Expansionary Institute

Michael Zey
futurist3000@aol.com

By Michael Depp

 
NEW ORLEANS, June 3 (Reuters) - The chairman of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee said on Sunday the entire United States was likely to face rolling blackouts like those already plaguing California unless swift action was taken to build new power plants and increase natural gas production.

"This country is very close (to), if not beginning to be in, an energy crisis," Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, a Louisiana Republican, told the annual meeting in New Orleans of the Edison Electric Institute, an association of investor-owned electric utilities.

Tauzin said the nation's high-tech economy could come to a "crunching stop" without an expansion of energy infrastructure and argued that government-imposed price caps would not provide a solution to high electricity prices.

"This new economy is a gas guzzling economy," Tauzin said, citing an Energy Information Agency study that forecasts the United States will need 1,300 to 1,900 new power plants in the next 20 years to keep up with a projected 45 percent increase in electricity demand.

Tauzin said energy conservation could be part of the overall solution but that top priority should be given to building new power plants and oil refineries. He also called for improvements in the transmission grid that carries power between states.

"We need to make sure that the new 21st century power system in our country has an interstate transmission system that works," he said, adding the government might have to exercise its power of eminent domain to achieve that goal.

Clean coal technologies and domestic natural gas were also vital energy resources, Tauzin said, calling for new areas to be opened for oil and gas drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

Some of the Republican congressman's arguments were echoed by Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, who said the nation should continue to pursue energy deregulation despite California's experiences but should also develop renewable forms of energy.

Landrieu told the meeting she was an advocate of nuclear power and criticized incoming Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, for saying Democrats would block the development of a nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

"As a Democrat, I have to say I was disappointed in our new leader in his statements about Yucca Mountain and not being open to the fact that we do have to have a repository for spent nuclear fuel," she said.

22:22 06-03-01

Copyright 2001 Reuters Limited.  All rights reserved.  Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters.  Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.