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Speaker: Electric cars can stifle U.S. oil demand
By Mike Jeffers
The Brookings Institution senior fellow spoke Monday at UT to an audience of about 100 people about the country's oil addiction, global warming and the impact of energy policies. During the Clinton administration, Sandalow served as an assistant secretary of state and served jointly as senior director for the National Security Council, among other posts. Sandalow authored "Freedom From Oil: How the Next President Can End the United States' Oil Addiction." Roger Duncan, deputy general manager of Austin Energy; Michael Webber, engineering assistant professor; and Eugene Gholz, public affairs assistant professor, joined Sandalow in a panel discussion about U.S. energy policy that was sponsored by the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy. Sandalow summarized the question his book tried to answer - how to end America's oil addiction - during his talk. "We have essentially no substitutes in our global transportation options," Sandalow said. "If you want to do something about that, nothing would do more good more quickly than making cars that connect to the electric grid." He said electric cars still generate less carbon emissions than combustion engines even though electricity is produced by coal because they are much more efficient. Acknowledging widespread criticism of corn-based ethanol such as the water consumption needed to grow corn and the energy costs in developing it, Sandalow said it encourages development of vehicles that can run on petroleum or ethanol and an infrastructure that could one day be used with other types of ethanol created from plants such as switch grass and sugar cane. Sandalow recounted eating dinner with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on separate occasions. He said they both agreed oil dependence is a national security issue and that the country needs a project with the kind of government involvement exhibited in the Manhattan Project, which began the atomic age. Fuel efficiency is a large part of the solution, he said. The Texan strives to present all information fairly, accurately and completely.
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