENEW’s web site: http://www.renewwisconsin.org, RENEW’s blog: http://www.renew-energy-blog.org and Madison Peak Oil Group’s blog: http://www.madisonpeakoil-blog.blogspot.com.
Immediate release
December 18, 2007
More information
RENEW Wisconsin
Ed Blume
608.819.0748
Clean Wisconsin
Ryan Schryver
608.251.7020, ext. 25
Trempealeau County sharply limits wind energy
Calling it an effective ban on commercial wind generators, Wisconsin clean energy advocates blasted Trempealeau County’s new wind ordinance, which was adopted Monday night on a vote of ten to six.
The county’s wind ordinance requires developers to place wind turbines at least one mile from neighboring residences, schools, hospitals, and businesses. This is the longest set back distance imposed to date by a local government in Wisconsin.
Speaking to the county board, RENEW Wisconsin Executive Director Michael Vickerman said that the ordinance “steers Trempealeau County toward a head-on collision with state energy policies, which designate wind power as a preferred energy source.”
RENEW Wisconsin, a statewide nonprofit organization, advocates for public policies and private initiatives to support renewable energy.
State policy favors wind power, because “it has shown itself to be a clean, safe and affordable energy option that helps reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and reduce global warming emissions,” according to Ryan Schryver of Clean Wisconsin, an advocacy organization for clean water, air, and energy.
“Local governments, as well as the state, should be looking at ways to eliminate the barriers to renewable energy production instead of creating new obstacles for siting wind developments, as this ordinance does,” continued Schryber.
“This ordinance – all 16 pages of it – could have been boiled down to one sentence: No wind energy system greater than 150 feet in height will be permitted in Trempealeau County,” Vickerman told the county board.
“If every county were to adopt a wind ordinance as arbitrarily restrictive as the one before you, renewable energy development in Wisconsin would slow to a stand still,” Vickerman added.
Presenting an oversized map of Trempealeau County, Jim Naleid, representing Holmen-based AgWind Energy Partners, said that “There is not one square inch of land where a commercial wind turbine can be legally sited under this ordinance.”
AgWind Energy Partners, a wind farm developer, recently installed a meteorological tower in the county to measure wind speeds.
END
Clean Wisconsin, an environmental advocacy organization, protects Wisconsin’s clean water and air and advocates for clean energy by being an effective voice in the state legislature and by holding elected officials and corporations accountable. Founded in 1970 as Wisconsin’s Environmental Decade, Clean Wisconsin exposes corporate polluters, makes sure existing environmental laws are enforced, and educates citizens and businesses. Phone: 608-251-7020, Fax: 608-251-1655, Email: info@cleanwisconsin.org, Website: www.cleanwisconsin.org.
RENEW Wisconsin is an independent, nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization that acts as a catalyst to advance a sustainable energy future through public policy and private sector initiatives. More information on RENEW’s Web site at www.renewwisconsin.org.
Michael Vickerman
Executive Director
RENEW Wisconsin
In a presentation prepared for the 12th Annual National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, Oct. 21-24, in Philadelphia, RENEW’s Executive Director Michael Vickerman reviews the requirements for the State of Wisconsin’s purchase of renewable electricity:
+ 10% content by 2007; 20% content by 2011
+ Covers agencies, UW campuses, prisons
+ Can purchase from utilities or generate on-site
+ State’s electric load — @ 900 million kWh/year
Complete presentation here.
In a presentation prepared for the 12th Annual National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, Oct. 21-24, in Philadelphia, RENEW’s Executive Director Michael Vickerman reviews the requirements for the State of Wisconsin’s purchase of renewable electricity:
+ 10% content by 2007; 20% content by 2011
+ Covers agencies, UW campuses, prisons
+ Can purchase from utilities or generate on-site
+ State’s electric load — @ 900 million kWh/year
Petroleum and Natural Gas Watch
by Michael Vickerman, RENEW Wisconsin
July 27, 2007, Vol. 6, Number 9
Of all the issue areas that Congress dives into from time to time, none reveals the inability of our legislative branch to fashion an internally consistent national policy quite like energy. The usual items in an energy bill–tax credit extensions, fuel subsidies, fresh regulatory requirements (and loopholes), new rules on offshore drilling, etc.—are designed to reward specific industries and influential constituencies. This year’s energy bill promises to follow that timeworn path left by Congresses of yesteryear.
But an energy bill has to be more than the sum of its subsidies to constitute effective policy. This is especially true as we enter a time of growing resource and environmental limits that threaten to bite us in the collective behind if we don’t curb our profligate consumption of energy.
Now is not the time to continue subsidizing every form of energy that can be produced in the United States, as the current Congress seems intent on doing. In previous bills, Congress has taken great pains to make sure that every energy constituency—coal, oil, nuclear or renewables–gets its fair share of the federal pie, regardless of need or environmental impact. This is the cheap energy paradigm at work—promoting economic growth by artificially lowering energy prices.
But while this paradigm may have been defensible before U.S. oil output reached its maximum in 1970, it has no place in today’s energy-constrained world. Artificially lowering the cost of all energy sources will not only encourage waste and overconsumption, it will hasten the arrival of that traumatic day when the flow of cheap oil and natural gas cannot meet the demands of a hypermobile society.
It’s no secret that Congress lacks the stomach for offending powerful energy lobbies like Big Coal. But it’s simply not possible to institute policy changes, especially those intended to reduce carbon dioxide discharges into the atmosphere, without picking a fight with the coal industry, the electric utilities, and what’s left of the U.S. automotive industry. Therefore, if Big Coal pronounces itself satisfied with the energy bill’s contents when it is passed, you can be certain that Congress declined to incorporate any provisions that would cause coal’s share of the energy pie to shrink, such as a carbon tax or renewable feed-in tariffs.
What makes the United States singularly incapable of producing a coherent energy policy aimed at cutting energy consumption and using low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels? I believe there are three factors explaining this lamentable state of affairs. The first is that your average American citizen has the energy IQ of beach sand, and, in this regard, your average Member of Congress is the mirror image of his or her constituents. For proof, I would direct your attention to Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who regularly appears on news programs to suggest that gasoline is overpriced at $3.00 per gallon and that motorists are being fleeced by dastardly oil companies.
Actually, at that price gasoline is a steal, and it would be so even at $4.00—the amount Canadians pay–or $5.00. Packing 125,000 Btu’s of energy, a gallon of gas will power the average car 25 miles, yet it costs less on a volumetric basis than milk, apple juice, Evian, coffee from Starbucks, Mountain Dew, Listerine, and Red Bull. Try getting that performance with a gallon of Gatorade in your tank. It will set you back $10 and you still wouldn’t be able to back your car out of the garage.
It should be noted that retail gasoline prices in Germany are the equivalent of $7.00 per gallon, yet its economy remains healthy. Why is that? Because Germany, unlike the underachieving U.S., has a national energy policy designed to transition the nation smoothly into a post-fossil fuel energy environment. By taxing fossil energy and providing long-term price support for wind and solar electricity production, the Germans are plowing today’s wealth into building up a sustainable energy system that can withstand the future economic dislocations resulting from Peak Oil and climate change.
Indeed, no other country has made as much progress as Germany in building up a renewable energy infrastructure for delivering low-carbon electricity to homes, businesses, and rail networks. But other countries that lack domestic supplies of fossil energy, like Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, are also moving aggressively to harness their renewable resource base. They too are light years ahead of the United States in this regard.
A second problem confronting policymakers is the unequal distribution of energy resources across this vast country of ours. A handful of coal-producing states—West Virginia and Wyoming come to mind–are net fossil energy exporters, and will view with hostility any policy proposal that will place limits on energy extraction within their borders. Their power is magnified by the markets they serve, which include large swaths of the Midwest and South.
On the other side of the coin are the West Coast states, Florida and New England, which are populous regions that which have no domestic coal interests to protect. Nor does the automotive industry have a big presence in these states. Not having to appease Big Coal or Big Auto enables state governments in these regions to plot a more aggressive course toward achieving emissions reductions and fuel diversity goals, as is being done in California and Florida.
One would expect members of Congress to promote the principal energy industries in their region. This predisposes them to enter into strategic alliances with other members representing different energy interests, usually of the “I’ll watch your back if you’ll watch mine” variety. Though these alliances are necessary for lubricating the deal-cutting and building support for the entire package, often it comes at the expense of public policy objectives.
Indeed, Congress is institutionally incapable to pass a comprehensive energy bill that attempts to diversify the nation’s energy resource base and scale back its carbon footprint unless it contains elements that work in the opposite direction (e.g., gasifying coal and expanding offshore drilling).
Further complicating matters is the very nature of the U.S. Senate itself, a body organized to magnify the power of individual states to block “national interest” initiatives from changing the status quo. Each state is equally represented in the Senate, no matter how populous. And Senate tradition grants committee chairpersons enormous deference to bottle up or water down legislation that might impose unwanted changes on the states they represent.
Another Senate tradition, the right of unlimited debate, is enforced by a rule that expressly allows a minority of senators to thwart the will of the majority. To shut off debate on a measure, especially one in which powerful economic forces and regional interests are pitted against each other, bill proponents have to line up not 51 but 60 votes. Under the rule, debate continues even if 59 senators vote in favor of ending it and only one votes against the motion.
The energy bill passed by the Senate in June came tantalizingly close to incorporating a 10-year tax package that would have raised $29 billion, mostly from oil and gas companies, and redirected it toward renewable energy development. The tax package was designed to be self-supporting; that is, it would not have trigged additional borrowing to underwrite the pro-renewable energy incentives.
Would such a tax package raise prices at the pump? A little. But remember too that $29 billion equates to about nine months’ profit for Exxon Mobil alone. And, from a social equity perspective, it’s always better to base energy subsidies and incentives on a real-time transfer of wealth than to saddle future taxpayers with even greater levels of indebtedness.
Nonetheless, the oil and gas companies objected to the closing of their favored tax loopholes, and they called upon their senatorial friends in the Oil Patch states to kill off this measure. To accomplish this, these senators made common cause with their counterparts from the Southeast and Rocky Mountain states, where Big Coal is very strong. Thought this minority bloc was outvoted 57-36, they managed to prevent the tax package from being attached to the larger energy package. In any other legislative venue, losing a vote by a margin of 21 would be considered a stinging defeat, but on the floor of the U.S. Senate, it counts as a win.
In his most recent installment of Lyndon Johnson’s biography, author Robert Caro points out that there have been only a few periods in the nation’s history where the Senate lowered the floodgates and allowed legislation reflecting the popular will to come washing through its portals. Those rare instances resulted from significant political realignments that put one party with an activist agenda firmly in power.
The closest the United States came to a coherent national energy policy was during the mid-to-late 1970’s. During that period there was a prevailing sense of anxiety over the nation’s energy security, and both the legislative and the executive branches responded to the national mood with decisive actions. In a five-year period Congress passed laws creating automobile fuel efficiency standards, prohibiting new gas-fired power plants, and requiring utilities to purchase electricity generated by independent entities. By the debased standards of current governance, those were amazingly productive years.
However, once the price oil dropped in the 1980’s, the urgency of the previous decade evaporated, and successive administrations began dismantling the policy initiatives adopted in the Ford and Carter years. When the Reagan Administration lowered fuel efficiency standards in 1986, Chrysler Corporation chairman Lee Iacocca said: “We are about to put up a tombstone ‘Here lies America’s energy policy.’”
It would take nothing short of a sea change to overcome Congressional inertia and recover the ground lost in the last 25 years or so. But though the prospects for a truly coherent national energy policy are improving — and the need has never been greater — both the citizenry and the current Congress are far too complacent to entertain changes that might involve belt-tightening and discipline. Given the current political dynamic, it would be unrealistic to expect this Congress, with its narrow majorities, to be the one that jump-starts the federal government into meaningful action.
Yes, we will see some progress on the energy front this year and next, but they will represent the sum of state government initiatives undertaken to counter the policy vacuum that persists at the federal level.
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Sources:
Caro, Robert A., Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, 2002, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., New York.
National Environmental Trust: History of Fuel Standards, One Decade of Innovation, Two Decades of Inaction. URL: http://www.net.org/documents/cafe_history.pdf