Any plan to reduce energy consumption should rest on economics — not ideology.
Henry R. Linden is the Max McGraw Professor of Energy & Power Engineering & Management at the Illinois Institute Technology in Chicago. He is the retired founding president of the Gas Research Institute and a past president of the Institute of Gas Technology. He also is a frequent contributor to Public Utilities Fortnightly.
The new Bush Administration National Energy Plan that has been developed by a task force headed by Vice President Cheney was released on May 17, 2001, even though its key elements had been well publicized throughout various media channels during the first half of May. The statistical basis for the plan can be found largely in the "Reference Case" projections of the "Annual Energy Outlook 2001," published by the U.S. Energy Information.1 Such specifics as the requirement for 38,000 miles of additional natural gas pipelines are new, but they seem credible, since most of the 1,300 to 1,900 new power plants required by 2020, according to the Energy Task Force, will be gas-fired. The number of new power plants required is consistent with EIA's projections of new combustion turbine/diesel and combined-cycle capacity increases of a total of 344 gigawatts (GW) between 1999 and 2020. These numbers imply average plant sizes of roughly 180-265 megawatts (MW), which seems reasonable. In fact, unsubstantiated reports put the new capacity already authorized at 90 GW. Among the many controversial features of the Bush energy policy initiatives is the proposal to grant the government eminent domain over electric transmission line construction — presumably through rulings by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which has long-established jurisdiction over siting of interstate natural gas transmission lines.