ＥＥＥ会議（米国のエネルギー法案審議の再開）................................................2003.9.3


日本でも目下エネルギー基本計画の策定作業が進んでいますが、米国でも懸案のエネ
ルギー法案の審議が議会で再開されようとしております（前会期以来上院と下院の意
見が割れているので両院合同委員会での審議が中心となります）。共和党の議員たち
が今夏の大停電を梃子に同法案の早期成立を狙っているのに対し、民主党の議員たち
は、同法案でアラスカの北極野生生物保護区（ＡＮＷＲ）での石油開発を認めるのは
重大な環境破壊だなどとして強く反対しております。New York Timesも本日(9/2)の
社説で、現在のエネルギー法案は地球温暖化防止や石油の海外依存度低減に全くプラ
スにならない、エネルギー業者を利するだけだとして、今の法案をご破産して新法案
を用意すべきだと主張しています。米国議会の白熱したエネルギー論議に較べて、我
が国会のエネルギー論議の低調さが気になります。
--KK
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Backward on Energy

Every president starting with Richard Nixon and the 1973 oil embargo has
promised to reduce America's ravenous appetite for oil while investing
heavily in new energy sources. Mainly for lack of imagination and political
will, all have failed. President Bush is headed in the same direction, for
exactly the same reasons. What he and Congress exuberantly describe as their
"comprehensive energy plan" is in fact a dreary compendium of subsidies and
tax breaks for the coal, oil and gas industries that do nothing to address
the problems of global warming or the country's dependence on foreign oil.

These tired ideas are embodied in House and Senate bills awaiting
reconciliation in a conference committee that begins work this week. The
widespread blackout two weeks ago is said to have given the legislation "new
urgency." Not so. The blackout gave new urgency to the need to address the
reliability of the electrical transmission system, an issue the bills touch
upon. But it cannot possibly be said to have conferred new legitimacy on the
cornucopia of industry payoffs that make up the rest of these measures.

John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, has the right idea, which is to focus
exclusively on the provisions dealing with the reliability of the power
grid ? and dump the rest. This approach would fasten Congressional attention
on a matter of immediate concern: preventing future blackouts. That is a
thorny enough issue as it is, given regional and ideological differences in
Congress. More important, it would allow Congress to step back from the mess
it has created and design something worthwhile. Members of Congress tend to
tackle big issues like energy every five or 10 years. So they need to get it
right the first time.

There is no shortage of ideas. The bipartisan National Commission on Energy
Policy, underwritten by several major foundations, is preparing a detailed
strategy aimed at balancing energy and environmental concerns. A second
bipartisan group called the Energy Future Coalition, which is loaded with
former government officials and academic experts, has already come forward
with a half-dozen arresting proposals that make Congress's ideas look all
the more tedious.

Take, for instance, the matter of improving fuel economy ? the quickest and
surest way to ease America's oil dependency. The bills in Congress do
nothing on this score. The coalition, by contrast, urges a $10 billion
investment in a combination of manufacturing changes and consumer incentives
to encourage the production of millions of fuel-efficient hybrid cars.
Subsidizing the auto companies to ease their transition to hybrids from
S.U.V.'s will be controversial. But the $10 billion the coalition wants for
that purpose is in fact no more than what measures before Congress would
lavish on the oil and gas industries, who do not need the money at all.

Similarly, Congress would throw billions at what it calls "clean coal
technology," which has been a euphemism over the years for subsidies to the
coal and power industries. The coalition starts with the premise that coal
is inherently a dirty fuel and that the trick is to find a way to dispose of
the harmful pollutants created by coal. It would thus spend heavily on a
proven technology called carbon sequestration, a process in which the carbon
dioxide produced when coal is burned is injected into the ground.

The coalition has other bold ideas, all expensive and all, to some extent,
chancy. But at least they point the country toward a brighter energy future.
This cannot be said of the retrograde legislation that Congress seems
determined to give us.