Draft GPUS Platform Amendment Energy

Section title: Energy

Section subtitle: ???

Our position: We advocate strong energy policies at all levels of government to shift decisively away from polluting energy systems towards reduced energy use and clean energy sources.

Our energy use and abuse is at the core of many environmental and even social problems. With less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. consumes 25% of the world’s energy resources. Our oil and gas addiction in particular has led to wars and human rights abuses in many countries. The regional and global peaks in oil, gas, coal and uranium production are driving up costs of conventional fuels, threatening wars and social chaos if we cannot move beyond the dirty fuels immediately and invest in only the cleanest, most sustainable energy strategies.

We oppose energy utility deregulation. We support strong protections for electricity and natural gas consumers. These protections can only occur in a locally-controlled, fully regulated energy system that directly links generation with transmission and distribution. We recognize that deregulation and its reliance on markets – as opposed to state-based regulations – is incapable of providing affordable, reliable and clean energy. We support state efforts to regain control over electricity by establishing democratic, public control systems to locally coordinate supply and demand and by eliminating energy trading. Consumers deserve full disclosure of the specific electric generating facilities used to produce their electricity. We support net-metering to make decentralized energy production economically viable.

Energy management must be governed by the principle of conservation, efficiency, and clean renewables. Of highest importance is to use less, then to use wisely, and to have clean production of what is used. We advocate strong public policies to widely deploy conservation, efficiency, and clean renewable energy technologies. Examples include tax credits, renewable portfolio standards, research programs, loans and grants. Existing policies that currently benefit nuclear power, combustion technologies (including technologies that produce burnable fuels) or large hydroelectric dams should be eliminated and reallocated to conservation, efficiency, wind and solar power.

Green Solutions

Conservation and Efficiency

1. Extensive conservation measures will bring huge resource savings for both the economy and the environment. Europe consumes less than half of the electricity consumed per capita in the U.S. We call for extensive energy conservation efforts, with a goal of reducing energy consumption by 50% in 20 years.

2. We support efforts to decentralize regional electric grids by promoting energy efficiency and localized clean renewable energy. Tax-exempt bonds should be authorized to finance public ownership of utilities and to allow publicly owned utilities to finance conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy projects.

Clean Renewables

1. We call for a Manhattan Project-level of commitment to developing clean renewable energy technologies – technologies that do not create pollution in the course of generating electricity. These can include wind, solar (including solar thermal and concentrating solar), ocean power, geothermal, and small-scale hydro. Since even clean renewable energy can have negative environmental impacts, care must be taken to minimize such impacts. Clean renewable energy does not include nuclear power, any sort of combustion or process in which by-products are ultimately combusted, or hydroelectric dams that block entire rivers.

2. The Green Party calls for federal commitment to the mass-production of cheap, non-toxic solar photovoltaic technology to enable widespread deployment of solar power. To make solar more cost-competitive, we support large-scale government purchases of solar cells for installation on government facilities.

3. We support efforts of individuals and institutions to voluntarily purchase wind and solar power products through tradable renewable energy certificates. However, there are limits to the volunteer, market-based approach to promoting clean energy. Just as we cannot expect that individual purchases of organic food will cause all food production to become organic, we cannot expect that voluntary approaches will be sufficient to fully replace current energy supplies with clean energy.

Fuels for Transportation and Heating

1. Oil and gas are the primary fuels used for transportation and heating. U.S. dependence on oil and gas has driven an unparalleled assault on the global environment and on human rights in many nations. We call for a rapid transition to electric vehicles to ultimately eliminate the need for burnable fuels in private land transportation. We recognize that hydrogen is not an energy source, but an energy storage tactic – one that makes no sense in the private transportation sector. We also recognize that biofuels and other “alternative” fuels are limited in potential and require very damaging production systems that cannot be done in a large scale without causing dire environmental harm.

2. We support further research into energy storage strategies, so that the use of hydrogen as an energy storage medium – or a more viable alternative – can, make it possible to operate a decentralized grid on intermittent energy generation methods, such as solar and wind. If fuel cells turn out to be the best option to efficiently distribute electricity as needed, they should be powered using hydrogen sourced from water and separated by electrolysis with power provided by clean, renewable energy technologies, We oppose the use of nuclear technologies or carbon-based feedstocks for hydrogen production.

3. We oppose the development of environmentally-destructive “alternative” fuels produced with polluting, energy-intensive processes or from unsustainable or toxic feedstocks, such as genetically-engineered crops, coal, or waste streams contaminated with persistent toxins. This includes especially ethanol derived from corn, cellulosic ethanol and nearly all biodiesel. Biofuels should be used only where no combustion-free technologies are an option.

4. With regard to heating fuels, we support building codes for new construction that incorporate the best available energy conservation designs. New construction should be required to use proven passive solar methods to achieve substantial portions of its heating energy from the sun. For existing homes and buildings, we support programs to aid in their weatherization and increased energy efficiency.

5. We oppose further oil and gas drilling or exploration – especially that which would occur in other countries, on our nation’s outer continental shelf, on our public lands, in the Rocky Mountains, and under the Great Lakes.