The president gets it. It is refreshing to see. Although I was Secretary of the U.S. Air Force under the Bush administration, Obama and I see eye-to-eye. As a very early, and sometimes lonely advocate for alternative fuels for the military and the rest of America, I am emboldened by his portfolio approach to the future of energy.
President Obama's insistence for the creation and use of new energy sources in America is about creating a better future and owning the world leadership we have taken for granted for decades. It is not about 'conserving by wearing sweaters'; it is recognition that innovation and initiative must replace the 'woe is me' atmosphere of peak oil prospects, blown-out wells, and natural gas pipelines. President Obama correctly emphasized a portfolio approach. We need new sources of energy electricity, but more importantly we need technologies that tackle petroleum and liquid transportation fuels. He called for a galvanized, focused, and ambitious America to secure our energy future -- calling it this generation's Sputnik moment. He couldn't be more right. In 1957, the Sputnik call-to-arms sparked an instant and close partnership between the U.S. government and private industry. Working together, NASA, Grumman, Boeing, and others put a man on the moon. We need that same partnership ethic today if we are to secure true energy independence and our position at the lead of energy innovation.
The U.S. Air Force is the largest consumer of petroleum in the military. Every day, it burns more than 7.0 million gallons of oil. And where do we get that oil? In 2010, the U.S. spent more than $300 billion to import 4.2 billion barrels of oil, largely to make fuels needed to meet military and civilian transportation demands. One of the greatest threats to our economic and national security is the need to secure foreign oil. So, when President Obama confirmed a commitment to develop domestically renewable petroleum replacements from biomass, also known as bio-crude, he put a stake in the ground that alternatives are not just good for the environment, they're critical to our national and economic security. Bio-crudes are compatible with the DoD's current fleet of tanks, ships, and planes, which will be in use for the next 30 years.
Make no mistake; there has been enormous progress in pursuing a wide variety of alternative energy sources, including bio-crudes. Many efforts have been sparked by grants from the Department of Energy and U.S. Department of Agriculture. The FAA introduced CAAFI standards and the Air Force and the Navy are using their limited marketplace muscle to set standards and demand for new fuels. The Navy, with a centralized fueling requirement, announced the Great Green Fleet Initiative, which concentrates their market power to encourage bio-crude development. These are the visionaries and implementers that the president is relying on to push energy technology forward. Are there critics? Yes. There were during the Space Race and they exist today. They're still asking the same question: "Is this worth it?" If you want a different future, you must risk the critics.
The president has set the vision. The military has led the way in setting standards and using their market power to provide industry with guideposts. Now, we need industry, alongside our engineering and scientific institutions, to identify and help remove barriers to new transportation fuels while balancing some of the new pressures for a cleaner and stable climate. Let the National Academy establish extraction-to-consumption standards, so we can accurately document a fuel's impact on our increasingly precious earth. Let's not have advocates for one technique or another develop political constituents that substitute for science. We have plans for sequestering carbon dioxide, but is anyone asking for how long? We block nuclear because of long half lives, yet we don't ask about the impact of converting cropland to fuel. In fact, RAND recently published a critique of alternative fuels that takes swipes at land conversion and deforestation. I would suggest that their broad brush be narrowed, and they focus on a future where non-arable land can be turned to farmed land, and non-potable water can be converted to energy production.
The role of the U.S. government is clear: set the standards and support a portfolio of technologies. Then, let the technologies self-select against the standards and enable a future for America that includes domestically produced crude so we no longer rely on imports of foreign petroleum. I salute the president as a visionary. This is our time to make an impact -- from energy independence to jobs to protecting the environment. Let's not squander it. Yes, the president gets it. And, so should we, so we can pioneer the way.
The hybrid approach has a precedent in medicine. Childhood leukemia was not largely conquered by a single drug or surgical procedure. It was a combination of approaches undertaken by many scientists and doctors who approached the problem from different angles over the past 30 years.
I believe that the ingenuity is there to do the same with energy. Let us hope that the urgency of the matter gets greater attention when policymakers recognize the role of alternative and renewable energy in national defense is as great as it is with the economy and the environment.
Instead Obama's CHu's report does not even break solar and wind out of hydro. Chu uses old numbers for green energy, and future predictions for "clean" fossil and nukes. Solar and Wind energy has reached about 1% of the energy mix and is doubling every year or two, so it can replace all fossil and nukes power in 10-20 years. Cheaper in the long run, clean, safe, and forever.
Chu loves nukes. Nukes have some critical unsolved problems: Proliferation, terrorism, accidents and waste. Nukes got 10 times the subsides that green energy at the same stage in it's development. Nukes and fossil still get 100 times the breaks and subsidies of green energy. Those who propose subsides proportional to the energy production want to keep things just the way they are.
See Green Light at www.aesopinstitute.org for an overview of a little recognized National Security threat that can accelerate the process.
See "Cold Fusion" on the same site for a possible Black Swan and a definition of that term.
As a former Air Force officer I am very aware of the need to supersede fossil fuels. Little known pending possibilities are likely to make that possible for aircraft and spacecraft.
See Moving Beyond Oil on the same website for a more information.
Prepare to see a gathering flock of Black Swans.
What we really need is a SOLUTION. Our government should offer a $1 billion PRIZE for the missing breakthrough: clean, affordable and reliable electricity. In the last two years DOE has given politically connected 'development deals' more than $30 billion. These deals do not help us find a breakthrough, they enrich developers. One wind farm in Texas has a "developers fee" of $244 million for getting the deal approved. (Google it, there are more of these schemes being uncovered every day).
Instead of continuing to waste billions on over-hyped and under-performing wind and solar schemes, we need a breakthrough. A $1 billion prize will either find that breakthrough or tell us exactly where we are in that search.
The President's cheerleading is expensive and it isn't going to find our missing breakthrough. Offer $1 billion - America trusts competition and reward a lot more than political promises.
I'm all for more advances but we need to start now to switch over--waiting to win the lottery not such a good idea........wind farm in Texas===sounds like business as usual, the "money men" will scam anything they can to make a buck!
Thank you Michael Wynne 21st Secretary of the United States Airforce.
It is indeed an honor to speak to you for your service.
You gave African Americans the affirmative action, after years of discrimination to be hired if they had the skill. Somehow during the Reagan state's right's era, the skilled training centers, like social security, ended up on the Republican chopping block. Gone were any chance to "be" someone in America by trade. 30 years of neglect to train poor Americans to have a bootstrap.
This has resulted in increased "skilled foreign" labor on and off the books, being hired through backslapping cronyism. The jobs were shipped overseas, during the last Republican promise.
I hope, and I'm circulating petition, to have the African American who's faught side by side in America for it's freedoms, can be included in the Green Trades. This is perfect, and the obstruction is bankrupting the guy, but his determination to bring the opportunity to students as an alternative to college, is from the heart.
Someone really needs to help him get the "everyday in VA obstruction" out of the way of progress for our future.
They are patriotic, they say, that do this.
Your a soldier of the people, maybe you could talk to the generations now wielding power, and make some sense of the exclusion of AA to get trainiing. Most can't afford a vehicle and during the crash, they lost jobs, took lower paying ones, and still lost the monthly car note.
America, it's time for unity.
They are exploiting the teacher's skill to teach and certify in the rural green schools, but the only one on the city/urban busline, they send no students to fill his classes.
Racism, expecially the 30 year undercover, ethnicity code system of discrimination, is going to ruin this country, as God is my witness. We are only noticed during elections, when they say we'll try and can never establish the inequality to access to training schools for the poor. Since we are paying for the substidy in the housing and the poor can't afford college, then why not offer them and their family members to attend a skill training school, that can help them provide for their families with good jobs.
The intergenerational welfare of all the poor, wouldn't continue, if we do as they did in the 70's and train the American citizen in the trades they keep "importing and hiring immigrants from other countries to do.
I believe it is a sham system of "exceptionalism" and derrier kissing to live among "real Americans" to survive, that has the youth so upset. Like a dead body, hate of a fellow human and oppression of skilled labor knowledge, should be "history" not present day.
I know they have their heritage, and we don't live out where they show the confederate or swaztika, but to have our taxes, paying for googobs of statues and monuments of secessionist, and can't EVER pass an inheritance to your children.
Are you a believer of a rising tide raising all boats? Yours and the President's ideas are great for the country, however, if the poor are still unskilled in the Green jobs, then the poverty in all cities for one set of people, will continue. This opportunity to convert to better cleaner energy sources should be given to any who wish to take up the trade. The demand is so desperately needed. The speculators of oil on Wall St, already salivating over the gouging to come.
Where I live in Richmond Virginia, there is a minority African American businessman who teaches installation of solar and wind and also certifies the students upon completion. I was so glad he put the school on a busline on Broad Street where urban students who couldn't afford college, could get the trade. Finally I said, a chance given to the unskilled felony record child support owing Daddys a chance to get a skill that can't be outsourced, start a business retrofitting in this state. Sure history's great to preserve, but patches and old heating, draining our federal budget. (LAHEAP)
We wouldn't need another program for senior housing, and low income winter or summer cost.
Richmon's unemployment training system on the stimulus, is leaving this company out of the right to train.
We the people own the projects, let's get smart and stop paying a high gas and oil bill, when solar panels can be applied and the state deficits cleared away.
People are harping and batching about cars and their poor mileage. Ok, take a look at that semi. It might get 6-8MPG, downhill, with a tailwind. How can you improve on that? You start from the standpoint of 80K pounds GVW. How much force does it take to move the vehicle from a standstill, how much does it take to power the vehicle at 55MPH, how much going up a 6% grade, how much iron goes into making one of these things, look at all aspects of it. Torque, and horsepower.
There's a lot of interesting ideas out there, diesel-electric is a combination that's been around for a while, they use it on rail locomotives. There's also regenerative braking. There's a lot of cool ideas. Now, have any of them been tried, on a heavier scale? When you're talking semis, you're talking Big Rigs, 'big' being the key term, here. Tires twice the size of those on your conventional car. Matter of fact, everything's bigger on a big rig: Drive line, fuel tank, exhaust, transmission, everything's bigger, and heavier than that found on a car. Translation: You aren't going to power this monster with a Honda Civic high-efficiency hybrid engine. But, you COULD think about up-scaling all that 'green'tech stuff, and buy a surplus semi somewhere, and use it as a test bed. Nevermind the brick-like shape, just work on one aspect, like regen braking, something that could help regional/local delivery trucks. Delivery vans run on diesel, too. Lots of opportunities to excel, here.
From WSJ:
Oil-Drilling Boom Under Way --- Rig Count Doubles in U.S. as Companies, Landowners Tap New Crude Sources
By Ryan Dezember and Matt Day
10 February, 2011
The Wall Street Journal
CUERO, Texas -- Oil-drilling activity in the U.S. has accelerated to a pace not seen in a generation as energy companies, oilfield contractors and landowners rush to exploit newly profitable sources of crude.
The number of rigs aiming for oil in the U.S. is the highest since at least 1987, according to Baker Hughes Inc. The 818 rigs tallied by the oilfield-service company last week are nearly double last year's count and about 10 times the number in the late 1990s.