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Are Your Socks Still On?

January 30, 2007

Knock our socks off, it didn’t. President Bush’s State of the Union speech was supposed to include energy proposals that, one White House official promised, would leave the nation with a collective case of bare feet.

It didn’t. The most serious flaw in the address was the lack of explicit support for legislation limiting carbon emissions, through a mechanism putting a price on those emissions. Only when the energy market sends a signal that loading up the atmosphere with carbon imposes costs on society will the market turn to technologies that can arrest the carbon buildup.

Still, the speech was interesting in that it gave a push – if ever so mild – to the political momentum for a national climate policy that is picking up speed in Washington, DC.

President Bush didn’t say "yes" to carbon caps, but he didn’t say "no" either. For the first time, he discussed climate change in a State of the Union speech. He declared hopefully that technological breakthroughs would enable America to "confront the serious challenge of global climate change."

He offered two proposals to cure America’s oil addiction – a dramatic increase in the federal renewable fuels standard and modest boost in motor vehicle fuel economy standards.

Greater use of biofuels and improving gasoline mileage are necessary steps for reducing America’s dangerous vulnerability to the perturbations of violence, tight supplies and soaring demand that afflict the global oil market.

The proposals are a good start towards that end, although the president should have offered a much stronger fuel efficiency proposal. Even Ted Stevens, the curmudgeonly Alaska senator closely identified with the oil industry, has proposed raising the standard to 40 miles per gallon by 2017. Stevens’ bill has the look of a clever gambit towards trading fuel economy for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Still, 40 mpg is an ambitious target, and adoption of it would represent significant progress.

But what will the president’s proposals do for reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

It depends. President Bush’s fuel economy proposal is not a straightforward boost in the standard from today’s fleet-wide average of about 24 mpg. He has proposed changing the design of the system to set different standards for different sizes of vehicles. The Union of Concerned Scientists, no friend of the administration, estimated that his proposal would result in a 34-mpg standard by 2017, as long as the system doesn’t include gimmicky loopholes. Total estimated annual greenhouse gas emissions reductions: 95 million metric tons, about 1.3 percent of today’s total annual emissions. A small bite, but a bite nevertheless.

More uncertain from a climate standpoint is Bush’s proposed "renewable and alternative fuels standard." The jury is still out on whether corn-based ethanol results in carbon emissions reductions or increases, because of the quantity of fossil energy that goes into corn production.

In any event, the U.S. doesn’t grow enough corn to meet Bush's target with corn-based ethanol alone. Expanded development of ethanol from cellulosic sources – farm waste, forestry residues, fast-growing energy crops such as switchgrass – will be necessary both to meet Bush’s target and cut carbon emissions from the transportion sector.

With coal-based liquid fuels, there is no question about the climate impact. Producing fuel from coal would result in substantially higher carbon emissions than production from crude oil. If greater dependence on coal-based fuels is in the cards, the carbon sequestration nut must be cracked and fast. No one can say for sure whether that technical trick can be mastered, so a great deal more research is necessary.

One thing is for certain, however. The climate game is finally on in the nation’s capital. Polls show that the public is worried. The president is finally talking about the issue. Bills have been introduced and congressional committees plan hearings. Business wants regulatory certainty and the opportunity to make money selling emissions reduction technology. Evangelicals and sportsmen, core conservative constituencies, are concerned about global warming's impact on nature.

Progress is sluggish. But the signs look good.