Issues: Oil & Energy

Executive Summary

Reliable energy has helped propel America's impressive technological advances and comfortable way of life. Thanks to this ready supply, we can heat our homes and our businesses, power our computers and telephone systems, drive our automobiles and aircraft, and run our manufacturing plants and hospitals.

Yet America still depends on energy technologies of the past, and this dependence threatens our nation's economy, our health, and our security. We import nearly 60 percent of our oil, much of it from unstable regions in the world. We use oil in part to fuel cars and trucks whose average gas mileage is at its lowest in 20 years. Burning fossil fuels creates 70 percent of our electricity. Yet burning fossil fuels in our power plants, cars, and factories accounts for more than 60,000 premature deaths in the United States each year. And drilling for oil and gas industrializes some of our most prized wild places, denying future generations the last remnants of our natural heritage.

These wasteful, outdated approaches are contributing to the most urgent environmental and public health crisis of our time: global warming. Americans are already feeling the effects of intense heat waves, prolonged droughts, and rampant wildfires. Yet scientists predict that if we continue to burn fossil fuels unchecked, our children will face far more dangerous threats from coastal flooding, water shortages, and polluted air.

The good news is that solutions exist for curbing global warming and for supplying America with the energy we need to thrive. Using innovative, clean technologies available today, we can move beyond our reliance on dirty and unsafe energy sources and our dependence on unstable regions of the world. We can provide reliable transportation, comfortable buildings, and productive industry at the minimum cost to our society. Indeed, 21st century energy solutions can help America's economy prosper, secure our nation, increase jobs, and protect our health.

America has the vision, ingenuity, and ability to harness clean, efficient energy here at home, and NRDC has drafted a plan to realize this vision. With this plan, we can:

• Enhance our national security by reducing our dependence on oil
  
  
• Promote the use of cleaner energy resources that save money while reducing air and water pollution that threaten public health
  
  
• Exert American leadership in curbing global warming pollution
  
  
• Protect the public's wildlands and wildlife from destructive energy development
  
  
• Create jobs and support American farmers by investing in homegrown technologies and fuels.
  

Figure 1

A Plan to Secure America's Energy Future

1. Combat the global warming crisis by requiring caps on carbon dioxide emissions.

The largest and fastest growing sources of global warming pollution are power plants and cars and trucks, which account for almost three-fourths of total U.S. emissions. Technologies exist today to reduce global warming pollution by modernizing power plants, vehicles, and fuels. The challenge is ensuring these solutions are put in place. Congress should pass the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act to create a comprehensive market-based program to press industry to embrace global warming solutions.¹ The act will set a cap on emissions from large carbon dioxide emitters in the electrical power sector, in addition to the industrial, commercial, and transportation fuel sectors. And it will create powerful incentives to minimize the cost of reducing pollution.

2. Commit to saving 2.5 million barrels of oil a day by 2015.

Congress should enact a national commitment to save at least 2.5 million barrels of oil per day in 2015 and 10 million barrels per day by 2025. Technologies exist today that can achieve these savings. We can put American manufacturers to work building the most energy-efficient cars and trucks, and we can put American farmers to work growing crops for new biofuels. We can save American consumers money by increasing the efficiency of our cars and trucks and strengthening smart growth policies. All of these steps will reduce dangerous air pollution, including emissions that cause global warming. Congress should set these savings in motion by enacting a national requirement to reduce our oil use by 2.5 million barrels per day.

3. Support and expand existing investments in energy efficiency.

The fastest, cleanest, and cheapest way for America to address its growing energy demand is through energy efficiency-getting more and better service using less energy. Thanks to readily available technology for improving heating and cooling systems in buildings and increasing the efficiency of everyday appliances, America can make dramatic cuts in energy use without sacrificing comfort or profitability. Indeed, the economic benefits of investing in efficiency measures typically outweigh costs by a ratio of 2 to 1. To tap this underutilized energy resource, NRDC is calling on Congress to enact the package of federal financial incentives and minimum standards for energy efficient products and buildings contained in the Snowe-Feinstein bill in the Senate and the Cunningham-Markey bill in the House.

4. Expand the role played by renewable energy supplies.

Clean energy such as wind, solar, and biomass provides electricity without damaging the environment or releasing dangerous air pollution. In order to ensure that all Americans can take advantage of these clean resources, NRDC endorses a federal renewable portfolio standard to require electricity providers to include a minimum level of clean energy resources in the electricity mix they deliver to their customers. We also recommend extending the renewable-energy production tax credit to keep renewables on their continued march to cost-competitiveness.

5. Reduce all major air pollutants from power plants.

Electric power plants are the single largest source of some of the worst air pollutants, including deadly particulate matter, acid-rain-forming sulfur dioxide, toxic mercury, and carbon dioxide, which causes global warming. Congress should pass a law to strengthen the Clean Air Act and to protect Americans from these harmful emissions, while at the same time providing electricity producers with certainty and flexible, enforceable compliance methods.

6. Do not drill for natural gas in sensitive offshore and onshore areas.

The vast majority of our offshore and onshore gas reserves are already open for leasing and development. Protecting a few remarkable pieces of America's natural heritage will neither harm the industry nor disrupt supply. Congress should protect fragile areas of the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf from the hazards of gas exploration and drilling. Likewise, Congress should protect several special places, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Teshekpuk Lake and Dease Inlet in the Western Arctic Reserve, Utah's redrock canyon country, New Mexico's Otero Mesa and Wyoming's Jack Morrow Hills.

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