Warning that our continued reliance on imported oil poses an ongoing threat to national security, President George W. Bush signed an executive order in January requiring the federal government to increase alternative fuels use in an aggressive national strategy to reduce oil consumption 20 percent over the next decade. Bush has also initiated a broad range of other government-based initiatives on the energy front.
These measures won’t make much of a dent in oil imports. Americans are expected to consume 28 percent more oil in 2030, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates, as global demand for oil increases more than 50 percent. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, alternative fuels, including nuclear, hydropower and renewables like ethanol, will account for less than 20 percent of our total energy profile.
Even converting all 440 million acres of U.S. cropland to corn-based ethanol productionwould still meet only two-thirds of our domestic demand for gasoline. Ethanol is a useful gas extender and octane enhancer that helps reduce greenhouse emissions. But it’s impractical as a gasoline substitute and creates new environmental deficiencies. True, Brazil uses lots of sugar-based ethanol, but is also the world’s fourth-largest producer of carbon emissions. The huge sugar cane plantations required for ethanol are hastening the destruction of Amazonian rain forests.
Cut through the hype and this fact stands out: We have an estimated 112 billion barrels of crude oil reserves in U.S. oil sands and in offshore deposits, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico. That will power 60 million cars and heat 25 million homes over the next 60 years. Job No. 1 for achieving energy independence is removing regulatory roadblocks and encouraging the enormous investment needed to extract these domestic oil supplies.
The problem is few in Washington are talking about getting government out of the way so the private sector can find the oil and produce the energy that heats and cools our homes, powers our economy and produces more valuable and necessary goods and services than most of the rest of the world combined. Only in the upside-down logic of official Washington would more government be seen as the solution to an energy mess essentially created by government in the first place.
