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The Road to a New Energy Future 2006-10-26 RoadMI.pdf

Executive Summary

America is the most technologically and economically advanced nation in the world, blessed with vast natural and intellectual resources. Our nation has a track record of responding to major challenges and achieving unthinkable goals. If any nation in the world is capable of creating an energy system that can fuel our economy while preserving our environment and our long-term security, it is us.

But America’s energy situation today is less secure than it has been in recent memory. Our domestic production of oil peaked decades ago and our production of natural gas may be peaking now. As a result, we import more of our energy than ever before, leaving our energy supplies and national security vulnerable to political instability abroad.

We have ample supplies of coal, but mining it causes severe environmental damage and burning it releases large amounts of global warming pollution.  Nuclear power has been tried and found wanting for economic, environmental and public safety reasons. And virtually every year, Americans consume more energy in our cars, homes and businesses.

For America to retain our economic vigor, national security and environmental health, we must build toward a New Energy Future – one based on homegrown, environmentally friendly energy sources and the sensible use of energy throughout the economy.

We have the tools to achieve a better energy future – in the technological prowess of academia and industry, the cutting-edge public policies now being pioneered in states across the country, and in our vast reserves of energy from the sun, wind and crops.

THE NEW ENERGY FUTURE PLATFORM
In order to achieve a New Energy Future, we need to set ambitious goals for how we will transform our economy to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and then marshal the political, economic and technological resources to achieve those goals.

In 2006, a broad coalition of environmental, consumer, labor and civic groups gave their endorsement to a New Energy Future platform that includes the following goals:

 • Reduce our dependence on oil by saving one-third of the oil we use today by 2025 (7 million barrels per day).

 • Harness clean, renewable, homegrown energy sources like wind, solar and farmbased biofuels for at least a quarter of all energy needs by 2025.

 • Save energy with high performance homes, buildings and appliances so that by 2025 we use 10 percent less energy than we do today.

 • Invest in a New Energy Future by committing $30 billion over the next 10 years to the New Energy for America Initiative, thus tripling research and development funding for the energy-saving and renewable energy technologies we need to achieve these goals.10

In fall 2006, we issued a white paper entitled A New Energy Future: The Benefits of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy for Cutting America’s Use of Fossil Fuels. The paper found that, under one plausible technological pathway for meeting the goals of the New Energy Future platform, the United States could, by 2025:

• Save 10.8 million barrels of oil per day, equal to four-fifths the amount of oil we currently import from all other nations in the world.

• Save 9.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per year, nearly twice as much as is currently used annually in all of America’s homes.

• Save 900 million tons of coal per year, or about 80 percent of all the coal we consumed in the United States in 2005.

• Save 1.7 billion megawatt-hours of electricity per year, 30 percent more than was used in all the households in America in 2005.

Such reductions in fossil fuel consumption would address many of the energy-related challenges facing the United States today, including our exposure to high and volatile prices for fuels like oil and natural gas, our dependence on foreign nations for crucial energy supplies, and our emissions of pollutants that cause global warming, which threatens to have dramatic impacts on America’s environment, economy and public health.