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Energy

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Come Nov. 4, people who pay $4 a gallon or more for gas on the way to the polls will likely be thinking of energy issues while in the voting booth.

Many Americans will have paid costly bills for summer air-conditioning. Voters in cooler regions will be dreading their natural-gas or heating-oil bills for the winter.

Whoever inherits the White House can anticipate energy to be one of the defining issues of the presidency. The term will be marked by debates over nuclear, coal, natural-gas and solar power, offshore oil drilling, increasing fuel use from China, and the fact that some people don't think global oil production can meet demand.

The nation, and presumably the president, will have to find a way to negotiate surging energy needs, environmental concerns and soaring prices.

Gasoline started setting records in mid-March, surpassing prices set in the wake of Gulf Coast hurricanes in 2005, and rising a couple of cents a day through June.

It would cost drivers nearly $6 million more daily to buy the same amount of fuel consumed last year, but many are cutting back.

And some utilities disconnected 40 percent more people from their electricity for late payments from January through May this year than the same time in 2007.

Getting more energy is proving to be difficult. President Bush asked Saudi Arabia to increase oil output, with limited results.

Controversy slows efforts to build more power plants. Even relatively non-controversial natural-gas generators need transmission lines and pipelines to deliver their fuel, and both can invite debate.

Here are some questions to help voters weigh the candidates on energy: Is the next president likely to enact energy legislation?

  Both John McCain and Barack Obama pledge to overhaul the country's approach to energy issues. The debate will hinge on setting a long-term strategy that keeps the economy running, and learning to adapt to higher energy prices.

Climate-change legislation that affects energy also is likely to move forward. Not only is public demand strong, but also the affected industries, such as coal-burning power plants, would like to see solid legislation that takes away some of the uncertainty caused by the lack of a policy.

Why is there debate over drilling for oil off U.S. coasts and in Alaska? President Bush recently lifted a presidential ban on offshore drilling, but Congress would need to do the same to give oil companies access to regions off-limits since 1981. The ban was originally spurred by a 1969 oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif. McCain supports removing the ban; Obama is opposed.

Opponents say drilling is not worth the environmental risk and that it's likely the oil would simply sell at the global market price at the time.

McCain said last month that offshore drilling wouldn't greatly ease the supply crunch but would provide a "psychological impact" to Americans and ease concerns the government was not acting on the issue.

Obama said McCain is focused on drilling because it "polls well."   Numbers tell the story best. The banned offshore reserves hold about 18 billion barrels of oil, which sounds like a lot unless compared with daily global demand.

If all the off-limits offshore areas and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were open to drilling, they could produce about 1 million barrels a day at their peak before trailing off, the Energy Information Administration estimates. That represents a little more than 1 percent of the nearly 85 million barrels a day produced worldwide. The new oil wouldn't affect U.S. gas prices much, the EIA concluded.

Will laws limiting the amount of greenhouse gases from power plants or cars make things more expensive? Probably, but building more power plants to meet electric demand won't be free, either. The debate over greenhouse-gas legislation is likely to center on how much it costs consumers and the economy to enact such legislation.

 
For example, Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and John Warner, R-Va., have tried to pass legislation that would cut greenhouse-gas emissions 19 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, and 63 percent by 2050.

Public Service Co. officials used some assumptions to calculate that would cost them $180 million a year in operating expenses in 2012, and could add 5 percent or more to customer bills. A separate analysis of the bill by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that if utilities could pass on the expenses, customers could see bills go up 44 percent in 2030.

Both McCain and Obama support cap-and-trade programs - where a limit is set on emissions and businesses can trade permits that allow them to release those emissions - along the lines of the Lieberman-Warner bill.

McCain supports giving out permits to release greenhouse gases that equal the current production from power plants and transportation fuels, and gradually reducing those allowances, forcing companies to cut back emissions or buy "offsets." Offsets mean paying for others to cut their emissions when you can't cut your own.

Obama wants to auction off all the permits to emit greenhouse gases and use some of the money to fund alternative energy and help low-income families pay for weatherizing their homes or paying their energy bills.

Can't we use more U.S. coal?

The U.S. has plenty of coal reserves, but many coal plants have been shelved, and others are struggling to get permits. Coal also emits the most carbon dioxide associated with global warming.

Because coal supplies about half the nation's electricity, can be burned around the clock and is relatively inexpensive outside of environmental costs, experts say research into technology that could clean up its emissions is critical.

Obama and McCain support funding such technology. Obama's energy pledges include that he will "use whatever policy tools are necessary, including standards that ban new traditional coal facilities" that don't have reduced emissions.

The coal industry wants to develop a way to capture and store the greenhouse gases that come out of coal plants.

Why not build more nuclear plants?

McCain supports building more nuclear power plants. Obama's campaign page says it's "unlikely" that the country can cut greenhouse-gas emissions without nuclear power. McCain supports storing spent nuclear fuel from the nation's generators under Yucca Mountain outside Las Vegas.

While that is the only site the Department of Energy and other federal agencies are preparing for permanent storage, it's not supported by many people in Nevada, as well as communities along routes to Yucca Mountain, such as Flagstaff.

O bama opposes Yucca Mountain as a storage site and says there is "no future for expanded nuclear" without first finding a safe solution to dispose of nuclear waste.