Do We Need an Energy "Manhattan Project"?

It's mid Oct 08 and the market is collapsing. Congress has just approved an $850B bailout plan for Wall street.

Geez with maybe even half that and granting we even make lots of mistakes along the way, if the gov't can put up a Manhattan Project to massively mass produce solar cells using the best available technology out there, we may end up producing these dirt cheap - and thus possibly solve bboth the world's economic and climate change crises?

Worth trying.

Minerva Concepcion of NJ @ Oct 09, 2008 11:50:20 AM

solar technology. Reagan administration.

I use to be employed at UNM and NMSU doing energy research, circa 1975. It became apparent to me that numerous solar and energy efficiency technologies existed, but were a threat to existing oil, coal, gas and nuclear technolgies. Bluntly, they didn"t want it. They were fearful these technologies would put them out of business....you know, they are correct. When Reagan went into office, solar energy inventors, and people critical of nuclear, coal and oil industries well...got fired from their jobs, discredited and targets. There has been technological suppression, I know, I was there. There has been a crime committed here, and frankly if these technologies had been adequately funded, we would today see a Microsoft of solar technology. Now we are going to pay more ways than one

martin nix of WA @ Sep 05, 2008 21:21:52 PM

Balance and power

I am not sure why so many comments, both here and in other locations, want to set up either-or scenarios. Since we do have major problems already with one billion daily going overseas for energy, and that will only get worse, we need to work together to build solutions.

When people get serious, as with the Manhattan Project, they may not have the exact answer at the start but the scientists and policy makers can work together to arrive at the best solution we know of at the moment. This is not a mystery - there are effective models of energy use, CO2 heating, climate change, and so on.

Market forces do NOT always work adequately. The mantra that government is bad is only a thinly-veiled wish that business can dominate. That is called fascism. Will corporations do a better job protecting our rights and economic health than government? Think carefully, because you may get what you ask for.

Speaking of the United States specifically, not much will happen until there is a new president. This is probably fitting, as whatever is started now would likely be revised in a major way by the next administration in the USA. Hopefully the next president, whomever it is, will have both the will and the political support to start a true, and urgent, re-thinking of national energy and environmental policy, including 1) incentives for consumer and business adoption of renewable energy and conservation, 2) research support, 3) regulation such as pushing manufacturer fleet gasoline mileage up and perhaps requiring production of electric cars over the next five years, and 4) direct funding of key efforts that may (but the government and scientists can decide) include an upgraded national electric grid to allow more local power generation by various technologies, similar to the way the national highway system was funded.

What is wrong with these ideas? We need to work together to solve national, and global, problems.

PlanetThoughts.org of NY @ Aug 11, 2008 08:36:41 AM

Solving the energy crisis doesn't require another Manhatten Project. It requires a paradigm shift.

There is no reason to spend millions of public money to try to solve the energy crisis. Private industry understands the value of finding alternative and cheaper energy. The profit system is incentive enough.

Rather than creating programs that won’t show any results for years (if ever), the government needs to find an immediate means of reducing the miles driven every day by Americans on their way to and from work.

The obvious answer is to push for telecommuting. This sounds like a good idea. After all, telecommuters don’t need to drive to work - they get there via the internet which doesn’t require much energy.

So, if everyone already has high speed internet access, why isn’t everyone telecommuting? There are two answers. First of all, management doesn’t trust employees to work from home with all of the distractions in the home. They also do not want to have to depend on unreliable internet service from the same company that tells you they will fix your cable TV problem some time between 8am and 6pm next Tuesday.

For their part, many employees don’t really want to work from home. Some do not have a decent work area. Many do not like the idea of having to mix work life and home life together in one location. They feel more comfortable having a place to go to in the morning to get away from distractions in the home, and they like being able to leave work at the end of the day in order to leave the pressures of work at work. With the exception of the truly dedicated and ambitious, most workers want to get away from work at the end of the day. This is the reason that telecommuting has only caught on with a small percentage of the work force.

The problems with telecommuting are not insurmountable – they just require a paradigm shift. The current paradigm says that people either work in a centralized corporate office of they work from home. The answer is to provide an office, but locate it near the home so workers have real offices, but they don’t have to commute more than a mile or two each day. If people could drive down the street to an office located near where they live, fuel consumption by such workers would be cut by 90 percent each and every day.

Who says that employees all have to drive to the same location to work? A system of remote office hosting centers (or ROHCs) could provide office space to individuals from different employers. Shared office centers could provide real offices, professional internet access (with personal firewalls), a professional phone system and a security system which could be used to provide working hours back to management.

If you want to get cars off the road, you don’t need to get rid of offices – you just need to move the office closer to the worker. This solution is much easier than inventing an atomic bomb. All it requires is a new way to host office space – through remote office hosting centers.

aullman of TX @ Jun 26, 2008 23:32:38 PM

Manhattan Project lends ideas to local green-going

This is not the answer either because it would be led by right or left-wing scientists also not in favor of doing what is best for the people . . . but what in the long-run is best for the elite population they serve to uphold & protect. When you said, "a multibillion-dollar, government-led research and regulatory effort is just what is needed right now to develop clean energy sources in America", I am sorry I disagree. Although citizen interaction is the much needed voice government officials need to listen to but they are just deaf to our concerns.

The people outside of government and Washington D.C., will make farther strides in conserving energy if each local community practises some simple recycling, renovation of delapidated buildings, updating refrigeration systems in teir local restaurants and eateries, moms using cloth diapers and services to clean them again instead of disposable landing in a 'fill' a mile deep . . . etc !

Hybrid cars are a fabulous idea, cost needs to be lower though if it will sweep wide across the United States. Carpooling is also good to continue and maybe more reliance on public transportation. Converting to solar sounds simple enough, well?

sharing the light,

Miss Erica Hidvegi, the Enlightenment_Advisor, B.A. Psych/M.A.

Transpersonal Studies- Cnslng/Author, Artist, Photographer,

Entrepreneur & Freelance extraordinaire

Miss Erica Hidvegi of OH @ Jun 16, 2008 16:22:40 PM

"Things are different this time"

It's frequently stated, and has become the cry-wolf phrase of late, but all of the indicators show that this time it truly is different. We're witnessing one of the greatest re-allocations of wealth in U.S. history. We're seeing large, influential think-tanks such as the IEA go back to the drawing board since their oil market predictions keep missing their marks. We have King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia stating flatly, "The oil boom is over and will not return. All of us must get used to a different lifestyle." (the Saudis were our saving grace in the 1979 oil crisis). It's not just a passing phase; it's a problem we have to deal with.

The "we" in that last sentence includes every man, woman, child, think-tank, government official, corporate executive, employee, and on and on -- realistically, across the globe but primarily in the U.S. Since we use over 2x more than even the 2nd largest consumer of petroleum, every facet of our society must change. We must first of all conserve. To paraphrase Matthew Simmons of Simmons International, conservation is the largest new "oil find" we have out there.

Conservation has to get into the very bones of our culture. Unfortunately, we may require economic chemotherapy to get hyper-consumerism out of our bones before conservation can take its place. The government can lead the way or it can watch from the sidelines. New tech creation and deployment will happen this time despite government subsidies toward old tech infrastructure. It IS different this time.

Bob in Austin of TX @ Jun 03, 2008 08:40:20 AM

Energy "Manhattan Project"

Didn't we have one of those after the Arab oil embargo of '72? Remember all those research projects like carbon fiber high speed flywheels, shale oil, walls made of endothermic salts, etc.. Converting Argonne Nat. Laboratory into energy research.

About the only commercialized product after all that work and billions of dollars was the SUV taking over from the gas guzzling land cruisers. LOL.

Luther of IL @ Jun 02, 2008 11:32:48 AM

Hydrogen, Guarantees, and Corrections

1) Hydrogen is a great example of the problem of picking one technology over others. Hydrogen was promoted in the late '90s/early '00s as an alternative technology to the problems of batteries -- poor energy density, slow charging, short lifespan, environmental risks, and so on. However, since then, we now have batteries like lithium phosphate, titanate, and spinels with energy density ~3x that of lead-acid, lifespans ~20x, power density ~10x, are environmentally benign, and so on, and which can charge in just a few minutes. Now hydrogen's weaknesses -- especially the fact that it's 2-4 times more energy wasteful -- are far more pronounced than that of EVs. As a consequence, things like California's "hydrogen highway" are floundering, and far more EVs and PHEVs are coming out than hydrogen cars. Thankfully, these cars don't *need* special infrastructure; fast chargers (like the $125k/250kW AltairNano charger used by Phoenix) can reduce the need for gasoline, but they're not a requirement. So, no waste there.

2) Perhaps the best way such an energy "Manhattan Project" could be dealt with is to look to Germany and the concept of price guarantees. In their case, they guarantee solar electricity can be sold for a given rate for decades. This sort of concept, in my opinion, combines the best of the free market and government incentive by retiring the risk. You might hesitate to build an alternative fuel plant in the current environment, even if you could make a killing in competition with $4/gal gasoline, because of the risk by the time that it comes online you might be competing against $2/gal gasoline. If you knew you could rely on a given price, there's almost no risk, so you'll get far more private investment.

3) I will remark that the "singlemindedness" of the other projects presented -- that the Apollo and Manhattan projects were oriented toward a single path to success, while here we'd be looking at several, isn't exactly accurate. Tell me -- if you were a scientist in the days before the atom bomb, what route should be taken to build one? The answer was that we really didn't know. There was every isotope in the world (except for some forms of iron) as an option. Sure, it was narrowed down quite a bit, but this still left a number of paths that had to be pursued in parallel. Ultimately, we succeeded with two of them (U-235 and Pu-239) at around the same time. The same thing applies with the Apollo Project. The Russians had the same goal as us, to land a man on the moon and get them home again, but their rocket design took a completely and radically different approach. And their design (the N1) turned out to be a horrible choice; it never managed a single success. There were no guarantees that any route taken in the US would be correct. We initially pursued many design options at once, and eventually finalized on what would ultimately be the Saturn V which -- thankfully, after many modifications, worked great.

Rei of IA @ Jun 01, 2008 00:45:29 AM