Author: arh0531@gmail.com

Now retired from multi-decade career in Federal government, most recently at U.S. Department of Energy..

Now retired from multi-decade career in Federal government, most recently at U.S. Department of Energy..

Oil Spills and Our Inability to Clean Them Up Properly

While preparing my latest blog (on zero energy buildings – to be posted shortly) I read the attached piece on the Washington Post’s OpEd page for March 29, 2014: “We Still can’t clean oil spills”. It was authored by Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, and because I think it is a very important article I am reprinting it here to facilitate its distribution. BP, Exxon and other oil companies can advertise all they want about their commitment to safety, but advertising doesn’t substitute for investments in safety research and deployment of safety equipment and practices in an industry that will inevitably experience accidents. Reduced dependence on oil is the long-term strategy that we also need to pursue aggressively.

“25 years after Exxon Valdez, we still haven’t learned to limit oil drilling

By Frances Beinecke, Published online on March 28

Frances Beinecke is president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. She was a member of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Twenty-five years ago this month, the Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into the water. The public was shocked by photos of oil-soaked otters and reports that coastal residents had lost their livelihoods. The cleanup effort was so vast it required 11,000 people, some of whom scooped up oil with buckets. People were outraged.

Two decades later, the Macondo well beneath the Deepwater Horizon blew out, killing 11 and sending 170 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, and I saw firsthand the oil-drenched beaches and the anxiety of coastal residents. It was hauntingly familiar. Many lessons from the Exxon Valdez spill had not been applied, and the country was once again struggling with an industry ill-prepared to respond.

Flash forward four years, and oil spills continue to endanger our waters. A week ago , a barge and ship collided and spilled about 168,000 gallons of thick, viscous oil into Galveston Bay near a vibrant bird sanctuary.

An even greater potential disaster looms. Shell Oil plans to drill in Alaska’s next frontier — the Arctic Ocean, a region even more pristine and remote than Prince William Sound. The company’s initial attempts were plagued by failed emergency equipment, a 32-mile-long ice floe and a grounded drill rig. If this last unspoiled ocean isn’t put off-limits in a hurry, we could witness a spill of far greater proportions.

Our country can learn from experience. Preserving marine riches for generations to come makes more sense than trying to bring them back from the brink of the latest disaster.

Here is what we know and must act on today:

The oil industry is still using the same ineffective technology to clean up oil in water as it was 25 years ago. Exxon was woefully ill-equipped for cleaning up Prince William Sound, and the industry vowed to invest in better technologies. Yet when the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred, the industry showed up with the same tools: containment booms and dispersants. Companies spent billions of dollars to advance drilling technology but only a fraction on cleanup research. They had nothing new to offer. And those booms managed to pick up just 3 percent of the oil spilled in the Gulf.

Since the BP spill, companies have increased the number of available well caps, ships and booms, but they have had few breakthroughs in cleanup ability. That is alarming for the Arctic, since booms have not proved capable of cleaning up oil in an Arctic environment shrouded most of the year in ice, fog and gales.

This is particularly important since we now know that oil lingers for decades. In 2003, researchers found that more than 21,000 gallons of oil from the Exxon Valdez tanker remained in Prince William Sound, and some is still present. A recent study concluded that the region’s harlequin duck and sea otter populations have rebounded — but that took 24 years. Pacific herring have reached only 15 percent of pre-spill levels, gutting what was once a $12 million fishery in Prince William Sound. And while one pod of orca whales hit hard by the spill is recovering slowly, the other is headed for demise.

In Louisiana, oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill continues to wash ashore, and researchers are just beginning to understand its effects on the food chain. It’s clear that oil spills cannot be wiped away in a matter of months or a few years, and they can imperil wildlife for generations. Our remaining polar bears and some of our last beluga whales must not be exposed to the same dangers in the Arctic Ocean.

Congress has failed to strengthen safeguards for offshore drilling since the Gulf of Mexico disaster. Just one year after the Exxon Valdez spill, Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act and generated important improvements in tanker safety. Yet in the aftermath of the larger spill in the Gulf, Congress hasn’t passed a single law to rein in an industry known for reckless operations and resistance to oversight.

It is long past time for Americans to hear what oil disasters keep telling us: Our safeguards and cleanup equipment aren’t sufficient, and our oceans and coasts remain vulnerable to long-term damage.

The oil industry and Congress must fill the holes in our safety net and recognize that some places should be off-limits to drilling. The fragile and beautiful Arctic Ocean is one of them. I do not want to mark the 25th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill by reflecting on an oil disaster in the Arctic. Let us learn from history and create a safer, clean energy future.”

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Exxon-Valdez Alaska oil spill

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BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill

Electrochromic Windows: We Need to Get the Cost Down

A technology that has fascinated me since I first saw it demonstrated nearly forty years ago is the electrochromic window. It is part of the family of smart glass technologies that control the amount of light and heat that the glass transmits. This control can be activated by temperature (thermochromic), by light (photochromic), or voltage (electrochromic). This blog post will focus on the latter, which offers significant potential for reducing the energy consumed in buildings. Electrochromic windows have other useful applications as well.

How do electrochromic windows work?

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When a voltage is applied between the transparent electrical conductors (usually less than 5 volts) an electric field is set up in the window material. This field moves ions reversibly through the ion storage film through the electrolyte and into the electrochromic film. Different ions (typically lithium or hydrogen) produce different colorations, and the window can be switched between a clear, highly transparent state and a transparent blue-gray tinted state with no degradation in view (similar to that achieved in photochromic sunglasses) by reversing voltage polarities. Critical aspects of electrochromic windows include material and manufacturing costs, installation costs, electricity costs, and durability, as well as functional features such as degree of transparency, possibilities for dimming, and speed of transmission control (complete switching can take several minutes). Many different electrochromic window options at different price points for buildings are now available, and active R&D efforts are underway. One recent advance is the development of reflective, rather than absorptive, windows which switch between transparent and mirror-like.

Electrochromic windows are an attractive energy efficiency measure because they can block heat (infrared radiation) in the summer, reducing air conditioning loads, and allow infrared wavelengths to pass into buildings in the winter and reduce heating loads (windows account for about 30% of building energy load). This also reduces utility peak load demands. Tunable electrochromic windows also serve to reduce lighting loads when adequate natural light is available, reduce glare, provide privacy without the need for blinds and curtains, and reduce fabric and art fading by blocking ultraviolet radiation.

Important applications, in addition to reducing energy demand and increasing human comfort, include use in automobile windows, sunroofs and rear view mirrors, in aircraft (e.g., the Boeing 787 Dreamliner uses electrochromic windows in place of pull down window shades), and as internal partitions in buildings with the ability to switch screens and doors from clear to private.

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Given that electrochromic (EC) windows have been under development for many decades, their obvious ability to block or transmit wavelengths of light as needed, and their many applications, why hasn’t greater use of such windows become a standard part of building construction. The simple answer is cost. NREL looked at this issue in its December 2009 report entitled ‘Preliminary Assessment of the Energy-Saving Potential of Electrochromic Windows in Residential Buildings’ and compared the cost of low-e argon-filled windows with that of EC windows and concluded that “..EC windows would have to reach a price point of approximately $20/square foot before they would be competitive..” At that time EC windows were in the range $50-100/square foot, with commercial buildings on the lower end and residential applications on the higher end. Another approach bring taken by a few EC window companies is to add an EC film to existing windows, which reduces costs considerably.

How much energy can EC windows save? The NREL study, using a model to evaluate the performance of EC windows in a single-family traditional new home in Atlanta, predicted that whole-house energy demand could be reduced by 9.1% and whole-house electricity demand by 13.5%.

Looking globally, the U.S. and China have joined in a $150 million consortium called the U.S. China Clean Energy Research Center aimed at facilitating “joint research and development on clean energy technology. The consortium estimates that in the next 20 years China will build more square footage of floor space than the current total in the United States. The goal is to make those buildings as energy efficient as possible.”

Several new factories have been or are being built to produce EC windows or EC films and reduce costs significantly through economies of large-scale production. My intuition says this will happen soon, and will serve as an important step toward zero-energy buildings – i.e., buildings that use no more energy in a year than they produce through PV generation. A future blog will discuss zero-energy buildings in more detail.

Animal Wastes: An Energy Resource That Is Win-Win

I first became aware of the animal waste issue in 1995 when a lagoon of liquid pig wastes in Iowa overflowed its banks and contaminated a nearby waterway. It made the national news, including the Washington Post, and resulted in one of my DOE colleagues asking me if we had a program to generate fuels/energy from such wastes. This was a logical question as I then headed DOE’s renewable electricity programs and biomass issues were under my purview. I answered honestly, no, but immediately headed to the offices of my biomass program and directed that such a program be started. I designated one of the senior biomass staff to head it up, it started the next day, and the new program head, a Ph.D, was unofficially given the title “Dr. Poop”.

Not having such a program earlier was clearly an oversight on my part, and I began to educate myself on the realities of animal wastes and their possibilities for productive application. One step was tracking down people in the DOE national laboratory system that knew about such things, and I found an expert at Oak Ridge. He directed me to useful information, of which there was quite a bit, and helped me organize an all-day meeting at the University of Tennessee with animal waste experts that explored these issues in detail. It was illuminating to say the least, especially for this boy from the Bronx who didn’t see his first bull until he was 16 and his first pig until he was in graduate school. I’ve never been the same since.

A few facts and numbers will put the issue in context. The U.S. produces lots of livestock (cows, chickens, turkeys, etc.) and therefore lots of animal wastes. Until recently the U.S. was the leading global meat producer but is now #2 behind China (42 million metric tons/MMT vs. 83 MMT), with Brazil coming in third at 25 MMT. EPA, which plays an important role in animal waste management in the U.S., estimates that this waste is produced on 1.3 million farms across the nation. The numbers of animals raised each year in the U.S. is staggering – more than 9 billion chickens, 250 million turkeys, 100 million beef and dairy cattle, 65 million pigs, and other animals (sheep, goats, ..) that are raised as part of our food economy. The net result of all this is about one billion annual tons of animal wastes – about ten times the amount of municipal sewage – that have to be dealt with in a way that does not jeopardize human, fish, or ecosystem health.

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Why are animal wastes a threat? Agriculture, including livestock, is a major source of nitrates that pollute water supplies. Animal wastes also contain disease-causing pathogens such as E coli, Salmonella, and Cryptosporidium that can be many times more concentrated than in human waste. “More than 40 diseases can be transferred to humans through manure.” Antibiotics added to animal feed to project against infection and speed up llivestock growth (about 30 million pounds annually, or 80% of antibiotic use in the U.S.) gets into human foods and contributes to the evolution of anti-biotic resistant bacteria. In addition, wastes at pig farms emit hydrogen sulfide, a corrosive gas that if inhaled at high concentrations can lead to brain damage and death.

Can’t we just contain this stuff so it doesn’t get into our water supplies? The facts are that some waste lagoons are as big as several football fields and are prone to leaks and spills.

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To quote the Natural Resources Defense Council:
“In 1995 an eight-acre hog-waste lagoon in North Carolina iburst, spilling 25 million gallons of manure into the New River. The spill killed about 10 million fish and closed 364,000 acres of coastal wetlands to shellfishing.

In 2011, an Illinois hog farm spilled 200,000 gallons of manure into a creek, killing over 110,000 fish.

In 2012, a California dairy left over 50 manure covered cow carcasses rotting around its property and polluting nearby waters.

When Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina in 1999, at least five manure lagoons burst and approximately 47 lagoons were completely flooded.

Runoff of chicken and hog waste from factory farms in Maryland and North Carolina is believed to have contributed to outbreaks of Pfiesteria piscicida, killing millions of fish and causing skin irritation, short-term memory loss and other cognitive problems in local people.

Nutrients in animal waste cause algal blooms, which use up oxygen in the water, contributing to a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico where there’s not enough oxygen to support aquatic life. The dead zone fluctuates in size each year, extending a record 8,500 square miles during the summer of 2002 and stretching over 7,700 square miles during the summer of 2010.

Ammonia, a toxic form of nitrogen released in gas form during waste disposal, can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before being dumped back onto the ground or into the water, where it causes algal blooms and fish kills.”

Complicating all this is the reality of ‘intensification’, the fact that “..smaller family farms have been replaced by corporate operations hounding thousands of animals in assembly-line conditions.” For example, the number of pig farms in the U.S. in 2011 was one tenth the number in 1980 but the number of pigs sold was about the same. Ten companies today produce more than 90% of the nation’s poultry and 70% of U.S. beef cattle come from farms with at least 5,000 head of cattle.

This concentration of livestock growing in factory farms, called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is driven by economic imperatives. It leads to a buildup of animal wastes in small land areas, which if properly stored and used, can be a valuable resource. If not properly managed the waste produced by CAFOs can pollute the environment, especially water sources. Waste is often pumped into open-air lagoons from which liquid manure is sprayed onto fields as fertilizer. The amount of waste applied often exceeds what the crops can absorb, leaving the rest to escape into the air or as runoff into surface waters.

There are many productive uses of manure, including fuel and energy production. These include recovery of undigested anti-biotics, recovery of solid materials for use in building materials, and production of dry plant and crop fertilizer that is the byproduct of biodigestion. It is this latter activity that offers a ubiquitous and large energy resource.

As reported by the Agriculture Extension Division of Colorado State University: “The demand for clean energy, coupled with concern for management of livestock wastes, has revived an interest in generating methane from livestock manures. The most widely accepted technology currently available for converting organic wastes present in livestock manure is anaerobic digestion (AD). AD is a biological process by which microorganisms convert organic material into biogas, containing methane and carbon dioxide. Biogas produced by this process can be utilized to generate electricity or can be cleaned up and supplied to natural gas lines. Collection and utilization of methane generated from livestock manure offers the potential to reduce global emissions of methane (a greenhouse gas), reduce CO2 released from fossil fuels, diminish odor from agricultural facilities, and improve water quality. In many cases, anaerobic digestion either decreases on-farm energy costs or increases revenues from energy resale.” An interesting number is that, on average, “..a single dairy cow produces approximately 120 pounds of wet manure per day” which has an energy value of about 14,000 BTU. Thus, “It would take manure from approximately 50 cows to produce enough biogas for heating a typical home.”

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Proper management and use of animal wastes is clearly a ‘win-win’ if we can prevent water and air pollution and tap into a potentially large energy resource. For example, China is actively pursuing biodigestion of human and animal wastes, particularly in rural areas that lack grid connections, for producing biogas for lighting and cooking. The International Energy Agency’s CADDETT Reneable Energy Program (http://www.caddett-re.org) “..gathers information on full-scale commercial projects which are operating in the member countries..”. Its Renewable Energy Register, a database of demonstrated renewable energy projects, contains many biodigestion entities – e.g., ‘Poultry Litter as a Fuel for Electricity Production’, ‘Electricity and Heat from the Aanaerobic Digestion of Farm Wastes’, and ‘Centralized Manure Digestion Plant’. Information is readily available; what is now needed is widespread implementation.

Gender Issues and Sustainable Development: We Need to Pay More Attention

The term ‘sustainable development’ was first used by the Brundtland Commission in its 1987 report Our Common Future. It defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Two factors critical to sustainable development are access, at reasonable coats, to adequate supplies of energy and clean water. It is in this context that we consider issues of gender equity, which is a core development objective in its own right. It is also clear that gender equity is a key to successful development.

For purposes of development gender is a social and not a biological construct. It refers to a set of relations, including power relations, which define social function on the basis of sex. Thus, gender relations can be changed, and while gender relations are not inherently oppressive, all too often they are oppressive of women. Where gender equity (equality) is missing, meaning that women and men do not have equal conditions for realizing their full human rights and potential to contribute to national, political, economic, social and cultural development, and to benefit from the results, there are serious negative consequences for development.

Women head one-third of the world’s families (in parts of Latin America families headed by women are the majority) and frequently are the financial mainstays of and principal energy and water providers for their families. They are responsible for half of the world’s food production, and produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries. To produce adequate sanitation, food, and energy for cooking, women and girls must first ‘produce’/gather water, firewood, charcoal and dung. It is known that in developing countries women and girls spend many hours each day doing so. This reduces significantly the time they might otherwise use for education, community involvement and cottage industries that generate revenue. If safe and reliable water sources do not exist nearby they are forced to pay exorbitant prices to street vendors or rely on unsafe local water resources. This has major implications for hygiene and the spread of diseases among poor women and their families. They are also harmed by inhaling the smoke and particulates associated with burning biomass and cooking in confined spaces. Finally, poor women’s access to energy and water is less than that of poor men because decisions are most likely made by men and the needs of women are often ignored or undervalued. This has led to a situation where women are among the poorest of the poor in most parts of the world, leading to a ‘feminization of poverty’. ​

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While it is true that the lives of many women and girls has changed dramatically in some areas over the past several decades, it is also true that progress toward gender equity has been limited in others, including developed countries. The different positions of men and women in societies are influenced by historical, religious, economic, and cultural factors, all of which are difficult and slow to change.

Two international development organizations committed to improving gender equity are the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank. Many UN programs either focus on gender equity (e.g., UN Women: UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women) or recognize the central role of women in many development activities (e.g., the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation arising from the 2002 Rio World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the activities of the Food and Agriculture Organization/FAO of the UN).
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The World Bank has a broad range of programs as well, including the 2007 launch of its Gender Action Plan which provides support to women and girls in traditional economic sectors, GenderStats, a compilation of data at the country level on key gender topics, and an Advisory Council on Gender and Development. Another organization worth mentioning here is Energia, “an international network on gender and sustainable energy which links individuals and groups concerned with energy, sustainable development, and gender.” It was founded in 1985 and is now active in many countries on several continents.

Aside from the immorality of denying women equality with men, it is also bad economics. To quote the World Bank’s Gender Overview: “Under-investing in women puts a break on poverty reduction and limits economic and social development. Gender equality is a long-term driver of competitiveness and equity that is even more important in an increasingly globalized world. No country can afford to fall behind because it is failing to enable women and men to participate equally in the economy and society.”

A few numbers will help to illuminate the problem: “Of the estimated two million annual deaths attributed to indoor air pollution generated by combustion of fuels such as coal, wood, charcoal and dung, 85% are women and children who die from cancer, acute respiratory infections and lung disease.” (World Health Organization and UNDP, 2009). “..illnesses from indoor pollution results in more deaths of women and children annually than HIV/AIDS, malaria! tuberculosis and malnutrition combined.” (International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2013).

The good news is that two-thirds of all countries have now reached gender parity in primary education, and in over one-third girls significantly outnumber boys in secondary education (see World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development, World Bank, 2012). Unfortunately, these gains have not been universal and too many women are still dying in childbirth, lack the ability to participate in decisions that affect them, their families, and their communities, and are limited in their economic opportunities. There is still much work to be done.

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Subsidies For Energy Technologies: Are They Fair?

Subsidies for energy technologies is a complicated and contentious issue and one that a few studies have tried to illuminate for the rest of us. For what I consider informative and balanced discussions I would refer you to
– ‘Reforming Fossil-Fuel Subsidies to Reduce Waste and Limit CO2 Emissions while Protecting the Poor’, Global Subsidies Initiative of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (iisd), September 2012
– Ken Silverstein’s October 23, 2013 piece in the e-journal energybiz entitled ‘Fossil Fuels and Green Energy Feed Mightily at the Public Trough’
– ‘Analysis & Projections: Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010’, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), August 1, 2011
– ‘Federal Financial Support for the Development and Production of Fuels and Energy Technologies’, Congressional Budget Office (CBO), March 2011.

There are many other useful sources of information as well. Of course vested interests on all sides of the energy debate have taken their shot at this topic. For example, the views of the fossil fuel industries can be found in the publications of the Institute for Energy Research (IER) and often in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Supporters of subsidies for renewable energy technologies are active as well in expressing their views via statements by trade associations such as the American Wind Energy Association and the Solar Energy Industries Association. All in all, a difficult subject to get one’s objective hands around, but I will try (foolishly?) in this blog post. Admittedly a strong advocate for rapid progress toward a renewable energy future, I will try to be as balanced as I can in my discussion, as I truly want to better understand this subject and believe that informed public opinion is the long term prerequisite to a sustainable energy future. I will let you judge how successful I have been.

I start with a few definitions and some ‘facts’ that all sides in this debate can hopefully agree upon.
– “Subsidies are one of many policy instruments used by governments to attain economic, social and environmental objectives.” (iisd)
– “Energy subsidies, in particular, are often used to alleviate energy poverty and promote economic development, by enabling access to affordable modern energy services.” (iisd)

The EIA, in its analysis, refers to ‘energy subsidies and interventions’ in five categories: direct cash expenditures to energy producers and consumers, tax expenditures via provisions in the tax code, R&D expenditures for increasing energy supplies or improving energy efficiency, loans and loan guarantees for certain energy technologies, and electricity supply programs targeted at specific geographical regions (e.g., TVA and BPA). The discussion in this blog post touches on the first four.

U.S. tax code energy incentives were first established in 1916 and until 2005 were focused on stimulating domestic production of oil and natural gas. Incentives for improved energy efficiency and renewable energy (solar, wind, ….) were introduced starting in 2006 and by 2011 accounted for 78% of a substantially increased amount of federal energy-related tax expenditures in that year. However, it is important to recognize that this large support for ‘clean energy’ was due to passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), and did not imply a reduction in tax code incentives for fossil fuels or nuclear energy. To put some numbers into this discussion, CBO estimates that tax preferences (“..special deductions, special tax rates, tax rates, tax credits, and grants in lieu of tax credits..”) in 2011 amounted to $20.5 billion. An additional $3.4 billion was provided in FY 2012 by DOE in R&D support for fossil fuels, nuclear energy, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

CBO also points out that of the four major tax preferences operative in 2011, only four were permanent parts of the tax code (the energy efficiency part of ARRA expired at the end of 2011 and the tax preferences for renewable energy were scheduled to expire by 2013), of which three were directed at fossil fuels and one at nuclear energy.

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A quick word about nuclear energy: the Atomic Energy act of 1946, following the end of WWII, created a framework for government control of civilian nuclear power plants for electricity generation. Industry was concerned about potential liability in the event of a nuclear accident and the limited amounts of liability coverage initially offered by the insurance market, so in 1957 Congress passed and President Eisenhower signed into law the Price-Anderson Act, which has been renewed several times since, and “..governs liability-related issues for all non-military nuclear facilities constructed in the United States before 2026. The main purpose of the Act is to partially indemnify the nuclear industry against liability claims arising from nuclear accidents while still ensuring compensation coverage for the general public.” (Wikipedia). In its latest incarnation the Act requires the nuclear industry to cover the first $12.6 billion of damages, with costs above that to be covered by retroactive increases in nuclear utility liability or the federal government. Regardless of one’s view of nuclear energy, I believe it is fair to say that a U.S. civilian nuclear power industry would not exist without the Price-Anderson Act.

What is my take on all this, an issue I followed closely through my many years in federal service and still follow? Energy is clearly a driving force in economies, and prominence of nations at various points in history have reflected their energy sources – e.g., the Dutch with wind power in the 1600’s, the British with coal in the 1800’s, and the U.S. with oil in the 20th century. So energy is critically important and U.S. policies to encourage oil, natural gas and coal production were central to America’s emergence as a leading economy and nation. However, the context has changed – we now have well-established fossil fuel industries, supplying approximately 80% of global energy today, and we now understand that combustion of fossil fuels puts large amounts of pollutants and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These carbon emissions, which mix into the global atmosphere regardless of where they are generated, cause global warming as they change the earth’s energy balance with the sun and create climate change that seems irrefutable and which we are struggling to better understand. So the world has a conundrum: use of fossil fuels helps improve human welfare in lots of ways, but that use is creating a problem that is a severe threat to the planet’s health. These considerations have led to major efforts to develop and deploy clean energy technologies – improved energy efficiency to reduce our need for carbon-emissive fossil fuels, and renewable energy technologies (solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, hydropower, ocean) that do not emit carbon dioxide during power generation. Nuclear power is also a non-carbon-emitting power source that is receiving increased attention.

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Some people, including President Obama, have called for a phase-out of oil industry incentives, especially in light of unusually high profits recorded by major oil companies such as Exxon and Shell. This seems reasonable, as high oil prices today are providing adequate incentive to these companies. A complicating factor is that smaller, independent producers drill most of the onshore U.S. oil wells today, and are responsible for creating the wells that are delivering increasing amounts of home-grown shale oil and gas that are reducing consumer costs, creating domestic jobs, and bringing some factories back to the U.S. from overseas locations. If jobs and national security are our immediate priorities, then incentives for this domestic production by small producers should be maintained. The hitch is that this should not slow down national investment in clean energy technologies which are critical to our long-term economic and national security interests. This is where Congress has to exercise wise judgement as it sets national energy policy – taking care of today’s needs while investing in the future. The transition from today’s fossil-fuel-dependent world will take time, but it would be irresponsible to not look down the road and make necessary investments today that put us firmly on the road to a sustainable energy future. Without government intervention of this type, “..households and businesses do not have a financial incentive to take into account the environmental damage or other costs to the nation associated with their choices about energy production and consumption…unless the government intervenes, the amount of research and development (R&D) that the private sector undertakes is likely to be inefficiently low from society’s perspective because firms cannot easily capture the ‘spillover benefits’ that result from it.” (CBO). Our current energy pricing system does not take into account the ‘externalities’ of energy use such as public health effects and dependence on other countries for part of our energy needs.

In the end it comes down to values, as reflected in policy and budgets. When I first came to Washington, DC and worked on Capitol Hill I was told quickly that ‘budgets are policy’. I feel strongly that we lack a forward-looking national energy policy, which I ascribe to a failure by Congress to do its job of looking to the future, anticipating issues that will face the country, and taking the necessary steps to begin addressing those issues. When such a policy vacuum exists in Washington states often take the lead out of necessity, and that is happening now. We can clearly do better at the federal level to serve our long-term national interests.