Energy Solutions

Eileen Levandoski writes recently that wind is cheaper than coal, and goes into the drawbacks of so-called ‘clean coal’ in support of Virginia's off-shore wind initiative. While I don’t doubt that we can find ways to contain all the pollution from coal, I seriously doubt that our current plans include that. 

Offshore wind doesn’t seem like a bad idea, since, unlike onshore wind, the winds are more constant, and there won’t be nearly as much of an issue with the wind farm killing bats and birds, which leads to an upsurge in the insect and pest populations. 

But I have other ideas on how to address clean energy. Wind farms on land are limited, and like solar, cannot reliably meet peak needs. Electric cars are billed as ‘clean’, but they are not. They simply exchange the exhaust from a million tailpipes for that of a hundred smokestacks. Ethanol pollutes far more than the gasoline it displaces, drives up food costs and eats up food supplies, and results in federal largesse for already rich companies and political contributions for lawmakers steering the money to those programs, but no benefit for the public. ‘Clean’ natural gas and propane aren’t clean, just less dirty. In this economy, we can’t really afford to gear over to a whole new energy system quickly, but we do need to do something soon. 

Here are my proposals: First, the president should issue an executive order that all government agencies that buy or lease cars for government use should only acquire hydrogen cars, except for specific instances where a hydrogen car that provides the necessary performance isn’t available, such as snowplows, dump trucks, and armored cars. That will give Detroit reason to build more than a handful of demonstrators for the tax break. They know how to build them, they do build them, just in small numbers. We would be using existing funds to buy things we already buy, just adding the condition of buying specifically the hydrogen models. This will encourage GM, Ford, and Chrysler to increase the amount and variety of models available. 

Gasoline and hydrogen engines were developed at the same time, but gasoline engines won out, and have been developed more extensively. The story goes that Rockefeller backed gasoline, since he had invested in oil. Maybe so. But hydrogen has already nearly caught up with the gasoline engines that have been refined for over a century, and can be easily enough installed in almost any model of car. We just need to build them. 

Open-oxygen/ closed-hydrogen cycle engines emit nothing but water vapor, which means no pollution from the tailpipe. However, like electricity and hybrids, hydrogen is only a clean source when we get the fuel from a clean source, which we don’t right now. This is why I advocate nuclear power for the backbone of the grid below. Another advantage of hydrogen engines is that, once we get off Terra, hydrogen is the most freely available substance in space. Moon buggies and Mars cars could be easily adapted by adding an oxygen tank to replace the atmospheric intake of earth-bound models.

And no, the Hindenburg is not a valid reason to fear hydrogen – it was not designed to properly contain the gas. NASA and civilian scientists and engineers have long since designed protections against that flaw.

Second, give developers a large enough tax break to pay for all new construction being built with active or passive solar. Solar power can’t meet peak demand, and can’t replace the grid, but if every new house or business had active solar for electric power or passive solar for heating installed, we could significantly reduce the draw on the grid. Add in a larger break for homes and businesses retrofitting to solar and for earth-sheltered houses that inherently reduce their energy needs. Ideally, these breaks should allow the developer to pay for the installation up-front, and retro-fitters should be able to choose to take the break all at once or spread out over 2-5 years, so home-owners and business-owners can fit it to their financial needs. 

Additionally, charge developers who omit solar from new construction a penalty fee for it, unless the area they’re building in can be shown to be impractical for solar (in the shade of a larger building, for example). 

Third, clear the bureaucratic obstacles to nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean and safe. Nuclear waste can be reprocessed in soliton reactors to regenerate new fuel, and do not need to be dumped in Yucca Mountain (even if the nimby crowd in Nevada would allow it.). Chernobyl was a shoddy design operated by untrained personnel. 3-Mile Island was over-hyped; the damage was insignificant, and we can ensure it doesn’t happen again. 

On the coast, we can build reactors that will generate electricity for the grid, operate a desalination plant to create safe, clean drinking water, and crack seawater for hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen will be fuel, and we can make money from it, but the oxygen is a useful byproduct. We could easily afford to allow the sale of the hydrogen to cover the cost of giving free oxygen to hospitals, and only sell the surplus to the public for welding, scuba or personal oxygen tanks, and the like. 

Offshore wind farms are okay, but would be vulnerable to hurricanes. Better would be OTEC farms. Ocean Thermal Electric conversion plants draw cold, nutrient-rich bottom water up, and make electricity off the thermal gradient. They also feed the fish in the area. OTEC farms would be ideal for anchoring fish farms, and both would be built sub-surface, so hurricanes would be less of an issue than for wind farms. That cold water would not feed the heat engine of a hurricane, so a large conglomeration of OTEC farms might help weaken storm damage. 

The fish farms need not put fishermen out of work, either. Right now, we use a hunter-gatherer model of fishing, and have over-hunted fish. So let’s try an agricultural model and farm them. We could easily control the harvest, ensuring enough fish remain to repopulate the species, and releasing some into the wild, while maintaining a sustainable food source. The OTEC plant feeds them, all we need do is build large enough underwater cages to allow them to roam as freely as cattle in a pasture. Fishermen could either work the fish farm, or use their boat to transport the harvest, like truckers of the seas. Less risk and time will be involved, since they need not sail for days looking for a catch, and more predictable schedules mean less fuel, less cost, and higher return on their labor. 

We could even use sub-oceanic fish farms and OTEC plants as a work-release program, teaching a vocational skill to non-violent inmates as rehabilitation prior to release into society. On a fish farm, they’d be in a closely-controlled environment, so it’d be easy to avoid the pitfalls of easy access to drugs and alcohol while they’re re-adapting to life outside of prison. 

Yes, this is ambitious, but practical. We won’t replace the grid with my new model in a day, and we won’t pay for it overnight. We just need to start.