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Adopt sustainable energy system criteria, including the goals of phasing out nuclear power plants as their licensed lifetimes end, unless safety dictates a faster shutdown of specific plants, and reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions by 50 percent over the next forty years. Request the National Academy of Sciences to establish a standing committee on the second law of thermodynamics that would evaluate the energy system annually and recommend what fundamental research needs to be done to develop new energy-related technologies with far greater efficiency. For instance, this committee would recommend what materials research is needed to improve the efficiency of heat exchangers under conditions of small temperature differences. (For a description of the second law of thermodynamics, see "Dear Arjun" in Science for Democratic Action vol. 6. No. 3, March 1998.) Mandate stringent fuel efficiency standards increasing progressively to the equivalent of 100 miles per gallon for a CAFE standard that includes all passenger vehicles (including light trucks) by 2040. Stringent safety standards should be simultaneously mandated. Establish stringent efficiency standards for appliances. Dedicate about $5 billion per year for federal purchases of renewable energy, efficient vehicles, and advanced energy conversion technologies (such as fuel cells) for federal use and resale and provide a similar sum annually to states and local governments for the same purposes. Re-establish federal and state regulation of generation requiring reasonable rules for small power generators to connect to the grid. Severe financial penalties should be assessed for failure to comply and especially for any deliberate subversion of the regulations, since the damage to society from continued institutional resistance to the establishment of a distributed electricity grid would be great. The roadblocks to distributed grids, identified in the July 2000 report by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (full cite in endnote 3 of main article), should be expeditiously removed by a combination of local, state and federal government action and vigilant enforcement. All major residential and commercial real-estate developers as well as major industrial projects should be required to assess the energy impact of their projects and to consider developing their own local generation systems that would be connected to the grid. The Bush administration should ask the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to do a detailed study of how large-scale wind resources can be brought to play a major role in the electricity system in the next 20 years and in the overall energy system (via hydrogen production) in the two decades after that. (Click here for IEER's description of wind energy potential.) This study should also address the potential of offshore wind energy in the United States. Ask the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to design a pilot program for hydrogen generation and use that would enable a realistic evaluation of the methods by which a transition to a hydrogen economy based on renewable energy sources can be made. The U.S. government should re-affirm its policy of no reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel and adopt a policy of phasing out nuclear power plants at the end of their licensed lifetimes, unless safety dictates a faster shutdown of specific plants. Establish a task force that would study the potential need for natural gas to be a fuel that would enable the United States and the world to transition to a sustainable energy system by 2050. This task force would look at places where natural gas not associated with oil may be produced in an environmentally safe way and how such gas would best be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and phase out nuclear power at the same time. (See Science for Democratic Action vol. 6. no. 3, March 1998). The United States should take the lead in urging major oil companies to completely end the flaring of natural gas in oil-exporting developing countries such as Nigeria within the next three years. Instead of being wasted by flaring, this resource should be used domestically in those countries and possibly also exported for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. All local, state and federal jurisdictions should require utilities to establish just-in-time electricity efficiency plans. (See Arjun Makhijani and Scott Saleska, Nuclear Power Deception (New York: Apex Press, 1999), Chapter 9.