“If I am President, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector to a single, overarching goal – in ten years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela.”
Senator Barack Obama, Youngstown, Ohio, August 5, 2008
The need to reduce our reliance on foreign oil has been expressed by every president since Richard Nixon. President Obama has taken a pragmatic view in answering this challenge. He has not promised “energy independence”—rather, he has challenged us to eliminate oil imports from the Middle East and Venezuela in the next 10 years. This is an attainable goal.
The United States currently imports approximately 70 percent of its oil, a fact that makes us beholden to foreign governments who could influence our domestic and foreign policy with the simple turn of a wheel at the end of a pipeline 6,000 miles away. In this process we also export tremendous domestic wealth—the United States spent $475 billion on foreign oil in 2008 alone.
Russia’s recent dispute with Ukraine illustrates the gravity of the issue. When Russia cut off natural gas supplies, it left much of Europe with less than a 30-day supply of natural gas heading into the coldest part of winter. Russia has been upgrading its observers at OPEC meetings. It’s now clear that Russia will ask for, and be granted, full membership in OPEC, adding an aggressive member-state that has already shown its willingness to use fuel supplies as a weapon.
In 1973, the United States imported only about one-third of its oil needs, but anyone who lived through the OPEC oil embargo during that time remembers the economic, societal, and foreign policy disruptions. Now, in an era when we depend on foreign sources for approximately 70 percent of our oil, the potential dangers of even a brief disruption are obvious.
Transportation is where we must look for an immediate impact to reduce our nation’s dependence upon foreign oil.
Placing an emphasis on reducing the imported oil used as diesel fuel to move the more than 6 million heavy trucks in the United States today is the first step and would have an immediate effect. Fleet vehicles—public and private—can also add to this significant and immediate reduction. As cars and trucks are still one of the biggest sources of air pollution, using cleaner fuels can have additional important and tangible benefits to environmental quality as well.
Every domestic source can and should contribute to this effort. Our nation’s law and policymakers must play a central role in developing and implementing key policies, including:
- Increase investment in fuels that are domestically abundant, economical, and clean and expand their use to power passenger cars, as well as light and heavy duty trucks.
- Provide strong incentives to rapidly build the infrastructure to leverage the abundance and potential of clean and domestic liquid fuel resources like natural gas and advanced biofuels.
- Develop an advanced and “smart” electrical grid that can help accelerate wider adoption of electric cars, and promote investment in smart charging infrastructure.
- Work with manufacturers to increase deployment of clean energy vehicles, from accelerating production of plug-in electric hybrid cars, to advanced battery manufacturing, to increasing adoption of natural gas and advanced biofuels in the long-haul trucking fleet.
- Encourage trucking companies to replace their diesel-powered fleets with trucks that burn clean and efficient domestic fuels, and ensure that federal government and other public, private, and municipal fleet vehicles use domestic and clean fuels or electricity.
Immediate and expanded use of clean and domestic energy can provide a bridge to the next generation of non-fossil fuel transportation technology and accelerate innovation to move goods and people. Using existing technology, America can begin to reduce dependence on oil today.
Tags: CAP Action, CAPAF, Center for American Progress Action Fund, National Clean Energy Project, NCEP
