Weaning America Off The Teat Of Mid-East Oil

George Bush has said that he cannot waive a magic wand and lower gas prices. Of course, he could have championed a real energy policy to wean us off the teat of Middle Eastern oil. He could have dramatically raised the fuel economy standards. Better mileage would mean less demand which would lower prices.

The other side of weaning us off of Middle East oil is that it could make us much safer. Of course, we have been saying these things for years and no one seems to listen, least of all the oil cartel in the White House.

But now hope may be coming from an unlikely source. Calling themselves Set America Free (SAF), a coalition of liberals, conservatives and neo-cons has started lobbying to get us off of our dependence on Middle East oil. They have published an Open Letter to the American People and a Blueprint for Energy Security. See across the bump for details.
Their Open Letter is basically an introduction to the Blueprint, and it hits all the right notes:

For decades, the goal of reducing the Nation’s dependence upon foreign energy sources has been a matter on which virtually all Americans could agree. Unfortunately, differences about how best to accomplish that goal, with what means, how rapidly and at what cost to taxpayers and consumers have, to date, precluded the sort of progress that might have been expected before now.

Today, we can no longer afford to allow such differences to postpone urgent action on national energy independence. After all, we now confront what might be called a “perfect storm” of strategic, economic and environmental conditions that, properly understood, demand that we affect over the next four years a dramatic reduction in the quantities of oil imported from unstable and hostile regions of the world.

America consumes a quarter of the world’s oil supply while holding a mere 3% of global oil reserves. It is therefore forced to import over 60% of its oil, and this dependency is growing. Since most of the world’s oil is controlled by countries that are unstable or at odds with the United States this dependency is a matter of national security. At the strategic level, it is dangerous to be buying billions of dollars worth of oil from nations that are sponsors of or allied with radical Islamists who foment hatred against the United States. The petrodollars we provide such nations contribute materially to the terrorist threats we face. In time of war, it is imperative that our national expenditures on energy be redirected away from those who use them against us.

Even if the underwriting of terror were not such a concern, our present dependency creates unacceptable vulnerabilities. In Iraq and Saudi Arabia, America’s enemies have demonstrated that they can advance their strategic objective of inflicting damage on the United States, its interests and economy simply by attacking critical overseas oil infrastructures and personnel. These targets are readily found not only in the Mideast but in other regions to which Islamists have ready access (e.g., the Caspian Basin and Africa). To date, such attacks have been relatively minor and their damage easily repaired. Over time, they are sure to become more sophisticated and their destructive effects will be far more difficult, costly and time-consuming to undo.

Another strategic factor is China’s burgeoning demand for oil. Last year, China’s oil imports were up 30% from the previous year, making it the world’s No. 2 petroleum user after the United States. The bipartisan, congressionally mandated U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission reported that: “China’s large and rapidly growing demand for oil is putting pressure on global oil supplies. This pressure is likely to increase in the future, with serious implications for U.S. oil prices and supplies.”

Oil dependence has considerable economic implications. Shrinking supply and rising demand translate into higher costs. Both American consumers and the U.S. economy are already suffering from the cumulative effect of recent increases in gas prices. Even now, fully one-quarter of the U.S. trade deficit is associated with oil imports. By some estimates, we lose 27,000 jobs for every billion dollars of additional oil imports. Serious domestic and global economic dislocation would almost certainly attend still-higher costs for imported petroleum and/or disruption of supply.

Finally, environmental considerations argue for action to reduce imports of foreign oil. While experts and policy-makers disagree about the contribution the burning of fossil fuels is making to the planet’s temperatures, it is certainly desirable to find ways to obtain energy while minimizing the production of greenhouse gases and other pollutants.

The combined effects of this “perfect storm” require concerted action, at last, aimed at reducing the Nation’s reliance on imported oil from hostile or unstable sources and the world’s dependence on oil at large. Fortunately, with appropriate vision and leadership, we can make major strides in this direction by exploiting currently available technologies and infrastructures to greatly diminish oil consumption in the transportation sector, which accounts for two thirds of our oil consumption.

The attached Blueprint for Energy Security: “Set America Free” spells out practical ways in which real progress on “fuel choice” can be made over the next four years and beyond. To be sure, full market transformation will take a longer time. In the case of the transportation sector, it may require 15-20 years. That is why it is imperative to begin the process without delay.

We call upon America’s leaders to pledge to adopt this Blueprint, and embark, along with our democratic allies, on a multilateral initiative to encourage reduced dependence on petroleum. In so doing, they can reasonably promise to: deny adversaries the wherewithal they use to harm us; protect our quality of life and economy against the effects of cuts in foreign energy supplies and rising costs; and reduce by as much as 50% emissions of undesirable pollutants. In light of the “perfect storm” now at hand, we simply can afford to do no less.

Sounds good so far, but what do they mean by “encourage reduced dependence” instead of “mandated reduced dependence”? Do they seriously expect any of this to happen without the government forcing it to happen? And what does the blueprint actually say? Is this a bait and switch orchestrated by the GOP hawks in the group? Well, they lay out a 5 point proposal that looks pretty good:

• Fuel Diversification: Today, consumers can choose among various octanes of gasoline, which accounts for 45% of U.S. oil consumption, or diesel, which accounts for almost another fifth. To these choices can and should promptly be added other fuels that are domestically produced, where possible from waste products, and that are clean and affordable.
• Real World Solutions: We have no time to wait for commercialization of immature technologies. The United States should implement technologies that exist today and are ready for widespread use.
• Using existing infrastructure: The focus should be on utilizing competitive technologies that do not require prohibitive or, if possible, even significant investment in changing our transportation sector’s infrastructure. Instead, “fuel choice” should permit the maximum possible use of the existing refueling and automotive infrastructure.
• Domestic resource utilization: The United States is no longer rich in oil or natural gas. It has, however, a wealth of other energy sources from which transportation fuel can be safely, affordably and cleanly generated. Among them: hundreds of years worth of coal reserves, 25% of the world’s total (especially promising with Integrated Gasification and Combined Cycle technologies); billions of tons a year of biomass, and further billions of tons of agricultural and municipal waste. Vehicles that meet consumer needs (e.g., “plug-in” hybrids), can also tap America’s electrical grid to supply energy for transportation, making more efficient use of such clean sources of electricity as solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric and nuclear power.
• Environmentally sensible choices: The technologies adopted should improve public safety and respond to the public’s environmental and health concerns.

Does this sound reasonable to you? I know some people will complain about the proposed increase in coal use, but they are actually proposing a clean(ish) use called gasification which I will cover further down in the diary. It sounds a lot better than the “more nuclear, more MTBE” plan that Bush just signed, doesn’t it?

Now lets check out some of the specifics:

Vehicles

• Hybrid electric vehicles: There are already thousands of vehicles on America’s roads that combine hybrid engines powered in an integrated fashion by liquid fuel-powered motors and battery-powered ones. Such vehicles increase gas-consumption efficiency by 30-40%.
• Ultralight materials: At least two-thirds of fuel use by a typical consumer vehicle is caused by its weight. Thanks to advances in both metals and plastics, ultralight vehicles can be affordably manufactured with today’s technologies and can roughly halve fuel consumption without compromising safety, performance or cost effectiveness.
• “Plug-in” hybrid electric vehicles: Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are also powered by a combination of electricity and liquid fuel. Unlike standard hybrids, however, plug-ins draw charge not only from the engine and captured braking energy, but also directly from the electrical grid by being plugged into standard electric outlets when not in use. Plug-in hybrids have liquid fuel tanks and internal combustion engines, so they do not face the range limitation posed by electric-only cars. Since fifty-percent of cars on the road in the United States are driven 20 miles a day or less, a plug-in with a 20-mile range battery would reduce fuel consumption by, on average, 85%. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles can reach fuel economy levels of 100 miles per gallon of gasoline consumed.
• Flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs): FFVs are designed to burn on alcohol, gasoline, or any mixture of the two. About four million FFV’s have been manufactured since 1996. The only difference between a conventional car and a flexible fuel vehicle is that the latter is equipped with a different control chip and some different fittings in the fuel line to accommodate the characteristics of alcohol. The marginal additional cost associated with such FFV-associated changes is currently under $100 per vehicle. That cost would be reduced further as volume of FFVs increases, particularly if flexible fuel designs were to become the industry standard.
• Flexible fuel/plug-in hybrid electric vehicles: If the two technologies are combined, such vehicles can be powered by blends of alcohol fuels, gasoline, and electricity. If a plug-in vehicle is also a FFV fueled with 80% alcohol and 20% gasoline, fuel economy could reach 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

If by 2025, all cars on the road are hybrids and half are plug-in hybrid vehicles, U.S. oil imports would drop by 8 million barrels per day (mbd). Today, the United States imports 10 mbd and it is projected to import almost 20 mbd by 2025. If all of these cars were also flexible fuel vehicles, U.S. oil imports would drop by as much as 12 mbd.

One thing I notice is that they have not actually suggested any government regulation to make this happen. There is no mention of increased CAFE standards. Little of this will happen without legislation. The hybrids we have now are largely a response to California’s strict emissions laws (which the Governator weakened as one of his first acts).

fuels

• Fuel additives: Fuel additives can enhance combustion efficiency by up to 25%. They can be blended into gasoline, diesel and bunker fuel.
• Electricity as a fuel: Less than 2% of U.S. electricity is generated from oil, so using electricity as a transportation fuel would greatly reduce dependence on imported petroleum. Plug-in hybrid vehicles would be charged at night in home garages — a time-interval during which electric utilities have significant excess capacity. The Electric Power Research Institute estimates that up to 30% of market penetration for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles with 20-mile electric range can be achieved without a need to install additional electricity-generating capacity.
• Alcohol fuels: ethanol, methanol and other blends:

1. Ethanol (also known as grain alcohol) is currently produced in the U.S. from corn. The industry currently has a capacity of 3.3 billion gallons a year and has increased on the average of 25% per year over the past three years. Upping production would be achieved by continuing to advance the corn-based ethanol industry and by commercializing the production of ethanol from biomass waste and dedicated energy crops. P-Series fuel (approved by the Department of Energy in 1999) is a more energy-efficient blend of ethanol, natural gas liquids and ether made from biomass waste.
2. Methanol (also known as wood alcohol) is today for the most part produced from natural gas. Expanding domestic production can be achieved by producing methanol from coal, a resource with which the U.S. is abundantly endowed. The commercial feasibility of coal-to-methanol technology was demonstrated as part of the DOE’s “clean coal” technology effort. Currently, methanol is being cleanly produced from coal for under 50 cents a gallon. It only costs about $60,000 to add a fuel pump that serves one of the above fuels to an existing refueling station.
3. Non-oil based diesel: Biodiesel is commercially produced from soybean and other vegetable oils. Diesel can also be made from waste products such as tires and animal byproducts, and is currently commercially produced from turkey offal. Diesel is also commercially produced from coal.

Ok… maybe a spoke to soon about the MTBE. Or maybe there are other, more environmentally friendly additives? This is also where we get to the coal gasification. Rather than burning the coal directly, the coal is converted through various processes into other combustibles and usable byproducts like fertilizers. This is from a paper by E.L. Clark:

Coal gasification is a process for converting coal partially or completely to combustible gases. After purification, these gases – carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane, and nitrogen – can be used as fuels or as raw materials for chemical or fertilizer manufacture. From the early 19th century until the 1940s almost all fuel gas distributed for residential or commercial use in the United States was produced by the gasification of coal or coke.

Modern processes convert the coal more completely, more efficiently, and produce a higher grade product than what was used back before the 1940s. It is still creating fossil fuels, so there is still the issue of greenhouse gases, but gasification can also be used to create straight hydrogen and, in either case, is much more environmentally friendly than burning the coal directly. Here is what Sandia Nation Laboratory has to say:

Although coal itself is a low-hydrogen fuel, gasification of coal, followed by chemical conversion of the resulting fuel gas, can yield large quantities of hydrogen at relatively low cost. Furthermore, while coal is a fossil fuel, hydrogen production from coal can be achieved in a carbon-neutral production system by coupling the coal gasification system to carbon dioxide sequestration. Alternatively, using a renewable biomass source as the feedstock, hydrogen can be produced without CO2 sequestration in a nearly carbon-neutral system or, with CO2 sequestration, in a carbon-consuming system.

Are you sold on gasification yet? I agree this isn’t the ideal solution – I would prefer a 100% solar or other renewable system – but this is a good option until we can create more efficient photovoltaic cells.

Now back to our regularly scheduled diary. Though it doesn’t call for legislation to implement this energy plan, SAF does have some “Policy Recommendations”:

• Provide incentives to auto manufacturers to produce and consumers to purchase, hybrid vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and FFVs across all vehicle models.
• Provide incentives for auto manufacturers to increase fuel efficiency of existing, non-FFV auto models.
• Conduct extensive testing of next-generation fuels across the vehicle spectrum to meet auto warranty and EPA emission standards.
• Mandate substantial incorporation of plug-ins and FFVs into federal, state, municipal and covered fleets.
• Provide investment tax incentives for corporate fleets and taxi fleets to switch to plug-ins, hybrids and FFVs.
• Encourage gasoline distributors to blend combustion enhancers into the fuel.
• Provide incentives for existing fueling stations to install pumps that serve all liquid fuels that can be used in the existing transportation infrastructure, and mandate that all new gas stations be so equipped.
• Provide incentives to enable new players, such as utilities, to enter the transportation fuel market, and for the development of environmentally sound exploitation of non-traditional petroleum deposits from stable areas (such as Canadian tar sands).
• Provide incentives for the construction of plants that generate liquid transportation fuels from domestic energy resources, particularly from waste, that can be used in the existing infrastructure.
• Allocate funds for commercial scale demonstration plants that produce next-generation transportation fuels, particularly from waste products.
• Implement federal, state, and local policies to encourage mass transit and reduce vehicle-miles traveled.
• Work with other oil-consuming countries towards distribution of the above-mentioned technologies and overall reduction of reliance on petroleum, particularly from hostile and potentially unstable regions of the world.

The SAF Blueprint ends with a call for “A New National Project” like the Manhattan Project or the Man to the Moon Project (just goes to show you: if you want something done, you need a Democratic President). Just as those projects had many byproducts that found uses in many different industries, SAF believes their energy project could also yield useful byproducts.

The Blueprint concludes:

The estimated cost of the `Set America Free’ plan over the next 4 years is $12 billion. This would be applied in the following way: $2 billion for automotive manufacturers to cover one-half the costs of building FFV-capability into their new production cars (i.e., roughly 40 million cars at $50 per unit); $1 billion to pay for at least one out of every four existing gas stations to add at least one pump to supply alcohol fuels (an estimated incentive of $20,000 per pump, new pumps costing approximately $60,000 per unit); $2 billion in consumer tax incentives to procure hybrid cars; $2 billion for automotive manufacturers to commercialize plug-in hybrid electric vehicles; $3 billion to construct commercial scale demonstration plants to produce non-petroleum based liquid fuels (utilizing public-private costsharing partnerships to build roughly 25 plants in order to demonstrate the feasibility of various approaches to perform efficiently at full-scale production); and $2 billion to continue work on commercializing fuel cell technology.

Since no major, new scientific advances are necessary to launch this program, such funds can be applied towards increasing the efficiencies of the involved processes. The resulting return-on-investment – in terms of enhanced energy and national security, economic growth, quality of life and environmental protection – should more than pay for the seed money required.

Who are these hawks with brains and the liberals who have joined them? Some of the signatories may surprise you (I have added my links and comments- in italics):

• Gary L. Bauer, President, American Values; a real religious-right wing nut hypocrite. Bauer held several jobs in the Ronald Reagan administration, rising to the directorship of the White House’s Office of Policy Development. Has flirted with liberals before.
• Milton Copulos, National Defense Council Foundation
• Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY)
• Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy; Former Reagan administration Assistant Secretary of Defense. Pro-Israel spokesman, ideologically close to Israeli hardliners such as Likud party chief Yitzhak Shamir.
• Bracken Hendricks,, Apollo Alliance; Director of the New Growth Initiative. Served the Clinton Administration as a special assistant for the Commerce Department and the office of the Vice President.
• Jack D. Hidary, Coalition Advocating for Smart Transportation;
• Col. (ret.) Bill Holmberg, American Council on Renewable Energy; Col Holmberg passed away July 26, 2005. Had an impressive resume including serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, working with the EPA and Dept of Energy on alternative fuels, and running alternative energy non-profit organizations.
• Anne Korin, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security; Has advised myriad high tech companies, and has worked on a wide variety of projects for corporations including Exxon International (Esso,) KPMG, and Goldman Sachs.
• Deron Lovaas, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Gal Luft, Institute for the Analysis of Global Security
• Cliff May, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies; Former Director of Communications for the Republican National Committee.
• Hon. Robert C. McFarlane, Former National Security Advisor under Reagan; one of the architects of Iran-Contra.
• Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum; Juan Cole wrote on his blog “I urge academics and others to boycott the United States Institute for Peace this year, as long as extremist ideologue Daniel Pipes serves on it.”
• William K. Shireman, Future 500; Called a “master of environmental entrepreneurism”; Wrote California’s bottle bill recycling law and brokered deals between some of the world’s largest corporations and most impassioned activists – from Coca-Cola and Nike to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club.
• Professor Richard E. Smalley, 1996 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
• Hon. James Strock, Former California Secretary for Environmental Protection; Former EPA official
• Admiral James D. Watkins, Former U.S. Secretary of Energy; Former Chief of Naval Operations; Former Chairman of Watkins Commission on AIDS
• Hon. R. James Woolsey, Former director of the CIA; Member of PNAC; Co-Chairman, Committee on the Present Danger; Director, Paladin Capital – a private equity firm making millions off of the WOT.
• Meyrav Wurmser, Hudson Institute; Israeli national and hard-core neo-con; has been accused of inciting western hatred of Arabs, Palestinians, and other Muslims.

So, what do you think? As much as I hate to support any neo-cons, this group looks to be genuinely bi-partisan with good ideas.

(CP @ DKos & MLW)