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Our National Energy Prescription

Before we can solve our energy problems we first need to define our energy goals.

USA Energy goals:

• Cheap, plentiful energy
• Clean energy with low environmental impact
• Reduce carbon emissions by 50%
• Reduce reliance on OPEC by 50%
• Global energy leadership

There is only one path to reducing greenhouse gases and gaining energy independence that can be substantially implemented in ten years and accomplished in twenty-years:

• The USA must replace coal generation plants with natual gas and nuclear power to reduce pollution and strip mining, and possibly check global warming; and,
• The USA must replace half our transportation fleet with electric and natural gas vehicles to reduce our energy dependence to a level that does not threaten national security.

The biggest hurdles? Americans must overcome our unfounded fear of nuclear power – by all measures it's safer than coal. The United States must also overcome the undue influence upon energy legislation by special interest groups, such as the Big Coal and wind power. The auto industry sees the writing on the wall and is ready to play.

• Long-Range Planning. America needs a stable, comprehensive federal energy plan the stretches-out at least thirty years. The people and industries that bring us energy need to know what to expect in their future. Here's an example of the dangers of short-term planning: In the 1990's oil was so inexpensive that oil companies quit investing in infrastructure. Now, they are experiencing a shortage of drilling rigs as everyone rushes to extract today's more valuable oil. Many of the deepwater rigs, mostly American-owned, are rented to Brazil well into the future. Brazil planned long-term – the United States didn't. Another example of non-long-term thinking: one year tax credits.

Adopt diplomacy on behalf of energy efficiency. The U.S. could serve as the catalyst for encouraging world governments to embrace efficiency and conservation.

We should give serious consideration to guaranteeing a "price floor" on oil of, say, $60 or $65 a barrel. This could reduce the variance of oil prices and provide alternative-energy and conservation ventures with a reasonable degree of confidence in their project planning. Oil company capital investment would not be whip-sawed the way it is now.

Extend federal energy-tax incentives. Passing long-term tax incentives would encourage the market to continue investing in and deploying energy-efficient products and technology. With the federal energy-tax incentives extended eight to 10 years, the public would have time to modify its behavior to adopt and purchase energy-efficient products.

• A Pig with Lipstick. The United States must stop building coal generating plants and replace them with nuclear plants. Coal is unheathy and harms the environment. There is much talk about 'clean coal' but that technology is expensive and largely unproven. Coal generates 50% of America's electricity. We would like to see coal generation reduced to 40% in ten years then to 20% or less in twenty years. We'd actually like to see a quicker phase-out of coal but it is probably just too expensive to take newish coal plants with 45-year-lives off-line before they are worn-out.

• Go Nuclear. Nuclear energy is clean, powerful, environmentally friendly and safe. Long term waste storage is not the issue Americans have been told it is. The fact is, nuclear generated electricity is the ONLY way the United States can meet its baseline power needs, and retire emission-emitting coal plants.

  In the next ten years we propose the United States builds a hundred nuclear generating plants (adding to our current 104), and in the following decade double that to a total of 400 nuclear generating plants. Currently the United States gets 20% of its electricity from nuclear. Energy Plan USA's proposal would increase nuclear generated electricity to about 50%. The remaining 50% would be generated primarily by natural gas, coal, hydro, geothermal and, realistically, less than 10% by wind, solar and bio. We want to see coal fired generation plants converted to nuclear by the hundreds.

• Geothermal to the Max. The earth's crust throughout much of the western United States is so thin that 'hot rocks' are near the surface. The geothermal generation potential there is enough to meet 20% to 40% of the West's electricity demands. Like solar and wind, geothermal faces the problem of remoteness, so it's costly to get geothermal generated electricity to market.        

• Drill, drill, drill. The United States must encourage and produce as much domestic oil and natural gas production as possible -- without destroying our environment. This is the only way it can ever begin to become energy independent. About 60-70% of our oil consumption is for transportation. The critics say domestic drilling won't make a difference for ten years. We think it's more like five years. Natural gas boasts low emissions and the good-news is that USA production is on-track to increase 8% in 2008.

  Frankly, we don't see ever abandoning oil or natual gas as an energy source – they don't harm the environment when extracted the way coal does, and they deliver huge bang for the buck. Plus, the country's made tremendous progress in controlling emissions, and using oil and gas more efficiently.

• Tax Credits for Electric Cars and Natural Gas Cars. The electric car and natural gas car are our best bet for reducing oil consumption. Hydrogen powered cars and its infrastructure are too far into the future. The plug-in hybrid will soon be here in mass quantities with its ability to drive all-electric at a cost of only two to four cents a mile for the first 20-40 miles each day. OPEC can't drop oil's price enough to compete with electricity.

  Individuals and businesses can currently take advantage of federal tax credits for fuel-efficient cars. There are credits of up to $3,400 for a new hybrid, between $2,500 and $7,500 for plug-in autos under 10,000 pounds, and up to $15,000 for a plug-in vehicle over 26,000 pounds.

• Emperor's New Clothes? Too much discussion centers on on wind and solar power. No matter how much money the we sink into them, they can deliver at most 30% of its electricity needs. ...and that's a stretch. Their intermittant nature precludes them from replacing coal or nuclear.

  Wind and solar power are good complements to natural gas fired power plants, however. Gas turbines can be quickly taken on- and off-line, as needed. But wind and solar are expensive to build, and, because of their remoteness, they require new, expensive transmission grids.

Wind and solar have been around 30-years and received billions of dollars of aid, yet wind produces only 1.6% of America's electricity and solar 1/20 of 1%. Heating residential swimming pools, not generating electricity, is solar's top use.

• Efficiency. Government should replace the tax-depreciation schedule for investments in new capital stock with immediate expensing. New equipment is almost always more energy-efficient than old. Changing the tax structure so that new investments could be written off immediately would make it profitable to replace old with new equipment at a much quicker pace. This simple change could do more to increase energy efficiency throughout the economy than all the current mandates and subsidies.                      

• Conservation. We do not welcome speed limits or other regulation that hamper economic growth. Expensive energy encourages conservation.Since expensive energy is here to stay, the era of SUVs and McMansions has probably ended.

                                            — Robert Moen, Founder
                                                 rmoen@energyplanUSA.com

The Efficacy Of Presidential Energy Policy: From FDR to Obama
Forbes 2009
Occupants of the White House have attempted to control how we use energy sources. Be there is one instructive universal historic fact: No president has left office with the country using less energy than when he was first inaugurated. Since the first energy price crisis in 1973, the world's overall energy appetite has increased by an amount equal to adding another United States to the planet. The sheer, staggering scale of the world's energy demand places this issue as one of the central challenges of our era. Consider that today the world uses the energy equivalent of 2,500 barrels of oil every second. If those were real barrels stacked up, the pile would grow taller at 5,000 mph. Consider, too, a related reality. The toolkit of energy options available to any president or nation is in point of fact rather limited. There are no new energy sources; nothing equivalent to the first oil well drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, or the 1949 discovery of Saudi Arabia's monster fields. The newest addition to the phenomenology of energy production, the solar-electric cell, dates to 1954 at Bell Labs; first fission for nuclear energy was 1942 at the University of Chicago; piston engines date back to 1900, steam engines the 1700s, wind and water mills predate the 1200s. There is, in short, nothing new under the sun in the physics of primary energy sources. In the end, it doesn't matter whether a president's policy is motivated by trying to tame the atom, or tame the climate, the options are constrained and the requirements staggering.

Enter the 'Egghead' for Energy Secretary
Houston Chron 12.15.2008
Berkeley physicist Steven Chu will be named Secretary of Energy under the Obama administration.

He says, "You can be against wind, because big windmills are unsightly. You can be against nuclear for a lot of reasons. You can be against biofuel for a lot of reasons. And the end result is we go to coal. Coal is cheap; it's plentiful; and the default is coal. And that's what you have to understand is, you can be against everything, but then what are you going to be for?"

Amory Lovins, Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute offers this advice to Chu:

• Get the nuclear weapons and nuclear cleanup missions out of DOE into other civilian agencies, so DOE can focus on its civilian energy mission.
• Separate Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: they must be closely coordinated but merit separate Assistant Secretaries and budgets.
• Combine the divisions that promote fission and fusion. Fusion won't be getting much money anyway if we choose the best buys first and focus on technologies headed for deployment in competitive markets.
• Name and shame energy subsidies. Desubsidizing the whole energy sector, so we pay for our energy at the meter or pump, not through our taxes, would be immensely helpful to our prosperity, security, and environment.
• Be bold. This is our last and best chance to get energy right.