Location: New York
Author: Darrell Delamaide
Date: Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Both parties admit the choice for president will be clear. The energy debate is no less cloudy.
On climate change, both Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton espouse a cap-and-trade emissions program with an auction of 100 percent of emission credits to force emitters to quantify their pollution levels. The objective in both senators' plans is to get emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican candidate, pledged a "market-based energy reform" that would rely far less on government subsidies. A speech by McCain on energy issues focuses largely on national security arising from dependence on foreign oil, particularly the vulnerability to a terrorist attack. As far as climate change goes, a utility or industrial plant could generate tradable credits if it cuts pollution thereby offering incentives to deploy new and better energy sources and technologies.
McCain cites many of the same solutions as his Democratic rivals - improved light bulbs, smart grid technology, energy savings - concluding that "government must set achievable goals, but the markets should be free to produce the means." Regardless of which Democratic hopeful ends up with the nomination, candidate McCain will differentiate his energy policy from theirs through the level of government intervention.
Obama's detailed plan, by contrast, ticks off numerous areas in which government will get involved. He plans, for starters, to invest $150 billion over 10 years in energy reform. Part of this money will go to transportation - the next generation of bio-fuels and fuel infrastructure and the commercialization of plug-in hybrids. But the focus is also on development of commercial-scale renewable energy, investments in low-emission coal plants, and transition to a new digital electricity grid. The fund will seek to make sure that technologies developed in the United States are rapidly commercialized and deployed both here and around the world.
To speed things along, the Obama plan calls for a clean technologies venture capital fund in which the government will invest $10 billion a year for five years. The fund will partner with existing investment funds and the national laboratories to ensure that promising technologies move beyond the lab.
The Democratic hopeful would also establish a federal renewable portfolio standard to require that 25 percent of electricity consumed in the United States be derived from clean, sustainable energy sources by the year 2025. At the same time, he would significantly increase the resources devoted to the commercialization and deployment of low-carbon coal technologies. If that would mean establishing standards that ban new traditional coal facilities, then he would consider that possibility.
The Plans
With regard to energy efficiency, new buildings should be carbon neutral, or produce zero emissions, by 2030, according to the Obama plan. As president, Obama said he would establish a national goal of improving new building efficiency by 50 percent and existing building efficiency by 25 percent over the next decade to help meet the 2030 goal. And he would create a competitive grant program to reward states and localities that implement new building codes prioritizing energy efficiency.
Clinton approaches the issue from an environmental standpoint, emphasizing green objectives, but her goals are remarkably similar to Obama's, right down to some of the details, such as the $150-billion investment over 10 years and the 25 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2025. A federal strategic energy fund of $50 billion would fund one-third of that 10-year investment.
Some of the other novelties in her plan include doubling of federal investment in basic energy research. That would involve implementing measures to spur the green building industry by investing in green collar jobs and helping to modernize and retrofit 20 million low-income homes to make them more energy efficient. It also would mean launching a new "Connie Mae" program to make it easier for low- and middle-income Americans to buy green homes and invest in green home improvements.
While Obama is strangely silent on the issue of nuclear energy, Clinton is not. She believes that energy efficiency and renewables are better options. As she sees it, there are significant unresolved issues about the cost of producing nuclear power, the safety of operating plants, waste disposal, and nuclear proliferation. So Clinton opposes new subsidies for nuclear power.
She would strengthen the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and direct it to improve safety and security at nuclear power plants. Furthermore, she would terminate work at the Yucca Mountain site while also convening a panel of scientific experts to explore alternatives for disposing of nuclear waste. But she would continue research, with a focus on lower costs and improving safety.
McCain is less shy about using nuclear energy. He says that the obstacles that have kept a new nuclear power plant from being constructed for more than 25 years are political, not technological. He asks, rhetorically, whether the United States is less innovative or secure than France, which produces 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. He suggests providing for the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel by giving host states or localities a proprietary interest so when advanced recycling technologies turn used fuel into a valuable commodity, the public will share in its economic benefits.
In spite of his declaration for market-based solutions, McCain doesn't hesitate to suggest government intervention where necessary, noting that public-private partnerships may be necessary to build demonstration models of promising new technologies. That would include helping to move forward advanced nuclear power plants, coal gasification, carbon capture and storage and renewable power.
Like the other issues that divide the candidates, energy too appears to be driven in part along ideological grounds.
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