U.S. Secretary of Energy, Samuel W. Bodman, has written an honest perspective on the course our country is taking towards sustainability. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but it’s more honest than anything I’ve seen come out of this White House on this issue. The article is titled "A new energy plan for America" and is published in Newsweek here. It starts off:
If we look at the global energy picture today, the challenges America faces are startling. Demand is rising rapidly and will continue to do so. And it's clear that our world is overly dependent on one source of energy: fossil fuels. For a host of reasons—related to our economic health, our environmental well-being and our national security—our current path is unsustainable. We need a safe, clean, affordable, diverse energy supply. Here are 10 ways to get there.
Below is my take on each of his 10 points.
- Develop cellulosic ethanol: This topic has received substantial attention (but little public funding) over the last few years. There are at least two technological pathways by which this might be achieved: enzymatic conversion followed by fermentation, or thermal conversion. The enzymes are just now coming being developed, and perhaps in several years, will be available economically. Thermal conversion doesn't produce ethanol, but through pyrolysis, might produce a synthetic oil suitable for upgrading in a traditional petroleum refinery. That technology exists today, but the economics are unproven.
- Harness the Power of Nature: Here Bodman wishes for the moon, and hopes that solar and wind will solve all our problems. By 2015. Wind is slowly becoming more economical with time, as is solar, but we've got a LONG way to go until the technology is available at competitive prices.
- Build a hydrogen economy: What a crock. It embarrasses me that a fellow chemical engineer would write this. Repeat after me: "Hydrogen is NOT an energy resource". Hydrogen is merely a convenient way to store energy, much like a battery. Developing the hydrogen economy creates lots of jobs for people like me, but it solves no problems for society. It likely will serve niche roles (hydrogen powered fuel-cell cell phones, for example). Its primary benefit is to allow for more efficient use of energy, and so theoretically, might ultimately have an impact. But don't count on it. We're at least 100 years away from hydrogen serving any significant role in the U.S. economy for electricity, for transportation, or heating.
- Power up the hybrids: Bodman lumps together hybrids, flex fuel, and clean diesel. Flex fuel vehicles were created by Congress to let GMC and Ford sell cars that might be powered on 85% ethanol (if that were available), and claim that they’re sustainable, thus allowing them to sell more inefficient SUVs. Flex fuel vehicles are NOT a technological solution to anything. Hybrid vehicles, and to a lesser extent, clean diesel (I haven’t heard that label before, but I know what he means) are the real deal, and have the potential to substantially reduce petroleum consumption for transportation in today’s economy. What we need is a mechanism to get more of them on the road, and Bodman suggests tax credits. We also need to continue to aggressively develop more efficient, lightweight, economical rechargeable batteries. Batteries have come a LONG way in the last 10 years, but still have a long way to go.
- Use our own natural resources: This paragraph sounds like it was written by Dick Cheney and his secret energy panel. They want to extract more oil and gas from domestic resources. OK, I'm in favor of that, provided that it can be done cleanly, and provided that the companies extracting these national resources pay an appropriate dividend to the tax payers. By the way, for the knee-jerk environmentalists out there (I'm one of you), petroleum extraction, like everything else, has become pretty efficient, and environmental catastrophes are very low risk now. BUT, there's no such thing as no risk; appropriate safeguards must be in place to ensure environmental mitigation in the event of such an accident.
- Clean up coal: Did you know that almost exactly half of domestic electricity is produced from combustion of coal? 2.0 P-W*hours of 4.1 P-W*hours, to be exact, in 2005. (A peta watt hour, P-W*hours, is 10 ^15 Watt hours.) Coal has been, is, and will continue to be a fact in the U.S. Given that coal is mostly carbon, and by definition, its use produces copious carbon dioxide, this should change, eventually. But this isn't going to happen overnight, and while we're waiting for alternative technologies to develop economically, we need to focus on using coal more efficiently. If that makes you nuts, then I suggest you move to Iceland, where they’ve got lots of geothermal, or France, where they’ve got lots of nuclear. In the U.S., we've got a LOT of coal, and we'd be pretty stupid not to use it. I find myself agreeing with Bodman here.
- Get real about nuclear power: Even Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, has come out in favor of more nukes. I'm inclined to agree. Nukes have a lot of advantages, including no CO2 emissions, proven technology, and an enviable safety record. (The number of people killed by coal every year is more than the number of people killed by all nuclear accidents, ever.)
- Get real about nuclear waste: Here, Bodman and I part ways, and not because I'm from Nevada. (I also disagree with Harry Reid on this one.) Bodman claims that Yucca mountain is an appropriate permanent storage location. Most engineers I've spoken with all share the same opinion on this: we need to store nuclear waste for a long time, until technology is better developed to handle such wastes. It needs to be accessible, but secure. Forget about permanent storage. What the hell is permanent storage, anyway? Technically, that's meaningless. The current practice of dispersed (local) storage of high-level wastes is a reasonable stop gap, but if we could do away with the politics, I'm pretty sure we could identify a couple reasonable secure storage locations. Technically, this is hardly a challenge at all. Politically, it's a hot potato.
- Modernize our power grid: This is a topic about which I know little, and apparently, neither does Bodman. He says we need to upgrade; I’ll take his word for it. He doesn’t suggest specifically what that means, or how it would happen, or who would pay for it.
- Conserve: Did a Republican appointee actually use the "C" word in a sustainable sense? I’m pretty sure he wasn't referring to conservative politics. Conserve is what we MUST do; Americans aren't just addicted to oil, we're energy pigs. We want lots of it, whenever we want it, where we want it, and we want it free; we deserve it. This mindset has got to change. Our energy usage is destroying the planet we live on, and it is responsible for at least half of our military budget. Without a doubt, the best way to encourage conservation would be to tax every single joule of energy consumed; the revenues might be used to fund a robust research and development program on renewable energies. Politically, I can't see this happening in my lifetime. We need some articulate, bold, leadership. The leadership will have to come from a credible spokesperson, and it seems like Sam Bodman might be the man. In the same vein that "only Nixon can go to China", only a Republican appointee will be able to push such a program.
==========================================
One striking absence from Bodman’s list is conversion of corn to ethanol, the darling of corporate agribusiness (ADM, Cargill) today. The U.S. DOE has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this dead end. I hope by its omission that Bodman recognizes that this pathway will never pan out economically.
I've come to despise nearly everything that our decider in chief has done, to regret what our nation has become, and especially to wonder about our fellow citizens who voted for him even once. After reading Bodman's essay, I've started to wonder if there isn't possibly some hope, after all. Maybe I'm seeing a phantom silver lining, a miraculous mirage. But I'd like to believe that Bodman might be pushing a viable, sustainable energy program at the U.S. DOE. Maybe.
About me: I'm a chemical engineer, and I do research in the area of sustainable energy. My favorite strategy currently is thermal waste-to-energy processes, but I recognize that market forces, local conditions, and regulations will require a broad variety of strategies towards achieving sustainable energy. There is no magic bullet, and anyone who suggests otherwise is a charlatan.