Remarks at a Ceremony To Announce the National Energy Efficiency Program's Second Phase and Present Transportation Efficiency Awards

I'm very grateful to have this second .major meeting on how we can save energy in our Nation by the concerted effort of leaders like yourselves and those who are eager, I believe, as patriotic citizens to increase our Nation's security through reducing our dependence, unwarranted and excessive dependence, on imported oil.

Today we have formed a council for energy efficiency, and we have the panel members here, the award winners, whom we'll recognize in a few minutes, and community leaders, and I want to thank all of you for being present.

As you know, millions of our citizens now recognize vividly, as they didn't perhaps just 12 months ago, how vital it is for each one of us to join in reducing imports. There are only two ways to do it, as I've said many times: one is to eliminate the waste of energy, which has never been an integral part of Americans' lives; and secondly, to produce more energy ourselves. The cheapest, most efficient approach between those two, obviously, is to reduce our own consumption of energy, which I believe we can do, as has been proved by many of you already, without reducing the quality of our own lives.

For the past 3 1/2 years I and many of you here, all the members of my own administration, almost every Member of the Congress, has fought for and has finally achieved the basic framework of a comprehensive energy policy for our country, something that we've never had before and something which is already paying rich dividends for us.

We now import, the first half of this year, almost 15 percent less oil than we did the same 6 months in 1979. That's a remarkable achievement, particularly in view of the fact that in the years preceding this year we had had a steady upward trend in the amount of oil that we had bought from overseas. We've still not reached our goals. And as you know, by 1990 we have set as a goal for ourselves a slashing in half of the actual amount that we import and a reduction by more than two-thirds of the amount that we would have imported had we not put into effect these conservation measures.

We have today, this day, imported about 1 1/2 million less barrels than we did an equivalent day 12 months ago. This is a very fine achievement, thanks to many of you. We've got to keep this progress going. We've still got much to do, and we've made good progress already.

We've got two basic approaches, as you well know from the briefing you've had and from the discussion today. One is in the area of transportation, and we'll recognize some that have achieved superior performance already. And we also are launching, with as effective a program as possible throughout our Nation, a means by which we conserve energy within individual homes. And we think that each home, on the average, can save 25 percent of the energy it has been consuming. This can be done through tax credits to encourage the weatherization of homes, the installation of devices like thermostats, that are timed by day, to prevent excessive air conditioning or heating loads when they are not needed, because somebody might be absent-minded and not change the thermostat when they could have changed it, and of course, the installation of solar heating devices of all kinds.

We have received from the transportation industry about 190 different specific commitments derived from the previous meeting that we've had here. So, that is an achievement already. The homes will be the second achievement and a third one that we're working for is in the field of agriculture.

I've been a farmer almost all my life, except when I've been in government service. All of my people before me for many generations have been full-time farmers, and I know from practical experience that, in my earlier days, we had much less dependence upon bought fuels for the heating or drying of crops and for cultivation and, as any farm agent knows and as any superior farmer knows, minimum tillage can be an advantage and not a disadvantage. And the sun-drying of our crops, instead of using imported oil or natural gas or butane, can be a very efficient way to do an equally superior job.

We anticipate that if the farmers can save only 5 percent of the energy they use compared to a year ago and if homeowners can reduce, by an amount that I've already described, that we can cut our oil imports at a $32 per barrel price by roughly $20 billion each year.

We have, finally, a need to expand the public awareness of what can be done. A lot of people have feared energy conservation because it's new to them, and they have assumed, incorrectly, that to save energy in their own lives, in their homes, on their farms, in their businesses, in their transportation, would cause them to lead an inferior quality of life compared to what they had been using, to which they had been accustomed. This is not the fact. I think that this can be the means by which safety can be enhanced—with strict enforcement of driver habits, speed limits, more efficient automobiles, more efficient homes, more attention to sharing rides, the location of buildings in a proper fashion, and the orientation in business of a much more efficient operation with the production of goods—with a minimum amount of energy expended.

In closing, let me say that we shared this kind of discussion in Venice, recently, among the leaders of the seven major democratic industrialized nations. This is not a unique problem with America. As a matter of fact, of all the nations represented there, ours perhaps is the most blessed with the broadest range of energy availability. France, Italy, Japan, in particular, are heavily dependent on imported fuels. Great Britain, with the North Sea deposits, has now become relatively self-sufficient. Of course, we know that Canada has certain forms of energy, not nearly so much and so diverse as do we. But all of the nations are now moving toward a more careful approach to the consumption of energy.

I'd like to ask Neil Goldschmidt now to come forward to give the awards for outstanding energy efficiency in the transportation sector, and later on, in a subsequent ceremony, after the contests and the competition has been observed and analyzed, we'll have similar awards made for conservation in homes and on the farms. And we'll be asking all those who are directly involved, including farm co-ops, the TVA, major utility companies, to participate in special ways to inform their customers and their members about what they can indeed do in their own homes and on their own farms to enhance the conservation of energy in our Nation.

This is important to the well-being of our people; it's important to the security of our country. And I'm deeply grateful for the partnership that you have formed with us in this worthwhile pursuit. Secretary Goldschmidt.