Even as President Obama presses for renewable energy, he reminds us that not only will the entrenched oil and coal lobbies, and backward-looking business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce resist the change, but that we will need carbon-based fuels for decades. Energy reform is a strategic challenge and a matter of national security and economic security for the United States. In a speech he gave on Oct. 23 at MIT, Obama said "nations everywhere are racing to develop new ways to producing [sic] and use energy. The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy." It's a race we have to win.
Oil prices are already rising with the declarations by economists and governments that the recession and global economic crisis is over. The oil companies are doing their best to show good corporate citizenship and become energy companies with oil as just one component of their inventory. Nevertheless there are competing explanations for what sent gasoline prices over $4 per gallon just before the economy imploded, and it's likely to happen again. Some would like to blame speculators and Wall Street traders. As China and India grow their large economies they will need more energy and competition for oil will drive up the market price again. If other countries recover from the economic downturn more quickly than the United States, we may see gas at $4 a gallon long before the unemployed have found jobs so they can pay for gasoline to get to work.
When the President utters the words "clean coal" some environmentalists hear it as today's code for "I want your vote" to those in the coal industry and its powerful lobby, including many of Obama's Illinois constituents who gave him his start in politics. However, we're going to have a carbon-based economy for decades, and many more decades if we don't get going on renewable energy. That's plenty of time to find greener ways of using black coal to reduce the environmental impact while coal remains part of our energy production. So far the coal industry continues to dig in its heels and opposes mining regulation, carbon cap-and-trade legislation and limits on or the elimination of mountaintop removal.
"Clean coal" may be an oxymoron, but winning the race on developing more environmentally benign ways to manage coal production and use it in power plants could yet be an economic bonanza. However, China currently has the lead in putting the greenest coal production plants available online. India and China have huge coal reserves and tremendous shortfalls in their production capabilities. They will be using coal for decades and could be buying clean coal technologies from the United States. What's certain is that if we don't develop clean coal technology ourselves and improve it to the point where others can buy it from us, we'll be buying it from China.
There's a startling report just released by the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory that shows the tremendous boom in coal plants in China compared with the United States, and historical data and forecasts for wind energy and natural gas production in the United States. It's not a pretty picture.
I'm rooting for the University of Chicago's Laurens Mets, who's found a way to convert wind and solar energy into natural gas. If his method can be industrialized, we may escape the cyclical nature of solar and wind energy production. Right now these systems can deliver electricity only when there is demand, because there is no battery technology sufficient to store power on a large scale, and other ideas are unproven. Converting electricity produced by wind and solar farms into natural gas would provide a way to store energy in a form for which we already have technologies and infrastructure and use it to produce power when it is needed.
The Chamber of Commerce has its head in the sand. It has paid little heed to losing the membership of major energy companies such as Excelon, Pacific Gas and Electric, and PNM Resources, over its refusal to accept the science behind climate change and its resistance to energy reform. It has also lost consumer companies such as Apple Computer and Nike.
The Yes Men spoofed the Chamber last week, putting up a fake web site, calling a press conference at the National Press Club, and announcing on the Chamber's behalf that the organization had reversed its position on climate change. It would have been a welcome change; but the Chamber was not amused. Although there are some funny moments in the farce staged by the Yes Men's offensive against the Chamber, energy reform is not a laughing matter, and if we don't get going we won't even be in the race.
