After nearly a year of energy policy being a major political issue, Penn can be proud of its accomplishments in promoting renewable energy.

The debate over energy became prominent on the national agenda with the 2006 State of the Union, where the President introduced his Advanced Energy Initiative and pledged a 22 percent increase in research spending at the Department of Energy.

Impressive claims and urgent rhetoric have continued to surround the issue of energy dependence. This past Thursday, for example, Bush spoke at a conference promoting bio-fuels and insisted that the return to lower gas prices would not affect his administration’s promotion of renewable energy.

Yet the President’s actions suggest that his sincerity mirrors that of another subset of conference attendees: representatives of Chevron, an oil company.

Sun Microsystems founder and alternative energy champion Vinod Khosla said of the latter group, “Despite nice words from the American Petroleum Institute, make no mistake about it–they are not interested in a rapid transition.” A recent report from the Council for Foreign Relations confirms that Khosla may as well have been speaking about Bush himself.

Feeling the breeze–and it’s not just the “wind tunnel” at the high-rises (communityenergy.biz)

An independent CFR task force, co-chaired by former energy secretary James Schlesinger and former CIA director John Deutsch, argues that there have been almost no perceptible changes in US energy policy from either side of the aisle. The report further claims that the continued failure to address energy concerns is jeopardizing U.S. foreign policy and security.

For a recent example of the sort of practical changes that can lead to a more sustainable future, we can look to our own university. For another quarter–the fourth in a row–Penn has topped the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of Top Ten College and University Partners.

As The Daily Pennsylvanian reported last winter, Penn has a contract with Community Energy Inc. through 2010 and receives almost 30% of its total electricity from a wind farm in the Poconos.

This is something we can take great pride in. It is also something for President Bush and other big-talking politicians to learn from. As the social, political and environmental implications of our energy problems grow, it will be small actions–and not big words–that will lead to a solution.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.