by REP Executive Director Jim Scarantino This op-ed was published in the Hartford Courant on June 17, 2001.
Conservatives are supposed to be no-nonsense, hardheaded, bottom-line folks who demand efficiency in everything. But when it comes to energy efficiency, the "conservatives" in the White House seem to have an odd case of selective blindness.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney are preaching an energy crisis, but they ignore or disdain efforts to reduce waste in how Americans use energy. The administration has cut budget outlays for efficiency research, scrapped some standards for greater appliance efficiency and disregarded the findings of our national laboratories that efficiency is one of the surest and easiest ways to address our future energy needs.
Since we are supposedly in the midst of an energy crisis, one would expect the president to call for immediate increases in vehicle fuel efficiency. Instead, he punts. His energy plan calls for the Department of Energy to do no more than study the study on fuel efficiency being conducted by the National Academy of Sciences.
On energy policy, the Bush administration is like the proverbial economics professor who is walking across campus with his student.
The student stops to reach for a $20 bill lying on the pavement. The professor rebukes the student, "Why are you stopping? There's nothing there?"
"But sir," the student protests, "there's a $20 bill on the sidewalk."
"No, there isn't," the professor retorts. "If that were a $20 bill, it would have been picked up by now."
Energy efficiency is the $20 bill lying on America's sidewalk. The Bush administration, though, can't see it and must be cajoled into picking it up — troubling traits in leaders who call themselves conservatives.
Efficiency ought to be a natural foundation for a conservative energy policy. Efficiency delivers more with less. What could be more conservative than rooting out waste and saving resources for the future?
Consider three hardheaded examples from the business world:
A Lockheed Martin building in Sunnyvale, California, reduced its lighting energy consumption 75 percent through a design that puts free sunlight to work. Lockheed expected to recover the cost in four years. The brightly lighted building was such a great place to work, however, that absenteeism fell 5 percent and labor productivity rose by an equal amount. As a result, the investment paid for itself in one year.
LaFarge Corporation, a cement maker in Seattle, instituted a process change that improved plant efficiency, saving $161,000 per year in electricity costs and an additional $27,500 annually in maintenance costs. LaFarge also achieved significant reductions in air pollution emissions, a bonus appreciated by the plant's neighbors.
Decatur Foundry, a small castings producer in Decatur, Illinois, installed a more efficient drying system that reduced energy bills $9,000 per year, paying back its investment in 16 months. In an unexpected benefit, the new system also eliminated a production bottleneck, resulting in increased sales.
In a perfect world, efficiency would be snapped up like $20 bills on sidewalks. In reality, however, our marketplace suffers from incomplete information, missing price signals and organizational cultures and political forces that don't always encourage innovation and change.
Efficiency standards and incentives are necessary to help along largely effective, but often imperfect markets. Once our government sets the necessary high standards, the market can figure out how best to meet them.
And higher efficiency standards can be met. Off-the-shelf low-tech energy solutions are available today. A recent study by five national laboratories shows that national growth in electricity demand could be reduced by up to 47 percent through efficiency efforts. That translates into 600 new power plants we won't have to build, saving money for ratepayers and preventing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
A new Congressional Research Service report shows that a modest increase in fuel-efficiency standards for SUVs would save about the same amount of oil we could get from drilling the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Other increases in fuel efficiency could replace all the oil we currently import from OPEC countries. We could do more with less, save our pristine public lands and finally reach for real energy independence.
A conservative administration ought to seize all the $20 bills lying around. It's time for the Bush administration to open its eyes and pick up the benefits of energy efficiency, before someone else — like the Democrats in Congress — beats them to it.
