BigThink interviewed President-elect Obama's National Security Adviser, Ret. Gen. James Jones.
What principles guide your energy plan?
Well, we think that... Obviously, we need to do much better at
diversifying the supply base. We're obviously overcommitted on one
particular aspect, and that's oil and perhaps gas at some point, but
certainly oil. The transference of wealth to other countries is
historic and certainly not what we would recommend in terms of a level
playing field. But we think that with the diversity that we can
bring, the technology that we can muster to harness this diversity,
the reliability, the affordability, the respect for the environment
and climate and also bringing into focus the urgent need to modernize
and improve our infrastructure, are some of the things that just have
to be addressed comprehensively.
What are your specific prescriptions for solving the energy crisis?
We call, in our report, for example, we suggest that it's time to
consider an end to the moratorium on the production of oil and gas off
our lands and off our shores. This is something that should be
discussed and it shouldn't be rejected out of hand. We propose
increase in research and development, incentivizing research for clean
coal technology, including carbon capture and storage. Again, more
needs to be done on this issue. We think we should invest in
alternative fuels and renewable energy. We should get serious about
energy efficiency in all across our sectors. And we should modernize
and protect the energy infrastructure that we have. And we should
provide for a new and more streamlined regulatory framework for energy
investments but one that is much more rapid and much more agile so
that we can deal with the problem in real time
What can the US government do?
For example, I think there's general acceptance that, in some manner,
the nuclear sector has to be reenergized and reinvented. We led that
field for many, many years but we haven't built a nuclear power plant
in this country in over 30 years. Getting that started again is going
to take some incentives and some guarantees that only the government
can give for people who are going to invest billions of dollars to
bring this on line.
How do we encourage innovation?
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