So with all of these plans, what are my conclusions. I think it is pretty simple basically we need to combine all the plans into a comprehensive solution. Just a random question, what the heck is comprehensive, it seems to show up in every political speech given by anyone about anything, thus I naturally had to throw it in. Anyway, I digress.
So this comprehensive solution must contain both a stimulus for research and also a stimulus for applications of existent technologies. So essentially it would be a combination of the Manhattan Project and the TVA. First we need to pass Forbes’ bill to begin the process of stimulating research. Secondly we need to make R&D spending tax deductible to get businesses on board. Third we need to set up a more extensive grant program for something like 100 billion dollars over 5 years.
On the “TVA” side we need to start create governmental policy that reflects a logical look at environmental issues. We need to repeal the tariff on sugar cane ethanol and start developing the infrastructure to support biofuel. I think all cars that are sold within the United States in 5 to 10 years should be flex fuel. Again we can use the government’s taxing power to make this transition less economically damaging. Furthermore we need to streamline the process for approving nuclear power plants like they have in France so that we can have new nuclear plants coming online within the next 10 years. We must also implement other forms of alternative energy that can be built relatively quickly such as solar and wind so that we can start mitigating this crisis now.
I believe that any loss of income that the government has now will easily be offset by the economic growth that this combination of research and construction would stimulation.
I must say that I am sorry that this post does not contain my usual thoroughness but I am in the process of preparing my house for a move so I have been really busy.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
How about a New Manhattan Project?
Recently Rep. Randy Forbes, a republican from Virginia, released an energy policy that I believe has great potential and even espouses many of my ideas, which I have outlined previously. His bill, H.R. 6260 entitled, New Manhattan Project for Energy Independence, I believe will begin the process of shifting toward a more environmentally friendly and economically beneficial energy solution.
There are several main steps, which the representative outlines to achieve the ambitious goal of becoming energy independent within 20 years. While I would prefer a more environmentally minded goal, effectively I think that this bill will drastically reduce emissions while also gaining conservative support with its aim of energy independence.
First he would create a prize program, similar to the X-Prize foundation, which would grant prizes for the successful fulfillment of 1 of 7 categories. These prizes would range from 250 million to 10 billion dollars, which are much greater than any prize program that I know of. These prizes will stirrup innovation and lots of investment into these new technologies. The Ansari X PRIZE was a 10 million dollar prize for launching a private spacecraft, which was won by SpaceShipOne in 2004, however over 100 million dollars was invested by 26 teams in the competition. Therefore, the 14 billion dollars in prize money could easily produce 140 billion dollars in investment into these technologies. These are the goals for the program:
1) A Vehicle that costs no more than 10% more than a normal car that has equal performance, can travel 750 miles between refueling and get at least 70 MPG if it is gasoline powered.
2) A Green Building that uses 50% of the energy of a similar building and can be reproduced anywhere and costs no more that 15% more than a traditional building.
3) A solar power plant that generates 300 megawatts of power at a cost of 10 cents/kilowatt-hour.
4) A biofuel that when mass produced costs only 105% as the energy equivalent of gasoline.
5) A carbon sequestration system that only ads 15% to the cost of the power and will store the CO2 for 5000 years
6) A nuclear waste solution, which will remediate the waste so that it will not be harmful for at least 5000 years.
7) A sustainable fusion power plant that can produce 300 megawatts.
The other steps, which are outlined, are more traditional and include a 10 billion dollars grant program, and the development of a summit to discuss the various technical problems and solution dealing with energy independence. He also wants a commission to be established to develop recommendations to fulfill the goal of energy independence.
I have some minor criticisms of the bill like I think that 750 miles between refueling is unreasonable. I also am not a fan of carbon sequestration because I do not think capturing all the CO2 coming off a coal plant and then storing it in the ground is a good idea in the long run. Also I wish there was an emphasis on nuclear waste reprocessing. I further think there should have been a prize for developing an economically effective way of developing hydrogen. But overall I really like this plan as a start toward a greener energy solution.
There are several main steps, which the representative outlines to achieve the ambitious goal of becoming energy independent within 20 years. While I would prefer a more environmentally minded goal, effectively I think that this bill will drastically reduce emissions while also gaining conservative support with its aim of energy independence.
First he would create a prize program, similar to the X-Prize foundation, which would grant prizes for the successful fulfillment of 1 of 7 categories. These prizes would range from 250 million to 10 billion dollars, which are much greater than any prize program that I know of. These prizes will stirrup innovation and lots of investment into these new technologies. The Ansari X PRIZE was a 10 million dollar prize for launching a private spacecraft, which was won by SpaceShipOne in 2004, however over 100 million dollars was invested by 26 teams in the competition. Therefore, the 14 billion dollars in prize money could easily produce 140 billion dollars in investment into these technologies. These are the goals for the program:
1) A Vehicle that costs no more than 10% more than a normal car that has equal performance, can travel 750 miles between refueling and get at least 70 MPG if it is gasoline powered.
2) A Green Building that uses 50% of the energy of a similar building and can be reproduced anywhere and costs no more that 15% more than a traditional building.
3) A solar power plant that generates 300 megawatts of power at a cost of 10 cents/kilowatt-hour.
4) A biofuel that when mass produced costs only 105% as the energy equivalent of gasoline.
5) A carbon sequestration system that only ads 15% to the cost of the power and will store the CO2 for 5000 years
6) A nuclear waste solution, which will remediate the waste so that it will not be harmful for at least 5000 years.
7) A sustainable fusion power plant that can produce 300 megawatts.
The other steps, which are outlined, are more traditional and include a 10 billion dollars grant program, and the development of a summit to discuss the various technical problems and solution dealing with energy independence. He also wants a commission to be established to develop recommendations to fulfill the goal of energy independence.
I have some minor criticisms of the bill like I think that 750 miles between refueling is unreasonable. I also am not a fan of carbon sequestration because I do not think capturing all the CO2 coming off a coal plant and then storing it in the ground is a good idea in the long run. Also I wish there was an emphasis on nuclear waste reprocessing. I further think there should have been a prize for developing an economically effective way of developing hydrogen. But overall I really like this plan as a start toward a greener energy solution.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
If the G8 won't help how about an Oil Tycoon
This week T. Boone Pickens announced that he has a plan for increasing our energy independence and thereby beginning to help the environment. I applaud him for using his money to promote this cause and actually give a plan, unlike the G8. I was surprised to see that he actually purchased TV spots for his plan, which is a great step in the right direction. So in terms of what he has done to promote this issue, he is beginning to do great things and hopefully more will follow his lead.
However I must be more critical of the plan itself, which does not have helping the environment as a primary goal but seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. While this is a great goal I think that we can advance both aims with the same economic inputs that he seeks. His plan can be summed up as lets replace the 20% of our energy that we get from natural gas with wind power and then use that natural gas to run cars off of so that we can reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 1/3. He estimates that it will cost about 1.2 trillion to get 20% of our power from wind turbines. He already has substantial investments in West Texas in wind, including a 4000 mW plant that cost about 12 billion dollars. First of all, you all know I am a great proponent of Nuclear Power and I believe that 1.2 trillion would be better spent on the nuclear industry. This amount of investment, using the metrics outlined by the World Nuclear Association, could create around 200 new plants, which might get us to where 60% of our power came from nuclear. Also, according to those metrics, nuclear power has a lower operating cost than other forms of power, including wind. Also another issue I see with his plan is that it does nothing to combat the great evils of coal fire power plants. This is because the US has a lot of coal so there is no incentive from the people who want energy independence to get rid of coal, yet it releases most of our CO2 and other pollutants. Third, natural gas would be a good temporary fuel for our cars as according to Pickens’ Plan it release 30% less CO2 than gasoline. However, I believe that by the time the infrastructure is developed to support natural gas as our fuel of choice, we will be ready to switch to hydrogen. Thus I think that because biofuels require much less change in the current infrastructure they are a much better temporary solution.
So overall I applaud him for taking a step in the right direction. But I wish that his plan would do more for the environment and see the potential of other more effective technologies.
However I must be more critical of the plan itself, which does not have helping the environment as a primary goal but seeks to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. While this is a great goal I think that we can advance both aims with the same economic inputs that he seeks. His plan can be summed up as lets replace the 20% of our energy that we get from natural gas with wind power and then use that natural gas to run cars off of so that we can reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 1/3. He estimates that it will cost about 1.2 trillion to get 20% of our power from wind turbines. He already has substantial investments in West Texas in wind, including a 4000 mW plant that cost about 12 billion dollars. First of all, you all know I am a great proponent of Nuclear Power and I believe that 1.2 trillion would be better spent on the nuclear industry. This amount of investment, using the metrics outlined by the World Nuclear Association, could create around 200 new plants, which might get us to where 60% of our power came from nuclear. Also, according to those metrics, nuclear power has a lower operating cost than other forms of power, including wind. Also another issue I see with his plan is that it does nothing to combat the great evils of coal fire power plants. This is because the US has a lot of coal so there is no incentive from the people who want energy independence to get rid of coal, yet it releases most of our CO2 and other pollutants. Third, natural gas would be a good temporary fuel for our cars as according to Pickens’ Plan it release 30% less CO2 than gasoline. However, I believe that by the time the infrastructure is developed to support natural gas as our fuel of choice, we will be ready to switch to hydrogen. Thus I think that because biofuels require much less change in the current infrastructure they are a much better temporary solution.
So overall I applaud him for taking a step in the right direction. But I wish that his plan would do more for the environment and see the potential of other more effective technologies.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The G8 can they help us
The G8 is meeting this week and some of the major things that they are talking about are environmental and agricultural issues. They just set a target of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. Well this sounds great I think it is a an empty statement by the G8 as it does not hold any of the current governments accountable for decreasing emissions and also the Kyoto protocol set ambitious goals also and very few countries have lived up to their promises so far. Like I have continually stated, the answer lies with encouraging the growth of green technologies not with making empty promises to score political points. They must actively pursue this technology and implementing the great technologies that we already have, like nuclear power plants. I would have loved to see them outline an ambitious research and development plan like they would a foreign aid plan. If I would have heard them say that they will devote at least 100 billion dollars over the next 5 years to develop abundant and clean energy sources that would have been a step in the right direction.
We will see how they tackle the food issue; they already affirmed a 50 billion dollar foreign aid package including 25 billion for Africa. I hope that they realize that they must identify the base problem and solve that and not just paper over the cracks by giving out handouts, which will never adequate help the people. A couple years ago Popular Science had a small insert about some of the major environmental problems facing the world which was really interesting which can be found on this site. These are the problems that need to be addressed in order to truly help people. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse he outlines how one of the major contributors to societal collapse are environmental problems, and I think he is quite correct.
We will see how they tackle the food issue; they already affirmed a 50 billion dollar foreign aid package including 25 billion for Africa. I hope that they realize that they must identify the base problem and solve that and not just paper over the cracks by giving out handouts, which will never adequate help the people. A couple years ago Popular Science had a small insert about some of the major environmental problems facing the world which was really interesting which can be found on this site. These are the problems that need to be addressed in order to truly help people. In Jared Diamond’s book Collapse he outlines how one of the major contributors to societal collapse are environmental problems, and I think he is quite correct.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
More People, More Ideas
Many have seen population growth as the bane of environmental stability as people continue to over consume resources and expand into new environments. However as I have eluded to previously I believe that technological advancement is the solution to this problem not a decrease in population growth.
Population growth is directly correlated with technological and intellectual advancement. The link is very simple as populations grow they have more people that think and communicate with each other so they can collectively advance ideas more quickly. But two factors must exist for this to occur: people must be educated and people must be able to communicate. That is why I see the distribution of growth throughout the world as problematic. Not only are the areas with large population growth those that can not support many more people e.g. Africa, but also those areas are the places where those two conditions do not exist. In contrast the areas with the least population growth, western countries, not only have the economic conditions necessary to sustain growth but also have the intellectual conditions to have that growth translate into the advancement of humanity.
Thus we need to not look at the solution to our environmental problem as ending population growth but first of all making it distributed over areas which can support that growth, places with decent economies and also a low ratio of persons to acre of arable farmland. And second of all creating practices to increase the carrying capacity of all regions, that is to increase the amount of people the world can support, essentially through increasing the output of agriculture and decreasing its global foot print, like with my favorite hydroponics. We must also expand the eduction and communication systems throughout the world, but this task first requires the economic development of the third world. I do not suggest that we force certain people to have children or not have children as in China, but that we must make modern society more conducive to families and also that people must become aware of why population growth is important, I believe that our future is rooted in a continued exponential increase in population and advancement.
Population growth is directly correlated with technological and intellectual advancement. The link is very simple as populations grow they have more people that think and communicate with each other so they can collectively advance ideas more quickly. But two factors must exist for this to occur: people must be educated and people must be able to communicate. That is why I see the distribution of growth throughout the world as problematic. Not only are the areas with large population growth those that can not support many more people e.g. Africa, but also those areas are the places where those two conditions do not exist. In contrast the areas with the least population growth, western countries, not only have the economic conditions necessary to sustain growth but also have the intellectual conditions to have that growth translate into the advancement of humanity.
Thus we need to not look at the solution to our environmental problem as ending population growth but first of all making it distributed over areas which can support that growth, places with decent economies and also a low ratio of persons to acre of arable farmland. And second of all creating practices to increase the carrying capacity of all regions, that is to increase the amount of people the world can support, essentially through increasing the output of agriculture and decreasing its global foot print, like with my favorite hydroponics. We must also expand the eduction and communication systems throughout the world, but this task first requires the economic development of the third world. I do not suggest that we force certain people to have children or not have children as in China, but that we must make modern society more conducive to families and also that people must become aware of why population growth is important, I believe that our future is rooted in a continued exponential increase in population and advancement.
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