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Winning Our Energy Independence: An Energy Insider Shows How
S. David Freeman
Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, Publisher, 2007
240 pp., $19.95, paperback
ISBN-13:978-1-4236-0156-2
ISBN-10:1-4236-0156-4

Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy
Arjun Makhijani
Takoma Park, MD: IEER Press and RDR Books, 2007
257 pp., $19.95, paperback
ISBN: 978-1-57143-171-8

Both of these important new books not only maintain, but demonstrate -- based on practical experience and economic-engineering analysis -- that the United States should and can achieve the goal of energy independence, first proposed by President Nixon in 1973 after the Oil Embargo. Both books show how to virtually eliminate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that threaten the planet with global warming. Both authors would not only phase out coal plants – a major source of CO2 emissions -- but also eliminate nuclear power, because it proliferates nuclear materials, is a terrorist target, and causes major environmental and health problems.

David Freeman and Arjun Makhijani, the authors of the two books, worked together 35 years ago and both acknowledge the other’s contributions in reviewing pre-publication manuscripts. Freeman also contributes the Foreword to Makhijani’s book. But the style and tone of the two books are quite different, as their personal experiences over the last 35 years have also diverged. David Freeman, as the subtitle indicates, has been on the inside of the federal government, working for both Republican and Democratic presidents and as a congressional staffer, and has run utility companies, including the Tennessee Valley Authority (the nation’s largest nuclear utility company), the Sacramento (CA) Municipal Utility District, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the New York state Power Authority. Winning Our Energy Independence includes numerous anecdotes from Freeman’s personal experiences and is easy-to-read and somewhat folksy.

Arjun Makhijani founded the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) in 1987. While he has consulted with governments, he has primarily worked with community groups, and IEER’s “aim is to bring scientific excellence to public policy issues in order to promote the democratization of science and a safer, healthier environment.” Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free has a more academic and scientific format and tone, though it is very understandable, and its many references are helpful for those wanting additional information and sources to combat the many critics who will say that such a future is uneconomic, unfeasible, and therefore not the solution.

Winning Our Energy Independence begins: “The essential truth documented herein is that the United States can move swiftly to a predominantly renewable energy future. The exciting fact is that if it can happen in this country, it can happen in China, India, Indonesia, and almost anywhere on earth. And by starting an energy revolution, the United States will set an example that regains the respect and admiration of the rest of the world….The hopeful prospect of a pollution-free and sustainable energy future can provide an outlet for the emerging grassroots desire of most Americans. The American people, through their purchasing power and the power of their votes, can make it happen.”

Freeman states that the problem is “the three poisons” of oil, coal, and nuclear, which provide about 70 percent of the energy now consumed in the United States. He states: “This country is in a heap of trouble because we are overly dependent on oil from a group of folks who are terrorizing the world. Oil money is at the heart of what is financing terrorism as well as Iran’s nuclear program….Oil, like nuclear power, is a cause and instrument of war. It also has proven to be destructive of the environment.” Freeman lists five major threats from oil:

1. It is the main obstacle to cracking down on nations that promote terrorism,
2. It is picking the pockets of American consumers [more than $300 billion spent on imported oil in 2006],
3. It pollutes our oceans,
4. It poisons the air in our cities and causes major health ailments,
5. It is a major cause of global warming, which, in turn, is the cause of other environmental catastrophes.

As for coal, “The phrase ‘clean coal’ is an insult to human intelligence. There is no such thing. Coal is inherently dirty and is an unhealthy source of energy throughout every state of its mining and use.”

As for nuclear, Freeman states: “I have been an active participant in the electric power industry over the last forty years….I know of no failure as clear and dramatic as the failure of nuclear power on both public safety and economics….The nuclear industry has failed on all counts:

• Failed to find a safe place to store its wastes,
• Achieved the largest cost overruns in utility history,
• Failed to perfect any of the fundamentally safer reactor concepts,
• Failed to develop the breeder reactor that would make nuclear a large source of usable energy,
• Failed so miserably in the marketplace that no nuclear plants have come online in ten years, and no new ones have been ordered in thirty years,
• Failed to be safe or economically viable enough to even afford its own insurance after more than five decades and billions of dollars in research.”

Moreover, there are “very real and specific dangers of nuclear energy,” including the reactor’s “potential for massive destruction in an immediate danger,” plants are potential terrorist targets, plants provide “the means and excuse” to build nuclear bombs, and they create wastes that persist for thousands of years, and uranium mining causes lung disease and large volumes of wastes.

Freeman advocates: “A change of policy to ban new coal and nuclear plants is needed now…It is time to ‘say no’ to nuclear power, petroleum, and coal and apply our common sense to use the truly clean energy Mother Nature delivers free of charge, forever.”

The bulk of Winning Our Energy Independence is devoted is describing how solar technologies – sun, wind, and biomass – and garbage are abundant and can provide virtually all of our energy as coal and nuclear plants and gasoline-fueled transportation are phased out. Freeman is a strong advocate for plug-in hybrid cars, so that electricity from renewable energy could replace petroleum as the transportation fuel. He recognizes that “it will take many years before all our cars and buses are plug-in hybrids. But electricity, biofuels, and hydrogen (in 20 to 30 years) can replace more gasoline cars steadily every year from now on. The electricity will be much cheaper and cleaner than gasoline and will not be tied to the world market for oil.” Freeman believes that the auto industry should make plug-in hybrids a priority and argues that the industry could continue to provide much of the financing for new cars. He also supports a tax credit to pay for the higher initial costs of the plug-in.

Freeman devotes a chapter to brief summaries of what Brazil, Sweden, Japan, Iceland, China, and other nations are doing to promote renewables and some of the lessons we can learn and technologies we can use. Nonetheless, he believes the U.S. can be a leader—“Big Solar is not yet a reality. Neither is a plug-in hybrid car, an ell-electric car, or a hydrogen-driven car—all American inventions waiting to be transformed into problem-solving realities. The development of renewable energy is of international significance, not at all unlike the arms race. The difference is that it can result in saving our civilization, not destroying it.”

Another chapter describes how Los Angeles, where Freeman lives, could become an all-renewable city if there is “the public pressure and political will” to use nearby solar, wind, geothermal, and municipal waste resources.

Chapter 12 describes what Congress should do to enact a national renewable energy policy. Among Freeman’s specific recommendations are a “20 percent federal tax credit to electricity and natural gas utilities that gives highest priority to the efficient use of the energy they supply,” and ban on new coal or nuclear plants and retirement of the existing plants within the next 30 years, government-funded demonstration plants for Big Solar and hydrogen, increasing federal fuel economy standards one mile-per-gallon a year over the next 24 years, tax credits for plug-in hybrids or flex-fuel vehicles, and an excess-profits tax on oil to fund the tax credits. He views the next ten years as the transition period, in which the growth of oil consumption in the U.S. is stopped and major gains are made in renewables, plug-in hybrids, and energy efficiency in buildings and appliances.

Freeman says that “our environmental leaders have inadvertently helped mislead Americans by conceding that renewables are more expensive and lobbying for goals that make renewables only a small part of our supply. The driving force will be actions taken by readers of this book and concerned citizens generally, who will demand plug-in hybrid cars, purchase only Energy Star appliances, demand green power from their utility companies, install solar panels on their roof, and lobby senators and representatives to enact the [national renewable energy] policies.”

The last chapter is Freeman’s view of the long-term solution of changing “the material-growth mentality that is now so prevalent in this country….A moral constraint should be added to the environmental and political constraints on our growth in energy production. If all the people on Earth are eventually going to enjoy an adequate level of material well-being, we will need to adopt a new ethic which regards waste as a form of theft. If we continue a self-indulgent, disposable society in which the cycle continually is to dig, burn, build, and then discard, we are stealing from our children and grandchildren the planet’s resources.”

Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free has the goal “to assess the technical and economic feasibility of a U.S. economy with neither nuclear power nor CO2 emissions.” The project was conceived at a 2006 energy conference of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI), which also sponsored the book. At that conference, Freeman argued that all energy could come without using fossil fuels or nuclear power using present-day technology. Makhijani, who believes that global warming is a real and very serious problem, agreed with the goal, but was not convinced that the economic costs were surmountable. Dr. Helen Caldicott, NPRI’s Founding President, views the climate crisis as so urgent (as she does the need to eliminate nuclear weapons) that she agreed to raise the project funds and serve on the Advisory Board (with Freeman and others) to develop a roadmap for the future.

Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free begins by describing the need for a zero CO2 economy in the U.S. The Group of 8 industrial nations summit in June 2007 agreed to “consider seriously” the goal of “at least a halving of global [greenhouse gas] emissions by 2050.” The U.S. is the largest CO2 emitter even though it is less than four percent of the world’s population. Thus, such a substantial reduction, if calculated on per-capita basis, results in the conclusion for Makhijani that “the United States will likely have to eliminate 95 percent or more of its energy-related CO2 emissions by the middle of the century. This is the definition of a zero-CO2 economy [used in] this book.” Thus, the policies advocated recognize that “zero is to within a few percent of present-day CO2 emissions.”

The book includes chapters on the economic assumptions used, energy supply and storage technologies, demand and technology assumptions, a reference scenario, variations on that scenario, federal and state policies needed, a “roadmap,” and a final chapter of the main findings and recommendations.

A basic premise is that “[a]ny substantial reduction of CO2 emissions implies some price that would be attached to CO2 emissions.” Those costs could come through taxes on emissions, caps on the amounts of emissions, bans on new coal-fired plants, or some combination of methods. In addition, “the opportunities in the transportation, commercial, and residential sectors for economic implementation of energy efficiency are substantial.” Indeed, energy efficiency could allow for a three percent annual economic growth rate while reducing delivered energy by about one percent per year.

The time period (2050) for achieving the zero CO2 emissions economy was selected for several reasons: “The amount of installed coal and nuclear electric capacity in the United States is very large and it will take time to phase it out. It will be difficult to substitute liquid and gaseous fuels in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors quickly and it will become more economical as equipment depreciates, new buildings are built, and existing buildings are sold. A number of the technologies that are needed are not yet fully commercial and some have not been fully demonstrated (such as using V2G [Vehicle to Grid – putting parked cars into the electric grid by having solar cells charge electric batteries during the day or having the electricity go into the grid when not needed by the parked cars] to enable efficient use of renewable resources). The sunk investments in the fossil fuel sector would be largely lost if the equipment is retired prematurely. Rapid increases in the price of CO2 allowances, for instance, by sharp reduction in CO2 caps for the industrial and electricity production sectors, may cause a large-scale migration of industry offshore.”

The reference scenario assumes "that large-scale deployment of solar cells (on the scale seen for wind energy today) will not take place until about 2015 or 2020, though it may well do so before that.” Biofuels plays an important role in the reference scenario, even though large amounts of land are necessary – “Cultivation of prairie grasses, switchgrass, etc., would require an expansion of harvested area in the United States by about 30 percent.” Thus, more efficiency improvements, better storage technologies, and use of hydrogen are other possibilities, along with use of natural gas from combined cycle power plants.

Achieving the Zero emissions future is built around six policies:

1. A fixed annual limit on CO2 emissions from large fossil fuel users (electric utilities, manufacturing plants, airlines, large trucking companies, etc.) that would decline each year until it reaches 0 in 30 to 50 years and the government selling “emissions allowances” based on the annual cap. The program would be similar to what the U.S. has done to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions and to the European Union “cap and trade” program for CO2 emissions.
2. Efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings, and appliances.
3. Government purchases to promote low CO2 emissions.
4. Electric rate structure changes by states and local governments.
5. A ban on new coal-fired power plants without CO2 storage.
6. Elimination of subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear power.

Dr. Caldicott’s Afterword says that the book provides “a benign and efficient proposal to save the plant without the cancerous, radioactive, proliferation-prone side effects which current energy policy will inevitably bestow upon future generations.”

Both books set important and necessary policy goals and argue persuasively that they can be achieved with government and corporate leadership. Freeman’s book especially identifies some of the important roles and responsibilities for individuals. Both underestimate the political barriers and the entrenched economic power that is preventing enacting the proposed policies – for example, the inability for Congress to enact vehicle gas mileage standards for decades, including this year. Further, neither directly addresses how to counter the immediate plans for hundreds of new coal plants and dozens of new nuclear plants, which, if any significant numbers are built, will make the renewable future much more difficult to achieve. Because of the limited space, both lack much of the detailed implementation information that activists and concerned individuals need to achieve the goals. For example, see the article on pages 4 and 5 regarding the importance of, and barriers to, energy efficiency which is vital in the short run as the major alternative to the planned new plants.

Nonetheless, the two books provide the basic vision and goals so that people throughout the country can advocate for specific policy goals to local, state, and federal officials as well as to corporate executives with information and conviction that the policies can and should be achieved. Realizing that energy independent, renewable energy based, carbon-free and nuclear-free future is vital for all humankind, we must all be involved.

– Don Hancock

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Order Winning Our Energy Independence:
An Energy Insider Shows How from:
Gibbs Smith, Publisher
PO Box 667
Layton, UT 84041
Phone: (800) 835-4993
www.gibbs-smith.com

Order Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free:
A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy from:
IEER
6935 Laurel Ave. Suite 201
Takoma Park, MD, 20912
Phone: (301) 270-5500
www.ieer.org/carbonfree/
(Also available as a free download) [4.25 MB pdf]