Get out of the way!

By Ron Beasley

What should the Federal Government do to solve the energy crisis?  It should do nothing but get out of the way.  There are times when the conservative free marketeers are right.  The politicians in DC are so tied to Big Energy, oil, coal, nuclear etc. that nothing truly innovative can happen.  Cernig discussed the Voodoo Energy Policy that Bush was advocating this morning and it's primary goal is not to solve the energy problem but to pad the bottom lines of the corporate energy giants.  I don't have any real confidence that the Democrats will be any better.  But fear not - good things are being done in spite of the strangle hold big energy has on the lawmakers in DC.  Here are a few examples:

• I have already covered the effort to make ethanol from algae here.  Just think - 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre as opposed to the 370 gallons from corn.
• Oilman T. Boone Pickens' plan while not perfect is an order of magnitude better than anything we have seen from a DC politician.
• I covered printed solar panel technology that is cheaper than coal here, and the first large scale thin film solar plant has just been approved in California.
• Investment bank Goldman Sachs has a solar subsidiary that is busy buying up leases in the Mojave desert and Nevada.
• General Electric and others are busy  developing new battery technologies to power everything from hybrid cars to tugboats, city buses and diesel locomotives and General Motors expects to begin manufacturing the Chevy Volt, an extended-range electric vehicle and be selling it by 2010.
• PayPal's cofounder hopes to produce a practical $30,000 all-electric car in four years.

All of the above have one thing in common - they are going on without the federal government.  The politicians in DC are still more interested in maintaining as much of the status quo as possible for the benefit of big energy.  For once the conservatives are right - the government is part of the problem.

Comments

[Bruce Sanders]

Don't forget high altitude wind power. In fact, in this regard T. Boone has missed the boat.

For example:

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2005/08/sky_high_wind_p.html

though there are other companies working on this as well.