FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 8, 2001

BUSH ENERGY POLICY: A FLASHBACK TO 1974

Minneapolis - The upcoming release of the Bush administration's energy policy is straight out of 1974, says David Morris, author of new book, Seeing the Light: Regaining Control of Our Electricity System.

The Bush Administration is about to release its new energy policy report and Vice President Cheney says the report will emphasize production over conservation, fossil fuels over renewable fuels, giant power plants over small power plants. David Morris, vice president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and consultant to the U.S. Department of Energy under Presidents Carter and Clinton, calls this "oldthink".

"This is a policy straight out of 1974. In 1974 Chase Manhattan Bank announced that energy efficiency could never generate significant energy savings, solar energy was still the province of backyard tinkerers and dreamers, nuclear was the keystone of federal electricity policy and a single new power plant generated sufficient electricity to power a million homes."

That was then. This is now. Today the nation knows from experience that improving efficiency is the fastest and cheapest way to meet our future energy needs. Wind energy is now one of the least expensive ways to generate electricity and solar cells are fast becoming competitive even in urban areas. And today on-site power plants are more economical than central power plants.

The Administration's energy strategy assumes that nothing has changed in the last 25 years. "Dick Cheney says we need one new power plant a week for the next 20 years", Morris observes. "He probably doesn't know that we are presently installing 20 new power plants a day in banks, office buildings, restaurants, hospitals and households around the nation. We don't need 1500 new giant, remote power plants. We need a million new customer-based power plants - solar cellls, microturbines, fuel cells. We should rely on the technologies of the future, not the technologies of the past."

Morris calls the proposed federal energy policy "a classic top-down way of thinking". "We need a bottom up policy", Morris insists in his new book. "A policy where energy customers also become energy decisionmakers and energy producers. A policy oriented to extracting the maximum amount of useful work from local resources, from direct sunlight, and winds, and the soil's warmth, and crops."

A whole new range of advanced energy efficiency technologies, control technologies and generation technologies from fuel cells, photovoltaics, modular biomass, microhydropower, multifueled generators, small wind turbines, and microturbines allow industry, tenants and homeowners alike to become their own electric power generators, said Morris.

While oil drilling, natural gas pipeline laying, nuclear power plant siting can range from 5 -15 years, these customer-sized technologies can come "on line" within a year. They can protect users against brownouts and rate hikes and faulty infrastructure, claims Morris.

Over 30 states have taken steps to usher in the new decentralized electricity era, Morris points out in Seeing the Light.

A few days after the Vice President's comments, a new consortium of traditional energy industries formed to oversee an $8 million public education campaign in support of the Administration's centralized energy vision. Morris is not surprised. "A generation ago, traditional industries fought passionately for centralized telephone switchboards and mainframe computers and against opening the market to customer choice and newer technologies." Innovators and entrepreneurial companies had to fight their way through early market skepticism and barriers. They were successful, but then, as Morris notes, they did not have the federal government aggressively deriding their potential.

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) is a national nonprofit organization providing research, analysis and innovative policy solutions to build strong, sustainable communities. For more information or to order a copy of Seeing the Light, contact ILSR at 612-379-3815 or visit ILSR's New Rules Project web site at http://www.newrules.org/

More Information:

Institute for Local Self-Reliance
1313 Fifth Street SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Tel: 612-379-3815
Fax: 612-379-3920
http://www.ilsr.org/