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Curing Our Import Habit
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17168 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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12 / 1990 |
3,015 Words |
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Milton R. Copulos
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Iraq's invasion of Kuwait demonstrated as nothing else could that the relative stability of world energy markets in recent years was, in fact, a dangerous illusion, masking a threat to this nation's economic and military of monumental proportions.
Now that the Department of Defense has responded to the military threat in the Persian Gulf, it is time for Congress to take action and address the underlying cause from which that threat evolved. If the United States is prepared to spend billions of dollars and place tens of thousands of service personnel at risk, should it not also be prepared to implement policies that would make such a deployment unnecessary in the future?
Put simply, our nation must make energy security an urgent priority. A good starting point of this new policy direction would be to set a goal of cutting America's oil imports by half within a decade.
While the objective may be clear, the path to achieving it is less certain. Each energy alternative has its partisans, all of whom appear to make convincing cases. In order to make rational choices, however, there must be some standard against which options can be measured and compared. Among the criteria which should be considered are:
Lead Time: How soon can an energy source make a contribution? The crisis is already upon us, and, therefore, time is of the essence.
Scope: How substantial a contribution can an energy source make to reducing our oil import dependence?
Market Constraints: Are there any obstacles to adopting the energy source inherent in the structure or traditions of the market it is intended to serve?
Technical Feasibility: Any energy option considered should be well proven.
Resource Constraints: Do we have sufficient domestic resources to avoid the trap of exchanging one form of energy dependence for another?
Economic Viability: Any option should be able to stand on its own economic merits with no more than modest incentives.
There are four energy options currently availably that meet the requirements of the criteria listed above and that, taken together, would make it possible to achieve the goal of halving U.S. oil imports by the year 2000. They include:
1. substituting natural gas for oil wherever possible;
2. slowing the decline of domestic oil production;
3. improving the efficiency of domestic automobiles; and
4. expanding the use of ethanol in the motor fuel market.
What is most promising about an approach encompassing these options is that they would not only help address the nation's oil import vulnerability but would yield other significant benefits as well. For example, in addition to their effect on oil imports the
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