Press Release

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1: Summary and Recommendations

Chapter 2: Energy System Security Criteria

Chapter 3: The Bush Administration and the IEER Energy Plans

Chapter 4: Vulnerability Comparison: The Bush and IEER Energy Plans

Chapter 5: Policy Recommendations

References

The politics of Central Asia, the Caspian region, the Caucasian region, and the Middle East, are becoming ever more tangled with the politics of terrorism and with the nuclear politics of Pakistan and India. Of course, this is in addition to the old-time nuclear powers, the United States, Russia, and China, who are present in the region. U.S. policy in Central Asia, like that of the other major powers, is closely tied to the immense oil and gas resources in the region.³ Since September 11, the United States has introduced troops into Uzbekistan. The U.S. military presence in Central Asia is already showing signs of becoming prolonged, in the same manner as that in Saudi Arabia after the 1991 Gulf War. This could become a bone of contention between Russia and the United States, adding to the danger and complexity of the present crisis in the region.

Oil, of course, is also at the center of the global warming problem. Roughly half the emissions of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are attributable to oil. Most urban air pollution comes from motor vehicles. Much of the pollution of the oceans comes from oil spills, both routine and accidental. Yet the United States stood aside from the recent completion of the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Major disruption of the global climate is not only likely to produce adverse health and economic consequences but also serous security implications, whose character is difficult to anticipate.

The vulnerability of nuclear power plants, spent fuel storage, and plutonium storage facilities to attack, has also been revealed as never before. Studies in the past have hypothesized the potentially catastrophic effects of accidents, war, or terrorist attacks on certain portions of the nuclear energy infrastructure.⁴ There have also been some attempts at attacks on nuclear facilities. Yet, these concerns have not been taken as seriously as they might have been. They can no longer be ignored.

The crash of one of the airliners in Pennsylvania, not far from the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, as well as statements by a Taliban prisoner held in Afghanistan showing his awareness of nuclear power plants as potential targets,⁵ should greatly heighten serious concerns about nuclear vulnerabilities. Most spent fuel storage sites as well as storage sites of other nuclear materials, notably plutonium, also have severe vulnerabilities. A breach of spent fuel containment or a meltdown in a nuclear reactor could cause catastrophic releases of radioactivity and immense disruption of energy, environmental, and financial systems.

U.S. actions after past crises, notably in the period between 1973 and 1980, have mitigated problems temporarily, but they have not been stringent enough to make the U.S. energy system more secure for the long-term. U.S. oil import and nuclear vulnerabilities are greater today than they have ever been despite the recommendations of studies done as a result of earlier crises regarding security, which were for the most part not adopted.⁶

The scale of the September 11 events and the vastness of the economic impact makes it imperative that the United States take urgent and tough action to reduce energy system vulnerabilities, notably those related to oil imports, nuclear power plants and associated infrastructure, and the electricity grid. It is stunning that the Bush administration has not revisited its energy plan proposed four months prior to September 11 in light of the events of that day.⁷ Our analysis shows that the Bush energy plan would result in a great increase in energy vulnerabilities, including oil import insecurities, even if domestic oil production is expanded by opening up environmentally sensitive areas to drilling, including the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve. It would also keep nuclear vulnerabilities high and most likely increase them considerably.

The tables below on energy plan vulnerabilities show clearly that the Bush administration is on an unsound course of recommending an energy policy to the people of this country in the post September 11-period without revisiting its key vulnerabilities. Figures 1 through 7 which follow show some of the energy data and the vulnerabilities over time.

Figures 1 and 2 summarize the Bush and IEER energy plans respectively, and Figures 3 through 7 show how some of the vulnerabilities in the two plans would evolve over time.

List of figures:

1. Bush Energy Plan summary
2. IEER Energy Plan summary
3. Oil imports projections
4. Energy productivity projections
5. Number of nuclear reactors
6. Amount of fuel in spent fuel pools
7. Carbon dioxide emissions (carbon basis)

(View figure 2.)

(View figure 3.)

(View figure 4.)

(View figure 5.)

(View figure 6.)

(View figure 7.)

B. Main recommendations

The five most important recommendations of the report are:

• The United States should adopt an energy plan that would set goals for the long-term - a four-decade period. During this period, it must seek to essentially eliminate the most severe vulnerabilities to attack and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about one-half by about 2040.
• A goal of an average efficiency of 100 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles should be set for the year 2020. The efficiency goal should be accompanied by safety and emissions goals, so that all three issues can be coherently and simultaneously addressed. The technologies to achieve the mileage goal already exist.
• A national policy decision should be made to create regional distributed electricity grids in the next three to four decades. In these regional grids, a large proportion of the electricity would come from relatively dispersed generators, where installation of generation systems would be accompanied by efficiency improvements. Regulatory changes should be geared to encouraging the achievement of a distributed grid, rather than a centralized national grid of interconnected local and centralized electricity generation. Local and state governments as well as regional and national associations of local and state governments should have sufficient authority and funding to oversee these distributed grids and to regulate them for performance using economic, reliability, security, and environmental criteria.
• Nuclear power should be phased out. In general, the power plants can be decommissioned as they reach the end of their original license lifetimes. Some might need to be retired earlier if they have particular vulnerabilities.
• The U.S. government should commit about $10 billion per year to purchase renewable energy, fuel cells, efficient automobiles, and other leading edge technologies that are not fully commercial in order to promote their commercialization. Another $10 billion per year should be given to state and local governments for the same purposes. Direct subsidies for renewables and efficiency should be eliminated for new capacity replaced by this procurement program, which should operate consistently and reliably for at least a decade, and preferably for 20 years. Tax breaks for plants that have already been built or under construction, under the assumption that they will be available, can continue.

1. The Bush administration's energy plan will result in greatly increased vulnerabilities by (i) increasing the attractiveness of and number of targets for terrorism particularly in the nuclear, oil, and electricity systems, (ii) increasing oil imports in absolute amount and as a proportion of oil supply, (iii) increasing risks of nuclear proliferation.
2. The Bush energy plan will result in an increase of greenhouse gas emissions by roughly fifty percent by the year 2030.
3. A reduction of oil consumption of about forty percent can be achieved in the next four decades, even if air transportation continues to rely completely on petroleum and continues to grow significantly, provided stringent standards for efficiency in land-based transportation are set.
4. It is possible to eliminate most nuclear power related vulnerabilities and greatly reduce others by a more diversified approach to electricity, by adopting sound approaches to nuclear waste and plutonium management, and by precluding the use of plutonium as a fuel.
5. A sound government procurement policy and other policies can result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by about one-third by the year 2030 and by forty to fifty percent by the year 2040, relative to the year 2000.
6. A prolonged period of near complete phase-out of coal use can help provide the time for restructuring the energy industry in a way that would minimize its impact on workers. A transition period away from coal of four decades is compatible with a reduction of about half in carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2040. However, the maintenance of a relatively small coal sector of 50 to 100 million tons per year would provide the energy system with flexibility in case of disruption of energy supplies and this should be done unless other means of similar flexibility are put into place.
7. The achievement of reduction of carbon dioxide emissions can be made compatible with a total phase out of nuclear power.
8. The technologies to achieve the goal of simultaneously reducing carbon dioxide emissions and vulnerabilities to attack already exist. Some, such as wind energy and cogeneration, are already economical. Others will need suitable government procurement policies to make them economical. All of the needed technologies are advanced enough that they can be commercialized within the next five to ten years. Combined cycle power plants fueled by natural gas, fuel cells, cogeneration of various types, wind power, and highly efficient heating and cooling systems are the key technologies to achieving a substantial growth in the services that energy provides and reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.
9. Additional reductions in oil consumption and greater use of renewable energy can be achieved in the next three to four decades if a vigorous program of research, development, and procurement for technologies that are not close to commercialization is put into effect. The central elements of the supply aspect of these technologies is coupling renewable energy sources with hydrogen fuel, as well as development programs to couple hydrogen fuel with renewable biomass sources to obtain hydrocarbon feedstocks for industry.

1. Enactment of progressively more stringent carbon dioxide limits per unit of electrical power generation.
2. Transfer of spent fuel out of pools into dry storage when it is safe to do so rather than waiting until the pools are full.
3. Storage of dry casks containing spent fuel in sub-surface storage on-site at operating nuclear power plants.
4. A transfer of the control of spent fuel to the federal government at closed plants, with some consideration given to in-state consolidation of spent fuel at a single power plant in case of special vulnerabilities.
5. Creation of a national effort on transportation as an urban utility so as to ensure that public transportation and multi-modal transportation get a far larger share of federal resources than they now do.
6. An adoption of a policy to encourage distributed grids, and the orientation of a portion of the proposed federal procurement program to helping states and regions achieve distributed grids.
7. The United States should commit itself to the Kyoto Protocol process by taking the leadership in announcing a long-term goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by forty to fifty percent in the next four decades, with intermediate goals to be specified in forthcoming negotiations.
8. Natural gas should be regarded as the key transition fuel to a renewable energy future.
9. Public transportation in urban areas should be regarded as a utility, much like water, electricity or telephones. A diverse system of transport that includes cars, motorized and rail public transport, bicycle lanes and sidewalks would reduce vulnerabilities to terrorism by diversifying the modes by which people could travel in cities. By making public transportation safe, efficient, economical, frequent, and convenient, energy use as well as time for commuting could be greatly reduced with all the attendant social, economic, and environmental benefits.
10. Surplus weapons plutonium and all commercial separated plutonium should be immobilized and stored at a large nuclear weapons plant in subsurface silos in order to reduce the consequences of even a severe attack. Spent nuclear fuel from power plants, which contains 95 percent of all radioactivity in nuclear waste can also be packaged in dry casks for storage on site or close to site in subsurface silos. As nuclear power plants are closed, the storage can be consolidated within a state or region at a closed nuclear power plant site. The present highly unsatisfactory nuclear repository program should be scrapped and replaced by one that will result in a deep geologic disposal program that will better safeguard natural resources and future generations and also be less vulnerable to deliberate or inadvertent human intrusion.
11. The United States should request the National Academy of Sciences to create a standing committee to evaluate the energy system from the points of view of supply, efficiency, environment, and vulnerabilities, which reports to the government and the public each year.
12. Vigorous federal programs of research and development as well as energy policy, such as those at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory should be maintained and reinforced.
13. Continued filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as is currently being pursued.
14. A program of research, development, and demonstration that couples hydrogen fuels to renewable energy sources and to a variety of end uses including pipeline fuel uses, industrial feedstocks, and air transportation should be undertaken as an investment in a long-term sustainable energy system. One near term focus of such an effort could be to use wind-generated hydrogen to replace industrial and transportation uses of petroleum as fuel in highly polluted areas.⁸

In addition to the institution of their own procurements policies along the lines discussed above for their own facilities such as schools, colleges, state government buildings, state and local vehicles, etc. the state and local governments should:

1. Create or maintain state level regulation of electricity systems in order to achieve the overall goals of system reliability, reserve margins, and transmission and distribution capacity.
2. Establish state and locally owned utilities with public oversight and transparency safeguards, with the goal of promoting high efficiency, secure distributed grids, and adequate capacity of the transmission and distribution system to withstand attacks on critical electricity infrastructure without massive prolonged disruption.
3. Institute regulation at the regional reliability council that correspond to the regional grids to provide the overall framework for achieving secure and reliable transmission and generation, including maintenance of adequate reserve margins and transmission capacity.
4. Institute rules requiring developers to consider on-site generation with best available technology for heating and cooling, efficient devices and justify why these technologies should not be used.
5. Put in place requirements for energy audits to be part of the re-sales of residential and commercial buildings with information about best practices during resale and consequences for the new owners of buildings.
6. Enact stringent efficiency standards for appliances, buildings, and vehicles, should the federal government fail to do so.
7. Create task forces on transportation as an urban utility that would analyze the security, environmental, and economic benefits of regarding public transportation as a public utility, especially when connected with efforts on public safety and excellence in schools.

Next: Chapter 2: Energy System Security Criteria

3. Klare 2001.
4. FEMA 1980, Lovins and Lovins 1982.
5. Branigin, 2001.
6. See FEMA 1980, for instance.
7. Bush Energy Plan 2001. This plan was published in May 2001 by a task force led by Vice-President Cheney, and submitted to President Bush. Prior to its official adoption as administration policy it was widely known as the Cheney Plan.
8. Caldwell 2001.