Commentary: Imagine a Government Promoting Local Self-Reliance in Energy

Rising energy costs are a big problem, creating a direct financial hardship for those who can least afford it. High energy costs hit hardest in rural communities, where many residents commute long distances to low-wage jobs, and rely on propane – one of the most expensive fuels available – for home heating. Together, these two factors are threatening to destroy the rural communities that are the heart of this great country.

Big problems deserve big solutions, but so far, the proposals to address the energy crisis coming out of Washington have failed to contemplate the magnitude and scope of the energy problem.Even the presidential candidates, given a national stage every day to present a new platform on energy, have not taken the opportunity to put forth ideas on the scale needed to address the energy crisis in this country.

Let’s assume for a moment that the reason our politicians have put forth no credible plans for solving the energy crisis is that they don’t have any idea how to do it. In that case, here’s a fresh perspective: rather than trying to create an energy supply that can sustain our economy, let’s instead create an economy that can be sustained by our energy supply. It goes something like this:

Every town in America should immediately conduct an economic leakage study to characterize the loss of dollars from the community, particularly for importing food and energy from outside the community. Next, identify the greatest opportunities to reduce the losses through local production of food, fuels, and electricity.

Federal, state, and local governments must enact policies and fund programs to build economic resilience and security by applying the principles of local self-reliance to food and energy. For food, that means providing funding and support for community gardens, small farms and farm cooperatives, and local farmers markets. For thermal energy, it means creating opportunities and incentives for local, independent companies to heat local schools and businesses with solar and biomass energy. For transportation fuels, it means setting up small-scale, regional fuel cooperatives to grow, process, and deliver fuel from a diverse array of regionally appropriate biofuel crops. And for electricity, it means transferring ownership of the entire wires infrastructure to the public sector – and operating it the way we run our national highway system – for the public good.

Imagine unleashing the awesome power of government on a set of policies and programs that promote community self-reliance in food and energy, putting an end to the perverse incentives and programs that have created the least efficient, most polluting, energy and food system the world has ever known.

Imagining a government like this – one that works in the public interest – is imagining a revolution that is long overdue.

The video newscast containing this story is posted here.

Congress Holds Yet Another Hearing on Oil Prices

With gasoline prices averaging $4.07 a gallon in the U.S., congress is holding yet another hearing on the cause of high oil prices. It’s the fortieth hearing on the topic so far this year, according to the New York Times. If holding 40 hearings without getting an answer isn’t enough to convince you that they won’t get an answer this time either, consider that the featured “expert” speaker at the hearing is Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the head of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Yergin has gained fame by repeatedly making incorrect predictions about the price of oil: Three years ago, with oil at $50 a barrel, he predicted it would fall to $40 by 2007 - instead it rose to $57. One year ago, with oil at $70 a barrel, he said it would fall to $60 by the beginning of 2008 – instead it rose to $90.

So what will the Pulitzer prize-winner tell congress this time?

In an interview yesterday about the upcoming hearings, Yergin told reporters that the high price of oil was due to a shortage psychology in the financial markets. We can only hope that Senator Schumer, Chair of Congress’ Joint Economic Committee, will ask him whether this “shortage psychology” is being caused in whole or in part by the oil shortage.

(See the video that includes this story.)

Greenwashing Exposed at Florida Power and Light

Florida Power and Light calls it their “Sunshine Energy Program”, but until last week, the Miami Florida-based electric utility has repeatedly refused to turn over documents showing how it spent the $10 million dollars it collected from ratepayers for the program. The utility has been inviting its customers to add a charge on their monthly bill to develop solar power in the state.

After a nine-month probe, regulators finally got their hands on the details of the program, and shed a little sunshine on the matter: It turns out that the utility spent three quarters of the money on green marketing and public relations.

It seems that convincing the public that you are “green” while you are operating more than 5,000 megawatts of nuclear generation is an expensive proposition. So what did the utility do with $2 million dollars that was left over after paying for its green-washing campaign? Most of it went to buying renewable energy credits from out of state companies, including from a Texas wind farm owned by (get this) Florida Power and Light. Asked to justify using Florida ratepayer money to buy out-of-state renewable energy that it already owned, a spokesman for the company explained that the purchases took place through a third party broker. Huh?

Note to New Mexico readers: FPL built the wind farm for PNM's "Sky Blue" program. Time to audit that program too?

(See the video that includes this story.)

Commentary: Invest Two Trillion a Year in Dirty Energy? That's Insane!

Doing the same thing over and over again, and each time expecting to get a different result, has frequently been used to define the word “insanity”. If we accept this definition, then members of congress and utility regulators must be insane.

Holding forty hearings on oil prices, taking testimony from the same oil company spokespersons and their highly-paid shills, and expecting to gain new insight, is insane. This, while scores of real academics and nonprofit institutions perfect decades of research on oil decline and their proposals for an orderly phase-out of petroleum, and continue to go unheard.

The full commentary is posted here.

(See the video that includes this commentary.)