Energy "Manhattan Project" Needed To Wean US Off Of Oil

CNBC's "Hunt For Black Gold," a documentary special on oil and energy in the United States, aired Wednesday.

In the special, Representative Ed Markey tells CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, "We are in an energy emergency... on the one hand, are now being held hostage to a global-- price of oil that we increasingly have less control over. And at the same time, we don't have-- a coordinated, long term, energy strategy to get us off of fossil fuels and to move us to a renewable-- agenda."

WATCH:

Later, Markey calls for an energy "Manhattan Project:"

The special airs again this Sunday on CNBC at 10 p.m.

Comments

[realpolitic]

Special Prosecutor Named in Attorney Firings Case

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed a special prosecutor on Monday to investigate whether criminal charges should be brought against former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other officials in connection with the firings of nine of United States attorneys in 2006.

The move came as the Justice Department released a report by its inspector general severely criticizing the process that led to the firings.

The inspector general has been trying since last year to determine who in the Bush administration ordered the firings, whether the dismissals were intended to thwart investigations, and whether anyone had broken the law in carrying out the firings or in testifying about them. Critics have said the firings were politically motivated.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/washington/30attorney.html?hp

[NL207]

And this has what to do with energy policy?

[realpolitic]

I wanted to get a reaction particularly from you and I did. Thanks!!

[RealityBaseCamp]

My current wish list:
Thoroughly investigate all the promising technologies, claims, and schemes, and invest in the good ones (& by "invest," I mean share in the eventual profits, not just give away money). In the process, investigate the claims that some tech is being "suppressed" and make sure big money isn't actually intimidating/eliminating people. I suspect that's rare, but prove it. Make photovoltaics, batteries, biofuels, hydrogen, and maybe electric/hybrid car retrofits economically attractive as soon as possible. And make sure these things are produced domestically. Lots of work to do, but worth it.

[RealityBaseCamp]

For the people who think hydrogen is easy: I've been a hydrogen proponent for decades, but there are still obstacles. One, it doesn't come out of a water molecule without a fight. Simple electrolysis winds up being an inefficient way of storing electricity, and I have no idea which of the "water separation" methods are real OR workable. I'd love to see one of them work, because if you can do it in a car, you can do it at home or in a factory. Two, hydrogen doesn't like to be stored compactly. That, at least, means it's less dangerous than gasoline in a crash because it disperses so fast, but we need something that does THAT cheaply, too. Three, it's still a fuel, and if we can develop the batteries we need, the infrastructure for charging is mostly in place already. There are some big fuel companies that would like to keep delivering fuel, even if it's hydrogen, but they'll have to make it competitive or it won't happen. Anyway, as you can see from all the commercials, they'd rather sell us natural gas, if we'd just make the government remove some of those pesky restrictions.

[AlfredoENewman]

Well, if you have truly been a hydrogen proponent for decades. You already know the truth about hydrogen.

[RealityBaseCamp]

See above.

[noneIn2008]

Yet another project for the government to foul. How about addressing the time bomb of Social Security and Medicare first, before the government does anything else.

[jakefleisher]

The scale is staggering, but also PRECEDENTED. We did it once for war, can't we do it again for the sake of peace and prosperity. Our survival is just as much at stake.

A brief description of the scale of the Manhattan Project. Admittedly this excerpt is not cited, but I feel it is an accurate, broad strokes, description...
THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB was one of the biggest scientific projects in history... every kind of problem imaginable in physics, chemistry, metallurgy, ordnance and engineering had to be surmounted. Many of the problems had never been encountered before... human, material and monetary resources were poured in on a scale unsurpassed till then... The resources required were staggering... the Manhattan Project was using 70% of the silver produced in the United States. Steel production in the entire nation had to be ramped up to fulfill the needs of the secret laboratories. Extra electricity on a national scale had to be generated... At the end of the war, hundreds of thousands of people and an estimated 2 billion 1945 dollars had been spent on the biggest technical project in history. The entire country had had to be mobilized for it. In just three years, the scale of the project was consuming about as many resources as the US automobile industry.

[jellinda]

My family just went to an PHEV and XEV expo in Los Angeles. All of the models are set to go to open market by 2010- WAY TOO LONG. What we need right now is an inexpensive way of converting gas-combustible engines to hybrids to cut gas consumption. Those kits are available, but cost between 10 - 15 K and void any service contracts. Even if we find a way to convert our Prius to a plug-in (which is hard cuz of the kind of battery needed), Toyota won;t sanction the change. Any Manhattan project will have to include a universal agreement with car manufacturers and cash incentives to the owners.

[rollingdivision]

No one is going to invent a new magical source of energy. Subsidized energy sources actually end up using more total energy, resources or a combination of both. No government program will "wean us off of oil". The world will be using oil and other fossil fuels for the bulk our energy for the foreseeable future, certainly for the life times of all of us.

[krocklin]

That may or may not be true.
But what we can do is use half of less of the fossil fuel we are currently using.
This could be done overnight.
Hybrid, electric, diesel, mass transit can achieve it.

[krocklin]

I forgot to add natural gas to my list. And compressed natural gas. Hydrogen cells too maybe, but this is much more futuristic. The rest of the alternative sources ARE HERE NOW.

[Dynamohum]

There is already a battery that will power a car for 150-250 miles per charge. However, oil companies, American car companies, lobbyists, congressmen are blocking this from the public view. So many groups standing in the way of progress, all pushing their own agenda's whether they coincide or not with the greater good.

[realpolitic]

Yes, Rollingdivision if we did not have oil resources to fight over what would you do with all your right-wing nutcase ideas? Would you become a pacifist or find something else to fight over?

[MyTake]

Can these people say "HYDROGEN FUEL CELL" and envision that there is more energy in a barrel of water than there is in a barrel of oil?

Just split the hydrogen atoms off of the oxygen atom in a molecule of water using electrolysis and then flow the hydrogen gas against one side of the membrane and let it get atomically attracted to the oxygen on the other side and watch the water molecule reform with a electrical snap. Do this a zillion times per nanosecond, draw the electric current off of the membrane and run an electric motor with it.

Japan is moving to hydrogen fuel cell electrical generation in home.
Honda has a fuel cell car in operational production - Actress Jamie Lee Curtis has one.
Boeing flew a plane for 3 hours using a fuel cell.
Sheraton Hotels are installing fuel cell generators in their hotel chain.
Germany has built a fuel cell powered ferry boat.

This guy in Erie, Penn. has a unique way of splitting the hydrogen gas off the water molecule: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=xW25Aaaj9so

The only thing holding back hydrogen fuel cell release are the oil cartel thugs led by Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell.

So take your Manhattan project and off-shore drilling and stuff it!

[Dynamohum]

Electric, electric, electric!!!! rechargeable cells have or will have the smallest carbon footprint. Hydrogen will be expensive, just like oil has become. No one should be naive enough to think that switching from one source to another will benefit the consumer financially. There will be hydrogen cartels, just like the ones for oil. Unless there is a fundamental shift in our way of thinking, the rest of the world will progress even further ahead of us than they already are. My United States needs to get it's head out of it's butt and stop ruling by special interests and start ruling by common interest.

[MyTake]

Hyrogen will not be expensive as you are taking the water molecule apart and putting it back to together. Ninety percent of the global population lives within 100 miles of a coastline, therefore running electrolysis generators from wave, wind and solar energy generated power is all that is needed.

It is the fuel cell membrane that is expensive and it will be corrupt corporations that will price fix as they do on oil now. The automotive sector will tell you that it costs a million dollars to produce a fuel cell car which is a crock. Combustion engines have a high volume of machined parts to go into their motor and drive chain components. This is replaced by 3 parts; a single electric motor, a small fuel cell stack and a modified drive chain. They are desperate to bring fuel cell vehicles to market at prices exceeding their current models in order to satisfy their investor profit margins.

Once people have a fuel cell generator, they now have their own power source and will be free from energy and oil cartels.

[squirrelmessiah]

I don't think a "Manhattan Project" funding level steered by the federal government is necessary. The cheaper, better way to do this would be to keep energy prices high, therefore sending a market signal to private companies that whatever research they do will be end in profit. Raising gasoline taxes and introducing a carbon tax and electric utilities will fight global warming, enhance American competitiveness and finally bring about energy independence. Unfortunately this will be politically unfeasible.

[KillTheMessenger]

The cost of the Manhattan project in today's dollars was $24 billion. That would be enough to build on the order of 10GW of electric production capacity. We need 50 times as much if we want to be energy independent and do something about global warming. It's a tall task and I am not sure the American people are willing to take it on.

[gsuescum]

They said "like the Manhattan Project" not "let's spend as much as we did on the Manhattan Project."

Why don't we spend the bail out money on getting ourselves off of fossil fuel. Just in June we imported $45 billion in oil (gave money primarily to countries that don't like us).

If we could get off of imports (at June's rate) we could keep $540 billion per year in this country, employing our people, and keeping it out of the hands of enemies.

Why not spend the "bailout" money $700 billion to get off of oil. It would pay back for itself in a little over a year.

[OmniDude]

I may be dating myself, but didn't we go through the idea of weaning the country off of foreign oil and fossil fuels during the 70's? I do remember there was a move to have more alternative fuel sources like solar energy, and hydro-electric power. Also there was an emphasis to build electric cars andrely on more fuel effecient forms of transportation. Guess what happened to these ideas after 1980?

Hopefully this time around history will repeat itself and those ideas will come into fruition.

[KillTheMessenger]

Depends only on which party is in charge.

[NL207]

You mean that we should put Obama Campaign advisor, Franklin Raines, in charge of developing new sources of energy? Very unlikely he will do anything but loot the public coffers to the benefit of himself and his political cronies just as he did FannieMae after Bill Clinton appointed him to that position.

As soon as it becomes economic to use alternative energy sources, private conerns will begin building such facilities on a large scale. It's not happening now in a free market because it is simply not cost effective even at today's oil prices. Anyone who thinks controlled, subsidized markets will do a better job need only look at the failures of the Soviet Union in that regard for a measure of just how bad an idea that is and it is exactly that idea the Rep. Markey is proposing: a tyranny that will fail to deliver adequate supplies of any kind of power.

[mamadeus]

You are right. Carter tried to do something by giving tax write-offs to companies that produced solar power etc.... Reagan squelched the deals. Brazil kept going with their plans and have alternative fuel in their cars.

[joebaggadonuts]

What the Drill Baby Drill campaign is hoping to accomplish is a return to cheap oil prices. It will ultimately fail, but we will waste precious time and oil doing it, unless the D's have both the White House and the Congress after this election cycle.

[NL207]

If no drilling is done, supplies will fall anyway due to depletion of current reserves which will drive prices up. Drilling is needed simply to MAINTAIN the current price. Your statement says you are either ignorant or in favor of driving up oil prices through government intervention.

You can forget about the D's controlling the White House. Obama is going down 65-35. The man is no more than a Chicago thug politician. That is becoming crystal clear as this last 6 weeks leading up to the election unfolds. He is resorting to lies, lies, lies in his political ads and large segments of the public are not buying. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/us/politics/26ads.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Worse for him, his coattails lead right into the bowels of the FannieMae/FreddieMac collapse. Both Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson now work for the Obama campaign. These two guys lined their pockets at FannieMae with Enron style accounting. They don't belong in government. They belong in the jail cells on either side of Jeffrey Skilling and Andrew Fastow.

Lesson here: Republicans jail high profiile corporate crooks. Democrats appoint the same to positions of authority iin Government.

[realpolitic]

Bush former Attorney General Gonzalez can not even find another job in the legal community because he was such a crook. No one will hire him.

[dhertzfe]

Also, why is not a national mandate to lower the speed limits back down to 55MPH. It worked before. Why did it even go back up?

[deepintheheartoftejas]

In what sense did it work before? It was almost universally ignored (the noncompliance rate was higher than 80%, compared to only about 15% noncompliance with 70mph limits). Many western states refused to enforce it or created special low-level fines for the first 10 or 15 mph over the limit on highways. The limits were hated by nearly everyone.

And they didn't reduce fuel consumption: after adjusting for better fuel economy, the gains from the lower speed limit came out to less than 1%.

I guess you might enforce it better the next time (maybe through speed-ticketing cameras deployed nation-wide, or perhaps legally requiring car manufacturers to make cars that can't exceed the limit). I wouldn't want to be the member of a political party that supported such measures though, come the next election.

[ohmetoo]

Save water and create loads of energy, pave over much of Arizona and it's thirsty golf courses and put in solar. Harsh, but hey look at all the sunshine. The Colorado River might have a chance. Almost tongue in cheek.

[franklin opt]

I'm proud to say that Ed Markey is my representative.

When I call his office, the person who answers is always cordial and welcoming. Ed and/or his staff respond very quickly. More than once, I have called and found that Ed Markey's position on a given issue is close to mine and he's already working on a solution.

[Everybody Should Vote]

Everybody wants the scientific answer to this but the people pushing the solution know nothing about science. You can have the greatest minds in the world work in this crisis, but to get anything accomplished they need funding.

Sept 26 Polling Update
http://voteforamerica.net/editorials/Comments.aspx?ArticleId=72&ArticleName=Poll+Update

Obama 301, McCain 237
http://voteforamerica.net/electoral.aspx

The 700 Billion Dollar Concession
http://voteforamerica.net/editorials/Comments.aspx?ArticleId=71&ArticleName=The+700+Billion+Dollar+Concession

[franklin opt]

That's why Sen. Obama is emphasizing FUNDING, as posted here.

[PT6]

Wouldn't be nice to be rid of the BIG OIL PROFITS!

We need this!

WOW Palin is sooooo SMART! DRILL BABY DRILL!

BOONE WANTS TO SELL NAT GAS! The rest of his stuff is Bull!

We need what Obama Proposed:

From what we save on future fuel costs we could fund:

EVERY IDEA with quantify-able pay-backs.
Put tens of thousands of researchers to work.
Put millions of people to work in construction.
Put tens of millions to work in new corporations!

[joebaggadonuts]

OMG, you CAN'T put researchers to work. That will put money in the pockets of hard working edumacated people!! What are you thinking? Are you some kind of Democrat or something?

[TxAggie]

Be rid of Big Oil Profits! What do you propose, no oil? Are your opposed to profit? A 9 to 10% ROI is unreasonable? What are you a government employee? Only govt can exist without profit.

Obama has never had a real job. He has never porduced a product, he has never made a payroll, he has never run anything except his mouth.

[PT6]

This is what Obama has Proposed many times!

From what we save on future fuel costs we could fund:

EVERY IDEA with quantify-able pay-backs.
Put tens of thousands of researchers to work.
Put millions of people to work in construction.
Put tens of millions to work in new corporations!