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ENERGY：The Quickest Route to Green

作者：ssle060317　发布日期：2009-05-20　浏览：1584　字体大小：[ 大中小 ]

A 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency is possible with technology that exists right now.

You don't need a crystal ball to recognize that Barack Obama will face a daunting list of things to do.Many of the challenges are connected, directly or indirectly, to the question of America's long-termenergy strategy.

An energy strategy is not just about the price of gas. It's about the size of the U.S. national debt and the countries that finance it. It's about the conflicts that arise around the world over the supply of oil. It's about the cost of consumer goods and keeping inflation in check. It's about the ability of industrial companies to hold on to manufacturing jobs. And it's about addressing climate change and the environmental consequences of the dependence on fossil fuels.

To meet this crisis head-on and keep the U.S. economy growing, the next administration will need a plan full of energy options. Increased efficiency and conservation, and greater diversity of energy sources—including renewable energy, clean coal and nuclear, coupled with a bigger domestic supply of oil and natural gas—should be the major touchstones of any comprehensive energy strategy.

If these solutions sound like something far off in the future, experience shows that this isn't so. Energy efficiency and conservation not only happen to be the cheapest options, but they are also the quickest and cleanest ways to extend energy supplies and slash carbon emissions.

According to the National Petroleum Council, the United States could reduce energy use by 20 percent by applying technology available today. If it increased that target to 25 percent—similar to the goal we've set at Dow for 2015—the country could eliminate the equivalent of the energy it imports from all the Persian Gulf countries. Many firms have already taken steps on their own. Dow has improved its energy efficiency by 22 percent since 1995, saving $7 billion in energy costs on a $1 billion investment. These measures also prevented 70 million metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere

Efficiency improvements don't require anything we don't already have at our fingertips. For instance, cogeneration technology—which takes waste heat from a factory and uses it for heating—could, if deployed widely, substantially reduce America's dependence on foreign oil. The federal government should create investment tax credits as an incentive for industry to develop and implement high-efficiency cogeneration projects, among other efficiency improvements. Other nations, including Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, have already employed incentives to promote cogeneration.

There's other low-hanging fruit. Heating and cooling homes and buildings account for 40 percent of the United States' energy demand and 50 percent of its greenhouse-gas emissions. The U.S. government should set a national goal for the energy efficiency of new construction and retrofitting of existing homes. It should also provide incentives for green building design and education programs like the one California implemented eight years ago to persuade citizens to reduce their power consumption.

Another smart move would be to establish more public-private partnerships on energy efficiency and conservation, similar to one already started by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Association of Manufacturers, which promotes energy-efficiency best practices among the NAM's 13,000 member companies. There's also no reason for the U.S. Congress to have to vote every two years to extend energy-efficiency and renewable-energy tax credits, as it did recently. Making these permanent would encourage the private sector to invest more consistently in innovative technology that will lessen demand for fossil energy.

Most important, under the leadership of the new president the United States should make energy efficiency a central part of its foreign policy. Imagine if America were known as the world's largest exporter of energy conservation and alternative energy technologies instead of as the world's largest importer of oil.

Liveris is chairman and CEO of The Dow Chemical Co.