Energy: a Surplus of Bad Choices and Two Good Ones

Declaring the need for energy independence, President Bush has proposed a budget with funding for an array of programs [Advanced Energy Initiative] some of which have great promise. Yet from an environmental perspective, a trio of major programs are problematic: coal, biofuel, and nuclear power.  True all would decrease our dependence on foreign energy.  Yet, while a worthy goal, this is quite different from being friendly to our increasingly stressed environment.

The first resort should be to absolutely maximize methods that don’t harm the environment (which is also a good path toward energy independence).  There are two, and only two, of these: conservation and renewable energy.

Although, following the oil embargos of the 1970s, United States energy efficiency greatly improved, cheap energy has long neutralized this trend.  Europe, for instance, with its strong energy conservation policies, now emits approximately half the carbon dioxide per person of the United States [Trends in Sustainable Development].  Conservation needs to be augmented by renewable energy, of which solar and wind are the best.  Explains Dr. Janet Sawin of the Worldwatch Institute, “Sure we have lots of coal, but we have enormous amounts of energy from the sun that shines down on us every day, and from the winds that blow across America's plains.  Why aren’t we using these?”

What’s wrong with other methods?  Let’s start with coal, our most common energy source, great for energy independence and lousy for the environment.  Clean coal has been much touted, yet coal is dirty in all parts of the production and consumption chain.  First comes mining.  As the most accessible mines have been depleted, mountain top removal has become common, with devastating results for local communities and water quality [Mountaintop Removal/Valley Fill].  Then when coal is burned it causes smog, acid rain, and air toxics [Environmental impacts of coal power: air pollution].  Coal is also a major source of CO2, the main global warming gas.  While many of these problems can be mitigated, doing so is expensive and unlikely to be completely effective.

Biofuels might seem the opposite of coal, and are the current “environmentally friendly” fuel of choice.  It is necessary, however, to examine how they are produced.  Sawin cautions against dramatic increases in production of corn-based ethanol, which is "resource- and energy-intensive at this point.”   Agriculture relies on heavy machinery that burns quite a lot of fuel and on petroleum-based fertilizers.  On top of this the “opportunity cost” of the food that would have been produced needs to be subtracted.  As environmentalist Lester Brown has pointed out, this means a bidding war for food between wealthy, energy-intensive societies and poorer countries that need food [How Food and Fuel Compete for Land].  Still, Sawin is encouraged by the potential for advanced biofuels, and stresses the rapid advances in cellulosic technologies, which use  agricultural and forestry waste, or energy crops like switchgrass. "With the right policies in place, advanced biofuels have the potential to be ecologically and socially sustainable, and in some cases they could even improve conditions,” she says.

As a method of preventing global warming, nuclear power is a magic bullet.  Furthermore, risks of a catastrophic meltdown have often been exaggerated.  However, Sawin sees other problems with nuclear energy: " It's expensive - enormous subsidies are required to encourage utilities to construct new plants. There are also significant concerns and risks associated with security and waste."  We still don’t know how to dispose of wastes that stay dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years  [High-Level Waste] and can cause nausea, burns, cancer, and mutation, among other afflictions [Radiation and Health].  Waste continues to accumulate at nuclear reactor sites [Waste locations by State] while “permanent” storage is interminably delayed due to possible radiation leakage, particularly into groundwater.  If this is resolved, nuclear wastes will need to be shipped, via truck and rail, often through urban areas, at risk of accident or terrorist attack.

So before investing in coal, biofuels, or nuclear power, with their plethora of dangers and side effects, we need to use methods that work with no or few harmful environmental impacts.

Foremost is conservation.  In the United States, we waste energy in a plethora of ways that do not improve our quality of life.  Large vehicles with lone drivers are probably the most publicized, although our buildings use more overall energy.  Natural light and ventilation, better insulation, light sensors, reusing “waste” heat and water, cool “green” roofs, and high efficiency appliances are some of the ways buildings could save energy.  Smart Growth policies offer to greatly shorten our daily commutes, while telecommuting could eliminate many of them.  Encouraging local goods, and repair and reuse of goods, would lower an energy intensive dependence on long supply chains.

However, with a growing population, conservation is not enough to stem a voracious energy use.  We will need alternative energy sources.  The cosmos that surround us provide plenty of these, albeit harnessing them is not always easy.  Solar and wind are the two most common, and they have virtually no impact on the environment.  The damage of wind farms to bats and birds has been greatly exaggerated, and their aesthetic defects are a small price.

Once basic renewable technology is in place, it doesn’t require an endless stream of new resources torn from the beneath the earth.  Why subsidize problematic sources, such as oil and nuclear, when we should be subsidizing conservation and non-polluting energy?  It is imperative that a future of mass starvation, nuclear hazards, and climatic catastrophe be relegated to the realm of science fiction.  Instead, we must invest in a future in which less energy, together with cleaner energy, gets us further.


Ethan Goffman, Politics and Environment Correspondent:
Ethan’s column, Environmental Connections, published on the 1st and 15th of every month to Gather Essentials: Politics is a discussion of environmental matters from local to global, covering transportation, smart growth, environmental justice, green buildings, climate change, energy independence and other topics.
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