DETROIT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Global warming at the present time is a fact. The extent of the role of human agency in its causation is not.
The discussion of the role of human agency, in fact, has become so politicized that the simple notion that this is a question to be answered solely by science has been submerged in name calling and in the imputation of blame on those who even question whether we know enough now to make political-economic decisions that will not only affect the future of the American way of life, but also compel us to legislate limits for our lifestyle and to inhibit and even try to prohibit developing countries from creating and accumulating the wealth, which would allow them to reach the current standard of living enjoyed by Americans today.
In his State of the Union (SU) message the President of the United States addressed the above topic by proposing that the United States work to reduce its usage of gasoline by 20% in the next decade. This, he said, could be accomplished by pursuing the development and/or implementation of:
-
Clean, safe, coal burning technology;
-
Clean and safe alternatives to coal burning technology;
-
Alternate fuels, and;
-
(High power, high capacity) battery technology.
The President is proposing that America hedge its bets, and at the same time become the incubator for an energy supply revolution, so that no one anywhere has to give up his own or his children’s future quality of life on an if-come bet on greenhouse gas emissions.
If the Congress can grasp this concept then America may be on its way to a second century of world economic and intellectual leadership.
If the American Federal and State Governments make it a priority to support the four areas named in the SU with tax incentives, educational grants, development grants to private industry and, perhaps, even Manhattan-type projects at our great national laboratories such as Oak Ridge, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, then the global warming concern may be a genuine boon to this country and its industrial base.
Looking at each of the four topics enumerated above in some detail we see:
1. Clean, safe, coal burning technology will require national environmental permitting laws, so that a single national priority, clean, safe and economical energy production, can take the place of a myriad of State and local legislation that now makes it impossible to develop, upgrade or build new coal fired power plants. The development of such plants will not reduce carbon dioxide emissions, unless the carbon dioxide produced can be immobilized or stored so as to be inert. But new designs will surely be required to be able to burn lower grades of coal without producing any quality of life diminishing gases such as sulphur dioxide.
In addition the clean burning of coal can also be used to increase, by extraction from coal ash, the nation’s supply of many strategic metals and materials. Copper, nickel and germanium are found in much of the coal ash produced by coal fired power plants today. But even when significant quantities are found the sad state of the American smelting and refining industry requires that this valuable material go to landfill and be wasted and lost.
The development, in the U.S., of the best coal burning technology possible will open a huge global market for our power plant manufacturers, and will allow us to show the way to cleaner energy production to nations that are currently planning on building myriads of coal fired power plants without any thought for environmental safety.
2. The clean and safe alternatives to coal burning technology, that are ready for prime time, are, of course, nuclear power plants. America built the first such “civilian” nuclear power plant at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, more than 50 years ago. It was fuelled not with uranium but with thorium. The nuclear power industry ultimately went with uranium, because the perceived need for nuclear weapons meant that the government pushed the nuclear power industry in that direction to insure economies of scale in the production of highly enriched uranium and of plutonium.
The time of the massive need for nuclear weapons is over. American mining companies have discovered and proved immense deposits of thorium in Idaho and surrounds. A national interest in switching from uranium to thorium is held back only by the economics of replacing all of the existing uranium fuelled nuclear power plants with thorium fuelled ones, and by the lack of interest in building new plants paradoxically due to fear that is mostly out-of-place when uranium is replaced by thorium.
Government must step in and level the playing field and initiate an age of clean, safe, thorium fuelled nuclear power plants to eventually replace first the existing civilian uranium fuelled nuclear power plants and then ultimately all of the coal fired plants as well. This would completely eliminate electric power generation as a source of carbon dioxide! A newly energized American nuclear power plant design and manufacturing industry could guarantee the American standard of living for generations and produce immense wealth for America by selling the technology globally.
Solar powered plants are also a substitute for coal fired ones, but the technology and cost structure still needs work that only a massive federally funded program can hope to achieve.
3. Alternate fuels are a stopgap, because, except for hydrogen, they are all hydrocarbon based such as ethnaol and biodiesel, so that they produce carbon dioxide when burned. The President has called for the replacement by 2017 of 35 billion gallons of gasoline by alternate fuels. If a hydrogen production and distribution infrastructure can be begun by then it will mean that ultimately hydrocarbon fuels will become only curiosities, but the hydrogen economy can only be accomplished with massive federal funding and well constructed enabling legislation.
Foreign nations with less efficient agriculture than ours will not be eager to convert feed and food corn to ethanol production, but American engineered ethanol production technology using grasses and biomass systems will sell well globally if and when developed commercially.
4. Finally, the President mentioned the development of battery technology as an alternate energy source. This can refer only to safe, reliable, high capacity, rechargeable, high cycle life batteries for use in vehicles and heavy machinery.
Today the power and cycle life for vehicle operation can only be achieved by batteries based on lithium ion technology. Japan, Korea and China already nationally sponsor lithium ion battery technology development. Companies in those countries already produce lithium ion batteries for powering portable personal entertainment devices. Even though the technology was invented in the U.S. and developed here first.
The race is thus already on to develop lithium ion batteries large enough and powerful enough to safely and reliably be used to power vehicles and give them the range and performance of contemporary vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. The United States has large reserves of lithium in Nevada, and Chile has even larger reserves. We need to resolve not to waste these assets or let competing nations acquire them.
No American company in the battery development industry is large enough to finance the development of an ideal lithium-ion battery. The major American battery manufacturers have a vested interest in existing lead-acid battery technology, and the American car companies simply don’t have the in-house expertise to evaluate a lithium-ion battery development program much less undertake one.
It will require an institution such as the National Academy of Science to oversee a Federal funded mini-Manhattan project to develop the battery technology that American car makers and equipment makers need to overcome the lead now held by Japan’s government backed, in battery development, car makers. The Toyota Prius should be a wake up call not a call to surrender.
Although the President didn’t mention them, I must add fuel cells to the list of national development priorities. The problem is they need to be hydrogen fuelled and all current designs use so much platinum that they would not be practical in mass production due not only to cost but to simple availability of critical raw materials.
Resource investors who want to help make America energy independent and reduce emissions of gases suspected as contributing to global warming should invest in manufacturing, mining and technology companies working on:
-
Coal fired power plant technology and materials;
-
Processes for extracting metals from coal ash;
-
Processes for producing ethanol from non food agricultural products;
-
Thorium mining;
-
Thorium fuelled nuclear power plants;
-
Technology to safely switch existing uranium fuelled nuclear power plants to thorium fuelled operation;
-
Lithium extraction, mining and production;
-
Large scale Lithium ion battery technology;
-
Fuel cell technology that substitutes basic metals for platinum group metals, and;
-
Hydrogen production and distribution technology.
All of these technologies and products have huge global markets and each one of them helps to safeguard America’s quality of life, its independence and its freedom.
I think that this is what the President hopes will come from the directions to which he pointed in the State of the Union address.
