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The Hunt for Alternate Energy

Posted on: Tuesday, 7 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By WILLIAM TUCKER

ONE OF THE major reasons we have such serious energy problems in this country is because most people don't understand physics.

To that list you may now be able to add President Bush, who announced an "Advanced Energy Project" in his State of the Union address last week. The president - sounding suspiciously like Richard Nixon in 1973 - promised $22 million for two initiatives:

"To change how we power our homes and offices... zero-emission coal-fired plants; revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy."

"Research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen [plus] cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switchgrass."

The last reference must have set environmental hearts aflutter. Switchgrass - a fast-growing weed that can be harvested every year - has almost had a cult following in recent years among the enthusiasts of "alternate energy."

The premise that we can solve our energy problems by finding some kind of "alternative sources" rests on the assumption that vast portions of the universe remain unexplored. If we look hard enough, we may be able to find some overlooked pot of gold.

In fact, the universe is quite well-understood by now. Quantum mechanics has predicted the change of an atom's energy that produces a particular frequency of light to within one-billionth - probably the best scientific prediction ever made. We know where energy is generated. It comes ultimately from the transformation of matter, according to Einstein's formula, E = mc2. (E = energy, m = mass, the speed of light squared = a very, very big number.)

The energy that comes to us from sunlight, for example, is the result of fusion reactions involving hydrogen atoms within the sun. By the time it reaches us, this energy is extremely diluted. The amount of sunlight falling on a square meter of earth can be translated into enough current to run a 100-watt light bulb.

Covering every square meter of rooftop in the country with photovoltaic panels could probably generate all our indoor lighting plus some air conditioning as well during the daytime. At night, when the sun goes down, we would have to come up with something else.

Wind power is an even more diluted form of solar energy. It is the kinetic energy of air driven by the temperature differences in the Earth's atmosphere plus the rotation of the earth.

Windmills taller than the Statue of Liberty now produce 1.5 megawatts - enough to provide electricity to 600 homes. The largest windmill farms cover 25 square miles to generate 300 megawatts - about one-third the output of an ordinary power plant. The technology isn't going to improve much. The only question is how many square miles of land and sea we will cover.

One difficulty with wind is that the current it produces is very uneven. This is a big problem for an information economy that requires reliability in the "high 9's." If voltage fluctuates, computers start shedding their data. No contemporary grid is going to be able to rely on windmills for more than 15-20 percent of its power and even that may optimistic.

Methanol and ethanol from crops - "biofuels" - now consume 11 percent of the corn grown in the United States and replaces 2 percent of our gasoline consumption. Reaching 25 percent would require doubling the land under cultivation. Brazil has become the world leader in biofuels production by cutting down huge swathes of rainforests with massive subsidies from the government. But agricultural scientists are raising alarms.

"It takes seven times as much acreage to fuel one car as to feed one American," says critic David Pimentel.

Hydrogen has potential because it can be generated from electricity with nuclear power or coal - clean coal, of course. But hydrogen is difficult to handle and leaks through almost anything. It is not at all certain we can build a national infrastructure.

The uncomfortable conclusion is that we're going to be running on oil for a long, long time. The Canadian tar sands are showing promise, but the idea that we can stop "arming our enemies" by "kicking the oil habit" is a dismaying illusion. If we don't buy Iranian oil, somebody else will. One remarkable fact - America's few liquid natural gas import terminals are now running below capacity because other countries - mainly China - are out-competing us for supplies.

It's a tough world out there. We'd better get used to it.

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William Tucker, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is a Record columnist. Send comments about this column to opedpage@gmail.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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