E-Mail This Article to a Friend Energy reform Bush is playing politics with our power grid

LAST WEEK’S MASSIVE power outage was little more than a freak show for those of us who were fortunate enough to be able to watch coverage of the event on our televisions with the air conditioning blasting. But it showed, in stark fashion, just how vulnerable our power grid is and just how disruptive — and frightening — a blackout can be. (How would you have liked to be one of the sweaty souls trapped in a crowded New York subway train for hours and then led through dark, rat-infested tunnels by the glow of cell-phone lights to the streets above?)

Just as experts had warned about terrorist threats before 9/11, the country had been told — repeatedly — that if steps weren’t taken to improve the country’s power grid, we would suffer just as we did last week when the lights went out on 50 million people from Ontario to Ohio, Michigan, and New York. Incredibly, with the stories of elevator rescues and rotting meat still fresh in politicians’ minds, no one has stepped up to show leadership on the issue. Instead, we’re trapped in an echo chamber of blame.

To be sure, the game of assigning blame for the largest power outage in US history began just minutes after the lights went out. Canadian officials initially blamed the blackout on a lightning strike near an energy plant in Niagara Falls; American officials initially put the blame on Canadian power plants. Time magazine clucked: "There’s nothing like a multistate summertime blackout to get environmentalists and industry groups throwing spitballs at one another." One of the more odious assignations of blame came from Republican Party apologist Richard Benedetto, a USA Today columnist who wrote: "Look for the 2004 Democratic presidential candidates to chime in and lay the blame at the door of President Bush," even as he accused "[e]nvironmentalists and many Democrats" of blocking legislation that would improve the nation’s energy grid. The Republican National Committee dutifully distributed Benedetto’s little screed in a mass e-mailing.

It is ridiculous, of course, to say that environmentalists — who have long advocated the development of green energy sources such as windmill parks and solar-energy panels, along with conservation measures — bear responsibility for last week’s blackout. It’s equally ridiculous to say that Democrats are responsible. It is true that the energy bill currently before Congress, backed by President Bush and opposed by many Democrats, contains provisions that call for the updating of the nation’s power grid. Provisions that, had they been in place, might have prevented last week’s disaster. But this is the same energy bill that calls for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s the same bill that contains lucrative tax breaks for the oil and gas industries. It’s the same bill that was drafted, in part, using ideas garnered from Vice-President Dick Cheney’s closed-door meetings with energy-industry executives. There’s no reason not to draft a new bill containing the non-controversial portions of Bush’s energy bill, which most people agree would help improve the nation’s power grid, and enact it immediately. But congressional Republicans oppose doing this, as does the president. So who’s really playing politics with the nation’s energy needs?

Over the past decade, the federal government has dramatically loosened regulation of the energy industry with the goal of creating a free market for energy creation and consumption in place of the former heavily regulated monopoly. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have adopted some form of energy deregulation. Still, consumers have yet to see any benefits from increased competition. A report published in April by the Consumer Energy Council of America (CECA), a research think tank that advocates for residential and small-business energy consumers, states: "Consumers in most restructured states have not seen significant changes in price or quality of service." Nor have the "bulk of residential consumers in the states that have restructured to allow multiple providers of retail electric service" changed providers from their default service. But why would they? It’s not like energy providers come to consumers with a menu of choices the way telephone or Internet-service providers do. Imagine if your electricity provider gave you the option of receiving some of your energy from green sources, like solar or wind power. This isn’t going to happen without massive investments in research and development. And as long as price caps and rate freezes remain in effect, which they do even in most states with deregulation, the energy industry isn’t going to make these investments. Meanwhile, the federal government has completely abdicated its responsibility in this regard, thanks in part to influence from the oil and gas industries.

Citizens who live by the motto "not in my back yard" and oppose the development of much-needed transmission lines or wind farms (as some property owners on Nantucket, who oppose the construction of a wind farm off the coast of the island, are now doing; see "Give Wind a Chance," Editorial, August 8) must also share the blame. If you want to use more power, as most people with computers, cable television, and electric can openers do, you can’t then turn around and say you don’t want new power lines built in your neighborhood.

But the most significant change must come from Congress. It must provide what Peggy Welsh, CECA’s senior vice-president, refers to as "regulatory rules of the road." Right now, no clear demarcation exists between federal authority and state authority over the nation’s power grid. Questions such as "who has the authority to approve things like cost recovery has really stymied investment," Welsh says. There are no national standards on how much power a region must keep in reserve. Many of the standards in place now are voluntary — there is no enforcement authority.

Frankly, it feels silly to state what should be obvious to our national leaders, but since no one is saying it, we will: this is an important issue. For the president to play politics with our power grid — as he’s doing by linking some of the much-needed reforms to oil drilling in the Arctic — is reprehensible. We need leadership and cooperation to make sure a major blackout doesn’t happen again.

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