Energy Sources

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's plan to break the U.S. addiction to oil is languishing as Congress pushes instead for measures designed to address voters' more immediate concern about rising gasoline prices. With prices at the pump expected to jump 25 cents a gallon over those seen last summer, the president's goals for energy independence appear to have sunk close to the bottom of Congress' election-year priority list. "I'm looking forward to working with Congress when they get back, to make sure we invest wisely in new technologies" that will encourage use of alternative fuels, Bush said last week.

THE DESTRUCTIVE potential of our increasingly inflamed atmosphere was recently highlighted by both a Hollywood blockbuster (The Day After Tomorrow) and by the Pentagon, which earlier this year identified climate change as a national security threat. Unfortunately, what is missing from these justified alarms is the extraordinary -- and unprecedented -- positive consequences that would result from addressing this problem head on. A real solution to the climate crisis has the potential to begin to mend a profoundly fractured world.

Question of the Month June's question asked whether energy production can cure our power woes without doing unacceptable damage to the environment, and how readers would be willing to change their lives to become more energy- efficient. Fossil fuels can't power our future The Bush administration's answer to our energy requirements relies almost entirely on increased production of fossil fuels and minimizes the importance both of conservation and of using alternative and renewable sources of energy.

Maryland needs plan to promote cleaner energy I commend Del. Kumar Barve and state Sen. Delores Kelley for supporting clean energy standards for Maryland ("The energy answer is blowing in the wind," Opinion Commentary, Feb. 20). Currently, Maryland derives 96 percent of its energy from fossil and nuclear fuels. Burning these fuels releases air pollutants such as mercury, sulfur dioxides and particulates that cause learning disabilities in our children and trigger an estimated 200,000 asthma attacks each year as they cut short the lives of more than 1,000 Marylanders.

Much has been said about the power outages caused by recent storms, but one thing rarely mentioned is the importance of getting people off the electrical grid. It's a national security issue when so many people are rendered helpless in a neighborhoods because their electrical power all comes from the local utility. The government should continue to offer incentives for households to install solar panels, wind turbines or geothermal systems of whatever size. It would help if even one or two people on a block had an energy source besides the grid.

The Green Building Institute, 7761 Waterloo Road, Jessup, will offer a program on "Zero Energy Homes," optimizing materials and energy resources, and incorporating ecologically sound designs, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday. The cost is $40 for institute members; $55 for nonmembers. An individual membership and the seminar cost $80. A seminar on Geothermal Energy Systems, using underground sources of water and steam, is planned from 6:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. A brief discussion of financing options for residential buildings is to be included.

Last week, the Maryland state Senate passed a bill to allow trash incineration to be treated as a Tier 1 renewable energy source, equating it with wind and solar power. That is far from true. Incinerators are expensive and dirty and encourage waste. Burning our trash costs more and produces fewer jobs than recycling or composting systems. And incinerators have minimum guaranteed waste flows, which means that communities have to pay whether they produce trash or not. This tends to result in a lot of compostable and recyclable material being burned, producing noxious pollutants instead of reducing waste.

WASHINGTON -- Wind-power advocates say their technology is no longer an extravagant curiosity fit only for hermits and dreamers, but a practical and "clean" source of electricity that could help reduce air pollution and wean the U.S. from foreign oil.Participants in a "Windpower '90" conference in Washington, sponsored by the American Wind Energy Association, were told last week that the wind is already generating enough power in California to replace a...

It is unfortunate that commentator Charles Campbell's recent criticism of the current administration's handling of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was so supercilious ("D.C.'s Keystone Kops," Jan. 30). He made valid points: Wind and solar power are inconstant and must be supplemented. Their installations can be intrusive and demand lots of space. And the broader question of our energy problem is enormously complex. However, that does not justify our failure to invest in alternative energy sources the way other countries have.

In a recent letter to the editor, Charles Campbell rehashes tired talking points and cherry picks data to attack proven renewable energy sources like wind and solar power ("Nuclear is greenest," May 28). The old-school reliability concerns Mr. Campbell raises are most often voiced by fossil fuel companies - not the grid operators responsible for keeping the lights on. The "comprehensive study of U.S. wind power" that Mr. Campbell references is, in reality, based on data from four days in Colorado that was commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States.