Contrary to expectations, US President George W. Bush’s energy and climate-change policy will not drastically alter. His promise to reduce US petrol consumption by 20% in ten years hinges on major technological breakthroughs.
President Bush’s new energy proposals, however, failed to deliver on these expectations. His numerous proposals – summarised under the catchy title “Twenty in ten” (20% petrol consumption reduction withing the next 10 years) – are first and foremost an answer to the American “energy security” issue than to global-warming concerns. In fact, there was hardly any mention of climate change in the speech.
President Bush wants to achieve his 20% reduction of projected (=by 2017) petrol use through:
- A massive increase in the use of alternative fuels (mainly ethanol) by 2017: the current target (set in the US Energy Policy Act of 2005) of 7.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2012, is increased to 35 billion gallons, and;
- a strengthening of the federal fuel-economy standards by raising the fuel efficiency of cars and trucks by 4% more each year.
The third proposal in Bush’s plans is a doubling of US Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) by 2027. Currently, the US SPR is at 691 million barrels, representing about 55 days of net oil imports. President Bush wants to raise this reserve to 1.5 billion barrels by 2027. This would provide 97 days of protection in case of a major supply interruption. Under EU rules, member states need to have a 90-day minimum of oil reserves.
There were no new ideas on combatting the greenhouse gas emissions of power plants and households (representing around two-thirds of the US’ global-warming contribution) in President Bush’s speech. His administration has committed itself to cut the greenhouse gas intensity (the ratio of GHGs emissions to economic output expressed in GDP) by 18% before the year 2012. The US is putting most of its climate-change efforts towards technology development. It invests $29 billion in climate-related science and technology programmes.