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Executive Summary
America has the technological
know-how and the resources to move away from dependence on oil and other fossil
fuels and toward a cleaner, more secure New Energy Future.
America’s dependence on fossil fuels poses
challenges to America’s
environment, economic health and national security. Each of those challenges is
likely to become more critical in the years to come if we continue along our
present path of increasing energy use and increasing imports of energy from
abroad.
A New Energy
Future in which America
is smarter about how we use energy and in which we tap our abundant supplies of
clean, renewable, homegrown energy can address many of those challenges.
Achieving that future will require America to set clear goals to guide
our energy policies and to mobilize the scientific, economic and political
resources we need to meet them. This paper examines the benefits, in terms of
fossil fuel savings, of achieving a New Energy Future guided by the following
goals:
- Reduce our use of energy in our homes,
businesses and industry by 10 percent by 2025.
- Save one third of the oil we use today by 2025.
- Harness clean, renewable, homegrown energy
sources for at least a quarter of our energy needs by 2025.
There are many
ways that America
can achieve these goals. This paper lays out one plausible pathway, which we
call the “New Energy Future scenario,” by which the United States could achieve – and
in some cases go beyond – the goals and save vast amounts of fossil fuels.
By 2025, for
example, the United States
could:
- Save 10.8 million barrels of oil per day, equal
to four-fifths of the amount of oil we currently import from all other
nations in the world.
- Save 9.1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas per
year, nearly twice as much as is currently used annually in all of America’s
homes.
- Save 900 million tons of coal per year, or about
80 percent of all the coal we consumed in the United States in 2005.
- Save 1.7 billion megawatt-hours of electricity
per year, 30 percent more than was used in all the households in America in
2005.
Achieving the
energy savings and renewable energy targets listed above will not be easy, but
it can be done. Reduce our use of energy in our homes, businesses and industry
by 10 percent by 2025.
- Cutting our use of energy in homes, business and
industry by 10 percent would require reducing the amount of energy we are
projected to use in 2025 by 27 percent. Taking advantage of America’s
cost-effective energy efficiency opportunities could reduce our
consumption of electricity by as much as 20 percent and natural gas by
about 22 percent. Similar savings are possible for petroleum use.
- A combination of new technologies (spurred by
more robust federal investment in energy saving technologies and tax
incentives) and energy conservation measures could provide the remainder
of the savings needed to achieve the 10 percent energy savings goal.
Save one third
of the oil we use today by 2025. Sensible steps to improve the fuel economy of
our vehicles, reduce the rate of growth of vehicle travel, and replace some of
the oil we use with plant-based fuels could take us well beyond the goal of
saving one third of the oil we use today by 2025, providing total savings of
10.8 million barrels of oil per day.
- Increasing fuel economy standards for cars and
light trucks to 40 miles per gallon by 2018 and to 45 miles per gallon by
2023 would yield oil savings of 2.4 million barrels per day.
- Setting fuel economy standards for heavy-duty
trucks would save 1.1 million barrels of oil per day by 2025.
- Changing our transportation priorities so that
the average American drives no more in 2025 than he or she does today
could save 3.6 million barrels of oil per day versus projected use in 2025.
- Replacing a share of transportation fuels with
plant-based fuels like ethanol and biodiesel would save about 1.5 million
barrels of oil per day.
- Realizing 10 percent energy savings from homes,
business and industry would produce another 2 million barrels per day in
oil savings.
Harness clean,
renewable, homegrown energy sources for at least a quarter of our energy needs
by 2025. A variety of studies and industry projections suggest that tapping America’s
abundant supplies of clean renewable energy could fulfill 22 percent of our
energy needs by 2025 – and we could reach 25 percent renewable energy with
technology advances that would enable us to fully tap our renewable potential.
- Using plant-based fuels to substitute for oil in
transportation and industry could supply about 4.5 percent of our total
energy use in 2025.
- Wind power could provide as much as 30 percent
of America’s
electricity by 2025 and possibly more as new technologies and practices
allow for us to successfully integrate more wind power into America’s
electricity mix.
- Solar and geothermal power can combine to
produce another 12 percent of America’s electricity, while
an assortment of other renewable technologies – ranging from solar hot
water heaters to geothermal heat pumps – can also make an important
contribution.
- Additional renewable energy could be generated
using new technologies such as wave and tidal power or by achieving
technological improvements that would enable us to expand our use of other
renewable energy sources.
To achieve the benefits
of a New Energy Future, the United States
must adopt policies designed to increase our use of renewable energy and tap America’s vast
potential for energy efficiency improvements. America must also increase its
investment in research and development of the next generation of clean energy
technologies, as well as make the investments necessary to bring those
technologies into wider use.
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