U.S. paying price for energy indecision

DOMINION VIRGINIA POWER has asked for an 18 percent rate hike, which would raise the average monthly residential electricity bill from $91 to $107. The company says it needs the raise to compensate for huge increases in the cost of coal and natural gas, which it uses to generate electricity.

Dominion's costs have undoubtedly risen, and even a highly regulated utility deserves to turn a profit. Unfortunately, though, the company's request is just one more symptom of a global economic epidemic caused by rising energy costs. Just ask anybody who has bought gasoline lately. Or heating oil. Or food. Or anything made of plastic. Or that had to be moved.

Experts say oil prices, now well north of $120 a barrel, are probably headed higher still, an unprecedented spiral that threatens to cripple economies everywhere people drive, manufacture or eat. An America still trying to avoid a recession born in the mortgage markets may be especially vulnerable.

As bad as things have become, they're only going to get worse, if not in this outbreak, then in the next. Inelastic supplies, speculation in the commodity markets and growing demand from China and India make disruptive price increases a virtual certainty.

Such inflationary pressures are bad enough, but when American purchasing power - especially below the median wage - hasn't increased much in several years, the stage is set for sustained financial stress for people who can least afford it.

And though we have seen such a day coming, the world is still without good alternatives, at least immediate ones.

Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for which the president has consistently argued and which this page has endorsed, would take years to come on line, as would petroleum production from oil sands, shale or coal. In any case, none of those is likely to lower oil prices much, and might make the problem of global warming even worse.

Some self-styled experts argue that what America really needs is new gasoline refineries, but capacity isn't the problem. The oil industry argues that it may even have too much capacity because of increased ethanol requirements. Ethanol is a double - maybe triple - danger to the planet. It is inefficient to produce, requiring almost as much energy as it provides; it also diverts farmland, fertilizer and crops from the food supply, raising the cost of everything from rice to tortillas.

The simplest solution to an immediate energy shortage is for OPEC to open its spigot. The problem is that nobody knows how long the cartel's supply might last, or what kind of international nastiness all the additional oil revenue would finance.

Electric plants fired by coal - like the one Dominion wants to build in western Virginia - are just too dirty to be safe, either for people or for the planet, in the numbers we'd need. Coal plants have already poisoned waterways across Hampton Roads with mercury, a powerful neurotoxin, especially for babies and nursing mothers.

Nuclear energy could go far toward satisfying America's needs, but those plants take a long time to build, decades from permitting to production, and the storage of waste is a problem still to be solved.

There are alternatives in the wings, including cheap solar, ethanol from nonfood sources, other biofuels, even some radical nuclear ideas. The problem is that America's current needs are gigantic, almost unimaginable. Ramping up solar or cellulosic ethanol - even if it's possible - would take as long as it would to build a nuclear plant.

The one solution both cheap and easy and available requires simple conservation: drive less, carpool, boost your home's insulation, turn off the lights. The kind of stuff everyone with sense already does. If enough more people do that kind of thing, it might get us through the current crisis, or at least buy us some time.

The problem is the next major disruption isn't far away. We might have time to prepare, if we get to work right now. But until the nation gets serious about weaning itself from oil, until it starts investing real money in alternative energy, the next crisis will remain always on the horizon, ready to sicken the healthiest economy.