In his second inaugural address, President Obama declared:
The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition, we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries, we must claim its promise.
In his upcoming State Of The Union address, President Obama can describe the state of development of the technology mentioned in the bolded portion of the quote above.
When the President spoke of "the technology that will power new jobs and new industries," I believe he is speaking about the emergent technologies in the fields of renewable energy capture, and energy storage; much of that technology is the early fruit of the Department of Energy's ARPA-E, especially in the area of storage.
ARPA-E's Electrofuels Program has sponsored research and development of what may be the most transformational technology imaginable; technology that allows an economy that continues to grow and raise standards of living worldwide, but does so while reversing the flow of carbon dioxide in industry.
My upcoming documentary, A Most Convenient Convergence, highlights the research of the Electrofuels Program and describes a possible and prosperous carbon-neutral future made possible by this revolutionary work. The trailer for A Most Convenient Convergence is here - http://www.youtube.com/...
Over the squiggle, a first draft of how the President can present this to the nation
After a clear, eloquent description of the problem, the President can present this as part of the solution.
In light of man-made climate change and our obligation to future generations, it is apparent that we must shape our economy to become a carbon-neutral nation. We will lead by example in this, and usher in a carbon-neutral world economy.
We are fortunate in that we have had some of our finest scientists working directly on this for three years. Three years ago, we were able to spend Recovery Act money to found ARPA-E, the DOE’s research organization modeled after the Defense Department’s more well-know DARPA; over the last 50 years DARPA has funded high-risk/high payoff research for the Pentagon, the best known successes being the technologies of the internet and stealth aircraft.
DARPA was founded in response to the Soviet's launch of Sputnik. ARPA-E was founded to address issues of energy security and sustainability.
Now ARPA-E, like DARPA, does not fund incremental research; they have no program to squeeze another 1.5 mpg out of a gallon of gas. They are looking for high-risk/high-reward, disruptive technologies; those with the ability to displace the existing technology because its product or process is cheaper and/or better than what is now used.
ARPA-E spread a wide net in the hope of finding such disruptive technologies, with two major categories being capturing renewable energy sources, and storage of renewables. In such high-risk endeavors, a very high failure rate is expected, but I can report today that the scientists and engineers of ARPA-E have laid the groundwork necessary to say it is probable that we will see a thriving carbon-neutral economy in our lifetimes; we can choose to do so. This work is a gift to the world from the taxpayers of the United States.
In the collection of renewables, I’ll cite one example. We have teams exploring several fascinating approaches to improving solar energy collection, but tonight I will speak of extraordinary developments in wind power from ARPA-E, specifically that of Makani Power.
First I’d like to offer condolences to the people of Makani; their founder and CEO Corwin Hardham passed away last fall, far too young at 38 years of age. He was a pioneer in the science and engineering of airborne wind generation, a competitive wind surfer, a gifted dancer, and an inspiration to those who knew him. The company he left behind is continuing to develop this extraordinary technology.
Makani Power is developing a tethered flying electrical generator on a wing that soars on the stronger, more reliable winds that blow over a thousand feet above ground.
Their system uses only 10% of the material of a conventional turbine that produces the same amount of power. Because the wing harvests energy from the winds aloft, there is sufficient wind to operate more than twice as much of the time. These factors combine to expand the useable wind resource of the US from 15% to 70% of our land area.
Makani is only one example of breakthrough technologies in renewable power collection. There are other novel wind efforts, along with innovations in solar that offer dramatic increases in efficiency and decreases in cost.
However, like other renewables, we have no good way to store wind or solar. We have many teams investigating new battery technology, but also looking at electrical energy storage are what may be the crown jewels of ARPA-E, the teams of scientists and engineers of ARPA-E's Electrofuels Program. We have teams looking at many ways to store energy, but for overall disruptive potential in the economy and benefit to society, the Electrofuels Program seems to loom large.
The goal of the Electrofuelos Program is to store renewable sources of electrical energy in the chemical bonds of a liquid fuel, cheaply, and at very large scale. The technology being developed in this Program will deliver infrastructure-compatible transportation fuels cheaper than the fossil fuel industry; those fuels will be better too… cleaner than fuel from crude oil, with smaller carbon footprints in processing and transporting the fuel.
Now as exciting as that sounds – competitively priced, carbon-neutral drop-in replacements for gasoline, diesel and aviation fuels – it barely scratches the surface of what this technology can do for us. It will revolutionize agriculture by dramatically reducing the amount of fresh water needed to produce many agricultural staples, and replace the petrochemical industry, while creating a market for carbon dioxide, currently our most abundant pollutant.
In the future, it will become routine business for smokestack industries to capture their carbon flow for re-use in the Electrofuels industry, and generate a revenue stream by doing so, rather than let it escape up the smokestack to contribute to global warming.
Manufacturing of plastics will become carbon-negative, as carbon dioxide becomes the feedstock in the manufacturing process.
Some around the world have proposed geo-engineering schemes to combat climate change. These schemes all carry unknown hazards. The ability of the Electrofuels process to manufacture plastic means that we can embark on the only truly safe geo-engineering plan - making all of our plastic from carbon dioxide and disposing of it permanently underground in solid form.
We can take carbon dioxide out of a smokestack, turn it into useful plastic and when we are done with it, we can pay a union coal miner to put it in the bottom of the mine for permanent sequestration.
This is the future we can choose...
I timed this out to just under six minutes. Tell Ax I can cut it to two...