Lofty Matters

Conservation Is a Personal Virtue

Alright. We’ve made it clear that energy independence is far too costly to undertake. In addition, energy security (the more appropriate goal) won’t happen by a frantic search for something to replace oil. We need to find ways to do without oil. Chiefly by a huge increase of energy efficiency.

Dick Cheney, among others, doesn’t like this idea. Before 9/11 he said: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” Other energy players only want to find something to sell us instead of oil and they don’t really care what it might be. For the rest of us conservation just makes sense.

Energy efficiency is one of the fastest ways to reduce not only the energy we use but also pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. According to a new study if the US aggressively adopted more efficient cars, factories, homes, and other infrastructure, our CO2 emissions could be 28 percent below 2005 levels in twenty years. Saving energy is almost always cheaper than making it by the way. Because transportation is the biggest user of oil (makes up 7 of every 10 barrels we burn) any significant reduction will have massive ramifications. If we were able to persuade carmakers to switch to hybrids, we could cut our oil demand by a staggering 9 million barrels a day. This would be about 70 percent of our current imports.

A shift like this would create huge new demand on an electric grid already struggling to meet need. Plug-in hybrids actually stretch the grid’s existing capacity, however. Because they are charged at night (when power demand (and thus prices) are low) plug-in hybrids exploit the grid’s large volume of unused capacity. This kind of “load balancing” would let power companies run their plants around the clock. According to the Department of Energy load balancing like this could meet current power demands and generate enough additional electricity to run almost three-quarters of its car and light-truck fleet. This by itself would be enough to drop oil consumption by 6.5 million barrels a day. Nearly a third of America’s current demand!

Switching to electric-powered cars wouldn’t be free, however. Seventy percent of America’s electricity is made from high-carbon fuels such as natural gas and coal. This is why the power sector emits 40 percent of all U.S. carbon emissions. Only 8.4 percent comes from renewable sources.

An electric or plug-in hybrid fleet is still probably the most environmentally plausible path away from oil, though. Why? Because turning fossil fuels into electricity in huge power plants and then putting that power into car batteries is far more efficient than burning fossil fuels directly in car engines.

Where the clean-energy funds are and are not:

• Department of Energy’s solar budget (2008): $168 million

• Venture capital investment in solar (2006): $264 million

• Department of Energy renewable-energy budget (2008): $1.7 billion

• Venture capital investment in renewable energy (2006): $2.4 billion

• Federal ethanol subsidies (2006): $6 billion

• Federal coal subsidies (2006): $8 billion

• Federal oil and gas subsidies (2006): $39 billion

• Worldwide investment in renewable energy (2007): $71 billion

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