Obama Energy & Environment

In response to Energy & Environment: Of the People, By the People
but also some of my more general thoughts on the subject.

Electric cars are not advanced technology; they predate internal combustion engines by more than a few years. One thing that the new administration could push for before the US auto industry is bailed out is for the auto industry to be required to reinstate their scrapped electric designs. In the early 1990's when California's Air Resource Board (CARB) mandated that car companies who wanted to sell vehicles in California had to make zero emissions vehicles all the car companies created electric vehicles all of which would have enough charge to do the vast majority of driving a typical American does in a day. After the CARB reversed their decision due to auto industry influence the car companies repossessed almost all of the electric vehicles they had been leasing and scrapped them. There were many designs that were perfectly economically viable if manufactured in mass quantities. These designs included not only cars by the US auto manufacturer's but also the international auto-makers. If the new administration wants a change to the auto industry they should require that all major auto manufacturers’ that want to sell vehicles in the US be required to make zero emissions vehicles. And require the US auto industry to reinstate scrapped designs that were previously manufactured and have been shown to work well. Here is a short list of vehicles that were scrapped Chrysler TEVan, Ford Ranger EV, GM EV1 and S10 EV, Honda EV Plus, Nissan Altra EV, and Toyota RAV4 EV. The Obama administration should also offer tax incentives and credits to upstart car companies that specialize in alternative fuel vehicles such as Miles, ZAP, Tesla, and REVA. By doing this the new administration is encouraging entrepreneurialism and innovation over the stale business as usual that doesn't seem to be helping our economy at all.

As far as alternative energy one thing that the Obama administration needs to do is make sure that the alternative energy infrastructure is regionally sensitive. By this I mean take advantage of what each region can provide as far as alternative energy and not just put solar panels and wind farms around the country. The Pacific Northwest for instance has two kinds of environments, the western wet cloudy side of the Cascade Mountain Range and the eastern dry sunny side. Wind farms and solar power work quite well on the dry sunny side of the Cascades as well as wind farms in the plains. These don’t work quite as well on the west side of the Cascades, but what does work well is micro-hydro and micro-wind. Alternative energy needs to be planned regionally and not wholesale. Coastal regions should specialize in tidal power farms. The desert Southwest should specialize in solar concentrating power, not in solar panels which would be better suited to the Midwest. In the American West geothermal should be more heavily explored. The Midwest should look into biomass energy using livestock waste. For now the Appalachians should develop clean coal technology until that too can be phased out for cleaner forms of energy. As for nuclear, nuclear should become increasingly part of the renewable energy portfolio until someday when we can take advantage of space-based solar farms. Nuclear should become entirely the province of the federal government because of the security needed and no one group in the government is more heavily involved in nuclear energy than the US Navy. I believe the US Navy should be in charge of building and operating a new generation of nuclear power plants in the United States. The Navy has over 5400 reactor years of accident-free experience since they launched their first nuclear submarine in 1954. Today France provides around 80% of its energy from nuclear power and has never had any major incidents. Nuclear power is far safer than coal in regards to the amount of uranium released into the environment, nuclear power releases zero uranium into the atmosphere per year, whereas just in the US coal burning releases about 1000 tons of uranium into the air and about 2500 tons of thorium which is also radioactive. As for the problem of nuclear waste I believe that science can provide an answer to this problem. There is a constant stream of discoveries of new forms of life that can live and actually thrive in extreme environments; these creatures are known as extremophiles. There are some extremophiles that are radioresistant to nuclear radiation and actually need these environments to survive. These bacteria could be used to consume our radioactive wastes and make nuclear energy even more “green”.

In response to building efficiency, if the new administration requires that all new federally funded buildings and renovations be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified by the US Green Building Council then that will address not only energy efficiency, it will address environmental and human health issues as well. Many municipal governments have required that all new city funded buildings be LEED certified. Another way to promote this is to provide tax incentives to businesses that specialize in “green” construction or design. There could be incentives for engineering, architectural, and construction companies who have a certain percentage of their designers become LEED Accredited Professionals.