Energy of the future

President George W. Bush delivered his seventh State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, January 23. In the address, he touched upon many domestic issues, but spent the majority of time addressing the war in Iraq, and putting forth his recently issued plan for transferring full power to the Iraqis. Notably, however, President Bush proposed different initiatives to address energy consumption and our dependence on oil. For the most part, the plan is acceptable; however there are a few adjustments President Bush should make to it.

To achieve the goal of dramatically reducing our dependence on foreign oil, he proposes that America must change how we generate electric power and to use clean coal technology, solar and wind energy, and nuclear power. He proposes to reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent by 2017, and to do this, the government will promote the widespread use of renewable and alternative fuels. In addition to this, he wants to “reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks,” which, according to his numbers, would “conserve up to eight and a half billion gallons of gasoline by 2017.” Finally, he wants Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, from the present levels of 727 million barrels of crude oil, to 1.4 billion barrels.

President Bush puts forth a good plan, but it could go farther. Implementing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard revision is a touchy issue. Although it would fast track the implementation of high fuel economy standards, it also means the government would interfere in business and the market, something that should be minimized in most cases. Any discussion of the upward revisions must include the Big Three automakers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), and perhaps Toyota and Honda. Making cars more fuel efficient not only helps the consumer, but it also helps alleviate air pollution and would ease the pressure on gas prices.

Any energy plan the U.S. government proposes must include a wider usage of nuclear power. In the last few decades, safety has improved, and there is a less-likely chance for a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island incident occurring all over again, especially if training and safety guidelines are followed. In addition to that, nuclear power is a more environmentally friendly way of power generation when compared to most fossil fuels. Nuclear energy will never be the main source of power in America, but there is no reason it cannot provide a larger share of energy production than it currently does.

In addition to the expanded use of nuclear power, President Bush should heavily promote the usage of “clean coal” in power generation. According to the United States Department of Energy’s calculations, if coal production and consumption were held constant, coal could be used for the next 200 years before the worldwide supply of recoverable coal is exhausted. The U.S. FutureGen power plant is a project by the U.S. government to build a “near-zero emissions,” coal-fired power plant, and it will be financed by the Department of Energy and a group of coal mining and power generation companies. If such a power plant can be built with near-zero emissions, and use existing methods of coal extraction (as it is planned to do), then this should be at the forefront of any discussions concerning large-scale power generation in America.

While President Bush brings some decent proposals to the table, he does not go far enough in his promotion of technologies that we are at the brink of creating. FutureGen should be put on the fast track, and efforts should be undertaken to reduce oil consumption on a large scale in America. It will help the consumer’s pocketbook, and it will help the environment.