Levi Hill for the News Sun---Hobbs--The nation is facing an energy crisis where rolling blackouts, gas hoarding and high energy prices will become everyday occurrences.

That was the message Tuesday from former Shell Oil Co. President John Hofmeister during a one-hour talk titled “Affordable Energy in the 21st Century: Enablers and Disablers” at Tydings Auditorium.

Hofmeister visited Hobbs through a joint project by New Mexico Tech’s Center for Energy Policy at New Mexico Junior College and the E c o n o m i c D e v e l o p m e n t Corporation of Lea County.

Hofmeister focused on the pitfalls that will lead up to what he calls the “Age of Energy Abyss” and what he believes could prevent it from happening within 10 years.

“Energy is at the heart of what our country will or will not become in the 21st century,” he said. “We are at a critical juncture as a nation when it comes to energy availability and affordability.”

Hofmeister went on to explain the nation is in no different a place today from a year ago when oil prices climbed to $140 a barrel or even two years ago when pump prices climbed to more than $4 a gallon.

“Nothing has changed in the supply/ demand relationship except demand has fallen maybe three percent,” he said.

The nation has enough energy through fossil and renewable energy sources to meet demand indefinitely, Hofmeister said. However, the nation’s political scene will drive the country into the energy crisis by pushing renewable energies and failing to support traditional energy sources that will be the backbone of the nation’s energy industry for years to come, he said.

The demand for energy will increase as countries such as China and India grow their economies. The number of vehicles on the road globally is expected to grow from 1 billion to 2 billion by 2025, he said.

“The good news is we have more energy in this country than we will ever need,” he said. “More good news is there is more new technology every year to create energy more efficiently and use it more efficiently.

“The bad news is the Age of the Energy Abyss, which is becoming increasingly likely to be by the end of the next decade, is based on past and current energy policies,” he added. “We can expect shortages of electric and liquid fuels.”

Parts of the country such as New Mexico and Texas may weather the storm, because they are energy production centers, Hofmeister said, but other states will suffer.

Part of the cause is the nation is still relying on the energy industry and equipment created more than 40 years ago that will soon become too dated, he said.

“We continue to fill gas tanks, turn on lights, run a/c’s and furnaces because of an incredible energy legacy from 1930-1970,” he said. “The supply side of our energy is getting old and wearing out. There are 600 coal plants in the country. Sixty percent of our electricity comes from coal plants. More than 300 are over 35 years old, which means in 10 years, they will be 45 years old,” he said. “In the last five years, plans for new coal plants have been shelved by energy companies.”

The nation’s 104 nuclear power plants are approaching the end of their normal life spans and will have to be shut down even if they are to be recommissioned, a long process, Hofmeister said.

He said 98 percent of the nation’s energy comes from coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydropower. Even if the nation doubles its solar and wind energy production, it will only account for 4 percent of all the energy needed in the nation, he said.

The underlying problem is political, he said.

“We need dramatic changes that are not being espoused by national leadership,” he said. “We have in this nation a collection of selfish special interests that look out only for their own agenda. Our national government is broken on energy policy. Broken in ways you can’t imagine and it is unfixable in its current form.”

Hofmeister said the nation’s energy industries are also a part of the problem. They are fractured and fighting for their own interests and not working together, which they can’t anyway because of federal anti-competition laws, he said.

Politicizing of the issues has stopped new drilling along the United States’ coasts and development of new coal and nuclear plants, he said. The nation’s energy industry is also governed by 13 federal agencies and 26 committees and subcommittees that change leadership every twofour years and all base their decisions on politics and not science, Hofmeister said.

His solution? Have Congress create an independent regulatory board for the energy industry made up of governors appointed from the various interest groups — energy, environmental and public — and have those governors sit for 14-year terms and run the nation’s energy system on sound science and not politics. He points to the Federal Reserve, which has kept the American dollar relatively stable for 96 years, a feat no other nation can boast.

“The fix we need for energy is to get partisan paralysis out,” he said.