The Clean Renewable Energy Threat
Moscow Times
Feb 10, 2003
By Matt Bivens "A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy, which can be used to power a car -- producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free."
-- U.S. President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address.
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WASHINGTON -- It's curious that the image-savvy Bush administration installed solar energy at the White House as long ago as August and forgot to boast about it (the solar panels heat, among other things, the presidential spa). A wide-eyed innocent of a presidential spokesperson claims it never occurred to them that anyone would be interested. The administration's budget this year takes away even the few pennies it used to spend on renewable energy research, apparently so it can give that much more to its sugar daddies in the oil business. Could it be the White House kept quiet about its solar panels because it would be so shamefully hypocritical to make political book on them?
Um, no, it couldn't be. This is the crowd that wants more dolphin chunks in our tuna, the crowd that has been working to revive international trade in elephant tusks. (Open season on the Republican Party mascot!) It's run by people who fight like hell to let power plants pollute and then label their efforts "Clear Skies," headed by a president who lets loose the loggers and calls it "Healthy Forests." Shame ain't part of it.
So this blushing modesty about the presidential solar swimming pool must have other causes. Perhaps solar power works so well it's starting to frighten the oil industry?
Twenty years ago, generating a kilowatt-hour from sunlight cost about $2.50. Today's photovoltaics turn out kilowatt-hours for 20 to 25 cents -- a tenfold drop in cost, but still expensive. But the cost is dropping steadily every year for solar power, and even more dramatically for wind power. So consider the administration's trumpeting of hydrogen as a fuel of the future -- which it probably is.
Some government watchdogs have complained that this sudden hydrogen talk is hiding another taxpayer-funded giveaway to the automakers. And yes, it does.
But there's a larger story here: We can get hydrogen for the cars our children will drive from natural gas or even coal -- much dirtier, but more to the liking of the Enron-Halliburton administration -- or we can get it from water, where the H can be split from H2O with a zap from solar or wind-generated electricity.
Hydrogen from sunlight would be the ultimate zero-pollution fuel cycle. But is that what ExxonMobil focused on this week when it privately briefed U.S. Congressional staffers? The oil men said they'd be working on the president's hydrogen initiative -- and then proceeded to sneakily run hydrogen down as dangerous and dirty, although it's safer and cleaner than anything else ExxonMobil's offering.
Decisions taken now will determine if we have a fossil fuel-based hydrogen economy -- complete with more pollution, more foreign military adventures and more tribute to the vile House of Saud -- or a zero-pollution hydrogen economy that keeps our hard-earned money at home because it's run on mid-American sunshine. Sadly, no one's paying much attention, so the decisions are being taken for us.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, writes The Daily Outrage |
