Bush Goes Into High Gear on Energy
President Bush laid out his most aggressive energy and environmental agenda to date—mentioning global warming for the first time in a State of the Union address, or any major speech.
According to the president, his plan "will help us to confront the challenge of global climate change." Though such words mark a dramatic step for Bush, energy analysts and environmentalists have responded with as much skepticism as encouragement.
Bush laid out an ambitious goal to, in his words, "reduce our dependence on foreign oil" while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House is labeling the plan "20 in 10"—establishing a goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in the next 10 years, which would be accomplished primarily by two acts.
The first is to reform fuel economy standards for cars to conserve 8.5 billion gallons of gasoline. The proposal has gotten muted applause from environmentalists, who are calling it a move in the right direction, though many believe the plan gives too much flexibility to automakers and could allow loopholes. The second is by far the more ambitious, calling for a major ratcheting-up of the Renewable Fuels Standard, the popular centerpiece of his Energy Policy Act of 2005.
In 2006, RFS mandated production of 4 billion gallons of ethanol, a goal that was handily topped by about a billion gallons. Benchmarks for coming years, analysts say, will be easily surpassed as well. The success of ethanol has policymakers giddy. For one, it has proved to be an economic boon to the American heartland.
Several members of Congress, including Senate Agriculture Committee stalwarts Tom Harkin of Iowa and Dick Lugar of Indiana, are calling for increased ethanol production to a staggering 60 billion gallons by 2030. Rumors swirled in Washington that Bush would call for the same in his State of the Union address last night.
Instead, he targeted a no less ambitious but shorter-term goal of 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017, displacing 15 percent of projected annual gasoline consumption. But that proposal faces the same challenges, and on an accelerated timeline. Industry experts believe this country can produce about 15 billion gallons of ethanol from corn without disrupting other sectors of the economy, notably livestock producers that use corn and other feed.
Already, agricultural economist Lester Brown sees escalating food prices as a result of last year's record ethanol sales and predicts graver outcomes in the near future. Even if the market stabilizes, that leaves a 20 billion-gallon shortfall in ethanol supplies, which will have to be made up for with cellulosic ethanol, an alternative derived by other feedstocks such as switch grass, wood, and other plant matter. The problem is that for all intents and purposes, cellulosic ethanol doesn't exist yet, at least not commercially.
It can be produced with success in labs, but according to Arthur Ragauskas, a biofuels expert at Georgia Tech, "there are still significant challenges" to bringing it to market, namely cost and efficiency. While converting a starch like corn or sugar to ethanol is relatively simple, cellulosic matter poses a greater challenge because it requires "pretreatment" to make the material more reactive to the deconstruction enzymes that turn starch to glucose, which is easily turned into ethanol.
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