Here's some ideas: How U.S. can solve the energy crisis
June 27, 2008
suntimes.com
STEVE HUNTLEY shuntley.cst@gmail.com
Today's political debate over energy is, to put it mildly, uninspiring. Republicans want to drill for more oil in environmentally sensitive places such as the oceans or the Arctic, only underscoring our reliance on a fuel of which we have limited reserves. Democrats, believing the world is divided into villains and victims, seek to penalize U.S. oil companies with a "windfall profits tax" and scapegoat free markets by saying speculators drive up gas prices, ignoring the realities of supply and demand in the energy-gulping economies of China and India.
New ideas are few and far between from the political class. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, stands out by proposing the government establish a $300 million prize for the development of a break-through battery to revolutionize hybrid-vehicle technology.
I and others have written the country needs a Manhattan Project to free us from a dependence on overseas oil that only enriches countries that wish us ill, like Iran and Venezuela, and funds hostile ideologies such as fanatical Islamism. In short, energy is a national security issue requiring government intervention in the economy of the type that conservatives like me normally don't like.
The Manhattan Project was the World War II effort to produce an atom bomb before the Nazis could. Another example was the 1960s program to put a man on the moon before the Soviet Union could.
These required new technologies, and my thinking on energy tended to focus on finding new technologies. Others with better minds have come up with a Manhattan Project for energy that requires no scientific breakthroughs and uses current infrastructure. Those are the guiding principles of "A Blueprint for U.S. Energy Security" from Set America Free. It's a coalition of individuals and organizations across the political spectrum ranging from social conservatives to environmentalists, or, as one of them puts it -- "tree huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, cheap hawks and evangelicals."
Its four-year blueprint calls for the government to spend:
• • $2 billion to pay half the cost for automakers to make 40 million cars flexible-fuel capable, meaning they can burn alcohol, gasoline or any combination of the two. It costs $100 per vehicle to do this.
• • $1 billion to place alcohol fuel pumps in at least a quarter of the nation's gas stations.
• • $2 billion in tax breaks for consumers who buy hybrid autos.
• • $4 billion for loan guarantees to help automakers develop for the marketplace fuel-cell battery technology and plug-in hybrid vehicles. The coalition says a combination flex-fuel/plug-in hybrid electric car running on an 80 percent alcohol, 20 percent gasoline fuel could get up to 500 miles per gallon of gas. Since plug-ins can be recharged overnight when electricity use is down, current power plants could support up to 30 percent of U.S. cars being plug-in hybrids.
• • $3 billion for public-private cost-sharing projects to build 25 commercial-scale demonstration plants to make non oil-based liquid fuels. It notes America has hundreds of years in supplies of coal, and a Department of Energy project showed "clean coal" technology can produce methanol alcohol for less than 50 cents a gallon.
That comes to $12 billion -- compared with the $20 billion in today's dollars spent on the original Manhattan Project and $100 billion on the Apollo moon program. Set America Free asserts that switching American drivers to hybrid autos by 2025 could reduce oil imports by 8 million to as much as 12 million barrels a day. Currently, the United States imports 11.6 million barrels a day, and that's projected to reach almost 20 million by 2025.
Transforming what Americans drive in 17 years sounds like a tall order. Yet, the surge in popularity of SUVs began about that long ago. Set America Free's blueprint is limited, short-term government intervention to push the marketplace toward energy security. It merits a look from our political class.
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