http://www.newswise.com/articles/2001/6/ENERGYWO.IEE.html
Energy Woes Library: SCI Keywords: ENERGY ELECTRICITY ENVIRONMENT FUELS NUCLEAR POWER POLLUTION RENEWABLES Description: Reports from the Cheney task force and the national labs present sharply different versions of the U.S. energy future.
This press release is copyrighted by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). Its use is granted only to journalists and news media.
The long-awaited and much-discounted National Energy Policy report, issued on 16 May by a task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, was not the one-dimensional document critics and adversaries of the Bush administration eagerly awaited. Much of the criticism since release of the report would seem, in fact, to reflect more what people expected to read there than what is actually in it.
For this reason alone, IEEE Spectrum excerpts the report in the July issue, so that readers may judge for themselves. For a contrasting view, it excerpts a report prepared by researchers at several national laboratories and released last November, a study that presents quite a different look on the role fossil fuels need play in the country's energy future.
Whereas the Bush administration expects to see an enormous and inexorable increase in reliance on fossil fuels, the labs' report believes coal and oil consumption can be held close to current levels. The objective enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol of getting greenhouse-gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2010 has been dismissed by the Bush administration as unrealistic. The labs' report, though, sees it as readily doable.
While the Cheney report basically gives up on ideas of energy independence or energy security, and calls for creative diplomacy to secure new supplies of petroleum from the Caspian Sea area and from South America, the labs' report argues that greatly increased reliance on imported oil can be avoided.
As for transportation, where Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has said the United States will never agree to steep taxes on gasoline or fuel economy standards high enough to ban SUVs, the labs' report emphasizes the enormous environmental costs of gasoline vehicles. It suggests that gasoline prices--presumably even at current inflated levels--are still too low because they do not adequately reflect those social costs.
Contacts: William Sweet, 212 419 7559, w.sweet at ieee.org; Elizabeth A. Bretz, 212 419 7552, e.bretz at ieee.org. For copies of the complete article ("Energy Woes" by Senior Editor William Sweet and Senior Associate Editor Elizabeth A. Bretz, IEEE Spectrum, July 2001, pp. 48-53) or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, n.hantman at ieee.org.
===== Kevin Dean Buffalo, NY ICQ: 8616001 http://www.yaysoft.com
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