WASHINGTON (AP) – A bipartisan panel of energy experts said Wednesday that regulation of climate changing pollution and improved automobile fuel efficiency must be an essential elements of the nation’s energy agenda – a view that clashes with the White House and many members of Congress.

After two years of discussions, the National Commission on Energy Policy, a privately funded group, issued a report that sought to forge a middle path on such polarizing issues as climate change and auto fuel economy.

It also embraced a broad range of initiatives, from increased government spending to develop a new generation of nuclear power plants to more aggressive support for developing clean coal technology and support for development of renewable energy sources.

But the group’s recommendations on climate change and auto fuel economy represented an attempt to find a compromise that would address issues that have been largely ignored during four years of congressional debate on energy legislation.

“The commission believes that the United States must take action to begin limiting climate risks from energy-related greenhouse gas emissions,” the group’s report said. But it added that this must be done in a way that would “not harm the competitive position of U.S. business internationally.”

The 16-member panel – comprised of business leaders, former government officials, environmentalists and labor leaders – concluded unanimously that voluntary emissions reductions favored by the Bush administration will fall short of doing the job.

It called for a mandatory system of permits that would limit how much emissions a plant could release. The group said this would slow the growth of carbon dioxide emissions by 500 million to 1 billion tons a year by 2020.

The group viewed the mandatory program as “a meaningful first step” to addressing climate change, said William Reilly, a co-chair of the panel and former Environmental Protection Agency chief under the first President Bush.

The White House disagreed.

Dana Perino, a spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality, said the administration supports many of the proposals in the report, but not mandatory regulation of greenhouse gases.

“We believe that will do more harm than good to the nation’s energy policy and to the nation’s economy,” said Perino. She said the president’s voluntary program will achieve similar reductions in greenhouse emission growth.

The commission’s recommendations are not binding on President Bush or Congress. But they could help move along the debate about the country’s energy policy, which has stalled in Congress.

In recent years, Congress has repeatedly rejected requiring any substantial increase in auto fuel economy as well as mandatory measures to address climate change. But the commission’s report drew positive responses from lawmakers of both parties.

The report “should serve as a major spark for legislative progress” on energy next year, said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., who especially liked the panel’s call for $4 billion in federal spending to promote clean coal technology.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said the report “provides a catalogue of realistic solutions for our future energy requirements.”

And Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the Senate Energy Committee’s top Democrat, called the recommendations “a balanced approach to constructing a forward-looking energy policy.”

Many environmentalists said the commission should have been more aggressive regarding climate change.

“The commission’s prescriptions don’t go nearly as far and as fast as we need to go to fix global warming and oil dependence,” said Wesley Warren of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The commission urged a larger federal role in developing cleaner sources of energy and said the government should double the amount of money spent on research and development. The experts said Congress should “significantly strengthen” the standards for vehicles’ fuel efficiency so the United States could reduce its oil consumption.

Commission member Susan Tierney, an energy consultant and former assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration, said fuel economy improvements must be a “a centerpiece” of an energy agenda. The experts could not agree on how much farther vehicles should go on a gallon of fuel.

The commission avoid the contentious issue of whether to develop the oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Opening the refuge to drilling has been a White House priority and the focus of intense debate in Congress.

It was not included “because members of the commission do not agree on it,” said a commission leader John Rowe, chairman of Exelon Corp.

—-

On the Net:

National Commission on Energy Policy: http://www.energycommission.org/

AP-ES-12-08-04 1934EST

Copy the Story Link