Several days ago we made the case, based on analysis and information from the Cato Institute, that the U.S. Department of Energy should be scrapped altogether and the savings be used to reduce the deficit or returned to the rightful owners, the American taxpayers. The primary reason for the termination of the Department is the fact that since its inception decades ago, it has come up with next to nothing of value in the energy field. It has not developed and implemented a comprehensive national energy strategy to reduce our dependence on foreign and carbon based fuels and its support for a large variety of energy projects as paid off in virtually no successes.
And it is not as if there are no opportunities out in the real world, outside of the D.C. beltway, in the energy filed that have potential to made for a better energy situation in the U.S. It is just that the Department of Energy, like so many government functions, never seems to get around to being effective and efficient in executing its charter responsibilities. Consider what is going on in this industry that is succeeding without the Department of Energy:
- On July 8, 2010, the Associated Press reported that an experimental solar powered plane had completed a successful 24 hour continuous test flight. This technology proved that it could collect enough energy from only the sun during the daylight hours to power itself continuously in the air for 24 hours. It contained 12,000 solar cells and absolutely no carbon based or emission producing technology. The plan reached heights of 28,000 feet and speeds of over 75 miles per hour. This was obviously no Kitty Hawk type experience. The plane owners are working on a larger solar powered plane that they expect would be capable of international flights within two years.
The amazing fact about this venture is that they expect to accomplish all of this with less than $100 million of privately raised capital. No government intervention, no taxpayer money. Compare this effort, a solar powered plane for tens of millions of dollars with the Department of Energy that has probably burned through hundreds of billions of dollars throughout its life time with nothing comparable to this success.
And imagine about the possibilities: if you can elevate a plane for 24 hours to 28,000 feet that reaches a top speed of 75 MPH, is it too much of a stretch to imagine a solar based car that stays on the ground, is driven for only an hour or so a day and reaches a top speed of say 50 MPH? Even if you can imagine a world of cars like this, apparently the Department of Energy can not.
- An article from the Economist magazine was recently published in the February 13, 2011 issue of the St. Petersburg Times. The article, "Turning Garbage Into Gas," described how technologies are developing that would allow a facility to take a town's local garbage stream, break down the garbage into its underlying atomic particles via an electric "plasma torch" process, and use the atomic particles to create a variety of products including electricity, ethanol, and solid mass that could be used as building materials. The chemical and physics principles involved are described in detail in the article.
While the traditional way of burning garbage usually results in more levels of pollution, this technology is clean, modern, and shows a good chance of being profitable. The processes involved have been used successfully in Japan for the past ten years or so but advances in the underlying technology has drawn dozens of companies to the potential of the idea. According to the article, more than three dozen private firms are proposing construction of plasma torch plants in the United States.
Nowhere in the article is there any reference to the support that was or is being provided by the Department of Energy. This appears to be all privately funded work and research, with a private firm, Westinghouse Plasma Corp. actually renting out a research facility to these dozens of firms for $150,000 a day. Thus, a ten year old technology has evolved and gotten better and more efficient without government help.
If the Department of Energy did not see this existing and obvious opportunity, what makes us think they have any insight to a new technology that could change the world as much as the plasma torch? Terminate the Department, save the money, and let the free market and private enterprise find the solutions.
- In President Obama's recent state of the union message, he proposed that there be one million electric cars on the roads in the U.S. by 2015. Sounds impressive until you realize that one million cars would be less than 1% of the entire U.S. market, hardly earth shattering.
According to the Cato institute, the Department of Energy spends about $1.7 billion a year on vehicle research. That would extrapolate out to about $8.5 billion over the next five years. Is it worth whatever portion of that $8.5 billion that is used for electric vehicles to get a less than 1% penetration rate? I would say no, such a low penetration rate would have minimal impact on the environment and our dependence on foreign energy sources. From the President's statement, it is obvious that any Department of Energy research in this area will have minimal payoff, at least in the next five years. Stop the research and save the money.
- A short article in the January 17, 2011 issue of Business Week reported that Southern California Edison, SunPower, and Fotowatio Renewable Ventures will join together to build seven solar plants, one of which will be one of the largest in the country. The plants will be large enough to provide power to almost half a million homes. Nowhere in the article did it mention that the Department of Energy was instrumental in the development of the plants, just private enterprise efficiently serving a market need.
- Several years ago, according to an online article from the public television show NOVA, a family in southern California completely energy retrofitted their home for solar power. They ended up driving down their cost of energy to virtually zero at an overall cost of about $61,000. The article was about five years old so one could assume that the cost of such a retrofit today would be less, given technology improvements.
However, if you stay with the $61,000 figure, let's do a little math. According to Cato, the Department of Defense will spend about $159 billion this year to fight two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If our political class had not mismanaged our foreign affairs policy so much that we actually never ended up in such a situation, that $159 billion, just one's year's worth of war, could have been used to solar retrofit about 2.6 million U.S. homes across the southern part of the United States. If the government only financed 50% of the $61,000 cost, you could install solar power in over 5.0 million homes.
If you really want to get freaky with the math, let's assume that the United States government will have spent ten times that amount of money, $159 billion, by the time we exit out of a combat role in Afghanistan by 2014 (assuming that schedule holds up) in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Theoretically, we would have spent/wasted enough money to completely solar energy convert every single family home in Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Hawaii.
Imagine how much foreign oil this conversion would have saved, imagine how much less air pollution this would have caused, imagine how many more domestic jobs would have been created and most importantly, imagine how many lives, both military and civilian, that would have been saved.
This is the kind of imagination and creativity that may have justified the Department of Energy's $38 billion annual budget. However, we are not getting anything close to this when it comes to creativity and success. The Department has not funded any kind of research that allows a solar based plane to fly for 24 hours. It has not leveraged existing technologies that would be a new source of efficient and non-polluting energy. It is mired in the trivial, a million electric cars in five years dogma, that will have no impact on pollution or energy independence. It has not provided bold, alternative thinking that might reallocate limited taxpayer funds from destructive purposes, two wars, to clean distributed solar energy.
The private sector has done all of the things that the Department of Energy has not. After more than three decades of such failure, it is time to unplug the Department and return the funding to the taxpayers. That would give us all a charge. Theoretically, returning $38 billion in Department of Energy budget to 115 million U.S. households would give each household about $330, some real relief to pay for the ever escalating gasoline costs that the Department failed to fix.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment
Saturday, March 5, 2011
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