Editorial: Two steps forward, one (big) step back

Tuesday, April 17, 2001 | 9:12 a.m.

President Bush announced Thursday that he would keep two Clinton-era regulations that would mandate new energy-efficiency standards for clothes washers and water heaters. The new rules combined would save the average consumer about $48 a year in electric bills, while the savings in energy would equal the output of a dozen 400-megawatt power plants. But one day later Bush capitulated on the third, most important energy-efficiency regulation from Clinton's tenure: requiring that air conditioners become 30 percent more efficient.

If the Clinton proposal had been approved by Bush, the energy saved would have been equivalent to 39 400-megawatt power plants. For a homeowner paying $1,000 a summer in air conditioning costs, it had been projected that he only would have paid $700 under the Clinton standard. Here in Las Vegas, where air conditioning units seem to be running nonstop during the brutally hot summer months, these savings could have been considerable. Bush instead is proposing only a 20 percent improvement, which would be worth just 27 new power plants, and a homeowner would save $200 during the summer.

Bush's response to the energy crisis, which mirrors that of big energy-producing firms, is to drill for natural gas and oil on environmentally sensitive public lands. It's a shame the president hasn't shown leadership by insisting that conservation be taken seriously.