Our National Security Requires a Solution to Our Total Energy Dependence Upon Hydrocarbons

Concerned Citizen: This blog was originally intended to cover the broad range of subjects that are my passions (events in the Middle East have hijacked this goal for the past several weeks, but I am making a concerted effort to go back to my original goal).

Several of my interests intersect when it comes to energy policy (or un-policy, in the case of our current administration). Many of you have had to tolerate my rantings and ravings over the years about our need to break our dependence upon oil, particularly Mideast oil, for the obvious host of national security, and more recently, global warming reasons (this interest goes back to the energy crisis and Arab energy blackmail of the mid 70's, when I was already developing an interest in solar voltaic energy and nuclear solutions -- before anyone expected the Chinese and Indians to blow up our global energy demand budget). We made some progress on energy efficiency during the late 70's and early 80's (a tribute to Jimmy Carter, who I otherwise universallly despise), but quickly forgot about that priority as oil became cheap again (Retort to Mr. Gore: While we would expect little from the Texas-based Bush I and II administrations, what exactly was your Clinton administration doing for 8 years on this front?).

National security and maintaining our lifestyle and a clean Earth for our children are my highest priorities. Basically, this is how I see it:

1. I don't think its healthy to be paying a terrorism tax to Arabs and Persians through ever-higher oil prices, and I don't think it is a good idea to give them this leverge over our foreign policy (while I expect oil prices to dip in the early Fall when the spot market, and the hedge fund guys who contort it, wake up to the gargantuan crude inventories that have built up to historic levels, the secular price and supply/demand trend is not our friend).

2. I don't think it is such a good idea to be looking to the Russians or Venezualians as a savior either.

3. New hydrocabon sources will be found, but it is getting harder and harder to do so, and more expensive and intrusive to our environment.

4. We can no longer ignore the impact of global warming on the future of this planet. Sure the US has 100 years of coal, but from a global warming perspective we can't just burn all of it unless we invest in the solution of some very important technical issues regarding carbon sequestration (basically, this means capturing the carbon that is released in the smokestack when the coal is burned and pumping that carbon back into the ground to be "sequestered" forever, so it does not contribute to greenhouse gasses. feasibility has been proven, but scalability and expense has not).

5. The good news is that technology is our friend in solving these issues, IF we will have the willpower to invest in it and harness its potential. While Americans like simple, big, one-size-fits-all solutions, there will be no such thing here -- the press, politicans and other leaders should stress this fact if they want to best serve the Amercian people in solving these problems. From an investment and priorities perspective, we need a Manhattan Project and Mission to the Moon, coordinated multi-government program rolled up into one, with additional gigantic tax incentives for private industry to innovate and compensate for the fact that in the short term you will be going against the invisible hand of the market and compensating for the developemnt of economically inefficient technologies (but as long as they are energy efficient, we will be ahead in the long run -- investment for the future). There will inevitably be a lot of waste and theft, but that is the friction invlved in getting things done (isn't it better that someone other than Halliburton steal the money?).

The solution is a mulit-facetted one involving the following:

--conservation and greater efficiency in how we use energy, at every step of its usage in civilization,

--deployment of a range of alternative energies (solar, wind, hydro, tidal (my personal favorite), which will complement "always on" power supplies, like nuclear, sequestered coal, and reduced natural gas and oil electricity generation.

--development of a hydrogen-based energy carrier system. Contrary to popular belief, hydrogen is not an energy source but an energy carrier -- you don't just pull hydrogen from the ground and burn it -- man must use energy to produce hydrogen, which then is transported to where energy is needed and the energy is realesed from the hydrogen. Putting aside the media's scientifically illiterate musings about hydrogen as a "magic bullet" to our energy challenges (the "hydrogen based economy" article that I'm sure must have graced the covers of Time Magazine and Business Week at one point or another), hydrogen only makes sense if it takes less energy to produce hydrogen than the amount of energy it releases (and, as the SciAm article below discusses, nuclear power plants might be the answer here, IF.... see below).

-- development of hydrocarbon system energy replacements or supplements like ethanol (PS, we are not totally getting rid of oil usage for transportation for a long, long time). Again, a similar problem is presented here to that of hydrogen -- if you make ethanol from the production and harvesting of corn, under current processes you use more energy in its production than you get from the energy that is released by it. Work on more efficient growing and fermentation processes (looking to biochemistry for solutions) will hopefully shift this balance, as well as harvesting and usage of natural growing switchgrasses and other agricultual byproducts.

--Develop a new generation transmission system. Read the article from Scientific American linked below. An important solution to this puzzle that grabbed my consciousness decades ago was the challenge of normal temperature superconductivity, which would allow the transmission of electricity over long distances without the concomitant significant energy loss along the way. In my mind, this would allow nuclear power plants to be placed in the middle of the desert, where NIMBY rules wouldn't apply and the risk of massive loss due to accidents would be mitigated (we can debate the safety of next generation nuclear power some other time). This would also allow our different regional power grids to more efficiently share energy across time zones to better balance peak use periods, allowing less energy production wastage, and the building of fewer power plants of all types (especially fossil fuel plants). In other words, this would allow the sharing of periodic- production alternative energy generation -- i.e., sharing wind and sun-generated power from regions where current demand doens't require such energy, to those areas that do require it -- electricity generated by wind in California at day break can be more readily used in the Eastern time zones, which are already well into their busienss days.

The article linked below adds something to this superconductivity/national power carrier puzzle that I never thought of -- using this new energy carrier system to transport hydrogen, while at the same time using the hydrogen to cool the electrical carrier wires to maintain superconductivity of the electricity (basically, superconductivity relies on COLD wires).

Anyway, read the article below. If nothing else, some long term investment ideas should fall out of it. And please, forward this to your friends to "get the world out" (their is an email icon that you cna click at the bottom of this post).

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: A Power Grid for the Hydrogen Economy -- [ ENERGY ] -- Cryogenic, superconducting conduits could be connected into a "SuperGrid" that would simultaneously deliver electrical power and hydrogen fuel