SAFETY

PROCEDURES

Safety, Energy and Environment are the top priorities in the world today.

For some years, any increase in production capacity at power plants has gone hand in hand with the adoption of clean technologies and innovative production processes that combine a high degree of efficiency with a reduced environmental impact.

About 18% of the energy generated is produced using renewable sources (hydroelectric and wind power), with the remaining 82% coming from turbogas combined-cycle power plants. These facilities have an efficiency of more than 55% and, compared with conventional plants, use less fuel and, therefore, generate less polluting emissions.

The paramount objective of energy research is to promote energy efficiency, and to develop new energy systems, processes and products. Environmental research is aimed at minimising the environmental consequences of energy production and use by developing new technologies. This will be accomplished by:

• Improving energy efficiency by making models of, regulating and controlling energy-intensive industrial processes.
• Establishing a national centre of expertise on wind energy, autonomous energy facilities and hydrogen as an energy carrier.
• Tracking energy-related pollutants by tracing their journey through the natural environment, and through their absorption into food chains.
• Radio-ecology studies in the Arctic (Kara Sea) and in the Majak region of Russia.
• Industrial energy efficiency activities, operating agent for several national and international energy efficiency programmes.
• Professional expertise in activities related to climate change and energy efficiency projects in many countries.

Norton, Abraham and President George W. Bush all favor more drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands - the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Get ready for a dramatic shift in the tug-of-war between protecting the environment and extracting energy from public land.

The movement in energy's favor should become quite apparent Thursday, when Energy Secretary nominee Spencer Abraham and Interior Secretary nominee Gale Norton begin their Senate confirmation hearings.

With California on the verge of blackouts, utilities facing bankruptcy, and oil and natural gas prices sky high, experts agree there will be a renewed push to suck more fuel out of the nation's public land.

"The country faces some big issues on energy and the environment," said Paul Friesema, a Northwestern University political science professor who studies resource issues. "There's going to be tremendous fights."

Norton, Abraham and President-elect George W. Bush all favor more drilling for oil and natural gas on public lands. For eight years, the Clinton administration did the opposite: It put millions of acres off limits to energy production in the name of protecting wilderness and wildlife.

Potential drilling spots go beyond the long- talked-about push to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — which the same trio favors but which requires an act of Congress. Other areas include forests, wilderness and other federal land near Yellowstone National Park in Montana and Wyoming, the resource-rich spine of the Rocky Mountains stretching from Salt Lake City to the Canadian border, and off-shore waters, mainly the Gulf of Mexico.

Offshore gulf sites may be especially important. On Wednesday, the U.S. Minerals Management Service reported estimates that there is 65 percent more undiscovered offshore oil and 35 percent more undiscovered natural gas offshore than previously thought. The total is more than 3.5 years of current U.S. consumption.

Bush sent a clear signal of his intentions last week. "This is an issue where Ms. Norton, I'm confident, will probably come under fire. We need to drill for gas," he said in a New York Times interview. "... we are going to review parcel by parcel Western lands to determine the cost- benefit ratio for America. We need energy."

Bush, Norton and Abraham "seem to want to ignore the environmental side of the equation and focus on the energy side," said Michael Scott, program director for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, a Bozeman, Mont., environmental group. "The agenda for the future of the Western states is going to be energy development — perhaps at the sacrifice of the very values that Americans identify with the West, which is wildlife, great open spaces, clean air, clean water."

Business and energy industry officials welcome the idea of more drilling. "This is an issue (the Bush administration is) going to have to face immediately," said Bill Kovacs, vice president of environment and energy policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "At the end of the day, (we need) more gas pipelines, more power generators, more transmission lines; there's no choice."

From 1989 to 1999, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a division of the Department of Energy, the amount of power America generates rose 9.6 percent while the amount of power America used increased 24.7 percent.

In Kovacs' view, the shortfall means the country needs 1,200 new power plants, instead of the dozen or so being built each year.

When the Clinton administration put one-third of national forest land off-limits earlier this month — the parts that are roadless — Republicans saw the ruling in energy terms. It amounts to the loss of a year's supply of natural gas, given current consumption rates, according to the EIA.

But the prospect of more drilling appalls environmental groups. "Is nothing sacred? Is nothing off-limits?" asked Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, a Washington-based international environmental group. "This (incoming) administration is saying nothing is off-limits."

When Norton and Abraham testify Thursday, Democratic senators will press for specifics about where drilling would take place. Bush said he will review federal lands newly protected by President Clinton.

Environmentalists worry most about protecting the Rocky Mountain spine and the Yellowstone region. Drilling in much of this area could spoil crucial habitats for grizzlies, elks and wolves, said Scott, of the Yellowstone Coalition.