Kerry Offers 10-Year Plan for U.S. Energy Independence

[Rose Siding]

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) - With crude oil prices at a record high, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry (news - web sites) on Friday offered a 10-year, $30 billion proposal to move the nation toward energy independence.

Under the measure, aides said, American companies and consumers would receive financial aid to develop and buy more fuel-efficient motor vehicles.

In addition, it would set twin goals to have, by the year 2020, an even 20 percent of the nation's motor fuel and electricity come from alternative sources such as solar, wind, ethanol and biodiesel fuel.

Kerry, on a cross-country campaign tour, arranged to formally announce the proposal during a visit to a family farm outside Kansas City.

The measure would provide $10 billion to help automakers retool plants to build high-technology, fuel-efficient vehicles, and give consumers a tax credit of up to $5,000 to buy them.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040806/ts_nm/campaign_kerry_dc

[cthrumatrix]

1. awol's plan is still being baked in his "easy bake oven"

the ingredients are higher oil prices, higher heating bills and more money for his oil mega-corporation sponsors.

[SOS]

2. Reagan and the oil companies

destroyed Carters 1979 energy independence plan in 1985.
We would have ceased importing oil in 1991 if the Republicans and Big Oil hadn't stepped in to increase their profits at the expense of America's security.
Kerry's idea is good, but the un-American Republican Party and their bribers will never let it happen.

[LordActon]

4. Unfortunately you're right

Besides $30 billion isn't very realistic. It's like saying your going to mortgage a $300,000 house with shrub's tax rebate checks. $2.5 trillion is probably more realistic and it's going to take a few more 9/11's before we get the message.

The corporate machine will gladly take the $30B from us the taxpayers though with a wink and a nod but only a massive push by the masses will force any *real* change.

[Occulus]

5. answer may be thermal depolymerization

It's a process that can render waste products into oil and was featured twice in Discover magazine. Oil companies like the idea because it's basically a specialized form of refinery that can integrate easily with existing refining technology.

We can turn our garbage into black gold with a little funding. Why is this not being discussed?

[Massacure]

30. Because then out planet will become 800 degrees with global warming.

[Canuckistanian]

12. Remember when Carter installed solar panels in the WH?

Ronnie Raygun yanked 'em back out as soon as he was power.

[jpak]

16. Those solar panels were obtained by Unity College (Unity Maine)

in 1991 and are providing hot water to the dining hall to this very day...

Which sez a lot about Reagan, the GOP and their fucked up attitudes toward renewable energy.

[The_Casual_Observer]

19. Cheap Oil was the underpinning of the reagan "economic miracle"

With cheap energy all things are easy and anything is possible. Thus the endless Iraq/Iran war. Clinton road the coat tails of this policy by promoting peace in the middle east and oil for food with Iraq. As a result, nothing substantial has been done about renewables for the last 20 years.

[KittyWampus]

3. This Is Kerry's Winning Ticket! TV Ads Showing Windmills

and MoveOn can do the Bush/Cheney Smokestack ones.

[maxsolomon]

6. not NEARLY enough

money to do the job. & unless congress is on his side, he won't get any of it done.

STOP BUILDING HIGHWAYS.
STOP SUBSIDIZING SUBURBAN GROWTH.
STOP AIR CONDITIONING EVERYTHING.

a couple more 9/11s is right. $5/gallon will help panic the suburbanites.

[jay-3d]

8. If it wasn't

for air conditioning, no one would live in Texas

[blindpig]

9. plant more trees

I live in the South and would be tickled pink if AC disappeared. It would save us from sprawl. People lived here before AC, you have to adjust your lifestyle to your environment. Let the wimps move north.

[Bandit]

11. Stop Air Conditioning....but that is how Bush* wants to fight

Global Warming. He made a statement he thought was funny, something like "I don't know why everyone is worried about Global Warming we all have Air Conditioning" Probably not an exact quote but the jist is exact.

[Guaranteed]

31. It's not nearly enough money, is what it isn't...

If we do this right it's going to cost trillions of dollars. It's going to suck, but we have to do it.

So, Kerry, just do it.

[A_Possum]

7. burning coal

and $10 billion to transform the current generation of coal-fired utility plants into cleaner and more efficient facilities.

Excellent. Coal-burning introduces far more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear plants do.

[jpak]

20. Kerry is proposing to replace older coal plants

with state-of-the-art high efficiency (45-55% thermal efficiency) integrated gasification combined cycle plants.

These plants would reduce CO2, mercury, SOx, NOx, and particulate (radionuclide) emissions to near zero and dramatically reduce water consumption as well.

It's a good proposal.

BTW: The old chestnut that "coal plants release more radioactivity than nuclear plants" is not entirely true.

This myth has its origin in an Office of Technology Assessment report published in the '70's.

The study estimated radionuclide emissions from a HYPOTHETICAL coal plant design and two nuclear power plant designs.

Actual radionuclide emissions from operating coal and nuclear plants were NOT measured.

It also used a single value for coal radionuclide content (which varies widely depending on the source).

It concluded that the coal plant design released slightly more radionuclides than the pressurized water reactor design, but slightly less than a boiling water reactor design.

In reality, nuclear power plants routinely emit more radionuclides than their licenses permit and radionuclide emissions from coal plants vary widely (depending on design and coal used).

So, do coal plants emit more "radiation" than nuclear plants?

It all depends on how you fudge the numbers...

[NickB79]

23. So instead of going up the smokestack

The toxic wastes are simply held back with the toxic coal ash. Where does the coal ash go?

You aren't reducing the amount of chemicals produced; you are simply preventing them from being spread farther than they normally would. You still have to deal with them at some point.

[jpak]

28. If all present coal plants were replaced by IGCC plants

coal consumption (and ash production) would decline significantly.

Older coal plants have a thermal efficiency of ~30%, IGCC plants have thermal efficiencies >45% - i.e. they use dramatically less coal to produce a kilowatt hour of electricity than older coal plants.

In Western Europe, a large percentage of the fly ash produced by coal-fired power plants is used to produce construction material (i.e., real "cinder" blocks). Fly ash is viewed there as a commodity rather than a "waste".

That said, I would rather see coal-fired and nuclear power plants replaced by wind turbines and photovoltaic arrays - but Kerry's proposal is a good start...

...and a whole lot better than Cheney administration's so-called energy plan...

[mulethree]

33. I don't think the 45-55% includes the CO2 capture

These measure 45-55% when theres no CO2 capture involved. Capturing the CO2 (around 750g per KWh!) costs close to 20% of the energy generated.

So they stick a coal gasifier on the front, the gas is cleaned and then burned into a gas turbine and the hot exhaust from the turbine powers the plant's existing steam boilers and steam turbines and the final exhaust gas is processed or recycled until you have nearly pure CO2 which is compressed and then shipped or piped ..... somewhere.

The extra efficiency - electricity generation - from the gas turbine ends up powering the gasification, cleaner and CO2 recovery and you end up with an efficiency comparable to the original boiler but much cleaner. The power plant produces the same amount of electricity, but the cost goes up a bundle due to the extra $millions of equipment investment.

So it doesn't happen unless the government pays for it (taxes go up), or the government clamps down on power plant emissions forcing the utilities to pay for it (electric prices go up). I prefer the later as it makes renewable energy technologies more competitive and rewards generators who have already implemented scrubbers and such instead of rewarding just those with dirty unremediated existing plants.

Makes it feasible to burn more domestic (coal) fossil fuel instead of imported (gas and oil) fossil fuel. More energy independence but non-renewable energy. Texaco will be happy since they are leaders in coal gasification - odd that they hold patents on 200 year old technologies.

What do you suppose they will do with a billion tons of captured CO2?

[mom cat]

35. Can the cleaned up co2 be used to "enrich" the atmosphere in

greenhouses thereby stimulating growth and producing a byproduct of oxygen? It may be a hair brained idea, but I heard that tree growth is more rapid in cities with higher concentrations of co2. Also, and here I might be wrong, but I seem to remember that plants have a respiration cycle. If that is the case, some form of gas exchange cycle could be used to vent the oxygen that is created to the benefit of plants and people.

[mulethree]

37. they do that

If I remember correctly from my days playing with an indoor grow-room ... Plants grow better with more CO2 - up to about 5 times the normal concentration in our atmosphere. I believe it was 50% more growth at 5 times the normal CO2 concentration and then it starts decreasing as concentrations exceed 5X.

I wonder when they CO2 enrich greenhouse air, how much escapes and how much ends up as plant-material?

So plants are genetically optimized to work best with much higher levels of CO2 in the air. Meaning that they evolved during times when CO2 levels were much higher? Certainly there was much more carbon in the air before many plants grew, died and locked the carbon up in whats now coal.

Even more, millions of years earlier when zillions of plankton and algae locked up carbon into whats now oil?

[Cocoa]

10. the TV whores will tell us this is impossible

they'll be snarky and they'll roll their eyes at Kerry's "pie in the sky" plan, but they'll try to avoid the substance of the plan.

[mahina]

13. Just like voting...

Lots of effort goes into the self defeating idea that you can't do anything, one person can't change anything so I might as well not do anything-
The truth is, YOU have the power! (Thanks Howard!)

There is no one simple answer on energy- the answer is in a combination of approaches.

Please check out Amory Lovins' "Natural Capitalism", http://www.rmi.org

Check out the hypercar! Think of all the cars on the road as little generators. They sit unused in the garage once you get home. Rather than burning oil at a centralized facility and transmitting it at 25% electricity, soon you can plug your hydrogen car into your house and power your home with only hot water emitted.

When people say that hydrogen is a net energy loser, know that we are generating hydrogen with solar energy here at U.H.

This single issue represents great hope for the future of the US economy- we could develop new tech and sell it to the whole world, especially places like China and rural places that don't have energy distribution infrastructure in place. (leapfrogging the technology)

It represents great hope for the world environment. Finally we will have a president who is literate on energy. (*'s money for hydrogen had us generating hydrogen with nuclear energy- um, pointless!)

So challenge people so sure, armed with 30 year old opinions unburdened with actual information, with fact!

You can read the latest by some of the best minds on the subject here:
UC Berkeley Energy and Resources and affiliated folks:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/rael.html
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/papers.html#R&D

Sorry for the long post. I see this issue as really key, along with campaign finance reform, to taking America's future back.
Aloha!

[glitch]

14. Welcome to DU!

Glad to see another Lovins fan on this board! Thanks for the rael link too.
Diversity in our approach to the problem is the only solution.

[mahina]

15. Thanks!

Love your tagline...what are some of your favorite energy information sites?

[glitch]

34. Oh boy I have a lot of them - it will take some time - I'll bookmark this

thread and get back to you. But my favorite areas are passive solar architecture and biodiesel. Though all alternative energies are interesting to me.
I am going to try to attend this in two weeks:
http://solarliving.org/solfest2004.cfm

[amandabeech]

17. It will be very difficult to replace petroleum for many transport needs.

I've been studying this, as much as a non-scientist can, and I believe that we face a very, very difficult situation. I think that using electricity directly for as much transportation as possible will be necessary. That means electrification of as much rail as possible and using small electric cars, scooters and assisted bicycles will be the best way to go. That is if we can come up with enough electricity to do that as well as provide electricity for current uses. The foot and the horse look better and better!

The amount of energy obtained by burning petroleum products is much greater than the amount of energy needed to pump the oil, refine it and deliver it to the gas tank. Generally, the ratio may be 25 to 1, in Iraq, to 6 to 1 in old, nearly depleted fields here. The idea behind the ratio is referred to as "net energy" or "energy returned on energy invested" or "EROEI."

Unfortunately, ethanol, biodiesel and hydrogen have much lower EROEI's. The numbers I've seen are no better than, say, 1.5 to 1, or thereabouts, but perhaps a little better for switchgrass. Many believe that the EROEI for hydrogen and perhaps ethanol may be less than 1 to 1. It takes a lot of diesel to deliver seeds, diesel, pesticides and fertilizer to the fields, and the pesticides some fertilizer components are made using fossil fuels, including natural gas. Then transport the grain to the processing place, etc., etc. You get the picture.

Then, one must calculate the amount of farmland needed to grow crops for bodies or ethanol. We're paving over our farmland, and everything else, so they're not making any more.

We may be able to make ethanol or biodiesel from various waste materials, but I've never seen that scientifically quantified. However, in the future, we may run short on chemical fertilizer made with fossil fuels. At that point we will need to recycle organic waste into compost to spread on fields in place of chemical fertilizers, particularly the nitrogen component.

We may also find that our soils have been so depleted and destroyed by years of treatment with heavy loads of pesticides and chemical fertilizers that we will need to use composted organic wastes to bring those soils back to productive health.

Global warming that results in lower rainfall may also require us to use compost as a soil conditioner because soil with a high level of organic matter holds moisture much better.

Hydrogen is not found on its own. It is found in combination with another element, usually carbon or oxygen or both. Separating the hydrogen from the other atoms requires a lot of energy. Compressing and cooling hydrogen for storage and shipment also requires much energy. Hydrogen must then be put through fuel cell or burned, neither of which is 100% energy efficient. There is considerable scientific debate on whether the process of obtaining pure hydrogen, and storing, transporting and utilizing it, yields a positive EROEI.

For more and better information, I recommend checking out the Energy/Environment forum here at DU, Runningonempty2 group at Yahoo, or, for the scientifically minded, EnergyResources group at Yahoo. There are many other terrific sites out there, but these should lead you in the right direction.

[mahina]

22. Thanks..

Only problem with electric cars is you still have to generate the electricity somewhere and as you know you lose efficiency at every step. So again it's a combined solution...I like the hybrids and hypercars.
Did you catch the chairman of General Motors quote at the new car show last year? He said that the internal combustion engine will be off the roads in America within the decade at the unveiling of GM's hydrogen platform car. Of course it was easy to miss, being in a tiny column in tiny print on the bottom of the financial pages...
Great news nonetheless!

[amandabeech]

27. Yes. If we are to keep anything like our present lives,

we must combine extreme conservation measures with a dramatic increase in electrical production.

Unlike many people here, I do not rule out nukes, considering what I have read at the Energy/Environment forum, principally from NNadir, and from posters elsewhere. Nonetheless, the EROEI of nukes may not equal that of petroleum production. However, I do not think that we will have any clear idea about that until we here in the U.S. and other in the world attempt to build and operate much newer plant designs.

On the EnergyResources site, posters estimated the number of nuclear power plants of a certain output capacity that the U.S. would need to build every year in order to replace fossil fuel derived energy of all types, including natural gas- and coal-fired power plants. It was a very large number that I wish that I could recall. I may have to search for it this weekend.

Obviously, the production and operation of electric vehicles steps down the original energy, but I believe that it is greater than 1 to 1, which is standard that I have doubts will be exceeded by hydrogen to any extent. Electricity is also easier to distribute through our current infrastructure, although upgrades will surely be needed. Hydrogen will require an entirely new distribution system, since the circumference of gas and oil pipelines is not sufficiently large, or so I've read. Hydrogen also makes metal brittle, and it is not clear how long a hydrogen pipeline would last. As you can tell, I remain somewhat sceptical about the widespread use of hydrogen as a transportation fuel.

I like the hybrids and the hypercars a lot. I believe that a pluggable hybrid will bridge the gap between the hybrid and the electric vehicle. Imagine a car that not only would charge overnight, using electrical generating capacity that currently goes unused, run at least 20 miles on battery storage alone, but would also have a sufficient gasoline hybrid engine to make longer trips.

I saw something like the GM announcement that you mention. I believe that when Ford brought a hybrid Escape SUV to the auto show in New York a couple of months ago, GM was asked when their vehicle was coming out. GM said that Toyota had offered to license the Toyota hybrid system to GM, but GM had refused, insisting that hydrogen would be the way to go.

[Barrett808]

32. Don't forget plastics

The very building materials of our society are largely made from petroleum as well. I was ranting about this to a fellow passenger on the bus yesterday. I pointed to the synthetic material on the seat covers, the plastic fairings around the windows, the blouse she was wearing...

[Dover]

18. A number of schools in central Texas have switched over to geothermal

heating and cooling. These are not 'liberal' towns, either. But it works great and makes great economic sense (big savings with a very short time for recouping costs), so it's impossible to argue against it. Factories are employing water recycling and natural waste recycling systems. So there is SOME movement in the right direction. And with incentives for sustainable products companies that would eventually lower cost to the consumer, things could go faster yet.

[mahina]

21. Exactly!

Thank you for that info, it's so encouraging!
Does your community have net metering?
Our utility suceeded in rewriting net metering legislation to bring it down to .01 households, while publicly stating they supported it. Accckk!

Good for you!!!!!

[LordActon]

24. Good post amandabeech...

I too did a lot of research on this and pretty much came to the conclusion that the only near-term economically feasible technology that could really produce enough energy for our economy is nuclear produced hydrogen. We can bitch all we want about greener solutions but the economics for these just aren't realistic unless you combine them with drastic reductions in demand.

[mahina]

25. Disagree completely-

Could you cite some sources please?
I don't claim to be an expert but studied this for three years intensively and have kept up with the research while running my own company for the last 15 years.
I have to question your information mainly because you state that there is only one solution. Right there you are arguing against all research I am familiar with.
Looking forward to understanding the empirical evidence for your assertion - thank you in advance for your info!

[amandabeech]

29. I'm getting lost in this thread, Mahina.

For which assertion are you requesting empirical evidence?

[LordActon]

36. no problem...

mahina,

No problems here with your disagreement. Most people do disagree w/me on this topic.

I came to my conclusions after doing several weeks of reading on the topic because some friends approached me on joining a venture with them regarding starting a company that specialized in renewable energy. Most of what I read regarding projections showed engery demand growing at a linear rate 2% through 2030. I completely disagree with these models. I think energy demand is going to grow exponentially over the next 25 years due to globalization and a massive upward shift in living standards around the world (unfortunatly, I think downward for those of us here in the US). With Coal, NG, and Oil providing most of the supply in the short term, I see all of these key energy sources facing a crisis... not just Peak Oil that people have been going on about for the past couple of years but "Peak Energy"! Even with a significant invenstment in such, I just can't envision all of the renewables (combined) adding up to even a fraction of the demand that I see coming (about 50x estimates). With a couple of minor break-throughs in reactor technology, I think a nuclear based hydro economy could realistically be 15 years off if we start making significant investments now.

I can't say I have lots resources and datapoints at my finger tips but most of my conclusions came from simply pouring over the vast wealth of white papers, industry rags, news articles in nexus, websites, (pro, con, wacko, whatever) and some presentations I had seen. Like you, I don't think of myself as an expert. I'd definitely be interested in conclusions you've come to in your research. Always good to share ideas.

[The Commie]

26. My high school does that too.

[mbperrin]

38. Wind energy is great, and the biggest problem with it here in

West Texas is that there are not enough transmission lines yet to get out all the energy being produced. The other "problem" is that even more energy is produced when the wind kicks up!

http://www.vera.com/downloads/Abilene%20News%20-%20wind%2011-2-03.htm

Towers of Power: Tall turbines bring jobs, income to West Texas

Part 1 of a 2-part series

By Melissa Borden / Reporter-News Staff Writer
November 2, 2003

<from the story> Consumer demand kick-started greater interest in the industry, Sloan said. Central and Southwest Corp., now part of American Electric Power, held a series of meetings during which customers could ask industry experts questions. A 1997 meeting in Abilene produced revealing results, Sloan said.

About 250 customers from throughout the region offered opinions on the future of Texas energy. Overwhelmingly, customers wondered why more utilities were not harnessing sun and wind resources.

"That really was a real benchmark event," Sloan said. "It was just a very interesting and very monumental event for the Texas wind industry. They (consumers) knew the wind was not going to stop blowing in West Texas," and asked the experts to pursue renewable energy, even if at a higher customer cost, Sloan said.

<snip>

Project sites abound from the Panhandle to the Plains, but production and development have been hampered by a lack of adequate transmission lines. There is not enough electricity usage in West Texas to use up all that wind power, so it must be transmitted to more populated areas. At the root of the problem is that a wind farm can be operational within six months once construction begins.

<more>

Fast, immediate technology available now - just build more transmission lines to get it out - nothing exotic or untried, and consumers in West Texas even like it (it's not exactly a hotbed of Greenpeace out here!). Why not? The wind is not going to stop blowing out here!

[mahina]

39. Awesome...

great to hear that!

[Tight_rope]

40. Be carefull...that repuke theives will claim that's its their idea.,,,,,n/