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Presidential candidates on energy: Rhetoric vs. reality

A clean break from foreign energy sources is crucial, presidential hopefuls agree, but the facts hardly suggest a campaign centerpiece.

By Asjylyn Loder, Times Staff Writer
Published January 20, 2008

"Energy independence," to hear this presidential field tell it, can cure America of myriad ills, from climate change to unemployment.

America must break the "tyranny of oil," urged Barack Obama. We can't allow dictators to "enslave the American people," warned Mike Huckabee. We must end our addiction to oil because, said John Edwards, "it's killing us."

To hear the candidates tell it, America's energy dependence puts cash in the hands of terrorists, robs the nation's children of their future and undermines our foreign policy. Energy independence, on the other hand, will revive the family farmer, spur a new wave of American-led innovation and infuse our faltering economy with billions in feel-good green investment.

All this rhetoric does little to explain how Americans use energy, and where it comes from. As the primary campaign turns to Florida on Jan. 29, it's worth asking: What do we want from energy independence?

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Political rhetoric has colored energy policy since Jimmy Carter donned a sweater and asked America to turn down the thermostat. For most of us, the eye-popping electricity bill and sky-high price at the pump are the closest we come to what Robert Bryce estimates is a $5-trillion global energy market.

Bryce penned a screed published last week by the Washington Post titled "Five Myths About Breaking Our Foreign Oil Habit." If it isn't clear from that title, Bryce takes a dim view of "energy independence" politics. He's the managing editor of the Energy Tribune in Houston, and author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of 'Energy Independence', a book due in March.

"The rhetoric about energy independence is a kind of proxy for promising a whole lot of other things," Bryce said. But its no more realistic now than it was at the start of the Nixon administration, he argued.

Weening ourselves off foreign oil won't diminish the risk of terrorism, promote Jeffersonian democracy in the Muslim world or choke off money to unsavory oil-producing countries, who will just sell it elsewhere on the global market, Bryce said. It won't make energy cheaper or more secure, because it will sharply limit our fuel sources.

"Politicians are promoting this because it polls well," he groused. "It polls well because Americans don't understand the first thing about the size and scope of the global energy trade."

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So what does America get from the global energy trade? For starters, we get 30 percent of our energy from outside the United States, according to the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency that tracks energy statistics. That's right: 70 percent of our energy is produced here at home.

Break it down further, and you find that two fuels that provide 69 percent of our electricity - coal and natural gas - are produced almost entirely in the United States.

Obama's tyrant - oil - is another matter. Americans count on foreign countries for 60 percent of our oil. It produces less than 2 percent of our electricity. We use two-thirds of it for transportation.

If you think the Persian Gulf accounts for most of it, think again. The Persian Gulf accounts for about 11 percent of our oil consumption. Roughly half of our oil imports come from the Western Hemisphere. Canada is our biggest supplier, followed by Mexico.

There's a range of opinion in the presidential field about how best to cure our energy dependence. Despite overlaps, the candidates fall into two basic camps. On the one side, they're focused on reducing demand by promoting alternative energy, energy efficiency and increased gas mileage. On the other, candidates focus on increasing supply, both through alternatives and through expansions of oil and gas exploration.

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All that said, is "energy independence" even possible?

"It does depend on what you're talking about with 'energy independence,' " said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an outspoken backer of alternative fuels. "If you're talking about meeting our energy demands with domestic sources, that's technically possible, but it doesn't make economic sense."

We should be talking about "energy security," Rogers said. That means reducing demand to protect ourselves from climate change and the whims of unstable foreign governments.

But Obama says "Yes we can." Huckabee says we can do it in a decade, if we pursue it with the same sense of purpose that put a man on the moon.

Jonathan Cogan, an analyst with the Energy Information Administration, explained, "Our projections don't show that happening, even in the long term." There's just not enough oil and uranium in the ground in the United States to meet our demands and replace energy imports, he explained.

Cogan said analysts are retooling their projections to reflect the energy lawPresident Bush signed in December. That law requires new cars to average 35 miles per gallon by 2020 and calls for fuel producers to use 36-billion gallons of biofuels such as ethanol annually by 2022. Those measures are widely considered enormous gains for renewable-fuel proponents.

While the law will have a "measurable" effect on the projections, Cogan said, it will not eliminate our dependence on foreign energy sources.

Asjylyn Loder can be reached at aloder@sptimes.com or 813 225-3117.

The rhetoric

Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat:

"We can harness the ingenuity of farmers and scientists, citizens and entrepreneurs, to free this nation from the tyranny of oil and save our planet from a point of no return."

Mike Huckabee, Republican:

"And it's time to say that we're not going to allow dictators, whether it's the Middle East or from Venezuela, to continue to, in essence, enslave the American people, which is exactly what we've done."

Sen. John McCain, Republican:

"... I think both climate change and reduction of our dependence on foreign oil are now national security issues."

Sen. Hillary Clinton, Democrat:

"We've got to get serious about ending our dependence on foreign oil."

John Edwards, Democrat:

"America's dependence on oil not only leaves families vulnerable to rising prices, but it compromises our national security and contributes to the crisis of global warming."

Mitt Romney, Republican:

"Our military and economic strength depend on our becoming energy independent - moving past symbolic measures to actually produce as much energy as we use."

Rudy Giuliani, Republican:

"One of the ways to win the Islamic terrorist war against us is for us to be energy independent."

The reality

70% of America's energy is produced at home.

85% of our natural gas is produced at home.

Below 16% of our nuclear fuel is produced at home.

97% of our coal is produced at home.

40% of our oil is produced at home.

Source: Energy Information Administration

[Last modified January 18, 2008, 22:56:06]