Energy Future Coalition Urges Senate Support for Fuel-Efficient Vehicles, Plug-ins and Biofuels

21 May 2005

The Energy Future Coalition released a letter signed by a bipartisan group of 45 top national security, labor, and energy policy experts to U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), Chair of the Senate Energy Committee, which is currently marking up its version of the energy bill.

The letter, which is a version of a letter the group sent earlier to President Bush, urges the Senate to incorporate three initial steps to help move the country to a new model of energy production and use.

1. Tax incentives for US vehicle and component manufacturers that will enable them to retool existing production lines for both cars and trucks and produce advanced technologies that reduce fuel consumption. Tax incentives for consumers that will increase demand for these technologies. (The Council is sending a similar letter to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), chairman of the Committee on Finance.)

2. Support the further development, demonstration, manufacture and deployment of lighter weight advanced materials for dramatic gains in fuel economy and improved battery technology to support the development of plug-in hybrids.

3. Accelerate the introduction of alternative fuels by funding and promoting new technologies for biofuel production (e.g., cellulosic ethanol). “A well-focused and adequately funded program to take these technologies to the point of becoming low-risk commercial choices should be pursued on grounds of national security.”

Absent from the policy suggestions was any focus on raising fuel efficiency standards, or an explicit reference to hydrogen technology.

To pay for this, the group suggests:

Finally, we are not unmindful of the current budget situation and its implications for the energy bill; however, we think that a more rational allocation of scarce resources would substitute the unfunded elements of this package for the $2 billion “ultra-deepwater and unconventional onshore natural gas and other petroleum research and development program” contained in the House bill.

As the President noted recently, with oil at $50 a barrel, “energy companies do not need taxpayers’-funded incentives to explore for oil and gas.” We should support instead a new direction in energy policy that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, expand the production of domestic transportation fuels from agriculture, and create new jobs, economic growth, and investment in America.

Signatories of the letter include: Timothy E. Wirth, President of the United Nations Foundation and former U.S. Senator from Colorado; C. Boyden Gray, White House Counsel to President George H.W. Bush;  R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence; Robert McFarlane, National Security Advisor to President Reagan; Frank Gaffney, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Defense in the Reagan Administration; John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton; Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO; and Charles Curtis, Deputy Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration.

Additional signatories include: Adm. William Crowe, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, for President Reagan; Adm. James Watkins, Secretary of Energy, and William Reilly, EPA Administrator, for President G.H.W. Bush; Gen. Richard Lawson, former President of the National Mining Association; Larry Schweiger, President of the National Wildlife Federation; former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart and former Congressmen Vic Fazio, Jim Greenwood, and Phil Sharp.

(A tip of the hat to Greg!)