Besides the solar water heater at the WH, here's the most significant of Carter's "alternative energy programs":
The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a U.S. government-funded corporation established in 1980 by the Synthetic Fuels Corporation Act to create a market for alternatives to imported fossil fuels (such as coal gasification). The corporation was abolished in 1985.
The original intention of the corporation was to partner with industry (primarily oil companies) to create a market for domestically-produced synthetic liquid fuels, with a goal of producing 2 million barrels of liquid fuel per year within five years. Critics of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation point to its failure to achieve its goals as a reason to prevent government from interfering with free markets. The purported objective behind the Synthetic Fuels Corporation was to move research and development of synthetic fuels out of the Department of Energy and into a public-private partnership that would produce tangible results in a short period of time. Many believe that the drop in worldwide oil prices in the early 1980s played a primary role in obviating the need for the corporation, at least from a short-term economic perspective.
As the price of oil continues to climb, industry in the United States and elsewhere is once again looking to alternatives to imported petroleum. Coal gasification is being evaluated once again as a cheaper alternative to imported oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Synthetic_Fuels_Corporation_Act
Coal liquefaction by big oil companies subsidized by the federal government! That's what liberals want? It never amounted to anything due to economic reasons - oil prices fell during the '80's. Would liberals really like it if the government had spent the last 20 years paying several times the market price to big oil companies for 2M barrels a year of liquid fuel developed from coal? No, it would be attacked as a massive subsidy to big oil. BTW this would be unacceptable to todays greens and liberals due to the heavy CO2 production.
Here's another of Carter's "alternative energy programs":
United States Congress passed the Ocean Thermal Energy Converstion Act of 1980 to promote the development of ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), an alternate source of energy with the potential to minimize dependence on foreign sources of oil. The Act gave the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) the authority to license the construction, ownership, location, and commercial operations of OTEC facilities. Under the Act, OTEC facilities are not required to obtain leases or pay royalties to the federal government, a provision intended to encourage commercial development of the energy source.
The Act gave the U.S. Coast Guard the responsibility of ensuring safe construction and operation of OTEC facilities, preventing pollution, cleaning up any discharged pollutants, and ensuring that the discharged pollutions did not change the thermal gradient of the ocean region. Due to relatively low fossil fuel prices and the high perceived risk of investing in new technology, NOAA had not received any license applications as of 1998.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ocean_Thermal_Energy_Conversion_Act_of_1980,_United_States
Guess what? This wasn't killed. There just have never been any great competitive ideas developed to produce a lot of ocean thermal energy.
Re. some other "alternative energy" acts from that era, geothermal energy and solar energy - we have developed that where possible and economical. Just haven't been enough good competitive ideas yet that have been big enough to make us not "care about the price of oil" as jellyboy puts it.
In the real world, as opposed to the liberal pretend world, the best incentive for alternative energy isn't a goverment program. Its high conventional energy prices. Alternative energy programs are only good ideas if they're competitive with conventional energy. By and large, they haven't been since Carter left office because of conventional energy prices that were too low. |
