I think renewable fuels will be a Bush legacy, although the dems and the MSM will work overtime not to give Bush or the GOP any credit. IMHO, we need to be hustling to brand this as our success story.
Installed wind capacity in the U.S. has quadrupled since 2000 and we've led the world in new capacity the last couple of years. Ethanol has more than tripled and will double again over the next two years; even without cellulosic ethanol, it will be providing 10% of U.S. transportation fuel needs within a few years. We're the world leader here as well. Biodiesel has gone from essentially zero (2 million gallons a year) in 2000 to 275 million gallons last year and is headed toward 700 million gallons by the end of the decade. (Still a drop in the bucket, however, unless new feedstocks come online.) The first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plants are being built right now. Other renewable technologies are also coming to life.
I am also all for developing tar sands and oil shales, drilling in ANWR and offshore, and building more refineries. I think we're going to need all of it, plus nuclear. Conventional oil has risen from $20 to over $60 a barrel and India and China aren't going to go away. Even if the risk premium disappeared overnight, we're still in a new ballgame on energy.
The dems have been obstructionist on energy development for years. Essentially all they've proposed is higher CAFE standards and harassment of the oil industry. Now that new energy sources are beginning to come online, the dems are shifting their ground and trying to take credit. We shouldn't let them. If you look at the upward point of inflection on the renewable energy growth curves, they have all taken off in the last six years. This is our success story. I'm not inclined to give it away.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe ten years from now, conventional oil will be $25 a barrel. But I think it's liklier to be $100 a barrel and we'll be kicking ourselves for not doing more faster on alternatives.
The oil companies are quietly working on alternatives as well. It’s smart business for them to look ahead. My brother in law is a pipe fitter working on an ethanol plant in southern Indiana. I don’t recall the name of the company but he calls it an Exxon subsidiary due to the fact that Exxon is paying the bills.
All those initiatives you cited, wind, ethanol, bio diesel are feel good palliatives. They’re not effective. If that’s Bush’s legacy it’s a poor one.