EPA regulation of carbon emissions IS needed but so is some offshore oil....

Today's post: Wednesday, 5-19-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

Two current energy issues concern me.

1. I just sent this to both of the Senators for my state, California.:

Please Vote Against S.J. Res 26 and Any Similar Proposals.

Big Oil allies in Congress, led by Senator Murkowski from Alaska, are trying to block EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act to reduce pollution from the Oil and Coal industries.

Now that Kuwaiti scientists have predicted peak oil by 2014 & evidence accumulates that we may have already burned more fossil fuels and added more CO2 to Earth’s atmosphere than is safe, gradually beginning to take action to price our use of oil and coal accordingly makes sense. So does gradually increasing the standards for mileage for vehicles powered by gasoline or diesel fuel.

These things also begin to increase the energy independence of the United States by decreasing our dependence on oil from outside the United States.

Please vote against Senator Murkowski's resolution to challenge the EPA's authority to reduce global warming pollution.

2. Unfortunately, we do not yet have 50 to 100 times as much electricity being generated from clean sources such as solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, and some more nuclear power.

We also do not yet have a third of the cars on the road powered by electicity only. We also do not yet have another third or more of the cars on the road powered by plug-in hybrids.

And, we do not yet have wide distribution of cost effective sources of biofuels that supply more energy in use than it takes to make and transport them.

I’ve posted almost every week saying we badly need to put all these things in place as fast as is humanly possible. But it has not happened yet.

Lastly, the United States now uses more oil than we get from sources inside the United States.

This state of affairs decreases the energy independence of the United States because of our dependence on oil from outside the United States.

This has a severe and growing economic penalty as the dollars to pay for this outside oil leave the United States. And, it funds political regimes that often do not like the United States. So it sharply lowers our national security to allow this to continue.

Since the methods to deal with this I prefer and think we absolutely must have to survive economically have not yet been put in place, I believe we need to think about making some effort to keep any solutions we already have operating until these better solutions are put in place.

Clearly the technology, reliability engineering, needed routine maintenance, and governmental oversight of each of those were all severely lacking when the recent offshore drilling disaster happened.

Adding more offshore drilling has already been cancelled in many places in reaction to this.

This is certainly understandable due to the damage already seen and the damage likely to occur in the next year from this super massive oil spill.

But the real problem is that we will be in real hurt economically and in terms of our national security if we shut down the offshore drilling we already have. And, particularly if we can trade more offshore drilling for effective support for the better solutions we so desperately need, it may even make sense to support more.

But, it’s also extremely clear that it is unsafe to do these things without all the things being in place that were NOT in place recently before this disaster happened because they were not in place.

So, I think it’s imperative that each of these things must be put in place quickly and aggressively. And, each of them must be well done.

The size and capacity of blowout preventers for offshore rigs over high capacity oil fields that far underneath the sea must be about triple that of the one that failed recently.

The reliability engineering to ensure that they work when needed must be a good bit better and more thorough and have more parts than happened in this case.

And, the maintenance and checking protocols to be sure all the parts of the fail safe systems are still working must be carried out on schedule and done right 100 % of the time.

The oil companies, their suppliers of this equipment, and other oil industry stake-holders must begin voluntarily to show they can do these things AND to begin putting them in place in every offshore drilling rig they operate anywhere.

I’ve not seen evidence for that yet.

The good news is that there does seem to be some progress on increasing the government oversight and how good it is to help ensure these things are done.

But the fact is, for now, we need that oil for our economy and national security. Doing those effective and preventive things is the right choice.

Turning off existing offshore oil and turning off any increase in offshore drilling at all are the wrong choices it seems to me.

We need offshore oil now. But we also need to start doing it safely! Clearly we have not been doing so.