Energizing America

One of the reasons that the President is using Plug-Ins in his stump speech is the support that Plug-ins have received from serious security minded folks like Frank Gaffney.

Here is a piece he wrote a week before the State of the Union.

Energizing America
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
Jewish World Review
Jan. 24, 2006

One week from today, President Bush has an opportunity to make a truly historically significant State of the Union address. He can do so by setting forth a program for energy security that will play against type for a man from the "Oil Patch," by charting a course for setting America free of its dependence on oil. The time demands such leadership, the national security requires it and the American people deserve no less.

There are a number of compelling reasons for action: For starters, we in the United States, and industrialized world more generally, are funding both sides in the War for the Free World. On the one hand, since we consume far more oil than is available here at home, we are obliged to import most of what we need from abroad.

As a practical matter that means enriching with wealth transfers those who are the principal financiers of Islamofascist terror — notably, Saudi Arabia and Iran. And, on the other, we are paying vast sums to protect ourselves against such terror.

Secondly, we have a proven model for doing things differently. We have diversified sources to meet many of our energy needs (for example, coal, nuclear power, hydroelectric and biomass). Yet, our transportation sector remains reliant upon oil — sixty percent of it imported — for the gasoline and diesel fuel on which it runs almost exclusively.

This creates a dependency that is as unsustainable as it is strategically perilous, especially as the appetite for oil of our emerging rival, Communist China, continues to skyrocket.

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Existing technology allows one other form of energy to serve as a transportation fuel: electricity.

Increasingly, American consumers are looking to hybrid vehicles to reduce their transportation operating costs. Those costs can be reduced far more if such vehicles' batteries can be charged by the electrical grid.

In some areas of the country, electricity can be purchased off-peak (that is, when most people would recharge their cars, as they presently do their laptops and cell-phones) for the equivalent of 24 cents per gallon. If the vehicle's engine is also flexible-fuel compatible, plug-in hybrids can get 500 miles per gallon of gasoline.

Interest in such plug-in hybrids is about to get a further boost, thanks to a national grassroots campaign being kicked off at the National Press Club today. Led by Austin, Texas — a place President Bush used to call home — and its public utility, Austin Energy, this initiative is backed by a coalition of cities and counties from across the country, some 100 power utilities, national security experts (including yours truly) and various public policy organizations.

The idea is to raise awareness about and demonstrate demand for plug-ins, while encouraging governments at all levels to provide incentives for manufacturers to meet that demand. (For more on this coalition, see http://www.pluginpartners.com/.)

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