Employment, education, public health, environmental protection and national security goals can all be achieved simultaneously with the development of cheap, clean and abundant sources of domestic energy.

A well-conceived Energy Independence initiative, one that is economically and scientifically sound, would create jobs, encourage education, improve public health, and protect the environment, while simultaneously cutting-off the flow of oil money to the Middle East, ending the source of financing for Islamic Terrorism.

Cutting-off the flow of oil money to the Middle East by liberating the world from oil dependence (Obsoleting fossil oil as a source of energy) is a proactive way to end the war without getting our soldiers or innocent civilians killed.

Being anti-war without cutting-off the flow of oil money into the Middle East and ending our oil dependence is like being anti-drug without attempting to stop the drug trade and end drug dependence.

The most aggressive action Americans can take toward ending the war and defeating Islamic Terrorism is to mobilize our nation's technology, wealth, knowledge and manpower for the purpose and goal of American Energy Independence.

Our Energy Challenge

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

The End of Oil?
By Mark Williams Febuary 2005
TechnologyReview.com

If the actions—rather than the words—of the oil business’s major players provide the best gauge of how they see the future, then ponder the following. Crude oil prices have doubled since 2001, but oil companies have increased their budgets for exploring new oil fields by only a small fraction. Likewise, U.S. refineries are working close to capacity, yet no new refinery has been constructed since 1976. And oil tankers are fully booked, but outdated ships are being decommissioned faster than new ones are being built.

If those clues weren’t enough, here’s a news item that came out of Saudi Arabia on March 6, 2003. Though it went largely unremarked, the kingdom’s announcement that it could not produce more oil in response to the Iraq War was of historic importance. As Kenneth Deffeyes notes in Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak, it meant that as of 2003, there was no major underutilized oil source left on the planet. Even as established oil fields have reached their maximum production capacity, there has been disappointing production from new fields. Globally, according to some geologists’ estimates, we have discovered 94 percent of all available oil.

The Saudis’ announcement arrived right on schedule—at least, once the three-year delay imposed by OPEC’s anti-U.S. embargo and production cutbacks of the 1970s was factored in. In 1969, the prominent geologist M. King Hubbert predicted that a graph of world oil production over time would look like a bell curve, with a peak around the year 2000. Thereafter, he argued, production would drop—slowly at first, then ever faster.

Hubbert had a track record as a prophet: his 1956 forecast that U.S. domestic oil production would peak in the early 1970s proved correct. Kenneth Deffeyes, who started out in 1958 as a young petroleum geologist at Shell’s Houston labs working alongside Hubbert, became so convinced by the man’s theories that by 1963 he had left the oil business, except for occasional consulting work; he is now a professor emeritus of geosciences at Princeton University. In Beyond Oil, Deffeyes takes readers through Hubbert’s analysis in a highly readable style, even boiling down the complex mathematics into a few pages of graphs.

The prognosis? Deffeyes has no doubt that by 2019, the year in which Hubbert’s theories indicate global oil production will drop to 90 percent of current rates, human ingenuity will have found replacement energy sources (see “What Energy Crisis?”, p. 19). But Deffeyes is optimistic about the long term only because he believes that by 2010, pressures will grow so intense that they’ll create the resolve necessary to develop a new energy ­economy. In the short term, he foresees continually rising oil prices that force industry after industry closer to the wall. He fears not just escalating resource wars around the world but also mass starvation in some countries, since the 6.4 billion people living on the earth today are fed thanks largely to the successes of the 20th century’s “green revolution,” which, among other innovations, brought petrochemical-based fertilizers into wide use.

Because 15 years ago we failed to begin developing the new energy sources and technologies we need now, Deffeyes argues, in the immediate future we’ll have to rely on what we’ve got. In Beyond Oil, he examines how we might optimize the use of our geologically derived energy sources.

Deffeyes suggests that coal will make a comeback and that Fischer-Tropsch conversion—the process by which the Nazi regime turned coal into gasoline to keep its Panzers running during WWII—might become commonplace. He grants that there’ll be an outcry over the ecological costs of burning coal; similarly, there’ll be much agonizing as nuclear power plants are again rolled out. But Deffeyes believes that M. King Hubbert, whose 1956 paper predicting the U.S. oil production peak is titled “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels,” was right: nuclear power will be part of our response to decreasing reserves of oil and natural gas, as necessity overrides any political opposition.

Ultimately, says Deffeyes, we may just have to resign ourselves to relying more on coal, wind, and nuclear fission for ­electricity and switching to high-efficiency diesel and hybrid automobiles in order to ration our remaining oil reserves for as long as possible. Abundant energy from fossil fuels was a one-time gift, Deffeyes concludes, that lifted humanity up from subsistence agriculture and has led to a future based on renewable resources.

Read more about Synthetic Fuels and Zero-Emission Coal technology at:
www.AmericanEenergyIndependence.com/cleanhydrocarbons.html

U.S. Trade Gap Swells Unexpectedly to Record
Wed Jan 12, 2005

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. trade deficit widened unexpectedly in November to a record $60.3 billion, propelled by the highest-ever oil import bill and a drop in exports, a government report showed on Wednesday.

The surprising surge in the trade gap sent the dollar tumbling in early trading against both the euro and the yen and analysts said the shortfall will likely eat into expectations for the economy's growth

IMF chief wants U.S. to resolve deficit
IMF director general Rodrigo Rato said: ‘Truly excessive’ imbalance must be addressed.

The U.S. budget deficit is “truly excessive” and the world’s leading economy must resolve the problems linked to the imbalance, the head of the International Monetary Fund said in remarks published on Sunday, Jan. 9, 2005.

He also warned that aging populations were one of the biggest economic challenges ahead and said that last year’s spike in oil prices should persuade nations to use different sources of energy and to save as much power as possible....

...the (global oil) market is expected to continue trading at the $45 mark until the OPEC meeting and Iraqi elections at the end of this month. Most traders agreed the market overshot itself Monday, when prices hit $47.30 a barrel, while the current price seems to the “floor in the short-term”
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6805612/

Crude prices gain amid increased demand
Possible OPEC production cut also weighs

Jan. 12, 2005
Crude oil futures prices rose Wednesday on increased demand for heating oil and the possibility of further OPEC production cuts.
- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5612507/

Have we reached the "Peak"?
Are we beginning on the downhill side of World Oil Depletion?

Energy Efficiency and National Security:
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/efficiency.html

was it your post in the 'how should cgcs take action' thread that prompted my mention of the Alternative Energy R&D Initiative i wanted to present to kerry pre-election? the idea that something comparable to the Human Genome Initiative or the Apollo Mission .

nice stuff, thanks!

no, i guess it wasn't you but another thinking along the same lines:

target='_blank'>


http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...ndpost&p=137250

Energy is the lifeblood of the American economy. Cut off the flow of energy and the economy will die. For this reason, energy independence should be a matter of national security.

America's dependence on foreign oil has increased significantly in recent years and military tension in the Middle East has escalated into war. This is not saying the war in Iraq is only about oil. The issues are complex and the public debate about the war has divided the American people. There are no easy answers, but it is naive to think that the United States military would be in the Middle East if there were no oil.

Our nation’s wealth, along with the blood of American soldiers, is being drained onto the sand of the Middle East to keep oil flowing.

Energy Independence and National Security
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/nationalsecurity.html

Yes, I did add a post in the 'how should cgcs take action' thread in support of Energy Independence:
target='_blank'>Post #135
News and Action Items > Action Items > Talking Points & Ideas to Promote

It would help if everyone would ask the Admins to add Energy Independence to the list of action issues.

Energy is the foundation of a modern economy. Many of the social/political problems we face, just cannot be solved without cheap, abundant, reliable sources of energy.

So what if we solve all of our health and social justice problems if we live only to freeze or starve to death, or die in war/terrorism fighting over limited energy resources.

Let's work together to get our priorities in order!

This reason for selecting energy independence as a CGCS action item has been discussed earlier in this thread, but it bears repeating.

Gabrielle posted some links yesterday on George Lakoff's ideas about reframing. The following excerpt from DON’T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT! argues for "strategic initiatives" and identifies energy independence as a good strategic initiative for the left:

Unlike the right, the left does not think strategically. We think
issue by issue. We generally do not try to figure out what minimal
change we can enact that will have effects across many issues.

There are a very few exceptions. For example, at the present
moment there is a strategic proposal called the New Apollo
Initiative. Simply put, the idea is to put thirty billion dollars a
year—which is the amount that now goes in subsidies to support
the coal and gas industries—into alternative energy. What makes
this strategic? It is strategic because it is not just an energy issue or
a sustainability issue. It is also:
• A jobs issue: It would create two to four million jobs.
• A health issue: Less air pollution means less childhood
asthma.
• A clean water, clean air issue.
• A species issue: It would clean up environments and
habitats.
• A global warming issue: We would be making a contribution
to lowering greenhouse gases without a program
specifically for global warming.
• A foreign policy issue: We would no longer be dependent
on Middle Eastern oil.
• A Third World development issue: Every country, no
matter how “underdeveloped,” can make its own
energy if it has the appropriate alternative technologies.
Such countries would not have to borrow money
to buy oil and pollute their environments. And they
would not have to pay interest on the money borrowed.
Furthermore, every dollar invested in energy in the
third world has a multiplier effect of six.
In short, a massive investment in alternative energy has an
enormous yield over many issue areas. This is not just about
energy; it is about jobs, health, clean air and water, habitat, global
warming, foreign policy, and third world development. It is also
about putting together new coalitions and organizing new institutions
and new constituencies.

Thanks Istoodforu -

That was a great post!

The Sierra Club magazine featured an article/interview with George Lakoff in the July 2004 issue, titled "Winning Words":

Here is an excerpt:

Environmentalists have adopted a set of frames that doesn’t reflect the vital importance of the environment to everything on Earth. The term "the environment" suggests that this is an area of life separate from other areas of life like the economy and jobs, or health, or foreign policy. By not linking it to everyday issues, it sounds like a separate category, and a luxury in difficult times. Wilderness: a place for those in Birkenstocks to go hiking.

Sierra: What’s the alternative?

Lakoff: When environmental issues are cast in terms of health and security, which people already accept as vital and necessary, then the environment becomes important. It’s a health issue–clean air and clean water have to do with childhood asthma and with dysentery. Energy that is renewable and sustainable and doesn’t pollute–that is a crucial environmental issue, but it’s not just environmentalism. A crash program to develop alternative energy is a health issue. It’s a foreign policy issue. It’s a Third World development issue.

If we developed the technology for alternative energy, we wouldn’t be dependent on Middle East oil. We could then sell or give the technology to countries around the world, and no country would have to borrow money from the International Monetary Fund to buy oil and then owe interest. This would turn Third World countries into energy producers instead of consumers. And it’s a jobs issue because it would create millions of good jobs in this country. So thinking and talking about environmentalism in limited terms like preservation of wilderness is shooting yourself in the foot.

That’s why the frame is so important. Most environmentalists believe that the truth will make you free. So they tell people the raw facts. But frames trump the facts. Raw facts won’t help, except to further persuade the people who already agree with you.

- George Lakoff
www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200407/words.asp

Yes, energy independence needs to be a "strategic initiative". So many people agree that energy independence is crucial, but too few have the time to promote it. There needs to be a national effort, and it needs to be framed as bipartisan. I think a bipartisan appeal takes away the "choice" factor, and exposes the failure of the conservatives to put national security before profit.

Freedom4all,

Goerge Lakoff has some energizing ideas, doesn't he. Glad you liked my post.

ThomPaine responded to the idea of an energy independence initiative for CGCS:



I promised to get back on these questions, but they are over my head at this point. Can you help?

I will try to put in writing some kind of a time-line with what I think may work. I would like to see a discussion involving those who have knowledge of the subject.
I have created a new topic titled: Pro-Nuclear Energy is a Progressive Cause

I anticipate that some people will object to nuclear energy.

My first love is solar energy, but I believe we must embrace nuclear energy. I had a hard time coming to that conclusion, so I may be able to help others who are still resisting nuclear energy. One of the problems is that it seems to dominate the discussion whenever it is mentioned, when it should only be considered a piece of the solution. Emotions about nuclear are disproportionate with the realities. The hazards of burning coal and natural gas are far more dangerous than nuclear waste because they are dispersed into the atmosphere in large volumes.

I prefer solar too. The reason is that it is so much less cost intensive, that homeowners and small communities can use solar to be relatively independent of the larger energy infrastructure.
It takes a decade and megabucks to build a nuke.

Solar technology is improving, but it is not yet ready to provide power for an economy, community or home that depends on electricity 7/24. When you add the cost of energy storage Solar gets expensive (the sun doesn't shine at night or on rainy days).

Yes Nukes are expensive, but they provide 1,000+ MegaWatts of continuious electricity -- Nukes provide constant, reliable base load electric power 7/24 with zero emissions. It would cost as much or more to build a GigaWatt solar plant.

The new Nuclear Technology, called Generation III+ is ready to roll-out now. It is modular, mostly pre-built, so it is assembled at the site. Takes less time, and assures fewer problems during construction. It is estimated that a new nuke can be built and online in less than three years after ground-breaking. The Gen III+ technology is far beyond what is online today. Like comparing today’s computers with a 1985 PC.
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/safenuclear.html

The USA can afford Nukes, but poorer countries cannot.

Dr. Richard Smalley is looking to the sun to replace oil. But he says today's technology is inadequate. He is taking about storage and transmission of solar energy across great distance, and he says the cost of solar hardware and storage must be reduced to 1/10 th of what it costs today. He has proposed a national R&D to discover the new technology that will harness the power of the sun for all of the world. Let's solve the energy problem once and for all.

Today's solar energy technology is too expensive for the majority of Earth's citizens. Poor nations could not afford to develop solar on the scale needed to create a modern economy. Only the affluent nations can exploit today's solar energy technology. The technology needed to solve the energy problem for all of the world - permanently - does not exist today.

The sun provides all the energy our modern civilization will ever need:
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/solarenergy.html
It is our technology that is inadequate.

If you have broadband, take the time to watch and listen to the internet video lecture given by Dr. Smalley at Columbia University. On the Our Energy Challenge web page, located at the American Energy Independence web site, you will find a link titled: Columbia University Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center presents "Our Energy Challenge". Click and it will take you to a web page where you will choose high or low bandwidth to stream a Windows Media Video over the internet to your home PC.

At the end of the lecture, Dr. Smalley answers questions from the audience. It is worth the time. You can attend a lecture given by one of the world's renowned scientists at home on your own PC.

Notice the part where he says we need a national leader to inspire the nation to accept "our energy Challenge" like President John F. Kennedy inspired the nation to accept the challenge to land a man on the moon.

It might be a good idea to be mum about this until after the State of the Union address. If we hear about "nucelar energy", the credibility of this idea will be soundly besmirched.

-Istoodforu

I did not consider that

I am sometimes too much of an idealist, I tend to detach from the politics.

Is it possible to think that Bush may say something right, for the wrong reasons?

I remain skeptical of the privatization of nuclear energy. I trust Public electric Utilities, public highways, public water, Public hospitals... etc., etc.

I don't see any evidence that private corporations are any better at public services. However, I do see an important role for private enterprise - manufacturing and retail, etc. Healthy competition and fair profit are powerful motivations that help advance our technology and industry.

I will make a bet (a safe bet I believe) that if nuclear energy is mentioned, it will be only a brief comment. The nuclear industry cannot compete with the coal industry in the area of campaign contributions. Nuclear energy is a direct threat to coal powered electric plants.

However, the "energy companies" that wholesale electricity from wherever they find it (like Enron did), have no loyalties to anyone but their bottom line. They will take Nuclear, coal or gas, or wind or solar, so long as they own it.

Good points. When it comes to energy, I'm inclined to have more trust in manufacturing and retail from the private sector, than either a public utility or "energy companies". What I'm getting at here is the manufacture and marketing of small scale energy generation systems (e.g. wind, water, and solar) that are affordable by homeowners and small communities. I think families and communities can be a lot stronger if they depend less on the infrastructure for their very survival. Decentralization of energy production facilitates decentralization of political power. We would be less vulnerable to terrorist attacks or massive power outages.

At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, I believe that small scale generation needs to be a bigger part of the whole of energy generation. HOWEVER, I wouldn't be in favor of small scale generation of nuclear power ---- not in my backyard, or my neighbor's for that matter. Plutonium is pretty nasty.

The DOE has a web page about Distributed Energy Technologies:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/de/

I believe the first real market for hydrogen fuel cells will be in our homes and offices. Your home or office solar energy system would generate electricity and hydrogen to be stored for night-time use. A company named Altergy offers this now: www.altergysystems.com

A lead acid battery system for storing solar energy (about 100 kwh) would cost about $10,000 which is a bit much for most people, and unthinkable for the vast majority of the world's population.

Here is a futurists vision: A nickel investment for future’s grid will pay off

The truth is, most people don't want to go off the grid. They don't care about energy. They care about what energy can do. They want to flip the light switch and have light. They want to turn on the heat or air condition. They want refrigerated food and cold drinks. They want TV and the Internet.

They do not want to fix a solar system that is not working on their roof. If they have problems they want to call the electric company and have it fixed ASAP.

However, I think you might be on to something, if you would consider local energy co-ops doing this, rather than individuals or families. That way people can appoint or pay the neighborhood energy enthusiast to keep the system running - something like a home owners association.

Also - we might achieve the same thing just by passing pro-democracy legislation that mandates a shared national grid (with terrorist-proof nodes) that is designed to accept input from local small generators who agree to supply a fixed amount of current to the grid at a given time.

Someone else might like to offer a better way to say this. What I am saying is that the grid cannot allow fluxuating donors. Either commit to generating X amount of electric power during an agreed upon time or you are not allowed on the grid.

This link provides information about the grid and renewable energy:Why Energy Storage?

Crude oil prices could surge again this year, agency says
By Jad Mouawad
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
January 19, 2005

After last year's record-breaking rally, crude oil prices might surge again this year if global demand does not slow, because the world still lacks sufficient production and refining capacity, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly report.

Consumption this year is expected to grow 1.7 percent, about half of last year's 3.3 percent growth. But an unexpected spike in demand from China or sudden cuts in global supplies could send the price soaring again while production, pipelines and refineries remain very tight, said the agency, a Paris-based advisory group to 26 industrialized countries.

The price of oil rose yesterday morning after the report was released, briefly touching $49.50 a barrel, but closed unchanged at $48.38 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after gaining nearly $3 last week. Markets in the United States reopened yesterday after being closed Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Crude oil prices have nearly doubled in two years as the strong growth in consumption has made it hard for the industry to keep up. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries lifted its output to a 25-year high last year in a bid to put as much oil on the market as possible and meet a surge in demand that few had anticipated.

After being criticized for misreading consumption early last year and playing down the impact of growing demand in Asia, and especially in China, the energy agency prefaced its latest report with a note of caution and a list of questions it left largely unanswered.

"Most forecasters, the IEA included, expect oil demand growth to slow in 2005 from the torrid pace of 2004," the report said. "But what happens if it doesn't? Given that last year's demand growth came as a complete surprise to market participants, how can one dismiss concerns that demand growth might once again be underestimated?

"If oil consumption were to surge in 2005 as fast as in 2004, would producers be able to rise to the challenge?"

The agency's monthly assessment of oil markets is among the most widely circulated reports in the industry. It is used by OPEC members to set policy and by analysts to write market reports.

Demand this year is expected to reach 83.9 million barrels a day, up 1.4 million barrels from last year, according to the energy agency's latest forecast. While significant, that falls short of last year's increase of 2.7 million barrels a day.

Some analysts faulted the agency for once again underestimating how much more oil China would consume. The agency said it expected demand there to grow this year by 360,000 barrels a day, to 6.73 million barrels a day. Last year, Chinese demand grew by 850,000 barrels a day, and was the largest contributor to the surge in the world's consumption.

"They massively underestimated growth for China last year and are underestimating growth again this year," said Kevin Norrish, an oil analyst at Barclays Capital in London. "The fact is the Chinese economy is strong and growing."

At the beginning of last year, the agency forecast global demand to reach 79.6 million barrels a day for 2004. In the latest report, it estimated actual demand was 82.4 million barrels a day.

Today, prices are still close to the record of more than $55 a barrel reached in October after a series of production breakdowns in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, while markets remain concerned about the stability of major oil producers like Iraq, Venezuela, Nigeria and Russia.

"Demand is the wild card here," said Katherine B. Spector, the global head of energy strategy for J.P. Morgan Chase. "But you don't need a collapse in demand to alter the picture. You could have incremental change."

In its report, the agency also highlighted some long-term issues affecting oil markets that contribute to high prices, like a lack of sufficient refining capacity and cutbacks in exploration activities.

"It's the first time that they present a case for much higher long-term oil prices," Norrish said. "The tone was quite different from what they've been writing previously. And when the report's tone changes, that has an impact."

Have you heard about the Big Rollover?

What is the Big Rollover? It's when the demand for oil outstrips the capacity to produce it.

Read about it here: Are We Running out of Oil?

'Big Rollover' is a new one on me. It's widely known as 'Peak Oil'

"Vehicle-to-Grid", or V2G, is one potentially useful technology for storing and delivering power to the electrical grid. V2G relies on the storage capacity of battery-electric or hybrid vehicles along with their onboard electronics to not only store and deliver power, but perform power quality monitoring and control functions. Admittedly, battery-electric autos seem to have had their plugs pulled by the auto industry, but the concept is still sound.

http://www.udel.edu/V2G/

http://www.newstarget.com/001569.html

This kind of technology is a good idea. It makes sense. But, the connection of our homes to the grid is one-way. We need smart meters and a smart grid. With strong federal legislation to mandate two-way plug-in.

Good post, thanks.

You might be interested in this link: How utilities can save America from its oil addiction

Energy and the Global Climate:

Preventing climate change is at its core an energy challenge. Globally, fossil fuel production and use accounts for nearly 60 percent of the emissions that are causing the Earth’s atmospheric blanket of carbon dioxide to thicken and trap more heat. In the United States, fossil fuels contribute an even larger share – 85 percent – of these emissions. The sources are oil (42%), coal (38%), and natural gas (22%) – split almost equally between use in transportation, industry, and buildings.

Of all the threats to the world’s environment, the prospect of climate change looms largest. There is almost complete consensus in the scientific community that our climate is changing and warming; the remaining uncertainty is about how fast and how much this will impact the globe. The responsible course in the face of these truths, in the face of risks that large, is to get moving in the right direction. Increased energy efficiency and increased use of renewable energy are tools to reduce carbon emissions that are readily available today, and their use would grow with economic incentives. Technologies for capturing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and pumping them into long-term storage underground offer another promising option.
Rising to the Challenge of Climate Change

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/globalwarming.html

Since the OPEC embargo of 1973, the problem of oil dependence has been the nation’s most important energy challenge. The Department of Energy was created in large part to respond to that challenge, but to little effect. Each of the last seven U.S. presidents has pledged to steer the nation toward greater energy security, but the problem has only grown worse. Imports have surpassed 50 percent of total oil consumption and are projected to reach more than 60 percent by 2010. Of the one trillion barrels of world reserves, only four percent are to be found in the United States, and fully two-thirds are in the Persian Gulf. Thus, increased drilling in the U.S. would make almost no discernible difference in our oil imports.

The intensity of oil use in the U.S. transportation sector makes the American economy vulnerable to the actions of states in this volatile region. A study by Oak Ridge National Laboratory estimates a $7 trillion cost to the U.S. economy from the oil market upheavals of the last 30 years. Indeed, every economic recession in the past 40 years has been preceded by a significant increase in oil prices.

Diversification of U.S. oil supply is not an adequate answer. Oil is like any other commodity – the last unit sold determines its price. The United States could shift all its purchases to relatively safe political sources, such as Canada and Mexico, and it would not be protected. The global price is what matters most. A major disruption of production of oil in Saudi Arabia would cause the price of oil to spike everywhere in the world, dramatically impacting the U.S. economy.

But there are solutions. Technologies that improve vehicle efficiency can have a significant impact on both oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector. Additionally, efforts to develop fuels from biomass promise to dramatically reduce our dependence on oil to retain the level of mobility we now enjoy.
Energy and Our National and Economic Security

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

We grew up with the bug and the and the VW bus. What about subsidies to develop and market an ecobug and an ecobus in Detroit? Let's do it so that these are at least assembled by Americans getting decent wages and benefits----and designed by American engineers.

We do take the grid for granted. As a result people often feel a lot of anxiety and disorientation during an extended power outage. That's probably one of the biggest component stressors of an hurricane or some other catastrophic event. During those events, low tech rules. People who are accustomed to using low tech alternatives and have those handy in their homes, tend to experience less acute stress.
I remember really feeling helpless and panicky on one cold Friday afternoon when the power company shut off our power due to a "misunderstanding" about our energy bill. There didn't seem much else to do but crawl into bed with a lot of blankets and wait until Monday when we could get things straightened out when the power company office opened.

I wasn't aware that the grid cannot allow fluctuating donors but now that I think about it, it does make sense. The grid more or less has to use it or lose it, unless technology develops to efficiently store a huge amount of energy----like some huge energizer bunnies.

The Bush administration and their Department of Energy is almost 100% conterproductive in terms of supporting energy efficient technologies of all kinds. Don't expect that to change anytime soon.

If you/we want an Ecobug or an Ecobus, its up to folks like us to build them. I have been hoping some type of truly progressive energy group would help support efforts to produce such manufactured products for several years, not really anything like that happening yet. Perhaps by 2008 or 2012 the "Apollo Alliance" or somebody like them might. My last nerve will be burnt long before then.

Ford recently unveiled what I believe was a hydrogen powered bus, though I'm almost certain it was powered by "black hydrogen". That's no help at all.

I'm begining to suspect the lead and mercury levels in America's collective brain has reached a toxic level. What else would explain the rampant stupidity of the general population?

The Rocky Mountain Institute website provides numerous articles on oil/energy independence. While I'm not in agreement with Amory Lovins on his advocacy of hydrogen, this site is definitely worth exploring if you've got the time.

And in the meantime the rest of the develope world from Australia to Thailand can only shake their heads in sorrow and glee over the rampant stupidity that is US energy policy. They (we) are gonna make billions selling and leasing energy technologies to the US. while they will wring their hands and ask themself what has gone wrong. :o
It must be that anti-american conspiracy that has coursed it. Those frog eating french, those buck tooth japanese whit their inscrutable minds (We wont accused China, FOX News and Wal Mart says we cant).
In the EU, China, Japan, Canada and tigers of asia incl India. Energy policy is seen as to important to be left soly in the private sectors hands. And quite rightly since many of the technologies from high efficient solar panels (Germany & Japan) to Wave energy (Denmark & EU) and Fusion Power (EU, Canada & Japan)is simply to costly for the average multinational to simply develope in any meaning full way.
Only firms like GE. BP. & Siemens / Bauer has the size and inclination to invest any meaningfull amount in said technologies. But they are good at it too, even throu GE is still a second tier firm in wind turbines compared to the world largest firm in that area (Which they have sought and alliance/takeover bid for) Vestas.
BP is developing solar cells so is Shell, and Siemens/ Bauer has already a fairly large produktion going of said produks, whic is giving them a nice little profit on the side and good PR to boot.

Hello again Alexander38,

Glad to see you are still keeping an eye on us here. It sure looks like it is going to be up to the Europeans and the rest of the world to solve America's energy problems, and they'll undoubtedly get rich off us in the process. Americans seem to be gradually accepting the continual rise in energy prices, like there's no way round it.

I was talking up solar power with an older gentleman I know. His reply was about "how ugly those solar panels are", which is directly attributable to former Pres Ronald Reagan whether the old man knows it or not.

Another equally clueless friend actually suggested "we should nuke the whole middle east, move in and take ALL of the oil".

I'm currently in a red state, surrounded by fools of this general mindset. Gotta start packing, about time to sell the house and move on.

Wouldn't it be great if we as a nation would start to "act in our own selfish interests", but first we will need to reconsider the "global economy".

The idea behind Adam Smith's "invisible hand" is that when people are free to pursue their own selfish interests, the collective effect is like an invisible hand serving the greater good... Well, then why can't a nation pursue its own selfish interests? That is what China is doing, with help from Wal-Mart.

"When the rules of the free market undermine the security and prosperity of the nation, the American people need to change the rules. A free market is the engine of prosperity and economic growth, but unrestrained greed can hurt people; for example: Enron. Unrestrained greed, dishonest executives, foreign oil monopoly, the added expense of protecting the country from terrorism, and the fact that the Global Economy is far from being a level playing field, all work together to undermine the security and prosperity of America. The rules of the free market must insure that capitalism is forced to serve the people.

Global capitalism should not be allowed to become the master of nations."
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

If every home had a battery that could hold 100 kwH of electrical charge, that would go a long way toward solving the problem of being cut-off from the grid.

Nobel laureate Richard Smalley has proposed a national R&D program aimed at developing new technology such as a washing machine size battery for the home that would store 100 kw hours of electricity, and cost under $1,000 dollars. The technology to do that does not exist today. He also advocates R&D aimed at developing technology that would convert 80-90% of solar energy to electricity and cost less than 1/10 th of existing solar cells that only convert about 20% of the suns light. The technology does not exist today.

Do we have the political will to do this? Do we have the political leadership to champion this?

Our Energy Challenge

I would like to see a $5 per barrel tariff placed on all oil imported into the USA, if the oil is produced from anywhere outside of North America. That would help wean the United States from oil dependence without punishing Americans and local American business that depend on US oil production; including Canada and Mexico.

The oil tariff would give domestic biodiesel and other synthetic fuels an edge in the USA markets.

Then, I would like to see 100% of the revenue from the tariff invested in Dr. Smalley's R&D program.

A $5 per barrel tariff would generate about Ten billion dollars per year. Invest that much in solar and electrical storage R&D, every year for the next 10-20 years and we would witness the discovery of new technology that we have not imagined yet.
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/energychallenge.html

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/zif.html

Let's look back a few months... March 12, 2004 - Kerry v. Bush

TomPaine.com published an article that supports the idea of "Evangelizing American Energy Independence": Dumping Crude By Patrick Doherty, who spent a decade in the field of international conflict resolution, working in the Middle East, Africa, Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus.

So it's Kerry v. Bush. If the candidates deliver an honest debate on our economy and security, we'll be talking about energy this year.

We already know the two perspectives. Team Bush denies the scientific consensus on global warming, calls for redundant research and subsidizes oil, coal and natural gas. Kerry calls for a new Manhattan Project to make America independent of Middle East oil in 10 years by creating alternative fuels like ethanol and making cars more efficient. Among other things, his plan would create half-a-million new jobs.

What seems to be a stark contrast, however, isn't. Kerry's objectives are a move in the right direction, but they do not go far enough or fast enough. The Middle East supplies only 17 percent of our total crude oil consumption or 28 percent of imports. That means America would still be dependent on the global oil market, which is increasingly reliant on Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. As long as we get our oil on the global market, we will be chained to the dysfunctional politics of the Middle East.

Fortunately for Kerry, he won't need to study the problem for another decade. It turns out that three months before the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment published its explosive report about the threat posed by climate change (see Climate Change Alert), it published another report entitled, A Strategy: Moving America Away from Oil. The report, prepared by the Arlington Institute, outlines how to wean the United States off oil completely in 15 years. That's well beyond Kerry's 17 percent reduction over 10 years. (Read the report here.)

Oil, Oil, Oil

The report states plainly that our addiction to oil does more harm to American interests than good:

. . . The geopolitical issues associated with a major dependency on a raw material that is often found in politically unstable areas have come to a head, contributing in part to two Persian Gulf conflicts in the last dozen years.

The last senior government official to admit that Iraq was about oil was then-Secretary of State James Baker a dozen years ago. Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld may forever change their rationale for invading Iraq, but here we have a matter-of-fact statement that America's dependency on oil played a role in our two wars in Iraq. As the excuses for Operation Iraqi Freedom"WMD, terror and democracy"all fall by the wayside, it is encouraging to know that some folks in the Pentagon who know it was about oil, think things need to change and are willing to act.

The report continues that same straightforward talk as it delivers an assessment of our energy security situation. The reality is that we are a nation made extremely (and unnecessarily) vulnerable by our dependence on oil. Oil provides virtually all the energy for our transportation system and we import nearly 60 percent of our supply. Our trading partners in the developed world and the growing economies of China, India and South Korea are all similarly dependent and insecure. It's this global dependence on oil that determines the threats we face: destabilized producing regions and supply routes, extreme price swings, vulnerable concentrations of infrastructure and energy scarcity among the 5/6ths of the world's population in the developing world. Add the quite plausible wild cards like abrupt climate change, and this net assessment is dismal.

Since this report was published last August, America has followed its trajectory for the worst-case scenario, called turbulent world. The United States is mired in military protection of oil reserves around the world, our credibility is damaged, prices for gasoline and natural gas are high and upstream energy investment is off pace with projected demand. As it gets worse, the authors project, terrorist incidents will increase, investor and consumer confidence will drop, the government will shift from band-aid to band-aid and carbon emissions will rise, accelerating climate change.

Fifteen Years

The centerpiece of the report is a strategy for moving the United States from oil dependence to independence in 15 years. The authors provide the evidence to assert that a secure future will be all-electric, decentralized and efficient. The transition happens in three stages of five years each. Car engine technology moves from internal combustion to hybrids to fuel cells. On-board fuel moves from oil (gasoline, diesel) to bio-fuels (such as ethanol) to pure hydrogen. Transportation sector efficiency doubles from today's paltry 20 percent by shifting to ethanol hybrids and further increases with vehicles designed around hydrogen fuel cell power systems. After 15 years and less than $100 billion in investment, America will have kicked its oil habit.

This is not science fiction. The technology is available to start today. The challenge is transforming the market and the infrastructure, but attitudes are already changing. The plan notes the emerging alliance between the Motor City and the Midwest: General Motors recently signed a two-year partnership agreement with the national Ethanol Vehicle Coalition. That's because this path to independence makes great economic sense. A survey by the consumer-opinion gurus at J.D. Powers shows that with hybrid SUVs entering the market this year, sales are expected to expand significantly. And by growing our own fuel, we keep hundreds of billions of dollars right here at home, producing jobs and transforming America.

A Coherent Plan

Our future hinges on the coming debate on the economy and security. The Bush team wants to frame the debate as about two separate issues: economic growth and terrorism.

Bush, with a track record of distorting science and manipulating intelligence, has chosen a debate that fits his ideology, but does not reflect reality. There's no source of growth on the horizon and with both candidates ignoring the $44 trillion fiscal imbalance, any growth we get will be crushed by a massive spike in interest rates. Terrorism, of course, is fueled by our dependence on oil.

Nevertheless, the media already think this election is about economic growth and terrorism. Unless the Democrats challenge this frame, Kerry will be forced to debate band-aids instead of solutions. If that happens, Bush's mantra that the Democrats don't have a plan will stick: there are no short-term fixes possible.

Democrats still have time to change the frame. To do so, Democrats must abandon the dysfunctional 1950s-era economic formula of sprawl, fossil fuels and distorting subsidies and offer the obvious alternative.

These Pentagon reports, the Institute for America's Future's Apollo Alliance, the International Panel on Climate Change and recent studies by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the global re-insurance giant, SwissRe, all point to it: smart growth, renewable energy and global carbon trading. It means better jobs, more security and an increasingly prosperous, just and healthy society.

Sprawl or smart growth. Fossil fuels or renewables. Subsidies or carbon markets. These are the choices facing America. This is the debate America and the world desperately need.

Kerry has this new economic formula in his platform and in fact just raised the profile of his smart growth plank. And yet his mantra is education, healthcare and jobs. He can't have it both ways. We can either tweak the old economy or we usher in the new one.

These two Pentagon reports clearly state that the time for tweaking is over. The time for change has arrived.

It's not time to "bring it on," John Kerry. It's time to raise the bar.

Isn't it obvious that the Republican strategy is to the keep the Democrats off-balance so that the "Left" is always reacting to the "Right's" initiatives instead of progressively putting forth a new vision for our country?

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

If you haven't read this yet, take a few minutes, it's worth it:

A Better Way to Get From Here to There

A Commentary on the Hydrogen Economy and a Proposal for an Alternative Strategy

Forgotten in the sound and fury that followed Sept. 11 is the fact that bin Laden's top priority is the demise of the Saudi monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic state that would control the gulf's vast oil reserves. The United States, as bin Laden sees it, is the principal prop of the Saudi regime. Pakistan's Islamists talk about a greater Islamic state that would marry Saudi oil to Islamic nuclear weapons and collapse the capitalist system. Extravagant geopolitical lucubrations perhaps, but they also are the objectives of politico-religious leaders who wield tremendous influence among the Muslim world's impoverished masses.
Conspiracy of Silence Hides Saudi Connection to Terrorism


The next time Americans consider the purchase of a family car that matches satisfying heft with infinitesimal fuel mileage, they might want to think about where some of that gas money will ultimately be going. Part of the price of every extra gallon helps, albeit indirectly, to finance mosques and religious schools all over the world that spread a fanatical variant of Islam that sees legitimacy in terrorist attacks. This financing, amounting to billions of dollars a year, comes from the government and private charities of Saudi Arabia, a country that is now taking in roughly $80 billion a year from oil exports.
The Saudi syndrome

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com

Energy Independence and National Security

This is a very interesting article:


The Art of Energy -
The future will not be painted in oil.
By Peter Huber and Mark Mills
Tuesday Feb. 1, 2005

The past, present, and future of our energy economy are on display at the Museum of Modern Art. Don't look for a barrel of crude; admire, instead, what curator Terence Riley describes as "a remarkably beautiful object, half metal, half composite, that goes together in this crazy way that only a computer could understand." A mere 4 feet long, this relatively small but stupendously powerful exemplar of indigenous American craft is a fan blade from a jet engine that powers a Boeing 777. The unnamed artists who created it work for General Electric, the corporate Medici of the modern turbine.

Oil is not the dominant fuel of our modern economy. Oil supplies about 40 percent of the raw energy we use, and we use it mainly in our cars. Coal, uranium, gas, and hydroelectric power supply the other 60 percent or so. And by far the most important use of this not-oil fuel is to produce high-speed streams of hot gas that spin much larger versions of the blade on display at MoMA in New York. The blades spin the shafts that turn the generators that power our homes and offices.

And electricity—not oil—defines the fast-expanding center of our energy economy today. About 60 percent of our GDP now comes from industries and services that run on electricity. All the fastest growth sectors of the economy—information technology and telecom, most notably—depend entirely on electricity. More than 85 percent of the growth in U.S. energy demand since 1980 has been met by electricity.

The electrification of our economy is accelerating. In factories and refineries, electrically powered microwave ovens, lasers, welders, dryers are steadily displacing gas-fired ovens—because these new tools are far more precise and ultimately cheaper. This will move about 15 percent of our energy economy into the electrical sector over the next 20 years.

Even more significantly, the car is now being transformed into a sort of giant electrical appliance. Hybrid cars propelled by onboard, gasoline-fired electrical generators are indeed coming. Not for their fuel efficiency, or because they run cleaner—though they are efficient, and they do run clean. But because the new electrical drive trains that carmakers can now build offer much better performance, lower cost, and less weight. Five to 10 years from now—sooner than you think—you'll be driving around in a sort of two-ton Cuisinart.

It won't run more than about five miles on its onboard batteries—that's why it will still have a gasoline engine. But its batteries will take it about that far—a hefty onboard battery pack is essential to provide bursts of power for acceleration. As our city streets begin to fill up with these monster appliances, people will begin topping off their batteries from the grid. The vast majority of trips are under five miles. Cars spend most of their day parked. And the grid—fired by much more efficient power plants that burn much cheaper fuels—can recharge a hybrid car's battery for between one-third and one-tenth of the cost of power generated by the car's onboard gasoline-fired generator. Within a decade, we could readily be shifting a quarter or more of a typical driver's most fuel-hungry miles from the gas tank to the grid, very little of which is lighted by oil.

Now, back to art. Blades like the one on display at MoMA cost a lot. America currently spends about $400 billion a year on raw fuel—make that $500 billion if oil stays at $50 per barrel, which it won't. But we spend at least $500 billion a year on blades, furnaces, generators, car engines, motors, light bulbs, lasers—all the things that we use to transform, refine, and purify energy as we dig it out of the ground, and turn heat into motion, and motion into electricity, and electricity into laser light, and so forth.

The upshot: We are far less sensitive to the cost of raw fuel than we used to be, when the art-to-fuel ratio was a lot lower. Raw fuel accounts for about one-third of coal-fired power—which is to say, half of all our electricity—and only one-tenth of our nuclear electricity. Fuel costs represent under 20 percent of the typical cost of driving—not because gas is cheap, but because we spend so much more turning the exploding gasoline into a safe, comfortable ride. And you hardly think about raw-fuel costs at all when you check in for laser surgery and use half-cent-per-kilowatt-hour coal in an industrial boiler to create the $200 light of an ytterbium laser.

We are thus witnessing the economic twilight of fuel. America burns enough fuel to release 100 quadrillion BTUs of raw thermal energy every year. That's a gargantuan amount, and it keeps rising geometrically. Yet year by year, the cost of all those quads grows less and less important in our modern economy. The quality and cost of the engineering hardware matters far more.

If the future favored by the greens ever comes to pass, the art will count for everything. The 130 turbines GE is building for America's first offshore wind park five miles off Cape Cod will have 150-foot blades, mounted on towers rising 400 feet above the water. The wind is free and will blow forever; the art will account for the entire cost of the power. But that doesn't mean that wind is the way to go. Modern engineering art isn't cheap, conventional fuels still are, and wind is only one among many alternatives.

Indeed, for all our worrying about energy—or perhaps because of it—we humans have proved fantastically clever at plucking it from our surroundings. For the two centuries of industrial history now behind us, the technologies we have used to find, extract, or capture energy from our environment have certainly improved much faster than the horizon of supply has receded.

However bad it may be for the planet, the planet itself won't put a stop to this any time soon. Humanity currently consumes roughly 60 billion barrels of oil or its energy equivalent (referred to as BBOE, for billion barrels of oil equivalent) every year, about half of that as oil itself and half from other fuels. But the planet offers us, within quite easy reach, about 30,000 BBOE of coal and 2 million BBOE of oil shale. The winds of Nantucket Sound are powered by a tiny fraction of the 1 million BBOE of solar energy that reach the surface of the Earth every year. And the waters of the sound itself, and the oceans beyond, contain 2 trillion BBOE worth of deuterium, the fuel that lights the sun.

We think up new ways to use energy as fast as we think of new ways to find and seize it. Powered by much smaller blades but much richer fuel, a half-dozen jumbo jets in flight consume high-grade energy about as fast as the 130 turbines off Cape Cod will eventually generate it. We now build remarkably efficient solar cells out of silicon, but we build silicon microprocessors, too, and much faster; overall, the digital silicon currently consumes far more electricity than the solar silicon generates. In 1831, Michael Faraday, the great English physicist, discovered how to transform motion into electricity; he later demonstrated the phenomenon to William Gladstone, then chancellor of the exchequer.* "But, after all," Gladstone remarked, "what good is it?" To which Faraday could only reply, "Why, sir, one day you will tax it." With energy, that's always the safest bet: Demand materializes, and supplies do, too.

It's foolish to suppose that existing wells won't run dry—they will. But it's equally foolish to suppose that the tools we use to pump, strip, sift, seize, and separate energy from our surroundings can't improve and adapt as fast, or faster, than they have since 1765, when James Watt perfected a coal-fired steam engine … to facilitate the mining of more coal. For all practical purposes, energy supplies are determined not by the planet but by how ingenious we humans are at finding and seizing the energy we crave. And these days our engineers are so very clever, their handiwork is on display in one of the finest art museums in the country.

Correction, Feb. 1: The original version of this article mistakenly stated that Faraday demonstrated his discovery to Gladstone in 1831. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

Peter Huber, a fellow of the Manhattan Institute, and Mark Mills, of Digital Power Capital, are co-authors of The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run out of Energy

Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2112806/

Professor Galen Suppes attracted national attention last year by claiming that U.S. technology can now produce synthetic oil from coal cheaper than $30 per barrel.

The USA has more coal (in energy value) than the world has oil.

His book on the subject is available through Amazon.

Energy Disclosed: Abundant Resources and Unused Technology
— A book on energy technology and options available to make our country stronger and the world a better place
By Galen J. Suppes, Ph.D., P.E.
Truman S. Storvick, Ph.D., P.E.

Product Description:
The history of energy and man’s use of energy is the history of the inventions that have become modern manufacturing, transportation and communications. Energy industries have evolved from small-town shops to a few very large firms with annual sales approaching one trillion dollars per year. Contests between the industrial barons seeking to maximize their profit and government officials elected to represent the interest of individual U. S. citizens read like novels with villains and heroes crossing the battle lines in both directions. Add to this mix the special interest groups (often representing a single issue) usually speaking with a shrill voice, and there is little common ground that represents acceptable energy strategy for the 21st century. The average citizen is lost in the confusion of the battle between economic, political, environmental and social issues. In this confusion, knowledge is power, and the average citizen has yet to yield this power to its potential.

Our purpose for writing this book is to help you, our reader, better understand energy sources and the ways they are made available for your use. While biology, chemistry, and science are commonly taught in secondary schools, colleges, and universities; energy science and technology are only sparingly covered outside college curriculum in engineering or geology. It is important that every citizen be well enough informed to ask candidates for elected office to explain proposed energy policy. Our objective is to provide energy information that can help this interested citizen.

Energy’s history on earth starts with the sunlight that helped form wood and living organisms. Wood and living organisms are the raw materials stored by nature and transformed by geological processes over millions of years to give us coal, petroleum and natural gas. Wood warmed the cradle of civilization. Coal was probably first used 2000 years ago, and more recently, it powered the industrial revolution starting about 1700. Liquid fuel is easiest to use in engines and served to power the modern automobile. The first fixed wing aircraft flew using this same liquid fuel just after 1900. Liquid petroleum fuels made the 20th century the petroleum age with the mid-century addition of natural gas pipeline distribution.

Our ancestors didn’t know it, but it was this solar energy that produced the winds to push ships and turn windmills. It evaporates water from the salty oceans that the winds carry to high places where the fresh water of rains fed streams and rivers that turned their water wheels. The rain that is essential for our food supply and our lives would end in hours without the energy from the sun. Solar energy is the source of life on earth!

Prior to the sun’s radiation touching earth, atomic energy was shaping the universe. Man tapped into the power of nuclear energy near the end of World War II with two thunderous explosions over Japan. Two city centers were leveled and thousands of people evaporated.

This unfriendly introduction to nuclear energy has produced the attitude among many that everything nuclear should be banned. Even the name Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (an important medical diagnostic tool) had to be changed to calm patient anxiety. Attitude withstanding, nature’s nuclear energy touches us in the form of the sun’s radiation and geothermal heat every day. And when confronted with depleting oil and coal reserves, we cannot ignore the huge energy reserves available through nuclear energy.

Today, there are over 100 nuclear power plants in the U. S. producing about 20% of the electricity we use every day. A few pounds of "nuclear fuel" replaces thousands of tons of diesel or coal fuel, allows a submarine to cruise under water for months instead of hours, and provides electrical power without the air pollution associated with burning coal, petroleum, and vegetation.

The source of this nuclear energy goes back to the time when atoms were formed, long before our solar system existed. All of the atoms that we find in the gases, liquids and solids on earth were assembled in and among the stars from the particles and energy that make up our sun and the rest of the Milky Way Galaxy. The history of energy starts, and ends, with nuclear energy.

Organization of the Book

The chapters of this book are intended to be self contained. This results in duplication of topics, but it should be easier to read where you have special interest.

Chapters 1, 2, and 3 cover the history of energy, the reserves and some of the renewable resources available to us.

The story of energy through the 19th and 20th century depends on the work produced by hot gases expanding in engines (machines designed to do work). The science and technology of the development of these machines is summarized in Chapter 4. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 describe the technologies that provide transportation, electricity and the equipment we use to heat and cool our homes and workplaces.

Chapter 8 looks at the battle between economic, political, environmental and social issues from an entirely new perspective. The perspective is on government policies and how these policies can unintentionally take away incentives to invest into new U.S. technology and infrastructure. The defaults are either investment into foreign infrastructure or simply not commercializing the very technology that will solve today’s greatest social problems. Here, the widespread identification of this problem is the most important step toward its solution.

Chapter 9 evaluates alternative energy sources and technologies. We depend exclusively on petroleum fuels for transportation, and any interruption of our supply of imported petroleum can become an instant economic and social problem. Coal is the main source of fuel for electric power production; here, the competition from other energy sources keeps the price of electricity fairly stable. Known and emerging technologies can stabilize energy prices and create security from unemployment and military conflict.

Chapter 10 considers how changes in the energy infrastructure and economy can occur. The energy industries and the distribution network are run by a few huge industries. It will take billions of dollars to build any alternative energy source that can provide even 5% of our current use. Any changes made in the national energy system won’t happen by accident, and these changes will take two or three decades to occur. The energy future is much too important to society to be left to industrial leaders. Informed citizens, and especially the government officials they elect, must be involved in these decisions.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Product Details:
Paperback: 226 pages
Publisher: Renewable Alternatives, LLC (October, 2004)
ISBN: 0974952230

About the Authors:
Professor Suppes is an associate professor of chemical engineering at The University of Missouri-Columbia. Twenty years of experience in researching and teaching on topics of energy technology have been compiled in this text. The book was inspired by the fact that there are many and good solutions to the energy-related problems of today's societies.

Professor Storvick is an emeritus professor of chemical engineering at The University of Missouri-Columbia. Through over 50 years of professional experience Professor Storvick has witnessed historic milestones in alternative fuel and nuclear technologies. Professor Storick is also one of the few researchers, worldwide, who has participated in a major project designed to reprocess nuclear fuel.

See also:
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/cleanhydrocarbons.html

"It is a basic lesson of chemistry that the energy needs we meet today with petroleum can be met by other hydrocarbons, including natural gas, coal, tar sands and oil shale, for which there are centuries' worth of supplies, and environmentally sound methods of production available today or within economic reach. Natural petroleum has a cost advantage as a liquid fuel but the cost of making synthetic petroleum from coal or tar sands is modest and likely to fall substantially if carried out on a large scale and with appropriate research and development.

"The alleged cost advantages of natural petroleum over synthetic petroleum have probably already disappeared when we recognize the U.S. is paying a fortune in finances and blood for Middle East oil that is not counted in the price at the pump. The dollar costs of U.S. military operations in the Middle East attributable to policing the energy flows are tens of billions a year, if not $100 billion (£ 57 billion) or more. This amounts to a hidden subsidy to oil use of ten dollars or more per barrel exported from the region."
– America's disastrous energy plan
By Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University.
Published in Financial Times, December 23, 2003

www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/nationalsecurity.html

The replacement of coal power plants with nuclear power plants would reduce America’s atmospheric CO2 emissions by 30%.

Nuclear power is a proven emission-free energy source that can replace gas, oil and coals fired base-load electric power generation plants, and help the USA to develop a replacement for our oil based transportation fuel.

Nuclear power can begin to give America energy independence now, by providing the process heat required for manufacture of synthetic oil from coal. If nuclear heat is used in the manufacture of synthetic oil from coal, then the yield of oil from coal would be much higher than if coal was used to provide the process heat.

If coal power plants were replaced by nuclear power plants, for base-load electricity, and coal is used to make synthetic gasoline, then Americans who are dependent on the coal mining industry for their incomes would support nuclear energy. A billion tons of coal per year, at 3 barrels of oil per ton, could replace about 65% of America’s imported oil. (At 12 million imported barrels per day, 65% is 7,800,000 barrels per day.) Just over 20% of oil imported into the USA today comes from Persian Gulf Nations, which are also members of OPEC. Less than 45% of oil imported into the USA today comes from OPEC.

The U.S. has an estimated 268 billion tons of recoverable coal in existing mines, amounting to two to three times as much energy in coal as Saudi Arabia has in oil--enough to last a couple of centuries or more. That's only the coal in existing mines. If you consider total recoverable reserves, the U.S. has nearly 500 billion tons.

Synthetic Gasoline and Diesel from Coal
Gas-To-Liquids (GTL) technology is a process that will produce synthetic petroleum from America's abundant coal reserves.

"Synthetic diesel" and "Synthetic gasoline" are refined from synthetic petroleum, in the same way diesel and gasoline are refined from natural fossil petroleum (oil). The GTL technology starts with syngas (synthesis gas), which can be produced from any hydrocarbon source, including coal, oil sands, oil shale and biomass or even from recycled CO2 combined with hydrogen obtained from the electrolysis of water. In a reaction based on Fischer-Tropsch chemistry, the synthesis gas flows into a reactor containing a catalyst and is converted into synthetic hydrocarbons commonly referred to as synthetic petroleum.

GTL technology can be used to convert America's vast coal deposits into synthetic petroleum and/or clean synthetic diesel fuel, thus enabling the use of these resources in an environmentally friendly way.

The oil companies are not going to rush into the construction of new synthetic petroleum refineries because they do not want to be in a position like they found themselves in when President Reagan cut-off federal support for similar technology developed by the Carter Administration. When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 he ended the national synthetic fuels program, forcing the oil companies to abandon their investments in synthetic petroleum refineries here in the U.S.

Engineers who worked with the original Synthetic Fuels program admit that it had problems, but that was over 25 years ago. Considering the extraordinary advances in technology over the past 25 years, imagine where the synthetic fuels technology would be today if President Reagan had kept the program going.

Fortunately, private companies and the DOE have quietly continued research and development of Gas-To-Liquids technology. The GTL technology, available now, can produce synthetic petroleum from coal for under $40 per barrel. However, the up-front investment required for building a large GTL refinery would be hundreds of millions of dollars, so the oil companies don't want their money tied up in a GTL investment if world oil starts flowing again at under $30 per barrel.

Until we, as a nation, place a value on energy independence, alternate fuels cannot compete with the price of Saudi oil. Write your legislators in Congress today and ask them to support federal incentives for the development of Synthetic Liquid Fuels.

Write to your elected Representatives in Congress Now!


www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/cleanhydrocarbons.html

Packing away the petroleum

The US consumes more oil than any other nation: 20 million barrels per day in 2003, followed by China (5.6 million b.p.d.), Japan (5.4 million b.p.d.), and Germany and Russia (2.6 million b.p.d. each). But future demand for oil will rise at uneven rates:

• World oil use will increase by 44 million b.p.d. by 2025 - roughly equal to adding two more USAs to world demand.

• While industrialized nations consume 50 percent more oil than developing nations today, the developing world will catch up. By 2025, it's forecast to use 94 percent of what the developed world will use.

• A huge increase will come from China, which will see energy use for transportation more than triple by 2025.

Source: Energy Information Administration



www.csmonitor.com/2004/1021/p13s02-stct.html

Within 10 years, the cost of oil will hit $100 per barrel... the average price of gasoline within the USA will be $4 per gallon or more...

And the bad news is... these are conservative projections.

Is there a Smart, Real-Time Meter in your future?

The gas and electric meter at your home is dumb. The power company guy walks up and reads the meter once per month. The price of the electricity does not change during the day and night, though the demand for electricity cycles through extreme changes during the hours of the day.

Consumers can save money, a lot of money, and prevent electrical power outages if they have the knowledge and control to do so. Smart meters and smart appliances hold the key to both knowledge and control. Real-Time Meters using software and computer technology, installed in homes, offices and factories, can receive a price signal from the utility, through the power grid, and return usage information to the utility. This capability would make possible a wide assortment of products and services that could take advantage of real-time electricity prices.

Smart appliances, smart buildings and smart factory equipment can be programmed to interact with the power grid to insure optimal power usage and give the consumer the best power price by "knowing" to shut-down or reduce consumption when prices increase. Smart meters can also measure and control water and gas consumption.
www.AmericanEnergyIndependence.com/efficiency.html

But are the meters that SDG&E wants to install smart enough?

Time is money
SDG&E wants to replace traditional electric meters with high-tech devices capable of billing customers for power based on time of day it's used

By Craig D. Rose
STAFF WRITER

March 17, 2005

San Diego Gas & Electric is proposing to install a new generation of electricity meters that would match customers' bills with the wildly fluctuating rates that power fetches through the course of each day.

That could mean cheaper power at night and far more expensive power during hot summer afternoons, when many Californians want to crank up their air conditioners.

SDG&E, which this week submitted a detailed proposal to regulators for installing the new meters, is offering only a general outline of what it might propose regarding varying rates for power.



"Similar to higher-priced peak cellular phone minutes, energy used during certain peak periods would cost more, while energy used outside of those periods would cost less," said William Reed, an SDG&E vice president.

"Overall, the average rate would stay the same."

The plan that SDG&E has presented state utility regulators would require spending $420 million over four years to remove old power meters and install advanced meters for each of its 1.3 million customers. But the investment would provide savings of $660 million to customers over the long run, according to SDG&E.

The utility said the meters and new rate plan would trim peak power demand by 360 megawatts – equivalent to what's used by nearly 360,000 homes – and eliminate the need for several so-called peaker plants, units that are run only to meet demand on the hottest days of year.

The new meters also would eliminate the need for human meter readers and provide the utility with more immediate power-grid information, potentially reducing the likelihood or the duration of outages.

But the program would, for the first time, expose small business and residential consumers to fluctuating hourly prices of electricity, a commodity that can't be stored and with a price volatility that is legendary.

Even on cool days, with low power demand, the utility's hourly cost for electricity can double in the course of a 24-hour period. During the hottest days or when supplies are tight, far higher swings in power costs can occur.

On Sept. 8, a day of record electricity usage in the state, power prices fluctuated sixfold in the course of the day. Those costs were driven by the scarcity of electricity and by the increased cost of producing power from peaker plants, which are typically the most costly units to run.

Under current rates, the billed cost of running a central air conditioner in typical homes is 40 to 80 cents an hour, depending on system size.

Had high-tech meters been in place last Sept. 8, customers could have found themselves paying far more for using power during the hottest part of the day and perhaps less for using power in off hours, depending on what new rate plan is approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, which will review SDG&E's proposal.

The utility and other advocates of time-of-use meters believe that the devices, which flash signals indicating times of high power costs, will encourage customers to shift consumption to periods of lower demand and lower prices.

SDG&E says it expects that customers would delay doing laundry and other nonessential activities until off-peak hours, reducing the need for peaker plants.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which serves Bay Area customers, has reached the same conclusion and is making a similar proposal.

Southern California Edison, the state's third major electric utility, agrees that advanced meters could provide efficiencies and savings, but says it wants to wait for the development of lower-cost devices before moving to deploy them.

Consumer advocates said yesterday that they worry about customers who can't shift their power consumption because their primary usage is for refrigerators or badly needed air conditioning.

"They could be punished by time-of-use rates," said Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers' Action Network. "What can the owner of a 7-Eleven do to reduce peak demand?"

Shames also said the technology could bring real benefits, adding that he hopes to work with SDG&E on a proposal for advanced metering that would be beneficial to all.

If the California Public Utilities Commission approves the plan, SDG&E will expand an earlier pilot program and install advanced meters for 10,000 customers this year. After an assessment, the utility would begin permanent deployment of meters to customers in 2007 and complete the process in 2009.

The electric meters also would be able to monitor natural-gas consumption, eliminating the need for meter readers. SDG&E said it didn't anticipate the need for layoffs among the 160 part-and full-time meter readers and would instead eliminate the jobs through promotions, transfers and attrition.

SDG&E's proposal to provide the new meters to all customers is a shift from its earlier plan to deploy them for 40 percent of its ratepayers. It said customer fairness motivated the expansion.

The utility also said results from 300 customers in its first pilot program found that the customers used 14 percent less electricity during peak periods.

"We wanted to give all customers a chance to control their energy usage and opportunities to save," said Ed Van Herik, an SDG&E spokesman.

www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050317/news_1n17meters.html

ExxonMobile, the world's largest oil company, is sitting on $23.1 billion in cash, more than double what it was holding last year. ChevronTexaco has nearly $10 billion in hand, also doubling its cash reserves over one year ago. In all, assuming an average price of $50 per barrel, Americans will pay more than $200 billion this year, most of it going to undemocratic governments in the Middle East and Africa.

www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/editorial2/20050326-9999-lz1ed26bottom.html

Private electric mass transit...

A revolution in urban transportation

www.unimodal.com
www.skywebexpress.com

ExxonMobil recently announced that it has so much extra cash, it hasn't even figured out how to spend it all.

The five largest oil companies are ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Conoco-Phillips, BP and Shell; collectively, they’ve raked in profits of $230 billion since 2001. This handful of corporations controls a substantial chunk of the oil and gas market, enabling it to keep gas prices artificially high. Indeed, a 2004 investigation by Congress' research arm, the Government Accountability Office, concluded “that mergers and increased market concentration generally led to higher wholesale gasoline prices in the United States.”

Increasing fuel economy standards to 40 miles per gallon by 2015, would reduce U.S. oil consumption by 2.3 million barrels a day and save consumers $23 billion annually.

when plug-in hybrids become available in 2007 and beyond, their gasoline efficiency will be greater than 100 mpg.

Hydrogen Vs Electric Hybrid

Is anyone interested in attending this? Lakoff will be there. I think I might go.


http://www.sierrasummit2005.org/

US Court Rules Energy Task Force Records Will Remain Secret Bloomberg

This is a great article by Robert Freeman. The following includes only excerpts, click on the link at the end to read the entire article.

Have you heard the story of a South American Indian tribe that has devised an ingenious monkey trap? The Indians cut off the small end of a coconut and stuff it with sweetmeats and rice. They tether the other end to a stake and place it in a clearing. Soon, a monkey smells the treats inside and comes to see what it is. It can just barely get its hand into the coconut but, stuffed with booty, it cannot pull the hand back out. The Indians easily walk up to the monkey and capture it. Even as the Indians approach, the monkey screams in horror, not only in fear of its captors, but equally as much, one imagines, in recognition of the tragedy of its own lethal but still unalterable greed.

The story to illustrate the problem of value rigidity. The monkey cannot properly evaluate the relative worth of a handful of food compared to its life. It chooses wrongly, catastrophically so, dooming itself by its own short-term fixation on a relatively paltry pleasure. America has its own hand in a coconut, one that may doom it just as surely as the monkey. That coconut is its dependence on cheap oil in a world where oil will soon come to an end. The choice we face (whether to let the food go or hold onto it) is whether to wean ourselves off of oil—to quickly evolve a new economy and a new basis for civilization—or to continue to secure stable supplies from the rest of the world by force.

As with the monkey, the alternative consequences of each choice could not be more dramatic. Weaning ourselves off of cheap oil, while not easy, will help ensure the vitality of the American economy and the survival of its political system. Choosing the route of force will almost certainly destroy the economy and doom America’s short experiment in democracy. To date, we have chosen the second alternative: to secure oil by force. The evidence of its consequences are all around us. They include the titanic US budget and trade deficits funding a gargantuan, globally-deployed military and the Patriot Act and its starkly anti-democratic rescissions of civil liberties. There is little time left to change this choice before its consequences become irreversible.

...The broader implications of the Patriot Acts go far beyond the abusive treatment of criminals or terrorists. Their portent can be glimpsed in the language used to justify them. When Attorney General John Ashcroft testified on behalf of the Act, he stated, “…those who oppose us are providing aid and comfort to the enemy.” These are carefully chosen words. “Aid and comfort to the enemy” are the words used in the Constitution to define Treason, the most fateful of crimes against the state. In other words, protest against the government—the singular right without which America would not even exist—is now being defined as trying to overthrow the government.

And by the internal logic of a global Oil Empire, this is entirely reasonable. The needs of the people of any one country must be subordinated to the larger agenda of Empire itself. This is what the Romans learned in 27 B.C. when Augustus proclaimed himself Emperor. It was the end of the Roman Republic and the disappearance of representative government on earth for almost 1,700 years, until the English Civil Wars in the 1600s. That is the reality we are confronting today—offering up our democracy in propitiation to an Empire for Oil. It will be a fateful, irreversible decision.

Returning to the coconut metaphor, the choice of a Grab the Oil strategy is the equivalent of the monkey holding onto the handful of food, remaining trapped by the coconut. It is an ironclad guarantee of escalating global conflict, isolation of the US in the world, unremitting attacks on the US by those whose oil is being expropriated and whose societies are being dominated, the militarization of the US economy, the irreversible rescission of civil liberties, and the eventual extinguishment of American democracy itself. It is the conscious, self-inflicted consignment to political and economic death.

But the coconut metaphor, remember, involves a choice—food or freedom. What, then, is the alternative, the letting go of the paltry handful of food in conscious preference for the life of continued freedom?

The alternative to Grab the Oil is to dispense with the hobbling dependency on oil itself and to quickly wean the country off of it. Call it the path of Energy Reconfiguration. It is to declare a modern day Manhattan Project aimed at minimizing the draw down in the world’s finite stocks of oil, extending their life, and mitigating the calamity inherent in their rapid exhaustion. It means building a physical infrastructure to the economy that is based on an alternative to oil. And it means doing this, not unilaterally or militarily as the US is doing now, but in peaceful partnership with other countries of the world, the other counties in our shared global lifeboat that are also threatened by the end of oil.

In more specific terms, energy reconfiguration means retrofitting all of the nation’s buildings, both commercial and residential, to double their energy efficiency. It means a crash program to shift the transportation system—cars, trucks—to a basis that uses perhaps half as much oil per year. This is well within reach of current technology. Energy Reconfiguration means using biotechnology to develop crops that require much less fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and machinery to harvest. It means refitting industrial and commercial processes—lighting, heating, appliances, automation, etc.—so that they, too, consume far less energy than they do today. It means increasing efficiency, reducing consumption, and building sustainable, long-term alternatives in every arena in which the economy uses oil.

Such a program would return incalculable benefits to national security, the economy, and to the environment.

In terms of national security, Energy Reconfiguration greatly reduces the county’s susceptibility to oil blackmail. It reduces the need for provocative adventurism into foreign countries in pursuit of oil. As such, it reduces the incentive for terrorism against the US. And by reducing such threats, it reduces the need for a sprawling, expensive military abroad and a repressive police state at home. Savings in military costs—perhaps on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars a year—could well pay for such a program. The saving of democracy, of course, is priceless.

The economic benefits are at least equally impressive. By reducing energy imports, the US would reduce its hemorrhaging trade deficit and the mortgaging of the nation’s future that such borrowing implies. A national corps of workers set to retrofitting the nation’s homes and businesses for energy efficiency would address employment problems for decades in a way that could not be outsourced to Mexico or India or China. And a more efficient industrial infrastructure would make all goods made in America more competitive with those made abroad. In all of these ways, Energy Reconfiguration raises, not lowers, the average standard of living while increasing the resilience of the economy as a whole.

...Even within the US there are ample precedents for optimism