viewDoint Charles F. Luce Chairman of the Board, Consolidated
The price of environmental protection To supply the nation’s growing electric needs without serious damage to the environment is indeed a large task. We cannot long continue to do so on the basis of today’s technology. Nor is today’s level of research and development work sufficient to produce answers as quickly as society requires them. What we need is a vastly stepped-up R&D effort. There are, I believe, four principal areas in which accelerated research and development should take place: ( 1 ) the breeder reactor which will vastly extend the world’s supply of energy, and will operate at higher thermal efficiencies than today’s nuclear reactors; (2) better processes to remove pollutants from smokestacks, and thereby make usable the large deposits of high-sulfur coal in the eastern U S . ; ( 3 ) improved cooling methods, including cooling structures that transmit w b t e heat directly to the atmosphere: and (4) more efficient and economical techniques for underground transmission of electricity at high voltages. By no means is this enumeration of R&D opportunities all-inclusive, but I do believe that the greatest need and best hope of significant improvement in this decade lie in these four areas. And the monies we are spending in these areas, I believe, should he increased by at least $200 to $300 million per year. Who will pay for this research and development and the application of its results to commercial power facilities? Environmentalists assert, and I think properly, that all of the costs of protecting the environment should be reflected in the-cost of goods and services; that air and water and scenic beauty are no longer, if they ever were, “free goods.” In turn, these costs will be added to the price of the goods or the service-in our case, to the price of electricity. Alternatively, these costs may be subsidized by tbe government and thus by all taxpayers. I t seems most equitable to me that the users of electricity pay for an adequate R&D program to reconcile power production :tion with environmental protection. One way to do thisj would be for each electric utility to apply ., share of,the cost.. -But. for a rate increase to cover its there are 50 rate regulatory agencies and they might not all take the same approach. Further, the publicly owned utilities typically are not subject to regulation of their d a t p ntilito mmmircinnr ...-..r n t p p hv _, --....... I have proposed that federal legislation be enacted to create a trust fund for research to find better ways of reconciling power production with environmental protection. The source of funds would be a federal 1
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excise tax on all users of electricity from whatever source. Administration of the trust fund would be under a national director, drawing upon the research capabilities of private and public laboratories, and assisted by national and regional advisory panels drawn from the utility industry, manufacturers, environmentalists, academicians, and consumers. I believe that a similar tax on the use of natural gas, coal, and oil for purposes other than the generation of electricity might well be considered. To propose a new tax is not a popular thing. Yet, if we are serious when we say that all costs of producing energy, including environmental costs, must be included in the price of the energy, this sort of tax makes a great deal of sense. There are ample precedents in the federal highway and airport trust funds. As important as it is to step up R&D for technological answers to the problems of the electric industry and society, I think it would be unwise to rely on technology alone. We need, I believe, to couple a strong R&D effort with a strong national policy of conservation of energy-both for ecological reasons and because the sources of energy on the planet Earth are finite. We need a new environmental ethic that would signify a willingness of individuals to forgo many luxuries of an affluent society, to forgo wasteful consumption of any product or service-including electricity, I t would signify, also, a willingness to pay higher taxes and higher prices for the costly facilities necessary to combat pollution effectively. With such an ethic, and with the finest technology that man can dism v p v thP plprtrir indiiqtrv and the nennle it serves I
