April 5, 2001

Energy Efficiency Programs Are Set for Bush Budget Cut

By JOSEPH KAHN

WASHINGTON, April 4 — The Bush administration plans to cut programs intended to make buildings and factories use less energy and to generate more power from the wind and the sun, people who have seen the administration's budget proposal say.

The cuts, being proposed despite the administration's contention that the nation faces an energy crisis, would reduce the Energy Department's overall spending on energy efficiency and renewable energy by about $180 million, or 15 percent, though some people involved in the process said the administration had talked of cuts of up to 30 percent.

The spending reductions reflect how the Bush administration has sought to upend the Clinton administration's approach to energy policy by emphasizing efforts to increase the supply of oil and gas while reviewing or canceling some programs intended to reduce demand.

President Bush has repeatedly warned that California's electricity shortages are part of a broader energy crisis that requires urgent action. Mr. Bush cited the nation's energy needs in abandoning a campaign pledge to impose controls on carbon dioxide emissions by power plants. He has also said he wants to open protected federal lands to oil and gas exploration.

A task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney is drafting a broad energy plan that will propose ways to reduce demand as well as increase energy supplies, administration officials say. But the administration has tended to play down the potential of efficiency programs or new sources of energy, arguing that they impose a burden on private industry and might not contribute much to alleviating shortages.

For example, the administration is now reviewing whether to delay or scrap Clinton administration standards that would require new clothes washers, water heaters and central air-conditioners to use less electricity and natural gas. The air-conditioner standards offer the greatest potential for energy savings — they would require that new central air- conditioners use one-third less energy than under current minimum standards of efficiency — but they are being fought by an industry group that calls them too expensive.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham declined to discuss details of the budget cuts, which officials say are not final until the president's budget proposal is formally unveiled on Monday. But in a recent television interview, Mr. Abraham referred to some such programs as "not having returned a very good investment for the taxpayers."

The programs in question have helped develop a range of standards and other tools to reduce energy demand and increase the supply of energy from nonpolluting sources. Supporters say the programs have had some notable successes, among them reducing the cost of wind power by as much as 90 percent and developing software that architects often use to design energy-efficient office buildings.

Not all such programs are scheduled for cuts. Mr. Bush promised in the campaign to increase financing to help low-income families insulate their homes, and an Energy Department program devoted to such weatherization is scheduled to get $120 million more next year than it received in this year's budget, a 100 percent increase.

But a program to reduce energy use at steel, glass, pulp paper and refining companies, all heavy users of energy, is set for a sharp reduction, people who have seen the budget proposal said. The budget also envisions less spending to improve the design of offices and homes.

Research into wind, solar and geothermal energy development is also scaled back under the plan. California relies on geothermal energy sources for 6 percent of its electricity needs, and some who served in the Clinton administration say investment in deploying that source of energy more broadly could help ease the state's electricity crisis.

Some lawmakers from both parties have pressed the administration to maintain financing levels for energy efficiency programs, but they say the administration has stood firm.

"My impression is that this is just not a priority for them, which is inconsistent in that they keep sounding the alarm about an energy crisis," said Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

But some Republicans have signaled support for a new energy policy that puts less emphasis on protecting the environment.

"The problem is that over the last eight or nine years we've not had an energy policy, we've had an environmental policy that drove energy policy," Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, told an audience of electricity industry executives at an Energy Marketers Association conference today.

Government financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy has varied sharply over the last two decades. It was highest at the end of the Carter administration, when the nation faced a severe energy crunch. President Ronald Reagan discontinued most such spending, but it rose during both the Bush and Clinton administrations. At $1.2 billion, the total spending today measured in constant 1998 dollars is still only one- third the level of 20 years ago.

Though supporters of such programs acknowledge that some government research has proved ineffective, they say the nation would face a far greater energy crisis today without government- and industry-backed efficiency advances.

They cite studies concluding that energy efficiency technology developed in the last two decades created $200 billion in energy savings last year.

-- What Energy Crisis? (beyond@dumb.com), April 05, 2001

Answers

>>a program to reduce energy use at steel, glass, pulp paper and refining companies, all heavy users of energy, is set for a sharp reduction

Why doesn't this surprise me.

-- (more p@y.backs), April 05, 2001.

George Bush Sr., Jeb Bush, George W. Bush.

Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest.

-- (way@beyond.dumb), April 05, 2001.