Get Serious about Energy

I recently spent two weeks on vacation in France with my family. We spent a week day-hiking in the Alps near Mont Blanc and five days touring a small portion of Provence near Aix-en-Provence. I know that France remains a bête noire for some Americans, but the country is beautiful, the food and wine a delight, and the people unfailingly friendly, even in the face of my 75-or-so-word French vocabulary.

We flew to Lyon and took two trains from there to Chamonix to reach the Alps. While in Chamonix, we used the train or a free local bus to reach the trailheads of our hikes. To reach Provence, we retraced our path to Lyon and caught the TGV, the French high-speed train, to Aix, where we rented a small BMW diesel station wagon.

Four things related to energy caught my attention during our stay.

France's rail system, like the rail systems of most European nations, is extensive, fast, efficient, and well-used.

Nuclear power stations are an unremarkable sight. We noticed at least half a dozen during our travels, and we weren't looking for them. The distinctive nuclear power station cooling tower, with its ever-present plume of steam rising above it, does not inspire dread in the French.

I had never driven a diesel-powered automobile before this trip. I had always heard that, while they got good mileage, they performed poorly in terms of acceleration. Not this diesel. With four adults in the car, it had plenty of zip and managed to get close to 40 mpg of fuel.

Filling the BMW before I dropped it off cost 48.35 euros ($58.50) because diesel was 1.06 euros per L ($4.83 per gal). Gasoline ranged from 1.20 to 1.50 euros per L.

The point I am making here is not particularly profound. The French use much less energy than Americans do to achieve a very similar quality of life. Some French people might say a superior quality of life. The electrical energy they use is generated in the main by nuclear power, which does not contribute to the burden of greenhouse gases accumulating in Earth's atmosphere. Their cars are very fuel-efficient because gasoline and diesel fuel are, as a matter of public policy, expensive.

Meanwhile, back here in the U.S., C&EN reported last week that the Bush Administration strongly opposes language in the Senate energy bill that, while nonbinding, calls for the eventual establishment of a mandatory program to limit emissions of greenhouse gases (C&EN, July 25, page 37). On the same Government & Policy Concentrates page, C&EN reported that the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow Republican representative had chastised Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) for his apparent harassment of climate-change researchers. In the News of the Week section, we reported that a federal appeals court had rebuffed 12 states in their effort to force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate CO₂ as a pollutant (page 10).

The most profound challenge humanity faces over the next 50 years is figuring out how to run an advanced, technological society without burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. Many analysts now think that global petroleum production may peak in the next decade. There's enough coal on Earth to provide energy for the next couple hundred years, but if we burn it all, we are likely to make the planet unlivable. Eventually, we must learn to live off the sun, but in the interim, nuclear power and more efficient use of energy will be essential. The U.S. needs to participate in these efforts.

What's maddening is that this challenge is regularly portrayed as a threat to the U.S. economy. It should be viewed as an enormous opportunity for one of the most inventive nations on Earth. Harnessing solar energy to replace most of our fossil-fuel use would open vast new markets, here and abroad. Achieving this will require a long-term applied research effort, and the U.S. government should partner with industry to embark on it. There are many ways to fund such an effort, such as a modest carbon tax that would both raise the needed revenues and encourage greater efficiency. It is time we acted.

Thanks for reading.