A Real Energy Strategy For America

09/27/2005

Paul Munnis

With two thirds of the known reserves of crude sweet oil still in the ground, the recent panic over oil supply seems way overdone and is far too melodramatic to fit the facts of permanent higher prices. America does have a problem with oil refineries, or rather the lack of them, and we need to build more in the public interest. That will bring supply and demand back into balance. If the existing oil companies will not make the investment then we should invite foreign competition or else seriously consider nationalizing the refineries in the public interest.

We are using natural gas to make electricity and that is the worst conceivable use for it. We would be far better off using it to heat our homes with.

Coal and nuclear power are the preferred sources for generating electricity. We know that coal pollutes the air downstream and we know that nuclear energy has a disposable rod problem. We advocate the use of coal powered plants on coastal areas where the prevailing upper level winds blow out to sea and use of nuclear power plants in the west and the middle part of the nation where pollution blowing from west to east has little product to be carried in the atmosphere except for steam. Nuclear plant rod storage limits must be raised and closed military bases must become the dispersed storage facilities for these rods.

Some level of pollution is inevitable yet the total mass of pollution can be managed downwards in three key areas:

Industrial - we are reducing manufacturing in America and hence the need to manufacture energy for the manufacturing sector is going downwards quite rapidly. Little needs to be done in this area in our opinion. Massive reduction in the use of aluminum products, such as aluminum foil for home use, would free up a lot of energy for America. This is an area of energy use that is not really necessary.

Transportation – Democrats had a robust emissions control program going that has been killed by the GOP and it should be restored. Also, second generation hybrid car design is upon us with pluggable hybrids. Hybrid automotive production should continue to be encouraged and be switched over to by law for private transportation. The use of bio-diesel and ethanol gasoline stretchers should continue to be encouraged and mandated.  Companies should be encouraged to provide subsidized public transportation for their workers and for the most part not allow private cars on their properties for daily commuting and parking. Communities need to assure excellence in local public transportation and on a par with that available in Europe. Rail should be expanded, and subsidized. Airlines need to be kept only for long haul trips of 750 miles or more. We need to look at a method of formal subsidy of airlines and eliminate this management horror that we call our national airline system. We are not against nationalizing the U.S. airline industry. It is presently a disgrace of poor management that we are giving bailouts to on a daily basis.

On-Grid Solar Panels – are now feasible for homeowners. We can place this type of solar panel on our roof and use the solar generated AC power to power our homes by running the utility meter backwards. If production is higher than consumption then a credit is obtained and when consumption is higher than production it is still less by the amount of solar energy generated. The price of these panels is coming down rapidly and the nation’s roofs should soon blossom with solar produced energy. Already, demand is backlogged by three months worth of production as commercial building owners are making the transition. The potential here is so great that a need for added nuclear power plants may be entirely eliminated. 

We encourage municipalities to take back ownership of natural gas distribution, electrical energy, sewer, water, waste disposal, and cable TV utilities, as means for reducing the local property taxes with the profits from these enterprises and as a means of generating local jobs. Municipal ownership of cellular telephone facilities should also be examined. Private ownership of these is proving to be subject to extreme violation of the public trust, much price gouging, management manipulation of availability through the creation of artificial shortages, stock manipulation, and large scale abuse of federal and state tax credits. We would like to see our public and private schools add solar panels and wind generators in an on-grid configuration.

Learning from recent hurricane disasters we feel that all across America, in every truck weigh-in area found along our Interstate highway system, we need to add storage tanks for the strategic storage of gasoline. This will be a part of the strategic petroleum reserve. When people must be evacuated these tanks should then be opened and used for the emergency fueling of evacuating vehicles.

We also believe that every hospital in America must be equipped with emergency stand-by power generators and these must be sufficient to power a hospital for at least 14 days without fuel re-supply. Also, small local use generators of at least five hours uninterrupted operation must exist for use on hospital floors where patients are hooked up to ventilators and where emergency operating rooms and trauma centers are located. These are a second level backup for the main emergency hospital generators. All nursing homes and hospitals in America must be required to have emergency generator capability as a condition of a license to operate as well as be required to provide safe transportation capability for the evacuation of the more mobile patients.

I am sure that readers of this article can add to the list of things that we should be doing and it is time that we make them known to our local and state government. In our opinion Washington is too bound up with ideology to use their common sense anymore and there is so much greed in central government that can be seen by even a casual observer that we must diversify government itself. The bigger issues of the national geopolitics of oil is beyond our ability to create a strategy for and we leave it to the think tanks to do. Central government direction and private ownership of the public commons is a total failure however and we must now revert to states rights and local control of these commons wherever possible.

If the City of Rochester wants to do something useful with a sales tax then levying it to cause more energy autonomy of government buildings and to make loans to the private sector for improved energy efficiency would be a darn good plan and be likely backed by much of the community. Assuring the U of M that a campus with quality low cost energy availability can be built in the City of Rochester would also benefit our case.