Technology Can Cut Pollution Without High Cost, Study Says

The United States could reduce emissions of greenhouse gases through technology and avoid huge costs to the economy and wrenching changes in the American lifestyle, according to a U.S. Energy Department study released yesterday.

The Energy Department's contribution to the rancorous debate over global warming comes shortly before an international meeting on climate change in Kyoto, Japan. At that meeting in December, the United States and other developed nations will be pressed to agree to binding commitments to reduce energy consumption sharply, and within 13 years to roll back, to 1990 levels, emissions that have been blamed for global warming.

The Energy Department's study found that the costs of research and development of technology to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by the year 2010 could be paid for -- in part or in full -- by energy savings.

The White House will host a conference on climate change Oct. 6 as it struggles to decide what position it will take in the highly divisive international debate. Attempts to shape the official U.S. position are being played out in a battle of advertising and with competing studies that warn of risks to the environment if emissions are not curbed, and risks to the U.S. economy if the government yields to international demands.

The cost of developing energy-saving technologies is "likely to be more than balanced by savings in energy bills," the study said. "This analysis shows that what's good for the environment also can be good for the economy," said Energy Secretary Federico Pen~a.

The Energy Department study carries significant weight because it was developed over the course of a year by five highly regarded federal laboratories and was reviewed by outside professionals. The department cautioned that the report shouldn't be read as a description of what the Clinton administration will propose, but department officials noted that it backs up an assertion that Clinton made last month -- that the United States could reduce emissions at no cost by 20 percent "if we just changed the way we do things."

Since the end of the Cold War the laboratories have been searching for new missions by shifting their activities from working on weaponry to developing new technologies, including ones that increase energy efficiency.

The study examined existing technologies and those under development to determine how much each might contribute to reducing emissions produced by burning fossil fuels. The laboratories assumed a "vigorous national commitment" to developing these technologies and the possible use of a system of emissions trading.

Such a trading system would allow utilities, factories and other facilities to buy reductions in emissions from other sources rather than reducing their own. The idea, which has been used successfully to reduce other pollutants, is to provide an incentive for making the most cost-effective cuts.

The technologies the Energy Department looked at included the prospects for developing more efficient vehicles and alternate fuels; more energy-efficient lighting and appliances; energy-saving materials for use in residential and commercial buildings; and improved wind turbines to generate electricity.

The study also examined possible gains from using more natural gas to generate electricity, extending the lifetimes of nuclear power plants and using more of the steam produced by industry to produce power.

The study pointed out that consumer electronic appliances still consume the equivalent of the output of eight to 10 major power plants even when they are not in use. Appliances, including television sets, computers, radios and compact disc players, draw power when they are turned off but still plugged into an outlet, in part because it allows them to start faster.

Joseph J. Romm, acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said the study is a "projection of what technology might be able to do and not a prediction of what necessarily will happen."

"It confirms what we've been saying all along, that there are low-cost and no-cost options to reduce global warming," said Michael Marvin, executive director of the Business Council on Sustainable Energy, whose members include the producers of energy-efficient equipment and sellers of natural gas, one of the cleaner alternatives to coal and oil. But Marvin said he thought the study also should have looked at the benefits to the economy from improved health and other gains stemming from reduced pollution.

"What it basically shows is that there is a way to substitute technology for energy consumption and therefore possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at much lower costs," said Dan Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Al Chambers, a spokesman for Ford Motor Co., said his company is "very much in favor of technology initiatives and pushing forward as quickly as possible on all the different alternatives that exist." But, he added, "if you think this can be achieved, why would you need to have legally binding targets? If this is all possible, it builds the case for doing this with voluntary measures."